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JERUSALEM
On a rooftop in the Old City
laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight:
the white sheet of a woman who is my enemy,
the towel of a man who is my enemy,
to wipe the sweat off his brow.
In the sky of the Old City,
a kite.
At the other end of the string,
a child
I can’t see
because of the wall.
We have put up many flags,
they have put up many flags.
To make us think that they’re happy.
To make them think that we’re happy.
~ Yehuda Amichai, translated by Stephen Mitchell
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BELLOW AFTER GAZA: REREADING “TO JERUSALEM AND BACK”
What he did was listen—and seek out people worth listening to. “Here in Jerusalem,” writes Bellow, “when you shut your apartment door behind you you fall into a gale of conversation—exposition, argument, harangue, analysis, theory, expostulation, threat, and prophecy.” Everyone is a diplomat, but no one will be diplomatic. “The subject of all this talk is, ultimately, survival,” Bellow writes, “the survival of the decent society created in Israel within a few decades. At first this is hard to grasp because the setting is so civilized.”
This may be part of what attracted Bellow, the lifelong anthropology student, to Israel: Civilization was both so deep and so precarious. The bloody borders were so close. It is still true: It feels so normal in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, says the solidarity tourist after October 7. Flying back and forth to Israel during this past year of war, I found myself revisiting Bellow’s literary-political travelogue for its evocation of a distant yet unsettlingly familiar political world, for its insight and its blind spots, and always for its marvelous descriptions and flashes of wit.
Bellow’s only foray into full-length nonfiction, To Jerusalem and Back was published in 1976, three years after the Yom Kippur War and shortly before he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The book “may well have clinched it,” writes biographer James Atlas. Here, Bellow the writer of ideas “grappled manfully with global politics”—and, I would add, permits himself to gape at the nation for which such grappling is everyday life.
Rather than play the Professor Luftmensch of many of his novels, Bellow is now merely a diligent student. “I don’t think my judgment has much value,” he tells a friend who asks for it. “I am simply an interested amateur—a learner. I can, however, tell him what I have heard from intelligent and experienced observers.” It’s a useful pose as he reads or meets with this or that professor.
It becomes harder to maintain, however, as he lands meetings with novelist A. B. Yehoshua, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, while Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek plays host. Abba Eban is described as “a type with which I am completely familiar.” Bellow is not the man on the Clapham omnibus. He is comfortable in this rarefied world of diplomats and deep thinkers and content at last to let the subject of his inquiry, Israel, take center stage.
So fascinating are the Israeli characters we meet and so urgent are the ideas they thrash about in Bellow’s quick tableaus, that even the reflective interludes among civilizational treasures can seem almost prelapsarian and out of place. Bellow felt some of this himself:
In these days of armored attacks on Yom Kippur, of Vietnams, Watergates, Mansons, Amins, terrorist massacres at Olympic Games, what are illuminated manuscripts, what are masterpieces of wrought iron, what are holy places?
Defeat had been staved off in the Yom Kippur War, but at great cost. Another round of fighting was expected with the Arab clients of the Soviet Union, but no one could say when. “Israel’s political leaders do not seem to me to be awake,” and few Israelis would have argued. All recognized that “American foreign policy is in retreat,” but Israel’s dependence on America had been made “cruelly explicit,” and Kissinger was demanding territorial concessions.
“There are few families in Israel that have not lost sons in the wars,” Bellow writes. “One does not make casual political conversations here.” Repeating the political complaints of Mahmud Abu Zuluf, the editor of Jerusalem’s Al-Quds daily, Bellow irritates his friend, the writer David Shahar, “with my American evenhandedness, my objectivity at his expense. It is so easy for outsiders to say that there are two sides to the question. What a terrible expression! I am beginning to detest it.”
Shahar does too:
“They don’t want our peace proposals. They don’t want concessions, they want us destroyed!” Shahar shouts and slams the table. “You don’t know them. The West doesn’t know them. They will not let us live. We must fight for our lives.”
It is a speech, captured perfectly, that all of us have heard and some of us have given—though Shahar, a distinguished novelist who was born in Jerusalem in the 1920s and fought for the Irgun, was more qualified than most to do so. But it isn’t Bellow’s speech. What troubles him is that he has no response to it:
As for me, I say no more. Can I tell Shahar that the “conscience of the West” will never permit Israel to be destroyed? I can say no such thing. Such grand statements are no longer made; all our hyperbole is nowadays reserved for silence. We know that anything can happen.
Domestic critics are eager to put Israel on trial. “Professor Tzvi Lamm of the Hebrew University charges that Israel has lost touch with reality.” He calls Israel autistic. A novelist Bellow meets “is convinced that Israel has sinned too much, that it has become too corrupt, and that it has lost its moral capital and has nothing to fight with.”
Jaffa Gate
Bellow listens and finds many sins to worry about. Always fascinated by the primitive, he expects Israel to be civilized:
But at this uneasy hour the civilized world seems tired of its civilization, and tired also of the Jews. It wants to hear no more about survival. But there are the Jews, again at the edge of annihilation and as insistent as ever, demanding to know what the conscience of the world intends to do.
Bellow is more comfortable letting others prosecute the case against the Arabs. Where he must speak in his own words is against their apologists in the West. The French are the worst. “Since 1973, Le Monde has openly taken the side of the Arabs in their struggle with Israel,” he writes. “It supports terrorists. It is friendlier to Amin than to Rabin. A recent review of the autobiography of a fedayeen speaks of the Israelis as colonialist.” One is surprised again and again how little has changed in fifty years.
Before Israel’s rescue mission at Entebbe, Le Monde toasted Idi Amin’s triumph:
After the raid, Israel was accused of giving comfort to the reactionaries of Rhodesia and South Africa by its demonstration of military superiority and its use of Western arms and techniques, upsetting the balance between poor and rich countries, disturbing the work of men of good will in Paris who were trying to create a new climate and to treat the countries of the Third World as equals and partners.
Readers today will not be shocked to hear criticism of a successful Israeli hostage rescue. By now we are all familiar with the priorities of the Western left, which so dismayed Golda Meir.
Though Jean-Paul Sartre takes it on the chin in this book, it is Bellow’s depiction of The New York Times that stays with me:
~ “But don’t Americans know that Sadat was a Nazi?” the librarian says. Well, yes, well-informed people do have this information in their files. The New York Times is sure to have it, but the Times as I see it is a government within a government. It has a state department of its own, and its high councils have probably decided that it would be impolitic at this moment to call attention to Sadat’s admiration for Hitler. ~
Of the Times, he concludes, “If it covered ball games as badly as it reviews books, the fans would storm it like the Bastille.” In fairness, the Times had the decency to publish a positive review, by Irving Howe, of Bellow’s book.
Israel’s friends often harbor a secret hope for the world to forget all about it. We can understand some of the objections to Israeli-run Jerusalem from Muslims and even serious Christians. “Those who baffle me,” remarks Bellow, “are the disinterested parties, themselves without religious beliefs, calling for this that or the other form of shared control.” Why must they track Israel so relentlessly?
Bellow’s friend John Auerbach, a kibbutznik sailor-writer and an escapee from the Warsaw Ghetto who lost a son in war, wants to talk life and literature with Bellow, not politics. He tells of a young American sailor on shore leave, a boy from Oklahoma:
He had heard of Israel, but only just, and he was not especially interested. John was delighted by this. A clean young soul, he said. Such ignorance was refreshing. The young sailor knew nothing about holocausts or tanks in the desert or terrorist bombs.
Bellow allows us to see, if we read closely, the gentle critique behind his friend’s story. To Auerbach, what could Bellow, Chicago-raised, know about “holocausts or tanks in the desert or terrorist bombs”?
A trip to Jerusalem drives home to Bellow not necessarily how Jewish he is but how American. After listing some of the horrors going on around the world, he comments, “As an American, I can decide on any given day whether or not I wish to think of these abominations. I need not consider them. I can simply refuse to open the morning paper. In Israel, one has no such choice. There the violent total is added up every day.” The Israeli must track every development all over the world, for none will leave him untouched:
The world has been thrown into their arms and they are required to perform an incredible balancing act. Another way of putting it: no people has to work so hard on so many levels as this one. In less than thirty years the Israelis have produced a modern country—doorknobs and hinges, plumbing fixtures, electrical supplies, chamber music, airplanes, teacups. It is both a garrison state and a cultivated society. . . . All resources, all faculties are strained. Unremitting thought about the world situation parallels the defense effort. These people are actively, individually involved in universal history. I don’t see how they can bear it.
This thought recurs again and again. Yehoshua tells Bellow that in Israel one simply cannot write, because “you are continuously summoned to solidarity, summoned from within yourself rather than by any external compulsion; because you live from one newscast to the next.” Of Israel’s politicians, Bellow writes, “It is perhaps astonishing that they aren’t demented by the butcher problems, by the insensate pressure of crisis.”
If Israel were a brutish nation, as its enemies allege, it would be less remarkable, not more. The world has plenty of those, and they don’t detain us long. But in circumstances that engender brutes, Israel has strained to remain a thinking, building nation. It takes Bellow’s breath away.
Bellow praises Kollek’s efforts to serve Jerusalem’s Arabs but adds:
Still, I often think that Kollek wants to show the world, and especially the Arab world, what good sense and liberality can do. . . . The cruel history of this city can have a stop, he seems to be saying. He is, in this respect, less a psychologist than a rationalist: how can people fail to recognize their own interests? What a Jewish question that is!
The injustices of Israel’s founding prove less about Israel than about those who fixate on them. The “sin” of the Zionists, Bellow writes, summarizing the view of historian Walter Laqueur, “was that they behaved like other peoples. Nation-states have never come into existence peacefully and without injustices.”
Jerusalem mayor Tel Kollek
Bellow devotes considerable thought to whether Jews have a duty to be better, to set a moral example. “Putative friends of Israel” are always saying so, and surely Jewish tradition says the same. In the end, Bellow concludes it’s the wrong question:
Obviously, the Jews accepted a historic responsibility to be exceptional. They have been held to this; they have held themselves to it. Now the question is whether more cannot be demanded from other peoples. On the others, no such demands are made. I sometimes wonder why it is impossible for Western intellectuals . . . to say to the Arabs, “We have to demand also more from you.”
It never works that way:While Israel fought for life, debaters weighed her sins and especially the problem of the Palestinians. In this disorderly century refugees have fled from many countries. In India, in Africa, in Europe, millions of human beings have been put to flight, transported, enslaved, stampeded over the borders, left to starve, but only the case of the Palestinians is held permanently open. . . . What Switzerland is to winter holidays and the Dalmatian coast to summer tourists, Israel and the Palestinians are to the West’s need for justice—a sort of moral resort area.
Bellow’s instinct is to historicize. The Jews conquered the land? “Of course the Arabs had themselves come as conquerors, many centuries ago,” he writes. But he knows this doesn’t satiate. “It is manifestly true that others have displaced peasants from their lands. Nevertheless, the tu quoque argument is insufficient, and that there were injustices must be granted.”
Anyone who won’t grant that, he distrusts. But to a world that obsesses over it, he is defiant:
What others have done with a broad hand the Jews are accused of doing in a smaller way. The weaker you are, the more conspicuous your offenses; the more precarious your condition, the more hostile criticism you must expect.
“The occupation is costly and embarrassing,” writes Bellow. “Israel, born out of a national liberation movement, now seems to be denying the Palestinians their political liberties.” Bellow admires Harkabi:
He concedes that the Arabs have been wronged, but he insists upon the moral meaning of Israel’s existence. Israel stands for something in Western history. . . . Arab refugees must be relieved and compensated, but Israel will not commit suicide for their sake. . . . A sweeping denial of Arab grievances is, however, an obstacle to peace.
