Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British law valued property over people. That is why you could get transported to Australia for stealing a loaf of bread. Steal much more and your prospects were even more dramatic.
Self-made wealth at minimum depends on the laws not only of property but also of contract, and on their judicial enforcement. Let alone all the freebies and subsidies, like favourable tax laws.
And, of course, in the end you die, if you are lucky in a bed, after illness has diminished your power, depleted your fortune, and narrowed your horizons to the three feet on either side of your hospital bed. Whether your hospital bed is in a palace or in a windowless cubicle in a noisy ward, the view is much the same, and the prospect about as pleasing.
I personally would have appreciated greater fortune and less illness, but there are real compensations in adversity, and not just schadenfreude at the comical obtuseness of the selfish among the wealthy. Though that is um, fun too. You also get some perspective, develop your curiosity about the world, and learn more empathy for the less fortunate. And you realise that such knowledge is, in sober truth, where the treasure actually is.
While I have lived in a state where the DMV met the stereotype, it’s far from universal. In 10 years with the DMV in Virginia and 13 years in Kentucky where it’s the county clerks office that handles vehicle registration, I’ve met consistently helpful staff who put most business phone support to shame. Public servants in the truest sense.
A French judge at the ICC authorised arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes in Gaza.
For this he was sanctioned by the United States, meaning he cannot have accounts with companies like Google, Amazon or Apple; cannot book hotels through Expedia; can't use credit cards, since VISA, MasterCard and American Express are all US-based; can't do banking, since almost all banks won't do business with anyone subject to US sanctions due to the integrated nature of the worldwide financial system.
He is a European citizen. He was doing his job, in Europe. He was applying laws that the European Union, on paper, supports. The institution where he works is headquartered in Europe (at The Hague). Europe helped to create the institution and today funds it.
And Europe is helping enforce these sanctions against him, aiding and abetting the economic execution of one of their own citizens.
Keep in mind, the US has the American Service-Members' Protection Act (or the Hague Invasion Act) on the books, which (as I recall) basically says "if the ICC tries to prosecute an American for war crimes we'll send the military to The Hague to free them" and I believe it extends this protection to US allies (such as Israel), though I'm not sure how it works for NATO since I think every NATO member aside from the US and Turkey is a member of the ICC. Israel is not an ICC member.
So sanctioning a judge for trying to apply ICC jurisdiction to a major US ally is really nothing surprising, but Europe going along with it means they've made the choice that law bends to power and convenience.
Guillou became inconvenient, the law became inconvenient, so Guillou became an economic non-person and the law became a piece of paper.
Mike, no one is going to listen to you. OK, maybe 1 out of 100 people at best. You are genuinely prophetic (not pathetic), but those with a comprehensive understanding of history, of a broad familiarity with provocative literature, and those with life experiences that clearly portend how people behave or not, are rarities.
What you are trying to bring is an awareness of possibilities that with each incredulous action of Trump et al. (Administration, GOP Congress, SCOTUS) become probabilities. You are espousing the theme of Martin Niemöller (i.e., First they came for the Communists....). No one believed this, or like your commentary, maybe one out of 100. Many of my family in Łódź did not believe this and they lost their lives in Auschwitz, or Bergen-Belsen, or managed to survive in the Łódź ghetto, but then only to die from Typhus or God knows what.
Earlier this year, I wrote a contemporary version of Niemöller:
First, they came for immigrants of color,
And I did not speak out
Because I am white.
Then they came for the Judges,
And I did not speak out
Because I am not a Justice.
Then they came for the Governors and Senators,
And I did not speak out
Because I am not a politician.
Then they came for the Press and the News commentators,
And I did not speak out
Because I am not part of the mainstream media.
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me….
Stephen B. Strum (1942-202?) on March 13, 2025
apologies to Martin Niemöller (1892-1984)
Come Jan 2026, many of us will lose a lot of hard-earned assets paying sky-high premiums for healthcare. Trump will go after Social Security. In the midst of all of this, Trump will continue to rack in billions for himself and his family.
In the years to come, those that are outspoken against Trump will be unlawfully "removed." They will have assets taken. This is the typical scenario of the Fascist, the Franco and it is no coincidence that Putin has amassed billions of dollars. Trump is emulating this-- in our faces-- and we are acting as a Nation of Pussies, standing down, standing by.
John Adams should have been and should be required reading if we ever toss out the trash in the oval office and truly drain the swamps of the Administration and Congress.
