There are four different ways to transliterate the letter "Ц". "Tzar" is one of four possible transliterations from Cyrillics, which Wikipedia.en gives as: "Tsar (/zɑːr, sɑːr/ or /tsɑːr/), also spelled czar, tzar, or csar".
Similarly, consider the Russian composer, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский). His last name starts with the letter, "Ч", whose sound is like the English "ch" as in "check" and the Spanish letter, "ch" as in "chalupa" (yes, Spanish dictionaries treat it as a single letter). And Italian also has the sound which is a "soft c" followed by and "e" or "i" (eg, "ciao!").
Other languages might not have that sound and so need to find some other way to write it. Like the "Ц", the "Ч (our "ch" sound) is an affricate, the combination of two different consonant sounds (slightly basdardized): eg, "Ц" = /ts/, "Ч" = /tŠ/ (Š is like our "sh" sound). Hence languages like French and German have to write it as a combination of two letters, namely "t" combined with their way of writing our "sh" sound: eg, French "ch" -> "tch", German "sch" -> "tsch".
Therefore "Чайко́вский" gets transliterated as:
in French -- "Tchaikovski" or "Tchaïkovsky"
in German -- "Tschaikowsky" or "Tschaikowski"
in Italian -- "Čajkovskij", but also "Ciajkovskij", "Ciaikovski", or the French "Tchaikovsky".
in Spanish -- "Chaikovski"
in English -- "Chaikovski", but we frequently use the French.
Added to the problems of transliteration we have our off-the-wall English "phonetic spellings" which only serve to confuse language students (especially due to English vowels being radically different from everybody elses'). Therefore, I always prefer to refer back to the original for pronunciation.
Just for fun, consider the English "j" (eg, "jungle"). In English it's also an affricate (/dž/, a voiced "ch"--/tš/), but in French it's a pure sound (/&zcaron/). So the German word for "jungle" is written "Dschungel"; the French just discard the "d" sound and change it to a pure /ž/, hence "jungle".
Trump is itching to become a Western Leader again.
I doubt that. He likes the attention but he doesn't like people constantly wanting him to do things.
Of course, Phat's statement begs the question of whether Trump has ever deserved being considered a leader, especially since he was doing the bidding of his master, Putin. The general staff of the German Army said of their Kaiser Wilhelm II, arguably an eerily prescient pre-saging of Trump, that he couldn’t lead three soldiers over a gutter, but even there Kaiser Bill's leadership skills far outshone Trump's.
But besides Trump's pathological need for constant attention and ego fluffing, Trump's "running" for the Presidency is motivated by two very important factors:
Trump's desperate need for protection from facing the consequenced for his many criminal activities. Which is to say that his loss of protection under that now-infamous OLC (Office of Legal Counsel) memo has him terrified (A Sitting President 's Amenability to Indictment and Criminal Prosecution, 24 Op. O.L.C. 222, 222, 260 (2000) (OLC Op.).). From Volume II, Page 1, Section "INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME II" of the Mueller Report:
quote:First ... The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) has issued an opinion finding that "the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions" in violation of "the constitutional separation of powers." ...
3 OLC Op. at 257 n.36 ("A grand jury could continue to gather evidence throughout the period of immunity").
4 OLC Op. at 255 ("Recognizing an immunity from prosecution for a sitting President would not preclude such prosecution once the President's term is over or he is otherwise removed from office by resignation or impeachment").
Mueller cited that OLC memo as the reason why he could not seek Trump's indictment for his many acts of obstruction in the investigation, ten of which he detailed in Volume II of the report. He hinted to Congress that they are the ones empowered to take action on that report, presumably by impeaching Trump for obstruction of justice, but instead Congress impeached Trump for extorting President Zelenskyy for personal political gain.
Historical note: That OLC memo was one of two memos in response to two questions from Pres. Nixon. VP Agnew had just resigned immediately before being arrested for corruption (he had been informed of his imminent arrest and resigned in order to not taint the office of VP). Also having been involved in that bribe-taking, Nixon asked the OLC whether a sitting president could be indicted or prosecuted. The OLC counseled no. Nixon also asked whether he could pardon himself. The OLC counseled no, since he'd be acting as his own judge which is impermissible. Please note that one of Trump's first questions in office was whether he could pardon himself, which proved that at least on rare occasions Trump was indeed able to plan ahead.
While in office Trump abused that OLC memo constantly to avoid the consequences of his persistent criminal activity. Now he no longer has that protection and he misses it sorely. He wants to have that protection again, so if he could regain the Presidency he would love for that to happen.
