People, considering things in the abstract, equate cause-and-effect with a strictly linear post hoc, propter hoc relationship of (innocent) impulse and (unintended) consequence, but it doesn’t necessarily work that way. In fact, in reality, systems exist or emerge quickly and cause-and-effect is submerged in a complex net of overdetermined, non-linear relationships. Strategic intent of one sort or another must be evoked to rescue human efforts at cognition from the confusion of infinite egress, separating signal from noise, order from chaos. Narration thus became the foundational political skill and reflective deliberation and objective measurement the only antidotes to its poisonous potential. Humans can get lost in the hypnotic dreamscapes of persuasive arguments. When misleading and mistrusted narratives, shared across classes, become the cause of political praxis, what recourse has a realism of individual reason?
THIS is impressive. Light years ahead of Boston Dynamics. It’s already over. Xi is hellbent on creating a prodigious population of these bots. China, soon enough, will have a another billion to feed. Yes, feed, because bots require energy too just like us humans.
I’ve been a bit puzzled by Ian’s recent trumpeting of China’s achievement of lifting so many people out of “poverty”. In the past, he was more skeptical about that claim. See, for instance, this post: https://www.ianwelsh.net/world-poverty-is-not-decreasing/.
I’m not sure where to stand on the issue, but I would note that subsistence farmers contribute much less to environmental degradation and climate change than factory workers in an industrial economy. So is it a good thing either for the individuals or the world that China has industrialized so successfully?
Perhaps it deserves more praise for pushing renewable energy and rail transportation. And perhaps it will find a way to combine a highly developed economy with low environmental impact and less exploitation of workers. But that remains to be seen.
Parsing pedophilia. Compare and contrast with Epstein and his “clients” and Michael Jackson’s sordid proclivities. Elvis was a real Hound Dog, was he not? Unlike Epstein’s victims, Elvis’s victims don’t seem to hold a grudge after all these years and to this day look fondly upon Elvis raping them. Mad world. I can guarantee you this, if Elvis was a poor black man, he’d have done 20 and some considering he said to one of the victims that didn’t know she was a victim, “14 gets you 20”.
Its about how Trump has just released an Executive Order “ordering” the makers of Glyphosate to make more of it, and also for total immunity-from-lawsuits and liability for the makers of Glyphosate, parTICularly Bayer and its semi-recent acquisition Monsanto and their Roundup brand.
The time is coming when glyphosated farmland will be unmortgagable, un-lendable against, etc. And any entity desiring to sell it will have to de-glyphosate the soil at the seller’s expense before any buyer will touch it.
An “Executive Order” is often just a declaration of desire on the part of President Piggy. But the Project 2025 Class which operates from within and behind President Piggy also desires this, and they will use all their personell within government to “make it so” to the extent that they can.
The MAHAnians will just have to figure out on their own which foods are grown with glyphosate and which are grown without it, and focus on avoiding those foods which are grown with glyphosate. Do they have the long-term discipline and motivation to do that?
This could be a low-level unscripted unplanned case of what John Robb would have called “open source rebellion”. Maybe a first-few action leaders planned out a first few Flock camera dismantlements, in hopes word would spread and inspire random other copycat camera dismantlings.
“Essentially all of the poverty reduction of the past 30 years comes from one source, and one source only. China. Which industrialized by classic protectionist policies which the IMF, World Bank and poverty ghouls do their best to make impossible.”
Good god L&S. Neither liking nor subscribing I’ve gotta say you’ve fallen prey once again to propaganda and lies while regurgitating the Michael Jackson pedophilia promoted and promulgated by certain alphabet agencies dominated by a certain power group whose name will go unmentioned lest one be accused of anti something or another, which could land you in jail or worse.
It’s tempting to use the f bomb to blow you off for this and other comments made along the way, but I’ll opt for a civilized exit instead and just hope the generational ignorance stops with you without transference to your children.
correct! no country has ever gotten rich by free trading. in fact, free trade is the death knell for democracy, self sufficiency, and creates third world conditions.
when the free trade cranks said poverty was going down under free trade, that lie was blubbered all over the legacy media, till finally someone pointed out it was all traced to one country, protectionist china.
today that lie has finally been thrown onto the junk heap of free market lies.
Dr. Ha Joon Chang plainly through historical records proves that free trade is bad for the poor and democracy
Good god L&S. Neither liking nor subscribing I’ve gotta say you’ve fallen prey once again to propaganda and lies while regurgitating the Michael Jackson pedophilia promoted and promulgated by certain alphabet agencies dominated by a certain power group whose name will go unmentioned lest one be accused of anti something or another, which could land you in jail or worse.
What? Huh? Let me guess, Michael Jackson is not responsible for his actions and instead, it was all Woodrow Wilson’s fault, right? Good grief.
Michael Jackson was a freak. No doubt about it. Elvis was a freak, no doubt about it. Epstein was a freak, no doubt about it. Epstein’s clients were and are freaks, no doubt about it. They all share one massive thing in common. They were, and are, wealthy and powerful and have, or had, status and influence. They all have or had power over people.
As the following two excellent videos underscore, only 5% of child sex abuse charges ever result in the perp being brought to justice. And that’s reported cases. Imagine all the unreported cases. This is especially true if the report is leveled against someone who is wealthy and powerful. You can pretty much guarantee the perp will never be brought to justice as we are seeing with the Epstein Files.
