Shared posts

13 Jan 00:48

898 - Bragg and Tag feat. Seth Harp (1/10/25)

Tom Roche

EXCELLENT: informative

We’re joined by investigative journalist Seth Harp to look at the two New Years terror incidents. Both involving military personnel associated with Fort Bragg, Seth helps us unpack the bizarre details around the attacks & attackers, their connections with the infamous fort, and the sprawling network of crime and conspiracy connected to U.S. special forces that could be connected to the incidents.


Pre-order Seth’s new book “The Fort Bragg Cartel,” covering everything discussed here and more, NOW: https://www.amazon.com/Fort-Bragg-Cartel-Trafficking-Special/dp/0593655087/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2IBFCDHXPCDNK&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DChbCJr_ack2Y0E77PHx1A.c3bQI937DRUIMbRbVsdKhtyPbEan_qiFTtz0ZgDgQP0&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+fort+bragg+cartel+seth+harp&qid=1736454146&sprefix=the+fort+br%2Caps%2C152&sr=8-1

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11 Jan 19:44

What will Trump's return mean for Ukraine, Gaza, and the economy?

Tom Roche

surprisingly good (and /very/ wide-ranging) Desai interview with the as-usual-variable-quality Lieven. He's still empirically bad on the NATO proxy war with Russia, but not so normatively bad on RF geostrategy, and quite good on a number of other topics, including

* probable US geostrategy under Trump 2.0 (aka /T2/)
* geoeconomy esp T2 tariffs esp vs PRC
* US deepstate pro and con war
* US empire economic and military decline
* (esp good) how US MIC (actually, Eisenhower wanted to call it 'military-industrial-academic complex') drives industrial policy (badly)
* probable nearterm backlash from Eurovassal voters (and how Eurovassal deepstates will seek to suppress it)
* Russia geostrategy esp RUW (Lieven weak as usual, but he's been worse)
* Zionist lock on empire deepstate (spatially- and level-comprehensive)

What will Donald Trump's second term as US president mean for the NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine and Israel's war on Gaza? How will his tariffs affect the economy? To discuss, political economist Radhika Desai is joined by Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNQztns8C9U This is part of the show Geopolitical Economy Hour. You can watch other episodes of the program here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDAi0NdlN8hMl9DkPLikDDGccibhYHnDP
11 Jan 18:38

#588 - Lubrication Theory Simulations

Tom Roche

MU excellent as usual

The White House has been destroyed by an earthquake, President Sean Young is trapped under the rubble, and House Speaker Eric Roberts wants to take over America in DC DOWN (2023), a low-budget disaster movie from the most trusted names in entertainment, Tubi and The Asylum. We treated ourselves to a good old-fashioned "good movie movie." PLUS: How seriously should we be taking Trump's threat to annex Canada? Join us on Patreon for an extra episode every week - https://www.patreon.com/michaelandus TORONTO: See Will introduce a screening of Jess Franco's Bloody Moon on January 14, 7pm at the Fox Theatre. Tickets - https://www.foxtheatre.ca/movies/the-important-cinema-club-masterpiece-classics-bloody-moon/ "The failure of Trudeauism" by Luke Savage - https://www.newstatesman.com/author/luke-savage
10 Jan 23:56

Will There Be a Gaza Deal Before Trump's Inauguration?

by Jeremy Scahill
Tom Roche

EXCELLENT

After his victory in the 2024 election, Donald Trump made clear that he wants a deal to release Israeli and international captives held in Gaza prior to his inauguration on January 20. Trump’s public posture has added urgency to what had become a diplomatic process surviving on the weakest of life support systems. The president-elect’s position on the Gaza war is largely in sync with that of Biden’s; Trump’s nominees for key national security positions and U.S. ambassador to Israel are a kettle of pro-Israel hawks, some of whom have openly declared there is no such thing as a Palestinian and no such place as the West Bank. At the same time, Trump clearly wants to proclaim a victory by securing the release of hostages as he resumes office in Washington, D.C.

In a new Drop Site News podcast episode, Jeremy Scahill speaks to Muhammad Shehada, a Palestinian writer and journalist from Gaza who has been doing in-depth reporting on the negotiations for a ceasefire and exchange of captives. His most recent piece for the Center for International Policy is titled “The Biden Administration’s False History of Ceasefire Negotiations.” They discuss the details of what is being negotiated, Benjamin Netanyahu’s history of sabotaging a ceasefire and how the Biden administration enabled it, as well as the prospects for a deal before Trump’s inauguration.

Our continued work depends on reader support. Your tax-deductible donation will fuel the hard-hitting investigations you won't find anywhere else.

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10 Jan 23:54

Charles Choi: Converting a Markdown Region to Org Revisited

by Charles Choi
Tom Roche

very short article ([archived here](http://web.archive.org/web/20250110235331/http://yummymelon.com/devnull/converting-a-markdown-region-to-org-revisited.html)) includes elisp (calling `pandoc`) function=`markdown-to-org-region`

On more than one occasion I’ve found myself needing to convert Markdown formatted text to Org using this workflow:

  1. Copy Markdown formatted text (usually from a web browser) into the kill ring.
  2. Paste above text into an Org buffer.
  3. Manually reformat said text to Org.

Folks who have pandoc installed can automate step 3 above with the Elisp function quoted below from the Stack Exchange post “Convert region/subtree from Markdown to org”.

