The micromanagement of the universities is indeed breathtaking.

Now I get it, when there's an institution, as we also have, as something like the "Ministry of Education", it is sure that schools and universities and especially the principals, rectors and deans that they have, do have their work time filled with applying to the standards and the instructions from the "ministry". Because what else would a "ministry" or a "department" do other than give standards and instructions? Yet this is normal bureaucracy.

Yet this goes indeed deeper, because there's a genuine hostility against the educational institutions. The common right-wing understanding goes that educational system and the academy has been overtaken by the Marxists, hence you have to fight these institutions. They are basically bad and don't do their job well. One should have noticed even here in the PF the threads about how this happened.

So what's the answer? All that you see the Trump administration doing now. Micromanagement of the curriculum and all the ugly stuff you are seeing now how especially universities are harassed by the Trump administration.

As one commenter put it: it's like going after a fly with a bazooka. Firing that bazooka (especially in a closed area with a lot of people) will surely bring far more devastation than killing a fly. If it's killed, btw.

Oh, this is what basically Trump and the MAGA voters have drooled about for a long time: having riot police and the army cracking down on immigrant protesters waving Mexican flags (even if there's a couple of Stars & Stripes flags there, doesn't matter). They are genuinely happy about it, perhaps some even enthusiastic.

This hides the fact that actually Trump administration, this one and the earlier one, has had difficulties in sending back as much illegal immigrants as other administrations because of the simple fact that illegal immigrants simply won't try to come to the US when Trump is in charge. Just as tourists are now avoiding the ugly police state that TACO's US is now. And Canadians for obvious reasons because of Trump's absolutely disgusting behavior towards Canada.

Maybe if Trump starts to abuse his authority further but we're not there yet and the culture war is enough of a distraction currently to get people to accept what's going on. — Mr Bee

There's a long way still to go with the Trump administration.

Do note that Democrats are still viewed as "normal Americans". So just let the effects of the tariffs take their effect on the economy. Perhaps there's more "Liberation Days" still ahead. Who knows about all that winning...

Finally, Trump is getting his riots. He has wanted this so much. And just where he wants them most, in pinko liberal California with an annoying governor.

He was so angry that last time during the BLM riots his people, starting from the Defence Secretary, didn't go along on what he wanted. Now it's different. Hegseth is eagerly promising Marines, the regular armed forces, to be deployed.

Oh, Trump really loves to hear that.

Putin's Normal behaviour. And that is what the Russia armed forces can do.

Large cities are easy targets.

I think the use of tactical nuclear weapons is only going to be used if somehow the Russian front is in such a dire position that it could collapse. Or the state looks to collapse. This is directly from the Russian doctrine, and they will likely follow their doctrine.

First of all, destroying the Ukrainian military is actually very difficult with nuclear weapons. Above all, what if Ukraine doesn't immediately seek peace. You escalate? How many nukes will you use after the the first strike? You go and demolish Kyiv?

Then once tactical nukes are used, you cannot go through the radiated area. Then you have the question of radiation fallout: what if the winds start moving the fallout into Russian territory? How will the Russians take that? China has said it's against the use of nuclear weapons. What then will be the response of your most important ally?

Once Russia would use nuclear weapons, basically the Pandora's box is opened. Likely many European countries would take defense against Russia just as seriously as Finland, the Baltics and Poland do. Enlarging nuclear deterrence in Europe would be likely. Germany or Poland acquiring a nuclear deterrent might happen then.

If people have not noticed, two nuclear armed countries, India and Pakistan, just a brief time ago went and had a limited war. They exchanged missiles and artillery fire, but then stopped. Let that above just sink in: we have already witnessed how two nuclear armed states fight each other conventionally without the conflict escalating to nuclear weapons. (This was actually the second or third time for those two countries.)

NATO can indeed respond to a Russia nuclear strike on Ukraine. Even if you have TACO as POTUS. The assumption that this will lead to an all out war and to a total nuclear exchange is a false assumption. The likeliest outcome is that NATO will make some hard hitting and crippling strikes that are indeed annoying to Russia, but then they will stop. Likely as they have said, without using nuclear weapons.

And then what will Russia do? How would the situation be then better for Russia? Likely it will be in a worse situation. And this is something that clearly Putin and the Russia military staff has already thought about. "Escalate to de-escalate" is something that the West already knows and has thought about for a long time. If it wouldn't be so, then it could really be that "Escalate to de-escalate" could work. That Russia used tactical nukes against Ukraine and this would make Europe to panic and insist that Ukraine takes the Russian "peace" deal alongside TACO.

Yet that's something that Russia cannot count on to happen. Thus the use of nukes is unlikely in my view.

It's just wonderful that after everything Elon is now going after Trump. What better than two annoying assholes going at each other. (Of course, the stuff has been known for a long time, yet since both Trump and Clinton have their Epstein links, it's understandable that the partisan hacks haven't looked at the whole issue)




Now Bannon wants Elon to be deported. Ah, these MAGA people are so hilarious.

A crucial distinction emerges between subjective and objective dimensions of these certainties. While our relationship to hinges involves unquestioning acceptance, this certainty is not merely psychological. These assumptions are shaped by our interactions with a world that both constrains and enables our practices. The certainty reflected in our actions has an objective component, as it emerges from our shared engagement with reality and proves itself through the successful functioning of our practices. — Moliere

Everything is about objectivity and subjectivity, actually. It's not merely a psychological issue, but simply logical. We can easily understand subjectivity as someone's (or some things) point of view and objectivity as "a view without a viewpoint". To put this into a logical and mathematical context makes it a bit different. Here both Gödel and Wittgenstein are extremely useful.

In logic and math a true statement that is objective can be computed and ought to be provable. Yet when it's subjective, this isn't so: something subjective refers to itself.

Do note the self-referential aspect Gödel's incompleteness theorems, even if Gödel smartly avoids direct circular reference of Russell's Paradox. Yet I would argue that Wittgenstein observes this even in the Tractatus Logicus Philosophicus as he thinks about Russell's paradox:

3.332 3.332 No proposition can say anything about itself, because the propositional sign cannot be contained in itself (that is the “whole theory of types”).