The back and forth is dizzying, but it well illustrates how Bellow justifies the position he will carry forward in America. He will maintain that “the root of the problem is simply this—that the Arabs will not agree to the existence of Israel” but urge Israel to make concessions for its own sake.
He attributes to Janowitz the view that “occupation of the West Bank makes it possible for the international community to blame Israel for everything that is wrong with the Middle East; occupation strengthens the Palestinian movement; occupation costs Israel a lot of money and brings it nothing but grief.” The argument is entirely familiar. And yet in our own day, we have seen that the absence of occupation—in Gaza and Southern Lebanon—can be even more expensive, in dollars, death, and grief.
To Jerusalem and Back is deep and reflective, pragmatic and piercing. But it is notable, for a book published about Israel in 1976, that the name of Menachem Begin never appears. Begin’s 1977 election shook Israel, and his Likud party has governed for most of the years since. There are hints in the book that one could pick out to explain this phenomenon, but Bellow himself didn’t grasp them. And yet the canny novelist warned his readers of just such an oversight almost from the start, reflecting on a dinner with an archbishop in the opening pages:
I have been hearing conversations like this one for half a century. . . . Such intelligent discussions haven’t always been wrong. What is wrong with it is that the discussants invariably impart their own intelligence to what they are discussing. Later, historical studies show that what actually happened was devoid of anything like such intelligence.
Bellow repeatedly returns to this idea that we—the West, the Jews—have “an inordinate faith in the power of rationality,” to quote his friend Harkabi. And yet, as Bellow writes later in the book, “I am forced to consider whether Western Europe and the United States . . . do not go about lightly chloroformed.”
Oriana:
This article is not “same old, same old.” Saul Bellow is a deep thinker, a thinker who grapples with morality.
One interesting thing about the name of Jerusalem: in Hebrew it's Yerushalaim, which is a masculine plural. Perhaps we should start thinking of Jerusalem in the plural. East and West Jerusalem easily come to mind, but maybe it's more interesting to think of the earthly Jerusalem and the heavenly Jerusalem. Or perhaps there are many Jerusalems, different for each inhabitant or visitor.
Meanwhile I have just found a fragment of an old poem (I'm not sure if it's mine or if I'm quoting someone)
The shark silhouette
of a military jet
circling over the city,
like everything that’s wrong
with the world.
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WHY “PALESTINE” IF THERE IS NO P SOUND IN ARABIC?
It comes from Hebrew. It is the name which the Hebrews used of the Sea Peoples.
The Sea Peoples were a group of tribes hypothesized to have attacked Egypt and other Eastern Mediterranean regions around 1200 BC during the Late Bronze Age. The Sea Peoples included well-attested groups such as the Lukka from Lycia, as well as others such as the Weshesh whose origins are unknown. Hypotheses regarding the origin of the various groups are the source of much speculation. Several of them appear to have been Aegean tribes, while others may have originated in Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and Western Anatolia. They invaded the Mediterranean southeast coast and settled there.
While the Near East was inhabited by Semitic nations, the Sea Peoples were Aryans. They spoke a language similar to Primordial Greek, and they did not circumcise their boy children. They settled on Gaza territory, and founded the Pentapolis — confederacy of five cities: Gaza, Gath, Ascalon, Ashod and Ekron.
The Hebrews called the Sea Peoples as פְּלִשְׁתִּים, romanized as Pəlištīm. It means “foreigners” or “invaders” — just like the Germanic peoples called the Latins as walhaz, foreigners, hence names like Wales and Gaul. The Aryans of the Pentapolis were “foreigners” to the Hebrews, and we know them today as Philistines. The Greek name is Φυλιστιείμ.
According to the Bible, the origin of the Philistines was “Caphtor”. This is mentioned in the book of Jeremiah (Yirmiyahu). This strongly suggests Crete. The archaeological finds in the Pentapolis are similar as the Minoan culture.
Fast-forward to Early Imperial period of Roman Empire. The Jews had this bright idea to put up (yet another) rebellion during the reign of Hadrian (Publius Aemilius Hadrianus) which was crushed with extreme prejudice and violence. The Jews, who had so far inhabited a province called Iudaea (Judea), were now driven into diaspora and internal exile all around the Empire. Hadrian wanted to wipe out even the memory of the troublesome Jews. He changed the name of the capital, which so far had been Hierosolyma in Latin (better known as Jerusalem) into Aelia Capitolina (after himself) and the name of the province as Palestina, after the Sea Peoples.
Those names stuck. Jerusalem was known in Arabic as ‘Ilya (from Aelia) until al-Quds (from kodesh, ‘holy’) eventually superseded it. And the province itself was known as Palestina for over 1800 years — until the foundation of the State of Israel.
The Latin /a/ in the end of the word evolved into /ə/ (schwa) in the language spoken in Gallia, and English borrowed that form. The schwa is denoted with ‘e’ in French — hence English has Palestine instead of Palestina. ~ SusannaViljanen, Quora
Santos Kuar:
Palestinians themselves say it as Fuh-las-TEEN
Note that the digraph “ph” did not originally denote a /f/ phoneme in Hebrew — it denoted a strongly aspirated /p/, as did Φ in Greek.
The Egyptians called them Peleset.
The culture and the lifestyle of the Philistines is rather well described in the Bible. They felt completely remote and alien to the Semitic nations of the region, and they are described as “barbarian” — but at the same time they were the first peoples in the region to know ironmaking.
They were very much wanted as mercenaries — David’s bodyguard was composed of “Cretes and Pletes”. It is easy to deduce they were Cretans and Philistines. Likewise, Goliath was “from Gath” and David insults him as “uncircumcised Philistean” — all Semitic nations circumcised their boys.
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Aelia Capitolina (Latin: Colonia Aelia Capitolina [kɔˈloːni.a ˈae̯li.a kapɪtoːˈliːna]) was a Roman colony founded during the Roman emperor Hadrian's visit to Judaea in 129/130 CE. It was founded on the ruins of Jerusalem, which had been almost totally razed after the siege of 70 CE. This act marked a significant transformation of the city from a Jewish metropolis to a small pagan settlement dedicated to the cult of Capitoline Jupiter.
"Aelia" is related to the Greek word helios, the sun.
*
*
FORMER PUBLISHER OF PRAVDA FALLS FROM A WINDOW
The former head of a Soviet-era publishing house has been found dead after falling several stories from his apartment block window, according to reports, in the latest unexplained death of a prominent Russian figure since 2022.
Russian state news media reported the death of Vyacheslav Leontyev, 87, who headed the Pravda publishing house, which produced the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
White Russian state media said Leontyev threw himself from his fifth-floor apartment in Moscow, western media outlets such as the The Times noted that he was the latest prominent Russian figure to die in unexplained circumstances since the full-scale war in Ukraine started, often involving falls from windows.
Moskovsky Komsomolets was among Russian state-controlled media outlets that reported the death of Leontyev, whose body was found on Saturday morning outside his apartment block in western Moscow, where he lived on the sixth floor.
The tabloid said that the death was a suspected suicide and followed difficulties such as his wife being recently hospitalized after a fall. On the day of his death, he had suffered heart problems but refused an ambulance, the paper said, without providing evidence.
Andrey Malgin, an exiled opposition journalist who knew Leontyev, said in a social-media post that the ex-publisher knew a lot about the [Communist] party’s money.”
Pravda, which means Truth, was founded in 1912 and was the official newspaper of the ruling Communist Party until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Leontyev had headed the Pravda publishing house from 1984 and remained in his post after it was renamed Pressa in 1991.
Many deaths involve defenestration—falling from windows or balconies. Some were officially ruled accidents or suicides, but their circumstances have fueled speculation that some may have been killed for their political views, corruption ties or knowledge.
In July, Roman Starovoyt, a transport minister, was found dead in a reported suicide soon after the Kremlin had announced his dismissal. It followed reports that he faced a corruption probe over the theft.
The same month, Andrei Badalov, vice president of state oil pipeline company Transneft was reported to have fallen from a window at his home in the elite Moscow suburb of Rublyovka, with police sources saying he likely committed suicide.
In February, Artur Priakhin, head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service in the republic of Karelia was found dead outside his office, with reports saying he had left a note which asked that no one be blamed for his death.
Police are investigating Leontyev’s death but it is unclear whether there will be any further public details to be released.
https://www.newsweek.com/former-russian-newspaper-publisher-dies-after-falling-from-window-reports-10838102
Oriana:
My apologies for “same old, same old.” The top Russian elites show a lack of imagination when it comes to “suicide.”
Even though defenestration was not a new way to liquidate political opponents, it is only during Putin’s rule that it became commonplace. In parallel with “Vlad the Impaler,” Putin may end up as “Vlad the Defenestrator.”
Tragedy, if repeated too often, begins to looks more comic than tragic.
On further thought, falling out of a window is also the cheapest way, and we know that the current Russian economy is not the strongest.
Speaking of Russian economy:
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TRUMP AND PUTIN — Misha Iossel, Facebook
It's way past time to stop listening to what Trump says or writes. He is permanently delirious. All that matters is what he does. And, in the end, this is what he does: undermining Putin. He has dementia -- and yet so ignorant and stupid, it's hard to understand where his stupidity ends and dementia begins. Tomorrow he will say something contrary to today's — and well, discuss it again?
But there is one constant in his unbridled nagging: he has never, not once in the last 9 years subjected even the slightest, most gentle criticism of Putin personally. Russia — please, at least also a region, with a glimpse; but Putin himself — never.
The meaning (conditionally speaking) of his latest statement on Ukraine is as follows: I wash my hands. I'm not interested in playing it anymore. I've promised a thousand and one times during the campaign to end this war in one day, with one phone call — it didn't work, oh well. We are to blame for ourselves. Picking up toys (I already took them a long time ago, by the way) and going home.
Gareth:
Trump has really got omnipotent and incompetent mixed up!
Lisa Flowers:
He has to play this game to gullible Americans, and Putin knows it's meaningless. Putin has so much Kopromat on him, going back decades. Trump is absolutely COWED.
*
TRUMP EXPECTED A RALLY; HE GOT A FUNERAL
~ On September 25, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suddenly announced he was calling about 800 of the nation’s top military generals and admirals, along with their top enlisted advisors, to meet at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia. Such a meeting was unprecedented, and its suddenness meant military leaders across the world had to drop everything to run to Washington, D.C., at enormous financial cost for the country. Under those extraordinary circumstances, speculation about what Hegseth intended to say or do at the meeting has been widespread.
Now we know. In front of a giant flag backdrop that echoed the opening scene from the movie Patton, Hegseth harangued the career military leaders, pacing as if he were giving a TED talk. The event was streamed live to the public, making it clear that the hurry to get everyone to Washington, D.C., in person was not about secrecy.
In his speech, Hegseth reiterated his vision of a military based in what he calls the “warrior ethos.” Ignoring the military’s mission of preventing wars through deterrence, its professional and highly educated officer corps, and its modern structure as a triumph of logistics, he told the military leaders that today was “the liberation of America's warriors, in name, in deed and in authorities. You kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct and don't necessarily belong always in polite society.”
He claimed that “we have the strongest, most powerful, most lethal, and most prepared military on the planet. That is true, full stop. Nobody can touch us. It's not even close.” But then Hegseth, who became defense secretary from his position as a weekend host on the Fox News Channel, complained that “our warriors” are not “led by the most capable and qualified combat leaders.”
He claimed that “foolish and reckless politicians” had forced the military “to focus on the wrong things” and that it had promoted too many leaders “based on their race, based on gender quotas.” “We became the woke department,” he said. “We are done with that sh*t.” He is loosening rules about hazing and bullying, changing physical fitness reforms with the idea that they will get women out of combat roles, and prohibiting beards, which will force Black men out of the service, for Black men suffer at a much higher rate than white men do from a chronic skin condition that makes shaving painful and can cause scarring.