1
2
3
4
(defun my-md-to-org-region (start end)
  "Convert region from markdown to org"
  (interactive "r")
  (shell-command-on-region start end "pandoc -f markdown -t org" t t))

So just copy the above function into your config and call it a day, no?

Not quite. If left unspecified, pandoc will automatically wrap long lines 😞. I prefer keeping a paragraph as a single long line in Org.

To keep a paragraph as a long line, use the pandoc argument --wrap=preserve.

Listed below is an amended version of the above routine.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
(defun cc/markdown-to-org-region (start end)
  "Convert Markdown formatted text in region (START, END) to Org.

This command requires that pandoc (man page `pandoc(1)') be
installed."
  (interactive "r")
  (shell-command-on-region
   start end
   "pandoc -f markdown -t org --wrap=preserve" t t))

Regardless of your preference, if this is news to you and seems useful, give it a try.

References

10 Jan 19:50

Best of The News Quiz 2024

Tom Roche

excellent

A satirical smorgasbord of The News Quiz's best bits of the year. Covering international tensions, a UK General Election, and of course the question on everyone’s lips, what exactly was a ‘Brat Summer’?

With Andy Zaltzman in the chair, full of whimsical animal metaphors and cricket stats, we’ll hear highlights from the crème de la crème of British and international comedy and journalism to dissect the news. It's a chance to return to, and revel in, some of 2024's funniest moments, starring Ian Smith, Lucy Porter, Geoff Norcott, Alasdair Beckett-King, Mark Steel, Ria Lina, Simon Evans and Zoe Lyons, amongst others.

Come digest a dramatic year of news, along with the leftover turkey, as we say goodbye to 2024, goodbye to 14 years or Conservative rule, goodbye to short-lived presidential hopeful Kamala Harris, and goodbye to Earth’s temporary second moon.

Written and presented by Andy Zaltzman

Producer: Sam Holmes Executive Producer: James Robinson Production Coordinator: Jodie Charman

A BBC Studios Audio Production for Radio 4 An Eco-Audio certified Production

10 Jan 17:40

News - Lebanon Elects a President, Afghanistan and Pakistan Skirmish at the Border, Trump Embraces Imperialism

Tom Roche

Bessner and (mostly) Davison return from 2-week holiday hiatus to deliver another EXCELLENT week-in-review (though now unfortunately with pre- and mid-audio advertisements, but they are brief and easily fast-forwarded)

Danny and Derek return to the newsroom for the first time in 2025! This week: the transition process continues in Syria (1:48) as the US government beginning relations with the new Syrian leadership (7:11), but fighting continues between Turkey and the SDF (10:25); in Lebanon, the IDF faces a withdrawal deadline (13:48) and the parliament finally elects a new president (15:46); yet more Gaza ceasefire talks are underway (19:37); the downing of a civilian aircraft strains Azerbaijan-Russia relations (22:54); Afghanistan and Pakistan exchange cross-border fire (26:05); South Korea is still trying to arrest impeached president Yoon while the interim president is also impeached (27:55); the Biden administration determines that the RSF is committing genocide in Sudan (31:13); as a new Ukrainian offensive is underway in Kursk (33:49), the Russians continue advancing in eastern Ukraine (35:36); Austria looks to be getting a far-right government (37:21); Justin Trudeau resigns as prime minister of Canada (40:21); and Donald Trump appears to warm up to the idea of conquering everything (43:12).


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10 Jan 02:53

Day 461: The end of UNRWA?

Tom Roche

another EXCELLENT update on the Zionazi wars from EI, esp
* Chris Gunness on the US empire's war on UNRWA
* Resistance Report (90:10-138:14) on Gaza and West Bank
* Israel prosecutor admits there are no 7 Oct rape victims
* Israel bans UN investigation of the "Hamas rape" hoax in order to shield actual IDF rapists

Watch entire broadcast here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z76bFnkpWiw Guests: - Donya Abu Sitta, writer and teacher in Gaza - Chris Gunness, former UNRWA spokesperson
09 Jan 21:01

1/9/25: LA Fires, Biden's Big Admission, Laken Riley Bill, Trump Retreating On Tariffs & MORE!

Tom Roche

BreakingPoints does 1st-of-2025 classic-format (KB+SE) episode of the year, and it's ... good enough--up to their usual standards--but it coulda been better. Notably: it ends (119:45 to end of content @ 144:52) with sequence=[excellent-if-flawed Saagar monolog on {H-1B visas, US techworker exploitation}, response/discussion (included in freefeed) with Krystal on that plus Amy Chua, Vivek, et al on "US culture"] which is EXCELLENT. Unfortunately, this comes after yet-another KB-vs-SE on US immigration policy (56:10-93:47) ... which would not be a problem, except that there's very little new content or argument. ISTM KB+SE have gotten into a rut s.t. ~2/mo (maybe weekly) they do these kinda-debates on migration which do not much except retread old content for ~30 min.

Net: generally-listenable and -excellent episode, but ya might wanna get your finger on that fast-forward trigger (which presumably you already have to cope with all the very-repetitive advertisements) starting ~56 min in the audio.

Krystal and Saagar discuss LA devastated by fires, Biden admits he wouldn't have made it four years, Dems support Laken Riley Act, is Trump retreating on universal tariffs, Fox News accused of colluding with Trump, Elon/Vivek full anti-American on H1b.