You can understand why the wealthy and power are never brought to justice because they are rarely if ever brought to justice for any wrongdoing because as we know the law does not apply to them, but with pretty much all other crime, where the wealthy can act with impunity and above and beyond the law, the unwashed are held to account by and large. The one exception being pedophilia and child sex abuse. Why this exception? Because as is above, is below. The Elite are pedophiles and ritualistically abuse children of all ages both directly and systematically. So, it only follows that systematically, law enforcement and the justice system are required to go light on child sex abuse and overlook it or look past it. As it is above, it is below, at least when it comes to child sex abuse.
‘propaganda and lies while regurgitating the Michael Jackson pedophilia promoted and promulgated by certain alphabet agencies dominated by a certain power group whose name will go unmentioned lest one be accused of anti something or another, which could land you in jail or worse.’
For the record, Michael Jackson said the problem is the Jewish executives.
There was a dude who was a lawyer ‘in Hollywood’ and was privy to all the cesspoolness of the entire industry for years. He had a small blog – now defunct – which may have been called ‘Hollywood Lawyer’ or something similar. I forget. But the point is that this dude wrote about all the vile crap that goes on and one of the more appalling things he wrote – which I didn’t believe at the time – he wrote about the little girl who was in Speilberg’s Poltergeist films: Heather O’Rourke.
Long story short, O’Rourke was brought into one of the studios where these ghouls operate and she was put on stage to dance/perform/act. The lights were set up in such a way that she couldn’t see what was going on and…
Remember that summer of 1982 was also ‘ET’ time here in the US while ‘Israel’ was beginning its ‘second war’ against Lebanon which culminated in the 1983 Marine baracks bombing which actually got Ron Reagan to stop- sucking Roy Cohn’s cock for a minute-and-a-half so he could feign sympathy for Americans on a carefully curated TV broadcast brought to you by the same people who rape ‘tweens’ in Hollywood.
—
‘Powerful men – including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump – would have big orgy parties with her other young girls.
I repeat, girls and older Victoria Secret models.
I don’t know whether the FBI has pursued this set of allegations in connection with Bill Clinton or Donald Trump but by all indications they have absolutely no interest.’
—
These are all nodes of the same ultimate network. Their people are in place everywhere. Their lawyers won’t ask the most obvious questions.
‘Jeffrey Epstein was notoriously involved in sexual activities (not intercourse) with female teenagers. In the known cases the youngest was fourteen at the time of her first encounter with Epstein (but had been told to lie to Epstein about her age before meeting him). There is no suspicion and no credible allegation that Epstein did ever do anything sexual with prepubescent children.
The girls were paid by Epstein to perform massages on him while being bare breasted or naked. While they were doing so he tended to masturbate. These contacts were consensual. No force was applied. The girls received $200 to $300 for each session. That’s a lot of money for an hour long effort for someone at that age.
It is certainly a weird habit for Epstein to have but it had nothing to do with pedophilia.
One wonders why girls who were paid to do consensual massages are suddenly classified as ‘survivors’. There are no allegation that any of them has ever been forced or threatened. These weren’t ‘survivors’ and not even ‘victims’ but service providers. That is exactly why no criminal procedure was initiated over most of those cases.’
– ‘Bernhard’ (‘b’), proprietor of the silly ‘MoonofAlabama’ psyop honeypot site.
For the record, there have been so many out-of-court settlements surrounding this that it is hard to know where to begin. Both civil and criminal cases have been brought again and again and again. Ryan Dawson has pounded home this point even more than the brilliant Whitney Webb.
I feel as sorry for someone who still pays heed to this monster ‘b’ as I do for someone who feels that ‘anglo-saxons’ are the only human group that has innate violent tendencies.
—
I listened to Daniel Davis – another one of these miltary warmongers whose panties get wet whenever talk of warmaking and wanton violence and destruction are on the menu – Davis laid out the nuts and bolts of what may happen if Isramerica bombs Iran and in the midst of this he was sure to subtly insert that Hamas are terrorists and October 7 was the worst event practically ever and he was sure to mention ‘Israelis’ first when he said that many people will die if this goes off.
Because Jewish lives are simply worth more than the goyim.
China may have impressively reduced poverty, however China defines poverty and measures its reduction, but it has not reduced inequality. In fact, inequality has increased. According to the following, China’s Gini coefficient has risen since 2015 to a high of 0.47 compared to a high during the same time period of 0.32 for OECD countries. There is nothing to indicate China is taking measures to seriously address this growing inequality. In fact, Chinese Communist Party leaders and members parrot the very same capitalist talking points when talking about the poor and poverty as noted in the italicized quote below from the article.
More fundamentally, Chinese local governments’ reluctance to spend poverty alleviation money on direct subsidies to poor households is related to how they conceive poverty and state support. In interviews, local officials expressed a widely-held belief that the poor must become self sufficient and enterprising to escape from poverty. To illustrate, an opinion piece published by People’s Daily and written by a member of the Shaanxi Province party committee’s standing committee argued that: “After escaping from poverty, [poor people] no longer need the minimum living guarantee provided by the social safety net.” A long-term social safety net would “force the poor population into a passive position of accepting relief, and fail to spur enthusiasm for life and work,” this official asserted.
‘People, considering things in the abstract, equate cause-and-effect with a strictly linear post hoc, propter hoc relationship…’
The confusion has its historical roots in the fact that Christian dogma is a blend of Hebrew mythology and history with Greek metaphysic and science, complicated by the fact that Greek metaphysic was never so clearly formulated as Indian, and was always in danger of being identified with highly abstract thought.
Indeed, the Western metaphysicians from Aristotle to Hegel have been – above all things – the great abstractionists, the thinkers. In this respect they are the opposite pole from any traditional metaphysic, which is radically empirical and non-conceptual.
