Librarian and Textician § Inopinum intactumque – Martianus Capella
East Vancouver
Joined December 2008
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Joseph Jones retweeted
If Trump rejects both war and peace, then the most likely scenario may prove to be one in which Trump’s economic warfare and blockade only exist on paper. Meaning, Trump walks away and claims to retain the blockade and sanctions infrastructure, but in reality, allows it to imperceptibly wither away.
The blockade begins to loosen, sanctions enforcement begins to decay, and slowly but surely, Asian and Middle Eastern countries begin trading with and investing in Iran. A new equilibrium emerges in which sanctions enforcement is strong enough for the U.S. to claim the restrictions are still in place, yet weak enough to prevent Tehran from challenging the new status quo.
This Swiss cheese scenario is the only walk-away option that could work. Because if Trump seriously retains the blockade and the sanctions, tensions between the US and Iran would be such that the two countries would constantly be on the verge of war with each other - as they are right now. Such an unstable status quo would eventually escalate into another war, defeating the very purpose of the walk-away.
To be clear, the Swiss cheese scenario is suboptimal compared with a peace deal.
Read full analysis: tritaparsi.substack.com/p/th…
Joseph Jones retweeted
René Girard on why the business world is more creative than the intellectual world:
“Intellectuals are often contemptuous of business and business people; but in business, you can at least distinguish the successful people from the unsuccessful people. If your business is losing money, you will immediately ask what your competitor is doing much better. And you'll start imitating your competitor. But if you are an intellectual, you will manage to rationalize things in such a way that you always want to do the opposite of your competitor. Therefore, you'll hide the fact of imitation better. A businessman who is responsible for a business will immediately imitate his competitor. That's why the world of business today is probably more creative in relative terms than the intellectual world. It is the last creative world because, in intellectual life, you don't dare to imitate others.”
From CBC Ideas
“... I think [this] the meaning of the sacrifice of Isaac, which marks the abandonment of human sacrifice. What's extraordinary about this Biblical text is that it first shows us an Abraham who is still obedient to the system of human sacrifice. It shows the obedience first: it shows that it's out of that obedience that true change becomes possible.”
— René Girard
Joseph Jones retweeted
American voters have made their choice. Time for the White House to make its own.
Our 2-day proposal stands: meet the requirements, including end to war on all fronts, and you will see results.
Or choose war, and see our alert and battle-hardened Warriors rain down hell.
Joseph Jones retweeted
BREAKING: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has just released a formal statement moments ago that is deeply concerning as it relates to the mindset of Iran right now.
In this post, Abbas Araghchi continues to push the same demands that have been demanded ever since the original MOU fell apart. These same “seven demands” have been reiterated multiple times now by FM Araghchi, Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Ghalibaf, and SNSC Mohesen Rezaee in recent days and weeks.
That’s not the concerning part.
What is concerning to me here is how Abbas Araghchi ends this post:
“Or choose war, and see our alert and battle-hardened Warriors rain down hell.”
You have to understand how much criticism figures such as Araghchi and Pezeshkian have received throughout this war inside and outside Iran for being SO DIPLOMATIC. To the point they border on being portrayed as desperate.
By trade, as Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi is a DIPLOMAT. In fact, this was exactly what he highlighted in his Financial Times op-ed a few weeks ago. He explicitly stated that he knows that a deal is unlikely, but due to his role being first and foremost focused on diplomacy, he will try nonetheless.
Now even Araghchi is coming out and stating in no uncertain terms: Make the deal or let’s get it on already.
Iran is becoming more and more hardened in their positions and rhetoric as this war continues.
Soon that will be reflected in their actions.
Joseph Jones retweeted
BREAKING: US launches operation "Iron Gate" to isolate Iran by land, blocking ground routes to move "advanced weapons, dual-use technology, sanctioned materials and revenue across its land borders and the Caspian Sea."
"The establishment of Task Force Iron Gate reinforces the success of our ironclad blockade against Iran at sea," Adm. Brad Cooper said, extending the naval blockade to Iran's land borders.