"In every society known to man, an aristocracy has risen up in the course of time, consisting of a few rich and honorable families who have united with each other against both the people and the first magistrate." - John Adams
Source; Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America.
Note: we are not dealing now with aristocracy, and these are not honorable people. They are financial rapists that have buried virtue under a horde of gold. Note: Defence was spelled that way during Adam's time.
"Property monopolized, or in the Possession of a Few is a Curse to Mankind. We should preserve not an Absolute Equality – this is unnecessary, but preserve all from extreme Poverty, and all others from extravagant Riches." — John Adams
We have billionaires that could not spend the money they have in their lifetime. Such "extra" funds could be used to solve many of the problems of the world, including those in the US. For example, it appears that molten salt reactors (MSRs) MAY be an answer to the world's energy needs, and not have the crucial issue of an extremely long-half life (100,000 years) of uranium-235's transuranic actinides (Plutonium-239, Americium, Curium).
Those billionaires could create new jobs, initially research to ensure that such reactors as the thorium molten salt reactor (TMSR) in use now in Shanghai is working without major downsides. If validated, we could do away with fossil fuels as energy sources and have community-size TMSRs. This would involve millions of new jobs in the US-- if validated in a Manhattan Project style re expediency + manpower + brains + humanism.
In other words, the shit that Trump creates on a daily basis could be turned to GOOD, with ramifications that are good for the many and for the E (earth). All with due diligence.
This is the path we in America and the world's peoples could take. Such TMSRs could bring water to deserts and create community farms that feed people and restore health.
But the world has to scream out, act out and demand such thinking. It is a combination of Jack London's "Service" and Robert Frost's deciding which path to take.
Service
"It is so simple a remedy, merely service.
Not one ignoble thought or act is demanded of any
of all men and women in the world to make fair the world.
The call is for nobility of thinking,
nobility of doing.
The call is for service,
and such is the wholesomeness of it.
He who serves all best serves himself." — Jack London (1876-1916)
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. — Robert Frost
Department of Motor Vehicles; where vehicles are registered/titled, where vehicle emissions tests and driver's tests are administered and driver's licenses are issued.
This is not a part of the federal bureaucracy, though states must comply with federal regulations, such as "Real ID."
Interaction with the DMV is often frustrating and time-consuming since many states desperately need of bring their DMV into the 20th century. Customer service can be maddening because you can wait for an hour only to get to the front of the line to find out that you don't have the right document, not because you are stupid, but because the instructions are so convoluted as to be nonsense. Honestly, it was much better the last time I was there, but I believe that's the type of experience Mike is referencing.
BINGO! We the people aren’t gonna stand by and allow these Modern day robber barons destroy us. What they should do is what Jaime Dimon (of all people) is doing. He came out and said he wasn’t gonna donate to the Ballroom because the Next DOJ… will not have mercy. Sorrows Sorrows Prayers Prayers .. every Pig has his Saturday as my grandma used to remind me . Also dont Help them they have a lesson to learn.
While the Tech Mongols are always careful to pay lip service to whatever democrat or republican platitudes that rule the day, beneath the Patagonia sweater vests and open collars lurks the most predatory, passive-aggressive, monopoly capitalists in human history. Irrespective of their personal political views, I do not want the unelected owners of private companies—Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Alex Carp, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, Sam Bankman Fried, Bill Ackman and others—to be the arbiters of free speech, much less intellectual discourse in twenty-first century America. Our humanity can defeat the Tech Mongols. The British, Russian and American empires were not driven out of Afghanistan by superior weapons, soldiers, and tactics—they were defeated by the human spirit.
Hopefully they've read this. Who can blame you for writing it and you are right. Will they catch on and themselves become human again and advocate for humans? We shall see. We are pissed and there are more of us.
It is certainly true that delusion runs the gamut, and that the end is the same for all, without respect nor care. It's also true that those who benefit in the very short term, inheriting bad ideas enjoyed by a tiny elite for millennia, need to be apprised, even warned, about the end that will consume them as handily as it does the rest of us.
It might be useful to prompt another way, a path to moral decency, to genuine accomplishment, to survival not necessarily simple but fulfilling. An inclusive ride into an actual future, the abandonment of the foolish virtual one that ends before the future.
Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British law valued property over people. That is why you could get transported to Australia for stealing a loaf of bread. Steal much more and your prospects were even more dramatic.