He also said he was tired of seeing “fat troops” and “fat generals and admirals,” and that he would institute a second physical fitness test every year.
“[I]f the words I'm speaking today are making your heart sink,” Hegseth said, “then you should do the honorable thing and resign.”
The military leaders listened to Hegseth without expression, in keeping with the military’s longstanding tradition of rejecting partisanship. While Hegseth paused for applause that did not materialize, he seemed to be playing to the cameras rather than his live audience.
In contrast, when President Donald J. Trump took the stage, he seemed uncomfortable at the lack of audience participation in what was essentially a rally speech. “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before,” he began. “This is very interesting. Don’t laugh, don’t laugh. You’re not allowed to do that. You know what? Just have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud. And if you want to do anything you want, you can do anything you want. And if you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room.”
The president who received five draft deferments—four for college, one for bad feet—continued to a room full of career officers: “Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future. But you just feel nice and loose, okay, because we’re all on the same team. And I was told that, sir, you won’t hear a murmur in the room.”
For the next 70 minutes, he spoke slowly, slurring words, delivering to the hundreds of professionals who had rushed from around the world to attend this meeting a rambling, incoherent stream of words that jumped from what appeared to be prepared remarks to his own improvisation. He covered the “Gulf of America,” the seven or eight wars he claims to have ended, the “millions and millions of lives” he has saved, nuclear weapons (one of the two “n-words” he informed the military leaders you can’t say), his demanding “beautiful paper, the gorgeous paper” with “the real gold writing” when he signs things (“I love my signature. I really do. Everyone loves my signature," he said), finding $31 billion on “the tariff shelf,” making Canada the 51st state, his dislike of the "aesthetics" of certain Navy ships, wild claims about his 2024 electoral victory, the press, America First, immigrants from prisons and mental institutions, and Venezuelans not daring to go out in boats for fear the U.S. will “blow [them] out of existence.”
The speech was highly partisan, attacking former president Joe Biden by name eleven times, calling him “the auto pen” and claiming his administration was really run by “radical left lunatics.” “We were not respected with Biden,” Trump said.
“They looked at him falling downstairs every day. Every day, the guy is falling downstairs. He said, It’s not our President. We can’t have it. I’m very careful. You know, when I walk downstairs for, like, a month, stairs, like these stairs, I’m very—I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record. Just try not to fall, because it doesn’t work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen and it became a part of their legacy. We don’t want that. You walk nice and easy. You’re not having—you don’t have to set any record. Be cool.
Be cool when you walk down, but don’t—don’t pop down the stairs. So one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a President, but he would bop down those stairs. I’ve never seen it. Da-da, da-da, da-da, bop, bop, bop. He’d go down the stairs. Wouldn’t hold on. I said, It’s great. I don’t want to do it. I guess I could do it. [Oriana: No way!!] But eventually, bad things are going to happen, and it only takes once. But he did a lousy job as president. A year ago, we were a dead country. We were dead. This country was going to hell.”
Like Hegseth’s, Trump’s speech seemed to have been designed to announce a new mission for the military. He claimed the U.S. has domestic enemies, “insurrectionists” “paid by the radical left,” and said that cities “that are run by the radical-left Democrats…they’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them out one by one. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war, too. It’s a war from within…. And I told Pete [Hegseth] we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military—National Guard, but military—because we’re going into Chicago very soon. That’s a big city with an incompetent governor. Stupid governor.” Trump told the audience that “our inner cities” are “a big part of war now.”
A former defense official told Jack Detsch and Leo Shane III of Politico the meeting was “a waste of time for a lot of people who emphatically had better things they could and should be doing. It’s also an inexcusable strategic risk to concentrate so many leaders in the operational chain of command in the same publicly known time and place, to convey an inane message of little merit.”
Either one of those speeches, in full view of the American public and foreign governments, would be enough to torpedo an administration before Trump. But the day was not over.
The Senate adjourned today without agreeing to the continuing resolution the House passed to fund the government until November 21. The Republicans refused to include the Democrats in any of their negotiations, and the Democrats, whose votes the Senate needed to pass the measure, said they would not agree to a continuing resolution unless it included a fix to extend the premium tax credits that support healthcare insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act. While Republicans extended the 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, they let the premium tax credits run out at the end of this year. Without that support, healthcare insurance premiums will skyrocket.
“We are shutting down,” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said tonight, “because Donald Trump thinks he’s a king. This was totally avoidable, but Donald Trump told Republicans, ‘Don't negotiate with Democrats.’... We didn't shut down when Joe Biden was president. Why? Because Democrats, when they were in the majority, took their responsibility to govern seriously, reached out across the aisle, and built bipartisan funding agreements with the Republicans….
We aren't asking for the moon. We are simply saying, we don't want health insurance premiums to go up by 75% on the American public. That's what Republicans have engineered as a means to pay for their giant tax cut for billionaires and corporations. We aren’t asking for some big new healthcare program. We're simply saying, if we're gonna vote for a budget, we want that budget to not increase premiums on families across this country by 75%, bankrupting American families. You know what else we want? We want this president to start acting… lawfully.”
House Democrats have been running a 24-hour live stream in which they and guests are talking about the shutdown and the importance of protecting health care.
Republicans seem aware that shutting down the government at the same time many Americans see their healthcare premiums jump dramatically will not be popular. Although the Hatch Act prohibits the use of government resources for partisan gain, the White House ignored the act to blame Democrats for the shutdown. Emine Yücel of Talking Points Memo reported that federal employees at the Social Security Administration, Small Business Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Commerce—and as well as other agencies—received an email blaming Democrats for the shutdown. It said Trump “opposes a government shutdown,” but Democrats were “blocking this Continuing Resolution in the U.S. Senate due to unrelated policy demands.”
The website for the Department of Housing and Urban Development showed a banner reading: “The Radical Left are going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their $1.5 trillion wish lists of demands. The Trump administration wants to keep the government open for the American people.” Melody Schreiber of The Guardian reported that the Department of Veterans’ Affairs said in a statement that “Radical liberals in Congress” were attempting to shut down the government “to achieve their crazy fantasy of open borders, ‘transgender’ for everybody and men competing in women’s sports.”
This evening, Trump posted on social media three pictures of Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) in the Oval Office with bright red caps placed on the Resolute Desk in front of them bearing the words “Trump 2028.”
But Trump’s ability to project dominance is weakening, and his speech to the generals didn’t help.
In Boston today, Judge William G. Young answered an anonymous correspondent who trolled the judge on June 19 by writing a postcard that said: “TRUMP HAS PARDONS AND TANKS…. WHAT DO YOU HAVE?” Young reproduced the writing at the top of his decision finding that Trump’s attempted deportations of legal residents for their pro-Palestinian speech violated the First Amendment. Then the judge answered: “Dear Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People of the United States—you and me—have our magnificent Constitution.”
Judge Young explained how Trump’s officers are using fear—through masked ICE agents, for example—“to terrorize Americans” so they stop resisting the president’s attempts to silence opposition. But, the judge went on, “The United States is a great nation, not because any of us say so. It is great because we still practice our frontier tradition of selflessness for the good of us all. Strangers go out of their way to help strangers when they see a need. In times of fire, flood, and national disaster, everyone pitches in to help people we've never met and first responders selflessly risk their lives for others. Hundreds of firefighters rushed into the Twin Towers on 9/11 without hesitation desperate to find and save survivors. That's who we are.
And on distant battlefields our military ‘fought and died for the men [they] marched among.’ Each day, I recognize (to paraphrase Lincoln again) that the brave men and women, living and dead, who have struggled in our Nation's service have hallowed our Constitutional freedom far above my (or anyone’s) poor power to add or detract. The only Constitutional rights upon which we can depend are those we extend to the weakest and most reviled among us.”
The judge concluded: “I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected.
After watching, if just out of morbid curiosity, his truly insane and infinitely embarrassing speech — well, "speech" — to the nation's top military today, it would be impossible for any remotely objective person not to come to the conclusion that he, this dangerous clown, is in deep, deep dementia.
He is, if you will — for the older generations of movie-watchers — an evil, vengeful, insanely powerful incarnation of Peter Sellers' Chauncey Gardiner with dementia... and without the ability to tend to flowers (destroying instead, covering with pavement JFK's Rose Garden... everything he touches dies). ~ Michail Iossel
We don’t know who wrote this viral takedown of Trump's speech to the generals, but whoever did, HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD. We couldn’t have said it better!
"Donald Trump walked into Quantico Tuesday expecting a rally. He got a funeral.
The generals sat in perfect silence, faces locked in the kind of grim stillness that comes from years of watching idiots talk and choosing not to react.
Trump, of course, couldn’t handle it. “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before,” he confessed, his voice trembling somewhere between wounded pride and panic.
Then came the kicker, “If you want to applaud, you applaud.”
This wasn’t leadership. This was a washed-up Vegas act begging the crowd to clap. The Commander-in-Chief turned into the Clapper-in-Chief, reduced to prodding the nation’s top brass like a sad carnival barker who forgot his punchline.
A campaign rally in uniform.
Instead of strategy, Trump delivered his usual medley of grievances: Barack Obama ruined everything, Joe Biden ruined it twice as hard, and only Donald J. Trump, self-proclaimed “two-term, maybe three-term president” could save America. It was less a military briefing than an episode of The Apprentice: Pentagon Edition.
The generals, trained to withstand battlefield chaos, sat stone-faced through the barrage of nonsense. They have endured artillery fire with more enthusiasm.
Enter Pete Hegseth, America’s Pastor-in-Arms. Trump’s “Secretary of War” took the podium with the intensity of a man who thinks Tom Clancy novels are actual military doctrine. He promised “fire and brimstone,” called for purges of “fat generals,” and announced he wants the next war to look exactly like the Gulf War, because apparently it’s still 1991 and CNN is running that same grainy footage of tanks in the desert.
But Hegseth wasn’t done. He led them in prayer. Yes, prayer. The nation’s top generals, summoned by presidential ego, now folded into a forced altar call like extras at a megachurch revival. The separation of church and state? Obliterated. Constitution? Shredded. Jesus, apparently, is now Commander-in-Chief. Trump can play Vice.
Weakness on parade.
Trump likes to brag about firing generals who “aren’t warriors.” But on Tuesday, the real firing squad was silence. Not one clap. Not one cheer. Just the steady hum of contempt vibrating off the brass like feedback from a dead microphone.
These men and women have seen actual combat. They’ve buried soldiers. They’ve lived with the weight of real command. And now they’re expected to cheer for a man who brags about moving “a submarine or two” like it’s a toy in a bathtub, or who lectures about “two N-words” as though nuclear strategy were a stand-up routine.
No wonder they didn’t clap.
The pin-drop presidency.
What happened at Quantico wasn’t just awkward. It was diagnostic. Trump’s presidency is a hollow shell propped up by applause, and when the applause disappears, so does he.
And Hegseth? He’s the zealot-in-chief, delivering sermons about war and Christ in equal measure, a man confusing the Book of Revelation with the Pentagon’s operations manual. Together, they make quite the duo: one desperate for claps, the other desperate for amens.
The generals gave them neither. Instead, they gave silence, the most cutting judgment of all.” ~ Facebook
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RUSSIA AND CRYPTO
An entrepreneurial babushka in St Petersburg, Russia, sells fresh vegetables from her garden for crypto currencies. The future is here.
After the West collectively disconnected Russia from its banking system, Russian officials and businessmen lost the means to siphon money out of the country. A new scheme was soon arranged that involved crypto.
