Video wird geladen...

Video konnte nicht geladen werden

Beim Laden dieses Videos ist ein Problem aufgetreten. Dies könnte an einem vorübergehenden Netzwerkproblem liegen oder das Video ist möglicherweise nicht verfügbar.

[ Margin Notes ] Xi Jinping is really sick, and it is not a mild case. On August 30 the “core” of the Chinese Communist Party stepped off his plane in Bishkek looking pale, puffy-faced and unsteady. Video that circulated outside the Great Firewall shows him gripping Peng Liyuan’s... hand as if it were a banister. She, in turn, quietly slipped her arm under his. CCTV’s official footage jumps from a distant wave at the cabin door to a handshake on the tarmac. The stairs themselves vanished into the editing suite. The Party that never lies simply decided the public did not need to see its leader negotiate gravity. This is not an isolated clip. In 2022 he nearly missed a step in Kazakhstan. In 2023 South African footage of the same painful descent was also cut. Last December, walking down steps with Emmanuel Macron at Dujiangyan, Xi again used his wife as a walking stick, one leg dragging. The pattern is now a running gag among overseas Chinese: the man who demands “absolute loyalty” cannot be trusted to walk down a jetway without a spouse acting as human scaffolding. The regime’s response is always the same. State television airbrushes the stumble, Xinhua prints poems about “golden periods” and “shared futures,” and anyone who notices the tremor or the swollen features is accused of “smearing China.” Meanwhile the only remaining deputy director of the Central Health Commission, Zeng Yixin, is a career oncologist. Coincidence, the Party insists. Just as it is coincidence that the same man who once strode across stages now blinks rapidly, speaks in a thin voice, and lists to one side. A system built on the myth of an infallible helmsman cannot admit the helmsman is listing. So the cameras are positioned, the scissors come out, and the first lady is quietly recast as a discreet nurse. The same Party that lectures the world on “national rejuvenation” cannot even let its own people see their leader walk down a set of stairs. That is not strength. That is a regime terrified of its own mortality, and of the day the video can no longer be cut. — Aricshow more

Aric Chen

53,997 subscribers

70,633 Aufrufe • vor 13 Tagen •via X (Twitter)

Wissenschaft & Technologie Nachrichten & Politik

Anya Rossi• Live Now

Private livecam show

0 Kommentare

Keine Kommentare verfügbar

Kommentare vom Original-Post werden hier angezeigt

Ähnliche Videos

This is not a border dispute. It is a sermon. A Hamas leader on a Gaza stage tells seven million Palestinians abroad to stop warming up. There are Jews everywhere, he says. Attack every Jew on Earth. Slaughter them. Kill them. With Allah’s help. The crowd is not a war room. It is a public. Hamas did not invent that sentence. Hamas is but one franchise of it. Islamic Jihad says the same thing with a different logo. Hezbollah wraps it in Khomeini and the language of “the Zionist entity.” The Houthis put “death to Israel, curse the Jews” on a flag and call it governance. The regime in Tehran funds the network and calls the Jewish state a tumor. Different uniforms. Same theology. For them, Jewish sovereignty is an insult to Allah, and Jewish lives outside the land are not off-limits. That is why “from the river to the sea” is not a housing policy, and why October 7 was not an accident of occupation. The target list in this clip is not a soldier at a checkpoint. It is Jews as such, wherever they are. Once the enemy is a people, not a government, there is no ceasefire that satisfies the idea. There is only a pause. Western coverage keeps shrinking this to one militia and one strip of coast because a regional ideology is harder to manage than a “peace process.” Factions are useful that way. They let you condemn Hamas on Tuesday and treat Hezbollah as Lebanese politics on Wednesday and the Houthis as a shipping problem on Thursday. The preacher does not bother with those folders. He names the Jews and asks the diaspora to start. If you want to understand the war, start with what they say when they are not fundraising in English. The map they want is not two states. It is a world with fewer Jews in it, sanctified as duty. Hamas is the local office. The ideology is the corporation.

Mor Edge Insight

68,280 Aufrufe • vor 2 Tagen

On the road to find the Grave of an NS party member that died in the early 1930’s in Eastern-Prussia. His grave is located on his estate property as this family was from an aristocratic family. The grave is Pagan and Christian at the same time.. The Haken* in the middle shows light beams on the side to depict the sun. The grave stands deep in the forest surrounded by a half circle of stones. There is also a Christian Cross on his coffin. The most interesting is that there is quote from Christ AND from AH on the back of his gravestone. This shows that this individual regarded both Christ and AH as his saviour. This locations is deep in the woods and hard to get to, the family estate is no longer there and no paths lead to it.. There is only nature, silence and a forgotten grave of another era.

On the road to find the Grave of an NS party member that died in the early 1930’s in Eastern-Prussia. His grave is located on his estate property as this family was from an aristocratic family. The grave is Pagan and Christian at the same time.. The Haken* in the middle shows light beams on the side to depict the sun. The grave stands deep in the forest surrounded by a half circle of stones. There is also a Christian Cross on his coffin. The most interesting is that there is quote from Christ AND from AH on the back of his gravestone. This shows that this individual regarded both Christ and AH as his saviour. This locations is deep in the woods and hard to get to, the family estate is no longer there and no paths lead to it.. There is only nature, silence and a forgotten grave of another era.

Die Neue Baukunst

44,044 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten

They did not take cursive from the schools because children no longer needed it. They took it because of what it was quietly building in them. Consider what the exercise actually is. A child, six years old, is handed a pen and asked to draw a single unbroken line that becomes a word. The wrist must float. The fingers must hold a living pressure, never quite the same twice, always correcting. The eye must follow the ink forward and trust the hand to finish what it has begun. There is no lifting, no stopping, no starting over mid-word. The loop must close. The ascender must rise and return. The sentence must travel from one margin to the other as a single continuous gesture, and at the end of it the hand must still be steady. Twelve years of this. Every day. Ten thousand small acts of sustained, self-correcting attention, carried out below the level of conscious thought, until the motion belongs to the body and the body belongs to the motion. This is not penmanship. It is the slow construction of an interior form. The hand that has learned to carry a line without breaking it is the hand of a mind that has learned to carry a thought without breaking it. The two are not metaphors for one another. They are the same faculty, trained in the same child, by the same daily discipline. Continuity of the stroke becomes continuity of the reasoning. The patience of the loop becomes the patience of the argument. The commitment to finish a word one has started becomes the commitment to finish a sentence, a paragraph, a life's idea, without reaching for the nearest distraction halfway through. Print is a different creature entirely. Print lifts. Print stops. Print assembles a word out of separate, stamped, interchangeable pieces, each one beginning and ending in isolation. A mind raised only on print learns to think the way print is made, in discrete tokens, in replaceable units, in fragments that can be recombined by any outside hand without the owner noticing the substitution. It is precisely the shape of thought a language model produces. It is precisely the shape of thought a language model can steer. Cursive is kata. This is the whole of it. A form repeated daily, for years, not for the sake of the form but for what the repetition lays down in the practitioner beneath the form. The swordsman does not train kata so that one day he may fight in kata. He trains it so that when the moment comes and there is no time to think, the movement is already inside him, older and deeper than thought, and it rises on its own. Cursive was the kata of the literate mind, the daily quiet drilling of continuity, of patience, of a line held steady under the long pressure of its own length. And the signature it produced at the end, that small flourished mark unique to a single human being on earth, was only the outward proof of an inward form no machine and no other hand could ever reproduce. Take the kata away and the practitioner is left with vocabulary in place of faculty. He can recognise a whole thought when he encounters one. He cannot carry one himself. He can admire a finished argument. He cannot sustain one long enough to close its loop. He begins books he does not finish, sentences he does not end, ideas he abandons the moment the screen in his palm offers him a brighter one. And when the machine begins feeding him tokens in the exact shape his schooling taught him to receive, he meets it with no interior resistance at all, because no interior form was ever built in him to push back with. They removed it quietly, across a generation, and they removed it in the last years before the machines arrived. Twelve years of daily practice in unbroken, embodied, self-authored thought, gone from the curriculum of almost every child in the Western world, just as the instruments designed to complete their sentences for them came online. The hand forgets. The mind, having never been taught the kata, forgets a thing it never knew it had. That is what cursive was. That is what was taken. And that is why the thought of anyone who still writes by hand, in long unlifted lines, remains, quietly, stubbornly, and without their ever needing to announce it, their own. Now the question stands open. What else has been banned, phased out, quietly retired from the curriculum and from common life over these same decades, under the same soft excuses? Mental arithmetic. Memorisation of poetry. Latin. Logic as a formal subject. Map reading. Knot work. The keeping of a commonplace book. The reading aloud of long passages in class. Singing in parts. What was each of those actually building in the child, beneath the surface of the lesson, and whose interest was served by its disappearance?