It is possible, then , that the Greeks derived a number of metaphysical doctrines from India, but, for the most part, mistook their nature and treated them as concepts – as abstractions which have an objective existence on a ‘higher plane’ than material things!
It seems to have escaped the Greek mind that a metaphysical term such as ‘eternity’ is not a concept at all. Rather, it is the negation of the concept of time. It involves no positive statement. It merely points out that the notion of reality as extended through past, present and future is a theory and not a real, first-hand experience.
As a result, then, Christian dogma combines a mythological story which is the for the most part Hebrew (as is Islamic dogma), and a group of metaphysical ‘concepts’ which are Greek, and then proceeds to treat both as statements of fact – as information about objective realities inhabiting (a) the world of history, and (b) the ‘supernatural’ world existing parallel to the historical, but on a higher plane.
In other words, it talks about mythology and metaphysic in the language of science.
The resulting confusion has been so vast, and has so muddled western thought, that all of our current terms, our very language, so partake of the confusion that they can hardly straighen it out.
It may help at this point to make a brief summary of the types of knowledge involved.
SCIENCE: The record of hisotry or facts , which are the parts of experience designated by nouns and verbs. However, ‘parts’ is already a noun, so that the reality or realities science discusses remain ultimately undefined.
[Since Hilbert, for example, mathematicians no longer attempt to define a point. Contemporary science more and more accepts the principle that it must work with a number of basic unknowns, signified by undefined terms]
METAPHYSIC: The indefinable basis of knowledge. Metaphysical knowledge or ‘realization’ is an intense clarity of attention to that indefinable and immediate ‘point’ of knowledge which is always ‘now’ and from which all other is elaborated by reflective thought.
A consciousness of ‘life’ in which the mind is not trying to grasp or even define what it knows.
METAPHYSICS (Greek and ‘Western’): Highly abstract thought , dealing with such concepts as nature, being, substance, essence, matter and form – and treating them as if they were facts on a higher level of objective existence than sensually perceptible things.
The most potent form of metaphysics is belief in deities, whether mono or poly, as they are not in any way, shape or form sensually perceptible.
MYTH: A complex of images or a story, whether factual or fanciful, taken to represent the deepest truths of life, or simply regarded as specially significant for no clearly realized reason.
THEOLOGY: An interpretation of combined myth and metaphysics (plural), in which both are treated as objective facts of the historical and scientific order.
The Christian account of the primal beginnings, taken simply as myth, is without doubt a marvelous tale, full of magic, poetry, and splendour.
The wonderful King of kings who was alive for ever before time began, the creation – out of nothing – of the nine choirs of angels , the dark mystery of thge villainous Lucifer, the six days of the making of the world, the First Man in the paradise-garden, Eve, the Serpent, and the Terrible Tree – all this is as good a tale as ever was told, and ranks with the marvels of the Arabian Nights, of the Puranas, of the Iliad and Odyssey, of Hans Andersen and of Grimm.
But, one must hasten to say, this is in no sense leading up to the conclusion that the story should be treated as mere poetry or mere fariy-tale, having no other function than entertainment.
There is no more telling symptom of the confustion of ‘modern thought’ than the very suggestion that poetry or mythology can be ‘mere’. This belongs to the notion that poetry and myth belong to the realm of fancy as distinct from fact, and that since facts equal Truth, myth and poetry have no serious content. Yet this is a mistake for which no one is more responsible than the theologians who, as we have seen, resolutely confounded scientific ‘fact’ with truth and reality.
Having degraded ‘God’ to a mere thing they should not be surprised when scietnists doubt the veracity of this ‘thing’ – for the significant reason that it seems an unnecessary and meaningless hypothesis (an excellent illustration of the point that ‘things’ are really hypotheses).
Certainly, the poets and the myth-makers have little to tell us about facts, for they make no hypotheses. Yet for this very reason they alone have something very important to say: they alone have news of the living world, of reality – over and above both religionists and, yes, scientists as well.
By contrast, the historians, the chroniclers and the analysts of fact record only the news of death. They tell us what, precisely, did happen. And because ‘life’ as we live it goes repetitively round and round – ‘history repeats itself’ – what, precisely, did happen is the best basis for predicting what, precisely, will happen. Such information is, then, the supremely valuable information for those who have no other interest in life than to continue – to keep on keeping on.
Myth does not supply us with facts in the sense, therefore, that it gives us no useful hypotheses for predicting the future – the use of prediction being to continue, to keep on ‘living’.
Because, for so many centuries, the theologians have confused eternal life with everlasting life, and salvation with temporal immortality, our culture is utterly hypnotized into the notion that mere continuity, survival, is a good – if not the supreme good.
Hence we value practical facts above all other knowledge because, above all else, we need to earn our livings, to adapt ourselves to events, to master the operations of nature, to provide for the future, to benefit posterity…..to what?!
Obviously, to keep on going on, to keep on consuming and accumulating, longer and longer, more and more.
Convinced that, in this fashion, we are practical, that we are getting somewhere, we do not notice that we are covering the same ground again and again. Not because we love the ground so much that we want to return to it, but, on the contrary, because we want to move away from it, to that grass on the other side, which is always greener…
‘the notion of reality as extended through past, present and future is a theory and not a real, first-hand experience’
Simply think about or remember the past right now or think about or project the future right now.
Your memories and projections are all happening right now in the present moment, which is constantly coming into being but as soon as you stop and try to capture it it’s gone…yet it’s always here.
Trump Considers Targeted Strike Against Iran, Followed by Larger Attack
The top negotiators plan to meet in Geneva on Thursday for last-ditch talks, debating a new proposal that could create an off-ramp as two carrier groups massed within striking distance of Iran.