My friend’s brother who is a real estate agent in Dubai, told me how it works.
A wealthy individual sends someone to bring piles of cash to the crypto exchange outfit located in Moscow City business center.
The crypto specialist sends payment in crypto to his partner in Dubai and he hands the wealthy individual cash in the local currency dinars.
Payment can be arranged as a bank transfer which is then used to purchase luxury apartments or pay tuition for the kids in the international school.
In the matters of apartment purchases, wealthy individuals are advised to contact federal security services (FSB) officers. They stay in five start hotels in Dubai and arrange money transfers with tax authorities charging a ten person commission for their services.
FSB is a huge structure , and its units are in continuous struggle over dwindling resources. Lots of guys fall from tall windows that you never get to hear about.
Some officers in the security forces decided that they want to take charge of the crypto exchange places, and organized large-scale raids.
What did they expect to find ? There’s a cash counting machine. A laptop. And a young dude in blue jeans and sneakers crunching numbers.
That’s Russian economy of the past three decades in a nutshell. I’d put it up on the coat of arms as the symbol of our country.
As a result of busts, crypto exchangers have gone underground. Offices are closed, but business continues in new formats: meetings in the lobby of a skyscraper to transfer cash; secret meetings in rented apartments in Moscow City for exchanges based on connections; remote exchanges for large sums over 1 million rubles.
Clients say that new schemes help circumvent raids and they continue to siphon off millions of dollars abroad.
~ Misha Firer Quora
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A VERY COLD WINTER PREDICTED FOR MOSCOW
The prediction for an abnormally cold winter puts the whole of Russia under threat. Meteorologists predict snowfalls, severe temperatures, and storms.
The capitals — Moscow and St. Petersburg — will see temperatures dropping to -20°C by early December and frosts as cold as to –30°C by January.
Other regions in the Urals and the Volga region will be seeing even lower temperatures: down to –40°C at nights. The whole winter is supposed to be colder than usual. Traditionally colder areas of the continent — Far East, Siberia, and the Urals — will experience sharp temperature drops.
Russia was trying to “freeze” the Ukrainians for 3 winters (2022–2023, 2023–2024, 2024–2025) by hitting the Ukrainian energy system. They didn’t succeed — Ukraine was saved because it was connected to the European energy system, and also the Ukrainian climate is quite mild.
Russia is on her own — and a severe winter coupled with Ukrainian deep strikes could create serious emergencies in the heavily populated Russian cities. The water in pipes could freeze without electricity, destroying the pipes. And in winter, fixing this would be extremely hard.
A strike on the energy system not only causes blackouts, but also the water supply is cut off. Russia uses centralized heating systems, and if the water freezes in pipes, this also means the heating system won’t function.
According to Ukraine's Intelligence Service, Russia’s electricity infrastructure is entering a systemic crisis: the current capacity shortage is 25 GW (9%) and it is growing. The shortage is caused by network overload, worn-out equipment, and sanctions that have restricted access to technology.
Russia is stuck at the front and the Russian troops can’t advance, blocked by Ukraine’s “drone wall”. The Russian military bloggers are already admitting that “the war cannot be won.”
Russia’s war is based on the willingness of the Russian people to fight it.
Ukraine fully intends to destroy this will to fight. ~ Elena Gold, Quora
Steve L:
‘Twould be ironic if after Napoleon and Hitler were defeated by the Russian winter, that fate should befall Putin.
Elena Gold:
After denying it for 10 months, Putin finally admitted that it was a Russian missile that hit an Azerbaijani civilian plane over Chechnya.
The Russian dictator had to beg forgiveness of a country he only wanted to give orders to.
John Rhodes:
They denied Chernobyl until they couldn’t lie any more. They denied shooting down Malaysia Flight 17 and refused access to the crash site until they had removed incriminating evidence of their involvement — couldn’t even do that properly. They denied that they were preparing to invade Ukraine in 2022. They denied that any of their soldiers were involved in the annexation of Crimea in 2014 (little green men). They deny targeting Ukrainian infrastructure and civilians. The list goes on. Now they FINALLY admit shooting down the Azerbaijani jet liner. No wonder the free world doesn’t trust them nor believe a word that comes out of their lying mouths.
Larry Blanchard:
The Kremlin will always shield those in Moscow and St P to the last from any ill effects. Those with the money and power are heavily concentrated in these two cities.
The rest of the country can freeze and starve for all they care (e.g. outside the “two cities”, they already have 3rd world medical care). In fact, they will likely welcome the propaganda value of any problems caused by Ukraine.
Hitler thought that all you had to do was kick down the door and the whole house would coming crashing down. Wasn’t going to happen in 1941, won’t happen in 2026. Unless we supply some genuine offensive weaponry and logistics and allow the Ukrainians to really take the fight to the aggressor the war will just drag on.
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MORE ON RUSSIA’S MENTALITY
Daniel Alexander:
It will always amaze me Russia’s ability to uphold to completely contradictory thoughts at the same time (even at the individual level):
They portray themselves as the victim of countless injustices (mainly carried out by the west) but at the same time they see themselves as the strongest and most powerful nation in the world. They see themselves as the victim of bullying but at the same time they treat other peoples like crap and “rightly so”! It’s no wonder they inspired Orwell to create the concept of doublethink.
Haocheng Lin:
There’s no contradiction at all. Aggressive nations often weaponize historical grievances to justify expansionism. Russian propaganda echoes the logic used by the Nazi Party in the 1920s-40s: territorial aggression framed as “restoring justice” and overturning past humiliation. As Hitler invoked the Treaty of Versailles, today’s Russia uses the collapse of the USSR to legitimize its imperial ambitions: whether in Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, or beyond.
Jan Vesely:
No contradiction at all. You are either bully or bullied, you are either oppressor or oppressed way of thinking. No third way, no be nice to other people, no friends, no allies.
Vadim Tulchinskiy:
Russian national character is bipolar disorder. What you rightly described is its manic phase. But I lived there in 1990th, and I remember its depressive phase. It will return. Believe history, not me. The whole history of Russia can be presented through the emotional oscillations with two extremes and two transitional phases.
Michael Gilichinski:
The infinite dead-end of russian nationalism is a century-long impotence to define who actually is Russian — ether all the subjects of their multiethnic empire or only blond and pure blood Vologda-type Ruski.
Sue Z:
“That’s why they act as a bully. They can do no wrong and if they don’t like something, it’s because someone else did something to offend them and is at fault.”
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A CULTURE WITHOUT ANGER
In the 1960s, Harvard graduate student Jean Briggs made a remarkable discovery about human anger.
At 34, she traveled beyond the Arctic Circle and lived in the tundra for 17 months. No roads. No heating. No grocery stores. Winters dropped below –40°C.
Briggs convinced an Inuit family to “adopt” her so she could observe their life in its natural rhythm. Soon, she noticed something extraordinary: the adults had an almost superhuman ability to control their anger. They never lost their temper.
One day, someone spilled a boiling kettle inside an igloo, damaging the ice floor. No shouting. No blame. Just a calm, “Too bad,” before fetching more water. Another time, a fishing line—painstakingly woven for days—snapped on the very first cast. The only response? “Let’s make another one.”
Next to them, Briggs felt like an impulsive child. So she began asking: How do Inuit parents teach their children this emotional mastery?
One afternoon, she found her answer. A young mother was playing with her angry two-year-old son. She handed him a small stone and said, “Hit me with it. Again. Harder.” When he threw it, she covered her eyes and pretended to cry, “Ooooh, that hurts!”
To Briggs, it seemed strange—until she realized it was a powerful lesson. The Inuit believe you never scold a small child or speak to them in an angry voice. Instead, they use gentle play to teach empathy and self-control. Even if a child hits or bites you, you respond with calm, not rage.
Maybe the rest of us could learn something from a culture where anger isn’t feared... because it’s understood. ~ Min Shres, Quora
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METHANE SEEPING OUT FROM ANTARCTIC SEABED
Planet-heating methane is escaping from cracks in the Antarctic seabed as the region warms, with new seeps being discovered at an “astonishing rate,” scientists have found, raising fears that future global warming predictions may have been underestimated.
Huge amounts of methane lie in reservoirs that have formed over millennia beneath the seafloor around the world. This invisible, climate-polluting gas can escape into the water through fissures in the sea floor, often revealing itself with a stream of bubbles weaving their way up to the ocean surface.
Relatively little is known about these underwater seeps, how they work, how many there are, and how much methane reaches the atmosphere versus how much is eaten by methane-munching microbes living beneath the ocean.
But scientists are keen to better understand them, as this super-polluting gas traps around 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide in its first 20 years in the atmosphere.
Methane seeps in Antarctica are among the least understood on the planet, so a team of international scientists set out to find them. They used a combination of ship-based acoustic surveys, remotely operated vehicles and divers to sample a range of sites in the Ross Sea, a bay in Antarctica’s Southern Ocean, at depths between 16 and 790 feet.
What they found surprised them. They identified more than 40 methane seeps in the shallow water of the Ross Sea, according to the study published this month in Nature Communications.
Many of the seeps were found at sites that had been repeatedly studied before, suggesting they were new. This may indicate a “fundamental shift” in the methane released in the region, according to the report.
Methane seeps are relatively common globally, but previously there was only one confirmed active seep in the Antarctic, said Sarah Seabrook, a report author and a marine scientist at Earth Sciences New Zealand, a research organization. “Something that was thought to be rare is now seemingly becoming widespread,” she told CNN.
Every seep they discovered was accompanied by an “immediate excitement” that was “quickly replaced with anxiety and concern,” Seabrook said.
The fear is these seeps could rapidly transfer methane into the atmosphere, making them a source of planet-heating pollution that is not currently factored into future climate change predictions.
The scientists are also concerned the methane could have cascading impacts on marine life.
It’s unclear why the methane seeps are happening in the region, but the researchers are investigating whether they might be affected by climate change.
At the other end of the world, in the Arctic, increased underground methane release has been linked to climate change impacts, Seabrook said, including warmer temperatures, shifts in sea level and the continued, slow rise of land after the glaciers melted in the last Ice Age.
It can create a feedback loop, Seabrook added, where climate change increases methane seeps, which themselves further increase the rate of climate change.
The scientists are heading back to Antarctica next week for two months to analyze the seeps in more detail.
Methane is a “real unknown, it’s going up in the atmosphere and we don’t know why,” said Andrew Thurber, a marine biology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a study author.
One of the most significant concerns is what’s happening in Antarctica, where there are vast reservoirs of methane, Thurber told CNN. If humans continue to warm the planet, these seeps could go from “a natural laboratory to an epicenter of danger,” he said.
In some ways they “are like a dangerous animal,” he added. “They are amazing to study and understand, but one needs to be very aware of what they can do if provoked or underestimated.”
https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/10/climate/methane-seeps-antarctica
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ZIMBABWE’S CASH CROP: BLUEBERRIES
Zimbabwe is Africa's biggest producer of tobacco but some farmers believe the country's long-term future could lie in a very different crop — blueberries.
Thanks to a breakthrough in trade talks with China, the world's biggest importer of the nutrient-rich fruit, Zimbabwe has taken a major step towards achieving its ambition of becoming Africa's blueberry capital.
Tobacco sales surged to a record $1.3bn (£1bn) last year, helped by the rising number of smokers in China.
In contrast, blueberry exports were worth a more modest $30m but horticulture specialist Clarence Mwale is undaunted.
"The future is food, not a bad habit," he tells the BBC at his warehouse in Harare.
For the first time, China has agreed to import Zimbabwean blueberries and, crucially, has exempted them from tariffs, in a boost for the southern African state's struggling economy.
"We have to strike while the iron is hot," exuberant blueberry farmer Alistair Campbell tells the BBC.