They did not take cursive from the schools because children no longer needed it. They took it because of what it was quietly building in them. Consider what the exercise actually is. A child, six years old, is handed a pen and asked to draw a single unbroken line that becomes a word. The wrist must float. The fingers must hold a living pressure, never quite the same twice, always correcting. The eye must follow the ink forward and trust the hand to finish what it has begun. There is no lifting, no stopping, no starting over mid-word. The loop must close. The ascender must rise and return. The sentence must travel from one margin to the other as a single continuous gesture, and at the end of it the hand must still be steady. Twelve years of this. Every day. Ten thousand small acts of sustained, self-correcting attention, carried out below the level of conscious thought, until the motion belongs to the body and the body belongs to the motion. This is not penmanship. It is the slow construction of an interior form. The hand that has learned to carry a line without breaking it is the hand of a mind that has learned to carry a thought without breaking it. The two are not metaphors for one another. They are the same faculty, trained in the same child, by the same daily discipline. Continuity of the stroke becomes continuity of the reasoning. The patience of the loop becomes the patience of the argument. The commitment to finish a word one has started becomes the commitment to finish a sentence, a paragraph, a life's idea, without reaching for the nearest distraction halfway through. Print is a different creature entirely. Print lifts. Print stops. Print assembles a word out of separate, stamped, interchangeable pieces, each one beginning and ending in isolation. A mind raised only on print learns to think the way print is made, in discrete tokens, in replaceable units, in fragments that can be recombined by any outside hand without the owner noticing the substitution. It is precisely the shape of thought a language model produces. It is precisely the shape of thought a language model can steer. Cursive is kata. This is the whole of it. A form repeated daily, for years, not for the sake of the form but for what the repetition lays down in the practitioner beneath the form. The swordsman does not train kata so that one day he may fight in kata. He trains it so that when the moment comes and there is no time to think, the movement is already inside him, older and deeper than thought, and it rises on its own. Cursive was the kata of the literate mind, the daily quiet drilling of continuity, of patience, of a line held steady under the long pressure of its own length. And the signature it produced at the end, that small flourished mark unique to a single human being on earth, was only the outward proof of an inward form no machine and no other hand could ever reproduce. Take the kata away and the practitioner is left with vocabulary in place of faculty. He can recognise a whole thought when he encounters one. He cannot carry one himself. He can admire a finished argument. He cannot sustain one long enough to close its loop. He begins books he does not finish, sentences he does not end, ideas he abandons the moment the screen in his palm offers him a brighter one. And when the machine begins feeding him tokens in the exact shape his schooling taught him to receive, he meets it with no interior resistance at all, because no interior form was ever built in him to push back with. They removed it quietly, across a generation, and they removed it in the last years before the machines arrived. Twelve years of daily practice in unbroken, embodied, self-authored thought, gone from the curriculum of almost every child in the Western world, just as the instruments designed to complete their sentences for them came online. The hand forgets. The mind, having never been taught the kata, forgets a thing it never knew it had. That is what cursive was. That is what was taken. And that is why the thought of anyone who still writes by hand, in long unlifted lines, remains, quietly, stubbornly, and without their ever needing to announce it, their own. Now the question stands open. What else has been banned, phased out, quietly retired from the curriculum and from common life over these same decades, under the same soft excuses? Mental arithmetic. Memorisation of poetry. Latin. Logic as a formal subject. Map reading. Knot work. The keeping of a commonplace book. The reading aloud of long passages in class. Singing in parts. What was each of those actually building in the child, beneath the surface of the lesson, and whose interest was served by its disappearance?

SiriusB

444,011 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten

China's central bank has now bought gold for 19 months straight, the largest official buyer on earth. And this week, as gold broke 4,000 dollars, China's biggest banks moved to push ordinary Chinese out of leveraged gold trading, with at least one warning it will liquidate any position not closed by month-end. Both are true at once, and together they explain what this crash really is. Start with what is being banned, because the words matter. ICBC and a string of other banks are shutting down retail trading in what the Chinese themselves call paper gold, the margined, leveraged contracts where you bet on the price without ever owning a bar. Some banks lifted the margin requirement to 140 percent to choke the leverage off before closing the products outright. Physical gold, meanwhile, stays wide open. Coins, bars, savings plans, ETFs, all fine. It is only the paper, the leverage, the casino, that is being shut, the last step in a five-year retreat that the crash just finished. Officially this is about protecting small investors, and that part is real. The same kind of leverage wiped out a wave of Chinese retail in a 2020 commodity blowup. But set the ban beside what the state is doing and something larger comes into view. While its citizens are pushed out of the paper, the People's Bank of China has spent those same 19 months buying the physical metal, more than two thousand three hundred tonnes of it now, accumulating straight through a 28 percent crash that scared everyone else out. Beijing is not trading gold. It is hoarding it. That is the strategy in one frame. China looked at the two things both called gold, the paper bet and the physical bar, and made a choice no Western government would make. It is taking the metal for the state and closing the casino for everyone else. The reason sits in a single date. 2022, when Russia's reserves were frozen with a keystroke. That taught every country outside the Western system one lesson: dollars in an account can be switched off, gold in your own vault cannot. So China is building its monetary independence out of the one asset nobody can freeze, and it does not want that foundation in the hands of leveraged traders who panic-sell in a crash, or priced by a paper market it does not control. Watch this month and the two worlds split in real time. Western investors were forced out of their gold by margin calls and a rate scare. China's central bank bought that exact dip with both hands. One side treats gold as a trade. The other treats it as the floor under a currency. The West is selling paper gold and calling it a crash. China is buying physical gold and calling it a foundation. In ten years, only one of them will look like it understood what gold was for. The metal is already moving to that side.

China's central bank has now bought gold for 19 months straight, the largest official buyer on earth. And this week, as gold broke 4,000 dollars, China's biggest banks moved to push ordinary Chinese out of leveraged gold trading, with at least one warning it will liquidate any position not closed by month-end. Both are true at once, and together they explain what this crash really is. Start with what is being banned, because the words matter. ICBC and a string of other banks are shutting down retail trading in what the Chinese themselves call paper gold, the margined, leveraged contracts where you bet on the price without ever owning a bar. Some banks lifted the margin requirement to 140 percent to choke the leverage off before closing the products outright. Physical gold, meanwhile, stays wide open. Coins, bars, savings plans, ETFs, all fine. It is only the paper, the leverage, the casino, that is being shut, the last step in a five-year retreat that the crash just finished. Officially this is about protecting small investors, and that part is real. The same kind of leverage wiped out a wave of Chinese retail in a 2020 commodity blowup. But set the ban beside what the state is doing and something larger comes into view. While its citizens are pushed out of the paper, the People's Bank of China has spent those same 19 months buying the physical metal, more than two thousand three hundred tonnes of it now, accumulating straight through a 28 percent crash that scared everyone else out. Beijing is not trading gold. It is hoarding it. That is the strategy in one frame. China looked at the two things both called gold, the paper bet and the physical bar, and made a choice no Western government would make. It is taking the metal for the state and closing the casino for everyone else. The reason sits in a single date. 2022, when Russia's reserves were frozen with a keystroke. That taught every country outside the Western system one lesson: dollars in an account can be switched off, gold in your own vault cannot. So China is building its monetary independence out of the one asset nobody can freeze, and it does not want that foundation in the hands of leveraged traders who panic-sell in a crash, or priced by a paper market it does not control. Watch this month and the two worlds split in real time. Western investors were forced out of their gold by margin calls and a rate scare. China's central bank bought that exact dip with both hands. One side treats gold as a trade. The other treats it as the floor under a currency. The West is selling paper gold and calling it a crash. China is buying physical gold and calling it a foundation. In ten years, only one of them will look like it understood what gold was for. The metal is already moving to that side.

Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡

327,303 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten

The court left three dead children in a hung jury and called it part of the process. That is not justice. That is cowardice. The jury refused to do the one thing that would have been appropriate and find Lindsay Clancy guilty. Patrick Clancy was in Midtown again, sunglasses on, walking like any other Sunday. Two days earlier a Massachusetts jury could not decide whether his ex-wife murdered Cora, Dawson, and Callan. Eleven jurors were ready to end it. We do not know for certain which way they were leaning, but most people think they wanted to acquit. One was the holdout. The prosecutor is expected to try the case again. So the man who already took the stand and described coming home to what his wife did to his kids now lives with the chance he will have to say it all a second time. The sidewalk photos of Patrick are not a victory lap. They are what life looks like when the system cannot finish the job and the cameras still follow the father instead of the verdict. Notice how little the press does to mourn the children. It is easier to drum up drama about a man walking on a sidewalk. A mistrial does not bring Patrick’s children back. Nothing does. Not even a guilty verdict heals those wounds. But a conviction would at least show there is accountability. A life sentence would tell other parents that Lindsay’s kind of act is not a loophole. Patrick now walks with the mistrial on him. It does not settle the facts. It postpones the pain and asks the surviving parent to keep taking the cameras as he moves through public. The kids are still gone. The case is still open. That is the story. Not that a man went for a walk.