‘During the meeting, Mr. Trump pressed General Caine and Mr. Ratcliffe to weigh in on the broader strategy in Iran, but neither official generally advocates a certain policy position.
General Caine discussed what the military could do from an operational standpoint, and Mr. Ratcliffe preferred to discuss the current situation on the ground and possible outcomes of proposed operations.
During the discussions of the operation last month to seize President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, General Caine told Mr. Trump there was a high likelihood of success.
But General Caine has not been able to deliver the same reassurances to Mr. Trump during the Iran discussions, in large measure because it is a far more difficult target.
Mr. Vance, who has long called for more restraint in overseas military action, did not oppose a strike, but he intensely questioned General Caine and Mr. Ratcliffe in the meeting. He pressed them to share their opinions of the options and wanted more of a discussion of the risks and complexity of carrying out a strike against Iran.
Earlier, the United States had been considering options that included putting teams of special operations forces on the ground that could carry out raids to destroy Iranian nuclear or missile facilities.
That included manufacturing and enrichment operations buried far below the surface, outside the range of American conventional munitions.
But any such raid would be highly dangerous, requiring special operations forces to be on the ground far longer than they were for the raid to capture Mr. Maduro.
Multiple U.S. officials said that for now, the plans for a commando raid had been shelved.
Army, Navy and Air Force officials have also raised concerns about the impact that a protracted war with Iran, or just remaining poised for such a conflict, could have on the readiness of Navy ships, scarce Patriot antimissile defenses, and overstretched transport and surveillance planes.
The White House declined to comment on Mr. Trump’s decision making.
“The media may continue to speculate on the President’s thinking all they want, but only President Trump knows what he may or may not do,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Even before the Iranians submit what appears likely to be their last proposal — officials said they expected it to be transmitted to the Trump administration on Monday or Tuesday — the two sides appeared to be hardening their positions.
Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, said on Fox News that Mr. Trump’s “clear direction” to him and Jared Kushner, his co-negotiator and the president’s son-in-law, was that the only acceptable outcome for an agreement was that Iran would move to “zero enrichment” of nuclear material.
But Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, insisted anew in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the country was not ready to give up what he said was its “right” to make nuclear fuel under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
With that statement, the decision about whether the United States was about to attack targets in Iran — with the apparent goal of further weakening the government of Mr. Khamenei — seemed to come down to whether both sides could agree to a face-saving compromise about nuclear production that Washington and Tehran could each describe as a total victory.’
The zero enrichment demand is the Netanyahu-Zionist demand. Trump isn’t hearing good things about the op from his Generals and military people but his Zionist ‘handlers’ keep pressing, with Witkoff and Kushner going right to the media.
For the record, Mel Gibson says the same thing. Gibson and Patel, best buds. If Israel is running the White House, nay the world, how do you explain Patel’s and Gibson’s friendship? Let me guess, Gibson is an imposter and part of the Jewish conspiracy, am I right?
It’s crap like this that makes legitimate criticism of Israel and Zionism impossible. It poisons the waters. If I was a Zionist, I would use it as a strategy to poison the waters so people would avoid criticizing Israel and Zionism. Hmmmmm.
‘how do you explain Patel’s and Gibson’s friendship? Let me guess, Gibson is an imposter and part of the Jewish conspiracy, am I right?’
What is the ‘Jewish conspiracy’?
Those are your words, not mine.
I do not know what the relationship between Gibson and Patel may or may not be, nor do I give a flying fuck.
Every group has supremacists and ‘the Jews’ are no exception.
Zionism is a very recent manifestation of Jewish Supremacism.
Perhaps what you refer to as the ‘Jewish conspiracy’ is the plain fact that ‘the Jews’ make up a whopping .2 percent – that is ‘point two percent’ – of the world population but have secured at minimum 10 percent of world ‘wealth’ such that six out of the top ten billionaires the world over are Jewish.
This would be a problem even if ‘the Jews’ made up a full two percent of the world population.
In the US, these numbers are even more egregious.
Is this what you mean when you talk about a ‘Jewish conspiracy’?
These are the facts right now so I suppose you’ll have to figure out for yourself whether this constitutes a ‘conspiracy’ – which you would also have to define as the word itself is used so haphazardly that it is difficult to determine precisely what one means when using it.
Are there Jews among ‘the Jews’ who gather and plan wealth-building initiatives and look to control and dominate others, including other Jews, in the interest of a ‘Pax Judaica’ or whatever term one wants to use?
bruce wilder
People, considering things in the abstract, equate cause-and-effect with a strictly linear post hoc, propter hoc relationship of (innocent) impulse and (unintended) consequence, but it doesn’t necessarily work that way. In fact, in reality, systems exist or emerge quickly and cause-and-effect is submerged in a complex net of overdetermined, non-linear relationships. Strategic intent of one sort or another must be evoked to rescue human efforts at cognition from the confusion of infinite egress, separating signal from noise, order from chaos. Narration thus became the foundational political skill and reflective deliberation and objective measurement the only antidotes to its poisonous potential. Humans can get lost in the hypnotic dreamscapes of persuasive arguments. When misleading and mistrusted narratives, shared across classes, become the cause of political praxis, what recourse has a realism of individual reason?
bruce wilder
try to see the humor
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1PlIuC2Oz0
THIS is impressive. Light years ahead of Boston Dynamics. It’s already over. Xi is hellbent on creating a prodigious population of these bots. China, soon enough, will have a another billion to feed. Yes, feed, because bots require energy too just like us humans.
mago
When the argument is a refutation of the premise. . . somehow I Kant wrap my head around it.
