Mixed bag of seven things

Lust, Gluttony, Pride, and Sloth are individual tendencies virtuous in moderation.  What they seem to want is a tireless emaciated sexless ninny.  Wrath, Greed, and Envy are the true antisocial tendencies which in practice are ignored or even inflamed among "believers"

Machine Consciousness ?

Consciousness is an illusion, a story we tell ourselves about our thinking after it has already occurred.  This helps in the programming of future thinking, or it basically IS the programming of future thinking.

Since different kinds of things do different kinds of thinking and learning, there will be different kinds of consciousness.   Any adaptive device or organism will have one kind or another.  We should be asking about human consciousness.  AI will never be identical with that since it learns differently.

Consciousness is not some kind of test which proves which things deserve a right to life or not.  It is a ubiquitous property of learning systems ("feedback") which we fail to recognize in it's lower orders.

Machines are tools, and they do not have a right to life.

They do not experience human life or society, therefore they are not human and can't create human decisions or human art.

A robot which DID experience something like human life and society sufficiently could attain something close enough to human consciousness to be considered as such.  But we'd still want to have the last call on whether it's a 'human life' we wish to preserve, as not having been subjected to our billions of years of evolution it could be even more evil.

Yahwism

 The original religion of the Hebrews was Yahwism, a polytheistic religion derived from the earlier Canaanite religion followed by Phoenicians.  The original central god was El, from which the word Israel is derived, but later the creator god Yahweh became central, and then sometimes El and Yahweh were held as the same god.  Elements of monotheism may have appeared in the 8th century BCE, and this was certainly true after the Babylonian Exile (when 42,000 descendants of exiled Israelites returned to the then Persian province of Yehud and were regarded as the original people, and the descendants of the people who had mostly never left and a few others who had moved in were somewhat displaced).  The Persians themselves had become Zoroastrian monotheists centuries earlier, and there are other similarities between Zoroastrianism and Second Temple Judaism.

I've previously blogged that "little was known" about the original Hebrew religion, but now I see it has a name and entry in Wikipedia FWIW.

Jerusalem was named by Canaanites after the Canaanite goddess of dusk and peace, which was certainly ironic for a city that has been reconquered 44 times.

The Phoenicians (who never regarded themselves as a "nation" but as a collection of city states such as Sidon and Tyre which are mentioned over 100 times in the Bible) were notably multicultural, peaceful and rich manufacturers*, traders and merchants.

In contrast, the Hebrews to the south of the Phoenician cities were often fanatical and notably hostile to their surrounding groups, a tendency even more visible in the Second Temple Hasmonean era (in earlier Second Temple societies, Judeans were mere subjects of other empires including Persia and Greece).   After Bar Kochba, for 1700 years Rabbinic (then Talmudic) Judaism recast itself as a universal religion of peace and global healing, and actually was a notably peaceful and pro-multicultural religion, far more so than the other Second Temple offshoot Christianity also proclaiming peace and love and which was also invented by Jews.  Sadly traditional Rabbinic/Talmudic Judaism was mostly supplanted in the 20th century by ethnic supremacist Zionist Judaism--as bad or worse than the bad old Hebrew or Hasmonean days.

Polytheistic societies are generally more tolerant of other cultures, and a prevailing view is that they are most often more peaceful.  The largest wars and empires have followed the rise of monotheism, though that could be coincidental.  Yahwism was somewhere in between--it was initially polytheistic but devolved into monolatry, with the local deity El being theologically merged with Yahweh to become the one god that needed to be worshipped.

(*The famous purple dye that never fades was not merely extracted, but made by Phoenicians (the greek word for "purple people") from sea snails in a complex manufacturing process that has never been duplicated.  And Phoenicians made other luxury goods and trinkets.  They were pioneers in mass production, as well as the phonetic alphabet.  Phoenicians pioneered the global trading business that Jews later took over because Phoenician culture was lost after their cities were defeated. OTHO, Zoroastrian Persians restored Second Temple Judaism, similarly monotheistic.  By 0 BCE, most Jews already lived outside of Judea.)

Boy Crisis

 I thought this article in the NYTimes by two Harvard sociologists was very good and neutral in tone.  However, look at the comments.  It angered many people who prefer to blame particular things, including porn and computer screens.  However there may be additional ideas to the ones suggested.

And I see the NYTimes has another oped denying there is a Boy Crisis, but the writer defines it in different terms.

Honeytraps

There is, actually, considerable evidence that Epstein ran a honeytrap, which takes compromising photos of powerful people doing stuff with prostitutes they might not want the public to know.

This was not an angle the government seriously investigated, which would have been investigating their own intelligence services.  Denials cannot be believed, and evidence from grand jury testimony is not going to explore such angles.

But what's rarely discussed is how this works.  Are rich and powerful people not capable of getting their own prostitutes rather than using a honeytrap operation.  Are rich and powerful people all pedophiles?

What's not understood here is that the honeytrap is not merely for your personal satisfaction.  The honeytrap is a initiation.  Other rich and powerful people are not going to return your phone calls until you have been initiated too.  Only once you have been initiated are you considered safe because you can be controlled.

Then, once you are part of the club, you can keep enjoying the perks.

We more or less know which people were doing that, with Donald Trump, for whom we have more Epstein photos than just about anyone, as one of the top clientele and not surprisingly Epstein was suicided during Trump's first administration.

Myths behind Magnitsky Act

https://therealistreview.substack.com/p/the-myths-behind-the-magnitsky-act

Quoting the above:

The true aim of the Magnitsky Act was to protect William Browder and Michael Khodorkovsky from Russian law for tax evasion. And to paint Russia as a “human rights” violator. And it worked very well indeed. Members of Congress didn’t care to examine the facts. They just bought the story Browder and Kyle Parker dreamt up.

Bisexual vs Pansexual

The (rather inside) argument whether Bisexual or Pansexual is a better term is discussed here.  The author (Kaylee) and I agree that Bisexual is the correct term.  In so doing, a lot of other concepts and words and online controversies are sussed out.

Zionism at home

It's often said by Noam Chomsky and others that the US imperial establishment created and uses Israel as their battleship in the middle east, to keep the other middle states from uniting against the west.

But there another angle.  The imperial establishment uses Zionism at home to defeat socialism.  They did this with Jeremy Corbyn, and they seem to be doing it to Zohran Mamdani.

 

Electoral Politics and the Circular Firing Squad of the Left

The chief political problem of the class of all primarily working people, is that is <i>division</i>.  This division was purposefully baked in to the Constitution of the United States, and has been augmented in various means by the ruling class from the beginning.

While the authors of the Constitution claimed to abhor parties, it seems what they actually abhorred were the other guy's parties.  Political parties arose almost immediately.

The construction of the republic virtually enssures that there will not be one but two competitive parties at the federal level and state constitutions typically do that for states as well.  The most obvious ways to enable multiple electorially viable parties is to have a Parliamentary Democracy  and also one of many systems that provides for Proportional Representation.  Such techniques are now used in some state and local elections, with mixed designs and mixed results.

But the electoral realities have led some left of center factions, nowadays including DSA and CPUSA, to endorse the "Vote for Democrats to defeat the Fascist Right" point of view, even though at one time both the major socialist group of the time and the Communist Party ran their own candidates.  The Communist Party only quit running candidates after 1988, partly driven by their loss of funding from the Comintern.  But it also shows the flexibility of Marxism-Leninism.

Other groups, such as the Green Party and PSL, often disparage the Democratic Party completely, sometimes making very unrealistic claims about the electoral viability of their candidates.

What's worse, groups even identify with their currently chosen position that they disparage the other one far more than those who all would agree are even worse, Republicans and far right.

After having studied the realities of electoral politics during the last election cycle, including theoretical analyses of voting impact, I've come to the conclusion that the best thing to do is Vote However You Damned Please.

This stems from both cynicism and optimism.  Cynically, the chance that your vote in any federal election is astronomically small, smaller than one over half the total number of voters, according to a very sophisticated probabilistic analysis by some economists a few decades ago.  When I pondered their analysis, but added the effect of pre-existing tendencies, they would only make the number much smaller.  So the probability of my vote changing a state-wide election would be not just one over millions but one over trillions or quadrillions.  Which is, more or less, the way it seems.  The result is pretty well baked in already.  Texas is a solid Republican state under present day rules that Republicans control.

Why give up the opportunity to speak with your real true voice, as loud and clear as you can, to enter such a game you are virtually certain to lose (as in fail to have an effect on the result)?  It's optimistic to believe that making your voice heard in such a way will change anyone's mind on anything, but it could.

(And nowadays, I always have the perfect argument post-facto for a "3rd-party" vote.  Just look at the totals, and my one vote for a lesser evil would still leave the lesser evil millions away from victory, so don't blame me.)

Voting for a candidate who truly represents your values would get noticed, if enough people had the courage to cast that sort of vote.

Now the very rational Noam Chomsky recommended long ago that you vote for the best person in a Presidential election, unless you live in a swing state.  In that case, he recommended voting for the lesser evil, most likely a Democrat.

That's a decent argument, but for me personally it would mean the same thing as what I just said, because I do not live in a swing state, nor do most people for that matter.  But I go farther out in my argument than Chomsky does here.