Trump wants to milk his cash cows for as long as he possibly can. Even during the 2016 campaign, even the most casual observer could clearly see that Trump was using his campaign to enrich himself. Campaign contributions went to leasing office space in Trump properties, paying Trump-run caterers and other services, etc. That included "office spaces" in abandoned Trump properties that nobody ever went to. Those campaign contributions also served as conduits for bribes paid to Trump; several of the appointments he made were for large contributors (eg, Gordon Sondland whose $1 million campaign contribution bought him the ambassadorship to the EU, which involved him in the Trump–Ukraine scandal and required him to testify at the impeachment trial, which in turn resulted in Trump firing him two days after Trump's acquittal).
We also observed that Trump registered for re-election at the soonest possible time so that he could keep his campaign cash cow lactating copiously for him. Keep that money flowing in. Keep open that money-laundering conduit for bribes. His hotels also served as conduits for bribes as special interest groups (eg, Saudi Arabia) would reserve large blocks of rooms at Trump's hotels and then not even use them (or else offer them as a huge freebie for veterans to come to Washington and demonstrate against legislation that the Saudis wanted to defeat). And we won't even cover here how Trump funneled millions of government dollars into his properties with his golf trips to his own resorts (for which we had to pay full price for his Secret Service entourage to be there), requiring military flights to overnight at his overseas properties, etc. Or how tens of millions of dollars are still unaccounted for from his Inaugural fund (last I heard). Or how a huge chunk of his $1 billion 2020 campaign fund mysteriously disappeared (though in this case it appears that he had been grifted by grifters that he had hired).
Trump's "Stop the Steal" lie is being monetized through his America First PAC et alia -- ironically, stopping the steal is exactly what we were able to accomplish. But he's appealing to contributors to donate to their legal fund to fight the election results (what he falsely calls "stopping the steal"), plus I'm sure that they're contributing for his anticipated 2024 run (and now to buy him a new jet, etc) along with him supporting other Repugnians' mid-term runs. But the way that's set up only about 30% of money raised goes to the GOP and 70% goes to Trump to use however he sees fit including for personal purposes.
Not only is that a huge cash cow for Trump, but only about 40% of the money received goes to its purposes. Every single charity or PAC bears a cost, overhead that must be paid before the remaining money can be used for the charity's work. You need to have a staff to handle the office work; eg, to print requests for donations, to stuff envelopes and mail them, to process incoming mail, to track donations, etc. I've heard the term "cost of funding", but it's also known by other terms. In normal charities that accounts for about 15% of all money donated, but it can creep up to 20% and still be valid. If the "cost of funding" get much higher, then that can be an indication of money being siphoned off; I heard of a nationwide charity whose "cost of funding" was 90% which just screams that it was a scam (I don't remember the name so I will not suggest what it could be). In the case of Trump's PAC, the "cost of funding" was given as 61%, which tells us that someone is siphoning away nearly half the donations without leaving a trace -- to borrow from the famous Kurt Weill song, "Could that someone be Don the Trump?".
So Trump's motivation to be President again is not to serve, since that would make him a sucker. Rather, he has three basic motivations:
His need to have his ego constantly fluffed. Balance that with his aversion to being exposed as a loser.
His need to escape prosecution for his lifetime filled with so very many crimes.
His greed for all the money that he can grift out of suckers.
So will Trump actually run for President again? Only if he is absolutely assured of winning, since his fragile ego could not survive losing yet again.
Rather, I predict that he will lead his followers along as long as he possibly can, misleading them into believing that he is going to run until the last possible moment. We've seen him do that kind of thing before. And as long as his followers think that he will run, they will continue to send him money, so he will milk them, that cash cow, for all the money he possibly can.
Just the other day I saw an article where some group is suing Trump for not announcing his candidacy but rather leading his followers on.
I don't know whether it's their official name, but the Ukrainian Foreign Legion is accepting veterans with combat experience and who are physically fit. 60-year-old Senior Chief Malcolm Nance has volunteered and is serving with them now:
That Wikipedia page on the Legion says that they're more than 20,000 strong. Also that they're getting volunteers with no prior military and have had to sort that out ("On April 1, 2022, Ukraine announced that recruitment will be temporarily halted in order to sort out volunteers who don't have any military background").
And Malcolm Nance's decades of work in the intelligence community included a concentration on Russian activity. He also speaks Russian.
quoteRealpolitik (German: [ʁeˈaːlpoliˌtiːk]; from German real 'realistic, practical, actual', and Politik 'politics') refers to enacting or engaging in diplomatic or political policies based primarily on considerations of given circumstances and factors, rather than strictly binding itself to explicit ideological notions or moral and ethical premises. In this respect, it shares aspects of its philosophical approach with those of realism and pragmatism. It is often simply referred to as pragmatism in politics, e.g. "pursuing pragmatic policies" or "realistic policies".