Joseph Jones retweeted
René Girard on the problem with modern art:
“The old classical theory of imitation was that you have to imitate the great guys. Today, that's no good for us because we are too proud, and we reject imitation. Everybody must be original; therefore, everybody is contradicting everybody else all the time. Competition between people loses all positive, concrete content and becomes completely abstract. Creation is destroyed.
What is modern art? Modern art is the type of art in which you must not repeat anything. It seems to me, for instance, that someone like Mahler in music opens up new areas of dissonance and harmony which, in other times, would have been exploited by all sorts of disciples for a century or so. Or Richard Strauss as well. Not in our time. So today music is interrupted because one is too proud to be the disciple of anybody. ... Music is very interesting in this regard.
The specialists say, for instance, that, from a technical viewpoint, Mozart is not creative. He brings nothing. But Mozart was infinitely creative inside a framework which he never felt like changing, which was good enough for him. So it's a totally different way of looking at things. The same thing is true in many fields.
I did an article once on the word ‘innovation.’ The word innovation, until the 18th century, always means something bad. Even with the people we regard as very progressive and modern, like Montaigne—if he says ‘innovation,’ it means something bad. It refers to people who try to look new and invent things when the old stuff is better and they should stay within the right framework. Beginning with the 18th century, suddenly innovation is good. And then you have to innovate in everything.”
(From CBC Ideas)
Joseph Jones retweeted
What I see in both these pieces is a kind of outdated technocratic, "pragmatic" approach to economics that attempts to make our current neoliberal economics seem as silently "natural" as they both try to make First Past the Post seem. Neither is natural, and neither is working.
Joseph Jones retweeted
Sitka Media's sole director is Anthem Properties CEO. Both companies have the same registered office.
#vanre #vanpoli
thinkpol.ca/2026/11/05/sitka…
Joseph Jones retweeted
When you listen to James Talarico, you realize that last night's results were not just a rejection of Trump and Israel's Iran war, but also a rejection of a Democratic Party led by people like Biden, Blinken, and Sullivan:
"I've never taken money from AIPAC, and I'm not taking money from AIPAC in this campaign. Seeing what's happening in Gaza makes me sick to my stomach as a teacher, as a Christian, as a human being"
This is his message, and he won in Texas!
Joseph Jones retweeted
In January, as Trump threatened to attack Iran to compel it to capitulate, I told a senior Trump official that Iran won't surrender and that their calculation is that they don't need to win the war against the US; they just need to destroy Trump's presidency.
They just did.
Joseph Jones retweeted
The indomitable girl who captured him was waiting for him thirty years later
On September 21, 1965, a 17-year-old Vietnamese girl named Nguyễn Thị Kim Lai was photographed escorting an enormous American airman through the countryside. His hands were tied behind his back. His head was bowed. She was carrying a rifle.
His name was William Andrew Robinson. He was 22, a helicopter mechanic and flight engineer in the US Air Force. The previous day his helicopter had been shot down during a mission to rescue another American airman.
Kim Lai was tiny. She weighed 37 kilograms. She had only finished seventh grade before joining the local militia. Her home province, Hà Tĩnh, was being bombed relentlessly by American aircraft.
According to her recollection, she discovered Robinson hiding among the rocks in a forest. Frightened by his enormous size, she fired three warning shots. He surrendered. Other militia members arrived and tied his hands.
A photographer named Phan Thoan captured the extraordinary contrast between the two.
The photograph became famous throughout Vietnam. It appeared on postage stamps. A celebrated Vietnamese poet wrote a poem about it. The image travelled around the world, becoming a symbol of a small country resisting a superpower.
Robinson was taken to prison.
He spent 2,703 days in captivity. Seven years, four months and twenty-three days. Much of it in isolation, enduring brutal conditions and torture. He was finally released on February 12, 1973.
Kim Lai became a nurse. She married, had three children and eventually became a grandmother.
Thirty years after their first encounter, in September 1995, she was playing with her grandchildren at a neighbour's house when someone came to tell her that foreigners were looking for her.
She returned home.
Standing there was William Andrew Robinson.
He had come back to Vietnam with a Japanese documentary crew. He had apparently wanted to find her for years but had never been able to afford the journey.