3.333 A function cannot be its own argument, because the functional sign already contains the prototype of its own argument and it cannot contain itself. If, for example, we suppose that the function F(fx) could be its own argument, then there would be a proposition “F(F(fx))”, and in this the outer function F and the inner function F must have different meanings; for the inner has the form ϕ(fx), the outer the form ψ(ϕ(fx)). Common to both functions is only the letter “F”, which by itself signifies nothing.This is at once clear, if instead of “F(F(u))” we write “There exists g : F(gu). gu = Fu”.

Herewith Russell’s paradox vanishes.

Here I think it's very important to understand just what is objective and what is subjective in this context. An objective model can is true when it models reality correctly and can be written as a function like y = F(x). But what then would be a subjective model, that couldn't be put into the above objective mold?

Let's take one example. Let's assume that the market pricing mechanism is dependent on the aggregate actions of all market participants. This obviously is true: trade at some price happens only when there is at least one participant willing to sell at the price and at least one willing to buy with the similar price. At first this looks quite objective and we can write as a mathematical function like y = F(X). But then, if we want to use this model, let's say to forecast what prices are going to be in the future and then participate in the market, this isn't anymore an objective function. Now actually the function is defining itself, which as Wittgenstein observed, cannot contain itself. Us using the function is self-referential, because the model is the aggregate of all market participants actions, including us. How are we deciding our actions? Because of the function itself.

I have argued for a fundamental parallel between Wittgenstein's hinges and Gödel's incompleteness results: both demonstrate that systematic thought requires ungrounded foundations. By examining how epistemic and mathematical systems share this structural feature, we gain insight into the nature of foundational certainties across domains of human understanding. — Moliere

If I understand correctly what you mean by grounded / ungrounded foundations, I would say it differently: Not all systematic thought can be brought back to grounded foundations. Usually we can use axiomatic systems and get an objective model, but not allways.

Just as there is also Gödel's completeness theorem, that theorem doesn't collide with the two incompleteness theorems.

Very seldom does a central banker give such a straightforward lecture on the large picture of monetary policy. (Especially Fed Chairmen can give extremely cryptic talks.) But here Christine Lagarde (ECB chief) does just that with clarity, perhaps because she is giving a lecture to students. She starts with a historical viewpoint on the role of the reserve currency through time. What one rarely hears is a central banker truly talking about the role of gold, "the barbarous relict" according to Keynes, in our fiat currency system even today. She also notes one important factor: the key role that military deterrence and defence alliances have today on the role of the reserve currency. Her speech starts at 06:33 after an introduction:



What is obvious that she does see a role for the Euro and the ECB, and the speech is basically an acknowledgement that things are indeed changing.

The crazy stuff that Trump is doing might bring the issue of the reserve currency to be a current question, not just a theoretical question. Lagarde also goes through what are the strenghts of the US economy and where the EU is lacking.

Seems like Ukraine did a very successful drone attack against Russian strategic bombers just today. Short range drones smuggled into Russia and then attack airbases very far away. Great job!!!

There's actually a long thread about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies that was started seven years ago here:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/2455/cryptocurrency/p1

True, but "heart" had a much different meaning in both the Hebrew and Greek context (see below). The heart is often referred to as the "eye of the nous," the inner-most part of the mind that receives the highest forms of intelligible illumination in the Patristics (gnosis). It is not primarily a symbol for "emotion" or "sentiment," but often instead of the deepest possible sort of knowledge. Early Christianity is very much a religion of Logos in a way perhaps at odds with some contemporary sentimentalism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I didn't know this. Thank you!

I find it interesting that you mention computers' inability to motivate themselves. Reason has often been reduced to computation in modern thought (computational theories of mind might play a role here, although the shift predates them by centuries). On this view, the computer is sort of an idealization of rationality. But if it cannot act, does that mean all action comes down to a sort of non-rational sentiment? Something else? — Count Timothy von Icarus

The idea is that computers (or Turing Machines) follow algorithms. An algorithm is a procedure used for solving a problem or performing a computation and act as an exact list of instructions that conduct specified actions step by step.

No, I'm not trying to reduce reason to computation here. I'm just trying to make a simple model on where the issue is. And it's a very specific issue. First of all, a Turing Machine can do a lot. But this doesn't meant that all (or some) action "comes down to a sort of non-rational sentiment". That's why I'm referring to mathematics, which is quite logical. The fact is that there do exist mathematical statements that are true but not computable. They aren't illogical, false, they are only uncomputable.

Completely agree! I think the ‘meta-algorithm’ you refer to might be close to what Roger Penrose was getting at in his Emperor’s New Mind. But overall in agreement with your post. — Wayfarer

I think that here really lies some awesome axiom that is simply missing from our philosophical and mathematical vocabulary. Once we know that axiom, everything makes far more sense.

Indeed it's the 'meta-algorithm' problem. The 'meta-algorithm' is the way to avoid the problem, to get that needed external view to have an objective model. The problem is that you cannot just write the 'meta-algorithm'. In mathematics this means that there's obviously a correct model, but no way to make that model or to compute it. Here the problem is that we actually don't have a theorem for just what computation is (which likely is linked to the whole problem itself).

The basic issue is that this is seen as a problem, as a paradox that ought to be overcome by some way. The instant response is usually: "Let's think about this in another way."

I think the basic red line (in this hypothetical axiom) is the following: by negative self-reference, you get something that cannot be computed / modeled objectively. With positive self-reference, you basically get a self-fulfilling prophecy of an outcome that indeed can be computed and objectively modeled.

And naturally this comes close to many mathematical limitations, like Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Which at the most trivial can be summed up like Hans Straub puts it:

What – in layman’s terms – is the trick in Gödel’s incompleteness theorem?

The trick is the same as in the barbar paradox and all other real paradoxes. The trick is to make a sentence, a logical statement and …

1. to refer it to itself (self reference)
2. and then to deny it. (negation)

That’s the whole trick. With this combination, any classic formal system can be invalidated.