But I've finally come to the conclusion that squabbles over electoral politics simply aren't worth arguments among and between left groups.  As long as none of us votes for the greater evil, we're all cool.  We can still denounce it just the same as those who voted for the lesser evil.

What we always need to get across is our ideas, not necessarily our candidates today.

I myself would probably vote for a progressive Democrat also to make the point that's who Democrats should be running.  I felt no angst in not voting for Holocaust Harris, who promised to keep up the genocide on Palestinians that Biden had been engaged in.  But I might well have voted for Bernie Sanders, even though I realize now how compromised he is too.

And then once you get past the "who will actually be elected" arguments, there's what happens in that the vast majority of popular ideas will be suppressed and elite ideas amplified, no matter who gets elected.  So whatever astronomically small chance your vote has in changing election, the odds that it will change any policy outcome is much smaller still.

Meanwhile, if true parties of the working class begin to get enough votes to be competitive, everyone will notice.  Eventually, they could replace one of the other two major parties.

So, Vote for whoever you damned please.

And don't waste any time trying to persuade working class voters with a different defined political tendency to change their minds.  It's not worth the effort, and only leads to more division.  And tamp down such arguments when they are presented to you.  Concentrate on the shared concerns which create the broadest popular fronts for organizing and the dissemination of information.

The truth is, it's barely worth voting at all.  And the truth is damned important, maybe even more important than "who wins."  If enough people know the truth, the fire can be brought to any ruler's feet.

The Consequences of the War on Iran

 MoA covers all the bases here, knocks it out of the park.  Show there was no nuclear material damaged, only moved around and possibly to other "dark" sites Iran has.  Now there is much greater "danger" from Iran developing nukes because no one can see what is going on.  Iran is fighting war off attrition which it will win.  Israel doesn't want to fight that war, it wants a pretext for US.  US doesn't have anywhere near the army to take over Iran, and Iran is more unified than ever against the old Shah the US wants to bring back.  And so it will go, as we race towards the abyss.

The BuyBull

Ryan Dawson posted on X:

Ted Cruz actually said God told him he has to support Israel. Therefore no matter what israel does, we have to support it because some jew put it in a book that also has talking animals, concubines, slavery, animal sacrifice, human sacrifice, plagues, global floods, living inside a whale, a bronze cobra curing poison, Azrael murdering all the first born children in Egypt, witches, giants, demon possession, magical hair, making the sun stand still, resurrections, feeding children to bears, bashing babies on rocks, turing people into salt, genocidal conquest, sound wave weapons, flaming horses, swallowing people with the earth, magic trees with magic fruit, curses, beasts, monsters, dragons, stoning people to death, rape, gang rape, child sacrifice, and war with outcomes depending on yahwehs mood swings and or iron chariots, a tower of babble, nephelim, turning sticks into snakes, socercery, scorpion locus human hybrid things, flesh eating birds, giant eyeballed wheels with wings, covering a nation with frogs, sea monsters, a flat earth with a dome, Hades, Ba'al, Asherah, and other gods borrowed from adjacent cultures, angels demons, posessed suicidal pigs, monarchy, and divine blood lines, and parting the Red Sea.

The buybull is full of crap. It's jewush mythology that rationalizing a cult that wants to kill off populations for dirt they self proclaim was given to them by God. Yahweh is Satan.

I posted a minor correction (thanks to algorithms and my refusal to pay for a blue checkmark, I get virtually zero views):

In the same Buybull, bad behavior on the part of Hebrews led God to modify his promise, and to demand that any future "Jewish State" be built by God himself and only after the Messiah comes.  That demand was repeated and underlined in the Talmud.  Zionist Jews are heretical.

Why I am still Philosemetic: Judaism requires faith in God*, but not belief in any specific thing.  You can follow Judaism and write off all the stories in the The Torah as allegorical myths and legends, and in the Talmud as hearsay.  It us up to each Jew to determine what they "believe."  Instead, Judaism has laws regarding behavior, and very detailed commentary on those laws.

(*"Faith in God" is not necessarily belief on one all powerful entity, but in the course of the universe, in effect that the arc of history bends towards justice.  Thus, a kind of atheism is consistent with Judaism.)

Jewish upbringing emphasizes reading and debating those laws.  This is excellent training for all kinds of modern careers in business, law, science, and medicine.  It is not entirely by nepotism that Jews have often been important contributors to human society.

Zionism perverts Judaism, essentially rendering it "faithless."  So rather than seeing the Holocaust as one more devastating epoch directed by God for some purpose (which would have to be a great evil sin against God's laws) it is seen as a reason to invoke some special conditions regarding waiting for the return of the Messiah.

The correct interpretation would be to see the Holocaust as an illustration of God's wrath regarding premature creation of the Jewish State.  Zionism had already been underway for some time.  Zionism was so evil it even collaborated with Hitler until 1937, and blocked an early boycott which could have caused the Nazi regime to fail.  Zionists were the ones often blocking Jews during World War II from reaching places like USA, trying to redirect them to Palestine.  Though sadly the victims of the Holocaust were mostly anti-Zionist Jews.

It's been my belief that some of the punishment of Jews in the Holocaust included punishment for (and hoped for education to prevent ) future crimes, like the ones underway now.  But how much we can't say.  It seems like that there will be more punishment coming.

I'd be begging God for seven generations of repairing the damage done to the Middle east, including all its peoples, through half celibate service.  There's also the Sodom and Gomorrah option, which sadly appears the way we are headed.

Iran

Iran is a large country, and one of the oldest in the world.  (Other contenders for oldest country are Egypt and Vietnam.). Iranians developed the first monotheism, and freed Jews from Babylonian captivity.

Tehran is a very large city of 10 million people, and the metropolitan area of Tehran includes 16 million people.  By comparison, New York City has 8.3 million people.  By all accounts, Tehran is a beautiful city:

Iran never "kicked out" Jews, and Tehran has a pampered Jewish community with more historic temples than non-Shia muslim faiths.  Jews have lived in Tehran since the founding of the Second Temple.  Not surprisingly, most Jews in Iran are anti-Zionist.  Judaism is a protected religion in Iran.  

(Bahai is not protected, Iranians are suspicious of Bahai because many spies have been Bahai.  Bahai leaders are often aligned with Israel and many Bahai live there.  But it looks like Iranians take this too far and it has become religious persecution.)

Many reports (and a few of my own personal experiences) suggest Iranians are the most hospitable people on earth.  For example, an American traveler posted this story:

I lived and traveled in Iran for months. In Tehran I lived with the family of a retired bank worker who saw me looking for housing. I roomed with his son for months, ate all my meals with them, and they never accepted any money. Once I was sick and throwing up and they all came into the bathroom and the dad stroked my head while I barfed and told me “Aybi nadare” (no shame, it’s ok). I traveled around most of the country by plane, train, bus, shared taxi, etc. Eventually I stopped booking hotels because I’d always meet people on the train, bus etc who’d insist I stay with them. The family of Iran/Iraq war vets from Yazd who took me to Taft for bbq in the mountains. The taxi driver from Rasht who made a bed for me on the floor of his tiny apartment because all the hotels were full. The only time a police officer talked to me was once to make sure I was ok. I never felt in any danger day or night. The land of Iran is as incredibly diverse as its people. There are mountainous rain forests and desert salt flats. I met among the most liberal and most conservative people there, and everything in between. Everyone was so kind it makes me cry with shame.

Yesterday western media reported that Iran struck a hospital in Beersheba.  The hospital is well known for treating IDF fighting in nearby Gaza.*  Left generally unreported (and actually hard to find online) is that Israel previously hit a hospital in Iran.

(*Iran also makes claims, more credible than similar Israeli ones which have

been proven false on endless occasions before, the the Beersheba hospital

was above some military base.  It seems interesting to me that Beersheba is only 42km from Dimona.)

The war between Israel and Iran was started by Israel, which had no legal reason to launch attacks against Iran.  Iran is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and has continued to follow a Fatah against making nuclear weapons, but meanwhile enriching uranium as high as NPT allows.  No one has ever proven that Iran has a nuclear weapons program (what they have is a nuclear enrichment program).  

Israel is NOT a signatory to NPT, has illegally helped other countries acquire nuclear materials, and has a significant number of nuclear weapons made possible by thefts of material from USA (most famously from NUMEC to which LBJ turned a blind eye, and which in general JFK had been trying to prevent).

For no good reason, Trump abrogated the JCA during his first term.  JCA gave Iran sanctions relief in exchange for not developing nuclear weapons.  The US intelligence community still believes that Iran has not developed nuclear weapons.  But Trump broke the agreement in his first term and put sanctions back on Iran.  In negotiations for a new agreement, US has been pressing Iran to give up all missile development.  It seems that it's not really about nukes, US wants Iran and its proxies to be completely defenseless.  Most people I know think Iran has more rights to nukes than Israel, and wish they'd hurry up and build them.  I've generally believed Iran was following the wisest course.

Iran has fought back against Israeli aggression very conservatively, tit-for-tat, avoiding escalation, hoping to minimize US involvement.  It is easy to determine the side that is ethically better.  Israel has recently bombed many middle east countries and has been conducting a genocide in Gaza and pogroms in the West Bank against Palestinians.  That proxies of Iran have been resisting Israel is to their ethical credit and our ethical debt.

The Economy

 During the unusual Biden to Harris vs Trump election year, there were many conflicting claims about the economy.