 

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09 Jan 18:08

BRICS grows, adding Indonesia as member: world's 4th most populous country, 7th biggest economy

Tom Roche

GER/Norton deliver another EXCELLENT, esp re Indonesia in geoeconomy esp nickel

BRICS keeps expanding. As a new full member, it added Indonesia, the 4th most populous country with the 7th largest economy on Earth. BRICS now has 10 members and 8 partners. Together they make up 41.4% of global GDP (PPP) and roughly half the world population. Ben Norton explains. VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIDWOWHW-cU Sources and links here: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/01/07/brics-adds-indonesia-member-economy/ Check out our related report on BRICS' plan to challenge US dollar domination by creating a multi-currency financial system: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/10/19/brics-russia-multi-currency-system-us-dollar/ Topics 0:00 BRICS expansion 0:51 Map of BRICS membership 1:11 List of BRICS members & partners 1:47 BRICS share of world economy 2:27 BRICS vs G7 3:44 Indonesian economy bigger than UK & France 4:41 Indonesia's BRICS invitation 6:05 Global South cooperation 6:56 China supports Global South 7:29 Non-Aligned Movement & Bandung Conference 8:31 US-backed coup against Sukarno 8:58 CIA-sponsored massacres 9:53 ASEAN prefers China over USA 11:07 Philippines allies with USA 12:08 Indonesia calls China & Russia friends 13:52 China is Indonesia's largest trading partner 14:17 China is ASEAN's largest trading partner 14:39 Nickel production 15:32 Indonesia industrializes with China's help 21:53 BRICS cooperation 23:43 De-dollarization 24:46 Outro
09 Jan 17:59

Irreal: Using Ediff On Regions

by jcs
Tom Roche

jeez: been using Ediff for at least a decade, did not know about `ediff-regions-wordwise` and `ediff-regions-linewise`. [Original post](https://emacs.dyerdwelling.family/emacs/20250108140933-emacs--ediff-comparing-regions/) archived [here](https://archive.today/LIlJA)

One of the Emacs powerhouses is Ediff. Every time I think I’ve found a better way of comparing files, it turns out that I just didn’t understand Ediff well enough. It can seem intimidating but as Prot informed me it really pretty simple if you ignore all the complications. I took his advice and can only agree with his assessment.

Now James Dyer has his own take on Ediff. His particular use case is comparing regions rather than whole files. It turns out that there are two functions, ediff-regions-linewise and ediff-regions-wordwise that will use Ediff to compare two regions in the usual Ediff way.

The documentation recommends that you use ediff-regions-wordwise for small regions and ediff-regions-linewise for larger regions. In either case, once you set up the regions to be compared you use Ediff in the usual way. Take a look at Dyer’s post to see how to set up the regions. It’s straightforward and easy to remember once you use it a couple of times.

It’s a nice post and well worth reading even if you don’t need to compare regions right now. You probably will in the future and even if you don’t remember the details, you’ll know what to look for when you do.

08 Jan 22:29

[UNLOCKED] Sweden, NATO, and Olaf Palme - Ola Tunander (AE146)

Tom Roche

EXCELLENT

This is a public episode of the American Exception podcast on Patreon [ www.patreon.com/americanexception ]. Subscribe for access to past and future episodes of American Exception and Devil's Chess Club! With Sweden officially becoming a NATO member, Ola Tunander returns to discuss the subject, with reference to his landmark article on the NATO deep state in Sweden. Entitled, “Dual State: The Case of Sweden,” this article was published in The Dual State: Parapolitics, Carl Schmitt and the National Security Complex. Ola Tunander is Research Professor Emeritus with the Peace Research Institute in Oslo. He earned his doctoral degree in 1989 with a thesis on US Maritime Strategy. He has written and edited 15 books on geopolitics, military strategy and European security, submarine warfare, and deception operations (aka psychological operations). Also, please subscribe to Ola’s Substack [ https://olatunander.substack.com/ ] where you can check out these additional excellent articles by Ola Tunander: * "The Concept of the Deep State" (This one discusses his recent discussions on American Exception with Peter Dale Scott and Aaron) * "Democratic State vs. Deep State: Part I" (His classic article the deep state of the West) * “An Underwater U-2: Part I" (Important work on the Swedish version of the strategy of tension, psychological operations which in the Swedish case involved submarine warfare) * "After Seymour Hersh’s Article" (His article on the Nord Stream bombing) Special thanks to Dana Chavarria for the sound engineering! Music: "Hawks Can Go” by Mock Orange
08 Jan 19:39

UNLOCKED - #586 - A Newsroom with a View

Tom Roche

Luke and Will excellent as usual

On our Patreon, we will be discussing the full run of Aaron Sorkin's THE NEWSROOM. This is the first episode. Join us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/michaelandus
07 Jan 00:15

Ahir Shah's Seven Blunders of the World

Tom Roche

amusing, but note this is only part 1 of 3 (the rest of which will probably not be on this feed)

Inspired by an email from his 74 year-old father, comedian Ahir Shah introduces us to the The Seven Blunders of the World.

In 1925, Mahatma Gandhi published an article in the journal Young India, outlining what he called the Seven Social Sins. They were wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, religion without sacrifice, and politics without principle.

One hundred years on, the world is a very different place (this was written on a computer, for crying out loud!). Yet, Ahir reckons Gandhi's century-old list of the great societal blunders still feels relevant today. Could they teach us anything going forward?

Join Ahir (and sometimes his dad, who started this whole thing), as he explores these seven blunders through his trademark combination of philosophical inquiry, political vigour and sweet gags.