Senator-Elect
I’ve been a bit puzzled by Ian’s recent trumpeting of China’s achievement of lifting so many people out of “poverty”. In the past, he was more skeptical about that claim. See, for instance, this post: https://www.ianwelsh.net/world-poverty-is-not-decreasing/.
I’m not sure where to stand on the issue, but I would note that subsistence farmers contribute much less to environmental degradation and climate change than factory workers in an industrial economy. So is it a good thing either for the individuals or the world that China has industrialized so successfully?
Perhaps it deserves more praise for pushing renewable energy and rail transportation. And perhaps it will find a way to combine a highly developed economy with low environmental impact and less exploitation of workers. But that remains to be seen.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM-oDed6eN0
Parsing pedophilia. Compare and contrast with Epstein and his “clients” and Michael Jackson’s sordid proclivities. Elvis was a real Hound Dog, was he not? Unlike Epstein’s victims, Elvis’s victims don’t seem to hold a grudge after all these years and to this day look fondly upon Elvis raping them. Mad world. I can guarantee you this, if Elvis was a poor black man, he’d have done 20 and some considering he said to one of the victims that didn’t know she was a victim, “14 gets you 20”.
different clue
New little webcast from Belle of the Ranch.
” Let’s talk about Trump and RFK Jr causing a fissure in MAHA…. ”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ItKQD42-7U
Its about how Trump has just released an Executive Order “ordering” the makers of Glyphosate to make more of it, and also for total immunity-from-lawsuits and liability for the makers of Glyphosate, parTICularly Bayer and its semi-recent acquisition Monsanto and their Roundup brand.
The time is coming when glyphosated farmland will be unmortgagable, un-lendable against, etc. And any entity desiring to sell it will have to de-glyphosate the soil at the seller’s expense before any buyer will touch it.
An “Executive Order” is often just a declaration of desire on the part of President Piggy. But the Project 2025 Class which operates from within and behind President Piggy also desires this, and they will use all their personell within government to “make it so” to the extent that they can.
The MAHAnians will just have to figure out on their own which foods are grown with glyphosate and which are grown without it, and focus on avoiding those foods which are grown with glyphosate. Do they have the long-term discipline and motivation to do that?
different clue
Here is a little item called: ” Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1rawriw/across_the_us_people_are_dismantling_and/
This could be a low-level unscripted unplanned case of what John Robb would have called “open source rebellion”. Maybe a first-few action leaders planned out a first few Flock camera dismantlements, in hopes word would spread and inspire random other copycat camera dismantlings.
Ian Welsh
Senator-Elect,
Here’s a quote from the article you linked:
“Essentially all of the poverty reduction of the past 30 years comes from one source, and one source only. China. Which industrialized by classic protectionist policies which the IMF, World Bank and poverty ghouls do their best to make impossible.”
mago
Good god L&S. Neither liking nor subscribing I’ve gotta say you’ve fallen prey once again to propaganda and lies while regurgitating the Michael Jackson pedophilia promoted and promulgated by certain alphabet agencies dominated by a certain power group whose name will go unmentioned lest one be accused of anti something or another, which could land you in jail or worse.
It’s tempting to use the f bomb to blow you off for this and other comments made along the way, but I’ll opt for a civilized exit instead and just hope the generational ignorance stops with you without transference to your children.
spud
Ian Welsh:
correct! no country has ever gotten rich by free trading. in fact, free trade is the death knell for democracy, self sufficiency, and creates third world conditions.
when the free trade cranks said poverty was going down under free trade, that lie was blubbered all over the legacy media, till finally someone pointed out it was all traced to one country, protectionist china.
today that lie has finally been thrown onto the junk heap of free market lies.
Dr. Ha Joon Chang plainly through historical records proves that free trade is bad for the poor and democracy
http://www.profitatanyprice.com/2015/04/free-market-policies-rarely-make-poor.html
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Good god L&S. Neither liking nor subscribing I’ve gotta say you’ve fallen prey once again to propaganda and lies while regurgitating the Michael Jackson pedophilia promoted and promulgated by certain alphabet agencies dominated by a certain power group whose name will go unmentioned lest one be accused of anti something or another, which could land you in jail or worse.
What? Huh? Let me guess, Michael Jackson is not responsible for his actions and instead, it was all Woodrow Wilson’s fault, right? Good grief.
Michael Jackson was a freak. No doubt about it. Elvis was a freak, no doubt about it. Epstein was a freak, no doubt about it. Epstein’s clients were and are freaks, no doubt about it. They all share one massive thing in common. They were, and are, wealthy and powerful and have, or had, status and influence. They all have or had power over people.
As the following two excellent videos underscore, only 5% of child sex abuse charges ever result in the perp being brought to justice. And that’s reported cases. Imagine all the unreported cases. This is especially true if the report is leveled against someone who is wealthy and powerful. You can pretty much guarantee the perp will never be brought to justice as we are seeing with the Epstein Files.
You can understand why the wealthy and power are never brought to justice because they are rarely if ever brought to justice for any wrongdoing because as we know the law does not apply to them, but with pretty much all other crime, where the wealthy can act with impunity and above and beyond the law, the unwashed are held to account by and large. The one exception being pedophilia and child sex abuse. Why this exception? Because as is above, is below. The Elite are pedophiles and ritualistically abuse children of all ages both directly and systematically. So, it only follows that systematically, law enforcement and the justice system are required to go light on child sex abuse and overlook it or look past it. As it is above, it is below, at least when it comes to child sex abuse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2IpBzTvwb0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kyk14zCFTiQ
Dan Kelly
‘propaganda and lies while regurgitating the Michael Jackson pedophilia promoted and promulgated by certain alphabet agencies dominated by a certain power group whose name will go unmentioned lest one be accused of anti something or another, which could land you in jail or worse.’