The court left three dead children in a hung jury and called it part of the process. That is not justice. That is cowardice. The jury refused to do the one thing that would have been appropriate and find Lindsay Clancy guilty. Patrick Clancy was in Midtown again, sunglasses on, walking like any other Sunday. Two days earlier a Massachusetts jury could not decide whether his ex-wife murdered Cora, Dawson, and Callan. Eleven jurors were ready to end it. We do not know for certain which way they were leaning, but most people think they wanted to acquit. One was the holdout. The prosecutor is expected to try the case again. So the man who already took the stand and described coming home to what his wife did to his kids now lives with the chance he will have to say it all a second time. The sidewalk photos of Patrick are not a victory lap. They are what life looks like when the system cannot finish the job and the cameras still follow the father instead of the verdict. Notice how little the press does to mourn the children. It is easier to drum up drama about a man walking on a sidewalk. A mistrial does not bring Patrick’s children back. Nothing does. Not even a guilty verdict heals those wounds. But a conviction would at least show there is accountability. A life sentence would tell other parents that Lindsay’s kind of act is not a loophole. Patrick now walks with the mistrial on him. It does not settle the facts. It postpones the pain and asks the surviving parent to keep taking the cameras as he moves through public. The kids are still gone. The case is still open. That is the story. Not that a man went for a walk.

Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸

53,700 Aufrufe • vor 6 Tagen

🇺🇸 🇮🇷 BREAKING: TRUMP JUST WALKED AWAY FROM IRAN. WHO'S SURPRISED? Iran struck a deal. No nukes. Everyone agreed. Then their own guys stepped outside and told the press it never happened. That is not diplomacy. That is a con. Trump laid it out plain. "They're liars. They're cheats. They're sick people." You cannot negotiate with a government that denies the deal the second the cameras turn on. This is the same regime that gunned down 54,000 of its own people for daring to protest. No guns on one side. Machine guns on the other. The media barely blinked. Trump still says the door stays open for his team. Witkoff and Kushner can keep talking if Tehran wants to be serious. But Trump himself is done playing referee in a game where the other side keeps moving the goalposts after the whistle blows. Strength is not cruelty. It is refusing to reward a liar with your time. Iran wanted a deal on their terms and deniability on ours. Trump is not signing up for that twice.

🇺🇸 🇮🇷 BREAKING: TRUMP JUST WALKED AWAY FROM IRAN. WHO'S SURPRISED? Iran struck a deal. No nukes. Everyone agreed. Then their own guys stepped outside and told the press it never happened. That is not diplomacy. That is a con. Trump laid it out plain. "They're liars. They're cheats. They're sick people." You cannot negotiate with a government that denies the deal the second the cameras turn on. This is the same regime that gunned down 54,000 of its own people for daring to protest. No guns on one side. Machine guns on the other. The media barely blinked. Trump still says the door stays open for his team. Witkoff and Kushner can keep talking if Tehran wants to be serious. But Trump himself is done playing referee in a game where the other side keeps moving the goalposts after the whistle blows. Strength is not cruelty. It is refusing to reward a liar with your time. Iran wanted a deal on their terms and deniability on ours. Trump is not signing up for that twice.

Bill Mitchell

50,414 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten

The Hug of a Hyena: A Warning to the Kinshasa Opposition Before the tragedy, there is a warm embrace; after it, nothing but crushed bones. There is an old, cautionary fable about a man who carried a hyena on his back wherever he went. Seeing this, a passerby stopped him and warned, "My friend, put that beast down. One day, that hyena will make you its lunch." The man ignored the advice and kept walking. A second man approached him with the exact same warning. Again, the man brushed it off, confident in his bond with the predator. Eventually, curiosity got the better of the man. He turned to the beast on his back and said, "Hey, my friend, people keep telling me that you are going to eat me. Is it true?" The hyena, at least, was brutally honest. It whispered into his ear: "You should always fear a threat that two or three men have already warned you about." Before the man could even process the words, it was too late. The hyena gave him no time to think, snapping its jaws shut. This fable perfectly illustrates the fatal mistake of forming an alliance with Félix Tshisekedi. He is political death on legs. It is tragic to watch the opposition in Kinshasa place their faith in a man who is ready to sell out the entire country, and himself along with it, just to retain the presidency. Having tasted the luxury of flying across the world millions of times, he has absolutely no intention of ever going back to a normal life. The political diagnosis is clear: the only cure for the nation is his absolute removal from that office. And for many, the only viable path left to achieve that is through the AFC-M23, for DRC to be at Peace.

The Hug of a Hyena: A Warning to the Kinshasa Opposition Before the tragedy, there is a warm embrace; after it, nothing but crushed bones. There is an old, cautionary fable about a man who carried a hyena on his back wherever he went. Seeing this, a passerby stopped him and warned, "My friend, put that beast down. One day, that hyena will make you its lunch." The man ignored the advice and kept walking. A second man approached him with the exact same warning. Again, the man brushed it off, confident in his bond with the predator. Eventually, curiosity got the better of the man. He turned to the beast on his back and said, "Hey, my friend, people keep telling me that you are going to eat me. Is it true?" The hyena, at least, was brutally honest. It whispered into his ear: "You should always fear a threat that two or three men have already warned you about." Before the man could even process the words, it was too late. The hyena gave him no time to think, snapping its jaws shut. This fable perfectly illustrates the fatal mistake of forming an alliance with Félix Tshisekedi. He is political death on legs. It is tragic to watch the opposition in Kinshasa place their faith in a man who is ready to sell out the entire country, and himself along with it, just to retain the presidency. Having tasted the luxury of flying across the world millions of times, he has absolutely no intention of ever going back to a normal life. The political diagnosis is clear: the only cure for the nation is his absolute removal from that office. And for many, the only viable path left to achieve that is through the AFC-M23, for DRC to be at Peace.

Manzi Willy

20,594 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten

NEW: Recently released January 6 footage shows one of the J6 protesters flashing something as he appears to be leaving the Capitol building. Many online are suggesting that the item he is holding is a badge and that he is a Federal agent. The man in the video is Kevin James Lyons and he was sentenced to over four years in prison. Lyons admitted to taking a wallet from then-Speaker Pelosi's staffer as well as a framed photo of Pelosi with late Congressman John Lewis. Lyons was an HVAC technician and was arrested in his home state of Illinois just one week after J6. On the evening of J6, Lyons shared a photo of the picture frame he took with his friends and said: "I'm pretty confident I am now a multiple Federal felon." It is very unlikely that the item he is holding is a badge and if it is, it is probably one that doesn't belong to him. Source assist: Brick Suit

NEW: Recently released January 6 footage shows one of the J6 protesters flashing something as he appears to be leaving the Capitol building. Many online are suggesting that the item he is holding is a badge and that he is a Federal agent. The man in the video is Kevin James Lyons and he was sentenced to over four years in prison. Lyons admitted to taking a wallet from then-Speaker Pelosi's staffer as well as a framed photo of Pelosi with late Congressman John Lewis. Lyons was an HVAC technician and was arrested in his home state of Illinois just one week after J6. On the evening of J6, Lyons shared a photo of the picture frame he took with his friends and said: "I'm pretty confident I am now a multiple Federal felon." It is very unlikely that the item he is holding is a badge and if it is, it is probably one that doesn't belong to him. Source assist: Brick Suit

Collin Rugg

3,261,934 Aufrufe • vor 2 Jahren

They just opened this mall in Ede. It belongs to Governor Adeleke. And a school is taking children on an excursion to it. On the surface, this might look like progress. But let us ask the hard questions. Despite all the investment Governor Adeleke is sinking into Ede, can it be sustained? And even worse, why is he doing it at the expense of every other town in Osun? This is not governance. This is the Adenization of Osun State. A governor who treats his hometown as the only priority and leaves the rest of the state to decay cannot claim to be a leader of all. #AmboAtide

They just opened this mall in Ede. It belongs to Governor Adeleke. And a school is taking children on an excursion to it. On the surface, this might look like progress. But let us ask the hard questions. Despite all the investment Governor Adeleke is sinking into Ede, can it be sustained? And even worse, why is he doing it at the expense of every other town in Osun? This is not governance. This is the Adenization of Osun State. A governor who treats his hometown as the only priority and leaves the rest of the state to decay cannot claim to be a leader of all. #AmboAtide

Senior Pst Okezie James Atañi.

32,439 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat

🇳🇵| #Nepal | The devastation in #Rasuwa is not an act of nature. It is the visible wound of a nation that has been carved up and sold by its own political class to foreign corporations and global financial institutions. Nepal's sovereignty has been under quiet, systematic attack for decades, and the landslide is the result. The government of Nepal did not merely fail to protect its people. It actively enabled their destruction through policies that prioritised foreign investment, "development" loans, and infrastructure projects over the lives of those in the mountains. The same pattern we have exposed across India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan is operating here. The globalist machine needs Nepal's rivers, its hydropower, its strategic location between China and India, and its people as a cheap, disposable labour force. What has happened in Rasuwa is part of this same plan. The hydropower rush in the Himalayan rivers has destabilised the slopes. Roads are carved through unstable geology without proper engineering, funded by development banks that demand Nepal remain a debtor nation. Forests are stripped. The people are told to accept "progress." Then the rains come, engineered or not, and the mountain comes down. The state calls it a natural disaster. The media says "pray for Nepal." And the same companies that pushed the projects arrive later for the "reconstruction." Nepal's tragedy is that its people have been taught to see themselves as victims of geography. They are victims of governance. The same globalist networks that are flooding Assam, burning Europe, shaking Turkey and Japan, and bulldozing Palestine are now tightening their grip on the Himalayas. Nepal is a key piece on that board. Its government has signed the agreements. The land has been mapped, zoned, and mortgaged. The people are in the way. I will not pretend that a single, tidy "plan" explains every layer of corruption in Nepal. But I will say this clearly: the flood and landslide did not have to be fatal. The deaths are the result of decades of deliberate neglect, of state capture by local and foreign oligarchs, and of an economic model that treats the mountains and their people as resources to be extracted rather than lives to be protected. The people of Nepal deserve more than prayers. They deserve the truth. That truth is that their government has failed them, and the same invisible system that is devastating the rest of the world is now using their rivers, their mountains, and their grief as fuel. The prayer posts will fade. The system will remain. Unless the people of Nepal, and of every targeted nation, choose to stop accepting the lie that the land is their enemy. The land is not the enemy. The land has been betrayed. The monsoon is the trigger. The real weapon was wielded long before the rain came.