Created and Performed by Ahir Shah Additional Material by Glenn Moore Cast: Vikram Shah and Meera Syal Producers: Daisy Knight and Jules Lom An Avalon production for BBC Radio 4

06 Jan 23:01

Kris Carta: Shopping (Lists) with Emacs

by Kris Carta
Tom Roche

unfortunately /very/ Apple-dependent, but interesting in showing elisp calls to AppleScript (and pointing to additional resources)

At home, we're tying to re-establish a good weekly meal planning & grocery shopping routine.

For many years the steps have been:

  1. Open up Notion
  2. Make a new page like "Meal Plan: Week 2"
  3. Write down what we'll eat on each day
  4. For each meal, list out the items we need to get for it
  5. (Add anything else we need to get for the week, like detergent)

The end result looks something like this: Meal plan in Notion


With the meal plan written down, now we need to make a shopping list.

We've started using a shared "Shopping" list in Apple Reminders. The UX is great, and it all works quite well when we're actively shopping.1 2 We also have widgets on our phones so we can check the list with some quick gestures.

The irritating part is getting the items into the shopping list. I struggled to find a satisfying way to automate this part 😣3 (until now!) .

At an impasse, I had given up, and kept awkwardly copy-pasting the ingredients from Notion over to Apple Reminders - of course this felt wrong every time I did it!

Recently I came across this page showing how to invoke AppleScript from Emacs (because of course that's in Emacs!).

I loathe AppleScript far more than is probably healthy, but sometimes it's the right - i.e. only - tool for the job.

After many iterations and some consultations with my private Emacs tutor, ChatGPT, I scratched together a function to add an item into the Shopping list in Apple Reminders:

Note: if this code can be improved, let me know! I'm still a beginner here and guidance is greatly appreciated.

(defun my-add-item-to-shopping-reminders (item)
  "Prompt for ITEM and add it to the ‘Shopping’ list in Apple Reminders."
  (interactive "sAdd item to Shopping: ")
  (let ((as-command (format
	"tell application \"Reminders\"
		tell list \"Shopping\"
			make new reminder with properties {name:\"%s\"}
		end tell
	end tell"
	item)))
    (message "AppleScript: %s" as-command)  ;; Debug
    (shell-command (format "osascript -e '%s'" as-command))))

I ended up going with shell-command and osascript because I couldn't get past permissions issues between Emacs and Reminders when using do-applescript - I spent a lot of time troubleshooting this before finally giving up 😞

With this milestone reached, there was just one step remaining: process the shopping list items, using the power of Emacs 🙌

With a deal great more iterations and head-scratching, I managed to make a script that:

  1. Parses an Org buffer into an AST
  2. Gets all the list items from the AST
  3. Gets the content of the list items and pushes it into a list
  4. For each item in the list of content, calls AppleScript to add it to the Apple Reminders "Shopping" list.

Sidebar: The hardest part in my Emacs learning has been finding a good reference flow for Emacs / library API's. I know I can look things up in Emacs with C-h, but if I don't know what to look up, then I end up online and searching around aimlessly. This Org Element API is quite helpful, but I wish I knew how to 'discover' it in Emacs, and I still wish it were better organized and more detailed (without being able to put my finger on what exactly I feel like I'm missing).

The script:

(defun my-add-org-items-to-shopping-reminders ()
  "Extract all list items from the current Org buffer and add them to the 'Shopping' list in Apple Reminders."
  (interactive)
  (require 'org-element)
  ;; Extract all list items
  (let ((parsed (org-element-parse-buffer))
        (items '()))
    (org-element-map parsed 'item
      (lambda (item)
        (let ((content (org-element-property :contents-begin item))
              (end (org-element-property :contents-end item)))
          (when (and content end)
            (push (buffer-substring-no-properties content end) items)))))
    ;; Add each item to Apple Reminders
    (dolist (item (reverse items))
      (let ((as-command (format
                         "tell application \"Reminders\"
                            tell list \"Shopping\"
                              make new reminder with properties {name:\"%s\"}
                            end tell
                          end tell"
                         item)))
        (message "Adding to Reminders: %s" item)  ;; Debug
        (shell-command (format "osascript -e '%s'" as-command)))))
  (message "All items added to the 'Shopping' list."))

Now, I have a new routine:

  1. Make the Meal Plan in Notion as usual, with the lists of items we need to get at the store: Meal plan in Notion

  2. Copy the entire Notion page and paste it into an Emacs buffer (even *scratch* works for this): Meal plan in Markdown

  3. Convert Notion's Markdown into Org4 Meal plan in Org

  4. Run the command to send the list items to Apple Reminders: Command to send meal plan items to Apple Reminders

  5. Go shopping! 🛒 Shopping list in Apple Reminders

  1. As much as I otherwise love it, Notion has never been 'lightweight' to use on mobile, and is often a real distraction in cases where I just need something, like a checklist to quickly reference and update.

  2. Also, it's important to keep the meal planning in Notion, because my partner, as smart & wonderful as they otherwise are, is not about to start using some nerdy text editor (😿) or a half-baked app I've written myself (we have enough of those already). Much of our family planning, including our recipes, is also done in Notion.

  3. At least one that doesn't require adding an additional service promising to synchronize the two platforms - no thanks!

  4. Not shown: a simple function I have to convert md->org in the same buffer, using a shell command to pandoc. Also, I did have the thought to just process a md buffer, but I don't know of a good parser for that and I avoid writing regexes whenever possible. I'm fine with have one extra command in my process (for now 🙃).

