The Great Refusal

A systemless cosmogony

[ahumourlessworld]

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[ahumourlessworld]

“"Which has to arise with idea and caudillo from the people." The first part is wrong. The idea can no longer arise from the people. It is "made", and those who know it are not usually men of the people. Now that giving efficacy to that idea is something that is probably reserved for a man of popular extraction. To be a caudillo has something of a prophet; it needs a dose of faith, of health, of enthusiasm and of anger that is not compatible with refinement. I, for one, would be good for anything but a fascist caudillo. The attitude of doubt and the ironic sense, which never leave those of us who have had, more or less, an intellectual curiosity, disqualify us from launching the robust affirmations without hesitation that are demanded of the leaders of the masses. So, then, if in Jerez, as in Madrid, there are friends of ours whose liver suffers with the prospect that I would like to set myself up as Caudillo del Fascio, you can reassure them for my part.” - letter from José Antonio Primo de Rivera to Julián Pemartín, 2 April 1933

[ahumourlessworld]

“I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.” - Ernest Hemingway, ‘A Farewell to Arms’ (1929)

[ahumourlessworld]

“In the dark hour before dawn they made love; then he pulled on his heaviest boots, packed a leather shoulder-bag with food and left the house while it was still dark. In the house of his parents, a light was burning - his father was preparing to milk the cows - but he walked on past it. He knew what they would say, and he knew that it would make no difference. What he was searching for lay somewhere out there.

He walked across the steppe all day. By evening, he was tired and homesick, and felt strangely lost. The world seemed a bigger place than he had realised, and his journeys to Tobolsk and Tioumen had not prepared him tor its vastness and alienness. The next day was worse; it rained all day, and he longed to be back home with his wife and children. That night he slept in a broken-down barn not far from Chelyabinsk. At dawn, he was tempted to go back home; he knelt by the roadside and prayed. As he prayed, something inside him woke up. He became clearly aware that it was only his heart that longed for home. His mind told him he had to go on. It gave him a strange pleasure to crush his emotions, to turn his face again towards the south. He had an odd sensation, like looking down on himself from a height, as the Virgin had looked down on him from the field near the river. He was strong again.

In a surprisingly short time, Grigory Rasputin became accustomed to the life of the open road. In Europe, he would have been regarded as a tramp or beggar; in Russia he was a strannik or pilgrim. The Russians are not a particularly religious people; yet they understand the urge that drives a man to leave his home and seek for salvation. Therefore there are few peasant cottages or farms that will refuse the wanderer food and rest. Besides, he brings a breath of the world beyond the village, and respite from boredom. Even if he merely sits by the fire and says nothing, his presence emphasises the brotherhood of man.

Occasionally, Rasputin slept in a bed; more often, it was in a hayloft or in the courtyard, or in the stable with the animals. He was always glad to enter the comfort of a home in the evening, and always glad to leave it for the open road in the morning. His greatest pleasure was to be alone in an empty landscape, with the rolling hills and forests stretching to the horizon. He loved to follow a river for miles along its course, to watch it narrow into mountain streams or broaden into lakes or marshes. He became an expert in catching fish and roasting it over wood fires; from other stranniki, he learned what roots and berries could be eaten. When his stout leather boots wore out, and then burst, he made himself sandals of bark, or walked barefoot; when the weather became cold, he wrapped his feet in cloth.

He had always felt close to the land, yet now he felt amazed to watch the changes of the seasons. From day to day, different trees and flowers bloomed; the air smelt different as it changed from spring into summer. Sunsets varied from pastel shades of salmon pink and apple green to rivers of flame that ran down the sky like a torrent. The night could be starry and tender, or dark and still and immense, or rainy and hostile. There were summer nights when he deliberately turned aside from a village or farm to sleep in the forest or by a river, because he could no longer face human company. His heart felt the need to expand, to open itself to trees and stars.

On one such evening, he made an interesting discovery. It had been a warm September day, but the evening was unexpectedly chilly. In his pack he had only one single chunk of grey bread - not even an onion or pickled cucumber. As he sat with his back against a fallen tree, he thought about his home and children, and suddenly longed to be back in Pokrovskoye. The emotion descended on him like a summer storm, unexpected in its violence. Yet a part of him remained detached, waiting for it to blow itself out. In the log behind him, he heard a rustling movement; looking round, he saw an enormous black beetle with great pincers on its head. A few inches away, grubs were burrowing under the rotting bark. As the beetle advanced, they vanished from sight. With interest, Rasputin watched the beetle move with surprising speed to the edge of the bark, push its armoured bulk underneath, and then slowly raise it by sheer strength. From where he was sitting, Rasputin could see the white grubs retreating further under the bark. The beetle suddenly backed away; the bark collapsed, trapping several grubs, which squirmed and writhed. The beetle waited for about a minute, then shouldered its powerful way forward again, pushing the bark upward. Before the grubs could escape, he had seized one of them in his great pincers, and carried it off back to its lair.

Rasputin watched this little drama with absorption. And, as the beetle vanished into its hole, he realised that the homesickness had vanished. Once again, he was in control of himself. The relief was so enormous that he laughed out loud. Then, as he chewed his chunk of hard bread, he thought about it. Why did he feel strong again? He thought of his mother's cat, Alexey, and the way it would lie for hours, its eyes fixed on a mousehole, so absorbed that it made no movement even if someone rattled food in its dish. This, he saw, was the answer: the cat watching the mouse. He had felt homesick because his soul was not in its proper place, inside his breast. The moment he became absorbed, the soul returned to its post inside him. And suddenly, he was calm and strong.

It was a discovery that was to last him the rest of his life. We are strong only when we are absorbed, when the controlling principle inside us returns to its interior castle. Grisha Rasputin expressed it more simply. Whenever he felt disturbed, bewildered, he thought of Alexey watching a mousehole. He allowed the emotional storm to rage around him while he remained absorbed in his imaginary mouse. Then the soul re-entered his breast, and suddenly, he was at peace. He called it the 'mouse game'.

The chief problem about being a wanderer was the sexual frustration. He had become accustomed to making love to Praskovia every day, and the deprivation often worried him more than physical hunger. If he was attracted by a woman, he fought it until the desire passed. But these struggles left him depressed and exhausted. The 'mouse game' helped him to control the problem; but he seemed unable to prevent it from recurring the next time he saw an attractive woman. He began to experience deep sympathy for the saints who had been tormented by female demons.

One night, he fell in with a peasant on his way back from the fields, a big, simple man who almost begged Rasputin to accept his hospitality. As soon as he saw the wife, he felt the tingle of desire. There are certain women who seemed to exude a disguised yet powertul sexuality; this powerfully built woman, with her plain face and big breasts, was one of them. During the evening, she avoided his eyes and said little. After supper, the peasant yawned and excused himself; their bed was on the other side of a curtain in the single room. Rasputin was given a bed on the floor, near the stove. He lay there, wide awake, listening to the sound of the woman removing her clothes. Then, peering round the curtain as if to make sure he was asleep, she came out naked and went to the sink. His body glowing with desire, he watched her as she washed her breasts and loins with a cloth. The red light of the stove made her flesh look like bronze. Then she turned, pretended to realise he was awake and started with surprise. Then, her hands modestly covering her loins, she slowly crossed the room towards his mattress. Rasputin sat up. As he did so, he saw the icon of the Holy Virgin in the corner of the room. He experienced a wave of disgust and despair. With a violent movement, he turned his face to the wall, pulling the blanket over his shoulder. Behind him, he heard a contemptuous hiss, not unlike an angry cat. He heard her cross the room to her own bed.

Unable to face her, he left the house before dawn. As he walked along he prayed: Oh God, why do you torment me with this lust? Why can I not be free of it Show me the way ...' He walked until the sun was high in the sky, and he no longer felt chilled to the bone. At a wood not far from a village, he found a stream at which he quenched his thirst. Then he closed his eyes and fell asleep in the long grass.