Some said we faced terrible problems during the Covid years, including very high inflation and unemployment, but astute management by the Biden administration and the Fed brought both indicators better than seen in quite awhile.

Others complained about high inflation and underemployment with low paying jobs replacing earlier high paying jobs.

Both have some truth (though I believe MAGA Red made a lot of hay from the false belief that the inflation rate was still high.  By all standard measurements, it was not: although we previously had experienced very high inflation (along with vastly reduced income, especially for some) and that was now permanently baked in, the actual rate had come down, which at least demonstrated some kind of competent skill* from the Biden Administration and the Fed, the kind of skill that would probably be lost with a hard right doctrinaire team of unqualified morons that would be hired by Trump.

On the other hand, there are fundamental problems, a wise Biden Administration could have done far better, and lots of problems are simply baked in because of spending about 1/3 of our resources on our endless war of global domination against the rest of the world.  Two big wars started under the Biden Administration.  I believe they could have been prevented (and even be stopped now immediately) by the US by simply stopping the weapons and support being sent to them.

*****

Imagine we're in the proverbial spiral down to hell (in the center of the earth).  It's not a fixed constant spirl, but our path while sliding down the inside of a cone.

As we proceed downwards, at any one time, we may be headed north.  So some may call out, "The problem is we are headed north!"  So there's a great push to the side to knock us off that course.  But meanwhile all we have done is gone further down, though possibly more steeply in some quadrants than others.

Changing from down to up requires fundamental change like turning the world upside down.

The fundamental change we need has to start with putting people first.

(* I hesitate to say expertise any more in describing people like Treasury Sec Powell, who is it least much more competent and skillful than anyone that could be imagined being appointed by Trump.  But like all others before, he continues down the path of employing mainstream neoclassical economics, which has certain deleterious side effects, among them creating instability by stability,  facilitating destructive growth more than useful development, and endlessly ratcheting up inequality.  The anti-economics economist I like most, Steve Keen, has a marvelous essay on the current disasterous state of QE, which probably never should have been done...people's needs should have been funded directly...and then stopped asap.  Paying interest on the reserves essentially created by QE is even worse.)

Who Started the Terrorism?

Who Started Terrorism in the Arab-Israeli Conflict? Bombs in Cafes: first used by Zionists in Palestine on March 17th, 1937 in Jaffa. Bombs on Buses: first used by Zionists in Palestine Aug. 20th-Sep. 26, 1937. Bombs in Market Places: first used by Zionists on July 6th, 1938 in Haifa. Bombing of Hotels: first used by Zionists on July 22nd, 1946 in Jerusalem. Bombing of Foreign Embassies: first used by Zionists on October 1st, 1946 in Rome (against the British). Mining of Ambulances: First used by Zionists on October 31st, 1946 in Petah Tikvah. Letter Bombs: first used by Zionists in June 1947 against British targets in UK. (for documentation, consult The Arab Women's Information Committee and The Institute for Palestine Studies, Who Are the Terrorists? Aspects of Zionist and Israeli Terrorism, (Beirut: Insitute for Palestine Studies, 1972).

Slightly Modified Establishment Journalism

Yasha Levine show how much a lie it is that Substack represents anything other than the establishment itself.  Truly independent journalists like him are the clickbait Substack uses while their algorithms try to steer you to preferred establishment types, like Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi, whose aura he deftly punches.

It's much like the real alternatives are merely the sizzle to sell the steak.

SMEJ, slightly modified establishment journalism.

China Belt and Road Initiative

China's BRI is consistently disparaged in mainstream US media including books.

Kyle on X has collected a trove of reports from official western sources that show BRI is positive for the world.  (This link is to a thread unroller not X.  I try to avoid sending you to X, though for certain strands of anti-Imperialism, there is more to be found on X than elsewhere, Kyle being one example.)

BTW, Kyle is an author, software engineer, and tenant organizer who lives in Portland, Oregon.  His book is Why The World Needs China.

The Communist Party in USA (CPUSA) has a very similar take.  In some earlier decades, CPUSA was very critical of the Communist Party of China (CPC).  Not anymore!  CPUSA Texas recently shared this book on China for discussion.  Published by Praxis Press, an independent Marxist publisher.

Here's another fairly upbeat take on China, from, of all places, UK's Conservative Telegraph.

The Human Economy is an Inversion of the Planet's Economy

 George T hits it out of the park again with another insightful essay.

Lab Leak Evidence Organized

I think this is the best article I've read on the Lab Leak, as it puts all the evidence and its context in a timeline.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/covid-19-lab-leak-origin-most-likely-matt-ridley/

Why are there more fascist anti-imperialists than left anti-imperialists in the West ?

The alignment of anti-imperialists with the fascist far right now seems firmly established in European politics if not US politics as well.

No where is this better illustrated than in German politics, where BSW party nearly got a seat in federal government, whereas MERE25 is nowhere to be seen.*

The way the story is told in mainstream US media is that right wing parties (deplorable) propose abandoning NATO (outrageous!!!).  Never ever is it mentioned that there are left movements, parties, and histories that also opposed NATO from its beginning and still.

(*Germany should not even be considered a representative democracy because the one party that could maybe challenge capitalist rule has been banned since 1956.  The Communist Party was never banned as such in the USA, and ran candidates in US Presidential elections until 1988 after which it decided not to anymore.  Individual Communists, however, were often persecuted by federal and state governments until freedom of speech was clarified by Brandenburg v Ohio in 1969.)

 Melenchon was originally anti-NATO, but now a serious person (as in the rightfully elected) he's become pro-NATO.

Liberal and left leaning people are not permitted, if politically visible, to be anti-Imperialist.  Even though much of the public feels that way, on both counts, they are not allowed to express either sentiment purely (they must instead vote against impending fascist oligarchy and for a weak "liberal" candidate who will basically do nothing to change the status quo for the better) and especially both at once.

But what else should we expect from a fascist capitalist oligarchy?  They're fine with anti-Imperialism, or populism, but only if it's Fascist.

Left anti-Imperialism is in the kitchens, and on the streets, but it's never on TV, in the corporate press, or acknowledged much elsewhere.

Tale of Three Parking Lots

For two years, the San Antonio Philharmonic (formed by the musicians of the San Antonio Symphony after it imploded) played at the First Baptist Church.  The cheap seats started at $30 ($35 for the second year) with a $5 per order charge.  The more expensive seats were $65.  Parking across the street was $10, and you paid the friendly congregation members in cash (and they usually had change for a $20).  Nothing on the parking ticket indicated a limited amount of time.  I often thought of going downtown after a concert to have a snack (but never actually did).  The parking lot has 3 exits on a relatively unused stretch of McCullough Avenue and it never took more than 4 minutes to get out of the parking lot, and usually half that.

The next year the Philharmonic intended to play at 3 different venues, First Baptist (as before), the Majestic Theater (where the Symphony--a predecessor organization--played from 1993-2015) and the Scottish Rite Temple (the new "home").  As the year wore on, most of the Majestic and First Baptist concerts were cancelled.  The prices for the cheapest seats at the Majestic were usually way higher (as high as $78 for the cheapest seats) but often came down to $40 or so a week or so before the performance.* (I paid about $40 after two fees were added to the base price of $25 for a performance of Beethoven Symphony No. 9).  The "average" seats were $78 and the high priced seats were well over $100.    The prices at the Scottish Rite Temple were just a bit lower on all scores.  My all-inclusive price for the Mahler Resurrection two days before the concert was a bargain, just $34 ($25 plus fees).  *When I had checked the price two months before it was at least double that (what I've called price whiplash).  Price Whiplash made it hard for me to convince a budgeting friend to go, and by the time the price came down it was too late.  Things were so messed up in 2024-2025 that maybe it wasn't really that the prices were changing, but somehow they were not being reported properly on the website.  Or maybe the prices came down after the Executive Director observed that not enough tickets were selling at the higher prices.

Parking at the Majestic was in a city lot that charged $15 for "the evening" (stamped no overnight parking).  You typically pay a city employee on the way in or out.  It can easily take 10 or more minutes to get through the traffic to the exit.

The only large lot near the Scottish Rite Temple is the First Presbyterian Church parking lot.  To get a ticket, you must scan a posted QR code and enter your license plate number and credit card into a webpage on your phone.  The posted prices are $15 for the first 2 hours and $15 for each additional 2 hours.  However, a fee is added which raises the $15 minimum cost to $20.78.  The web page immediately starts counting down your remaining minutes with a helpful link to "add more time" at $15 a pop (fees probably adding more again).

Symphonic performances typically last approximately 2 hours, plus or minus 30 minutes.  On May 24 there was a performance of Mahler's Resurrection without intermission which lasted very close to 2 hours.  I arrived with only a minute to spare and when I got back to my car, I was about 3 minutes past the 2 hour time limit.  I then had to wait 22 minutes for the bumper-to-bumper congestion of cars leaving via the one and only exit onto Avenue E to clear so I could get out without being stuck in that.  I still had a short line of cars in front of me.

If I had wanted to be absolutely sure I did not go over the time limit, I would have paid $30 plus fees parking, probably over $40.  This would be especially true if I were coming even more than a few minutes early or staying some extra time afterwards for refreshments and mingling.  The Executive Director of the Philharmonic said we would be able to have refreshments after performances in the fall.  He and former mayor Henry Cisneros spent about 12 minutes talking before the performance.  (I worried that would set me past the 2 hour limit, and in fact, it did.)