06 Jan 18:09

The Annual Berlin Fireworks Discussion

by The Späti Boys
Tom Roche

excellent

Uma, Nick and Ciarán ring in the new year with a discussion of Berlin's fireworks tradition, Macron's arrogant comments in Mayotte and Musk's Op-Ed in Welt am Sonntag.

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05 Jan 23:44

Irreal: Writing With Doom

by jcs
Tom Roche

pullquote edited {for clarity, to fix typos}:
> The real value of [this article](https://discourse.doomemacs.org/t/emacs-for-writing-prose/515) (archived [here](http://web.archive.org/web/20241231030948/https://discourse.doomemacs.org/t/emacs-for-writing-prose/515)) is the workflow and strategy that Mediapathic uses to organize his books. It’s very Org-centric. An obvious benefit of Org is the outlining and the ability to easily move headlined sections around. But there’s more. You can use tags to control export, track characters and their characteristics, and other useful things. Another advantage to Org for some writers is folding. Mediapathic shows a bit of code that opens a new window with the file narrowed to the Org subtree that the point is in. There’s some other useful information and a bunch of links to other resources

Recently, some one posted a link to this post about using Emacs for writing. It was written by Mediapthatic in 2022 but still very useful and up to date. It takes the point of view of a book writer but is equally applicable to any type of writing.

The post assumes you’re using Doom Emacs and Evil but that manifests mainly in the key shortcuts used to invoke the various commands. It mostly uses vanilla Emacs (including Org) but also depends on Avy for a lot of its functionality. There are some other packages but they play fairly minor rolls.

The real value of the piece is the workflow and strategy that Mediapthatic uses to organize his books. It’s very Org-centric. The obvious benefit of Org is the outlining and the ability to easily move headlined sections around. But there’s more. You can use tags to control export, track characters and their characteristics, and other useful things. Take a look at the post for the details.

Another advantage to Org for some writers is folding. It allows you to essentially disappear all the text except for that portion you’re working on. Mediapthatic also shows a bit of code that opens a new window with the file narrowed to the Org subtree that the point is in.

There’s some other useful information and a bunch of links to other resources so if you’re interested in using Emacs for writing prose, take a look at Mediapthatic’s post.

05 Jan 22:38

126! A Brave New World

History of Persia is back as we enter the Hellenistic Age. From a veterans' revolt in Bactria to the Lamian War in Greece, Perdiccas became the new regent of Alexander the Great's Empire in a chaotic time of shifting allegiances.


The Hellenistic Age Podcast https://hellenisticagepodcast.wordpress.com/

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05 Jan 17:02

Nizami Ganjavi

Tom Roche

bit gushy, otherwise excellent

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the greatest romantic poets in Persian literature. Nizami Ganjavi (c1141–1209) is was born in the city of Ganja in what is now Azerbaijan and his popularity soon spread throughout the Persian-speaking lands and beyond. Nizami is best known for his Khamsa, a set of five epic poems that contains a famous retelling of the tragic love story of King Khosrow II (c570-628) and the Christian princess Shirin (unknown-628) and the legend of Layla and Majnun. Not only did he write romances: his poetry also displays a dazzling knowledge of philosophy, astronomy, botany and the life of Alexander the Great.

With

Christine van Ruymbeke Professor of Persian Literature and Culture at the University of Cambridge

Narguess Farzad Senior Lecturer in Persian Studies at SOAS, University of London

And

Dominic Parviz Brookshaw Professor of Persian Literature and Iranian Culture at the University of Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Laurence Binyon, The Poems of Nizami (The Studio Limited, 1928)

Barbara Brend, Treasures of Herat: Two Manuscripts of the Khamsah of Nizami in the British Library (Gingko, 2020)

Barbara Brend, The Emperor Akbar’s Khamsa of Nizami (British Library, 1995)

J-C. Burgel and C. van Ruymbeke, A Key to the Treasure of the Hakim: Artistic and Humanistic Aspects of Nizami Ganjavi’s Khamsa (Leiden University Press, 2011)

Nizami Ganjavi (trans. P.J. Chelkowski), Mirror of the Invisible World: Tales from the Khamseh of Nizami (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975)

Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Dick Davis), Layli and Majnun (Penguin Books, 2021)

Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Rudolf Gelpke), The Story of Layla and Majnun (first published 1966: Omega Publications, 1997)

Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Rudolf Gelpke), The Story of the Seven Princesses (Bruno Cassirer Ltd, 1976)

Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Julie Scott Meisami, The Haft Paykar: A Medieval Persian Romance (Oxford University Press, 1995)

Nizami Ganjavi (trans. Colin Turner), Layla and Majnun (Blake Publishing, 1997) Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, Hafiz and His Contemporaries: Poetry, Performance and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Iran (Bloomsbury, 2019)

Julie Scott Meisami, Medieval Persian Court Poetry (Princeton University Press, 2014)

Asghar Seyed-Gohrab, Layli and Majnun: Love, Madness and Mystic Longing in Nizami’s Epic Romance (Brill, 2003)

Kamran Talattof, Jerome W. Clinton, and K. Allin Luther, The Poetry of Nizami Ganjavi: Knowledge, Love, and Rhetoric (Palgrave, 2000)

C. van Ruymbeke, Science and Poetry in Medieval Persia: The Botany of Nizami's Khamsa (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

05 Jan 02:35

Best Bet for 2025: Stronger Trade Ties Between Europe and China

by Adam Fishbein
Tom Roche

has useful (if too short--only 2022-2029) table comparing PRC to US GDPs in PPP-equivalent currency

One development for 2025 that can be seen clearly in the crystal ball is improving trade ties between China and Europe. The reason this is a virtual certainty is Donald Trump is doing everything he can to convince the world that, under his leadership, the United States is an unreliable trading partner.