The point is to understand how subjectivity relates to this. The computer simply follows algorithms, it's not a subject itself: it doesn't make any choices itself, it only follows the rules it has been given, even if these rules extensively are about making choices.

So here's one interesting question: could one say that the ability to make a negative self reference means having subjectivity?

A rich foreigner with an agenda can be quite dangerous—probably more dangerous than a foreign mugger. The latter is an obvious threat, while the former has the potential to do quite a bit of harm with their great resources. We must look at the values and allegiances of those entering our countries. Our elite universities in the US are flooded with very wealthy foreign students who have zero allegiance to the US, and I think our country is finally waking up to the fact that we've been sold out. — BitconnectCarlos

Seems you don't have any idea just how a modern scientific university works. On the contrary, foreign students bring money into universities... especially if your own citizens wouldn't have to pay huge fees. What are especially liked are foreign post-doc researchers, who come to make good research and then leave back to their country. The departments and the university get the product of their work, yet these foreigners aren't competing for the university positions with the locals, which the locals are very happy about. When you have had the best resources and the top research hubs in Ivy League universities, those attract the best talent.

Or do you think that foreign students are a fifth colony of agents that steel the precious wisdom only held the genius Americans? Hence the US would be better of without foreigners participating in their universities?

If you want to shoot yourself in the leg, please do so! Ban then all foreigners from entering your universities. That would really help them! I wouldn't be surprised if the Bigot in Chief in the White House would want that. He hates international trade, so this would be a natural extension of that.

Sweden is responsible for managing Sweden. Currently, 80% of the population is native Swedes; would they be okay with this number going to 70%? 60%? What kinds of cultural changes would we see at those levels? Do Swedes value their culture, or is it more defined by its openness and receptivity? What cultures are they importing? — BitconnectCarlos

Says the person living in a far more multicultural country than Sweden. But how do you get to 60%?

First of all, the largest population of foreigners and foreign born Swedes are us, Finns. The number of Sweden Finns are estimated of being from half a million to 700 000. These people were taught in school in Finland already the Swedish language. They are also Lutherans (if the belong the church), watch hockey and eat pea soup, just like the native Swedes do. They don't live in separated areas and naturally have intermarried to the native population. Above all, they look just like Swedes. This migration happened basically from the late 1960's to the early 1980's and thus their even their children are quite old now. As people can inside the Nordic countries as easily as an American can move from New York to California, many of the Sweden Finns have simply retained their Finnish citizenship, hence there are many who are indeed foreigners.



And because opening the border for hundreds of thousands of Finns worked so well and as they integrated well and the economy improved, some then thought Sweden that it was OK to get anybody. Until 2015-2016 that is. Once the European migration crisis happened, Sweden shut down quickly it's open door policy.

So how do you get these ideas of Sweden is "going to lose to multiculturalism"? That it becomes a Muslim state and the native population will be a minority and loose it's identity?

The only way you get these fictional statistics that in few decades Sweden will be muslim or whatever, is if you extrapolate from the year 2015-2016. Because that's when you had the European migration crisis. This is what it looked like in Sweden:




Hence if you assume the levels of Syrians coming to Sweden in 2016, then yes, then and ONLY then you will have dramatic changes in demographics of the country. Hence the idea that Sweden will become a Muslim country or loose it's identity is simply a lie. As I said, the Swedish government quickly stopped the open door policies - which naturally the racists and bigots extremists are totally silent about. And Swedes aren't at all so open to immigration, the US is far more open to immigration.




In fact it's quite difficult for even an American to emigrate to the Nordic countries ...if they wanted that is.

Maybe mass deportations are needed. — BitconnectCarlos

And just how is your President doing with those mass deportations? Last time he ended up deporting far less than other presidents, including his successor Joe Biden.

I'll hope the Trump administration is a minor setback to the World. And indeed there are plenty of ways around it. At least Wall Street has a firm belief in this.

Finally some sanity to Trump's insane tariff actions.

(BBC 29th May 2025) A US federal court has blocked President Donald Trump's sweeping global trade tariffs, in a major blow to a key component of his economic policies.

The Court of International Trade ruled that an emergency law invoked by the White House did not give the president unilateral authority to impose tariffs on nearly every one of the world's countries.

The New York-based court said the US Constitution gave Congress exclusive powers to regulate commerce with other nations, and that this was not superseded by the president's remit to safeguard the economy.

The White House has asked the court to block the order suspending tariffs while it appeals the case.

Let's see how this goes to the SCOTUS.

Pretty much as I said above. It is, to allude to a rather controversial, but also profound, book, ‘the Reign of Quantity’. One of the discussions that prompted this thread, was about how qualia (an item of academic jargon in philosophy of mind referring to the qualities of subjective experience) can be explained away as illusion. — Wayfarer

Positivism put's objectivity on a pedestal.

To emphasize objectivity is totally rational and sound: you find subjectivity in the creation stories of various religions. Why did something happen? How was the Earth formed? Where did we come? It was Gods will. There isn't an explanation for the answer, it's an issue of faith, an issue that religiouns are quite open about. In Christianity Jesus talks about opening your heart to him to find God, not to "use your brain and think it through". Positivism, a product of the 19th Century, had still to confront religious thinking in the way that there wasn't in the 20th Century or today, even if the real fight betwen science and religion had happened in the Renaissance in Europe. (In Muslim countries, religion prevailed and there was no Renaissance)

Explaining qualia away as illusion is one example. The emphasis on objectivity puts everything that is subjective to be unimportant, or simply not something of a scientific matter. Yet I think the problem is far larger than this. Objectivity has logical rules which simply limit just what can be accurately modeled.

Here is the problem: many of our most important and critical questions about reality cannot be modeled accurately with a totally objective model, because objectivity demands an external viewpoint of the issues at hand. Yet we ourselves are part of the universe and when this fact needs to be in the model, then we cannot make an accurate model. We cannot just assume an external viewpoint, somebody observing reality / the universe outside it.