The prices at the First Presbyterian parking lot are exorbitant, and limiting the time to 2 hours is antisocial.  It's also very inconvenient to use.

Sovereign Wealth Funds

A friend asked for comments on a Telegraph article on Sovereign Wealth Funds of Norway and Qatar.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/30/gulf-states-and-norway-propping-up-uk-economy/

So here are my comments:

The US could have chosen a similar route, but instead it chose to "lease" oil lands at marginal costs if any, and otherwise allow private entities to profit from the material wealth of the landmass of the USA, which is among the greatest in the world.  So the money flows to private actors (mostly) in the US, not to the US itself.

Does Norway have greater material wealth than US-in-total?  No.  Are citizens of Norway more frugal with themselves?  I'd suspect Norway spends as much (if not more) on its citizens than USA.  Nevertheless, because we worship "wealth" in all it's arcane forms, so if someone/something has it we think it must show some kind of superiority (and along the peculiar myths of capitalist superiority, even when they are inapplicable).

This (1) is something like a social choice, though few ever had a chance to vote on it (in US anyway), and (2) arguably it maximizes the (aka destruction) wealth produced, since nobody is greedier than private actors.  It also tends to make the society more unequal (something I'd think the Telegraph would like).

And if you really want to see who/what is running the world, don't just look at government and their resources and/or debts.  Look at all the private actors.

IIRC, the world is awash in "funds" OTOH 100's of quadrillions if not more.  Much of it is controlled by actors in London and NYC.  That's where the western world is actually being run, not Norway and Qatar.

This is normally considered by capitalists to be a wonderful thing.

Much of that may be relatively soft compared to Norwegian investments.  But one the money is flowing around the world in risky investments, it looks pretty similar: promises to pay sometime in the future.

The Norwegians are obtaining this "wealth" by destroying the world with CO2 and other kinds of pollution.  (Others may do that and worse.).  Nevertheless we focus on the financial wealth (in the form of someone else's promises to pay sometime in the future) rather than the real material wealth and costs.  The real wealth of good soil, water, etc, is everywhere being compromised for financial wealth.  And the destruction of the earth's real wealth will likely continue until it's all gone.  Some people in USA are already savoring the next planet to destroy.

Knocking Down the House with the Family Inside

I predicted, in my last post, that the next step would be Trump Destroying Everything (his proven instinct and honed skill) in the least time necessary.

Sadly, I was right.  Here we are with Liberation Day.

I have never been a fan of Globalization, though I recognize the value of trade as such.  But this is not the way to end Globalization, or trade deficits, or budget deficits, or de-industrialization.

Whatever bad you may say about it, and there's plenty, the US has been for a long time the wealthiest country in human history.  A significant part of that today is reliant on global trade.  We trade hundreds of billions of services for hundreds of billions of manufactured goods, which in many cases we don't even make anymore and haven't done so in a long time.

Whatever else you can say about this, it has worked so far, and showed no signs of not working.

Even if you wanted a total shift, you don't just throw that into the recycler all at once.  Not while people still need stuff not made in the USA anymore!!!

Even on a firm footing such as good planning, such things take a lot of time because you have not just one industry but supply chains and networks.

Trump's Liberation Day is psychopathic madness.

The 25th Amendment should be applied immediately if Congress still can't do what it needed to do in 2021 after January 6th...Remove Trump From Office.  He's insane, he's a madman, he's the very kind of power, pain, and fear manipulating lawless demagogue that the Founders of the US Constitution worried about (they were thinking about Oliver Cromwell and others) and tried to prevent by creating the Separation of Powers.

And Liberation Day is just one in a long line of lawless actions, including defying the courts over deporting a gay Venezuelan hairdresser with no convictions to one of the world's worst prisons in El Salvador, on highly specious grounds that would probably fall apart on any examination.  Shutting down big science in health (a national Comparative Advantage we should be building and funding more) and other essential government operations--which were chronically understaffed rather than overstaffed, for a country of our size and complexity.

Further problem is all the President has appointed are fellow Yes-men if not outright morons like himself.  And those Yes-men, now at the top of federal agencies are not only engaged in massively destructive layoffs, and killing the careers of the youngest generation of scientists and experts, but performing other actions, like recoding the Social Security programs, all being done by fellow Dunning-Kruger morons (whose whiz kid expertise in computer gaming or some such leads them to believe they are the masters of everything) virtually certain to create more catastrophes going forwards.

This has to be stopped.

No economists of any qualification (and who haven't become members of Trump's court) ascribe any description other than bullshit to either the simple version or the fanciest version of the formula used by the Trump Administration to calculate "reciprocal" tariffs.

But even if you took the fanciest version as beautiful and elegant, it's wrong again because the numbers used are way far out.  The elasticity of prices to tariffs is given as 0.25%. IOW, the claim is being made that foreign producers (and domestic importers) will absorb 75% of the tariff costs, leaving the consumer to face only a 25% increase.

Most people intuit 1:1 but the answer from research is more that the wholesale prices will likely rise by over 90% of the tariff cost.  Retail cost would generally rise a bit less than that.  So generally the consumer, not the foreign producer, winds up paying most (but not all) of the tariff cost.  But then retailers with quasi monopoly power may raise prices more, using the increased cost as an excuse.

EPI studied this angle, and concluded that even to meet Trump's stupid goals (which would basically reduce the world to a barter economy of the kind that never existed in human society) the tariffs should be about 1/4 as big, because this elasticity is, in reality, about 4 times bigger than the 0.25 estimate, which seems to come out of nowhere.

Some people are speculating this is just a negotiation tool.  Well, I'm not sure anyone wants to negotiate with Trump anymore.  Canada and Mexico allowed Trump to renegotiate NAFTA during his first term, and the reward they get for that now is threats of annexation.  Pretty much all other countries are probably beginning to think (if not long before) they'd be better off dealing exclusively with BRICS countries.

There goes our trade, there goes the world reserve status of the dollar, there goes the wealthiest country on earth.  All in one go.

But I've noticed, over on the social media now called X because of the curious twisted mind of the owner, bots and other people with hardly any previous posts (but often with exactly 125 followers) have popped up--and even in my "Following" stream--to tell me the wonderfulness of the virtually certain (economists give 80-90% estimates) stagflation (which I'd call the Trumpcession or Trumpocalypse, it will be Stagflation on Steroids) that Trump is brilliant and it's going to be wonderful.

So we can guess where Elon Musk stands.  And it turns out, his enormously expensive cars, which few Americans can actually afford (even if they'd want to, which is unlikely anymore) have more American Content in them than most American Brands (and quite often, Foreign Brands have more American Content than American Brands).

So that's our future, working in the Dickensian factories of Elon Musk, making all the things that used to be made in China.  And hardly being able to afford them.

*****

The obvious bullshit aspects of Trump's Tariffs include:

1) Attempting to balance trade with each and every country.  We don't have things to sell to many countries, but they trade with other countries that trade with us, so it works out.  Attempting to balance trade with every country is like imposing a barter system.  Barter systems, when they even exist, are usually very limited.  In human history, we went from Gift Economies to Credit Economies according to to David Graeber.  And these are the most efficient.

2) Presuming all trade imbalances are due to protectionism.  No, No, No.  All goods are not fungible, nor are desires or needs.

3) Presuming the "elasticities" involved are fixed.

4) Not accounting for trade wars and alternative trading blocks.

5) Pulling the elasticities out of a hat when known values are quite different.

6) Finally, presuming a trade imbalance is something so bad you must employ a harsh measure that will make many people suffer and seek alternatives.  The fact is, we run a trade imbalance because we can.  Or at least we could, because the rest of the world valued US dollars as a means of trade and a store of value.

Trump's tariffs end this game abruptly.  People have no reason to use dollars to trade with anyone but US.  Taking these measures to their logical extreme...they can't.  They're simply bartering their goods for ours, and no currency need be touched.

This is the sort of thing we should never do.  It sets of a failure in trust and goodwill.  That's been the source of our wealth, and this is smashing it.

7) The correct solution for de-industrialization is investment and education.  We can't fix 45 years of dis-investment with tariffs.  We have to begin the process or re-investing in US.  And for quite some time, that's probably going to require more (not less) imported goods.

8) The correct solution for underemployment and bullshit jobs is more worker power and limits on corporate and finance power.

We had those sorts of things...in the New Deal Era.  

Much of that was done away with by Presidents from Carter to Obama (Clinton actually made the biggest change by eliminating Glass-Steagall, and Carter kicked off deregulation in a big and bad way, but Reagan generally gets the credit now and put the most visible face on it for most people, so by many accounts we live in the Reagan Era, sometimes referred to as neoliberalism...the belief that "markets" are the solution for everything, so instead of new entitlements we've gotten new insurance subsidies so we can choose from a market of nothing but restrictive policies, trying to guess which slant of coverage--and which company--will work best for us, if we can afford it at all).

Or at least, we used to live in the Reagan Era.  It seems, for many people now, that Trump is the solution for everything.  And some of his backers will face less competition with Trump Tariffs.

Links:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/04/trump-tariffs-reason-advisers/

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp34nkj1kv2o

Faithful Execution

Many US officials take an oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.  The Presidential oath is special, it also requires the President faithfully execute the laws of the United States.