He was awakened by the sound of voices. He sat up cautiously. Fifty yards away, at the bottom of the slope, three girls were removing their clothes, laughing and chattering. Then one of them turned and saw him. She gave a scream of surprise and the others looked round. Then, to his relief, all three began to laugh. They were healthy peasant girls, and the notion of having undressed in front of a stranger struck them as funny. Then they ran into the trees, and he heard splashes as they flung themselves into a pond. Since communal bathing was accepted as normal in all country districts, Rasputin removed his own clothes and went and joined them. They were obviously delighted that the stranger was young and attractive, and all three vied for his attention. As he wrestled and struggled with them, trying to avoid being ducked, his masculine desires flowed strongly again. But this time it seemed natural and acceptable. Because he was a stranger, they also felt free to behave naturally. In the long grass of the meadow, as they lay drying in the sun, he made love to the most buxom and uninhibited of the girls. When that was over, it became clear that the other two - although lying some distance away and apparently unaware of what was happening - were eager to share the experience. After almost a year of celibacy, he acquitted himself like a Hercules. Then he lay down again in the grass and watched them dress and return to the village. His body glowed in the sun like a well-fed animal.

And then, suddenly, he realised that God had answered his prayer. He had asked, 'Why do you torment me with this lust?' Now God had shown him the answer, and it was as if his head was filled with light. God had told him quite plainly, 'Why blame me? You torment yourself. When did I ever say that sex was forbidden?'

He thought about the Archpriest Avvakum, burning his hand in the candle flame, and the thought made him roar with laughter. But it sprang from relief rather than amusement. It would have been wrong to sleep with the peasant woman the night before because he was a guest under her husband's roof. But it was right to sleep with the peasant girls because he wanted to and they had no objection. And neither, he now saw, had God. For the remainder of his life, Rasputin experienced no more conflicts about sex.

This new sense of freedom seemed to increase the power he felt inside himself. Most people struck him as hopelessly confused, trapped in a tangle of their own emotions. His inner certainty gave him access to a power inside him.

Within a few days he had occasion to use it. At a cottage where he asked for shelter, the daughter was ill - she had fallen in the river a few days before, had been pulled out half-drowned, and had been feverish and delirious ever since. Rasputin remembered his brother, and felt his heart contract with pity. He asked to see the girl, who was scarcely breathing, then asked the parents to leave the room.

As soon as he touched her forehead, he knew he could cure her. The power welled up from deep inside him, stronger than ever before. He knelt by the bed, played the 'mouse game' to still his mind, then allowed the power to flow from his breast and solar plexus. Almost immediately, she gave a deep sigh of relief and stretched her limbs. Smoothly, gently, the energy flowed from him, and every time he concentrated, a new surge of power passed from his hands into the girl. It had never come so easily and strongly. When he left her ten minutes later, she was breathing deeply and regularly.

He told the parents; 'God has cured her. When she wakes up, she will be well.'

The father embraced him and almost crushed the breath out of him; the mother kissed his hands. He was pleased that they believed him and made no attempt to go and see the child. The next morning, she was well enough to eat at table with them.

As he tramped on the next day, his bag again bulging with food, Rasputin experienced a curious, heady excitement that seemed to have no precise cause. If he concentrated and took a deep breath, the power welled up in him. If he relaxed and simply looked at the scenery, he seemed to enter into it, to see it with a kind of urgency, as if it was speaking to him. He was changing; he was becoming different. He felt like a chrysalis about to turn into a butterfly.

Suddenly, he again wanted to be back at home. Not, this time, out of misery and longing, but out of strength.” - Colin Wilson, ‘The Magician from Siberia’ (1988) [pp. 77 - 83]

[ahumourlessworld]

As of May 2026, America’s national debt is $39.11 trillion dollars. That’s 101% of our GDP (the largest nominal GDP in human history). We add $5.13 million more every minute. The interest payments on that debt is now $1 trillion dollars for the 2026 fiscal year.

We are in the process of losing another war in the Middle East (which has thus far cost about $50 billion).

There have been no prosecutions related to the Epstein files.

Trump appointees push $250 banknote with his portrait

“Trump administration officials have pressed the office responsible for printing the nation’s money to design a $250 bill featuring the president’s portrait, according to four current and former employees, in what would be the first appearance of a living person on U.S. currency in more than 150 years.

Starting last year, two political appointees at the Treasury Department — U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach and his senior adviser, Mike Brown — repeatedly urged staff at the agency’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing to prepare prototypes of the note, according to the employees, who said the move raised concerns because federal law currently allows only deceased people to appear on bills.

(…)

As part of the effort, Beach in August and September provided bureau staff with mock-up designs for the note, including one that shows President Donald Trump’s face in the center of the $250 bill between the signatures of the president and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, according to one of the employees and records reviewed by The Washington Post.

(…)

No living person has appeared on U.S. currency since 1866, when it was outlawed after the image of a mid-level Treasury bureaucrat showed up on a 5-cent note. Legislation that would allow Trump to appear on a $250 bill was introduced in Congress last year to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary but has languished.

In a statement, a Treasury Department spokesperson said the printing office “is conducting appropriate planning and due diligence” in response to the proposed legislation.

“Should this legislative mandate be signed into law, the BEP is moving proactively to produce a $250 commemorative note which will appropriately recognize the 250th Anniversary of our great nation,” the statement said.

The director of the printing bureau, Patricia “Patty” Solimene, and other staff repeatedly explained to Beach and Brown that there were legal and procedural obstacles to producing the note and that it would take years longer than they envisioned, the four employees said.

(…)

“She had told them we’re not authorized to do this. We can’t progress any further, and all the stakeholders have not even met to discuss the next steps,” said one of the employees. “Currency often takes six to eight years to produce a new bill, particularly one of such high value.”

Solimene said she was abruptly reassigned from her post by Treasury management on April 27, writing the next day in an email to colleagues that she was leaving with a “heavy heart.” She wrote in her goodbye email, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, that she had been reassigned to another job in the Treasury Department and that her departure was “not my choice.”

She added that she “never sacrificed the values or character of myself or the organization and always prioritized the U.S. Currency Program and the value each employee brings to the mission.”

“The buck stopped here,” she wrote.

Solimene did not specify in the email why she was reassigned and did not return calls seeking comment. A 24-year Army veteran, she had been the first female director of the bureau.

Brown, formerly a senior adviser to Beach, has since been named the bureau’s acting director. He did not return messages seeking comment.

The Treasury statement said Beach has “never asked staff to print the bill before congressional passage.” The agency declined to comment on Solimene’s reassignment. The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Solimene and her staff had consented to another administration request: to print $100 bills featuring Trump’s signature, according to the four employees. They said those bills — the first in American history to bear a sitting president’s signature — are currently being printed at the bureau’s downtown Washington facility.

(…)

While no law prohibits printing bills with Trump’s signature, U.S. currency experts say that producing a $250 note featuring the president‘s image would run afoul of current laws. One states only a “deceased individual” may be depicted on American currency. Another specifies which denominations the bureau may produce.

Larry R. Felix, a former director of the bureau, said “a $250 note is not statutorily authorized” without an act of Congress.

“The secretary has to be given authority to do that,” he said, referring to Bessent.

(…)

A second challenge, experts said, is that designing and printing any new note typically necessitates extensive coordination with the Federal Reserve, the Secret Service and private sector partners.

Felix said it took more than a decade to design and produce a $100 note with dozens of embedded security features that prevented counterfeiting.

(…)

“These guys think you can just print something overnight and it’s going to work in an ATM. It’s just crazy,” said one of the employees. “It takes years and years and years to produce these notes so they are reliable for the public.”

(…)

In February 2025, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) introduced a bill that would order the Treasury secretary “to print $250 Federal reserve notes featuring a portrait of Donald Trump.” The bill was referred to the House Financial Services Committee but has not received a hearing.

(…)

For the back of the note, Alexander said he proposed a theme of “women’s liberation” featuring Betsy Ross, the seamstress who made flags during the American Revolution.”