She recognised him immediately.
According to her recollection, he approached and embraced her before she could greet him.
They talked about their lives. Their families. Everything that had happened since those few minutes in a Vietnamese forest.
They even returned to the place where he had been captured.
Robinson reportedly expressed the hope that there would never be another photograph like theirs.
There is another photograph of them, taken during that reunion.
She is looking up at him. Smiling. He is standing beside her, still towering over her. No handcuffs. No rifle.
With no US government throwing away the youth of its own citizens to forcefully decide the future of Vietnam both can stand tall side by side.
Joseph Jones retweeted
Democrats are as bad as Republicans. The genocide in Gaza began under Biden, and Obama started the dirty wars in Libya and Syria and greenlighted the war on Yemen. But a major electoral defeat by Trump would make continued war against Iran more difficult.
youtu.be/duOpGC5wG0g?si=Dogh…
Joseph Jones retweeted
The answer I arrived at in some recent research into the 3rd century is that what's missing from this discussion is that it is specifically the Eastern Mediterranean that got into gnosticism.
This is because the eastern Mediterranean of middle and late antiquity had a lot of material prosperity and safety but also a lot of inequality, stagnant social and economic mobility, and anxiety around status, whether the music was about to stop, plus ennui from migration and urbanization caused by the pax romana.
It is the single time and place in history which most resembles our own in terms of what adaptive and maladaptive pathologies were viable. Alexandria was something like mixing a favela with LA.
It's not the terror and brutality of nature that makes people gnostic, or else it would have been the German tribes who thought it up. Gnosticism is fundamentally a disease of failing to thrive in artificial conditions that feel hostile to human nature. Flinching under the hand of a slave master is what gives you the idea of an evil demiurge, not watching lions kill antelope or whatever
the he-art of modern "art"?
Paul Gauguin, le grand peintre français célébré pour avoir fui l'hypocrisie bourgeoise et immortalisé la beauté pure de la Polynésie, a en réalité profité du système colonial pour prendre successivement dans son lit 3 adolescentes de 13 à 15 ans, avant d'abandonner ses enfants.
Dans l'histoire de l'art, l'ami de Van Gogh incarne le génie rebelle et le retour à la nature sauvage.
Ses toiles colorées, exposées dans les plus grands musées du monde, racontent le rêve d'un paradis terrestre où l'artiste vivait en harmonie avec les peuples autochtones de Tahiti et des îles Marquises.
La réalité historique, documentée par ses propres écrits, les archives coloniales de Polynésie et les travaux des historiens Bengt Danielsson et Nancy Mowll Mathews, est beaucoup plus sombre.
En 1891, lorsque Paul Gauguin débarque pour la 1re fois à Tahiti, il a 43 ans. Il a préalablement abandonné au Danemark son épouse légitime Mette et leurs 5 enfants sans ressources pour vivre sa bohème artistique.
Sur l'île, loin de trouver le paradis primitif qu'il imaginait, le peintre français profite pleinement de son statut d'Européen privilégié face aux familles locales appauvries.
Lors d'une excursion autour de l'île, l'homme de 43 ans jette son dévolu sur Teha'amana, une jeune adolescente originaire des îles Cook.
Si les recherches récentes dans les registres d'état civil estiment son âge réel à environ 15 ans au moment des faits, Gauguin affirme lui-même dans son récit autobiographique Noa Noa, publié en 1897, qu'elle n'a que 13 ans. Le quadragénaire s'y vante d'avoir obtenu cette enfant auprès de sa famille comme une épouse docile et raconte comment il l'a prise dans sa case dès le 1er soir.
Après un retour à Paris, Gauguin repart définitivement pour Tahiti en 1895, à l'âge de 47 ans. Sa santé est alors gravement dégradée, son corps affaibli par des plaies infectées aux jambes que les médecins de l'hôpital de Papeete traitent à l'époque comme une maladie vénérienne avancée, bien que ce diagnostic médical soit aujourd'hui discuté par certains chercheurs.
Cela ne l'empêche pas de reproduire exactement le même schéma avec des mineures.