He already worked hard to establish this point in his first term when he arbitrarily slapped tariffs on various imports from Canada and the European Union. His ostensible rationale was national defense, but no one outside of Mar-a-Lago could take that one seriously. We worried that we may not be able to get steel from Canada if the US is engaged in a war with another country? Or maybe we’re worried we will be at war with Canada, and they will cut us off. 

But Trump is showing that the craziness will get even worse in his second term. Before even taking office Trump made strong demands that Canada and Mexico essentially do things they are already doing (block drug shipments and restrict the flow of immigrants) or he will slap 25 percent taxes on all the goods we import from them.

This is bizarre from many angles, but most notably because Trump’s proposed import taxes would be a flagrant violation of the trade agreement he negotiated with Mexico and Canada just four and a half years ago. If Trump can just toss into the garbage a trade deal with two of our closest allies — one that he widely trumpeted at the time — then what would be the value of any deal he would strike with European countries? Clearly Trump does not feel bound by his commitments and there is no one in the US political structure who can force Trump to adhere to agreements made by the government, even when it was Trump himself who made the deal.

This is the way Trump has always done business. He routinely reneged on his commitments and often refused to pay contractors after they had done work on his projects. Many contractors would insist on payment in advance from Trump because they knew they would have a tough time collecting after the fact.

If the US is not going to be a reliable trading partner for at least the next four years, and possibly many more years into the future, Europe would be wise to look elsewhere. And there is one obvious elsewhere: China.

China’s economy is in fact already considerably larger than the US economy and growing far more rapidly. This fact is obscured by the tendency in the US media to use exchange rate measures of GDP, rather than purchasing power parity (PPP) measures. 

An exchange rate measure simply takes a country’s GDP, measured in its own currency, and then converts it into dollars at the current exchange rate. By contrast, a PPP measure uses a common set of prices to assess the value of all the goods and services produced in each country. This would mean that we apply the same price for a car, a computer, and a haircut, in both the US and China. Economists would usually argue that for most purposes the PPP measure is more useful.

By this measure, China’s economy grew larger than the US economy roughly a decade ago. It is now almost 30 percent larger, and according to I.M.F. projections will be more than 40 percent larger by the end of the decade. It’s not clear why the U.S. media insists on using the exchange rate measure of GDP in reporting that routinely refers to China as the world’s second-largest economy, perhaps it’s just nationalistic chauvinism. In any case, that call reflects political biases not realities in the world.

The larger size of China’s economy makes it a more attractive trading partner in any case, but it is also more likely to stick to its commitments than the United States as long as Donald Trump is in charge. For this reason, we can be fairly certain that Europe will be looking to shore up its trade relations with China as Donald Trump puts on his clown show in Washington and Mar-a-Lago.

The post Best Bet for 2025: Stronger Trade Ties Between Europe and China appeared first on Center for Economic and Policy Research.

05 Jan 02:24

Empire and the Missing Western Left – Adnan Husain (DCC66)

Tom Roche

excellent though truncated

Devil's Chess Club is part of the American Exception podcast on Patreon [ www.patreon.com/americanexception ]. Subscribe for access to past and future episodes of American Exception and Devil's Chess Club! We are joined by Adnan Husain, a historian of both Medieval Europe and of the Middle East. Adnan is Associate Professor, Queen's National Scholar Graduate Chair, and Director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. He is also the co-host of the Guerilla History podcast [ https://guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/ ]. We discuss a number of topics including the state of the Empire, the absence of an effectual Western Left, the state of the Middle East, and the determinants of US foreign policy. Special thanks to: * Dana Chavarria, production * Casey Moore, graphics * Michelle Boley, animated intro * Mock Orange, music
04 Jan 19:01

Seeking a Fren: Episode 4 - Vidya Killed the Radio Star

Tom Roche

another VERY EXCELLENT (and amusing) SFEW

Another brutal defeat leaves the right angrier than ever, and both the successes and failures of the left drive them to even darker places as the question of who is in charge of the party becomes much murkier.


This episode draws from William H. Tucker’s The Funding of Scientific Racism, Joshua Green’s Devil’s Bargain, and Deva R. Woodley’s Reckoning. For a full list of sources, check our works cited doc here: www.chapotraphouse.com/seeking

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04 Jan 18:46

The US stock market is in the biggest bubble in history. The entire economy is at risk.

Tom Roche

VERY EXCELLENT--as usual, Norton's argument is empirically verified and logically correct ... and, here, very scary ...