Trump is violating both (and would be removed from office immediately if Congress was doing its job).

What does my Deep State theory say about this?  Has the "Deep State" lost control?

No!  This is, of course, what the Deep State has always wanted!  Democracy?  No it's Scamocracy (and has been since the Kennedy assassination).

Last time around, the Deep State tied rubberbands around Trump with the baseless Russiagate accusations.  The purpose of those sanctions were to help steer Trump to delivering weapons to Ukraine (which even Obama had refused) as well as to keep "liberals" (ie Democrats) hating Russia.

This time around, the Deep State approach is different.  The War in Ukraine didn't turn out to lead to the breakup of Russia as planned, and it wants (much as Trump does, at least at some level) to end the War in Ukraine and pivot to China and Iran.

To this end, instead of rubberbands, the Deep State has mixed Orange Sunshine (Manson's favorite LSD) into Trump's Kool-aid.  In effect, they are saying, "Let Trump be Trump!"

My interpretation is that the Deep State wants Trump to do the war pivot (of course), wrecking as much as possible (fine), and then ultimately going up in flames (because they still don't really trust him, and would like to substitute someone they can totally control like Vance as soon as the necessary changes are made).

Right now, however, the war pivot isn't going very well.  Instead of pivoting, we are getting a larger and larger pile up.

So maybe just wrecking everything will work, the deep state must be thinking now.

Left, Conservative, and Liberal in World Affairs

https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2025-03-26/idiots-guide-world-affairs/

America Moving to Left ???

 MAGA Red and other right wingnuts are now proclaiming that America has been "moving to the left."

That's funny, because the America I live in has been steadily moving to the right all my life.  This has been analyzed many times: the rightward shifting of The Overton Window of mainstream acceptible politics is described in a large number of books.  Many have observed we still live in The Reagan Era with both parties emulating Reagan with one twist or another, but not really fundamentally changing matters.

In my lifetime, the New Deal era started by FDR gave way to the Neoliberal/Neoconservative era, which is clearly much farther to the right.

President Johnson unveiled the War on Poverty, Nixon unveiled the War on Drugs, and Clinton unveiled the War on the War on Poverty, ending the most fundamental aid program, AFDC, which guaranteed income support for needy mothers, and replacing it with a cheap limited duration and highly contingent substitute.

One key metric of social democracy (now called "leftist" because we've moved so far to the right) is union membership, which has been declining all my life.  Likewise, income inequality has been increasing all my life, to the extent that we now live in a second Gilded Age reflected by our current President who likes gold toilets.

Under Biden, universities were pressured by the US government to lock up students.  Trump took this one step further by threatening the funding of the universities unless they make even more draconian policies.

An apparent disciple of Ayn Rand has been given free reign to hack away at US government programs that he doesn't like.  It's worth noting that Naziism was most fundamentally about the elimination of socialism (European Jews were targeted because socialism was believed to have come from them).

We've moved so far the the right that fascism is now centrist in America.

We can only choose how much and how far, and with Trump Americans are going to see good and deep right now.

Fighting Darkness

The best way to fight darkness is with light.  (Heat isn't quite as much helpful.)

First thing, Fascists strangle expression of opposing views for that reason, and we must not let them.

Sadly, it's hard to light a single candle when faced with the high powered wind blowers of mass media.

AI is the perfect Fascist tool

 One of the first big uses of AI in society was the targeting of Palestinians in Gaza for assassination.  Hundreds of doctors, journalists, and others were targeted, part of the overall effort to make Gaza unlivable for Palestinians going forwards.

Apparently the Trump project to crack down on critics of Israel is also using AI, a fact briefly mentioned in this report by Jonathan Cook.  We can imagine AI has become useful in cracking down on critics of Israel in Germany and UK as well, whose prosecutions point to social media postings.

With AI, robots can scour people's social media accounts, with little fear that the AI itself might change it's mind or learn from the writing of the people it is reading.

So, by just "obeying orders," it's the perfect fascist tool.  If it's unable to make the fine distinctions that a well educated and thoughtful person might be able to do, that's a plus in these applications.

The Tesla Implosion

 Fairly straight up version from a marketing guy.

"Autopsy" from a sustainability guy.

From about 2011-2017 I was sure a Tesla was going to be my next car.  Then the Model 3 (on which I had purchased a "reservation") was very disappointing to me.  No dashboard, back window too high, and too wide for my garage.  By then I was becoming more and more disappointed that Tesla was not ushering in a new era of EV's, like a Henry Ford, but only making increasingly cranky statement pieces for whitewashing the unsustainable lifestyles of the rich people who buy them.

Back in 2009, I was impressed that Musk had done what others had long said was impossible: and EV with a range similar to a gasoline powered car.  It wasn't really that it was impossible, but there weren't enough moneybags to invest in it.  Somehow Elon got that done, so I respected him a lot.

Now I've lost all respect.  Elon Musk is Ayn Rand in drag and Hitler with a chainsaw.  Other people had actually designed the Tesla, all the ideas (and in all his other companies) were nothing new, Musk was simply able to sell them better to the corrupt and stupid capitalists of the western world.

And EV's aren't The Answer anyway, perhaps not even a help if not employed to actually reduce overall environmental destruction.  So what if one's car doesn't produce greenhouse gasses but the new infrastructure to build them toasts the planet?

The key point of being sustainable is to give up everything excessive.  And Teslas are full of excessive.

  

Pivoting to China and World War 3

 A decade ago, Professor John Mearsheimer was calling for greater peace with Russia and preparing for war with China instead.

Going back even further, around 1969 Gore Vidal also called the US fixation on fighting Russia stupid.  He argued for allying with Russia to keep China from taking over.  China was clearly going to have the top position eventually, and other major powers needed to ally ensure they wouldn't dominate.

About three decades ago for a brief moment we had something like peace (and lots of trade) with both Russia and China.  That started disappearing as soon as the Clinton Administration started reneging on the previous administration's promises not to expand NATO...  Then NATO sponsored wars in the former Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine.  The US sponsored Color Revolutions in many countries--including 2 in Ukraine because the first didn't run as intended--to oust Russian-friendly governments in Russia's backyards and replace them with highly dependent, corrupt, sold-out, and mostly unpopular western client states.  And here we are, at the precipice of WW3. 

 Brian Berletic argues the Trump Administration is not making the change (a reset with Russia) that it advertised and many of its fans believe (and that Maga Blue Democrats wrongly deplore).  Instead, he shows what the Trump Administration is doing is really just a continuation of previous policies.  They are unloading and outsourcing the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine to Europe, in order to free resources for war (and Berletic emphasizes that the moves make it clear that US has hot war in mind, not just economic war or cold war) with China.

So, yes, WW3.

The West's Moral Authority to Disparage Putin

None whatsoever, according to former UK diplomat Craig Murray.

I agree completely.  Craig states the basic case:

The plain truth is that the Western powers interfere far more in other countries than Russia does, through massive sponsorship of NGOs, journalists and politicians, much of which is open and some of which is covert.

I would have also explicitly mentioned the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, and the sanctions the US levies and enforces on many countries.  In the last 30 years alone, many millions of people have died as a result of US foreign wars, weapons, and sanctions.  (I've seen one believable estimate of 10 million.)  Nothing Russia or China have done in this epoch has come close, and this pattern holds all the way back to the end of WWII when US fought big wars in Korea, Vietnam and other countries, and funded 80 deadly coups also responsible for the deaths of millions.  US has been #1 in deaths from war, sanctions, and coups for some time now.

Craig also rejects a claim many of my friends nearly always make:

There is simply no evidence of Putin having territorial goals beyond Ukraine and the tiny enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It is perfectly fair to characterise Putin’s territorial expansion over two decades as limited to the reincorporation of threatened Russian-speaking minority districts in ex-Soviet states.

That it is worth a world war and unlimited dead over who should be mayor of the ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking city of Lugansk is not entirely plain to me.

The notion that Putin is about to attack Poland or Finland is utter nonsense. The idea that the Russian army, which has struggled to subdue small and corrupt, if Western-backed, Ukraine, has the ability to attack Western Europe itself is plainly impractical.

Then, Craig points to the obvious inconsistency between how Russia is disparaged and Israel is defended:

Strangely, the same “logic” is not applied to Benjamin Netanyahu. It is not argued by neoliberals that his annexations of Gaza, the West Bank and Southern Lebanon mean he must have further territorial ambitions. In fact, they even fail to note Netanyahu’s aggressions at all, or portray them as “defensive” – the same argument advanced much more credibly by Putin in Ukraine, but which neoliberals there outright reject.

Many Zionists including members of current Israeli government have recently made aspirational visions of a Greater Israel which not only includes Gaza and other parts of Palestine, but Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and beyond.  Craig doesn't venture that far in this post.

Then Craig states how the current European chest thumping looks in Russia:

The economies of Western Europe are being realigned onto a war footing, led by the utterly transformed European Union. The enthusiastic proponents of genocide in Gaza who head the EU now are channelling an atavistic hereditary hatred of Russia.

The foreign policy of the EU is propelled by Kaja Kallas and Ursula von der Leyen. The fanatical Russophobia these two are spreading, and their undisguised desire to escalate the war in Ukraine, cannot help but remind Russians that they come from nations which were fanatically Nazi.

