no gods, no masters, no cult leaders …

image on Twitter – see notes below and tweeted Globe and Mail article, archived*


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*a link; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer; see also the about post and the archives of miscellany, notrehta, or fw posts

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spin of core not same as spin of mantle

image on Twitter – see notes and tweeted article in Nature, archived*



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*a link; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer; see also the about post and the archives of miscellany, notrehta, or fw posts

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that the war in Ukraine was unprovoked ‘is a fairy tale for idiots and children’ (@caitoz)


see tweeted article, archived*

Caitlin Johnstone:
So, make no mistake, behind all the phony hand-wringing and flag-waving, the U.S.-centralized empire is getting exactly what it wants from this conflict. It gets to overextend Russia militarily and financially, promote its narratives around the world, rehabilitate the image of U.S. interventionism, expand internet censorship, expand militarily, bolster control over its European client states. And all it costs is a little pretend empire money that gets funneled into the military-industrial complex anyway.

Which is why when it looked like peace was at risk of breaking out in the early days of the conflict, the empire sent in former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson to tell Zelensky that even if he is ready for the war to end, his partners to the West were not.

Boris Johnson, then UK prime minister, with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev, April 9, 2022. (Ukraine government)

So, as you can see, the notion that this war is “unprovoked” is a fairy tale for idiots and children; there’s no excuse for a grown adult with internet access and functioning brain matter to ever say such a thing.

Had China backed a coup in Mexico and now had a loyal vassal in Mexico City who was letting Beijing distribute weapons along the U.S. border while continually shelling English-speaking separatists in Baja California who are seeking U.S. annexation, there’s no question that Washington would consider this a provocation and would respond accordingly. You can tell me that’s not true, but we’d both know you’re lying.



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*a link; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer; see also the about post and the archives of miscellany, notrehta, or fw posts

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George Monbiot: Can we feed ourselves without devouring the planet?





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*a link; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer; see also the about post and the archives of miscellany, notrehta, or fw posts




fossil fuel stays in the ground when cheaper thermal energy flows as a metered service*
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one more red line: Crimea

image from tweet on 2023-01-18 by antiwar.com*

Chomsky on the invasion of Ukraine that began February 24, 2022:
Of course, it was provoked. Otherwise, they wouldn't refer to it all the time as an unprovoked invasion. By now, censorship in the United States has reached such a level beyond anything in my lifetime. Such a level that you are not permitted to read the Russian position. Literally. Americans are not allowed to know what the Russians are saying. Except, selected things. So, if Putin makes a speech to Russians with all kinds of outlandish claims about Peter the Great and so on, then, you see it on the front pages. If the Russians make an offer for a negotiation, you can’t find it. That's suppressed. You’re not allowed to know what they are saying. I have never seen a level of censorship like this.

source: Common Dreams, 2022-06-25, archived*
from an op-ed by the then associate editor Seamus Milne in the Guardian, April 30, 2014:

After Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia, the bulk of the western media abandoned any hint of even-handed coverage. So Putin is now routinely compared to Hitler, while the role of the fascistic right on the streets and in the new Ukrainian regime has been airbrushed out of most reporting as Putinist propaganda.

So you don't hear much about the Ukrainian government's veneration of wartime Nazi collaborators and pogromists, or the arson attacks on the homes and offices of elected communist leaders, or the integration of the extreme Right Sector into the national guard, while the anti-semitism and white supremacism of the government's ultra-nationalists is assiduously played down, and false identifications of Russian special forces are relayed as fact.

The reality is that, after two decades of eastward Nato expansion, this crisis was triggered by the west's attempt to pull Ukraine decisively into its orbit and defence structure, via an explicitly anti-Moscow EU association agreement. Its rejection led to the Maidan protests and the installation of an anti-Russian administration – rejected by half the country – that went on to sign the EU and International Monetary Fund agreements regardless.

No Russian government could have acquiesced in such a threat from territory that was at the heart of both Russia and the Soviet Union. Putin's absorption of Crimea and support for the rebellion in eastern Ukraine is clearly defensive, and the red line now drawn: the east of Ukraine, at least, is not going to be swallowed up by Nato or the EU.

source: The Guardian, archived*

from an article by the then columnist John Pilger in the Guardian, May 13, 2014:

Why do we tolerate the threat of another world war in our name? Why do we allow lies that justify this risk? The scale of our indoctrination, wrote Harold Pinter, is a "brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis", as if the truth "never happened even while it was happening".

Every year the American historian William Blum publishes his "updated summary of the record of US foreign policy" which shows that, since 1945, the US has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.

source: The Guardian, archived*

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*a link; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer; see also the about post and the archives of miscellany, notrehta, or fw posts

site:twitter.com “warnings, from Kissinger to Mearsheimer” (!?) / on what was coming if we continued down the same path – see thread*



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Why was Roman concrete so durable?





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*a link; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer; see also the about post and the archives of miscellany, notrehta, or fw posts
Posted

thorium-powered 560°C heat source in standard 40’ container

The company has energy as a service (!*) as its business model to “develop, build, maintain, and decommission a fleet of autonomous reactors, … to sell energy as a service through the heat transferred to [its] customers via 560°C hot salt and metered by the MWh.”

image from tweet in notes below

please see also James Hansen on nuclear power in the post thorium: no meltdowns, no bombs
For us to halt and reverse climate change at our current level of energy use or higher requires us “to develop a new generation of nuclear-power plants, which use thorium-fueled molten salt reactors [an alternative nuclear technology] that fundamentally cannot have a meltdown.” James Hansen (Rolling Stone, 22 December 2016 )*


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*a link; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer; see also the about post and the archives of miscellany, notrehta, or fw posts


Each of the 25 numbered sheds contains two 40-foot containers and each of these generates 100 MWt.
The configuration generates enough thermal energy for a (formerly coal-fired) power station rated at 1 GWe.

Thomas Jam Pedersen (!*) at TEDx Copenhagen in 2016:



transcript of an interview dated 2022-01-17
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Unitarian principles betrayed

from Free Black Thought:
Extremist social justice theology betrays Unitarian Universalist principles


see tweeted article, archived*


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*a link; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer; see also the about post and the archives of miscellany, notrehta, or fw posts

once again: dogma and hierarchy (!*)

from Chris Hedges:
Paul Tillich wrote that all institutions, including the church, are inherently demonic. Reinhold Niebuhr asserted that no institution could ever achieve the morality of the individual. Institutions, he warned, to extend their lives when confronted with collapse, will swiftly betray the stances that ostensibly define them. Only individual men and women have the strength to hold fast to virtue when faced with the threat of death. And decaying institutions, including the church, when consumed by fear, swiftly push those endowed with this moral courage and radicalism from their ranks, rendering themselves obsolete.*


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