The US stock market is in "the mother of all bubbles", with the market capitalization of publicly traded companies at 206% of GDP. This is higher than the dot-com bubble of 2000, and even the peak of the crash of 1929. Meanwhile, just 25 companies make up over half of the weight of the S&P 500, and the Magnificent 7 Big Tech monopolies are 35% of the market cap of the index. However, the US economy was built upon this financial house of cards, and politicians are profiting from it. Ben Norton explains the dangers. VIDEO with charts here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rguHublkxCQ Topics 0:00 American exceptionalism 0:53 US stock market is over 60% of world 1:16 USA is 74% of MSCI World Index 2:10 Top 25 companies in world 3:29 Exorbitant privilege of US dollar 4:59 S&P 500 and Nasdaq indices 6:07 Magnificent 7 6:50 Just 25 companies make up 50.3% of S&P 500 8:26 Tesla is insanely overvalued 12:03 Big US companies are really financial firms 13:11 How to measure a bubble 14:15 Buffett Indicator (market cap to GDP) 15:57 Public & private equities to GDP 17:00 How the US government inflated the bubble 21:10 Richest 10% of Americans own 93% of stocks 22:23 Warren Buffett's warnings 23:56 Berkshire Hathaway dumps stocks 26:32 Jeff Bezos sells Amazon shares 27:22 Mark Zuckerberg sells Meta stocks 27:40 Elon Musk sold Tesla shares 28:08 The "greatest bubble in human history" 30:27 Alan Greenspan and "irrational exuberance" 31:16 Fears of "pent-up exuberance" 32:19 P/E ratios 33:41 Irrational investing 34:54 Donald Trump's tax cuts help the rich 37:54 Trump and Ronald Reagan 39:04 Trickle-down economics 41:16 Wall Street fills Trump's cabinet 42:02 Financialization of US economy 43:44 Will Trump reverse de-industrialization? 45:38 Real estate & homelessness 46:38 US dollar 47:34 Wall Street vs Main Street 49:06 Outro
02 Jan 16:41

Jeffrey Sachs and Aaron Good Discuss ‘American Exception: Empire and the Deep State’ (DCC61)

Tom Roche

VERY EXCELLENT wrapper to [Jeffrey Sachs' interview of Good](https://www.buzzsprout.com/1648477/episodes/15781327-season-4-episode-1-aaron-good-american-exception-empire-and-the-deep-state.mp3) (from [Book Club With Jeffrey Sachs](https://bookclubwithjeffreysachs.org/)]). This audio is much larger (199 MB vs 75), but Good's intro (TT:TT-TT:TT) and outro (TT:TT-TT:TT) audio is well worth the space/time.

Devil's Chess Club is part of the American Exception podcast on Patreon [ www.patreon.com/americanexception ]. Subscribe for access to past and future episodes of American Exception and Devil's Chess Club! This special episode features Professor Jeffrey Sachs interviewing Aaron Good about 'American Exception: Empire and the Deep State'. The interview was for Professor Sachs' excellent podcast and video series, Book Club With Jeffrey Sachs [ https://bookclubwithjeffreysachs.org/ ]. We decided to make a DCC episode which includes the interview, along with extra material before and after the discussion in which I speak about Jeffrey Sachs and then, eventually, about the history and and scholarship behind the concept of the deep state. I encourage everyone to follow Book Club With Jeffrey Sachs [ https://bookclubwithjeffreysachs.org/ ]. The Professor is a great interviewer, and his choices of books and authors are excellent. They have a YouTube channel [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXvuOG33zLs&list=PLprXkx-4Du8LthJd7fLlSXeTmUxlZ9xyC&index=23 ] and they are on the major podcasting apps. Image: American Exception, by Abby Martin, graphics by Casey Moore--cover art for American Exception: Empire and the Deep State (Skyhorse Publishing: New York, 2022) by Aaron Good Special thanks to: * Dana Chavarria, production * Casey Moore, graphics * Michelle Boley, animated intro * Mock Orange, music
02 Jan 16:36

Inside the hands-on lab of an experimental archaeologist

by Jennifer Ouellette
Tom Roche

excellent--one of the better AT articles

Back in 2019, we told you about an intriguing experiment to test a famous anthropological legend about an elderly Inuit man in the 1950s who fashioned a knife out of his own frozen feces. He used it to kill and skin a dog, using its rib cage as a makeshift sled to venture off into the Arctic. Metin Eren, an archaeologist at Kent State University, fashioned rudimentary blades out of his own frozen feces to test whether they could cut through pig hide, muscle, and tendon.

Sadly for the legend, the blades failed every test, but the study was colorful enough to snag Eren an Ig Nobel Prize the following year. And it's just one of the many fascinating projects routinely undertaken in his Experimental Archaeology Laboratory, where he and his team try to reverse-engineer all manner of ancient technologies, whether they involve stone tools, ceramics, metal, butchery, textiles, and so forth.

Eren's lab is quite prolific, publishing 15 to 20 papers a year. “The only thing we’re limited by is time,” he said. Many have colorful or quirky elements and hence tend to garner media attention, but Eren emphasizes that what he does is very much serious science, not entertainment. “I think sometimes people look at experimental archaeology and think it’s no different from LARPing,” Eren told Ars. “I have nothing against LARPers, but it’s very different. It’s not playtime. It’s hardcore science. Me making a stone tool is no different than a chemist pouring chemicals into a beaker. But that act alone is not the experiment. It might be the flashiest bit, but that's not the experimental process.”