🇳🇵| #Nepal | The devastation in #Rasuwa is not an act of nature. It is the visible wound of a nation that has been carved up and sold by its own political class to foreign corporations and global financial institutions. Nepal's sovereignty has been under quiet, systematic attack for decades, and the landslide is the result. The government of Nepal did not merely fail to protect its people. It actively enabled their destruction through policies that prioritised foreign investment, "development" loans, and infrastructure projects over the lives of those in the mountains. The same pattern we have exposed across India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan is operating here. The globalist machine needs Nepal's rivers, its hydropower, its strategic location between China and India, and its people as a cheap, disposable labour force. What has happened in Rasuwa is part of this same plan. The hydropower rush in the Himalayan rivers has destabilised the slopes. Roads are carved through unstable geology without proper engineering, funded by development banks that demand Nepal remain a debtor nation. Forests are stripped. The people are told to accept "progress." Then the rains come, engineered or not, and the mountain comes down. The state calls it a natural disaster. The media says "pray for Nepal." And the same companies that pushed the projects arrive later for the "reconstruction." Nepal's tragedy is that its people have been taught to see themselves as victims of geography. They are victims of governance. The same globalist networks that are flooding Assam, burning Europe, shaking Turkey and Japan, and bulldozing Palestine are now tightening their grip on the Himalayas. Nepal is a key piece on that board. Its government has signed the agreements. The land has been mapped, zoned, and mortgaged. The people are in the way. I will not pretend that a single, tidy "plan" explains every layer of corruption in Nepal. But I will say this clearly: the flood and landslide did not have to be fatal. The deaths are the result of decades of deliberate neglect, of state capture by local and foreign oligarchs, and of an economic model that treats the mountains and their people as resources to be extracted rather than lives to be protected. The people of Nepal deserve more than prayers. They deserve the truth. That truth is that their government has failed them, and the same invisible system that is devastating the rest of the world is now using their rivers, their mountains, and their grief as fuel. The prayer posts will fade. The system will remain. Unless the people of Nepal, and of every targeted nation, choose to stop accepting the lie that the land is their enemy. The land is not the enemy. The land has been betrayed. The monsoon is the trigger. The real weapon was wielded long before the rain came.

Aprajita Nafs Nefes 🦋 Ancient Believer

29,250 Aufrufe • vor 18 Tagen

There is a room in Málaga that was built to be the closest thing on earth to standing inside heaven. It is called the camarín of the Virgin of Victory, and it is hidden at the top of a tower inside the Santuario de la Victoria. To reach it, you climb and the ascent is the entire point... The building you are climbing through was completed in 1700, and it was designed as a single argument made in stone. At the bottom lies a crypt: a black chamber crowded with white plaster skeletons, a meditation on death and the brevity of life. From there a staircase rises, and as you climb it the light grows stronger and the imagery changes from bones to saints. The architects of the time understood this ascent as the soul's own journey, the dark crypt as the stage of penitence, the staircase as the stage of spiritual progress, and the room at the very top as the final stage: the union of the soul with the divine. That room at the top is the camarín, and its dome is one of the most extraordinary interiors in Spain... Every surface is covered in white and gold plasterwork. There is no empty space anywhere. The Baroque called this horror vacui, the horror of the void: the conviction that a space meant to represent heaven should not contain a single bare patch of stone. Out of that plasterwork emerge angels, flowers, birds, and mirrors. The mirrors are not decoration alone. They catch the light pouring in through the windows of the drum and throw it around the chamber, so that the gold seems to move and the whole room appears to shimmer and breathe. This wonder was built by people who believed that if you wanted to show a human being what heaven might feel like, you did not describe it to them. You built a room, and you let them climb into it... -- -- -- If you enjoyed this, I write a weekly newsletter read by over 50,000 people who love rediscovering the beauty of the past. You can join us here: If you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible.

There is a room in Málaga that was built to be the closest thing on earth to standing inside heaven. It is called the camarín of the Virgin of Victory, and it is hidden at the top of a tower inside the Santuario de la Victoria. To reach it, you climb and the ascent is the entire point... The building you are climbing through was completed in 1700, and it was designed as a single argument made in stone. At the bottom lies a crypt: a black chamber crowded with white plaster skeletons, a meditation on death and the brevity of life. From there a staircase rises, and as you climb it the light grows stronger and the imagery changes from bones to saints. The architects of the time understood this ascent as the soul's own journey, the dark crypt as the stage of penitence, the staircase as the stage of spiritual progress, and the room at the very top as the final stage: the union of the soul with the divine. That room at the top is the camarín, and its dome is one of the most extraordinary interiors in Spain... Every surface is covered in white and gold plasterwork. There is no empty space anywhere. The Baroque called this horror vacui, the horror of the void: the conviction that a space meant to represent heaven should not contain a single bare patch of stone. Out of that plasterwork emerge angels, flowers, birds, and mirrors. The mirrors are not decoration alone. They catch the light pouring in through the windows of the drum and throw it around the chamber, so that the gold seems to move and the whole room appears to shimmer and breathe. This wonder was built by people who believed that if you wanted to show a human being what heaven might feel like, you did not describe it to them. You built a room, and you let them climb into it... -- -- -- If you enjoyed this, I write a weekly newsletter read by over 50,000 people who love rediscovering the beauty of the past. You can join us here: If you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible.

James Lucas

69,389 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten

BREAKING: Iran named a warship after the general who spent his career threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz. The US just lit it on fire in the Strait of Hormuz. The IRIS Shahid Sayyad Shirazi, a Soleimani-class corvette, is burning at Bandar Abbas right now. Footage is out. The smoke is visible from the port. Bandar Abbas is not a random target. It is Iran’s primary naval base. It sits directly at the mouth of the strait that carries 20% of the world’s oil. This is not a ship that was sunk in the Indian Ocean four thousand miles away. This is Iran’s naval guardian, on fire, at the gate it was built to defend. A week ago, Admiral Brad Cooper said the US had destroyed 17 Iranian ships. Then the IRIS Dena went down near Sri Lanka. Now a corvette is burning at the crown jewel of Iran’s entire naval posture. Here is what the Strait of Hormuz looks like right now. 85% reduction in maritime traffic. Iran threatening closure. The vessel specifically designed to enforce that threat is on fire at the base that commands the chokepoint. Iran cannot close the Strait. Iran cannot defend the Strait. Iran cannot patrol the Strait. The force built to do all three is being systematically destroyed at its own piers. Every tanker captain, every shipping insurer, every energy desk pricing this conflict as a 4-to-5-week regional event needs to look at that footage and ask a different question. Not when does the war end. When does the traffic come back. Those are not the same question. And only one of them is priced.

BREAKING: Iran named a warship after the general who spent his career threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz. The US just lit it on fire in the Strait of Hormuz. The IRIS Shahid Sayyad Shirazi, a Soleimani-class corvette, is burning at Bandar Abbas right now. Footage is out. The smoke is visible from the port. Bandar Abbas is not a random target. It is Iran’s primary naval base. It sits directly at the mouth of the strait that carries 20% of the world’s oil. This is not a ship that was sunk in the Indian Ocean four thousand miles away. This is Iran’s naval guardian, on fire, at the gate it was built to defend. A week ago, Admiral Brad Cooper said the US had destroyed 17 Iranian ships. Then the IRIS Dena went down near Sri Lanka. Now a corvette is burning at the crown jewel of Iran’s entire naval posture. Here is what the Strait of Hormuz looks like right now. 85% reduction in maritime traffic. Iran threatening closure. The vessel specifically designed to enforce that threat is on fire at the base that commands the chokepoint. Iran cannot close the Strait. Iran cannot defend the Strait. Iran cannot patrol the Strait. The force built to do all three is being systematically destroyed at its own piers. Every tanker captain, every shipping insurer, every energy desk pricing this conflict as a 4-to-5-week regional event needs to look at that footage and ask a different question. Not when does the war end. When does the traffic come back. Those are not the same question. And only one of them is priced.

Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡

237,301 Aufrufe • vor 6 Monaten

The main bronze door of Milan Cathedral weighs 37 tons and took a single sculptor 10 years to complete. The Duomo of Milan is one of the largest and most intricate cathedrals on earth, and its five bronze doors were built to be worthy of it. Every inch of the great central door is covered in sculpted bronze, dozens of scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, faces caught mid-emotion, figures that seem to press forward out of the metal as if trying to step into the world... It was designed by the sculptor Ludovico Pogliaghi, who received the commission in the 1880s and did not see his door installed until 1906, having poured a decade of his life into modelling every figure by hand. And his was just the beginning. The five doors of the cathedral were not made together, or even in the same lifetime. They were created across nearly seventy years, by a succession of different sculptors, each carving their panels with the same obsessive care. The final door was not completed until 1965, its unveiling taken as the symbolic close of a cathedral that had been under construction, in one form or another, for 579 years... More than a century ago, the English polymath John Ruskin tried to put into words what it means to build something like this. He managed it in a single sentence. "When we build," he wrote, "let us think that we build for ever."