You claim to be replying to one of my messages from more than two years ago (ie, Message 211 -- 07-Mar-2022), yet nothing you write addresses that message. IOW, you are not actually replying to that message in any way. Instead, you quote from and respond to my message Message 492 (19-Nov-2024) over in the Israel Declares War For The First Time Since 1973. topic without any attempt to identify what you are replying to. Almost as if you want to hide something. As if you don't want anyone to be able to go back to the original message and see what it really says and in what context.
Sorry if I appear to be overreacting, but I had been watching a critique video about a professional creationist video (Calvin Smith of AIG Canada) whose title claims "I Studied Evolution IN-DEPTH" (like almost every creationist claims) and yet he, like all other creationists, displays abject ignorance of evolution and instead rails against strawmen that have little if anything to do with evolution. Plus they lie incessantly and are highly dishonest. So when you display similar behavior, or at least appear to, I cannot react very kindly.
So, what are you trying to pull?
I can't speak for all evangelicals by any means but I will say that *they* are in no hurry for the good times to be over for good. (Merle Haggard song) Christians in America want prosperity like anyone else and they want peace. What they don't want is diversity amongst religions nations or ideologies. They want unity. In our minds,(Conservative believers) unity is only achievable through Jesus Christ. This is the stumbling block that prevents unity...now globally.
Rank-and-file members, maybe. But their movements embrace the End Times. Pat Robertson even had a plan to set up loudspeakers in Jerusalem and throughout the world to broadcast his proselytizing efforts with the goal of fulfilling one of the trigger points for the End Times, that everybody must have heard the Word and given the chance to be saved; when that last person declines Salvation then is when the bad times roll.
Your assessment reminded me of the part in Episode 1 of the BBC TV production of The_Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981, available on Hulu last I looked) where the earth is destroyed by the Vogon Destructor Fleet to make way for a hyperspatial bypass (painted bulldozer yellow just like the bulldozer sent to destroy Arthur Dent's home to make way for a bypass, British for a highway). When the destructor fleet appears in the sky, the camera trolleys past a line of pedestrians looking up at it, ending with a street preacher wearing a sandwich sign saying "THE END IS NIGH!". Then when the destructor fleet commander announces their imminent destruction we have the same trolley shot where everybody is shouting angrily at the fleet, stopping at the empty sandwich sign because that street preacher had left it behind when he ran away in terror. Sorry, I couldn't find a clip of that on YouTube.
We could also discuss the difference between premillennialism and postmillennialism and how that traditionally affected the hyper-religious such that the Baptists, who believed that the Thousand Year Rule would come after Jesus returned, whereas the Christian Reconstructionists believed that Jesus would return after they had established that Thousand Year Rule. As a result, Baptists avoided political involvement, but that changed c. 1980 when they embraced the Christian Reconstructionist political agenda of turning America into an Old Testament theocracy and gave rise to what is now known as Christian Nationalism. Part of the Baptist attitude included not caring about conservation, etc, because they saw the world as falling apart anyway in keeping with their End Times mentality ("Why would you bother to polish the brass on a sinking ship?").
Remember, I spent some time with those people. They were obsessed with two things: 1) demons, and 2) the End Times. They may have become less virulent, at least outwardly, but that mania is still there.
dwise1:In order to act professionally in the job Mike Huckabee is being put up for, an evangelical Christian would need to put aside his personal evangelical Christian agenda of sabotaging peace in the Middle East and instead work towards peace.
In the case of the Middle East, there has so far never been a workable consensus in a religious context. Iran sponsors terror in the hopes of taking the thorn out of their side. (Israel). Israel wants peace through strength and in eliminating all of their enemies. Their enemies are of course the people who see them as the thorn.
Has nothing to do with what I had written. Try reading it again.
dwise1:How many evangelical Christians would have the ability to act professionally in that job? Not many.
You speak of professionalism in the military, but what about the alleged statements of Admiral Rob Bauer? Putin took them to mean that NATO was turning offensive rather than defensive.
What the fuck are you talking about? Who the fuck is ADM Rob Bauer (is that RADM, VADM, or ADM, what is/was his command, etc?) and what is he supposed to have said and within what context?
And why are you withholding that extremely pertinent information from us? There's that stench of dishonesty coming from you again.
Putin responded due to the encroachment of the war into his territory.