Currently exporting to Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia, farmers like Campbell would be gaining access to a massive new market, once Zimbabwe passes China's compliance tests on pest and disease control.
A former captain of Zimbabwe's cricket team, 53-year-old Campbell co-owns a high-tech 50 hectare (123 acres) blueberry farm about an hour from the capital, Harare.
Each of the 240,000 plants on the farm is grown in a pot imported from the Netherlands or South Africa. The pot soil is also imported.
The plants are watered eight times a day, with specially treated water, and the blueberries are kept in refrigerators soon after they are harvested to maintain freshness.
Campbell said that although it was a demanding fruit to grow, the rewards are worth it, especially as global demand is increasing for what some describe as a superfood, with high levels of vitamins and anti-oxidants.
Campbell believes Zimbabwe can cash in on the rising demand, as the fruit comes into season early, in late March, hitting the market ahead of major competitors like Peru.
"It's all about Peru avoidance," laughs Campbell.
Peru is both a bitter rival and an inspiration for Zimbabwe's farmers. In the last 10 to 15 years, it has gone from being responsible for less than 2% of global blueberry production to becoming the largest exporter of the fruit.
Zimbabwe's production this year is expected to rise by 50% to 12,000 tons.
Morocco currently leads Africa's production with more than 80,000 tons in 2024.
South Africa, Zimbabwe's neighbor, produced 25,000 tons.
With South Africa being severely hit by US tariffs, it is looking for new markets for its fruit, with China being an obvious one, especially as it has promised zero tariffs for all African states, except Eswatini because of its close ties with Taiwan.
China has not yet agreed to take South African blueberries, raising hopes among farmers in Zimbabwe that they will enter the lucrative market first.
The Zimbabwean and Chinese governments struck the deal earlier this month, offering what has been described as an "unprecedented opportunity for local producers to access one of the world's fastest-growing blueberry markets".
"This agreement is a milestone for Zimbabwe's horticultural sector," says Zimbabwe's Horticultural Development Council executive director Linda Nielsen.
"We now need collaboration to design policies that increase investment, boost production, and ensure our blueberries meet China's strict quality and phytosanitary standards," she adds.
Zimbabwe farmers are now looking for capital to boost blueberry production to 30,000 tons by 2030.
China has not yet agreed to take South African blueberries, raising hopes among farmers in Zimbabwe that they will enter the lucrative market first.
The Zimbabwean and Chinese governments struck the deal earlier this month, offering what has been described as an "unprecedented opportunity for local producers to access one of the world's fastest-growing blueberry markets".
"This agreement is a milestone for Zimbabwe's horticultural sector," says Zimbabwe's Horticultural Development Council executive director Linda Nielsen.
Last year Zimbabwe generated $30m (£22.5m) from blueberry exports. The amount may be modest, but with unemployment high, the jobs the industry creates are welcome. It employs about 6,000 people, mostly women.
"It's delicate hands that are needed for a delicate fruit," Rebecca Bonzo, a supervisor at Campbell's farm, tells the BBC in the Shona language.
"Up to 300 women work during the peak harvesting season. Many are sole breadwinners who can now take care of their families," she says.
Clarence Mwale — the founder of Kuminda, which represents a collective of small- and medium-scale farmers — says he is pushing more of them to become involved in blueberry farming.
He says he has achieved this with other crops for instance, about 5,000 small-scale farmers now supply horticultural products, mainly mangetouts [snow peas] and sugar snap peas, to the UK and other European markets, something that was unheard of 15 to 20 years ago.
Mwale says he is now looking for about 100 young farmers to diversify into blueberry farming and benefit from China's decision to open the market to Zimbabweans.
"As the Chinese market opens up…it gives us much more scope," he tells the BBC. "Where we were scrambling and fighting for the European markets, which we haven't been able to fulfill, now we have a vast market that we have to fill.
"It gives everyone a chance to get into the blueberry production."
Zimbabwe has traditionally been tobacco country.
But having fueled a bad habit in China, it now wants to promote a health food there, hoping in the process to acquire the status of Africa's blueberry capital.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y5qllgpgzo
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RETURNING TO CHURCH WON’T SAVE US FROM NIHILISM
Engaging in ritual for ritual’s sake only deepens nihilism.
Russian nihilists tied to chairs on horse-drawn platforms and paraded past groups of soldiers on their way to execution in St. Petersburg.
Earlier this year, a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California, was bombed. Around the same time, authorities in Washington foiled a mass shooting plot at a local mall, while Europe saw a string of stabbing attacks.
These and other incidents have fueled warnings about the rise of what the FBI calls “Nihilistic Violent Extremists,” or NVEs. Unlike conventional terrorists, these terrorists, says the FBI, are motivated by nihilism, driven “primarily from a hatred of society at large and a desire to bring about its collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos, destruction, and social instability.”
But how can believing in nothing drive people to commit acts of violence, when terrorism is usually defined by devotion to a cause? How can we make sense of this?
The New York Times columnist David Brooks offers one explanation. In a recent op-ed, he warns that a rigid political climate on the left has led people on the right of the political spectrum to actively embrace nihilism. Whereas conservatives like himself had formerly been focused on conserving cultural, intellectual, and political traditions, Brooks worries that some people on the right are now embracing postmodernism and becoming “radical deconstructors” who “don’t seem to think there’s anything to conserve,” which leads them to “make the leap into pure nihilism, pure destruction.”
He likens this trend to the rise of 19th-century Russian nihilists, whom writers like Turgenev and Dostoyevsky depicted as rejecting established norms and seeking radical upheaval. For Brooks, the pattern echoes what he sees in historical episodes of social and political turmoil, from Tsarist Russia to interwar Germany.
In other words, he suggests that we are today facing a situation similar to what led to the rise of the Nihilists in 19th-century Russia and the rise of Nazism in 20th-century Germany. Brooks seems to think these situations are comparable because of a historical trend he has identified: “smothering progressivism” leading to “populist reaction” and then “nihilist surge.”
But this trajectory describes neither Tsarist Russia nor Weimar Germany, which calls into question Brooks’ diagnosis of what is happening today. In fact, as I discuss in the opening of my book “Nihilism,” what inspired the Russian Nihilists was actually a situation much closer to what Brooks sees as the solution to nihilism: “to believe in belief.”
What Turgenev and Dostoyevsky identified as the threat of nihilism was not the threat of people responding to progressivism with violence, but rather the threat of people responding to conservatism with violence. The rise of the Russian Nihilists was brought about specifically by the conservatism that Brooks identifies with: conservation of the status quo. Brooks sees “one spot of good news” in recent studies that have shown that more young people are returning to church, which he interprets as a desire to have faith in something. So just as Brooks wants to combat nihilism by getting people to believe in belief, he sees hope in people having faith in faith.
Yet engaging in ritual for the sake of ritual is precisely what led to the crises that Turgenev and Dostoyevsky were writing about, as more and more young people in Russia were becoming disillusioned by rituals and institutions that seemed to have no meaning or significance beyond honoring tradition for the sake of tradition. The Russian Nihilists thus turned to destruction, not because they lacked conviction, but rather because of the strength of their convictions, specifically the conviction that the only way to find out what, if anything, was worth believing in was to find out what could survive destruction.
Like those who misread Nietzsche and think his claim that “God is dead” meant we should all become atheistic nihilists, Brooks seems to think that postmodern atheism is the cause of nihilism and so believes the only way to overcome nihilism is with theism. And for Brooks, it seems that any version of theism will do, as just having “faith in something” is all that matters. Yet it was precisely this way of thinking that Nietzsche identified as what was helping to spread the disease of nihilism.
As I discuss elsewhere in the book, Nietzsche viewed the death of God as an opportunity for people to actively decide for themselves what values to uphold rather than merely continuing to passively accept the traditions or authority of others as grounds for how to live. Yet Nietzsche feared that rather than take up this opportunity, we would simply create new gods to worship, and so continue to passively let others decide how we should live rather than actively take the responsibility for our own lives. Nihilism for Nietzsche thus did not mean to not have beliefs, but rather meant believing in nothing: maintaining convictions that have no real significance, simply believing in belief.
Hannah Arendt similarly worried that democracy was becoming an empty ritual that was being practiced merely for the sake of practicing it. Arendt feared that politics was increasingly coming to be seen as a dirty word, as something to be avoided whenever possible, and so was becoming something people only participated in by voting in elections. Voting became all that mattered according to Arendt because voting became a way to outsource politics to politicians, thus freeing everyone else from having to be concerned with politics until the next election cycle came along.
But as Arendt warned, this reduction of democracy to an empty ritual entailed that democracy would devolve into bureaucracy, to what she called the rule of nobody. In a society where no one wants to take responsibility, bureaucrats have all the power because they know how to maintain the rituals that undergird society and so maintain the appearance of democracy. So it would come as no surprise to Arendt that we are now trying to replace human bureaucrats with AI bureaucrats in order to create a nihilistic utopia: a society where finally no human should ever have to risk taking responsibility.
What Arendt points to then as the way to combat nihilism is through the rehabilitation of politics. So rather than wanting people “to believe in belief,” or be happy that people are going to church “to have faith in something,” Arendt would probably argue that we need to work to bring back the Ancient Greek model of the polis and in particular the Ancient Greek model of politics as what gives life meaning.
According to Arendt, the Ancient Greeks did not seek to avoid politics so they could stay home, but rather sought to avoid the home so they could gather in the marketplace and participate in politics. Young people seeking out churches would indicate for Arendt not that religion will save us from nihilism, but rather that young people are desperate to find places to meet other young people that aren’t online.
So if we want to combat nihilism we need to create more places where people can meet face to face, places where people can engage in the Ancient Greek model of politics: recognizing that we each have a limited view of the world and so can only grow as humans by sharing with each other how we see the world.
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/returning-to-church-wont-save-us-from-nihilism/
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SHE LIVED TO BE 117
When a supercentenarian, someone who is older than 110 years old, is interviewed, they are inevitably asked to share their tips for longevity.
But what if their secret could be studied scientifically? What could their genome tell us about aging and why they avoid the diseases that claim so many other people? If any secrets were uncovered, might they, perhaps, help others to live as long, too?
Questions like these are at the heart of a recent paper, published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, which investigated the genome of Maria Branyas Morera, a US-born Spanish woman who died in August 2024 at age 117 years and 168 days, shortly after becoming the world’s oldest living person.
“She was a very generous person, trying to help, so it was great to work with her,” Dr. Manel Esteller, a researcher at the Josep Carreras Leukemia Research Institute in Barcelona, Spain, who co-authored the study, told CNN.
Esteller and the research team took samples from Branyas’ blood, saliva, urine and stool before examining her genome and comparing it with those belonging to 75 other Iberian women.
“She was a lucky person from the start, and she got an extra plus through her life,” said Esteller, attributing about half of Branyas’ longevity to her genetics and about half to her lifestyle.
“She never smoked, she never drank alcohol, she liked to work until she could (not) … She lived in the countryside, she did moderated exercise (mostly walking one hour a day) … She had a diet that included olive oil, Mediterranean style and, in her case, yogurt,” he told CNN.
If there were one slightly unusual thing about Branyas’ lifestyle, it might be her consumption of yogurt, as she ate three servings a day.
Researchers hypothesized that, along with the rest of her diet, this habit kept her gut microbiome resembling that of a much younger person and reduced her levels of inflammation.
Branyas in 1925
Still, Branyas’ love of yogurt didn’t necessarily caused her “overall fitness” and her gut microbiome is “probably reflecting she’s actually a very good host to all those microbes because of all the other factors that are good about her body,” said Claire Steves, a professor of aging at King’s College London, who wasn’t involved in the study.