For the record, Michael Jackson said the problem is the Jewish executives.
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=dYe87LxX8Q0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYe87LxX8Q0
—
There was a dude who was a lawyer ‘in Hollywood’ and was privy to all the cesspoolness of the entire industry for years. He had a small blog – now defunct – which may have been called ‘Hollywood Lawyer’ or something similar. I forget. But the point is that this dude wrote about all the vile crap that goes on and one of the more appalling things he wrote – which I didn’t believe at the time – he wrote about the little girl who was in Speilberg’s Poltergeist films: Heather O’Rourke.
Long story short, O’Rourke was brought into one of the studios where these ghouls operate and she was put on stage to dance/perform/act. The lights were set up in such a way that she couldn’t see what was going on and…
https://totaldisclosure.net/molesters-killed-her/
This is what they do.
Remember that summer of 1982 was also ‘ET’ time here in the US while ‘Israel’ was beginning its ‘second war’ against Lebanon which culminated in the 1983 Marine baracks bombing which actually got Ron Reagan to stop- sucking Roy Cohn’s cock for a minute-and-a-half so he could feign sympathy for Americans on a carefully curated TV broadcast brought to you by the same people who rape ‘tweens’ in Hollywood.
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‘Powerful men – including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump – would have big orgy parties with her other young girls.
I repeat, girls and older Victoria Secret models.
I don’t know whether the FBI has pursued this set of allegations in connection with Bill Clinton or Donald Trump but by all indications they have absolutely no interest.’
—
These are all nodes of the same ultimate network. Their people are in place everywhere. Their lawyers won’t ask the most obvious questions.
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=kpXG-3DYqas&t=3812
https://youtu.be/kpXG-3DYqas?t=3810
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‘Jeffrey Epstein was notoriously involved in sexual activities (not intercourse) with female teenagers. In the known cases the youngest was fourteen at the time of her first encounter with Epstein (but had been told to lie to Epstein about her age before meeting him). There is no suspicion and no credible allegation that Epstein did ever do anything sexual with prepubescent children.
The girls were paid by Epstein to perform massages on him while being bare breasted or naked. While they were doing so he tended to masturbate. These contacts were consensual. No force was applied. The girls received $200 to $300 for each session. That’s a lot of money for an hour long effort for someone at that age.
It is certainly a weird habit for Epstein to have but it had nothing to do with pedophilia.
One wonders why girls who were paid to do consensual massages are suddenly classified as ‘survivors’. There are no allegation that any of them has ever been forced or threatened. These weren’t ‘survivors’ and not even ‘victims’ but service providers. That is exactly why no criminal procedure was initiated over most of those cases.’
– ‘Bernhard’ (‘b’), proprietor of the silly ‘MoonofAlabama’ psyop honeypot site.
For the record, there have been so many out-of-court settlements surrounding this that it is hard to know where to begin. Both civil and criminal cases have been brought again and again and again. Ryan Dawson has pounded home this point even more than the brilliant Whitney Webb.
I feel as sorry for someone who still pays heed to this monster ‘b’ as I do for someone who feels that ‘anglo-saxons’ are the only human group that has innate violent tendencies.
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I listened to Daniel Davis – another one of these miltary warmongers whose panties get wet whenever talk of warmaking and wanton violence and destruction are on the menu – Davis laid out the nuts and bolts of what may happen if Isramerica bombs Iran and in the midst of this he was sure to subtly insert that Hamas are terrorists and October 7 was the worst event practically ever and he was sure to mention ‘Israelis’ first when he said that many people will die if this goes off.
Because Jewish lives are simply worth more than the goyim.
That’s how it be, right?
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China may have impressively reduced poverty, however China defines poverty and measures its reduction, but it has not reduced inequality. In fact, inequality has increased. According to the following, China’s Gini coefficient has risen since 2015 to a high of 0.47 compared to a high during the same time period of 0.32 for OECD countries. There is nothing to indicate China is taking measures to seriously address this growing inequality. In fact, Chinese Communist Party leaders and members parrot the very same capitalist talking points when talking about the poor and poverty as noted in the italicized quote below from the article.
https://www.thechinastory.org/chinas-poverty-eliminated-but-substantial-inequalities-remain/
More fundamentally, Chinese local governments’ reluctance to spend poverty alleviation money on direct subsidies to poor households is related to how they conceive poverty and state support. In interviews, local officials expressed a widely-held belief that the poor must become self sufficient and enterprising to escape from poverty. To illustrate, an opinion piece published by People’s Daily and written by a member of the Shaanxi Province party committee’s standing committee argued that: “After escaping from poverty, [poor people] no longer need the minimum living guarantee provided by the social safety net.” A long-term social safety net would “force the poor population into a passive position of accepting relief, and fail to spur enthusiasm for life and work,” this official asserted.
Dan Kelly
‘People, considering things in the abstract, equate cause-and-effect with a strictly linear post hoc, propter hoc relationship…’
The confusion has its historical roots in the fact that Christian dogma is a blend of Hebrew mythology and history with Greek metaphysic and science, complicated by the fact that Greek metaphysic was never so clearly formulated as Indian, and was always in danger of being identified with highly abstract thought.
Indeed, the Western metaphysicians from Aristotle to Hegel have been – above all things – the great abstractionists, the thinkers. In this respect they are the opposite pole from any traditional metaphysic, which is radically empirical and non-conceptual.
It is possible, then , that the Greeks derived a number of metaphysical doctrines from India, but, for the most part, mistook their nature and treated them as concepts – as abstractions which have an objective existence on a ‘higher plane’ than material things!