The main bronze door of Milan Cathedral weighs 37 tons and took a single sculptor 10 years to complete. The Duomo of Milan is one of the largest and most intricate cathedrals on earth, and its five bronze doors were built to be worthy of it. Every inch of the great central door is covered in sculpted bronze, dozens of scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, faces caught mid-emotion, figures that seem to press forward out of the metal as if trying to step into the world... It was designed by the sculptor Ludovico Pogliaghi, who received the commission in the 1880s and did not see his door installed until 1906, having poured a decade of his life into modelling every figure by hand. And his was just the beginning. The five doors of the cathedral were not made together, or even in the same lifetime. They were created across nearly seventy years, by a succession of different sculptors, each carving their panels with the same obsessive care. The final door was not completed until 1965, its unveiling taken as the symbolic close of a cathedral that had been under construction, in one form or another, for 579 years... More than a century ago, the English polymath John Ruskin tried to put into words what it means to build something like this. He managed it in a single sentence. "When we build," he wrote, "let us think that we build for ever."

James Lucas

83,782 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten

Lads. Sit down and give me your ear a while, for I have watched from the water long enough and the hour is upon us whether we have the stomach for it or not. You remember. Or your fathers told you, or their fathers did, and the knowledge of it is in the marrow of you whether you drew breath in those days or not. The moors in the grey hour before dawn. Wet heather soft under the boot. Peat smoke rising from a low stone chimney a mile out across the bog, thin as a prayer. A sky the colour of a gun barrel and the gulls lamenting above the headland. The smell of turf burning, and wet wool, and the ferrous tang of the sea when the wind swung around out of the Atlantic and put the taste of iron on your tongue. A man could walk that land and know every stone of it was his by inheritance, because his grandfather had broken his back upon it, and his grandfather before him, back through the generations until you reach men whose names are lost and whose bones are in the soil you are standing on. The potato fields. God be good to us, the potato fields. Lazy beds cut straight as a gunwale, the ridges black and shining after a night of rain, women bent double with creels lashed to their backs and the children at their skirts, drawing the crop up by the hand for there was never any other means devised nor wanted. Hands split open at the knuckles and never entirely healed in this life. Hunger within living memory. Grandmothers who had seen the blight with their own eyes and would not speak of it from the year of it until the day they were laid down, save that a crust was kept always on the dresser which no soul in that house was permitted to touch. Not ever. Not for any reason under heaven. And the chimney sweeps. Wee lads no heavier than a sack of meal, black to the bone with soot, their lungs ruined before they were old enough to marry and old men entirely by thirty. Up the flues at first light, the skin worn off them by the brick, eyes crimson at the rim, breathing the black in with every draw of air. And the coal miners a half mile beneath our feet, down in the wet dark, the roof of the world muttering over their heads, the canary gone silent, a man's whole existence measured out in the shilling a ton and the dust he carried home in his chest to cough up of a Sunday morning into a rag. Fathers who descended and were never hauled up again. Widows at the pit head with the shawl drawn over the head and no tears remaining in them for they had spent those long ago. That was the tariff paid to keep the hearth lit. That was the reckoning of being warm in winter in the Ireland that was. And after the labouring week, Friday evening, and a man had earned the peace of what followed. Home first. Peeled the day off him in the yard. A shower of ice cold moor river water out of a tin bucket punctured with holes, hung on a nail on the gable wall, the water running clean down the back of him and carrying the week's dust and sweat away into the drain. Scrubbed till the skin was pink beneath the grime. Clean shirt laid out by the wife. The hair combed down with a drop of water. Then, and only then, did a man set himself to the table. A meat pie from the baker, tenpence if he was known to you, a shilling and no change if he was not, put down upon a proper plate. Fish and chips for threepence, the salt and vinegar soaked through the newspaper, but carried home and ate slowly at your own table with your people around you, not walked with through the streets like some vagrant tinker off the road. A man ate as a man who had earned his portion, for he had. And later, with the dishes cleared and the kettle set, down the road to the tavern. Low beams black with a century of smoke. A turf fire muttering in the grate. The air thick with pipe smoke and the vapour of wet overcoats steaming themselves dry on the backs of chairs. A pint of stout, cold and black as a cove at midnight, elevenpence laid down on the counter, a head on it thick enough to strike a match upon. A second one because you had it coming to you and no man present would dispute it. A fiddle starting up in the corner of its own accord. The old men in the snug who remembered matters the history books had long since mislaid. A song before the bolt was thrown on the door. The walk home beneath a firmament crowded with stars, the stout warm in the gut of you, the week behind you, and your own door waiting with the latch unlocked for you had no enemies in that parish. That was the country. That was the covenant. Honest labour, plain food, a cold wash, a hot meal, a cold pint, your own tongue in your own mouth, your own soil beneath your boots, and no man standing above you save the Almighty Himself. Now regard her. Regard her close. The fields disposed of to men who have never set foot upon them and never shall. The harbours signed away by the stroke of a pen in a room you were not admitted to, and foreign keels dragging out of our waters the living that sustained this island for a thousand years, while our own boats rot at their moorings for want of a quota. The tradesmen undercut by imported labour and imported goods. The shops shuttered along every main street from Donegal to Cork. The young ones scattered to London and Sydney and Boston and the Gulf because there is nothing remaining for them beneath their own roof. And the entirety of this rotten arrangement dressed up in the soft mannerly language of progress by men in towers of glass who could not tell a lazy bed from a grave, nor a trawler from a tugboat, nor an honest day's work from a pension plan. And now they arrive with the next imposition. A digital identity. A number assigned to each soul. A card required to buy your bread. A code required to draw your own earnings out of your own account. A file kept on every man, woman and child from the cradle forward. Permission asked to move. Permission asked to speak. Permission asked to earn. A levy upon every breath drawn and a regulation upon every step taken. No. And no again. And no for a third time so there is no misunderstanding of it. We do not require your digital identity. We did not request it. We did not vote upon it. We do not consent to it. We do not need your permission to exist upon the soil our forefathers are buried in. We are a free people. We have carried ourselves this far upon our own two backs. Through famine and empire and civil war and black lung and blight and the emigrant ship out of Cobh, we have come this distance under our own steam, and the arrangement appears to be serving us well enough without your intervention. We buried our own. We fed our own. We raised our own roofs and took our own fish and reared our own children in our own tongue. We are in your debt for nothing. Not a signature. Not a biometric scan. Not a single solitary inch. And while we are upon the subject, let us speak plainly of the tax man, for he has gone too long without proper introduction. The tax collector and the tax man are the one article under two names, and the article is a parasite. There is no dressing it up finer than that. A man who produces nothing, who grows nothing, who catches nothing, who builds nothing, who mends nothing, who has never in his professional life lifted anything heavier than a pen, and who arrives at your door with the full apparatus of the state at his back to carry off the fruits of labour he did not perform. He is a middleman between your sweat and some scheme dreamt up in a committee room by his own kind, and the great majority of what he takes is consumed by the machinery of the taking itself before ever a penny of it reaches the road or the hospital or the schoolhouse he claims to be funding. And I will go further while I have the floor. Finance itself, the whole apparatus of it, money breeding money in the dark without a hand laid upon a tool or a spade turned in the earth, is slavery dressed in a good suit. It is the oldest swindle known to man and it has never been anything other. A man who produces nothing yet lives off the productive labour of others through the charging of interest upon money conjured out of nothing is a parasite of a rarer and more refined order than the tax man, but a parasite all the same, and between the pair of them they have the working people of this island bled white and lectured at for the pleasure. A man who will not work with his hands, nor with his back, nor with his mind at some honest problem of the real physical world, is no man that I recognise. He is a ledger entry in a suit. The country was not built by ledger entries. The country was built by farmers and fishermen and masons and smiths and sweeps and miners and shipwrights and midwives and mothers, and those are the people whose say should carry in her councils, and no other. Here is what I put to you. Let each man and woman of this island direct the first tenth of their earnings themselves, by their own judgement, to the purpose they see as worthy. The school down the road. The lifeboat station. The hospice. The widow on the corner. The roof of the chapel. The harbour wall. Whatever it may be. Let the people who earned the money decide where the money travels. You will find the roads mended and the ports dredged and the schools standing and the old ones cared for inside of five years, and done better and for less, because the hand that earned the coin knows the weight of it and will not squander it upon consultants and committees. And let us have done with the paper currency and the numbers in a screen that can be frozen at the whim of a clerk in a tower. Bring back the coin. Gold for the great transactions. Silver for the weekly commerce of a working life. Copper for the small change of the day. Metal you can bite. Metal you can weigh. Metal that cannot be conjured out of nothing by a keystroke, nor erased out of existence by another. Real money for real labour. A coin in the hand is a free man's wage. A number in a database is a collar around a free man's neck, and they are fitting that collar now while we stand arguing over the colour of it. Feel it in your gut. That is not nothing. That is your blood relating to you what your ears will not hear. That is every forebear who starved and fought and coughed the black dust into a rag and descended the shaft regardless, standing at your shoulder and saying no further. Not one more field. Not one more harbour. Not one more son upon a plane. Not one more free man converted into a number in a ledger for the convenience of the parasites. This is the hour. Make no error about it. Ireland is redeemed in this generation or she is lost beyond recovery, and every true son and daughter of her knows it in the marrow. There is no middle ground remaining. There is no waiting it out. There is standing now, upon your own two feet, or there is watching her go under the waves for the last and final time. So stand. Stand with your farmers. Stand with your fishermen. Stand with your tradesmen and your miners and your sweeps and your mothers and your old ones. Raise the tricolour. Speak the tongue. Walk the land. Hold the line in the streets of every town and city and do not break it, for they are relying upon you to break and to go home and to forget by Tuesday. She is calling her children home. Every stone of her, every breaker on her western shore, every acre of wet heather and every coal in every hearth the length and breadth of her is calling. Answer her. Take her back. Every field, every harbour, every last inch of her. Take her back, or lose her entirely. There is no third road open to us.