Aside from eating lots of yogurt, Branyas possessed various variations of genes that helped her age healthily. Some of those that the research team identified included a gene associated with immune function and cognitive retention, a gene that influences how efficiently the body metabolizes fats, and another gene associated with aging brain health and heart disease.
“The level of detail in this paper is extraordinary,” Steves told CNN.
“They have gone very deep and managed to assess a wide range of different biological aging mechanisms … To my note, this is the first paper that’s every really done this in this detail,” she said, adding that future studies should see whether the findings are replicated in other supercentenarians.
Steves, like the researchers themselves, cautioned against drawing broad conclusions from this study, which focuses on just one person, since the aging process is different for everyone.
“When you’re only looking at one person, you can’t be sure whether or not what you’re seeing is because of just fluke, you can’t be sure that the relationship is really clear,” Steves said, though she added that focusing on one person can still offer some insights.
For example, by examining Branyas’ genome, the research team were able to illustrate that “extremely advanced age and poor health are not intrinsically linked,” as they said in their study.
“Ill-health in age is not inevitable. It comes about because of biological mechanisms … it’s something we can change,” said Steves, adding that the paper shows “it’s not going to be one single bullet, it’s got to be multiple different pathways.”
And by identifying the genes and proteins involved in healthy aging, Esteller hopes researchers can guide the development of drugs that can target these specific elements.
“Our aim should not necessarily be to all live to 117,” Steves added. “What we want to do is to try and squash the time when we’re unwell and suffering to as small as possible. And that’s what this lady seems to have done, as well as living to a long time.”
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/26/health/maria-branyas-morera-study-genes-intl-scli-wellness
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RENEWABLES OVERTAKE COAL AS WORLD’S BIGGEST SOURCE OF ELECTRICITY
Renewable energy overtook coal as the world's leading source of electricity in the first half of this year — a historic first, according to new data from the global energy think tank Ember.
Electricity demand is growing around the world but the growth in solar and wind was so strong it met 100% of the extra electricity demand, even helping drive a slight decline in coal and gas use.
However, Ember says the headlines mask a mixed global picture.
Developing countries, especially China, led the clean energy charge but richer nations including the US and EU relied more than before on planet-warming fossil fuels for electricity generation.
This divide is likely to get more pronounced, according to a separate report from the International Energy Agency (IEA). It predicts renewables will grow much less strongly than forecast in the US as a result of the policies of President Donald Trump's administration.
Coal, a major contributor to global warming, was still the world's largest individual source of energy generation in 2024, a position it has held for more than 50 years, according to the IEA.
Even though China is still adding to its fleet of coal-fired power stations, it also remains way ahead in clean energy growth, adding more solar and wind capacity than the rest of the world combined. This enabled the growth in renewable generation in China to outpace rising electricity demand and helped reduce its fossil fuel generation by 2%.
India experienced slower electricity demand growth and also added significant new solar and wind capacity, meaning it too cut back on coal and gas.
In contrast, developed nations like the US, and also the EU, saw the opposite trend.
In the US, electricity demand grew faster than clean energy output, increasing reliance on fossil fuels, while in the EU, months of weak wind and hydropower performance led to a rise in coal and gas generation.
In a separate report the IEA has halved its forecast for the growth of renewable energy in the US this decade. Last year, the agency predicted the US would add 500GW of new renewable capacity – mostly from solar and wind – by 2030. That has been cut that back to 250GW.
The IEA analysis represents the most thorough assessment to date of the impact the Trump administration's policies are having on global efforts to transition to cleaner energy sources and underscores the dramatically different approach of the US and China.
As China's clean tech exports surge, the US is focusing on encouraging the world to buy more of its oil and gas.
Despite these regional differences, Ember calls this moment a "crucial turning point."
Ember senior analyst Malgorzata Wiatros-Motyka said it "marks the beginning of a shift where clean power is keeping pace with demand growth".
Solar power delivered the lion's share of growth, meeting 83% of the increase in electricity demand. It has now been the largest source of new electricity globally for three years in a row.
Most solar generation (58%) is now in lower-income countries, many of which have seen explosive growth in recent years.
That's thanks to spectacular reductions in cost. Solar has seen prices fall a staggering 99.9% since 1975 and is now so cheap that large markets for solar can emerge in a country in the space of a single year, especially where grid electricity is expensive and unreliable, says Ember.
Pakistan, for example, imported solar panels capable of generating 17 gigawatts (GW) of solar power in 2024, double the previous year and the equivalent of roughly a third of the country's current electricity generation capacity.
Africa is also experiencing a solar boom with panel imports up 60% year on year, in the year to June. Coal-heavy South Africa led the way, while Nigeria overtook Egypt into second place with 1.7GW of solar generating capacity — that's enough to meet the electricity demand of roughly 1.8m homes in Europe.
Some smaller African nations have seen even more rapid growth with Algeria increasing imports 33-fold, Zambia eightfold and Botswana sevenfold.
In some countries the growth of solar has been so rapid it is creating unexpected challenges.
In Afghanistan, widespread use of solar-powered water pumps is lowering the water table, threatening long-term access to groundwater. A study by Dr David Mansfield and satellite data firm Alcis warns that some regions could run dry within five to ten years, endangering millions of livelihoods.
Adair Turner, chair of the UK's Energy Transitions Commission, says countries in the global "sun belt" and "wind belt" face very different energy challenges.
Sun belt nations — including much of Asia, Africa, and Latin America — need large amounts of electricity for daytime air conditioning. These countries can significantly reduce energy costs almost immediately by adopting solar-based systems, supported by increasingly affordable batteries that store energy from day to night.
Wind belt countries like the UK face tougher obstacles, however. Wind turbine costs have not come down by anything like as much as solar panels — down just a third or so in the last decade. Higher interest rates have also added to borrowing costs and raised the overall price of installing wind farms significantly in the last few years.
Balancing supply is harder too: winter wind lulls can last for weeks, requiring backup power sources that batteries alone can't provide — making the system more expensive to build and run.
But wherever you are in the world, China's overwhelming dominance in clean tech industries remains unchallenged, other new data from Ember shows.
In August 2025, its clean tech exports hit a record $20bn, driven by surging sales of electric vehicles (up 26%) and batteries (up 23%). Together, China's electric vehicles and batteries are now worth more than twice the value of its solar panel exports.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2rz08en2po
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THE TYPHOON-PROOF WIND FARMS
China is racing to develop a new generation of wind farms that can not only survive tropical cyclones, but also harness their power.
In southern China's Guangdong province, a new skyline is taking shape away from its shores: hundreds of wind turbines have been installed in the South China Sea to generate renewable electricity for homes, offices and factories.
The enormous towers – some as tall as 30-storey buildings – are a symbol of China's ambition for a greener future. Guangdong, one of the country's offshore wind hubs, is already home to about 15% of all turbines installed in the ocean worldwide. Over the next five years, the local government plans to more than double that fleet.
These turbines are on the frontline of one of the most destructive weather phenomena on Earth, which hits China's coast year after year: typhoons, tropical cyclones originating in the northwest Pacific.
These powerful storms bring winds at speeds of 119km/h (74mph) or higher. They terrorize East and Southeast Asian countries every May to November, and often leave a trail of death and destruction, including collapsed buildings and flooded streets. Typhoon Ragasa, which devastated southern China in September and was the world's most powerful storm this year, reached speeds of 241km/h (150mph).
Typhoons are the same phenomenon as hurricanes: they are both spinning storms fed by warm air, and just go by different names depending on where they occur. If they originate in the North Atlantic and northeast Pacific, they are called hurricanes; in the northwest Pacific, they are called typhoons.
However, the swathes of China's coastal regions that face typhoons multiple times a year, also have the best offshore wind resources, says Zhu Ronghua, director of Yangjiang Offshore Wind Energy Laboratory, an institute supported by the Guangdong government. The challenge, he says, is to build wind farms that are able to reap the typhoon's energy.
"It is extremely important that turbines installed in those regions can not only resist typhoons, but also harness the strong gusts in the lead up to their arrival," Zhu says.
Chinese companies are at the forefront of the research, development and commercial deployment of typhoon-resistant wind turbines, says Qiao Liming, who at the time of the interview was chief strategy officer for Asia at Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), a global trade body for the wind power sector.
"The Chinese government has made a strategic decision to make offshore wind a cornerstone of its 'dual‑carbon' goals," Qiao says. The goals refer to peaking carbon emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060.
There are different ways to define a typhoon-resistant turbine. Nationally speaking, China has a standard that guides companies to make "typhoon-type" turbines capable of withstanding wind averaging up to 198 km/h (123mph) for 10 minutes.
On a global level, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) – an organization publishing international standards for electrical, electronic and related technologies – has developed guidelines for "typhoon-class" turbines expected to survive 205 km/h (127mph) wind for 10 minutes and gusts of up to 290 km/h (180mph) for three seconds.
Neither is mandatory, but manufacturers can have their products certified by a third-party company to meet these standards. Some turbines in China do not have those certificates but have survived typhoons, so they become typhoon-resistant by reality, according to industry experts.
On average, a Chinese offshore wind farm is projected to experience at least 100 typhoons during its designed lifespan, which is normally 25 years, according to a spokesperson at Goldwind, a Chinese wind turbine manufacturer.
"If a wind turbine collapses, it can threaten human lives and cause enormous financial losses," the spokesperson says.
Past disasters have shown the severity of damage. In 2006, super typhoon Saomei landed in east China's Zhejiang province, bringing gusts up to 245 km/h (152mph). It destroyed 27 turbines at an onshore wind farm, of which five collapsed. The incident alone caused a staggering $70m (£52m) in economic losses.
Wind turbine blades can span more than 150m (492ft), like these ones shipped to an offshore site in China
During a typhoon, every part of a turbine is put under extreme pressure. Its blades are vulnerable to fracturing, cracking and breaking because the speed and direction of wind often change suddenly and dramatically. Its tower can bend or collapse, and its foundation – which also has to take the pressure from surging waves and fast ocean currents – is at risk of becoming deformed or overturning. Rain and lightning strikes can damage turbines, too.
When a typhoon approaches, a wind farm often shuts down its turbines through a remote-control system once the wind speed reaches their operational limits, according to Han Yujia, a renewable energy researcher at Global Energy Monitor (GEM), a California-based non-profit. Many turbines are also capable of turning themselves off automatically, she says. The turbines are then powered by their internal diesel generators or batteries. A control system enables them to make real-time reactions – such as changing the direction they face or altering the angles of their blades – to minimize the typhoon's impact, Han notes.
Both on-land and offshore wind turbines need to be typhoon-resistant if they are installed in areas exposed to the weather phenomenon, but the feature plays a more crucial role for offshore ones because typhoons are much stronger at sea, says Xiaoli Guo Larsén, a professor at the department of wind and energy systems at the Technical University of Denmark.
Standing tall
Major Chinese companies have increased their turbines' resilience using a combination of strategies, according to Han. They include developing advanced materials, improving their weather-forecasting ability and upgrading turbines' control systems, she says.
A good example, according to Han, is a model called OceanX manufactured by China's Mingyang Smart Energy Group.
With a floating foundation, the OceanX model supports not just one but two turbines. The main reason behind the unique design is to increase the platform's output. Compared to a single turbine whose blades swipe across the same area as OceanX's two turbines combined, OceanX can generate 4.29% more electricity, according to Mingyang. This is because the two turbines' blades spin side by side in opposite directions – one clockwise and the other anti-clockwise – so the wind between them will blow faster, enabling more electrical energy to be converted from air kinetic energy, the company says.