The most obvious example is in physics when a measurement itself affects the object that is measured. This isn't a trivial problem that you can just assume away in physics. It's the reason just why we have the elaborate models of Quantum Physics. In Quantum Physics we simply just cannot assume that the subatomic particles behave as Newtonian physics says. Yet this problem at all limited to physics.

Usually in all models, be the in economics or sociology or whatever, where we find this dilemma of a Black Box, where something crucial happens in a Black Box through it we have the outcome, but we cannot model just what happens in the Black Box, we typically have this problem of subjectivity. So it's no wonder that for example when thinking about how we actually learn and think something is this confusing Black Box.

Computer science shows the problem in the most simple and clearest way. As computers follow algorithms, they cannot follow an instruction "Do something else". That's not an algorithm: an exact list of instructions that conduct specified actions done step by step. In fact, a computer can follow this only if it has as in instruction, "If asked do something else, then x". Why can them humans answer this? Because they can understand what they have done (hence in a way they are aware of the algorithms they use) and then do something they have not done. But this is a subjective decision and subjectivity comes into the model. And now the objective modelling has a huge problem: it cannot model just what happened, how the human did the something else. In order for there to be objectivity, there has to be a meta-algorithm that the human follows, but that cannot be listed.

This isn't just a philosophical problem, this is basically a mathematical problem. Yet people don't realize how big this is because we are lacking the mathematical axiom behind this.

That there is a global problem seems to be the case, when Japan has it's close encounters with a bond crisis. It's interest rates have spiked up and this causes a severe problem to the country as it has 270% debt to GDP. Japan has to get it's fiscal house in order, which can result in assets now for example in US Treasuries being sold and put into Japanese debt.

This can be bad. At worst it could start a dollar crisis along the road and a huge crisis for the whole fiat monetary system.

Being on your ignore list is either very temporary or works differently. :wink:

There's a difference between accepting immigrants who appreciate the country they're emigrating to & work legitimate professions versus those who come, e.g., due to a religious duty to spread their religion or to exploit resources. Every nation has the right to monitor its borders and set its immigration policies. Some immigrants easily assimilate, while others have no desire to. — BitconnectCarlos

The first golden rule is that if it is commonly understood that the foreign people bring money into the society, foreigners will be accepted: nobody has a problem with tourists, with millionaires or needed talented professionals moving into your nation. If somebody is publicly against there being tourists, the person will be confronted by angry people who get their life earnings from the tourist trade. But if those tourists don't bring in money, just roam around and sleep in public parks, they will be immediately despised everywhere. Foreigners that just want to take your wealth and have no desire to appreciate anything else are usually in history called the invading enemy. What people feel about them is quite universal and these attitudes have a long history.

With refugees it's even more stark and obviously the closeness to the refugees matter very much. Clearest example of this is has been the response in European countries of the Ukrainian refugees compared to 2015 Migration Crisis. A very good decision by the Ukrainians was to forbid military-aged men from leaving the country (and many Ukrainian male expats going to fight in the war). Countries that had not taken any refugees in 2015 took millions. Poland has taken nearly a million Ukrainian refugees. People will think this is blatant racism, but the reality is that people can empathize with these as Poles obviously understand what a threat Russia is to them and the Poles have a bloody history with the Russians. If it would be just racism, then these countries would have taken also the Russian men fleeing the war as refugees. They surely did not.

Just because a source is biased or has an agenda doesn't mean it's wrong. — BitconnectCarlos

Please focus on what the disagreement here is. I don't think there is a genocide taken place, something like the Turks did against Armenians or what the Hutus did against Tutsis during the Ruandan civil war. There simply aren't the piles of white people lying around with either South African soldiers or jubilant crowds with machetes. A genocide looks like a Zombie movie with the exception that the Zombies aren't the brain eating living dead, but totally ordinary people minding their business whereas the "heroes" in Zombie movie are just like how they are portrayed in the movies, except that they just think that other people are zombies and killing them will make the world a better place.

Is South Africa dangerous for Whites? Yes, but it's also dangerous for Blacks too. Are there severe problems in South Africa and tensions between the ethnic groups? Yes.

This isn't nitpicking. We do have to find a way to talk about the situations in various countries accurately. Because we shouldn't use these terms like genocide as tropes.

Just because a source is biased or has an agenda doesn't mean it's wrong. — BitconnectCarlos

But if the source is telling that there's a genocide when there isn't a genocide, it's wrong. That there are tensions and hostility against an ethnic group can be totally true.

Do notice that the alt-right media-sphere that turns this out never report things like that EU and EU countries have dramatically tightened their immigration policies. This is because the agenda is to portray only the radical populists to be capable of doing this: the you have to favor some AfD in Germany to get change from Merkel's policies. Or that somehow Sweden is lost to multiculturalism when the US is far more multicultural than Sweden. And so on.

?

Oh.... a hit dog will holler.

Handwaving it under the banner of 'It's not yet genocide' is not the type of thing I would expect from rational people. — Tzeentch

Have you then read the Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank?
Terms like genocide or fascist are hurled as negative adjectives, hence defining things correctly is important as is putting things into context. The accusation is "that there is a genocide underway" is quite different from "there is a clear threat of ethnic violence", don't you think?

I would go further to say that there is ethnic violence, just as there are hate crimes even in the US, only more. Dismal economy and poverty do give a breeding ground for radical extremists, but not all of the people fall for them. And luckily, South Africa hasn't collapsed.

In fact, it reminds me more of the type of apologetics the Israeli government and its supporters like to spin. — Tzeentch

Or the apologetics of those that think actually Russia was the real victim in the Ukraine war. Yeah, I agree.

But we have to understand that people have different ways of thinking. I noticed it for the first time in PF (the old site, that is) when some Americans came to the forum to defend the actions of President Bush, like invading Iraq because of the WMD argument. They saw it as their patriotic duty to defend their country, when a lot of people where critical of the dubious reasons for the 2003 war.

I don't need to defend shit because there's no genocide. You'd rather follow the interpretation of a murderous idiot than sensible South Africans just so it fits in your racist worldview.