Lads. Sit down and give me your ear a while, for I have watched from the water long enough and the hour is upon us whether we have the stomach for it or not. You remember. Or your fathers told you, or their fathers did, and the knowledge of it is in the marrow of you whether you drew breath in those days or not. The moors in the grey hour before dawn. Wet heather soft under the boot. Peat smoke rising from a low stone chimney a mile out across the bog, thin as a prayer. A sky the colour of a gun barrel and the gulls lamenting above the headland. The smell of turf burning, and wet wool, and the ferrous tang of the sea when the wind swung around out of the Atlantic and put the taste of iron on your tongue. A man could walk that land and know every stone of it was his by inheritance, because his grandfather had broken his back upon it, and his grandfather before him, back through the generations until you reach men whose names are lost and whose bones are in the soil you are standing on. The potato fields. God be good to us, the potato fields. Lazy beds cut straight as a gunwale, the ridges black and shining after a night of rain, women bent double with creels lashed to their backs and the children at their skirts, drawing the crop up by the hand for there was never any other means devised nor wanted. Hands split open at the knuckles and never entirely healed in this life. Hunger within living memory. Grandmothers who had seen the blight with their own eyes and would not speak of it from the year of it until the day they were laid down, save that a crust was kept always on the dresser which no soul in that house was permitted to touch. Not ever. Not for any reason under heaven. And the chimney sweeps. Wee lads no heavier than a sack of meal, black to the bone with soot, their lungs ruined before they were old enough to marry and old men entirely by thirty. Up the flues at first light, the skin worn off them by the brick, eyes crimson at the rim, breathing the black in with every draw of air. And the coal miners a half mile beneath our feet, down in the wet dark, the roof of the world muttering over their heads, the canary gone silent, a man's whole existence measured out in the shilling a ton and the dust he carried home in his chest to cough up of a Sunday morning into a rag. Fathers who descended and were never hauled up again. Widows at the pit head with the shawl drawn over the head and no tears remaining in them for they had spent those long ago. That was the tariff paid to keep the hearth lit. That was the reckoning of being warm in winter in the Ireland that was. And after the labouring week, Friday evening, and a man had earned the peace of what followed. Home first. Peeled the day off him in the yard. A shower of ice cold moor river water out of a tin bucket punctured with holes, hung on a nail on the gable wall, the water running clean down the back of him and carrying the week's dust and sweat away into the drain. Scrubbed till the skin was pink beneath the grime. Clean shirt laid out by the wife. The hair combed down with a drop of water. Then, and only then, did a man set himself to the table. A meat pie from the baker, tenpence if he was known to you, a shilling and no change if he was not, put down upon a proper plate. Fish and chips for threepence, the salt and vinegar soaked through the newspaper, but carried home and ate slowly at your own table with your people around you, not walked with through the streets like some vagrant tinker off the road. A man ate as a man who had earned his portion, for he had. And later, with the dishes cleared and the kettle set, down the road to the tavern. Low beams black with a century of smoke. A turf fire muttering in the grate. The air thick with pipe smoke and the vapour of wet overcoats steaming themselves dry on the backs of chairs. A pint of stout, cold and black as a cove at midnight, elevenpence laid down on the counter, a head on it thick enough to strike a match upon. A second one because you had it coming to you and no man present would dispute it. A fiddle starting up in the corner of its own accord. The old men in the snug who remembered matters the history books had long since mislaid. A song before the bolt was thrown on the door. The walk home beneath a firmament crowded with stars, the stout warm in the gut of you, the week behind you, and your own door waiting with the latch unlocked for you had no enemies in that parish. That was the country. That was the covenant. Honest labour, plain food, a cold wash, a hot meal, a cold pint, your own tongue in your own mouth, your own soil beneath your boots, and no man standing above you save the Almighty Himself. Now regard her. Regard her close. The fields disposed of to men who have never set foot upon them and never shall. The harbours signed away by the stroke of a pen in a room you were not admitted to, and foreign keels dragging out of our waters the living that sustained this island for a thousand years, while our own boats rot at their moorings for want of a quota. The tradesmen undercut by imported labour and imported goods. The shops shuttered along every main street from Donegal to Cork. The young ones scattered to London and Sydney and Boston and the Gulf because there is nothing remaining for them beneath their own roof. And the entirety of this rotten arrangement dressed up in the soft mannerly language of progress by men in towers of glass who could not tell a lazy bed from a grave, nor a trawler from a tugboat, nor an honest day's work from a pension plan. And now they arrive with the next imposition. A digital identity. A number assigned to each soul. A card required to buy your bread. A code required to draw your own earnings out of your own account. A file kept on every man, woman and child from the cradle forward. Permission asked to move. Permission asked to speak. Permission asked to earn. A levy upon every breath drawn and a regulation upon every step taken. No. And no again. And no for a third time so there is no misunderstanding of it. We do not require your digital identity. We did not request it. We did not vote upon it. We do not consent to it. We do not need your permission to exist upon the soil our forefathers are buried in. We are a free people. We have carried ourselves this far upon our own two backs. Through famine and empire and civil war and black lung and blight and the emigrant ship out of Cobh, we have come this distance under our own steam, and the arrangement appears to be serving us well enough without your intervention. We buried our own. We fed our own. We raised our own roofs and took our own fish and reared our own children in our own tongue. We are in your debt for nothing. Not a signature. Not a biometric scan. Not a single solitary inch. And while we are upon the subject, let us speak plainly of the tax man, for he has gone too long without proper introduction. The tax collector and the tax man are the one article under two names, and the article is a parasite. There is no dressing it up finer than that. A man who produces nothing, who grows nothing, who catches nothing, who builds nothing, who mends nothing, who has never in his professional life lifted anything heavier than a pen, and who arrives at your door with the full apparatus of the state at his back to carry off the fruits of labour he did not perform. He is a middleman between your sweat and some scheme dreamt up in a committee room by his own kind, and the great majority of what he takes is consumed by the machinery of the taking itself before ever a penny of it reaches the road or the hospital or the schoolhouse he claims to be funding. And I will go further while I have the floor. Finance itself, the whole apparatus of it, money breeding money in the dark without a hand laid upon a tool or a spade turned in the earth, is slavery dressed in a good suit. It is the oldest swindle known to man and it has never been anything other. A man who produces nothing yet lives off the productive labour of others through the charging of interest upon money conjured out of nothing is a parasite of a rarer and more refined order than the tax man, but a parasite all the same, and between the pair of them they have the working people of this island bled white and lectured at for the pleasure. A man who will not work with his hands, nor with his back, nor with his mind at some honest problem of the real physical world, is no man that I recognise. He is a ledger entry in a suit. The country was not built by ledger entries. The country was built by farmers and fishermen and masons and smiths and sweeps and miners and shipwrights and midwives and mothers, and those are the people whose say should carry in her councils, and no other. Here is what I put to you. Let each man and woman of this island direct the first tenth of their earnings themselves, by their own judgement, to the purpose they see as worthy. The school down the road. The lifeboat station. The hospice. The widow on the corner. The roof of the chapel. The harbour wall. Whatever it may be. Let the people who earned the money decide where the money travels. You will find the roads mended and the ports dredged and the schools standing and the old ones cared for inside of five years, and done better and for less, because the hand that earned the coin knows the weight of it and will not squander it upon consultants and committees. And let us have done with the paper currency and the numbers in a screen that can be frozen at the whim of a clerk in a tower. Bring back the coin. Gold for the great transactions. Silver for the weekly commerce of a working life. Copper for the small change of the day. Metal you can bite. Metal you can weigh. Metal that cannot be conjured out of nothing by a keystroke, nor erased out of existence by another. Real money for real labour. A coin in the hand is a free man's wage. A number in a database is a collar around a free man's neck, and they are fitting that collar now while we stand arguing over the colour of it. Feel it in your gut. That is not nothing. That is your blood relating to you what your ears will not hear. That is every forebear who starved and fought and coughed the black dust into a rag and descended the shaft regardless, standing at your shoulder and saying no further. Not one more field. Not one more harbour. Not one more son upon a plane. Not one more free man converted into a number in a ledger for the convenience of the parasites. This is the hour. Make no error about it. Ireland is redeemed in this generation or she is lost beyond recovery, and every true son and daughter of her knows it in the marrow. There is no middle ground remaining. There is no waiting it out. There is standing now, upon your own two feet, or there is watching her go under the waves for the last and final time. So stand. Stand with your farmers. Stand with your fishermen. Stand with your tradesmen and your miners and your sweeps and your mothers and your old ones. Raise the tricolour. Speak the tongue. Walk the land. Hold the line in the streets of every town and city and do not break it, for they are relying upon you to break and to go home and to forget by Tuesday. She is calling her children home. Every stone of her, every breaker on her western shore, every acre of wet heather and every coal in every hearth the length and breadth of her is calling. Answer her. Take her back. Every field, every harbour, every last inch of her. Take her back, or lose her entirely. There is no third road open to us.