[ahumourlessworld]

“GRIECO: In conclusion, then, how shall we formulate the Third Way?

ABBAGNANO: Allow me a comparison that may seem blasphemous but is decidedly not so. About the Third Way, as about God, we can seriously only speak negatively. We can say what God is not, not what God is. This is so, in some sense, with the Third Way. Everyone already invokes this liberating prospective. But each is trying to draw water to one's own mill. In any case, we know that the Third Way can be no variant of Marxism or capitalism. It cannot consist in an adjustment in the distressed course of corporatism. We cannot identify the Third Way with any economic system, pure or mixed, that is coldly calculated in committee.

Everything prefabricated, everything that is an abstraction, everything that tends to degrade humanity into an object and not into a subject of history, is not the Third Way. The Third Way starts at the point where human beings find themselves anew, their own standard, the sense of their own existence in the world. The rest, I am tempted to say, comes by itself as a consequence: social justice, freedom of the spirit, the right of projecting our own life in an autonomous way, but with respect for the projects of others as its limit. At bottom, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, people dreamt of putting themselves in the place of God. We have paid, are paying, dearly for this illusion. Now to save ourselves, we have no other alternative but to go back to ourselves, to content ourselves with being only human.

Too little? Without exaggerating, it appears to me to be quite a great thing. What could be greater, more exalting, than a real, concrete, earthly, not metaphysical, project: the ability freely to build our own destiny, without any patronage or conditioning? No longer guaranteed by a transcendent God whose mysterious motions need only to be seconded to ensure our salvation. No longer dissolved in the anonymous magma of a History that, in every case, proceeds always toward the good and which realizes its ends in Immanence. These ends are just as mysterious as those of the transcendent God.

Humanity today heads toward the year 2000 nearly in an orphan state. It feels alone on a planet that has long ceased being the center of the world. On this planet, like a minute grain of sand dispersed in a universe generated probably some billions of years ago by a colossal explosion, we have discovered and have become convinced that we have a task to carry out: a union of appropriation and knowledge. A task we cannot delegate, even to a personal God, "Creator and Lord of Heaven and Earth."

We orphan human beings now know that salvation or damnation depends exclusively on us, on our choices of life. We know that we get nothing for nothing and that for us no irreversible conquests exist. We are forced to project ourselves. Continually, daily, we are forced to invent ourselves.

These orphans condemned to a finite destiny, circumscribed in time and space, have nevertheless acquired the certainty of having the means and the possibility of dominating time and space. Thus, with our little grain of sand as our point of departure, we have moved to the conquest of the cosmos, renewing the ancient myth of Ulysses. In this way, the frontiers of the possible have dizzily opened up and in all directions, because science, having become humble and problematic after its nineteenth-century intoxication, has revealed that the wonders of the macrocosm are integrally contained in the microcosm and, hence, in the infinitely small.

The Third Way, then, lies at the start of a new, and heady human adventure that is up to us, and only to us, to direct to a good ending. Under the eye of God? In the perspective of human finitude, God is a possibility philosophy and science cannot exclude from the human horizon. God lets us be, respects our freedom: the freedom of projecting ourselves as if we were to live forever but of conducting ourselves as if we were to die tomorrow. Not by chance that we are today rediscovering the religious dimension, the dimension of the sacred.

We are rediscovering that God's freedom does not embarrass, even less does it abolish, human freedom. Perhaps the Third Way, which in substance is the path of salvation, lies at the convergence of these two liberties. For too long they have clashed, or have been badly confused, thus precipitating humanity into the chaos signaled philosophically by the "Death of God" and by human fragmentation. The Third Way, in conclusion, is the rebirth of humanity in the dramatic concreteness and in exalting ambiguity of its finite destiny.” - Nicola Abbagnano, ‘The Human Project; The Year 2000’ (1981) [p. 96 - 98]

[ahumourlessworld]

“ABBAGNANO: Keynes affirms the state's intervention because, in his judgment, simply no truth exists in the claim that the economy of the market place, if left to itself, has a capacity of internal self-regulation, thus sparing it from committing irreparable errors. His view is that the marketplace does not possess the cure-all that places it above every suspicion and guarantees quite absolutely its infallibility. On the contrary, the law of the market place, based on the mechanism of supply and demand, does not necessarily bring about a stable equilibrium between public and private interest. Only the state can pursue this equilibrium as a goal and, therefore, accomplish it. This is so because the state acts for the community's good. It does not view its own profit as its objective.

Naturally, even the state's intervention carries with it its own risks. Keynes could quite well see, for example, that such an intervention leads to a dizzying growth of production. This growth generates a condition, more or less widespread and serious, of galloping inflation. He does not consider this an evil. He holds that the negative side of inflation is constantly being absorbed and neutralized by the growth of profits and progressive growth of wages.

GRIECO: But has the entrepreneurial state fully satisfied Keynes's expectations, confirming in daily practice the validity of his theory? Has neo-capitalism, with its mixed economy, truly corrected the errors of pure capitalism?

ABBAGNANO: Unfortunately, the Keynesian project has not yielded the expected results. They have not materialized because, first, everywhere the state has turned out to be a bad, the worst, entrepreneur. The reasons behind this general failure are legion. The most conspicuous is that, in the entrepreneurial sponsorship of the state, political and partisan interests prevail. These contravene the basic laws of the economy. The consequences of this fiasco have exceeded the grimmest forecast.

We can attest to this fact each day if we consider the situation into which Italy has fallen. Italy is a country where the entrepreneurial activity of the state has assumed enormous, it not monstrous, proportions. What has happened to Italy? State intervention in the economy has brought about a frightening deficit.

This deficit continually grows. Against it, failing any efficacious corrective, the only remedy we can find is recourse to a further inflation that escapes any control whatever. The economy's ills grow worse. We become further entangled in an endless spiral that makes futile any prospect of liberation. Neo-capitalism has generated the birth of an inflationary state. This state threatens to shipwreck with its insipience the same community whose welfare it was supposed to guarantee.

GRIECO: What then? Does really no way exist out of this crisis? What do the experts suggest?

ABBAGNANO: The experts are all agreed on the diagnosis of the ills of neo-capitalism. No unanimity, deep disagreement, exists with respect to the remedies. The prevailing tendency favors a decisive return to the past. Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, is one interpreter most convinced about this. In this scholar's view, the only thing we need to do is to promote a general return to classical economics. The reason? By unanimous acknowledgment, since the state's intervention aggravates, does not correct, the defects of the market place, the only reasonable political economy to carry out should be drastically to reduce public spending.

Friedman asks what the state does nowadays when it sees itself strangled by the growing deficit of its entrepreneurial sponsorship? To escape this suffocating squeeze, it imposes new taxes. Hence, it diminishes the citizen's capacity to undertake new economic initiatives. A state with an overburdened economy tries to rescue itself by increasing the tax burden. Not how it should be, according to Friedman. Salvation is to be sought in the opposite direction, by lowering the deficit through reduced spending.

GRIECO: Neo-capitalism has no choice? To enter the road toward salvation, it would have to radically invert the present tendency of its mixed economy?

ABBAGNANO: If we are to heed Friedman, and the other economists who think as he, that would appear to be the case. No one has the courage to carry out this contrary direction that so many consider so necessary and urgent. It clashes with too many already established interests. This demonstrates the blind alley into which the economy of the Western countries has been driven and the gravity of the crisis through which they are going.

The politics of neo-capitalism, the lack of preoccupation with the enterprise's deficit, has in the end turned out the be a politics that does not pay. It has plunged big industry into an irreversible crisis. Simultaneously, it has not helped the workers. To make the production of goods ever more costly for the working class is not in its interest. Beyond a certain point inflation becomes a pit that swallows up any benefit whatever. The struggle of unions for an increase in salary become futile, since an increase in prices erodes and supersedes such a raise.