It seems to have escaped the Greek mind that a metaphysical term such as ‘eternity’ is not a concept at all. Rather, it is the negation of the concept of time. It involves no positive statement. It merely points out that the notion of reality as extended through past, present and future is a theory and not a real, first-hand experience.
As a result, then, Christian dogma combines a mythological story which is the for the most part Hebrew (as is Islamic dogma), and a group of metaphysical ‘concepts’ which are Greek, and then proceeds to treat both as statements of fact – as information about objective realities inhabiting (a) the world of history, and (b) the ‘supernatural’ world existing parallel to the historical, but on a higher plane.
In other words, it talks about mythology and metaphysic in the language of science.
The resulting confusion has been so vast, and has so muddled western thought, that all of our current terms, our very language, so partake of the confusion that they can hardly straighen it out.
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https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?t=160&v=z3Hl8TBaR7Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3Hl8TBaR7Y&t=160s
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It may help at this point to make a brief summary of the types of knowledge involved.
SCIENCE: The record of hisotry or facts , which are the parts of experience designated by nouns and verbs. However, ‘parts’ is already a noun, so that the reality or realities science discusses remain ultimately undefined.
[Since Hilbert, for example, mathematicians no longer attempt to define a point. Contemporary science more and more accepts the principle that it must work with a number of basic unknowns, signified by undefined terms]
METAPHYSIC: The indefinable basis of knowledge. Metaphysical knowledge or ‘realization’ is an intense clarity of attention to that indefinable and immediate ‘point’ of knowledge which is always ‘now’ and from which all other is elaborated by reflective thought.
A consciousness of ‘life’ in which the mind is not trying to grasp or even define what it knows.
METAPHYSICS (Greek and ‘Western’): Highly abstract thought , dealing with such concepts as nature, being, substance, essence, matter and form – and treating them as if they were facts on a higher level of objective existence than sensually perceptible things.
The most potent form of metaphysics is belief in deities, whether mono or poly, as they are not in any way, shape or form sensually perceptible.
MYTH: A complex of images or a story, whether factual or fanciful, taken to represent the deepest truths of life, or simply regarded as specially significant for no clearly realized reason.
THEOLOGY: An interpretation of combined myth and metaphysics (plural), in which both are treated as objective facts of the historical and scientific order.
The Christian account of the primal beginnings, taken simply as myth, is without doubt a marvelous tale, full of magic, poetry, and splendour.
The wonderful King of kings who was alive for ever before time began, the creation – out of nothing – of the nine choirs of angels , the dark mystery of thge villainous Lucifer, the six days of the making of the world, the First Man in the paradise-garden, Eve, the Serpent, and the Terrible Tree – all this is as good a tale as ever was told, and ranks with the marvels of the Arabian Nights, of the Puranas, of the Iliad and Odyssey, of Hans Andersen and of Grimm.
But, one must hasten to say, this is in no sense leading up to the conclusion that the story should be treated as mere poetry or mere fariy-tale, having no other function than entertainment.
There is no more telling symptom of the confustion of ‘modern thought’ than the very suggestion that poetry or mythology can be ‘mere’. This belongs to the notion that poetry and myth belong to the realm of fancy as distinct from fact, and that since facts equal Truth, myth and poetry have no serious content. Yet this is a mistake for which no one is more responsible than the theologians who, as we have seen, resolutely confounded scientific ‘fact’ with truth and reality.
Having degraded ‘God’ to a mere thing they should not be surprised when scietnists doubt the veracity of this ‘thing’ – for the significant reason that it seems an unnecessary and meaningless hypothesis (an excellent illustration of the point that ‘things’ are really hypotheses).
Certainly, the poets and the myth-makers have little to tell us about facts, for they make no hypotheses. Yet for this very reason they alone have something very important to say: they alone have news of the living world, of reality – over and above both religionists and, yes, scientists as well.
By contrast, the historians, the chroniclers and the analysts of fact record only the news of death. They tell us what, precisely, did happen. And because ‘life’ as we live it goes repetitively round and round – ‘history repeats itself’ – what, precisely, did happen is the best basis for predicting what, precisely, will happen. Such information is, then, the supremely valuable information for those who have no other interest in life than to continue – to keep on keeping on.
Myth does not supply us with facts in the sense, therefore, that it gives us no useful hypotheses for predicting the future – the use of prediction being to continue, to keep on ‘living’.
Because, for so many centuries, the theologians have confused eternal life with everlasting life, and salvation with temporal immortality, our culture is utterly hypnotized into the notion that mere continuity, survival, is a good – if not the supreme good.
Hence we value practical facts above all other knowledge because, above all else, we need to earn our livings, to adapt ourselves to events, to master the operations of nature, to provide for the future, to benefit posterity…..to what?!
Obviously, to keep on going on, to keep on consuming and accumulating, longer and longer, more and more.
Convinced that, in this fashion, we are practical, that we are getting somewhere, we do not notice that we are covering the same ground again and again. Not because we love the ground so much that we want to return to it, but, on the contrary, because we want to move away from it, to that grass on the other side, which is always greener…
https://archive.org/details/mythandritualinc013384mbp
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‘the notion of reality as extended through past, present and future is a theory and not a real, first-hand experience’
Simply think about or remember the past right now or think about or project the future right now.
Your memories and projections are all happening right now in the present moment, which is constantly coming into being but as soon as you stop and try to capture it it’s gone…yet it’s always here.
Dan Kelly
Trump Considers Targeted Strike Against Iran, Followed by Larger Attack
The top negotiators plan to meet in Geneva on Thursday for last-ditch talks, debating a new proposal that could create an off-ramp as two carrier groups massed within striking distance of Iran.