But the floating platform also has plenty of intriguing features to counter typhoons and stay balanced during extreme weather, says Wang Chao, the turbine's chief designer. For example, its foundation is tied to the bottom of the ocean by ropes via one single point underneath it. This allows the structure to change its orientation more easily to be aligned with the wind. "As long as the turbines face the typhoon, the load (forces) they take will be the smallest and they will be the safest," Wang says.
Another feature is the "ultra-high performance" concrete used to build OceanX's foundation. It is four times tougher than normal concrete and can withstand pressure exceeding 115 Megapascal – that's more than 16,600lb (7,530kg) per square inch – according to Wang.
In September 2024, the model was installed in a wind farm about 70km (43 miles) off the coast of Yangjiang city in Guangdong, just a few weeks before super typhoon Yagi – the strongest typhoon China had seen in a decade – slammed into the country's southern coastlines.
OceanX was situated in a patch of waters that saw its wind speeds reaching up to 133 km/h (83mph), and it successfully braved the gales and waves, Wang says.
The OceanX model has two turbines, allowing it to generate electricity more efficiently
Closer to one of Yagi's landing sites, 47 wind turbines manufactured by Goldwind withstood maximum wind speed of 161 km/h (100 mph) for six hours off the coast of Guangdong's Xuwen county, according to the company's spokesperson. Those turbines also managed to generate a total of 2.1 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of power in the space of nine hours when Yagi passed the region, the spokesperson said. That amount of electricity can power more than 2,100 Chinese citizens or nearly 800 UK families of three for a year.
Goldwind achieved the feat via a series of innovations, its spokesperson says, including by using stronger materials such as carbon fiber and an advanced monitoring system that helps the wind farms' staff access the turbines' status in real time so as to make the best decisions.
Some researchers say it is important that offshore turbines can capture typhoons' gusts as long as it is safe to do so. Otherwise, a turbine will have to be turned off when the wind speed exceeds 88km/h (55mph) – the average "cut-out" speed for turbines – says Zhang Mengqi, another researcher at GEM. "Then a huge amount of clean energy will be wasted," she notes.
Tropical cyclones form on the warmer ocean near the equator and typically travel westwards and towards the poles, so they rarely hit Europe – though the continent is facing more and more intense storms. The United States is yet to build offshore wind farms on a large scale in its hurricane-prone regions in the south, Zhu says.
"China may have the most advanced typhoon-resistant technologies for wind turbines right now," he adds.
The technology has a huge home market. Over the next decade, about 170 GW of new offshore wind capacity – more than twice the global total offshore wind capacity currently – will be connected to the grid in China, and about 60% of them will be located in typhoon-prone regions, according to Wang Yufan, an analyst at research and consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.
But major accidents still happen. During Yagi, a seaside wind farm in Hainan's city Wenchang was severely damaged by the super typhoon when it landed in the city, bringing gusts as strong as 223 km/h (139mph). (Yagi made a total of four landfalls in East and Southeast Asia.) Photos of the aftermath show the wreckage of around seven broken turbines on a beach, and all their towers are snapped.
Multiple researchers tell the BBC that those turbines had just been installed and not been connected to power, so they could not make necessary adjustments during Yagi to protect themselves.
Most recently, typhoon Ragasa tore through southern China in late September, forcing more than 2.2 million people to be evacuated in Guangdong province, according to China's state-run agency Xinhua. In Yangjiang, where Ragasa landed, the local government moved 167,343 people to safety and opened the city's 1,038 shelters to residents, Xinhua reported.
While it is too early to fully assess the impact of this latest typhoon, at least five wind turbines in Yangjiang collapsed, according to journalists reporting from the city for Chinese publications Red Star News and Cover News. The natural disaster, which lasted three days, could cause up to 468 million yuan ($66m) in economic losses for offshore wind farms in China under the worst-case scenario, according to projections made by China Property and Casualty Reinsurance Company, a Beijing-based insurance company, before Ragasa's landfall.
OceanX withstood maximum wind speed of 152 km/h (94mph) as Ragasa passed, Wang says. According to Mingyang, the typhoon affected the company's 1,345 offshore wind turbines in three provinces, and all of them coped well.
A team of experts in Goldwind had projected Ragasa's pathway five days before it landed using a self-developed early-warning system, and created a typhoon-countering plan for each of the company's wind turbines affected by the event, according to the company’s spokesperson.
The preemptive strategy helped Goldwind's more than 260 offshore turbines successfully survive the event, including when the wind speeds suddenly increased from 68-144 km/h (42-89mph) within a few hours and the wind direction shifted by 150 degrees within 15 minutes on 24 September, the spokesperson said.
Super Typhoon Haiyan moves towards the Philippines in 2013. Typhoons are becoming more intense due to climate change
'Palm-tree' turbines
As interest in offshore wind energy grows, so do challenges. For one, it is becoming harder to keep turbines safe as the blades become longer and longer.
One potential solution is to use "downwind" blades – meaning, blades placed behind the motor, rather than in front – to protect the turbine, according to a project by several US universities.
The alternative, "downwind" blades proposed by Pao and her colleagues were inspired by flexible but resilient palm trees and could be made with more cost-effective materials. They are fixed behind the motor facing away from the wind, and can fold up to deflect gusts. (Mingyang's OceanX turbines have downwind blades but they cannot fold.)
Another problem is the "rapid intensification" of typhoons, which means they are getting more intense over a shorter period of time, Han says. A 2023 paper found that the number of typhoons that rapidly intensified per year in offshore areas within 400km (249 miles) from the coastline tripled between 1980 and 2020 due to climate change. Wind farms and turbine manufacturers must design better strategies to respond to the trend, she says. Han also thinks that manufacturers should make swappable parts for offshore turbines so they can be fixed more easily after sustaining damage.
Nevertheless, many consider China's vast experience in building typhoon-resistant turbines valuable for other regions, such as Southeast Asia, which is keen to harness their offshore wind but also faces the annual blasts.
There are also challenges, GWEC's Qiao warns. Each wind power project must consider site-specific wind conditions so as to select appropriate turbine models, she says. Plus, many typhoon-prone areas in Asia are remote islands with weak grids and different power standards, so those wind power projects must be carefully considered, she adds.
But the experts also see the offshore wind industry's ongoing battle with nature as a fascinating engineering challenge.
"Tropical cyclones are a challenge for developing wind power because they can be very destructive," Larsén says. "But they also provide an opportunity for humans to use new technologies to develop the ultimate turbines that can withstand the toughest conditions.”
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20251006-the-typhoon-proof-wind-farms-powering-chinas-coast
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THE EARTH IS GETTING DARKER
New satellite data reveal Earth’s Northern Hemisphere is absorbing more solar energy than the South, threatening to disrupt global climate balance.
For nearly twenty years, satellites have quietly gauged the flow of sunlight and heat through the Earth’s atmosphere. Today, scientists say those measurements indicate a disturbing trend — the Northern Hemisphere is steadily getting darker compared to the Southern Hemisphere.
The discrepancy could redefine wind patterns, ocean currents, and even global temperatures.
Tracking the Planet’s Energy Flow
The study relies on 24 years of satellite data collected by NASA’s Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES). The system tracks how much solar energy the Earth absorbs, known as absorbed solar radiation (ASR), and how much energy it sends into space, known as outgoing longwave radiation (OLR).
When researchers hemispherically compared these measurements, they found that the North was getting more solar energy than it had before. During the study period, the Northern Hemisphere received about 0.34 watts per square meter more solar energy every decade than the Southern Hemisphere. While that may sound like a minuscule difference, it’s statistically significant and big enough to upset the Earth’s delicately balanced energy equilibrium.
The shift is showing, says Dr. Norman G. Loeb, a climate scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center and the study’s lead author: Both hemispheres are reflecting less sun, but the effect is stronger in the North.
What’s Behind the “Darkening”
The darkening of the Northern Hemisphere — its reduced ability to bounce sunlight back into space — is associated with several intertwined factors. One of the most significant is the loss of reflective surfaces. Melted sea ice and decreasing snow cover in the Arctic exposed darker land and ocean surfaces that absorb more heat.
The shift is showing, says Dr. Norman G. Loeb, a climate scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center and the study’s lead author: Both hemispheres are reflecting less sun, but the effect is stronger in the North.
Concurrently in the Southern Hemisphere, natural events such as Australia’s massive bushfires and the Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption temporarily raised the level of aerosols and enhanced sunlight reflection. Such spikes were not intense enough to counter the global balances, though.
The study also reports changes in water vapor and clouds. Clouds are notoriously challenging to model, and their effect varies by location. Some areas have seen thinner clouds, while others have introduced more substantial cloud cover. All in all, the scientists determined clouds aren’t making up for the North’s increased absorption as was thought.
A Broken Symmetry
For many years, researchers took it for granted that Earth’s climate system would self-regulate. If one hemisphere was getting more solar energy, clouds or ocean currents would redistribute it. That presumption is being put to the test.
“The data suggest that clouds aren’t entirely compensating for hemispheric imbalances,” Loeb’s team said. That loss of symmetry matters because it affects the manner in which the planet redistributes heat. The energy imbalance drives air and ocean circulation — the forces behind weather, rain, and climate stability.
As the North assumes more energy, heat transport patterns can be altered. Winds and ocean currents that carry warmth across the equator dissipate or reverse. Those small changes ripple throughout the system, influencing local climates and potentially intensifying warming on northern continents.
This is asserted by a study that says that the whole world, Earth, is becoming darker.
The whole world has taken up an extra 0.83 watts per square meter per decade of energy since 2001. While some of this excess energy is lost via atmospheric and oceanic circulation, about 0.21 watts per square meter per decade is left — sufficient to boost warming trends.
In Europe and North America, the extra heat might mean more severe and persistent summers. Interference with wind patterns and the melting of Arctic ice could also supercharge regional warming. The scientists caution that the changes themselves are slow but accumulate over time and power feedback loops, which in turn, reinforce climate change.
Uncertainties and Open Questions
The strength of this research lies in its long, unbroken dataset. Two decades of CERES measurements give scientists a reliable look at the manner in which the streams of energy have evolved. The study is, however, not without flaws. Differences in the energy absorption are modest in magnitude, and separating the specific contribution of aerosols, albedo, water vapor, and clouds remains challenging.
Scientists are also uncertain whether this hemispheric imbalance will continue to grow or stabilize. If it does, global circulation patterns might arrive at new equilibria and potentially alter climate models based on symmetric assumptions.
“The results reinforce a clear need to reexamine how models handle hemispheric compensation,” the authors state. “Even modest differences in energy balance can have profound implications.”
The Bigger Climate Picture
These results arrive as scientists around the world compete to make finer climate projections. Most current models rely on the premise that clouds automatically would offset changes in radiation. However, if clouds are not doing so, as this research indicates, those models are possibly underestimating future warming in some places.
The study’s implications are not limited to meteorology. The excess energy trapped in the Northern Hemisphere could increase high-latitude melting, reverse monsoon regimes, and alter rainfall patterns that feed billions of people. Understanding why and how the hemispheres are separating can allow scientists to anticipate and manipulate these changes more successfully.
Loeb and his team say the next step will be to extend satellite records and include new observations in climate models. Tracking these changes on longer timescales may reveal whether the imbalance is a brief wobble or a long-term adjustment in the Earth’s energy system.
Practical Implications of the Research
This growing hemispheric asymmetry underscores the complexity of climate change. The fact that the Northern Hemisphere is absorbing greater energy means global warming will not occur uniformly. The North American, European, and Asian regions — already containing most of global population and industry — might see greater temperature rises and migrating weather extremes.
For policymakers, the message is clear: cutting aerosol pollution cleans up the air at the expense of affecting slightly the way the planet reflects the sun. Climate models need to capture this trade-off more accurately. For scientists, the challenge is to refine satellite tracking and incorporate these results into forecast models.