SiriusB

15,437 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten

Madain Saleh, also known as Al-Hijr, is a pre-Islamic archaeological site located in the northwest of Saudi Arabia. It is one of the most important archaeological sites in the Middle East and was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2008. Madain Saleh is a place of great historical and cultural significance, and it is a must-visit destination for anyone interested in the history and culture of the Arabian Peninsula. Madain Saleh was the second city of the Nabataean kingdom, which was established in 2nd Century BC. The Nabataeans were an Arab tribe who were known for their expertise in carving tombs and buildings out of rock. They were also skilled in agriculture, trade, and commerce. The Nabataean kingdom was centered in Petra, which is located in modern-day Jordan. Madain Saleh served as a strategic outpost for Nabataeans, and it was an important stop on the trade routes that connected the Arabian Peninsula with the Mediterranean world. Archaeological site of Madain Saleh covers an area of 13 square kilometers. It is located in a remote desert region, and it is surrounded by rocky mountains and valleys. The site contains around 130 tombs, which were carved out of the sandstone cliffs. The tombs are adorned with intricate carvings and inscriptions, which provide insights into the culture and religion of the Nabataeans. The most famous tomb at Madain Saleh is the Qasr Al-Farid, which means "the lonely castle." This tomb is located on a hilltop and is surrounded by a large courtyard. It is the largest tomb at the site, and it is considered to be one of the finest examples of Nabataean architecture. The tomb was never completed, and it is believed that it was abandoned after the death of the Nabataean king who commissioned it. Another important tomb at Madain Saleh is the Tomb of Lihyan son of Kuza. This tomb is located in the southern part of the site and is carved into a rock cliff. It features a large entrance hall, a central chamber, and a series of smaller rooms. The tomb is decorated with intricate carvings and inscriptions, which provide insights into the religious beliefs of Nabataeans. Madain Saleh is not just a site of tombs; it also contains a number of other important structures. These include the Al-Khuraymat and Al-Sabika temples, which were used for religious ceremonies and rituals. The site also contains a number of houses, wells, and cisterns, which provide insights into the daily lives of the Nabataeans. Madain Saleh was abandoned in the 3rd Century AD, after decline of the Nabataean kingdom. The site was rediscovered in the 19th Century by the Swiss traveler Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. Since then, it has been studied by archaeologists from all over the world. The site is now managed by the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage, which has carried out extensive restoration and preservation work. Madain Saleh is not just a site of historical and cultural significance; it is also a place of great natural beauty. The site is surrounded by rugged mountains and valleys, and it is home to a diverse range of flora and fauna. Visitors to the site can enjoy hiking and camping, as well as exploring the ancient ruins. Madain Saleh is a site of great historical and cultural significance, and it is a must-visit destination for anyone interested in the history and culture of the Arabian Peninsula. Ancient ruins at Madain Saleh provide a glimpse into the engineering and architectural skills of the Nabataeans, as well as their religious beliefs and cultural practices. However, as the site becomes an increasingly popular tourist destination, there are concerns about its preservation and the impact of tourism on the local environment. It is important that the Saudi government and local communities work together to ensure that the site is protected and that tourism is managed in a sustainable way. 🎥© Paris Verra #archaeohistories

Madain Saleh, also known as Al-Hijr, is a pre-Islamic archaeological site located in the northwest of Saudi Arabia. It is one of the most important archaeological sites in the Middle East and was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2008. Madain Saleh is a place of great historical and cultural significance, and it is a must-visit destination for anyone interested in the history and culture of the Arabian Peninsula. Madain Saleh was the second city of the Nabataean kingdom, which was established in 2nd Century BC. The Nabataeans were an Arab tribe who were known for their expertise in carving tombs and buildings out of rock. They were also skilled in agriculture, trade, and commerce. The Nabataean kingdom was centered in Petra, which is located in modern-day Jordan. Madain Saleh served as a strategic outpost for Nabataeans, and it was an important stop on the trade routes that connected the Arabian Peninsula with the Mediterranean world. Archaeological site of Madain Saleh covers an area of 13 square kilometers. It is located in a remote desert region, and it is surrounded by rocky mountains and valleys. The site contains around 130 tombs, which were carved out of the sandstone cliffs. The tombs are adorned with intricate carvings and inscriptions, which provide insights into the culture and religion of the Nabataeans. The most famous tomb at Madain Saleh is the Qasr Al-Farid, which means "the lonely castle." This tomb is located on a hilltop and is surrounded by a large courtyard. It is the largest tomb at the site, and it is considered to be one of the finest examples of Nabataean architecture. The tomb was never completed, and it is believed that it was abandoned after the death of the Nabataean king who commissioned it. Another important tomb at Madain Saleh is the Tomb of Lihyan son of Kuza. This tomb is located in the southern part of the site and is carved into a rock cliff. It features a large entrance hall, a central chamber, and a series of smaller rooms. The tomb is decorated with intricate carvings and inscriptions, which provide insights into the religious beliefs of Nabataeans. Madain Saleh is not just a site of tombs; it also contains a number of other important structures. These include the Al-Khuraymat and Al-Sabika temples, which were used for religious ceremonies and rituals. The site also contains a number of houses, wells, and cisterns, which provide insights into the daily lives of the Nabataeans. Madain Saleh was abandoned in the 3rd Century AD, after decline of the Nabataean kingdom. The site was rediscovered in the 19th Century by the Swiss traveler Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. Since then, it has been studied by archaeologists from all over the world. The site is now managed by the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage, which has carried out extensive restoration and preservation work. Madain Saleh is not just a site of historical and cultural significance; it is also a place of great natural beauty. The site is surrounded by rugged mountains and valleys, and it is home to a diverse range of flora and fauna. Visitors to the site can enjoy hiking and camping, as well as exploring the ancient ruins. Madain Saleh is a site of great historical and cultural significance, and it is a must-visit destination for anyone interested in the history and culture of the Arabian Peninsula. Ancient ruins at Madain Saleh provide a glimpse into the engineering and architectural skills of the Nabataeans, as well as their religious beliefs and cultural practices. However, as the site becomes an increasingly popular tourist destination, there are concerns about its preservation and the impact of tourism on the local environment. It is important that the Saudi government and local communities work together to ensure that the site is protected and that tourism is managed in a sustainable way. 🎥© Paris Verra #archaeohistories

Archaeo - Histories

196,581 Aufrufe • vor 2 Jahren

32 coins. $2.5 million. 0.0038% of the stack. That is the sale the market is now blaming for a $3 billion liquidation cascade and a Bitcoin price nearly halved from its peak. A $2.5 million sale cannot move a trillion-dollar asset. It is a rounding error. In the same week, Strategy raised $128.3 million selling its own stock, 50 times larger. It did not need to sell coins. It chose to. The crash has real drivers: a record 13-day run of ETF outflows, a rotation into AI, a Fed in no hurry to cut. But the accelerant the market keeps naming is 32 coins. The coins were never the point. The signal was. And the signal was deliberate. Michael Saylor told the Q1 call he would “probably sell some bitcoin to pay a dividend just to inoculate the market and send the message that we did it.” His logic was sound: prove the Bitcoin is usable capital, not a vault that can never be opened, and show he is not a prisoner of his own vow. His “never sell” always meant be a net accumulator. He is up more than 170,000 coins this year against the 32 he sold, and he scores himself on one number, Bitcoin per share. By that math, defending the dividend with a sliver was discipline, not distress. The market read it as the opposite. The dose became the catalyst now blamed for the crash. The inoculation became the infection. Because what changed was never Strategy’s solvency. It was its identity. The market has stopped pricing a permanent holder and started pricing what the filings always described: a state-contingent allocator now funding its own preferred dividends, at the margin, from the Bitcoin beneath them. And the buffer is thinning. The cash reserve behind those dividends has fallen from $2.25 billion to $900 million. Against a preferred bill near $1.7 billion a year, that is roughly 6 months of runway. Be precise. This is not a death spiral. Strategy still holds 843,706 Bitcoin, worth more than $50 billion even now, and has more funding levers than almost any company alive. A real rally makes this a footnote, and the sell-side calling the reaction overdone is not wrong on the fundamentals. But the regime has changed. The question is no longer Bitcoin’s price on any given day. It is the cadence of the dividend declarations and the path of that reserve. Bitcoin did not acquire a yield. The wrapper acquired liabilities. This week the market learned that difference costs far more than 32 coins.