‘During the meeting, Mr. Trump pressed General Caine and Mr. Ratcliffe to weigh in on the broader strategy in Iran, but neither official generally advocates a certain policy position.
General Caine discussed what the military could do from an operational standpoint, and Mr. Ratcliffe preferred to discuss the current situation on the ground and possible outcomes of proposed operations.
During the discussions of the operation last month to seize President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, General Caine told Mr. Trump there was a high likelihood of success.
But General Caine has not been able to deliver the same reassurances to Mr. Trump during the Iran discussions, in large measure because it is a far more difficult target.
Mr. Vance, who has long called for more restraint in overseas military action, did not oppose a strike, but he intensely questioned General Caine and Mr. Ratcliffe in the meeting. He pressed them to share their opinions of the options and wanted more of a discussion of the risks and complexity of carrying out a strike against Iran.
Earlier, the United States had been considering options that included putting teams of special operations forces on the ground that could carry out raids to destroy Iranian nuclear or missile facilities.
That included manufacturing and enrichment operations buried far below the surface, outside the range of American conventional munitions.
But any such raid would be highly dangerous, requiring special operations forces to be on the ground far longer than they were for the raid to capture Mr. Maduro.
Multiple U.S. officials said that for now, the plans for a commando raid had been shelved.
Army, Navy and Air Force officials have also raised concerns about the impact that a protracted war with Iran, or just remaining poised for such a conflict, could have on the readiness of Navy ships, scarce Patriot antimissile defenses, and overstretched transport and surveillance planes.
The White House declined to comment on Mr. Trump’s decision making.
“The media may continue to speculate on the President’s thinking all they want, but only President Trump knows what he may or may not do,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Even before the Iranians submit what appears likely to be their last proposal — officials said they expected it to be transmitted to the Trump administration on Monday or Tuesday — the two sides appeared to be hardening their positions.
Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, said on Fox News that Mr. Trump’s “clear direction” to him and Jared Kushner, his co-negotiator and the president’s son-in-law, was that the only acceptable outcome for an agreement was that Iran would move to “zero enrichment” of nuclear material.
But Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, insisted anew in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the country was not ready to give up what he said was its “right” to make nuclear fuel under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
With that statement, the decision about whether the United States was about to attack targets in Iran — with the apparent goal of further weakening the government of Mr. Khamenei — seemed to come down to whether both sides could agree to a face-saving compromise about nuclear production that Washington and Tehran could each describe as a total victory.’
https://archive.ph/OS2II
The zero enrichment demand is the Netanyahu-Zionist demand. Trump isn’t hearing good things about the op from his Generals and military people but his Zionist ‘handlers’ keep pressing, with Witkoff and Kushner going right to the media.
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For the record, Michael Jackson said the problem is the Jewish executives.
https://media.gettyimages.com/id/2203822822/photo/us-news-fbi-ufc-training-lv.jpg?s=594×594&w=gi&k=20&c=H8mINAt0wGHxiZtlfXkGHVrkcPHT4AC3ORKfiAfd8og=
For the record, Mel Gibson says the same thing. Gibson and Patel, best buds. If Israel is running the White House, nay the world, how do you explain Patel’s and Gibson’s friendship? Let me guess, Gibson is an imposter and part of the Jewish conspiracy, am I right?
It’s crap like this that makes legitimate criticism of Israel and Zionism impossible. It poisons the waters. If I was a Zionist, I would use it as a strategy to poison the waters so people would avoid criticizing Israel and Zionism. Hmmmmm.
Dan Kelly
‘how do you explain Patel’s and Gibson’s friendship? Let me guess, Gibson is an imposter and part of the Jewish conspiracy, am I right?’
What is the ‘Jewish conspiracy’?
Those are your words, not mine.
I do not know what the relationship between Gibson and Patel may or may not be, nor do I give a flying fuck.
Every group has supremacists and ‘the Jews’ are no exception.
Zionism is a very recent manifestation of Jewish Supremacism.
Perhaps what you refer to as the ‘Jewish conspiracy’ is the plain fact that ‘the Jews’ make up a whopping .2 percent – that is ‘point two percent’ – of the world population but have secured at minimum 10 percent of world ‘wealth’ such that six out of the top ten billionaires the world over are Jewish.
This would be a problem even if ‘the Jews’ made up a full two percent of the world population.
In the US, these numbers are even more egregious.
Is this what you mean when you talk about a ‘Jewish conspiracy’?
These are the facts right now so I suppose you’ll have to figure out for yourself whether this constitutes a ‘conspiracy’ – which you would also have to define as the word itself is used so haphazardly that it is difficult to determine precisely what one means when using it.
Are there Jews among ‘the Jews’ who gather and plan wealth-building initiatives and look to control and dominate others, including other Jews, in the interest of a ‘Pax Judaica’ or whatever term one wants to use?
different clue
Here is something interesting from the AskTheWorld subreddit.
” What’s a product from your country that makes locals go ‘of course we have that’ and everyone else go ‘ but why?’ ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskTheWorld/comments/1rdcbke/whats_a_product_from_your_country_that_makes/
It leads off with a photo of a German ” eggshell crack-starter thingy” ( not its real name).
different clue
At first glance this seems somewhat creepy, but it is also inspiring.
from the nextfuckinglevel subreddit . . . ” The fastest man on two hands ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/1rg9hzz/the_fastest_man_on_two_hands/
different clue
Now, this is creative.
” Anything to avoid that ticket ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/1rgjkmq/anything_to_avoid_that_ticket/