To Russians this feels a lot like 1941. With Europe in the grip of full-on anti-Russian propaganda, the background to Trump’s attempt to broker a peace deal is troubled and Russia is understandably wary.

Then he states the basic case where we concur:

But Putin is not Hitler. It is only through the blinkers of patriotism that Putin appears to be a worse person than the Western leaders behind massive invasion and death all around the globe, who now seek to extend war with Russia.

First Amendment Rights

While most legal experts I follow are adamant that the Constitution explicitly (and with many Precedents) applies to all People in the USA--not just Citizens--and that includes the Bill of Rights*, it seems that the Trump Administration is not the first to test this.

 (*I love how Judge Nap's eyes grow very big when he emphasizes this point.)

It was the Biden Administration which argued that Julian Assange did not have First Ammendment rights to free speech.  When UK judges questioned if this wouldn't violate the principle of non-discrimination in international human rights agreements, in 2015, the Biden administration quickly settled the Assange case rather than answer the question.

But many wonder why Khalil was chosen when there were surely much better cases around where protestors had actually been accused or convicted of a crime.  I guessed that it was because Khalil was "one of ours" who was politicized (aka radicalized) by the Genocide in Gaza.  It turns out, I was right.  Khalil worked for the British government in toppling Assad (as shown in Craig Murray's article linked immediately above).  He wasn't a spy but an asset used by British Intelligence because of his local knowledge and connections.  He was likely apolitical and on the track to a much better economic life for himself in the West.  Murray lays out two other possibilities, including that he might have been a double agent all along, but finds the idea that he was politicized by the Gaza Genocide to be the most credible.

Nihilism

 Some might consider me a nihilist.  After all, I consider the grand extinction of humanity to be very likely resulting from the growth economy we have now, and a massive human die-off of more than 50% (and probably more like 90%) inevitable in the next century or so.  We've already seen an age-defining extinction and decimation of non-human species, which will only get worse the longer the human "experiment" continues.  And I don't hold out any hope for the endless stream of techno hyperbole that crosses our screens: "Singularity.  AI.  Quantum Computers.  Crpto Anything.  Mars."  The age of tech actually making things "better" is long over, and even if it did, it would only bring on overinflation and collapse of the growth economy sooner.  Look at the server farms being built for Crypto and AI.  Look at the globally expanding manufacturing and mining of toxic metals.  Now tech is intended to build a more comprehensive overlord, while holding up feel good promises.

Only a no-growth society can make sensible choices.  As long as human society is programmed for growth and not sustainability tech will always be an amplifier of destruction, not a savior.

Given that such horrific outcomes are near inevitable anyway, what's the point in doing anything?

That is where I break in many ways from nihilists.  Firstly, I don't consider anything to be inevitable.  Everything that happens is the result of vast numbers of causual "contribution."  To get right down to it, everthing that happens is influenced by everything within a time-space lightcone.

So what I just did moments ago, contributes to the global reality in some tiny measure within seconds, and perhaps more than that later, etc.

So the future is not some determinate thing, it is something I contribute to, along with everyone I know, and know of--including those whose "contributions" I might well hate.

People like me are contributing less to the political outcomes of the world at this moment than many others.  I'm no Trump, Biden, or Netanyahu.

(But my hope remains, like Hari Seldon, people will be reading my words to form their understanding of this time and since.  And so in some form, my contribution may be much greater in the future.  I am also hoping that future starts while I am still alive and not too far from now.)

And regardless of the likelihood of success, I am fully responsible for my contribution and should am for it being a good one, at least overall. Perhaps the best I can make it, but within balance of my life as a while, not 'sacrificing' myself (for something unlikely anyway, the prevention of human and animal suffering and extinction, etc).

I may have little choice, for example, but continue to do business with corporations that violate my ethical ideals.  But I can try to reverse that effect with other measures including contributions, purchases, donations, protests, organizing, and speaking.

What we need is an ecologically rebuilding communist society to clean up from the collapse of the growth economy.

So, anyway, it was with that in mind that I read this description of Soviet Nihilism, which I'm not sure about.

Update from Greenstein

Long one of my favorite bloggers, Jewish Anti-Zionist Tony Greenstein has written recently about his interviews with Katie Halper and Rania Khalek which went deep into the thickets of history.

Here are my favorite sections:

Orthodox Jews in particular opposed Zionism. Agudat Yisrael was founded as a specifically anti-Zionist organisation. This gives the lie to the claims of Britain’s racist Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis that Zionism and Judaism have been intertwined for 3,000 years.

I also went into the content of my book in some depth explaining that for the Zionists building a ‘Jewish’ state was the first priority in the holocaust and that Ben-Gurion is notorious for saying that if there was a choice to be made between rescuing and saving Jews and building their bastard state, the latter comes first. 

When Britain offered to take 10,000 Jewish children in the wake of Kristallnacht the Zionists were outraged that they weren’t going to Palestine. In a speech to Mapai’s (Israeli Labor Party) Central Committee Ben-Gurion said:

If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel.

I also described the Kasztner Affair and the resulting trial in Israel from 1954-8 when the leader of Hungarian Zionism, a senior official and candidate in Mapai (the Israeli Labor Party) for the next elections, Rudolf Kasztner, sued for libel when he was accused of being a Nazi collaborator. He lost when it transpired that he had spent his time post-war at Nuremberg testifying in favour of Nazi war criminals.

Kasztner had concluded a deal with Eichmann that if the Nazis agreed to a train out of Hungary for the select few (Zionists, bourgeois and a few rabbis) he would not inform Hungarian Jews of the Auschwitz Protocols which two escapees from Auschwitz had written detailing where they would go if they boarded a deportation train. Up till then no one knew that Auschwitz was an extermination camp. Kasztner went so far as to misinform those who were deported that they were travelling to a fictious resettlement camp, Kenyermeze.

With Rania I gave an outline of the development of Zionist historiography of the holocaust and how it had been distorted to accord with Zionist myths of Jewish resistance. Zionism has rewritten the letters and memoirs of the Zionist resistance fighters in the Warsaw ghetto eliminating their criticisms of the Zionist movement.  This was in order that their writings should accord with the Zionist narrative that they led the resistance and were heroes rather than sordid collaborators.

The Zionist historians had also erased entirely the role of Jewish anti-Zionists, in particular the Jewish anti-Zionist Bund and its leader, the last Commander of the Resistance, Marek Edelman.

With Rania I first discussed Trump’s ethnic cleansing plans. I was sceptical that they would succeed but I am less so now as all the indications are that Israel is looking for an excuse to resume the genocide.

We discussed the reaction of Israeli Jews to the plan. 80% support it and just 3% think its amoral. Which means that 97% of Israelis are not only amoral bastards but genocidaires too.  The other 17% either can’t make their mind up about it or think it’s not practical.

I imagine some Nazis also thought the extermination of Jews, Poles, Gays, Roma etc. was not practical. This is the morality of Israelis and that’s why I find it hard to explain why in a democratic, secular state  Israeli Jews would have the right to national rights as Jews. It is difficult explaining why Palestinians should be forced to live side by side with genocidal would be murderers.

And

I also explained that Hitler didn’t start out with a plan to genocide the Jews. His plan, like the Zionists was ethnic cleansing.  It was only when that failed that genocide became his only option if he wanted to be rid of the Jews. The same ‘dilemma’ faces the Zionists.  If it can’t be expulsion it must be holocaust.

I went into how the very history of the holocaust had been rewritten by the Zionists to emphasise Jewish resistance, despite it being very low apart from the Warsaw Ghetto and a few others such as at Bialystock which went off at half cock, Lachwa and Minsk.

We discussed the situation of Arab Jews in Israel and how Israel deliberately set out to destabilise their position in 1948. In Iraq it is well documented that they planted bombs in synagogues and other places Jews frequented in order to stimulate flight. Avi Shlaim, an Emeritus Professor at Oxford University in his book Three Worlds has recently come up with further proof of Zionist involvement in the bombings.

When the Zionist underground threw a grenade into the courtyard of the Masudo Shemtov synagogue in Baghdad, killing 2 people, they stimulated a mass emigration of the oldest Jewish community in the world.  Out of 135,000 Jews only 10,000 remained after 1951.

I also told how when they arrived in Israel Iraq’s Jews were treated like animals and were sprayed with DDT. Three Worlds also explains how a rich cultured community were turned into poor labourers in Israel, forced to sleep in tents and how they were deArabised.

I described how Holocaust Worship today leads to the creation of holocaust museums (but not for Black slaves or the Native Indians) such as the United States  Holocaust Museum where history has been rewritten.  When I went there Pastor Niemoller’s saying ‘First they came for ...’ was hanging above the entrance except it had been changed. The first category was ‘First they came for the communists’ but that wouldn’t do in cold war America so it was omitted.

I also showed how two-thirds of the members of the Judenrate, the Nazi Councils that the Nazis established to help implement the Final Solution, were Zionist. It was the Judenrate and not the Nazis who rounded up Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. Rania observed that the Palestinian Authority was the Palestinian equivalent of the Judenrate!