Are you parroting Putin's talking points that he's fighting "The Ukrainian Nazis" and that he's responding to "NATO aggressive expansion"? Don't you realize that's nothing but propaganda lies creating an excuse for his invasion of and war of aggression against Ukraine in order to annex its territory?
"Ukraine used to be part of Russia; we just want it back again." Another example of that was Saddam Hussein's invasion and occupation of Kuwait with the excuse that it used to be part of Iraq before the French and English victors of WWI carved up the former Ottoman Empire's Middle East territory arbitrarily creating new borders; not only did they spin off Kuwait as its own country, but they also lumped three mutually antagonistic ethnic groups into Iraq that only a ruthless strongman like Saddam Hussein could hold together, hence the armed internal strife after we removed him from power (the same with Yugoslavia which only a Tito could hold together and its bloody balkanization after he died). The same with Hitler's "gathering in of the Germans" excuse for retaking former German territories in Czechoslovakia and Poland -- at least that loss of German territory was only a decade old, not 70 years old in Kuwait's case.
Like the tyrants before him grabbing territory through naked aggression, Putin is just making flimsy and transparent excuses for his actions which idiot apologists parrot without thinking.
Second, don't you understand even the most basic concepts of self-defense? It's not just block-block-duck-retreat, but rather you need to include counter-punches to convince the bully that he cannot get away with pushing you back. I'm in Florida right now which has its infamous "stand your ground" self-defense law. What part of that do you refuse to understand?
In my karate training, virtually all the moves we were taught and trained in included counter-punches and counter-kicks: block-counter-block-counter-block-counter-counter-COUNTER-KIAI! Even in aikido, which is much more defensive in nature, most moves ended either with having "led the attacker into falling" (we never did any throws, as in judo, but rather would blend with his motion and redirect it into him falling) or in an immobilizing wrist or arm hold. Absolutely purely defensive actions doing nothing more than simply deflecting or avoiding the attack never prevails, but rather must be combined with action to stop the aggressor.
A real-life instance was what my son had to do when he was in elementary school. On his way home, a larger kid tried to bully him. In response, my son blocked the bully's attack followed with a "chicken punch" to his jaw (AKA, "chicken wrist" which is a quick close-in jab with the back of the hand next to the wrist; I use the same kind of move, albeit more benign, to push a door closed without getting my hand dirty). Didn't hurt the bully, but it got his attention and let him know he couldn't get away with what he was doing. My son never had a problem with that bully again.
As long as Putin knows that he can get away with his aggression with impunity, he will not only continue but will escalate his attacks. You need to hit him back hard to let him know he can't get away with that crap.
Ukraine does indeed need peace and security, but neither is possible as long as nobody acts to stop Putin's aggression.
Its ironic that a Jewish concentration camp is the focus of your concern.
Not really, given that Trump's incoming administration is planning on concentration camps. Not camps deliberately designed to be "death camps" (damned Nazis completely tarnished the reputation of concentration camps), even though they tend to become that as the British learned with their camps in the Boer War (Second Boer War concentration camps):
quote:During the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), the British operated concentration camps in the South African Republic, Orange Free State, Natal, and the Cape Colony.
. . .
As the Boers used a 'guerrilla warfare' strategy, they lived off the land and used their farms as a source of food, thus making their farms a key item in their many successes at the beginning of the war. When Kitchener realized that a traditional warfare style would not work against the Boers, he began initiating plans that would later cause much controversy in the British public.
. . .
According to historian Thomas Pakenham, in March 1901, Lord Kitchener initiated plans to deter guerrillas. In a series of systematic drives, organised like a sporting shoot, with success defined by a weekly 'bag' of killed, they captured and wounded Boers. They swept the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas including women and children. Large epidemics of diseases including measles, killed thousands, affecting children the most. It was the clearance of civilians and uprooting a nation that came to dominate the last phases of the war.
As Boer farms were destroyed by the British under their "Scorched Earth" policy - including the systematic destruction of crops and the slaughtering or removal of livestock, the burning down of homesteads and farms to prevent the Boers from resupplying themselves from a home base, many tens of thousands of men, women, and children were forcibly moved into the camps. This was not the first appearance of concentration camps, as the Spanish had used them in Cuba during and after the Ten Years' War. However, the Boer War concentration camp system was the first time a whole nation had been systematically targeted, and the first in which entire regions had been depopulated.
Eventually, a total of 45 tented camps were built for Boer internees and 64 additional camps were built for black Africans. The vast majority of Boers who remained in the local camps were women and children. Between 18,000 and 26,000 women and children perished in these concentration camps due to diseases.