Read full article

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01 Jan 02:39

E191 - Grand Strategies of the Left w/ Van Jackson

Tom Roche

This interview with Van Jackson (@ Victoria U Wellington) is nominally a review of his book [/Grand Strategies of the Left: The Foreign Policy of Progressive Worldmaking/](https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009002080), but actually provides a VERY EXCELLENT (informative and entertaining) overview of contemporary US "grand strategy" (/GS/) aka highest-level international-relations (/IR/) theory as taught/practiced in the deepstate. Lots of just discussion, but topics covered include:

* nesting of disciplines: "security studies" within IR within political science (aka /polisci/)
* definition of "grand strategy"? Bessner asks, but they never deliver.
* key GS texts:
***** George F. Kennan's 22 Feb 1946 /Long Telegram/ and Jul 1947 /Foreign Affairs/ article /The Sources of Soviet Conduct/ (written as "X")
***** esp for primacy theory (below): John Mearsheimer, /The Tragedy of Great Power Politics/
***** esp for offshore balancing (below): Christopher Layne, /The Peace of Illusions/
* dominant {frameworks, currents, categories of theories} in GS today, as defined by Posen and Ross 1996 (/Competing Visions for US Grand Strategy/):
***** /primacy/: rationalist, realist, preoccupation with threats and "great power competition" within international anarchy, but assuming global interests must be protected
***** /neo-isolationism/: rationalist, realist, but unlike primacy theory does /not/ assume global interests, instead focuses on leveraging US geostrategic position (e.g., large oceans east and west, vassals north and south)
***** /offshore balancing/ (aka /selective engagement/): rationalist, realist, more global than neo-isolationism but less global than primacy theory, inherits/extends "balance of power" theory, focuses on "key regions."
***** /neoliberal institutionalism/: rationalist, liberal, seeking global peace/security through/foregrounding multilateral/international institutions primarily to foster "free" trade and capital mobility (and backgrounding military power, hence not "realist")
where
***** "rationalist" in their terms ~= rational-choice theory (esp game theory) applied to IR (vs its original home in economics)
***** "realist" ~= 'foregrounding military power' in the context of international anarchy
* Jackson's political/intellectual journey: datasources, personality
* Trump as continuity in US-practice IR (i.e., what deepstate does vs what deepstate-friendly academics theorize about IR)
* 3 "progressive grand strategies" (plus critiques, in the audio):
***** "shared principles": antimilitarism, economic equality, anti-authoritarianism, solidarity
1. "progressive pragmatism": either primacy theory or "liberal internationalism" (Jackson means neoliberal institutionalism?) but with a "veneer" of one or more of the shared principles
2. "anti-hegemonism": Bessner (who identifies as anti-hegemonist) summarizes as (edited for clarity) "assumes people in given region are best situated to make decisions about that region." A type of anti-imperialism.
3. "peacemaking": "peaceful ends require peaceful means," so need to design international institutions (à la neoliberal institutionalism) "not around power-balancing" (à la {offshore balancing, selective engagement}) and definitely not military-or-mostly institutions (presumably à la NATO, though Jackson and Bessner don't say this).

Danny welcomes back to the program Van Jackson, senior lecturer in international relations at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, to explore grand strategy and a progressive foreign policy to make a more just and stable world. They discuss where grand strategy falls in the fields of political science and international relations, dominant grand strategies like offshore balancing, neoliberal institutionalism, and anti-hegemonism, how these strategies relate to what's happening in DC, and more.


Grab a copy of Van's book Grand Strategies of the Left: The Foreign Policy of Progressive Worldmaking.


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31 Dec 19:26

Day 439: Questions and answers

Tom Roche

VERY EXCELLENT, esp Resistance Report (82:03-126:19 in the audio)

Watch entire broadcast here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAp4XkI__fM We take questions from our audience in this special episode.
31 Dec 17:55

Irreal: Emacs Only Static Blog Site

by jcs

Every Irreal reader who’s paying even a little attention knows that this site is WordPress based. It’s been that way since 2011, and I’m pretty satisfied with it as a blogging platform. Still, it would be nice to have a bit more control and not have to suffer the occasional WordPress vagary.

The thing is, most of the static site solutions involve something like Hugo, which, as far as I know, is an excellent piece of software but is just another thing that I don’t have control over and doubtless comes with its own set of problems.

James Dyer is a Hugo user but, like me, would like to have a process that is completely Emacs centric. Therefore, he has been running an experiment in using Org-publish as the basis of his blog publishing workflow without depending on any external software. Right now, he’s considering this a backup to his Hugo-based system and his workflow includes importing the posts from the Hugo workflow to the Org-publish one. If the experiment is a success, he will be able to replace his Hugo workflow to one that is entirely Emacs based.

If you’re interested in having a static blog site, take a look at Dyer’s post for some good ideas for a starting point. Emacs really can handle the whole process as Dyer shows.

31 Dec 02:32

The End of Syria – Larry Wilkerson (DCC64)

Tom Roche

VERY EXCELLENT, unfortunately truncated

Devil's Chess Club is part of the American Exception podcast on Patreon [ www.patreon.com/americanexception ]. Subscribe for access to past and future episodes of American Exception and Devil's Chess Club! To discuss the cataclysmic fall of the Syrian government, we are joined again by Lawrence Wilkerson. He is a retired United States Army Colonel and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Special thanks to: * Dana Chavarria, production * Casey Moore, graphics * Michelle Boley, animated intro * Mock Orange, music
31 Dec 02:32

The Hot Royal Frosty Treatment part 1 (feat. Josie Parkinson & Kate Cheka)

by The Späti Boys
Tom Roche

amusing, but unfortunately this ep only covers (not /quite/ solely to smother with abuse :-) 'Hot Frosty'--'The Royal Treatment' will only be on the paywalled part 2 of 2

Heya, it's the holiday season so Nick and Ciarán have on the Wine Queens (Josie Parkinson and Kate Cheka) to talk about the Netflix Christmas movies Hot Frosty (2024) and The Royal Treatment (2022). Part 2 is available now but only on Patreon.com/cornerspaeti

We'll be off for a week and back to you in the new year.

To you and yours, we wish you a very merry cum.

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