En 1896, il prend pour compagne une nouvelle adolescente tahitienne âgée de 14 ans et demi, Pau'ura. Elle lui donne 2 enfants, dont une petite fille qui meurt quelques jours après sa naissance, avant que le peintre ne quitte définitivement Tahiti en délaissant la jeune mère et son fils.
En 1901, désormais âgé de 53 ans, diminué par ses ulcères purulents aux jambes et l'abus d'absinthe et de morphine, Gauguin s'installe aux îles Marquises, sur l'île d'Hiva Oa.
Il y jette son dévolu sur Marie-Rose Vaeoho, une élève de l'école des sœurs catholiques âgée de tout juste 14 ans selon les sources historiques.
D'après les témoignages locaux recueillis aux Marquises par les biographes du peintre, Gauguin convainc les parents de lui céder l'adolescente contre quelques cadeaux. Effrayée par cet homme vieillissant aux jambes bandées, la jeune fille de 14 ans tombe rapidement enceinte, puis retourne chez ses parents pour accoucher quelques mois avant la mort du peintre en mai 1903.
L'homme que les manuels d'histoire de l'art célèbrent encore comme un poète de l'innocence exotique et de la liberté absolue a terminé sa vie en colon profitant de son statut pour s'offrir des adolescentes de 14 et 15 ans avant d'abandonner sa descendance.
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Stopping meant the 30,000 soldiers who had already died had died for nothing.
The Pentagon Papers.
They tried to keep them secret for a reason.
When their own internal documents were leaked, when the American people got to read what their government actually believed privately about Vietnam, as opposed to what they were saying publicly, what they found was this:
Their own analysts knew they were losing.
Knew the strategy wasn't working.
Knew the body counts were fabricated or meaningless.
Knew the South Vietnamese regime had no legitimacy with its own people.
Knew the war couldn't be won in any meaningful sense.
And they kept going anyway.
Why?
Because stopping meant admitting they had been wrong.
Stopping meant the 30,000 soldiers who had already died had died for nothing.
Stopping meant the story they had told the American public, "we are winning, we must stay, we are defending freedom," was a lie from the beginning.
And admitting all of that was politically impossible.
So they kept sending young men to die in a war their own government secretly knew was unwinnable, because the alternative was political embarrassment.
They sacrificed their own soldiers to save face.
That is who makes the rules of the international order. That is whose judgment you are supposed to defer to. That is whose threats are supposed to make you tremble.
A government that fed its own children into a war it knew was lost because the paperwork involved in admitting defeat was too politically inconvenient.
And they want to talk to you about governance. About accountability. About the "rules-based international order."
Vietnam read the rules of that order and decided to write different ones.
ALT The New York Times, 13 June 1971. The first publication of the Pentagon Papers, a classified U.S. government history exposing the gulf between Washington's private assessments of the war in Vietnam and its public statements.
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Joseph Jones retweeted
Is there a chance of victory in the war against Iran?
Why is Netanyahu pressing Trump for the use of nuclear weapons?
Because the war has been lost. The military means employed have solved absolutely nothing and have left a hole of at least $400 billion in war spending and direct losses for GCC countries so far.
Contemplating the use of nuclear weapons is a desperate measure to reverse the failure. And would it work?
As I said before, there is no way to place a bomb inside the mountain. It would be a bomb detonating on the -almost- surface of the mountain and devastating entire regions of Iran.
This is the only way out of this war, however shameful. A victory that tastes of defeat and global condemnation.
By conventional means there is neither enough arsenal to win the war nor the political stamina to sustain it.
The current approach of strangling Iran seemed perfect and counted on phased closures of land borders. The problem with that?
Iran tightened the flow of petrodollars by using the Houthis and opening another front, while also bombing facilities and blocking Saudi shipping traffic in the Red Sea.
These are chess moves: “Squeeze our economy and we squeeze the global oil market.”
It is a crossroads where a solution exists, but it requires large payments and concessions that, in my view, have so far proven irreconcilable.