Also note that the farmers killed are predominantly not white. So there's that. Sigh. — Benkei

Reflecting on to other countries and not the one the one you live in is one way to sell a message that otherwise wouldn't fly, because a) it wouldn't be appropriate or b) usually people are aware of the situation in the country they live in.

Regardless of country, it is terrifying when you have prominent politicians (Malema's party controls 10% of Congress) in mass rallies glorifying the murder of another ethnic group, especially where there are pre-existing ethnic tensions. We should have learned this from Rwanda, where the language used played a key role in dehumanization. — BitconnectCarlos

Look, I understand it's a touchy issue for you, but the obvious reality that you indeed have these kinds of politicians in various countries, including Israel. And when there's an outright violent conflict and hatred among the different people, then the there is the real fear of a genocide.

Yet I think the larger and more probable fear is just ethnic cleansing which was very successful in the case of Nagorno-Karabakh. And all the Azeris had to do was to publicly deny it. Abstaining from widespread violence worked. Ethnic cleansing is a reality in our time. Now the talk of cleansing Gaza is totally normal as moving everybody away to other countries is openly discussed.

If that happens, I guess it would give a great example even to some extremist idiot in South Africa to then call for similar actions, even if the insane move would destroy the South African economy even more. Africa has seen it's examples of expulsions of minorities: Idi Amin giving 90 days for Asians (primarily Indians) to leave Uganda in 1972. Before that he had expelled the Kenyan minority.

Yet the undeniable fact is that there isn't a genocide going on against white people in South Africa. There isn't even a government lead ethnic cleansing program going on. South Africa is one of the most violent countries in the World. A country being one of the most violent in the World usually means that many people will emigrate from the country. What basically Trump has done perhaps can simply just increase the brain drain and pensioners moving to the US, if they can opt for that automatic refugee status.

If the shoe were on the other foot and whites were imposing racist laws and seizing land from blacks and screaming genocidal chants at mass rallies, the world would be all over it (and rightfully so). Yet double standards define our times. It is seen as fine when an "oppressed" or formerly oppressed group behaves oppressively, and the politically correct thing is to look the other way and not blame them. — BitconnectCarlos

With the example of Zimbabwe, I tried to show you that this isn't the case. Partisan actors will think this way because they simply won't be interested in something that doesn't promote their cause. Put them aside and there's still the ability to get an objective view about events, even if you need to find it out yourself with a little work.

It's the alt-right lie that "this is what you are not told about... by the lying fake media". It's their gimmick.

The discussion is about SA, though, not Zimbabwe. I'm not sure why you're deflecting to Zimbabwe. — BitconnectCarlos

Because in Zimbabwe there has been actions against white farmers by the government. Even there one cannot make the case for genocide. South Africa has high crime rate. Farms are in rural areas, where law enforcement isn't as close as in the suburbs. That's the reason. If you assume there's a covert government operation of killing white people in South Africa, there's got to be a lot more of evidence.

(BBC, May 2025) None of South Africa's political parties - including those that represent Afrikaners and the white community in general - have claimed that there is a genocide in South Africa. But such claims have been circulating among right-wing groups for many years, and during his first term, Trump referred to the "large scale killing of farmers" in South Africa.

Some white farmers have been killed but a lot of misleading information has been circulated online. In February, a South African judge dismissed the idea of a genocide as "clearly imagined" and "not real", when ruling in an inheritance case involving a wealthy benefactor's donation to white supremacist group Boerelegioen.

South Africa does not release crime figures based on race but the latest figures revealed that 6,953 people were murdered in the country between October and December 2024. Of these, 12 were killed in farm attacks. Of the 12, one was a farmer, while five were farm dwellers and four were employees, who are likely to have been black.

This is just the nonsense ramblings of Trump. But seems to have hit a sweet spot among some.

Well, what would you think if you had stadiums of Israelis yelling "kill the Palestinian," led by major politicians? — BitconnectCarlos

BitconnectCarlos, they already do that!

(AP, june 5th 2024) JERUSALEM (AP) — Thousands of mostly ultranationalist Israelis took part in an annual march through a dense Palestinian neighborhood in Jerusalem’s Old City on Wednesday, with some stoking wartime tensions and chanting “Death to Arabs". - In past years, police have forcibly cleared Palestinians from the parade route, and large crowds of mostly ultranationalist youth have chanted “Death to Arabs,” “May your village burn” and other offensive slogans. The police say they are deploying 3,000 security personnel to ensure calm.” At the insistence of Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the police, the march will follow its traditional route, entering the Muslim Quarter of the Old City through Damascus Gate and ending at the Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray.

So wtf are you talking about???

Do those ultranationalists represent all Jewish Israelis? No, but so doesn't some similar politician in South Africa who use hate speech.

What the South Africans do know when they see it is an apartheid system.

I agree. Yet the case of South Africa shows just how rare are politicians like Nelson Mandela and how easy it is for the populists to spread their hate in every country.

Even if no questions in the OP, a good synopsis of positivism! :cheer:

I think the real problem with positivism isn't at the philosophical ideology itself, but simply adapting it's methods in a very poor manner. I will here comment on positivism from the viewpoint of sciences, not philosophy. Starting from the idea that sciences are universal, there is then often this attempt then to create a mathematical theory of something, something like physics. If it's mathematical, it's scientific! And if we have statistics, then it is easy to make in the end some kind of function. And when you talk about mathematical functions, many commentators that don't know much about mathematics drop out. Yet especially in social sciences you have to have a clear understanding of what those statistics actually tell, how are they linked to each other.

I myself studied economic history. I remember once a professor gave us an example of how bad positivism can be in history. He read us out loud a page of a study, which was terribly boring and confusing, just basically a list of various sources and original documents. There wasn't any attempt to make a summary, to make it to a cohesive description of the events. This was basically just the "documents themselves telling history".