In conclusion, neo-capitalism today emerges virtually everywhere as a kind of monster fiercely set on devouring itself. The energy crisis that accompanies it makes the monster all the more ferocious. This crisis is all-enveloping and conditions neo-capitalism's every move. Thus the Western answer of neo-capitalism to the aberrant Gulags that Marxism generated looms quite negatively as a gigantic edifice with clay foundations. At any moment it is in danger of collapse. It fails to offer an authentic prospect of liberation for the future.

GRIECO: Then have we not really plunged into hell without remedy?

ABBAGNANO: Neo-capitalism's basic sin, the primary cause of all its flaws and all its errors, is to have degraded human beings into pure and simple economic entities. The homo economicus in the theory of Adam Smith, classical capitalism's prophet is an abstraction that finds no counterpart in reality. There we see that the economic component, however emphasized, never coincides with the primary human interest. It has intrinsic limits that it cannot surmount, at the risk of destroying individuals in their concrete complexity.

The hell to which neo-capitalism subjects us is precisely this economic abstraction that had already ensnared the development of classical capitalism. It certainly did not wait for Marx to be condemned. In reality, homo economicus is a commercialized human being, reduced to an object and the tool of an absolutized production no longer human and satisfying no one. It makes everyone unhappy, disappointed, ready to be seduced by alternatives of liberation that are such only in appearance, like the dream of the revolution destined to realize the kingdom of God on earth.

The truth is that abstractions of any kind only generate monsters. Liberation lies only in reality, in the humble daily reality that opens up before our eyes. What does this reality show us? Surely not the monolithic puppet of homo economicus. Instead, it shows us individuals who want to produce the maximum number of goods possible with the least possible expense. This results from a goal not always and exclusively of brute profit. It also can be one of pride and power, for example. It shows us to be, doubtlessly most often the case, human beings who in our work try to maintain and guarantee our dignity, free choice, personality.

Liberation is revolt of the individual about whom we have talked at the start of our discussion. This revolt arises from human depths and brings people to reaffirm themselves, their human concreteness and earthly limits. The revolt is against all the generalizations and abstractions that have turned out to be only sources of disaster and aberration. In the face of the incumbent menace of mass alienation from which no liberation exists for anyone, people have rediscovered, if only in a confused and uncertain way, What I would call their existential vocation": the need to project themselves in an individual, autonomous measure. Obviously this would take into account all the constituent factors of their own existence.

This new perspective recognizes the weight of economics. Work plays a determining role. Ideology that blocks free choices in any field and pretends to intervene massively and obtusely in the politico-religious sphere of the individual must not condition work. To say this with an image: Adam Smith's so-called homo economicus has found anew its own indestructible and inalienable spiritual nucleus in the crisis of neo-capitalism. It has rediscovered its soul.

GRIECO: Does this mean that a spark of hope exists for exiting this hell? In the prospective of the year 2000, can we still think of a human liberation? Does a Third Way, pursuable with profit by individuals of good will, lie between the Marxist Gulag and the neo-capitalist hell?

ABBAGNANO: The Third Way, the only one that can get us out of this hell, does exist. All persons of good will can doubtlessly pursue it. All we need to embrace it is, first, an act of trust in ourselves, in our capacity to project ourselves above and beyond the models that hold sway and clash today in the world. Nothing is given to us once and for all. Nothing in us is immutable.

We must disconnect Marxism and capitalism from the abstract heavens of the absolute and must return them to their reality as means, as instruments through which humanity's history passes on its way toward realizing a goal that transcends them. No perfect social system exists that we merely need to adopt to attain happiness. All social systems are imperfect, flawed, in need of constant revision. What corrective prevents them from degenerating into tyranny, into abuse of power, into anarchy? Only the human measure that indicates the limits within which people have the right and the duty to move and work.

Let us take a concrete example: work. Today we have people who consider it in every case as a condemnation, as something against which we must rebel so as to feed our libido and enable us to arrive at a state of happy creativity. Dreams! This means to abandon oneself to the seductions of utopian fantasies. Reality is quite different. It tells us that work is an activity that demands commitment and effort, that possesses techniques, and cannot, must not, be faced with a spirit of rebellion and violence.

To condemn work, to put it under accusation just because it is work, is absurd. Such an attitude is contrary even to Marxism. Marxism extols work as the highest human activity. For Marx, human beings live in their work and are fulfilled by their ties to their work. Consequently, the goal toward which we should strive is a state of equilibrium that prevents exploitation of human beings by human beings. The worker has to be able to say to the employer: "I do my part honestly. But you in exchange must guarantee me the job and ensure the best conditions for the optimum use of my energies."

Alienation, this scourge that accompanies humanity to the threshold of the year 2000, is the poisoned fruit of human commercialization, of human beings forced to sell themselves with their own labor. The Third Way starts the moment people succeed in untying themselves from such servitude and can offer their own labor without compromising their souls in the interplay of give and take. In the Third Way, people must find the guarantee and the limits of their own projection, because this economic projection is no abstract activity. It is something concrete made by, and for, people.

We return to our old point. Human beings do not exist in an absolute way, divided into so many economic spheres, each perfectly delimited and pigeonholed in a sort of colossal archive of humanity. To make matters simpler, we are simultaneously producer and consumer in a kind of continuum. This means that the one cannot spite the other without spiting itself.

To speak of the Third Way is a line of direction, a point of understanding, a complex maturation of motives that involves human beings totally. Unless we keep this firmly in mind that the Third Way is not just any recipe for liberation concocted at the bedside of a humanity heading toward collapse, it becomes a futile rhetorical exercise, if not altogether a conscious fraud. The Third Way is a goal that we can, must, indicate to everyone. We cannot, must not, impose it on anyone. The Third Way is the liberation of people from the structures that have devoured them, decreeing death even before proclaiming the definitive and irreversible death of God.” - Nicola Abbagnano, ‘The Human Project; The Year 2000’ (1981) [p. 89 - 93]

[ahumourlessworld]

CIA Took Files on JFK, MK-ULTRA From Tulsi Gabbard ‘in the Middle of the Night’ and Has Refused to Return Them: Report

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna claimed the CIA entered Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's warehouse and took away files relating to M

“Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) claimed on Wednesday that the CIA entered Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s warehouse and took away files relating to MK-ULTRA and the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy.

During an appearance on NewsNation’s Katie Pavlich Tonight, Luna revealed:

We were actually just notified that the CIA went in and took documents out of ODNI. Multiple boxes pertaining to the JFK files, as well as MK-ULTRA. The reason why this is troubling is, A) There was an executive order that the president had directed the full declassification of JFK. But then also to the MK-ULTRA files, the CIA has famously said that, you know, all documents were released and other documents had been destroyed, so these are allegedly those documents that apparently never existed, and so very troubling.

I did just talk to Chairman [James] Comer and we are sending in the next hour or so a preservation of documents request to the CIA. I have called into the White House, to the director of the CIA himself, and so obviously as this develops we will keep everyone up to date, but strange times we’re living in, that’s for sure.

After host Katie Pavlich questioned, “Does the CIA have jurisdiction to go into Gabbard’s office like that and take documentation?” the congresswoman replied, “Well, the CIA does not have jurisdiction to work against an executive order by the president, and so the fact that someone did this when the president is out of country– from what I gather I believe that [CIA director John] Ratcliffe is with him, and so this seems like it was an internal coup, to be honest.”

After the interview, Pavlich clarified that the taking of documents was “not a raid” and that the incident took place last year, not this week, but that the files “were not given back.”

“People from the CIA took documents (related to the JFK assassination/MKUltra) from the National Reconnaissance Office *last year* in the middle of the night during the government shutdown and have not returned/is withholding them from ODNI,” said Pavlich in an update. “Because the CIA is withholding these documents, they cannot be declassified and scanned for public release.”

Rep. Anna Luna threatens to subpoena CIA over MK-Ultra files

“Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., says she will subpoena the CIA if the agency does not return boxes of files seized from the Director of National Intelligence’s office.

The files, which reportedly include documents relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the CIA’s MK-Ultra program, were being processed for declassification.