I quoted Hannah Arendt who said in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem that

Wherever Jews lived, there were recognized Jewish leaders, and this leadership, almost without exception, cooperated in one way or another, for one reason or another, with the Nazis. The whole truth was that if the Jewish people had really been unorganized and leaderless, there would have been chaos and plenty of misery but the total number of victims would hardly have been between four and a half and six million people.[1]

I told how the Warsaw ghetto resistance’s first task was to execute Jewish [[Zionist]] collaborators. They couldn’t have organised a rebellion with the collaborators operating. [[...]]

Whatever happened to the Phoenicians?

 It have wondered for some time why one of the greatest empires in world history, the Phoenician Empire, is nearly scrubbed from western history.  These were also the smart people who also invented the alphabet.  Instead, we learn a lot of made up details about a nearby backwater tribe of no such grand distinctions who made themselves famous for male genital mutilation and recasting religious stories largely invented elsewhere.  That the pseudo-history of this tribe (regarded as God's Truth by many) barely mentions the concurrent activities of the adjacent Phoenician Empire has always made me very suspicious.

The grand conspiracy theorist Miles Mathis has written a grand essay on this.  First he notices that the era of the Phoencians greatest success, 1200-800 BCE, which is called a "Dark Age" in western history, wasn't so dark after all.  Mathis shows that it was deliberately blacked out, to hide the success of the Phoenicians.

In our academic (as opposed to biblical) history, the Phoenicians were first defeated by the Persians.  But Mathis shows that this supposed defeat never happened.  Instead, what seems to have happened is that Phoenicians married into the royal lines of Persia, and eventually took them over.  So Persia and Phoenicia became the same thing.  And then this happened again with Greece, with Alexander (who was probably more Phoenician than Greek).  And through Alexander, the next was Egypt.

And then Mathis shows the Pheoenicians followed that model the world over.  All the royal European lines are basically Phoenicians who wormed their way in.

In Mathis' telling, once the Phoenicians had mastered trade, they decided that wasn't good enough.  They wanted to directly ingest the wealth of their partners with a straight pipe, and this is how they did it.  Largely with marriage, secrets, and clandestine activities.  We are still ruled by Phoenicians today (and we wish they'd do a better job).

Then what about the Jews?  They are of course Phoenicians too.  Both are semitic (despite some attempt by Victorian scholars to recast Phoenicians as Aryan).  Possibly one in the same.  They have a folk history in the Holy Bible to confuse people, conveniently owning all "Abrahamic Religion" sides.

I'm not saying this far out conspiracy theory that Phoenicians still run the world is true.  But after reading Mathis, it's clear that most of what we think we know is lies, lies meant to hide inconvenient truths about our past so we don't fully understand the present.

And it also underlines a point I keep trying to make against racial supremacists: We are all more closely related than you think.

So I can state with very high probability than indeed I am descended from both Cyrus and Darian, and yes Abraham and David (if they even existed) and James the Brother of Jesus (if not Jesus himself, if he existed and has surviving ancestors).  Over 2000 years, the probability of any descent you could think of is over 80% and over 3000 years it's over 90%.

So, basically, we are all Phoenicians now.  (They REALLY got around, too.)

Though it's possible there's an inner Phoenician elite most of us are not part of.  Well, that may be at least partly the elite we know.  Not many who could choose would choose to live in ordinary circumstances (or worse) as disguise.

I don't know what to say

 I don't know what to say when people, quoting "respectable" sources such as The Atlantic magazine and the BBC, claim that Russia is losing the war in Ukraine badly.

I suppose I could point them to articles such as this one where my favored journalist debunks the claims in The Atlantic.

Not that it would do any good, because they would surely say that MoA is Russian Disinformation.

Tim Cook, writing at Antiwar.com, has similar feelings except he DOES know what to say and says it.

I happened to notice that Antiwar.com is an operation of the Bourne Institute, and I looked up Bourne.  He was a lefty writer who opposed WW1 and argued against another self-described liberal, Dewey, who endorsed it.  Bourne also argued against the idea of a 'Melting Pot' in favor of multiculturalism.  Sadly Bourne died of "Spanish Flu" (which actually started in Kansas) in 1918.

Here's the 10 minute Aron Mate description of the origins of the war in Ukraine.

Though this is often called Russian Disinformation, US officials repeatedly promised that NATO would not extend eastward.

A Great Moment

Aaron Mate gives a pretty good primer.

https://www.aaronmate.net/p/zelenskys-hostility-to-peace-triggers

Simplicius has a particularly good 10 minute section of the 50 minute encounter, which gives a somewhat different view from US centrist MSM which of course castigates Trump.  Simplicius and many other recommend viewing the entire 50 minutes (I have not yet done that).

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/bloodbath-in-the-oval-office

Historian Doctorow calls this "historic"

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2025/03/01/the-trump-zelensky-fracas-in-the-white-house/

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/03/the-oval-office-shouting-match-wrap-up.html

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-ukraine-zelensky/

https://consortiumnews.com/2025/03/01/trump-vance-school-zelensky-on-reality-of-his-war/

Duran (on youtube link below) emphasizes that the Minerals Deal was originally Zelensky's idea, and all sides seemed set to accept a no-explicit-security-guarantees version Trump had offered him until Zelensky started trying to renegotiate that with Trump on camera...making this NOT a set-up but a real live dramatic and pivotal (though probably predictable by all involved) "negotiation" that ended in failure for Zelensky because he was demanding too much...something Trump had already ruled out...and what Zelensky was (and has been) demanding is basically a nuclear WW3 NATO response to defend Ukraine, because otherwise NATO is running out of conventional stuff and Ukraine is running out of conscriptables to keep this war going.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG2dTDIGjaM

Mearsheimer was one of the first to respond.

I have never voted for Trump, I have never donated to Trump, I have always supported leading Trump opposition candidates, and I haven't supported anything else President Trump has done.  In fact

for those other things he has been and might do I have great anger and fear for our constitutional republic, let alone our economy and the health and safety of our citizens.

But on these two things--restoring relations with Russia and ending support for the War in Ukraine--he has exceeded my most rosy expectations so far.  (If in fact the world is saved from nuclear annihilation by his avoiding WW3, they may be the two most important things.)

I've learned from long concert attendance, that it's best to give the

standing ovation to the work that truly inspires you, rather than wait

until the end by which time your enthusiasm may have dimmed or even been canceled.  So I immediately wrote a letter to Trump, thanking him. 

Other than reinforcing an already existing precedent that Presidents can even withdraw from treaties when those treaties themselves forbid that option, I'd even be fine with Trump pulling out of NATO. NATO has long proven to be imperial overreach in many places, most obviously Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Serbia, where it has indeed operated as an offensive alliance.  (My own interpretation of the war in Ukraine is that too: It's NATO's offensive war on Russia by proxy.)

It would be better if NATO were officially discarded by the treaty-required Senate vote.  But NATO is really just a cover for US imperialism anyway.  It's driven by the US geopolitical agenda, and powered by the military prowess and economic power of the US.  It actually doesn't commit anyone to anything.  If the US simply ignores NATO, nothing is likely to happen.  Britain's 60 operational tanks aren't going to make much difference, nor the 12,000 or so "peacekeeping" troops it might scare up

Despite much ranting and raving in NATO-owned European governments and "centrist" Atlantacist media and parties throughout the West, they are not going to do anything except said ranting and raving.

The entire "need" for NATO from the beginning was (#1) US Imperial ambition, #2 Russia/Commie phobia, and (#3) Western misrepresentations of events surrounding the end of WW2.

When the Soviet Union fell, even many former anti-Soviet hardliners were calling for bringing NATO to an end.  (Instead, that's when NATO's most aggressive and least "defensive" phase began.)

But amidst all the anti-Russian hysteria what is never noticed is how most of the aggressive wars of the last 80 years, and in particular the last 25, have been driven by US and not Russian imperialism.

Russia has played a more conservative role surrounding it's old but still ethnic Russian populated border areas, and the US has tried to push them into war by inflaming eliminationist movement like the re-emergent and neo- Nazis in Ukraine whose fervor is based on pushing Russians out.  Meanwhile, I see few if any Russian errors here, deviations only follow US precedents except with better justifications, whereas the US errors are immense.

If only Johnson had treated Diem like this, the Vietnam war could have been avoided.

Now if only the Zelensky treatment could be dished out to Netanyahu, rather than his usual being waited on hand and foot.  Then we could really and earnestly think about the end of US Imperialism.  It must end soon, if the world is to survive.

And if only Trump could drop the rest of the US Imperialist agena upon the Global South, in particular Venezuela and Cuba, Trump could capitalize on his success in dumping Zelensky by winning back the hearts and minds of the Global South which Biden and his predecessors trashed.

Letter to Trump

I think it is very good that you are re-establishing diplomatic relations with Russia.  This is the path leading us away from global annihilation in nuclear war.  Russia is an important country, and Putin is a great leader.

I was pleased to see you and VP Vance stand up to Ukrainian dictator Zelensky in public.

I will be happy to see all US military aid to Ukraine ended.  You are correct that we should never have backed war in Ukraine in the first place, and the war would not have happened otherwise.

AI is an enormously expensive bubble

This article may be a bit one sided and shrill.  And its very long and sometimes seems repetitious.

But I think it's also an excellent introduction to who is behind what is available in AI, and a look behind multiple curtains.  As I've always thought, it doesn't look good.  A good nutshell of the article is as follows:

These are also — and I do not believe there are any use cases that justify this — not a counterbalance for the ruinous financial and environmental costs of generative AI. It is the leaded gasoline of tech, where the boost to engine performance didn’t outweigh the horrific health impacts it inflicted.