Another example was someone making VERY long statistical research paper trying to measure the prosperity of Finland for the last 1000 years: from the year 1000 to the year 2000. I remember the dead silence in the room from economic historians, until someone remarked how little do we know about the year 1000, about the pre-Sweden era when Finns were majority pagan and about the difficulties of measuring anything from that society to our modern one. The moderator quickly went diplomatically onward and introduced the next research. But I guess the attitude that you could measure prosperity of a people that at start weren't a unified people but largely pagan tribes and then compare that prosperity to the 19th and 20th Centuries with mathematical precision is something that someone with a firm belief in positivism belief would do.

Hence when I think of the two examples, they don't actually criticize positivism itself, it's just that a lot of bad research can be made with positivism. But I guess even worse research can be made by other philosophical ideologies.

It’s interesting that the irony is lost in this pivot to a genocide in South Africa. The only other country in the world, apart from Israel which was an apartheid state. It demonstrates what a poisonous practice it is. — Punshhh

Not at all. Just remember that it was South Africa that made the case against Israel of genocide against the Palestinians. That is why there's this large effort to tarnish the image of South Africa.

no dogfigts, but close call nonetheless. — jorndoe

BVR fights. Basically a lot of aircraft firing beyond visual range missiles and hoping that they will hit. Just as in Ukraine, there both sides don't dare anymore to fly over territory held by the enemy. If you fly low, then MANPADS systems like SA-18 or the Stinger plus the traditional AAA can shot you down. If you fly high, you are a target to S-400 or Patriot systems.

It's been said that originally the Pakistani PL-15's had a range of 145 km, while the Chinese versions are 300 km and the PL-17 missiles have a range of 400 kilometers. The old F-14 had it's Phoenix missiles developed in the 1960s with a range of 184 kilometers (C-model), which was for long the longest range missile in US inventory. Once the great F-14 was retired, so were the Phoenix missiles (in 2004). AIM-174 Gunslinger missile that has originated from the SM-6 surface to air missile has a range of some 240 kilometers, is only coming now to the field to replace the Phoenix's role of very long range interception missile. The F/A-18 Superhornet has had the ability to carry the missile from 2024. AIM-260 is only coming up and has a planned range of at least 200 kilometers. The US and the West wasn't at first so interested in long range missiles as usually BVR means that you can easily hit accidentally own aircraft. But if the strategy is simply to shoot at anything moving in the air, then it's different.

F-14 with six Phoenix missiles. No other US fighter could use the missile.



An interesting and informative clip on the new AIM-174 missile and how it would be used against China. The fighters fire the missile and then the targetting information is given by other means:

Members of the SA government lead "kill the boer" chants in large stadiums, and there have been thousands of murders of white farmers. I've never been to the region, but that alone is terrifying.

"Genocide" apparently no longer holds any fixed meaning, either. — BitconnectCarlos

Actually it does.

If you would want an actual discussion about the subject, then the discussion should be more about Zimbabwe, not South Africa. But the history of former Rhodesia is quite different from South Africa, just as is the history of Namibia is also. And still, the term genocide wouldn't be appropriate.

Yet in the case of Zimbabwe, the idea that "liberal fake media" didn't report these issues simply is incorrect. In fact, events under the Mugabe regime were reported especially by the BBC, but also other media. Sanctions were put against Mugabe regime by EU and the US for human rights violations (and election fraud). The human rights violations were directed at the regime itself. Something like 3 million Zimbabweans left the country (of 16 million), so not all whites. At the most there were perhaps 250 000 - 300 000 whites, yet the white population started to decrease already in the 1970's and the trend has continued since 1980 with now there being perhaps less than 30 000.

And of course, news like the following don't make it to the echo chambers, just like that European countries have tightened their stances on migrants and refugees. Any positive news out of Africa doesn'ts sell:

(the Telegraph, September 2023) Across Zimbabwe, there are now thought to be as many as 900 white-run commercial farms. The farmers are not usually working their own land, but are renting in joint ventures from black farmers given confiscated white-owned land.

“So many have come back to farm up our way, we’ve almost got enough for a cricket team again,” said one white farmer in another part of the country.

After the evictions, some seized farms were handed over to politically connected beneficiaries linked to the ruling Zanu-PF party. Mugabe and his wife Grace built an empire of around a dozen farms themselves. Others were divided up into small-holdings and shared out.

Beneficiaries often borrowed against their new farms, but in many cases struggled to make them productive. Faced with financial pressure from banks to repay debts and political pressure from the government to boost agriculture, many beneficiaries have in recent years turned to the proven expertise of some of the white former farmers. Some of the new white farmers lost their own land 20 years ago, others are an entirely new generation.

“Beneficiaries got access to the best land and cheap credit, but when the economy dollarised, that became hard debt. Then they had to find a partner who could farm them out of debt. For people who wanted to farm and had lost their land, it made sense,” said one farming source.

Straight after the evictions, many white farmers tried to set up in Zambia or Mozambique. But they often struggled in unfamiliar terrain. “Now, you can come to Zimbabwe and get a farm and blow the cobwebs away and the guy is perfectly happy to be renting it to you for eight per cent,” the source said.The joint ventures between new black landowners and white farmers are commercially pragmatic but can come with sensitivities. Some new white farmers seek out the original evicted owners to ask if they have objections to them working their old land. Others agree to pay the original owners a small share.

Farmers said agriculture in Zimbabwe was now booming in a rare bright spot for an economy in crisis. Tobacco, long a favourite crop in the country, had a record harvest this year, selling 263 million kg, worth £626 million. The increase is not due to the return of white farmers alone. One black farmer who had received 750 acres of seized land said there had been heavy government investment.

“Farming is going well at the moment,” he said.

Indeed.
The only thing consistent is that the US economy and international trade doesn't like uncertainty. And Trump will just give us far earlier the fiscal crisis / dollar crisis that would have happened otherwise later.

You are aware that Congo is not South Africa, yes? — tim wood

NOS4A2 doesn't care where the pictures are actually from. Besides, Trump has used earlier this similar tactic in his campaign in 2016 with old video clips from a documentary about the Moroccan-Spanish border (from Melilla, if I remember correctly) to be as video footage from the US-Mexican border.

And how did Trump react then?