Luna posted on social media that the CIA has 24 hours to return the files to DNI Tulsi Gabbard or she will issue a subpoena, as Congress has requested those records.

“The reason why this is troubling, A) there was an executive order that the president directed the full declassification of JFK, but then also to the MK-Ultra files famously the CIA said that all documents were released and other documents had been destroyed,” Luna told NewsNation’s Katie Pavlich. “So, these are allegedly those documents that apparently never existed.””

[ahumourlessworld]

Inflation Soared to 3.8% in April, Driven by Gasoline Prices

“Consumer prices rose 3.8% in April from a year earlier, a clear impact of higher gas prices since the start of the war with Iran.

The figures, reported Tuesday by the Labor Department, surpassed the previous month’s reported increase of 3.3%. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected inflation of 3.7%. The April increase was the highest in three years.

Prices excluding food and energy categories—the so-called core measure economists watch in an effort to better capture inflation’s underlying trend—rose 2.8%. That compared with forecasts for a 2.7% increase, and was a pickup from 2.6% the previous month.

(…)

“The American economy has entered a new chapter where inflation appears to have stepped up,” says Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM. He predicts the headline rate moving to 4% later this year. “Median American families are going to find it very challenging to adjust going into the second half of the year.”

(…)

Prices rose 0.6% in April from the previous month, in line with economists’ forecasts and slowing from 0.9% in March. Energy prices accounted for over 40% of the month-to-month increase.

Energy prices were up 18% from a year earlier; within that gasoline was up 28% and fuel oil jumped 54%.

Airfare prices rose 21%.

(…)

High prices ate into households’ purchasing power. Inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings declined 0.3% in April from a year earlier. That marked the first time inflation outstripped annual growth in paychecks since April 2023.

(…)

From a year earlier, food prices were up 3.2%. Coffee prices rose about 19% over the year, and fresh vegetables rose about 12%. Prices for tomatoes, which were already getting more expensive due to adverse weather conditions and President Trump’s tariffs, rose 40% over the year.

Among the signs that tariffs continue to push up some prices, audio equipment jumped 5.8% from a year earlier and apparel was up 4.2%.”

Prices at the Pump Are Wiping Out Wage Gains

“For the first time in three years, inflation is outstripping growth in Americans’ paychecks.

Blame the gas pump. Americans are currently paying about $4.50 a gallon for regular gasoline, according to AAA, up more than 50% since the initial U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran in late February. Pay increases aren’t keeping up.

(…)

Americans are dealing with a math problem. While hourly wages rose a seasonally adjusted 3.6% on the year through April, the pace has mostly slowed over the past four years as hiring cooled from a postpandemic hot streak. Meanwhile, inflation was 3.8% year over year, pushed up by surging fuel costs. After seasonal adjustment and rounding, the Labor Department said this leads to a 0.3% decline in inflation-adjusted hourly wages, also known as real hourly earnings.

(…)

On a weekly basis, the drop in earnings was less severe as workers put in slightly longer hours in April. Weekly earnings were down 0.2% on the year for all private-sector workers and up 0.1% for production and nonsupervisory employees, who tend to be the rank-and-file workforce.”

[ahumourlessworld]

"When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. And he took the calf the people had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it." - Exodus 32:19-20

"When I looked, I saw that you had sinned against the Lord your God; you had made for yourselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way that the Lord had commanded you." - Deuteronomy 9:16

"At Horeb they made a calf and worshiped an idol cast from metal. They exchanged their glorious God for an image of a bull, which eats grass." - Psalm 106:19-20

[ahumourlessworld]

U.S. Treasury will have to borrow $2 trillion this year just to continue functioning—more than $166 billion every month

“The U.S. Treasury will likely have borrowed more than $2 trillion by the end of the fiscal year, according to the latest estimates out of the Executive Office of the president—a figure described as “beyond scary” by budget hawks.

(…)

The presentation showed that as of April 2026, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) expected the 2026 fiscal year to run at a deficit of $2.06 trillion, higher than estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The federal fiscal year will end on September 30, with the OMB projecting a deficit of $2.17 trillion for FY2027.

This means that for every month of the current fiscal year, the government will have issued more than $166 billion in debt. From October, that average will increase to approximately $181 billion a month.

The CBO, by comparison, had estimated a deficit of $1.85 trillion for the current fiscal year and $1.89 trillion for next year.

It comes as national debt—being added to month after month—creeps closer to the $39 trillion mark. At the time of writing, the U.S. national debt sits at $38.91 trillion, per Treasury data.

The interest payments on that debt are now so huge that they rival government spending on both education and defense combined. The CBO’s preliminary estimates released last month show the Treasury paid out nearly $530 billion on service payments between October 2025, when the fiscal year starts, and March 2026. This equates to more than $88 billion in interest payments a month, or more than $22 billion a week.

“$2 trillion deficits used to be unheard of, and then they only occurred during major recessions—it’s beyond scary that $2 trillion deficits are now the norm,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “Markets will only tolerate our unsustainable borrowing for so long; the risk of a fiscal crisis gets higher as the days pass. We need deficit reduction urgently.”

(…)

The push to anchor deficits to 3% of GDP has garnered bipartisan support in recent years. Some policymakers believe that even an agreed-upon target would be too lax—a mandate should be written into the constitution. Even a 3% benchmark is roughly half the level of current deficits, and would on its own require budgets to meaningfully shift. It would require approximately $10 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade for the target to be reached by 2036.”

[ahumourlessworld]

Do We Really Hate Anne Hathaway?

““Everyone sort of hates Anne Hathaway,” Mr. Stern said, speculating that it was because she comes off as “so affected and actressy.” Mr. Franco did not strain to defend his 2011 Academy Awards co-host. “I’m not an expert on — I guess they’re called ‘Hathahaters’ — but I think that’s what maybe triggers it,” he replied cagily.

So why does the perky and supremely talented actress inspire such froth? Ms. Hathaway could simply be a victim of what the British call “tall poppy syndrome” — the bloom that pokes above the others is the first to get cut. With her too-perfect mouth, flawless skin, doe eyes and svelte figure, Ms. Hathaway is certainly one of Hollywood’s most visible blossoms of late, particularly after scooping up a best supporting actress Oscar and Golden Globe for her turn as Fantine in “Les Misérables.”

(…)

No one, it should be noted, accuses her of doing anything wrong. Rather, Ms. Hathaway seems to have become a mirror for our own inadequacies.

“It’s not really Anne Hathaway I ‘hate,’ ” said Sarah Nicole Prickett, a writer for Vice and The New Inquiry, a culture and commentary site. “It’s all the lesser, real-life Anne Hathaways I have known — princessy, theater-schooled girls who have no game and no sex appeal and eat raisins for dessert.”

Indeed, for some nonfans, Ms. Hathaway seems to embody the archetypal high school drama geek who cannot turn off the eager, girlish persona, even away from the stage. “We love authenticity, that’s why we have a billion reality shows,” said Neal Gabler, an author of several best-selling books on Hollywood culture and history. “And here comes Anne Hathaway. Everything she does seems managed, calculated or rehearsed. Her inauthenticity — or the feeling of her inauthenticity — is now viral.”

(…)

“Why Do Women Hate Anne Hathaway (But Love Jennifer Lawrence)?” Ann Friedman asked on New York magazine’s fashion and women’s issues blog, The Cut. “We simply don’t find successful ‘perfect’ women all that likable,” she wrote, adding that women prefer sassy best-friend types like Jennifer Lawrence, with her Oscar-night podium stumbles and self-effacing jokes about Spanx and cheese steaks.

One might think that Ms. Hathaway would have an adoring fan base in the gay community — what with her outspoken support of gay rights, her star turns in “Brokeback Mountain” and “The Devil Wears Prada,” her fashion sophistication, a gay brother and her reported plans to play Judy Garland in a biopic. But gay people, too, have failed to embrace her, according to Derek Hartley, a talk-show host on SiriusXM’s gay issues channel, OutQ. “Anne Hathaway practically demands that we love her,” Mr. Hartley wrote. “I’ve seen less aggressive bids for our attention on Grindr.”