 The spending on AI datacenters has been gargantuan, it will surpass $500 billion before long, boosted by venture capital and the decenter businesses themselves (including Google and Amazon).

Lack of profitability means we end up all paying the bill.

Here's Ziltron diving deeper into AI promises and nonsense.

Here's Ziltron describing the Digital Rot Economy we live in because of Venture Capital.

Free Speech except for Thee

Another "free speech" warrior who won't let me even like their posts.

*****

A post from Matt Stoller disappeared on X less than 9 minutes after it was posted.  He said, "The media has had an anti-Federal government spending bias since the 1970's.  There's nothing new with DOGE, it's just rehashed Heritage Foundation nonsense.  (This post appeared in my timeline and but I couldn't like it because it had already been deleted.)

Much as I try to migrate from X to Bluesky, Bluesky still feels like a luncheon with Maga Blue democrats.  There's no critique of longstanding US foreign policy (which tries to dominate the world), and one of the baddest things about Trump according to nearly all I follow on Bluesky is that he appears to be making peace with Russia and ending US support for the War in Ukraine (which is only possible because of US support).  Hardly any of the Antiwar and Anti-Imperialist voices I follow on X are on Bluesky.  It doesn't seem this is because of Bluesky banning people, but because of the power (or lack of power) of people gathered there.  So I'm sticking with my plan of reading X on odd days.  I occasionally try to cast some light (with as little heat as I can manage) on Bluesky...this may get me banned or at least blocked by some I'm currently following (which wouldn't make me too sad).

Even Twitter Off Days

Using algorithms instead of human censors, and (mostly) shadowbanning--nothing new--but to a more pervasive level than ever before, the social media formerly known as Twitter has become an alt-right brainwashing system.

Despite that, due to it's long history as the first truly argumentative Social Media, that service continues to host a number of anti-establishment voices of some merit which are not available elsewhere.

(However, many are moving to the competitive service Bluesky, which is getting better and better as a result.)

So while Maga Blue immediately left Twitter the moment the new owner began reversing some of the earlier bans (the wrong reason but perhaps the right move), the service formerly known as Twitter still has some unique value.

THUS I propose a partial boycott.  I propose making the Even days of the month (2,4,6,8, ...) into Twitter Off Days.

On those even days, I will use email (still my biggest thing), Bluesky, favorite blogs and Substacks, Patreon, Youtube, etc.  Everything except the service that used to be known as Twitter.

I suggest people apply the same principle to all of the services operated by the nazi oligarch, or others.

USAID

 I am utterly opposed to DOGE hacking government institutions, and shutting down US agencies created by Congress.  Not only is this Unconstitutional, it doesn't deal with the lives of the current employees and other people affected for no good reason.

USAID was created by an act of Congress in 1961, and that act specifically says there should be an agency to perform this work (not a few handpicked friends of the Secretary of State).

If President Trump is allowed to get away with this, where it will all end?  We know one thing for sure, from the moment he does get away with it, we no longer have a Republic, we have a naked Dictatorship.

If one wants to change the direction of the US government, and I concede I do, one must change the mission first, in Congress, then everything else follows.  If we don't change the mission, the work will go on somewhere else and with even less transparency.  It should well be noted that the kinds of work USAID (and it's sister public NGO, the NED) does was previously done by CIA on the black budget, and it could resume being done by CIA on the black budget.

So if the goal is to make the US stop trying to control the world, which mine is, that has to be taken head on, and not skirted around the edges by even "abolishing" individual agencies like USAID.  Such actions are reckless, unfair, and ultimately pointless.

Even if your goal were just saving money, this would not be the way to do it.

And, it's laughable that Elon Musk and his friend Mike Benz have described USAID as a "Marxist" operation.  If only it were, I'd be deeply supportive of it.  Such incredible spin and dishonesty mainly reveals these people cannot be trusted at all.  They're kooks as well as crooks, just like their boss President Trump.  Boy do we have a wild ride ahead.

*****

But all the same it irks me when USAID is described as a Humanitarian Agency, as if the US had a charity because of its bleeding heart.  Nearly the entire US media (including online) has gone to bat almost immediately to defend USAID in those sorts of terms, about how much "aid" it delivers (while not mentioning anything else).  Once again this makes the "conspiracy theory" of CIA controlling US media look all too real.

Let's get something straight here.

USAID is US SOFT POWER.

Wikipedia says:

 The goal of this agency was to counter Soviet Union influence during the Cold War and to advance US soft power through socioeconomic development.[13][14]

[14]  

Matanock, Aila M. (July 25, 2017). Electing Peace: From Civil Conflict to Political Participation. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-10140-0. The mission of USAID had initially been to counter communism through development.

Soft power is generally a more cost effective means of opening up new regions to US financial exploitation (called Freedom and Democracy, of course) than hard power.  If you want to win hearts and minds, nothing works as well as food and medical assistance.

Cuba does it probably far more relative to the size of its economy as the US (and generally where the US doesn't do it at all).

US SOFT POWER pales in comparison to US HARD POWER

US waves a lot more Hot Power in the world than soft power.  Merely look at the military weapons sent to Ukraine since President Trump first authorized it.  I'm seeing a number of $65 Billion but that does not sound complete to me (I think it's about double that).

And Israel, which had generally been the Camp David Accords authorized $3.5B per year, but more recently it's been $21 Billion.

And even that probably pales in comparison with what the US spends on military operations.  The US has spent Trillions of Dollars on foreign military operations since 9/11/2001.  And it's continuing.

IS USAID GOOD OR BAD ?

I think it's fine a good that the US government spends money providing food and medicine to people in other countries, regardless of the political motivations of the US in doing so.  Whatever it spends in these ways pales in comparison to Hot Power, when it should probably be the other way around.  So I look at is as a drop in the bucket given back to the world, at least the food and medicine part.  I'm sure it primarily goes to people we want to curry favor with, for geopolitical power reasons, and others we less want to curry favor are damned, but at least we're doing something positive somewhere, and that's better than nothing.

(Um, but is is "medicine" or "research" the US is conduction.  Research may be fine, certain kinds perhaps not, but let's not consider it aid at all.)

I don't feel so sanguine about the media and other influence USAID provides.  It's clear that USAID has run many influence operations, funded media organizations around the world and especially in US conflict zones.  But I have yet to see the total numbers, no searches I've done have located the total numbers, and most often just debunking Musk on particular points.

The individual numbers can be pretty impressive though.  According to the Council on Foreign Relations, who would in no way enlarge the numbers (more likely find any way to minimize it--which is what they are doing here I believe, claiming these to be exceptional cases when in fact they are typical examples if not on the smaller side):

https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/03/cuban-twitter-and-other-times-usaid-pretended-to-be-an-intelligence-agency/

According to a US government website, USAID has given $3 Billion to Ukraine since 1992 to "support efforts to strengthen democracy and good governance, improve health care systems, and mitigate the effects of the conflict in the east.

When I read a line like "strengthen democracy and good government" I know what that means.

It's the same old Freedom and Democracy propaganda that enables US investors to buy up the world, which is called Neo-colonialism.

$3B to Ukraine of influence ops is still a drop in the bucket of USAID over that period.  (Victoria Nuland is shown on a video from a conference from around 2014 saying the US had given more than $5 Billion to Ukraine.)

It turned out, that was only a tiny down payment.

But let us remember that USAID isn't the only US soft power organization.  There is also NED, the National Endowment for Democracy, whose entire mission is the promotion of US style bankster imperialist "Freedom and Democracy."

Here's a relevant QUORA discussion on USAID and NED.  The original post (from someone who does a lot of work for USAID) gives a link (broken) to the "Foreign Aid Explorer" which would tell us where the USAID money goes.  Then. it has a link which supposedly tells us were NED funding goes, but it's just a FAQ for applying to NED which gives no such information.  This discussion appears to be from five years to a few months ago, and I wonder if defenders of Freedom and Democracy are following the standard disinfo playbook of providing links (or references etc) which they don't expect anyone to check out, or have things just changed (and when and why?)

Poster Lance Chambers (an elder with PhD, MA, 6500 Quora followers) thinks like me when he writes:

I remember when I lived in Tanzania that a host of US NGO’s would set up charities and schools to educate the young children. One of the big things they did in the schools was to teach English - understandable as it would help them to read which is an important attribute but why English - it was because they also offered a host of books written in English.

The problem wasn’t that they were helping them read but that the books in English were all in English. No books in Swahili so they could write in their native language which would have been very useful but also that many of the books were about how wonderful the US was, how rich they were, how much they should be honoured and respected for all the largess they were offering, how America was so wonderful, so supportive, so kind, so generous - I’m sure you have an idea of what these bodies were doing?

To me they were humiliating the Tanzanians so as to convince them that America would be their saviours and to convince them that America could do no wrong and that the people and government of Tanzania should follow the US in all things.

I admit that this was close to 60 years ago but I still see the US acting in the same way far too often to make me feel comfortable of Americas suggestions of proffered largess when it all ends up being little that is of use if anything at all.

As if to respond to my questions, a video from Grayzone appeared about 8 hours after I first posted it.