(ABC News, Jan 2016) Both Donald Trump and his campaign are defending their use of footage of the border between Morocco and Spain in an ad that touts Trump’s hardline stance on illegal immigration into the United States.

“I think it’s irrelevant,” Trump told Bill O’Reilly on Fox News Monday night. “It's really merely a display of what a dumping ground is going to look like. And that's what our country is becoming very rapidly.”

The 30-second television, ad unveiled Monday, shows footage of dozens of people fleeing across what appears to be a national border, as the narrator says, "He'll stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for."

Despite the narration, the footage is not of the “southern border” between the United States and Mexico, but rather the border of Morocco and Spain, according to PolitiFact, a fact-checking project operated by the Tampa Bay Times.

That South Africa is one of the most violent places doesn't matter, what matters is the idea that "the liberal fake mainstream media" isn't talking about whites being attacked by a black majority, but Trump is! That's what get's the Trump people so aroused so much, that they don't give a fuck if the so-called evidence is fabricated or not. That's only the liberal cry babies whining. Actual specifics, like from where pictures are from, don't matter, it's about embracing ones prejudices. Many of these Trump supporters like too the replacement theories also, so what better is there to talk about a genocide of the white population in South Africa?

Something actually quite historic happened that directly has an effect also on the potential Taiwan crisis. In the 2025 skirmish between India and Pakistan May 7th to May 10th, modern Chinese aircraft and weaponry were used extensively and what seems to be quite successfully against the Indian French/Russian weapon systems.

This was the first time that Chinese J-10 fighters armed with PL-15 missiles were used extensively in a beyond visual range fight were both air forces operated from their own airspace and didn't venture into enemy airspace (that was left to missiles and drones). With both India and Pakistan having engaged with hundreds of fighters, this was the first large air battle of this decade. The Pakistani's (who have 80% of the weapons systems from China) did shoot down French Rafale fighters and Russia Flanker and Fulcrum fighters used by India. What is evident that both countries got their air forces fully committed, yet held back from an all out war. This is also crucial to understand as both sides have nuclear weapons. Even if the Indian Air Force isn't equipped with US technology, the IAF is a quite modern and large air force. This is actually important to China, because it has now shown that it's fighter aircraft are up to fight modern Western aircraft.

(If you are interested in this subject, here's a good overview of just what happened in the air war in the four day skirmish between India and Pakistan, seen from the Pakistani side. Especially the commentary of the Pakistani Air Force commander is interesting.)


Chinese J-10 fighters in Pakistani service armed with four PL-15 missiles:


Prior to this engagement Chinese modern weapon systems have not been used in war. For the Chinese, this brief skirmish was a very important lesson.

And it seems that at least in this case this leftist terrorist has taken the same strategy that far-right terrorists use: to be lone actors and not be linked to any group, as that then would wake up the vast security apparatus of the US. I agree with the horseshoe theory, even if let's say that many in the alt-right have become far more positive about Israel, there are still those with the old traditions for anti-semitism.

Rodriguez was associated with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a far-left group that regularly posts anti-Israel rhetoric on social media. The group claims on social media that Rodriguez was not a member, and his association with it ended in 2017.

If there only would be simply the consistency of opposing corruption in the White House irrelevant of the party in power, I would respect your arguments more. But as you are a staunch defender of Trump even if the corruption is evident and corruption is corruption only when it's the workings of a Democratic cabal in the White House, it's simply meaningless. It's just typical American partisanship where the other side is evil and the your side are saints.

But of course it isn't only the Qatari plane. It's all the crypto schemes that the Trump family is making. Just like the Pakistani crypto deal that Trump's children got with Pakistan... and then the US chose to intervene in the Pakistani-Indian crisis. Trump just loves when they kiss his ass and give money to him.



Earlier it was those pump and dump schemes with Melania coins. Or then you have little newsbits that don't make headlines, but surely would have made if it was Hunter Biden, not Eric Trump. (I remember you all so pumped about dealings of Hunter Biden.)

HUNG YEN, May 21 (Reuters) - Vietnam's prime minister and U.S. President Donald Trump's son Eric held a groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday for a $1.5 billion luxury residential development with three 18-hole golf courses outside Hanoi.
The U.S. president's Trump Organization family business and its local partners received approval for the project last week from the Communist authorities in Vietnam, which is separately negotiating over tariffs with Washington.

And btw, did Hayes, or his "Presidential library" keep the fucking desk afterwards? I think not. But what would you care.

And don't forget that Trump get's Grift Force 1!!!

The United States officially accepted a luxury jet to use as Air Force One from Qatar, the Department of Defense confirmed to ABC News on Wednesday.

"The secretary of defense has accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar in accordance with all federal rules and regulations," Sean Parnell, chief Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement.

What a huge win for the American Democracy! Yeaahh! :grin: :up:

The whole process helps the economy too, because now the government has to rip off everything to make it the command center it ought to be.

(CNN) Converting a luxury jet gifted by Qatar to President Donald Trump into a replacement for Air Force One could potentially cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and it could take up two years to install the necessary security equipment, communications and defensive capabilities for it to be safely used by the commander in chief, current and former officials told CNN.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said Tuesday that the plane “poses significant espionage and surveillance problems.” Across the aisle, Democratic Sen. Jack Reed, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said accepting it would pose “immense counterintelligence risks by granting a foreign nation potential access to sensitive systems and communications.”

Trump exclaimed in a social media post on Sunday that the Defense Department would be receiving a “GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily.”

And that is temporarily, because naturally the next POTUS has to have a new one... or continue to fly with the old one. :joke:

I've been ignoring this thread in favour of my blood pressure so have no clue where the discussion stands. — Benkei

In that the worst outcomes will come true ...just not instantly, but with time. So much time that the common man (or voter) forgets the issue and the media loses interest.

Now the US is actively assisting in the deportation of Palestinians.

(NBC News) The Trump administration is working on a plan to permanently relocate up to 1 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya, five people with knowledge of the effort told NBC News.

The plan is under serious enough consideration that the administration has discussed it with Libya’s leadership, two people with direct knowledge of the plans and a former U.S. official said.