(…)

P. M. Forni, a founder of the Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, which focuses on manners and social behavior, agrees that piling on can be fun, in a perverse sort of way. “The sensation of belonging to a group of like-minded people activates the pleasure centers of the brain,” Dr. Forni said. “So at a certain point, something like what has happened to Ms. Hathaway acquired momentum, and people were willing and eager to be part of that momentum.”

“The psychological dynamics at work are, at least in part, the ones at work in cyberbullying,” he added.

Jack Goncalo, an associate professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University, who studies group dynamics, goes further and argues that the Hathahaters might not actually harbor negative feelings about Ms. Hathaway, but are merely following a mob mentality. Psychologists call this “informational social influence.” “ ‘If the majority has done my thinking for me, I can move on to something else,’ ” Dr. Goncalo said. “People don’t want to think.”

In that sense, Hathahating echoes the emergent online sport of “hate reading” — following a blog regularly for the express purpose of ridiculing it, or “hate watching,” the bad-television-show analog, as chronicled by Katie J. M. Baker, in Jezebel.

“It’s like we’re in middle school,” Ms. Baker said. “The easiest way to bond is to talk smack about someone else, whether you’re online or at a party.””

[ahumourlessworld]

U.S. intelligence says Iran can outlast Trump’s Hormuz blockade for months

“A confidential CIA analysis delivered to administration policymakers this week concludes that Iran can survive the U.S. naval blockade for at least three to four months before facing more severe economic hardship, four people familiar with the document said, a finding that appears to raise new questions about President Donald Trump’s optimism on ending the war.

The analysis by the U.S. intelligence community, whose secret assessments on Iran have often been more sober than the administration’s public statements, also found that Tehran retains significant ballistic missile capabilities despite weeks of intense U.S. and Israeli bombardment, three of the people familiar with it said.

Iran retains about 75 percent of its prewar inventories of mobile launchers and about 70 percent of its prewar stockpiles of missiles, a U.S. official said. The official said there is evidence that the regime has been able to recover and reopen almost all of its underground storage facilities, repair some damaged missiles and even assemble some new missiles that were nearly complete when the war began.

(…)

Three current and one former U.S. official confirmed the outlines of the intelligence analysis, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

(…)

One of the U.S. officials who spoke to The Washington Post said they thought Iran’s capacity to endure prolonged economic hardship is far greater than even the CIA estimate. “The leadership has gotten more radical, determined and increasingly confident they can outlast U.S. political will and sustain domestic repression to check any resistance” inside Iran, the official said. “Comparatively, you see similar regimes lasting years under sustained embargoes and airpower-only wars.”​

(…)

But the CIA estimate says Iran can survive the U.S. blockade for 90 to 120 days — and maybe longer — before facing more severe economic hardship, the four people familiar with it said.

Tehran is storing some of its oil aboard tanker ships that otherwise would be empty because of the blockade, one of the people said. It is also decreasing the flows in its oil fields to ensure the wells remain functional. “It’s nowhere near as dire as some have claimed,” this person said of Iran’s economic situation.

The CIA analysis might even be underestimating Iran’s economic resilience if Tehran is able to smuggle oil via overland routes. Truck and rail convoys can’t replace the volume of ships and open sea lanes but might provide an economic cushion, one of the U.S. officials said. “There’s a belief they could begin moving some oil via rail through Central Asia,” the official said.

On the matter of Iranian weapons, the confidential intelligence assessment says that Iran’s inventory of missiles and mobile launchers remains formidable.

Iran is thought to have had roughly 2,500 ballistic missiles before the war began, as well as thousands more unmanned drones. Iran has used those weapons to launch retaliatory strikes against U.S. allies in the Gulf as well as U.S. military sites across the region. A Post visual investigation found that Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at U.S. military sites in the Middle East, a level of destruction far larger than what has been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government.

The timeline for when Iran can again start producing ballistic missiles in substantial quantities has shortened, one of the U.S. officials said.

To control traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, however, the missiles matter less than the lower-cost drones, analysts inside and outside the government say. And unlike medium-range missiles that can strike, say, Israel, these drones can be built in small warehouses and easily concealable facilities, another U.S. official said.

“All it takes is one drone to hit a ship and no one will give insurance” to the oil tankers, said Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies.

In early April, the U.S. intelligence community assessed that more than half of Iran’s missile launchers were still intact and that it had thousands of one-way attack drones in its arsenal, The Post and CNN reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Citrinowicz, a former head of the Iran branch in Israeli military intelligence, said that even if the blockade lasted several months, it would not force the regime to bend to Washington’s demands. “The problem is they don’t think they need to capitulate,” he said.

In the end, he said, despite U.S.-Israeli military successes in Iran, the war’s outcome still could be strategic failure.

“What started as a war supposedly aimed at toppling the regime and dismantling its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities,” Citrinowicz posted Wednesday on X, “may instead leave Iran’s regime stronger than before — empowered by sanctions relief, still retaining significant missile capabilities, continuing support for its proxies, and almost certainly preserving uranium enrichment on its own soil.’’”

Secret document reveals Russia’s plans to aid Iran

“THERE ARE many reasons why America’s war on Iran has been failing. One of them is the effectiveness of Iranian drones. Now a confidential document obtained by The Economist from a trusted source suggests that Russia has offered to provide Iran with unjammable drones and training on how to use them against American troops in the Gulf and perhaps elsewhere.

Until now, Vladimir Putin’s government is thought to have provided intelligence that enabled Iran to target American forces in the Middle East. This is the first evidence that it may also have offered to supply innovative weapons in large enough numbers to inflict many casualties on American and allied forces, we can exclusively report.

The secret plan involves Russia providing Iran with 5,000 short-range fibre-optic drones of the sort used in the war in Ukraine, an unknown number of longer-range satellite-guided drones, and training to use both sorts. It is contained in a ten-page proposal prepared by the GRU, the intelligence arm of Russia’s armed forces, for presentation to Iran. We have been able to examine the ten-page proposal, which contains six diagrams and a map depicting islands off the coast of Iran.

Though the document we saw was undated, we estimate that it was drafted within the first six weeks of the war, when there appeared to be a real chance of President Donald Trump ordering ground troops to attack Iranian territory, potentially to seize Kharg Island, an important oil terminal. We do not have direct evidence to confirm that the document was passed to the Iranians, whether any of the drones reached Iran, or if the promised training programme has begun.

Regional intelligence sources briefed on the plan said they considered it plausible, but were unable to independently corroborate it. Christo Grozev, an expert on Russia’s intelligence services, says the proposal is consistent with other evidence that the GRU is looking for ways of increasing Russian support for Iran during its war with America and Israel. And it fits with evidence emerging across the region of closer military co-operation between Russia and Iran.

In late March, for instance, Western intelligence officials said that Russia was preparing to send Iran its own upgraded versions of the long-range Shahed-type drones that it initially bought from Iran in 2022 and started producing in 2023. The Russian versions can better evade air defences and carry heavier payloads, but do not represent a step-change in capability.

(…)

The second part of the secret Russian plan is the provision to Iran of long-range satellite-guided drones equipped with Starlink terminals. Russia had used these to locate and either evade or attack Ukrainian air defences. They were highly effective against Ukrainian logistics, even when operating well beyond the frontlines. In 2026, however, Elon Musk denied Russia’s armed forces access to Starlink by blocking all terminals operating in Ukraine except for those on a “white list” approved by Ukraine’s government. The Russian proposal suggests these drones could instead be diverted and used in the Middle East, which has no such restrictions. Though it speculates that Starlink connectivity there would also be shut off in time, they could still inflict “disorder” on American forces in the interim.

The third element of the plan is training. The document proposes recruiting drone operators from among an estimated 10,000 Iranian students studying in Russian universities. Other communities that could potentially be tapped are Tajiks, who speak both Russian and a version of Persian, and the Alawite minority in Syria, loyal to the ousted regime of Bashar al-Assad. All would be screened for loyalty and against religious extremism, the proposal suggests.