The camps were poorly administered from the outset, and they became increasingly overcrowded when Lord Kitchener's troops implemented the internment strategy on a vast scale. Conditions were terrible for the health of the internees, mainly due to neglect, poor hygiene and bad sanitation. The supply of all items were unreliable, partly because of the constant disruption of communication lines by the Boers. The food rations were meager, and there was a two-tier allocation policy, whereby families of men still fighting were routinely given smaller rations than others. The inadequate shelter, poor diet, bad hygiene, and overcrowding led to malnutrition and endemic contagious diseases such as measles, typhoid, and dysentery to which the children were particularly vulnerable. Due to a shortage of modern medicine facilities and medical mistreatment, many internees died.
The Confederate POW camp at Andersonville, Georgia, comes immediately to mind, where 13,000 of the 45,000 Union prisoners held there died from disease because of the appalling conditions.
Would Trump's minions run their concentration camps humanely? Experience with the first Trump administration tells us resoundingly that they would not. Don't forget that for MAGAts the cruelty is the purpose. Besides, they don't even think that the people they'll be rounding up are human. I wonder how long before they start to refer to them as "rats" like Hitler's Nazis did about the Jews.
And don't forget that, like the Nazi camps, Trump's camps won't just be for immigrants (which will include naturalized citizens arrested through Operation Second Look). Other "enemies of the state" like journalists and Democrats will also be imprisoned. And when they've rounded up farm labor and there's nobody to pick the crops, those camps would provide the slave labor needed -- that's what the Nazis used their prisoners for.
Regarding Operation Second Look:
But, you say, they're talking about deporting, not imprisoning in camps. Logistics, laddie, logistics. You need somewhere to hold them while arranging transport. Plus there are the citizens that they aren't yet able to strip of their citizenship yet, though Trump did have his eye on getting rid of birth-right citizenship anybody could be stripped of their citizenship.
Imagine the absolute worst that they could do and then double it. You would still be denounced as a wild-eyed optimist.
Ukraine is one of the largest "breadbaskets" in the world.
My 9th-grade (1965-65) social studies teacher was a retired Chief Petty Officer who introduced us to Tom Lehrer and Bob Newhart. I think he also compared the "breadbaskets" of the USA and the USSR and the effects that geography had on them.
The effects of weather on the growth of crops tend to change from year to year with the band of good growing weather tending to shift by latitude, north and south. Our "breadbasket" extends north and south from Texas to the Dakotas, so even if the weather turns bad it will still be good somewhere in that region; local crop failures will not result in crop failure for the entire country. But the USSR's "breadbasket", concentrated in the steppes that include Ukraine, runs east and west within a narrow band of latitudes, so if they get bad weather and suffer a crop failure, the entire country suffers as well.
I don't know what point you were trying to make there. Securing that "breadbasket" under Russian control would be in Russia's interests, just as securing control of Crimea was for guaranteeing naval access to the Black Sea. But neither of those obvious motivations have anything to do with the propaganda "reasons" Putin has presented that that you echoed.
And there are other means for protecting those interests other than naked aggression coupled with genocide (ie, he's seeking to eliminate Ukrainians as a different people than Russians with their own language, including by the mass abduction of Ukrainian children in order to relocate them to Russia to be raised by Russian families as Russians).
I also hope that Trump represents American interests moreso that Putins interests. The Art Of The Deal must help Americans. (Or else it is not a deal.)
Not in Trump's mind. The only one that any deal must benefit is Trump himself. He literally does not care for anybody other than himself. Not even his own children. So why would you ever think that he would care about us?
Well, he does care about Putin and wants to keep his favor. Especially since Putin had basically put him in office. And I'm sure that Putin has been funneling money to Trump, perhaps in part as payment for some of those Top Secret/SCI documents that Trump had stolen (eg, at one point Trump specifically asked for highly classified information about our assets and then an astounding number of those assets started dying (stood too close to a window), getting arrested, or just plain disappearing -- coincidence? Or does Nance's Law apply: "Coincidence requires a lot of planning.").
And don't forget Trump's multiple personal meetings with Putin, around three hours face-to-face alone with no other American present (OK, one time Trump had a translator, but he confiscated her notes and swore her to strict silence). One of Jered Kushner's tasks was to set up a back-channel phone link with Putin that excluded all government agencies (ie, no FBI, no NSA, no CIA, no State Dept, no nobody else). And he had several personal phone conversations with Putin while out of office for which he ordered everybody out of his office in order to talk in complete privacy. Repeated direct private communication with Putin with no American witnesses!
It should be intuitively obvious to even the most casual of observers that Trump is a fucking treasonous Russian asset. Only a complete fucking idiot would try to deceive himself into thinking that Trump would ever represent American interest over Putin's interests.