Self-made wealth at minimum depends on the laws not only of property but also of contract, and on their judicial enforcement. Let alone all the freebies and subsidies, like favourable tax laws.
And, of course, in the end you die, if you are lucky in a bed, after illness has diminished your power, depleted your fortune, and narrowed your horizons to the three feet on either side of your hospital bed. Whether your hospital bed is in a palace or in a windowless cubicle in a noisy ward, the view is much the same, and the prospect about as pleasing.
I personally would have appreciated greater fortune and less illness, but there are real compensations in adversity, and not just schadenfreude at the comical obtuseness of the selfish among the wealthy. Though that is um, fun too. You also get some perspective, develop your curiosity about the world, and learn more empathy for the less fortunate. And you realise that such knowledge is, in sober truth, where the treasure actually is.
While I have lived in a state where the DMV met the stereotype, it’s far from universal. In 10 years with the DMV in Virginia and 13 years in Kentucky where it’s the county clerks office that handles vehicle registration, I’ve met consistently helpful staff who put most business phone support to shame. Public servants in the truest sense.
https://infosec.exchange/@zaufanatrzeciastrona/115582689334400958
A French judge at the ICC authorised arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes in Gaza.
For this he was sanctioned by the United States, meaning he cannot have accounts with companies like Google, Amazon or Apple; cannot book hotels through Expedia; can't use credit cards, since VISA, MasterCard and American Express are all US-based; can't do banking, since almost all banks won't do business with anyone subject to US sanctions due to the integrated nature of the worldwide financial system.
He is a European citizen. He was doing his job, in Europe. He was applying laws that the European Union, on paper, supports. The institution where he works is headquartered in Europe (at The Hague). Europe helped to create the institution and today funds it.
And Europe is helping enforce these sanctions against him, aiding and abetting the economic execution of one of their own citizens.
This is so horrible that I just cannot digest it!
Keep in mind, the US has the American Service-Members' Protection Act (or the Hague Invasion Act) on the books, which (as I recall) basically says "if the ICC tries to prosecute an American for war crimes we'll send the military to The Hague to free them" and I believe it extends this protection to US allies (such as Israel), though I'm not sure how it works for NATO since I think every NATO member aside from the US and Turkey is a member of the ICC. Israel is not an ICC member.
So sanctioning a judge for trying to apply ICC jurisdiction to a major US ally is really nothing surprising, but Europe going along with it means they've made the choice that law bends to power and convenience.
Guillou became inconvenient, the law became inconvenient, so Guillou became an economic non-person and the law became a piece of paper.
Thanks
(Still sucks)
Mike, no one is going to listen to you. OK, maybe 1 out of 100 people at best. You are genuinely prophetic (not pathetic), but those with a comprehensive understanding of history, of a broad familiarity with provocative literature, and those with life experiences that clearly portend how people behave or not, are rarities.
What you are trying to bring is an awareness of possibilities that with each incredulous action of Trump et al. (Administration, GOP Congress, SCOTUS) become probabilities. You are espousing the theme of Martin Niemöller (i.e., First they came for the Communists....). No one believed this, or like your commentary, maybe one out of 100. Many of my family in Łódź did not believe this and they lost their lives in Auschwitz, or Bergen-Belsen, or managed to survive in the Łódź ghetto, but then only to die from Typhus or God knows what.
Earlier this year, I wrote a contemporary version of Niemöller:
First, they came for immigrants of color,
And I did not speak out
Because I am white.
Then they came for the Judges,
And I did not speak out
Because I am not a Justice.
Then they came for the Governors and Senators,
And I did not speak out
Because I am not a politician.
Then they came for the Press and the News commentators,
And I did not speak out
Because I am not part of the mainstream media.
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me….
Stephen B. Strum (1942-202?) on March 13, 2025
apologies to Martin Niemöller (1892-1984)
Come Jan 2026, many of us will lose a lot of hard-earned assets paying sky-high premiums for healthcare. Trump will go after Social Security. In the midst of all of this, Trump will continue to rack in billions for himself and his family.
In the years to come, those that are outspoken against Trump will be unlawfully "removed." They will have assets taken. This is the typical scenario of the Fascist, the Franco and it is no coincidence that Putin has amassed billions of dollars. Trump is emulating this-- in our faces-- and we are acting as a Nation of Pussies, standing down, standing by.
John Adams should have been and should be required reading if we ever toss out the trash in the oval office and truly drain the swamps of the Administration and Congress.
"In every society known to man, an aristocracy has risen up in the course of time, consisting of a few rich and honorable families who have united with each other against both the people and the first magistrate." - John Adams
Source; Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America.
Note: we are not dealing now with aristocracy, and these are not honorable people. They are financial rapists that have buried virtue under a horde of gold. Note: Defence was spelled that way during Adam's time.
"Property monopolized, or in the Possession of a Few is a Curse to Mankind. We should preserve not an Absolute Equality – this is unnecessary, but preserve all from extreme Poverty, and all others from extravagant Riches." — John Adams
We have billionaires that could not spend the money they have in their lifetime. Such "extra" funds could be used to solve many of the problems of the world, including those in the US. For example, it appears that molten salt reactors (MSRs) MAY be an answer to the world's energy needs, and not have the crucial issue of an extremely long-half life (100,000 years) of uranium-235's transuranic actinides (Plutonium-239, Americium, Curium).
Those billionaires could create new jobs, initially research to ensure that such reactors as the thorium molten salt reactor (TMSR) in use now in Shanghai is working without major downsides. If validated, we could do away with fossil fuels as energy sources and have community-size TMSRs. This would involve millions of new jobs in the US-- if validated in a Manhattan Project style re expediency + manpower + brains + humanism.
In other words, the shit that Trump creates on a daily basis could be turned to GOOD, with ramifications that are good for the many and for the E (earth). All with due diligence.
This is the path we in America and the world's peoples could take. Such TMSRs could bring water to deserts and create community farms that feed people and restore health.
But the world has to scream out, act out and demand such thinking. It is a combination of Jack London's "Service" and Robert Frost's deciding which path to take.
Service
"It is so simple a remedy, merely service.
Not one ignoble thought or act is demanded of any
of all men and women in the world to make fair the world.
The call is for nobility of thinking,
nobility of doing.
The call is for service,
and such is the wholesomeness of it.
He who serves all best serves himself." — Jack London (1876-1916)
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. — Robert Frost
What does DMV stand for?
Department of Motor Vehicles; where vehicles are registered/titled, where vehicle emissions tests and driver's tests are administered and driver's licenses are issued.
This is not a part of the federal bureaucracy, though states must comply with federal regulations, such as "Real ID."
Interaction with the DMV is often frustrating and time-consuming since many states desperately need of bring their DMV into the 20th century. Customer service can be maddening because you can wait for an hour only to get to the front of the line to find out that you don't have the right document, not because you are stupid, but because the instructions are so convoluted as to be nonsense. Honestly, it was much better the last time I was there, but I believe that's the type of experience Mike is referencing.
Hope that helps. 😉
Thank you! Now I get it!
BINGO! We the people aren’t gonna stand by and allow these Modern day robber barons destroy us. What they should do is what Jaime Dimon (of all people) is doing. He came out and said he wasn’t gonna donate to the Ballroom because the Next DOJ… will not have mercy. Sorrows Sorrows Prayers Prayers .. every Pig has his Saturday as my grandma used to remind me . Also dont Help them they have a lesson to learn.
While the Tech Mongols are always careful to pay lip service to whatever democrat or republican platitudes that rule the day, beneath the Patagonia sweater vests and open collars lurks the most predatory, passive-aggressive, monopoly capitalists in human history. Irrespective of their personal political views, I do not want the unelected owners of private companies—Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Alex Carp, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, Sam Bankman Fried, Bill Ackman and others—to be the arbiters of free speech, much less intellectual discourse in twenty-first century America. Our humanity can defeat the Tech Mongols. The British, Russian and American empires were not driven out of Afghanistan by superior weapons, soldiers, and tactics—they were defeated by the human spirit.
Hopefully they've read this. Who can blame you for writing it and you are right. Will they catch on and themselves become human again and advocate for humans? We shall see. We are pissed and there are more of us.
What is "the lonley"?
It is certainly true that delusion runs the gamut, and that the end is the same for all, without respect nor care. It's also true that those who benefit in the very short term, inheriting bad ideas enjoyed by a tiny elite for millennia, need to be apprised, even warned, about the end that will consume them as handily as it does the rest of us.
It might be useful to prompt another way, a path to moral decency, to genuine accomplishment, to survival not necessarily simple but fulfilling. An inclusive ride into an actual future, the abandonment of the foolish virtual one that ends before the future.