The text of the GRU report suggests that it was written at a time when the main threat facing Iran was an American amphibious assault to open the Strait of Hormuz or to seize Kharg Island. It notes that American landing craft would be particularly vulnerable to drone attack, because of their slow speed. A diagram illustrates how Russian-trained Iranian drone operators could attack a landing flotilla by launching swarms of five or six drones from hidden positions some 15-30km away. Although it now seems very unlikely that America will try to land troops in Iran, the prospect of this concerned Russian and Iranian officials earlier in the war.

The GRU document notes that Russia is heavily committed in the fifth year of its “special military operation” in Ukraine. This would limit the resources it can allocate to helping Iran. The proposal also points out that Russia would be taking political and military risks by becoming more involved in the war in Iran. But limited assistance would complicate any American operation. It would also remain deniable, the document suggests, which would avoid dragging Russia into open conflict with America.”

[ahumourlessworld]

Vladimir Putin hunkers down for fear of assassination

“In recent months, Russia’s Federal Protective Service (FSO), which guards top officials, has sharply tightened security around the president. He spends more time in underground bunkers micromanaging the war and has grown more detached from civilian affairs, according to people who know Putin in Moscow and a person close to European intelligence services.

Putin’s isolation has increased in recent years, particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic. But as of March, the Kremlin’s concern over a coup d’état or an assassination attempt, specifically involving drones, has intensified sharply, said the person close to European intelligence.

“The shock of Ukraine’s drone Operation Spiderweb is still there,” a person familiar with Putin told the FT. Last year, Ukrainian drones attacked Russian airfields beyond the Arctic Circle. Security fears were additionally fuelled by the US’s seizure of Venezuela’s leader Nicolás Maduro in January, said a second person also familiar with the president.

(…)

The president and his family have stopped going to their residences in the Moscow region and in north-western Valdai. Putin is spending more time in bunkers, including in the Krasnodar area in southern Russia, working from there for several weeks, while state media use recorded footage to project normality.

Staff in the president’s immediate circle, including cooks, photographers and bodyguards, have been barred from taking public transport and using mobile phones or internet-enabled devices around him. Surveillance systems have been installed in their homes.

People in Russia who know Putin said recent internet shutdowns in Moscow are also at least partly related to the president’s security and anti-drone protection.

FSO agents now conduct large-scale checks with the help of dog units, and are stationed along the banks of the Moscow river, ready to react in case of drone attacks, according to European intelligence.

(…)

Security concerns are not limited to Putin. According to the person close to European intelligence, security service representatives at a meeting with the president late last year blamed one another for failures to protect Russia’s top military personnel, including the killing of Fanil Sarvarov, a lieutenant general — the latest in a series of Ukraine-linked attacks.

Alexander Bortnikov, head of the FSB, the federal security service, blamed the defence ministry, which, unlike other agencies, lacks a unit dedicated to protecting senior officials. Viktor Zolotov, head of the National Guard and Putin’s former bodyguard, denied responsibility, citing limited resources.

(…)

The president holds daily meetings with military officials, focusing on operational details such as the names of small Ukrainian settlements that are changing hands. Non-war-related officials, in contrast, are typically granted an audience only once every few weeks or months.

“Putin spends 70 per cent of his time running the war and the other 30 per cent meeting [someone like] the president of Indonesia or dealing with the economy,” said one person who knows him, adding that the only way to get more access is through “doing more war”.

Andrei Kolesnikov, a Moscow-based political analyst, said: “Putin is like the new Banksy sculpture in London [a man carrying a flag that covers his face], he does not want to see or hear. He listens only to the security services, which now run all spheres of life, and hopes that people will adapt to this as the new normal.”

(…)

According to state-backed as well as independent pollsters, Putin’s approval ratings have slipped to their lowest level since autumn 2022, when he announced a partial mobilisation, prompting hundreds of thousands of young men to flee the country.

Social media is filled with videos of ordinary Russians and influencers criticising the authorities over internet crackdowns, taxes for small businesses and livestock culls in Siberia.”

Beware the Sudden Death of Vladimir Putin

“Security around Putin has tightened sharply, the intelligence says, with more checks, fewer aides, restricted movements, limited communications. Many in the Western world, and especially those in Ukraine, will welcome the news and fantasize about the idea of drone-delivered justice against the Russian president.

But a gratifying fantasy would meet a grim reality. A ruler who trusts fewer rooms, fewer phones, and fewer aides is not presiding over a calm succession machine. And that's the big problem. Russia’s eccentric system of gangster politics is built around one man: Putin. It would be most dangerous the moment that man suddenly disappears.

Putin has spent a quarter-century making himself the Russian system’s referee, patron, and final court of appeal, playing elite factions off against each other so they compete for his favor—a key to wealth and success in modern Russia. Little of political substance happens without his explicit or tacit approval.

And Putin has built that vast personal power while substantially reducing the checking influence of institutions and individuals around him. He is now the center of the universe in the Russian state, and his implosion would leave a black hole into which all else is swallowed.

(…)

But the gravest threat to Putin is probably from within the vast mob-state of his making; an opportunistic, ambitious rival sensing both advantage and a window of opportunity (though it’s best advised to avoid open windows in Russia) with the dire state of the economy and the botched handling of the war in Ukraine.

The potential is clearly there. Just look at the recent past. In June 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner fighters seized the military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don and advanced toward Moscow before abruptly turning back. It was a reminder that loyalty in Putin’s system can become armed leverage with startling speed.

(…)

But none of the names resolves the system’s central problem, which is Putin's indispensable role as its lynchpin. He is a kind of unifier of the factions, using patronage and menace to keep them balanced and pacified by a consensus that he and he alone is the legitimate ruler. Who from the elite factions could truly replicate or reform that?

The prime minister, currently Mikhail Mishustin, would serve under the constitution as the immediate acting president were Putin to die. Behind Mishustin, where the true power rests, a knife fight for the Russian state—a highly militarized and aggressive nuclear power, we mustn't forget—would begin between the elite clans.

(…)

The “anyone but Putin” instinct is tempting but too tidy. Russia is not a parliamentary system waiting for an opposition leader to walk through the front door and make a democratic case to a free electorate able to vote on conscience alone.

It is a wartime autocracy with intelligence chiefs, military commanders, presidential guards, oligarchic interests, and regional brokers whose fortunes depend on proximity to coercive power, and often in contest against each other.

Elite acceptance of any acting president could be uncertain because Russian institutions are weak and presidential authority is unusually concentrated. The successor most likely to survive is the one best able to frighten the others.

The opposing case deserves its due: Putin’s sudden exit could create an opening for a successor who wants sanctions relief, battlefield respite, or a less ruinous relationship with the West. There are opportunities aplenty in those regards.

But that possibility belongs to a later phase, after someone has survived the first scramble. Even then, it would require a wholesale shift in mindset among officials in a system Putin has spent more than 25 years creating in his image.

And most potential successors look to have bought into Putin's geopolitical strategy of imperial expansionism, anti-Western antagonism, and hard-power realism.

The immediate test for Putin’s successor won’t be moderation or reflection, a kind of de-Stalinization for the 21st century. It would be to take control of coercive institutions, elite money, battlefield command, and a hypernationalist narrative about Russian greatness.

Put simply, Putinism with a different face, and perhaps an angrier one.

Russia's structural weaknesses won't limit its explosive potential in a succession fight. If anything, they might turn a fire into an inferno. The state of Russian society, and the challenges that lie ahead, are sobering.

(…)

Then there is the economic pain. Interest rates and inflation are painfully high. Russia’s reserves are depleted. State resources are funnelled toward sustaining the Ukraine war with men and materiel. Sanctions have bitten hard, growth is weak. The lesson from history is that authoritarian societies with nationalist tendencies and bad economies often turn to hateful violence.

Demobilization would add another combustible variable: The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has argued that the Kremlin likely sees alienated veterans as a threat to regime stability.

A separate report by Global Initiative says returning veterans of the Ukraine war, including convicted criminals, are already feeding violence, organized crime, and pressure on Russia’s police and social services.

A postwar Russia would not merely be bringing soldiers home; it would be importing into civilian life hundreds of thousands of men trained, traumatized, and wounded by a brutal war, only for them to become embittered by a poorer and ungrateful peace.

A state under that mix of military pressure, elite suspicion, rampant crime, and economic strife may become less predictable, but no less aggressive. Putin would struggle to contain these forces. Now imagine a contested leader or a factional war at the top instead. It is a recipe for chaos with spillover that would ripple out across Europe.

(…)

Putin’s sudden death would end one man’s rule without ending the system he created. Americans can want justice for Ukraine and still understand that an unmanaged collapse at the top of the Russian state would not be justice. It would be a crisis with nuclear weapons, armed factions, and a war already underway.

Be careful what you wish for. Putin’s death may solve one problem. But it could create a dozen more.”

[ahumourlessworld]

This actually explains a lot

[ahumourlessworld]

“So far as it is act, rather than fact, moral reality can be defined as liberty. This entails, first, mediation; and, second, universality. The spirit is free inasmuch as it is a process, in which its being is situated neither at the beginning, nor the end, but in the unity of the beginning and end. My will is free only insofar as I do not detach myself from my will as a consequence of my activity and my will does not detach itself from me. By detaching one from the other, we become—to use Kantian language—two phenomena: and, like all phenomena, each is intelligible solely according to the principle of causality. I, personally, cannot be what I am not; and operari sequitur esse (function follows being); so I cannot manifest myself except in certain given actions, each of which will be what it is able to be, given its conditions. Rather, I am only 'I' insofar as I act and want: I am what I do; beyond that act I do not exist; I become a simple presupposition. I find myself to be real when acting, that is, when the act is reaching its conclusion. Not, however, that we should consider the completion of this action in its tangible external crystallization. We should rather consider it in terms of its interior usefulness or spirituality. But if I only exist as a result of my own actions, it no longer makes sense to look for the conditions that pre-existed my actions and that might somehow determine my actions.

This process or mediation is the circle in which spiritual reality is realized as reflexive activity that does not act on or create anything but itself. It expresses itself, fundamentally and immanently, by speaking of self: Ego. This is not the representation of a reality that you might imagine existing prior to the representation; it is a realization, the self-realization of the realizing self.

But what of mediation and universality? Mediation realizes the universality of the subject that arises through the act; and without universality the subject would return to itself without having differentiated itself from its immediate being. In fact, it would not even be able to return, because it would not have sufficiently distanced itself from itself. The function of spirit is to actuate the Ego; it is self-affirmation. But it would not be an affirmation if it did not go beyond the ego that has to be the object of the affirmation. Rather, it would have to arrive at an affirmation in which the affirmation itself absorbs the presumed immediate object of knowledge through the act of idealizing the initial (abstract) object and installing the new concrete object. The idealization is thus a universalization, that is, mediated universality (which is not there initially but presents itself. The thought is always this: the so-called reduction of the particular due to universal categorization. And the act of self-consciousness is the thought that lies at its core and becomes its immanent form. This is its desire or moral act: it affirms itself only by the very act of affirming itself, thereby negating its own abstract or presumed particular subjectivity in order to become a concrete universal subjectivity. Only thus do we earn our freedom.

In fact, we believe ourselves to be naturally free, but all of spiritual experience demonstrates that we must seize our liberty. Indeed, every time we affirm our liberty we implicitly acknowledge that once we were not free. On the one hand, the history of humanity runs from slavery to liberty; and men have always fought, are fighting and will forever fight for liberty. The story of each individual man, regarded as the empirical succession of moments in his particular life, is the progressive release from bonds that the individual comes to consider constraining, and from which he periodically feels the need to break free. Within the intimate dialectic of our personality, what surprises us is how we seek to satisfy the need that hangs over us, that is, the need to make our freedom a reality. It is the realization of a concrete liberty that resolves the determined problem of our concrete personality. On the other hand, our own experience tells us that man's progressive emancipation in history—and the triumph by which, day by day, man manages to carve out his freedom in the natural and social environment in which he strives to live, and the profound liberty that we celebrate deep within our soul—is nothing but subjection to a law that draws us progressively ever higher. It strips us of the egoism that makes the individual appear to be by nature sealed beneath a skin of sensation or within some thought that is particular, relative, ephemeral and arbitrary. In fact, this is an egocentric conception of life, but it raises us to the realm of universal things, values and ideals, to a reality that is not limited by time and space, and is not circumscribed by accidental conditions. In short, it raises us to a reality that is not particular. A slave became aware of liberty and his own need for it, and was therefore spurred in his struggle for liberation by the same obedience that subjected him to the will of his master. It compelled him to act upon a will that was not his innate will, but a will that he considered a law. It is no longer an individual will, but a universal will relative to the basic society in which the slave finds himself bound to the personality of the oppressor. And the slave had to conceive of that law as universal, that is, as greater than his own self in its natural existence. It was in the name of that same law that, over time, he could call for equality of rights for himself and all the other members of society. Man continues along the path of freedom via school, social coexistence and social institutions; via his ideas, his beliefs and his customs. And no one will ever know how to command if he has never learnt to obey: that is, to recognize the ideality of law as absolute, which he will need to use as a norm and title of true authority. Others cannot take authority seriously if they begin to doubt it or if they stop respecting whoever claims to be exercizing it.

But the dawning of self-consciousness, even in the individuals ideal solitude, becomes clear as it brings men together, and drives them to live a common life, in the positive concreteness of spiritual universality. Before that, life's character (which, as I said, experience attests) reveals itself by realizing a universal reality: by uttering a word, again only mentally, that would have no meaning and would not correspond to a real moment of interior life if it did not arise like a flash of universal light. The universal light is swathed in transcendental value because of the narrow limits of the particular subject. It soars before the particular subject like a great being with an absolute sense of its own self-worth.

So liberty is the mediation between self and living universality. It is not presupposed but made real in the generation of itself.” - Giovanni Gentile, ‘Discorsi di religione’ (1920)

[ahumourlessworld]

Nationwide Survey: Most Farmers Can’t Afford Fertilizer

“Conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation April 3-11, the survey shows 70% of respondents say fertilizer is so expensive that they will not be able to buy all the fertilizer they need.

More than 5,700 farmers, both Farm Bureau members and non-members, from every state and Puerto Rico took the survey. Farm Bureau economists analyzed the results in the latest Market Intel.

The analysis reveals that almost 8 in 10 farmers in the southern U.S. say they can’t afford all needed supplies this year, followed by the Northeast and West at 69% and 66%, respectively, compared to 48% of the farmers in the Midwest.

Just 19% of farmers in the South prebooked fertilizer purchases in advance of planting season. In the Northeast, only 30% of farmers prebooked, followed by 31% in the West, and 67% in the Midwest. Even with higher pre-booking rates, almost one in three Midwestern farmers still report entering the season without securing all of their fertilizer needs.

The conflict in the Middle East sent fertilizer and fuel prices soaring. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is keeping critical fertilizer supplies and crude oil from reaching global markets, putting a squeeze on supplies around the world.

“Spring planting decisions depend heavily on access to fertilizer and diesel fuel, both of which have been impacted by geopolitical risks that have disrupted global markets,” the Market Intel states. “Since the escalation of tensions in the Middle East, nitrogen fertilizer prices have risen more than 30%, while combined fuel and fertilizer costs have increased roughly 20% to 40%. Urea prices have increased by 47% since the end of February, marking the largest month-to-month percentage increase in the price of urea. These increases are occurring when many producers were already facing tight margins for many consecutive years.”

(…)

According to the survey, 94% of respondents reported their financial situation has worsened or remained the same since last year, while only 6% reported improvement.”