Biden dealt with Putin for many years. Less is known about Mr.Trump
What? Where have you been since 2016? We all observed exactly how Trump would deal with Putin, exactly as he has always dealt with him!
And what we also know is that this second Trump administration will be massively worse than the first one was.
Graffiti in the opening of The Nasty Girl ("Das Schreckliche Mädchen", better translated as "The Terrible Girl", 1990):
Wo wart ihr 1933-1945? Wo seid ihr jetzt?
(Where were you 1933-1945 (when Hitler was in power)? Where are you now? )
One thing that I heard is that Trump is not a fan of digital currency.
Anything that Trump "stands for" depends on who had bought him most recently. For example, entering the campaign he was totally against TikTok, but then he got a contribution from TikTok and suddenly he was totally FOR TikTok. The only thing Trump has ever actually stood for was getting more money.
Yeah, he started out being against crypto, but then they bought him and now he's all behind crypto. And it's part of his new grift.
And about Bitcoin? I still say it's a giant Ponzi Scheme. Gold is a far better store of value. Trump seems on board with it as a campaign promise, but I would be willing to bet that Trump and Musk own far more precious metals than they do bitcoins.
And they are lining up to get their hands on a lot more gold. Our gold as they prepare to replace part of our gold reserves with crypto-currency "in order to reduce our debt".
On Friday, Chris Hayes (All In With Chris Hayes) laid it all out:
8½ minutes long. At around two minutes, he gets to crypto. One of the problems with crypto is that it lacks liquidity; you can't do anything with it (outside of conduct criminal activities like cartels). It is difficult to sell, besides which doing so would drive the value down, etc. By 4 minutes, he discusses their plot: bring in a new buyer, the US government, who will be obligated to sell billions of dollars of our gold (at least $100 billion) in order to buy bitcoin from the billionaires who cannot do anything with their bitcoin investment. IOW, it's a massive bailout for the billionaires at our expense, but then with the Republicans what else is new outside of the massive scale and sheer audacity.
Yeah, that's your "financial genius businessman" Trump at work. Lining up to suck all the nation's wealth into his own pocket and into the pockets of his billionaire friends.
Well, as Thomas Jefferson warned us, in a democracy the people get the government they deserve.
Why can't Gold be the bedrock of a new financial system rather than the dollar?
...
The US Dollar was pegged to oil for stability, and now the Yuan is also pegged to oil.
...
The BRICS association plans to have a common basket of currencies tied to gold and other natural resources.
...
The global fiat currencies are tied to the dollar as the global reserve currency but this monopoly is now breaking up.
No, it isn't. You are being fed a bunch of hogwash.
My reply is in part inspired by a new Sir Sic video about an "ex-atheist" turned evangelical Christian comedian. The problem with all such "ex-atheists" that I have encountered is that they were never actually atheists, but rather they were apathetic about religion and never bothered to learn anything about it let alone ever think about it. As such, they are complete rubes just waiting to be plucked up by proselytizers "asking them questions" that they have literally never heard before -- of course, we have all heard those "questions" many times before. And as a result, their views of what an atheist is or how an atheist thinks have nothing to do with actual atheists.
What that leads to is how believers (both "ex-atheists" and non-) project their own foibles on everybody else; eg, "everybody worships something; atheist just worship ... ". I even encountered one who challenged how atheists could answer the question of justification, which is a Christian concept (how to deemed righteous in the sight of God) that has no meaning for an atheist, and yet Christians don't understand how anyone could possibly think differently than they do and hence "everybody, including atheists, seek something to worship and seek justification", and other such ludicrous nonsense. And they cannot understand why laughter at their inane nonsense is usually our only possible response.
The point I'm taking here is that they are so buried and mired in their ideology that they lose all perspective and cannot even conceive of other ideas ... like, for instance, reality.
Phat is so mired down by the idea that commodities have intrinsic value and that currencies are based on that inherent value that he cannot understand that commodities' value is not intrinsic but rather changes as it is traded. If only he would devote even just a fraction of the time and effort to learning actual economics and finances instead of feasting on slop in the trough.
Are you saying that reality by definition does not (or need not) include God?
Reality, by definition, is what it is. Those things included in reality are included because of evidence that they exist. There is no such evidence for "God" nor does including or removing "God" have any discernable effect. Refer back to my quasi-mathematical proof of this (from my Message 643, 21-Oct-2022):
ID wants to force science to include God and other such supernatural things.
So, let's take a scientific function, f(x,y,z), and add onto it a "God term" God to get a new ID function, g(x,y,z), such that:
g(x,y,z) = f(x,y,z) + God
Now apply both functions to the same real world situation, r, such that:
rf = f(x,y,z) rg = g(x,y,z)
What we find is that there is no difference between the outcomes of that same real world situation using either of the two functions; ie:
rg = rf
So,
g(x,y,z) = f(x,y,z) f(x,y,z) + God = f(x,y,z)
Subtracting function f() from both sides:
God = 0
Therefore God = zero. Proven by applying ID.
QED
So what possible good or use could there be to including into reality something that neither adds through its inclusion nor detracts through its absence?
Referring also to John Lennon's song: "God is a concept by which we measure all our pain.", we find that rather, "God" is a surrogate, a stand-in for our ignorance.
Many Christians, even the ones who bridle at and whine and gnash their teeth at the mere mention of the term, use their god as a God of the Gaps (GotG), which is a complete waste and debasement of a god. If there's something they do not understand, then their "answer" is "goddidit", which results in them giving up on understanding anything (one of my stronger reasons to oppose ID, another being that it's just a smokescreen to hide creationism -- it's going from creationism's game of "Hide the Bible" to ID's new-ish game of "Hide the Creationism"). A recurring complaint against science is that it "disproves God" by showing us natural explanations of previously inexplicable phenomena even though those natural processes are supposed to have been created by said "God" and hence would operate as created (eg, ID's co-founder, lawyer Phillip Johnson: "I oppose evolution because it leaves God with nothing to do."). They hate science because it refutes their "God of the Gaps", not because it could ever refute a god who is "Sovereign over Nature". Just about every one of ID's complexity arguments turns out to be pure "God of the Gaps"; eg, "All this is so complex that we cannot explain it, therefore goddidit." (that also ignores the observed fact that evolutionary process almost invariably generate high levels of complexity, even irreducible complexity)
quote:Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)
So this practice of substituting "God" with a "God of the Gaps" serves no purpose other than trying to hide believers' ignorance with sham answers and to oppose seeking any real answers. Including such a useless and counterproductive "God" in reality serves no useful purpose and instead does great harm.
A different, non-GotG "God" surrogate that could be useful would be one which is used to motivate and guide one's spiritual growth. Unfortunately, most Christians (especially "true Christians") lack the maturity follow that path, but rather would choose to force their false beliefs on everyone else and persecute those who do not comply.
There's also the theological use of a "God" surrogate providing us with something that our minds can grasp and that we could work with. We mortal humans are incapable of detecting or even determining whether anything supernatural exists, let alone being able to observe it, study it, communicate directly with it, determine its characteristics or desires, etc. Furthermore, even if some supernatural entity powerful enough to be considered a god were to exist and possessing the infinite qualities associated with "God", it would so vastly far beyond our ability to even begin to comprehend (eg, a call-in Christian: "Us trying to understand God would be like an ant trying to understand us humans and what we are thinking.").
A mere human believer could not possibly even begin to try to comprehend an actual god, so he needs to create a surrogate "God" that he can work with and onto which he projects his own ideas, loves, and hatreds (ever notice how "God" always hates the same people that we do?). But then most believers go on to make the mistake that their made-up surrogate "God" is actually the "real thing", which has led to so much human suffering and destruction.
Edited by dwise1, : Added Tanypteryx to his quote in my WayBackMachine reposting
When asked about that experience, he was very vague and became increasingly evasive; not even Archimedes could pry it out of him. Then a panel member describes how the Bible describes the experience of being visited by the Holy Ghost (extremely difficult to not notice it when it happens) and it was nothing like what the caller described (kind of a vague feeling, more of a conclusion after the fact than an experience).
Also consider the experiences with a demon that both my high school friend's mother and my ex-wife's brother, both fundamentalist Christians with Chuck Smith's Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa (the "mothership" of that franchise), had. They had been napping when they "woke up" "experiencing" a demon holding them down keeping them paralyzed and unable to speak despite their desperate attempts to scream for help. Instead, that was simply a case of Sleep paralysis, a common state of shallow sleep in which we are highly suggestible as well as being paralyzed to keep us from acting out our dream:
quote:Sleep paralysis is a state, during waking up or falling asleep, in which a person is conscious but in a complete state of full-body paralysis. During an episode, the person may hallucinate (hear, feel, or see things that are not there), which often results in fear. Episodes generally last no more than a few minutes. It can recur multiple times or occur as a single episode.