32 coins. $2.5 million. 0.0038% of the stack. That is the sale the market is now blaming for a $3 billion liquidation cascade and a Bitcoin price nearly halved from its peak. A $2.5 million sale cannot move a trillion-dollar asset. It is a rounding error. In the same week, Strategy raised $128.3 million selling its own stock, 50 times larger. It did not need to sell coins. It chose to. The crash has real drivers: a record 13-day run of ETF outflows, a rotation into AI, a Fed in no hurry to cut. But the accelerant the market keeps naming is 32 coins. The coins were never the point. The signal was. And the signal was deliberate. Michael Saylor told the Q1 call he would “probably sell some bitcoin to pay a dividend just to inoculate the market and send the message that we did it.” His logic was sound: prove the Bitcoin is usable capital, not a vault that can never be opened, and show he is not a prisoner of his own vow. His “never sell” always meant be a net accumulator. He is up more than 170,000 coins this year against the 32 he sold, and he scores himself on one number, Bitcoin per share. By that math, defending the dividend with a sliver was discipline, not distress. The market read it as the opposite. The dose became the catalyst now blamed for the crash. The inoculation became the infection. Because what changed was never Strategy’s solvency. It was its identity. The market has stopped pricing a permanent holder and started pricing what the filings always described: a state-contingent allocator now funding its own preferred dividends, at the margin, from the Bitcoin beneath them. And the buffer is thinning. The cash reserve behind those dividends has fallen from $2.25 billion to $900 million. Against a preferred bill near $1.7 billion a year, that is roughly 6 months of runway. Be precise. This is not a death spiral. Strategy still holds 843,706 Bitcoin, worth more than $50 billion even now, and has more funding levers than almost any company alive. A real rally makes this a footnote, and the sell-side calling the reaction overdone is not wrong on the fundamentals. But the regime has changed. The question is no longer Bitcoin’s price on any given day. It is the cadence of the dividend declarations and the path of that reserve. Bitcoin did not acquire a yield. The wrapper acquired liabilities. This week the market learned that difference costs far more than 32 coins.

Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡

165,572 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten

The White House is not a museum that has to stay frozen. It is the working house of the American presidency. The Supreme Court is right to let the ballroom move forward now. ABC just reported that the Court formally granted the Trump administration’s request to keep building. That is the correct call. A president should be able to finish a state room worthy of the country instead of getting boxed in by people who treat every beam as a political crime. Opponents wanted a halt. They dressed it up as preservation and process. What they wanted was a stalled pit on the East Wing so they could say he failed. The Court refused to give them that. America hosts the world in that house. Allies, rivals, funerals, inaugurations, state dinners. A proper ballroom is not vanity. It is capacity. It is security built into the same complex. It is the country acting like it intends to last. Finish it. Make it beautiful. Let Trump and Melania walk the floor when it is done. The people who hate the idea will hate the finished room too. That is their problem. America will enjoy the ballroom for generations to come. It is a gift to our collective future.

The White House is not a museum that has to stay frozen. It is the working house of the American presidency. The Supreme Court is right to let the ballroom move forward now. ABC just reported that the Court formally granted the Trump administration’s request to keep building. That is the correct call. A president should be able to finish a state room worthy of the country instead of getting boxed in by people who treat every beam as a political crime. Opponents wanted a halt. They dressed it up as preservation and process. What they wanted was a stalled pit on the East Wing so they could say he failed. The Court refused to give them that. America hosts the world in that house. Allies, rivals, funerals, inaugurations, state dinners. A proper ballroom is not vanity. It is capacity. It is security built into the same complex. It is the country acting like it intends to last. Finish it. Make it beautiful. Let Trump and Melania walk the floor when it is done. The people who hate the idea will hate the finished room too. That is their problem. America will enjoy the ballroom for generations to come. It is a gift to our collective future.

Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸

15,804 Aufrufe • vor 12 Tagen

Chinese Official Reportedly Seeks Political Asylum at Paris Olympics A widely circulated rumor on Chinese social media suggests that a major scandal might erupt involving the CCP at the Paris Olympics. According to the rumor, Yuan Haoran(袁昊然), a Chinese representative to FINA (the International Swimming Federation), is expected to apply for political asylum and not return to China. Currently, this information cannot be verified. However, it is confirmed that all of Yuan Haoran's posts on Weibo have been deleted, and his account has been closed. I just searched, and criticism against him is already appearing on Chinese internet, accusing him of "biting the hand that feeds him," speaking for foreigners, and so on. Yuan Haoran is the former Director of the Swimming Department of the General Administration of Sport of China and currently serves as the Deputy Director of the Fencing Department. This video shows footage of him being interviewed in China in 2017. P1 is a photo of Yuan Haoran, and P2 shows that he had 156K followers on Weibo and 3275 posts. P3 shows that all his posts were deleted.

Chinese Official Reportedly Seeks Political Asylum at Paris Olympics A widely circulated rumor on Chinese social media suggests that a major scandal might erupt involving the CCP at the Paris Olympics. According to the rumor, Yuan Haoran(袁昊然), a Chinese representative to FINA (the International Swimming Federation), is expected to apply for political asylum and not return to China. Currently, this information cannot be verified. However, it is confirmed that all of Yuan Haoran's posts on Weibo have been deleted, and his account has been closed. I just searched, and criticism against him is already appearing on Chinese internet, accusing him of "biting the hand that feeds him," speaking for foreigners, and so on. Yuan Haoran is the former Director of the Swimming Department of the General Administration of Sport of China and currently serves as the Deputy Director of the Fencing Department. This video shows footage of him being interviewed in China in 2017. P1 is a photo of Yuan Haoran, and P2 shows that he had 156K followers on Weibo and 3275 posts. P3 shows that all his posts were deleted.

Inconvenient Truths — Jennifer Zeng Reports

108,759 Aufrufe • vor 2 Jahren

🇺🇸 DALLAS IS ABOUT TO BECOME THE CAPITAL OF THE AMERICA FIRST MOVEMENT! For the first time in party history, Republicans are holding a midterm convention. Not a debate stage. Not a press conference. A full blown convention, September 9th and 10th, right in the heart of Dallas. The Democrats aren't ready for this! Trump called it exactly what it is. "It has never been done before, and will be a truly Historic Event." Think about that for a second. Presidential conventions happen every four years like clockwork. Midterm conventions do not happen at all, because most parties do not have anything worth celebrating in the off year. The GOP just decided they do. RNC Chairman Joe Gruters is already calling it Trumpapalooza. That is not a typo. That is the energy level we are talking about. This is not just a rally. It is a two day showcase of the Great American Comeback. No tax on tips. No tax on overtime. Falling oil prices while the administration denuclearizes Iran. A border that finally has a lock on the door. Trump is not asking Republicans to imagine the wins. He is putting them on a stage in Texas and pointing at them. And Texas is not a random choice. It is the epicenter of this year's fight for Congress, with Ken Paxton battling for Senate and multiple House seats hanging in the balance. Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson called it exactly right, an event that will "energize our party, strengthen the conservative movement, and help build momentum." Now look across the aisle. Democrats floated the idea of their own midterm gathering. Then they quietly shelved it. No unifying message. No standout headliner. No comeback story to tell voters, because they do not have one. That is the difference in one sentence. Republicans are throwing a party because they have something to celebrate. Democrats are staying home because they do not. Midterms usually punish the party in power. Trump just decided to rewrite that rule in Texas, in front of the cameras, with the whole country watching. Buckle up. Trumpapalooza is coming, and the other side has nothing on the calendar to answer it with.

🇺🇸 DALLAS IS ABOUT TO BECOME THE CAPITAL OF THE AMERICA FIRST MOVEMENT! For the first time in party history, Republicans are holding a midterm convention. Not a debate stage. Not a press conference. A full blown convention, September 9th and 10th, right in the heart of Dallas. The Democrats aren't ready for this! Trump called it exactly what it is. "It has never been done before, and will be a truly Historic Event." Think about that for a second. Presidential conventions happen every four years like clockwork. Midterm conventions do not happen at all, because most parties do not have anything worth celebrating in the off year. The GOP just decided they do. RNC Chairman Joe Gruters is already calling it Trumpapalooza. That is not a typo. That is the energy level we are talking about. This is not just a rally. It is a two day showcase of the Great American Comeback. No tax on tips. No tax on overtime. Falling oil prices while the administration denuclearizes Iran. A border that finally has a lock on the door. Trump is not asking Republicans to imagine the wins. He is putting them on a stage in Texas and pointing at them. And Texas is not a random choice. It is the epicenter of this year's fight for Congress, with Ken Paxton battling for Senate and multiple House seats hanging in the balance. Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson called it exactly right, an event that will "energize our party, strengthen the conservative movement, and help build momentum." Now look across the aisle. Democrats floated the idea of their own midterm gathering. Then they quietly shelved it. No unifying message. No standout headliner. No comeback story to tell voters, because they do not have one. That is the difference in one sentence. Republicans are throwing a party because they have something to celebrate. Democrats are staying home because they do not. Midterms usually punish the party in power. Trump just decided to rewrite that rule in Texas, in front of the cameras, with the whole country watching. Buckle up. Trumpapalooza is coming, and the other side has nothing on the calendar to answer it with.

Bill Mitchell

13,955 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten