h/t WRSA

We are taught that history is linear progress, but it’s cylical

Note: We can learn a lot from old dead white guys.

Twenty-two centuries ago, some Greek bloke called Polybius was hauled to Rome as a hostage, and he spent his captivity studying the place, not as a tourist, but the way a doctor studies a patient he already suspects is dying.

His conclusion was that no form of government lasts. They turn into one another, in order, like a wheel coming round.

The men who win a thing know what it cost, because it cost them. Their grandchildren are handed it for nothing, and nobody values what they were handed for nothing, so they spend it. The rot is that forgetting.

Some medieval Arab judge named Ibn Khaldun spent his life watching hard desert tribes conquer the soft cities of North Africa and then, within a few generations, go soft themselves and get conquered in their turn.

He had a name for the thing that held the conquerors together: ”asabiyyah”. It’s the loyalty you only get out of people who have starved and bled beside one another. Hardship makes it, and then comfort eats it.

He even put a clock on the decay: about four generations from the founder, who remembers, to the great-grandson, who looks at the whole inheritance and assumes, in Khaldun’s phrase, that it “was not built through effort” — that it had simply always been there, like the hills, and that one lets it slip.

A dying civilisation does throw up its strong man, Spengler granted. The chaos becomes unbearable, and somebody grips the wheel.

But that man may not be the cure. He’s perhaps the last symptom of the rot.

Continue reading …

How Christian-on-Christian Violence Perfected the Binary and Prepared the Modern Mind for Its Final Enclosure

Note: This is a follow up to The Finite Creed by E.M. Burlingame. More unsettling history. We really need to know how we got to where we are today.

Before proceeding, it is important to understand what enclosure is and why it’s so critical to our understanding of all that’s been, all that is occurring and all that follows. Enclosure is the oldest instrument of power — the fencing-off of what was once common and open, free, a field or a forest or a people’s shared ground, into parcels that can be owned, counted, and governed; and the enclosure of the mind is that same act turned inward, the conversion of the boundless open field of what a person might think into a narrow set of fenced and permitted positions among which they remain free only to choose. This is the one enclosure worth any price to a power that lives by owning people, for a fence around a field still needs a guard and a chain around a body still needs a jailer, but a wall built inside the mind is patrolled by the very prisoner it contains — which is why such powers will spend whole treasuries and whole centuries to raise it: the mind that encloses itself is the only subject who never has to be watched, never has to be paid for, and never tries to escape, because it has mistaken the wall for the world and the warden’s voice for its own.

This work follows the refinement of that enclosure across five movements, from Constantine’s pivot at the Milvian Bridge in 312 to the founding of the Bank of England in 1694. Most of its claims are structural rather than conspiratorial, and I’ll keep that distinction in view: an institution carrying a particular logic, applied generation after generation by administrators trained in that same logic, produces consistent results without needing a single guiding hand. Correlation of interest isn’t conspiracy. Institutions carry logic the way rivers carry water — not by intention, but by the shape of the channel. Where the argument does claim intention — and at one point it will, plainly — I’ll say so.

Continue reading …

“For Aristotle, democracy is possible only within homogeneous ethnic groups, while despots have always reigned over highly fragmented societies.

A multi-ethnic society is thus necessarily anti-democratic and chaotic, for it lacks ‘philia’, this profound, flesh and blood fraternity of citizens.

Tyrants and despots divide and rule, they want the city divided by ethnic rivalries. The indispensable condition for ensuring a people’s sovereignty accordingly resides in its unity. Ethnic chaos prevents all ‘philia’ from developing.”

— Guillaume Faye

From Grok:

President Trump’s reported account describes an Iranian drone lodging between two US Apache pilots over the Strait of Hormuz without exploding, later igniting during landing, leading the pilots to ditch the helicopter into the sea for a historic first rescue by an unmanned US Navy surface drone.

US Central Command conducted retaliatory strikes targeting Iranian air defense, radar, and surveillance sites near the strait after the June 9 incident, described as a proportional self-defense response amid ongoing fragile ceasefires involving Iran, Israel, and Hezbollah.

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Maximum speed of the drone is 115 mph. Cruising speed for the Apache is 165 mph with a top speed of 182 mph. No mention of how the drone was able to enter the helicopter but here is Grok’s analysis:

According to President Trump’s account (and consistent with U.S. officials’ descriptions of a collision), this was not the drone peacefully flying inside like a bird through an open window. It was a high-speed impact during a low-altitude patrol:

• The drone struck the Apache with enough kinetic energy to shatter or penetrate the canopy and/or side fuselage panels.
• On impact, the drone’s lightweight composite wings and structure likely sheared or crumpled, while its denser central fuselage (containing the engine, fuel, and warhead) punched inward and became physically embedded in the narrow space between the two tandem seats.
• The armored crew compartment is designed to survive 23 mm cannon fire, but a 200 kg drone hitting at 100+ mph is a completely different level of energy transfer—enough to breach the plexiglass canopy and outer skin without necessarily destroying the entire airframe instantly.

Here is Grok’s analysis of the drone’s structural integrity:

Core Materials and Construction

• Wings: Fiberglass (sometimes with carbon fiber reinforcement in Russian versions). They incorporate an internal honeycomb core for added rigidity while keeping weight extremely low (~200 kg total drone mass). This honeycomb also reduces radar cross-section (RCS) by absorbing/scattering radar waves. osmp.ngo
• Fuselage: Early Iranian versions use lightweight honeycomb throughout. Russian-produced Geran-2s upgraded to fiberglass over woven carbon fiber for slightly better production consistency and durability—but it remains a thin, non-armored composite shell.
• Overall airframe: Delta-wing layout with a simple central fuselage blending into the wings. Some analyses describe the build as “largely foam and plywood” (or foam-core composites) for extreme cost-cutting. tdhj.org No metal armor, reinforced cockpit, or crash-resistant structure—everything prioritizes cheap production, range (up to ~2,000 km in standard form), and basic stealth over toughness.

Needless to say, this is the biggest fish story that I have ever read.

Tillis never represented North Carolina. The epitome of the greedy and corrupt political elite.

This is why Belfast is burning … About time.

Read the Zerohedge post …

h/t WRSA

A truly bizarre series of events off the coast of Iran today (yesterday as this is posted) that in my opinion were entirely provoked, if not staged, by the US. It started with multiple news reports that a US Army Apache helicopter had been shot down in the Persian Gulf but the two pilots emerged unscathed. What the hell was an Apache helicopter doing? The AH-64 Apache is a twin-engine attack helicopter primarily designed for anti-armor warfare, close air support, and armed reconnaissance. Apparently it was conducting reconnaissance. The US claims that Iran shot it down, but Iran insists it did no such thing.

I am bothered by the claim it was shot down… If the rocket or bullets had hit the cockpit or damaged the main rotor, the craft would have plunged into the water and the pilots would not have survived. So what happened? Was one of the twin engines damaged but still able to function? Was the rear rotor damaged? Those are the only two scenarios I can imagine that would not have caused a catastrophic crash. Once the helo landed in the water, the pilots had to open the canopy and jump into the water. Hopefully the main rotor — assuming it was intact when the copter hit the water — shattered on impact. Otherwise, the pilots would have been shredded trying to escape.

I think that today’s US attack on Iran was an effort to scuttle the negotiations. While Iran struck back hard at targets in Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan and Kurdish controlled territory in northern Iraq, it limited its retaliation. Iran apparently still believes that there is a viable accord that will end the war, not only the attacks on Iran, but also bring security to Lebanon and Gaza. The onus is on Donald Trump to force Israel to accept the terms. That has the Zionists very nervous, which explains why they are spying on Trump’s negotiators.

Continue reading at Sonar21 …