The condition may occur in those who are otherwise healthy or those with narcolepsy, or it may run in families as a result of specific genetic changes. The condition can be triggered by sleep deprivation, psychological stress, or abnormal sleep cycles. The underlying mechanism is believed to involve a dysfunction in REM sleep. Diagnosis is based on a person's description. Other conditions that can present similarly include narcolepsy, atonic seizure, and hypokalemic periodic paralysis. Treatment options for sleep paralysis have been poorly studied. It is recommended that people be reassured that the condition is common and generally not serious. Other efforts that may be tried include sleep hygiene, cognitive behavioral therapy, and antidepressants.
Between 8% and 50% of people experience sleep paralysis at some point during their lives. About 5% of people have regular episodes. Males and females are affected equally. Sleep paralysis has been described throughout history. It is believed to have played a role in the creation of stories about alien abduction and other paranormal events.
When we observe that in sleeping dogs, we ascribe it to dreaming about chasing rabbits instead of them having a personal experience with DOG.
So how do we ensure that we are not just dreaming it? Especially if we are also under the influence of a bad burrito.
Also, I was talking about evidence and about how you construct surrogates (made-up substitutes for the Real Thing, which you assume exists whether it actually does or not -- old popular truism: "When you ASSUME you make an ASS of U and ME.") And all you can come up with is a stupid ghost story? So what would you do if Lord Krishna were to appear to you? Or the Buddha were to appear to you in order to warn you away from believing in the gods since that will only keep you from gaining Enlightenment?
So instead of addressing the ideas presented, you post really stupid nonsense that avoid the subject. And then you have the gall to wonder why nobody can ever take anything you say seriously? Really?
There are so many things that might be possible, which is why we need some kind of evidence so that we can hold onto the more evidenced things and no longer have to bother ourselves with the unevidenced things.
Yet again (obviously for the others, not for you since everything just flies high over your head) here's that Carl Sagan story yet again:
quote:The Physicist and the Metaphysicist
In the 1920s, there was a dinner at which the physicist Robert W. Wood was asked to respond to a toast. This was a time when people stood up, made a toast, and then selected someone to respond. Nobody knew what toast they'd be asked to reply to, so it was a challenge for the quick-witted. In this case the toast was:
"To physics and metaphysics." Now by metaphysics was meant something like philosophy -- truths that you could get to just by thinking about them. Wood took a second, glanced about him, and answered along these lines: The physicist has an idea, he said. The more he thinks it through, the more sense it makes to him. He goes to the scientific literature, and the more he reads, the more promising the idea seems. Thus prepared, he devises an experiment to test the idea. The experiment is painstaking. Many possibilities are eliminated or taken into account; the accuracy of the measurement is refined. At the end of all this work, the experiment is completed and ... the idea is shown to be worthless. The physicist then discards the idea, frees his mind (as I was saying a moment ago) from the clutter of error, and moves on to something else.
The difference between physics and metaphysics, Wood concluded, is that the metaphysicist has no laboratory.
The founder of a local skeptics group has a personal policy for his own ideas: he actively seeks out people who can disprove them. Like in Sagan's story and in the practice of science, when you come up with an idea you then need to disprove it. That's what all the testing in science is about. Instead of trying to prove your ideas, you see whether it can survive repeated testing. Science works by eliminating the ideas that don't work. Here's the accepted definition for a scientific theory:
quote:A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspects of the natural world based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment.
Or more expansively:
quote:Theory might win the prize for the most commonly misunderstood word in science. In everyday usage, a theory is a hunch. A guess. Speculation. For example, I have a theory about why my cat yells (sings?) at night — he’s calling on the spirits of his ancestors to free him from the captivity of his luxurious life.
But in science speak, a theory is almost the complete opposite — it’s a broad explanation for a wide range of phenomena that’s supported by a vast amount of evidence. As science progresses and evidence accumulates, related ideas are combined into a clear and powerful explanation.
Theories form the basis of our scientific knowledge and are used by scientists to make predictions for further testing, and as such are continually subjected to scrutiny.
Examples include gravitational theory, plate tectonic theory, evolutionary theory, cell theory, germ theory, foraging theory, the sliding filament theory of muscular contraction, atomic theory…
The bottom line is that the ultimate goal of science is to understand and explain the natural world, and theories are about as close to the “truth” as we may ever get.
So don’t be fooled when someone doubts science because “it’s just a theory.”
In sharp contrast is how apologists go about their business. They "already have the truth" so instead of trying to learn anything new, they work unflaggingly to reject or corrupt any evidence that would disprove their "truth", even going so far as to fabricate false "evidences" in their ongoing campaign to deceive everyone, most importantly themselves.
We observe you following the path of apologists. Not a good look.
Now to wait and see how much you ignore this time and what you choose to completely misconstrue.
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