In exchange for the resettling of Palestinians, the administration would potentially release to Libya billions of dollars of funds that the U.S. froze more than a decade ago, those three people said.

No final agreement has been reached, and Israel has been kept informed of the administration’s discussions, the same three sources said.

And well, if for some reason my country is the happiest country on Earth (which I find always amusing), Israel is the fifth happiest country. I assume this didn't include the Palestinian territories. But they are more happy than you are in your country. So there we are.

World Happiness Report -rankings 2024:

1 Finland 7.741
2 Denmark 7.583
3 Iceland 7.525
4 Sweden 7.344
5 Israel 7.341
6 Netherlands 7.319

Actions are important. But do you not act according to any principle? — NOS4A2

Principles are indeed important. But are principles mental constructs of our mind or something else? That's the metaphysical question, yet it doesn't matter to the importance of principles themselves.

Think about that you love some person, be it your parent or child or a loved one. Surely there is that subjective part of you loving somebody. Is that then different if you believe in metaphysical question in nominalism or realism? In my opinion it doesn't matter.

Society is not a thing, though, complex or otherwise. It's just a name for a concept. — NOS4A2

And a concept is an abstract idea, so you are going in circles. Yet people do live in more or less organized communities that we call societies. And there's many words or names for this.

'Cutting waste and fraud' is a pretext, or a cudgel. — Wayfarer

Well, working and functioning institutions are an obstacle for Trump: they are indeed bad for the White House.

Hence if Musk's DOGE went on this crazy rampage through the corridors of US power, that itself was a good thing for Trump.

One’s metaphysics ought to inform how he approaches the other branches of philosophy, including politics and ethics. — NOS4A2

I disagree.

Politics and ethics as other moral issues are very important irrelevant of them being either our mental constructs or them being something independent of us. What we do, the actions, are important. The reasons why we do something only explain our actions, but the actions themselves are the important issue here.

If one believes the word “society” is just a general name he’s not going to spend a serious amount of time trying to change it. — NOS4A2

Now I don't follow your logic at all. Society is a word and we give words / names for complex things like society.

There has never been a nominalist, or rather, individualist country. America is close, I suppose, and has advanced beyond its collectivist ways in the treatments of groups and their memberships, but it still has a long way to go. — NOS4A2

Nominalism and individualism aren't synonyms. And here individualism or collectivism aren't metaphysical questions.

The top 1% own about a third of the nation's wealth. If most of the top 5% are Boomers, that explains much of the disparity. It's not boomers per se, but the ultra wealthy, who have the disproportionate wealth. — Banno

Nobody takes their wealth with them when they die.

Things like stock market crashes destroy wealth (which mainly wasn't there) and natural disasters and wars can destroy wealth literally.

Be more sceptical. — Banno

The question was if popular music, especially rock music, will continue to be listened by future generations, but that the rock music will be the songs that actually have been already made and "The Great" rock musicians that are listened are the ones that we now put to be the "GOAT"s. Basically something that we have seen with "classical music".

As we cannot just wait for the next Century to start and look at the musical environment then, we can observe if there are differences in the small niche "generations" that we talk about now.

Coming back to the OP, perhaps it should be interesting to first talk about music in Antiquity and in the Bronze Age. Naturally the obvious issue are the limitations of the musical instruments themselves. But first question here should be: how close is Rock'N'Roll, or our current music today, to the music from three thousands years ago. Obviously we don't have recordings and we have only modern representations of those (which are influenced by modern music), yet what I find interesting is how close that music seems to be to ours. Now, if there indeed is a continuation (and likely there surely is), then we aren't far too off how ancient music sounded.

An interesting history of the oldest song we know about, which also shows the problem of interpretation of ancient songs:



So how close is this (interpretation) of an ancient Egyptian love song to a modern rock ballad? If the interpretation is close (and that's an if), then I would argue it's not so far from modern music played acoustically.

But if someone kills another for some the sake of some name like “country” or “God”, then we have an instance of destroying what is boundlessly more valuable for the sake of an idea or figment. This, I fear, is the threat of realism. — NOS4A2

Umm... so this is behind your reasoning in that a metaphysical stance, nominalism or realism, can be a threat?

If nominalism rejects universals and the abstract and thinks these are just mental constructs, then to the above example it doesn't at all matter. The metaphysical question is hardly relevant: if "country" or "God" are either "abstract entities" or if they are "mental constructs" doesn't matter at all to the actions of someone taking a life of another person.

If you start with nominalism, then issue "good" or "bad", "legal" or "illegal" or things like "justified defense" are also simply mental constructs, but apparently very important ones for our society to function. It doesn't somehow lower or give more credibility to the action, if ones metaphysical view is nominalism or realism.

The stance of there existing universals and abstract entities doesn't create anything more to the issue. Metaphysics doesn't answer moral or social questions.

?

Not a chance.

But typical for Israeli propaganda effort, somehow in the gay Eurovision song contest, Israel got more points from the publec than Sweden from Finland which had a Swedish-Finnish band playing a song about bathing in the Sauna, which was the new craze here and had gotten enormous enthusiasm in Finland. (In the contest you cannot vote for your own country) But nope, a song that in Finnish Spotify-list is played 72nd (Israel's Eurovision song) got more votes than the song that on the same Spotify-list is number 1, higher than the Finnish eurovision song (4th).


Seems that one country wants to show that actually Europeans love them a lot.

That's probably what Trump thought as he entered office, but evidently it isn't so simple. — Tzeentch

I'm not sure even if he thought this way. Trump simply thinks that he's in good terms with Putin, so he would get the deal. Putin naturally won't budge.

Freezing military aid to Israel is another hot potatoe, considering the massive influence of the Israel lobby and the ramifications it may have for those who support pressuring Israel. This is why not a single US administration has managed to put meaningful pressure on Israel since ... Well, since ever? — Tzeentch

Basically Netanyahu is also an American politician, so well can he handle the US. For Trump there is no problem to back Israel and get money from the Gulf Arabs. He doesn't have to pick sides.