Substack.com/@global21
Joseph Jones retweeted
BREAKING: The U.S. may have begun striking Iranian air-defense systems, as multiple explosions rock Qeshm Island and Bandar Abbas in southern Iran, amid heavy U.S. aerial activity across the Gulf. At least five KC-46A Pegasus tankers and one KC-135R have been spotted operating in the region, while air-defense activity is reported over Qeshm, according to Initial and local reports.
The developments come shortly after the IRGC announced it had captured two U.S. MQM-170 Outlaw drones intact using electronic warfare and shot down an MQ-9 Reaper east of the Strait of Hormuz, bringing its announced MQ-9 losses to 55 since the conflict began.
Joseph Jones retweeted
BREAKING: Just as a glimmer of hope emerges between the US and Iran, someone starts bombing Iranian radar sites. I suspect Israel.
I posted a few days ago that a glimmer of hope had emerged in the US-Iran talks mediated by Qatar. Over the past few days, progress has increased to the point that sources and officials on all sides have privately expressed a degree of optimism, and both JD Vance and Trump himself did so publicly just a few hours ago.
Then, suddenly, things started to blow up on the Iranian island of Qeshm, as well as near the cities of Bandar Abbas and Ahvaz in southern Iran.
The Iranians tell me that they are certain the attacks were conducted by Israel, and not the US. A senior US source tells me it wasn’t the American side.
I posted last weekend that Israel had breached Iranian airspace. Tehran, however, opted not to respond, suspecting that Israel wanted to goad Iran into a trap by responding harshly, as that could help Netanyahu in the elections and force Trump’s hand in terms of turning to war.
It would be completely in line with a decades-long pattern of Israeli sabotage of US-Iran diplomacy that Netanyahu would begin kinetic action on the eve of a potential breakthrough in US-Iran talks - which incidentally appears to include a Chinese dimension - in order to sabotage it. Israel has opposed every US-Iran deal, including Trump’s MOU from this past summer.
Read more: tritaparsi.substack.com/p/br…
Joseph Jones retweeted
There is a word for what America did to Vietnam, and that word is not "intervention."
That word is not "conflict."
That word is not the polite, bloodless language of the history textbooks they write for their own children so those children can sleep at night.
The word is: atrocity.
They burned villages and called it "pacification."
They poisoned the land, the water, the food chain, and the genetics of generations not yet born with 20 million gallons of chemical agents, and called it "defoliation."
They created free-fire zones, which means exactly what it sounds like, zones where their soldiers were free to shoot anything that moved, and called it military strategy.
They killed between two and three million Vietnamese people and called it the cost of containing communism.
But here is what they could not do:
They could not make Vietnamese people stop fighting.
After everything, after the napalm and the B-52s and the strategic hamlets and the Phoenix Program death squads and the torture and the embargo and the mining of harbors, after every tool in the arsenal of the most powerful empire the world had ever assembled, the Vietnamese were still there. Still fighting. Still refusing.
So America left.
And now they want to talk to you about resilience. About strength. About what it takes to stand up to adversity.
They give TED Talks about it. They sell books about it.
Meanwhile, the country they tried to annihilate with the full industrial weight of their war machine is still here, still sovereign, still standing, and they have the absolute audacity to lecture the world about strength.
The humiliation is not ancient history.
It lives in every policy, every threat, every sanction they deploy today.
Because they know, they know, that their power has limits.
Vietnam showed everyone where those limits are.
Joseph Jones retweeted
BREAKING: Donald Trump is now privately asking his allies about the job performance of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine as he searches for a scapegoat for the conflict’s political damage, per The Atlantic.
Trump is reportedly furious that his top military advisers promised him a quick victory that never came.
Two outside advisers close to Trump told the magazine that Hegseth is unpopular in much of the White House, with some suspecting he "has not been honest about the state of the war," consistently painting it in rosy terms. "Hegseth is good at telling the president what he wants to hear," one adviser said.
Hegseth and Caine have even briefed Trump and JD Vance on new strike plans designed to let Washington declare “victory.”
Now Trump is reportedly asking people around him whether the same advisers who promised him a quick win are actually capable of ending the war or have dragged him into a much bigger mess.