In the long term, such information can guide wiser climate policy, allowing societies to adapt to patchy warming and protect energy-balance-sensitive ecosystems. The study also illuminates how small changes — a few watts per square meter — can quietly shift the balance of a planet’s climate.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/earth-getting-darker-changing-planet-160700507.html?guccounter=1
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HOLY MOSES OR WHOLLY MYTH? DID THE EXODUS REALLY TAKE PLACE?
Most scholars believe Moses was mythical, not a real historical figure. Why?
Scholars have dated the stories of Moses in the Pentateuch to around the sixth century BCE, but that is far too late for any of the biblical stories of Moses to be historical. Israel was already well-established in Canaan by the sixth century BCE, which explains why the Torah shows knowledge of Canaanite nations and cities that did not exist circa 1500-1200 BCE.
The earliest reference to Moses outside the Bible was in the Egyptian history of Hecataeus of Abdera, a Greek traveler and historian, circa 300 BCE, and thus around a thousand years after the alleged “exodus.” Diodorus Siculus made two references to Hecataeus's accounts of Moses, which described Moses as a leader who left Egypt to colonize Judea. Hecataeus's account of Moses was similar to the Bible's, suggesting the Bible was his very suspect source.
There was no written Hebrew language at the time of Moses. The earliest written Hebrew dates to the 10th century BCE. Such early Hebrew texts are written in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, a regional variant of the Phoenician alphabet used in Canaan during the Late Bronze Age. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet was used throughout Canaan. But of course Moses was too early for written Hebrew and according to the bible he never entered Canaan.
It has been claimed by many christians that Moses wrote the first five books of the bible, but camel bones tell us otherwise. The first book of the bible, Genesis, mentions the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob owning large numbers of camels 22 times as a way of impressing us with their wealth. But the oldest domesticated camel bones discovered in the Levant date to around 930 BCE, more than half a millennium after the time of the patriarchs.
There is no archeological or extra-biblical textual evidence of the “laws of Moses” being known or followed in Judea before the second century BCE. Rather, the archeological and textual evidence confirms that prior to the second century Jews were eating “unclean” animals like catfish, and were not only worshipping multiple gods, but Yahweh had a consort, Asherah! Yes, god had a wife! Archeological finds include artifacts that mention “Yahweh and his Asherah.” Such artifacts explain why the bible admits that Yahweh and Asherah were being worshipped together in King Solomon’s temple.
There is no archeological or textual evidence of any large-scale enslavement of Israelites in Egypt. To the contrary, Egyptian historical records confirm that ordinary Egyptians built the pyramids.
Other arguments against a successful slave revolt include:
If an Egyptian pharaoh had died and lost all his chariots and horsemen in the process, Egypt’s enemies would have been lining up to attack and plunder Egypt.
I often hear christian apologists say Egypt wouldn’t have admitted such a defeat, but other nations that had been bullied by Egypt would have had a field day with it. And yet Moses wasn’t mentioned outside the Bible for a thousand years after his alleged lifetime.
This would be like no one mentioning Leonides, Joan of Arc or Spartacus for a thousand years, but of course their names were on everyone’s lips immediately because of the improbable things they did. People who defeat far greater powers against impossible odds get noticed, and talked about. That is not remotely true with Moses.
Also, even if the Egyptians wouldn’t have mentioned an embarrassing loss to Israelite slaves, they would have bragged in 400 years of records about enslaving an entire people. The Egyptians did brag about their conquests, but there is no such bragging in the extensive Egyptian records prior to the alleged Exodus.
There is no archeological or extra-biblical textual evidence of a mass exodus of Israelites from Egypt. The exodus of roughly half its population would have caused the economic collapse of Egypt, but of course that didn’t happen. And such an exodus would have been noted by Egypt’s many enemies, but there was no crowing about Egypt’s comeuppance at the hands of despised, ragtag, weaponless slaves. This is the single greatest argument against the “exodus” and the actual existence of Moses, along with the absence of hundreds of thousands of graves and skeletons in the Sinai Desert.
The biblical book of Exodus quite suspiciously doesn't name the Egyptian pharaoh in question although it names many other kings. Also the first direct correlation between the Bible and extra-biblical sources doesn't occur until much later, with the Tel Dan Stele, which has been dated to the 9th century BCE. And the Tel Dan Stele confirms nothing about the alleged “exodus.”
There is no archeological evidence of millions of people living in the narrow strip of the Sinai Desert for 40 years. And where are the graves and the skeletons so many people would have left behind?
There is no archeological or textual evidence of a military takeover Canaan at the time of Moses, Joshua and Caleb.
The fabled walls of Jericho fell long before the time of Moses, Joshua and Caleb.
There are two versions of the Moses addressing the Pharaoh with the demand that he let the Israelites go. These contradictory accounts appear in chapters 3 and 6 of Exodus. In one account Moses spoke to the Pharaoh himself and in the other Aaron was the speaker, allegedly because Moses was a poor speaker. Since according to christians Moses wrote Genesis, he should have known which version of the story is correct.
Why are there two versions?
Because the Levites who wrote and redacted the bible decided to make themselves seem like the mouthpieces of the “god” they invented. But different redactors of the bible had different agendas. In this case, one of the redactors wanted to enhance the prestige and power of his tribe, the Levites, by claiming Aaron was the oracle of god.
The story of Moses being set afloat as a baby in a reed basket and being found and adopted by a royal family was rather obviously “borrowed” from the far more ancient myth of King Sargon the Great of Akkad.
In conclusion, there is no reason to believe in mythical Moses or the loopy Exodus. ~ Michael R. Burch, Quora
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REVOLUTIONARY TOLERANCE
In an age of ferocious religious bloodletting, Sebastian Castellio argued that everyone seems like a heretic to someone else.
Born in 1515, Sebastian Castellio lived in an age of execution. In terms of judicial killings in Europe, the period between 1500 and 1700 outstripped any era before or after. The new heresies of the Protestant Reformation prompted an initial burst of executions: approximately 5,000 people were put to death for their religious beliefs in the 16th century. This was followed by far deadlier witch hunts, which saw about 50,000 people legally exterminated for witchcraft.
Most terrifying for ordinary Christians was the fact that the standards of orthodox thought and behavior shifted like the sand. One minute, Henry VIII was killing Protestants; the next, Catholics. His daughter Mary earned her ‘bloody’ nickname by executing the very Protestants who had been in favor under her half-brother Edward VI. If we add to the death toll the millions of people who died in the Thirty Years’ War and other Wars of Religion, we see that heresy could be truly lethal.
In the midst of this fear and uncertainty, Castellio, a professor of Greek, stepped back from the dogmatic clashes of the day. Rather than echo the calls for battle, he issued a plea for toleration. His great insight was that everyone was a heretic according to somebody else.
Castellio questioned the idea of heresy itself. ‘After a careful investigation into the meaning of the term heretic,’ he wrote, ‘I can discover no more than this, that we regard those as heretics with whom we disagree.’ It was the religious equivalent of the notion introduced a few decades later by Michel de Montaigne that a barbarian is, in essence, someone not like me.
Castellio’s abhorrence of heresy executions led him to question other traditional doctrines and practices within Christianity, including the Bible itself. His views, often developed in opposition to those of his nemesis, John Calvin, would start to grow a liberal branch of Christianity, one that challenged the dogmatic confessions of the churches that emerged from the Reformation and instead championed tolerance, free thinking and reason.
Castellio’s ideas eventually won out in the West. But today his name is unknown.
Castellio was an unlikely innovator. He was the son of a farmer, born in the village of Saint-Martin-du-Frêne in France, which at the time lay in the independent duchy of Savoy, about halfway between Lyon and Geneva. In a stunning example of social mobility for the time, he would rise from his peasant origins to become professor of Greek at the University of Basel in the Swiss Confederacy.
Though we know little about his formative years, he started his ascent by receiving a humanist education in Lyon, where he demonstrated a gift for learning languages. As a boy, he stomped grapes on his father’s farm; by the age of 23, he was composing Greek verse. He also learned Latin, Hebrew, Italian and some German.
In 1540, at the age of 25, fear of religious persecution drove the newly Protestant Castellio to leave France for the Holy Roman Empire. In Protestant Strasbourg, he met Calvin, who had been exiled from Geneva for too aggressively pushing his ideas for religious reform on the city. Their relationship was initially cordial, and Castellio even lived for a time in Calvin’s house. In 1541, a new group of leaders in Geneva invited Calvin back. He returned, and Castellio joined him as head of the Geneva school. But feelings hardened between the two men when Calvin criticized as inaccurate a French translation of the New Testament that Castellio had drafted.
Their relationship soon devolved into open hostility when Calvin thwarted Castellio’s nomination to become one of the city’s pastors. Calvin refused to admit Castellio to the ranks of the pastors because Castellio deviated from Calvin’s views on the biblical book of the Song of Songs and on the interpretation of Christ’s ‘descent into hell’ as confessed in the Apostles’ Creed.
It was Castellio’s first lesson in the dangers inherent in dogmatic orthodoxy, whether Protestant or Catholic, and it undoubtedly played a role in leading him to think differently. Catholic persecution had forced him to leave France, now Protestant intransigence drove him from Geneva.
No longer welcome in Geneva, Castellio moved to Basel, where he found work as a poorly paid corrector for a printing press. Castellio used his position at the press to publish several works, including a new translation of the Bible in 1551, rendering it into elegant Latin, as if it had been written by someone like Cicero. His distinctly non-verbatim approach to the translation revealed that he placed more importance on the Bible’s overall message and meaning than on its individual words. Moreover, in his dedicatory letter to the young King Edward VI of England, Castellio revealed his opposition to religious persecution: ‘If someone disagrees with us on a single point of religion,’ he laments, ‘we condemn him and pursue him to the corners of the earth … We exercise cruelty with the sword, flame and water, and exterminate the destitute and defenseless.’
But it was an event in Geneva in 1553 that catalyzed Castellio’s thinking. In October that year, the Spaniard Michael Servetus was burned alive for heresy. Servetus was a medical doctor, who was, incidentally, the first European to describe pulmonary circulation. But he also rejected the orthodox doctrine of the trinity – the belief that God is one deity in three co-eternal persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – held by Catholics and Protestants alike. Although he was rejected by almost everyone, Servetus’s antitrinitarian ideas would later influence early Unitarian churches in Poland and eastern Europe.
Servetus first published his views in 1531, and the condemnation of those ideas forced him to spend the next two decades underground, living under the assumed name Michel de Villeneuve. His identity was discovered after the publication of the Christian Restitution (1553), a book that revived his heretical views of the trinity. After slipping out of jail to escape the Catholic Inquisition in France, Servetus found his way to Protestant Geneva, where Calvin prompted the city officials to arrest him. The city council found Servetus guilty of heresy and sent him to the stake, sadistically using green wood to slow the flames and consequently increase his suffering.
Calvin defended the death sentence in print, explaining ‘that heretics are rightly to be coerced by the sword.’ He argued that ‘when someone rips religion from its foundations, utters detestable blasphemies against God, leads souls to destruction with impious and pestilent dogmas, and openly defects from the one God and his pure doctrine, it is necessary to apply the ultimate remedy to prevent the deadly poison from spreading further.’ To support his contention, Calvin cited Deuteronomy 13: ‘If anyone secretly entices you …, saying, “Let us go serve other gods” …, you shall surely kill them.’
Most of Calvin’s fellow pastors and theologians at the time agreed. Philipp Melanchthon, Martin Luther’s successor in Wittenberg, praised Calvin for his role in the execution, telling him that the ‘church owes you and posterity will owe you a debt of gratitude. I completely agree with your judgment, and I affirm that your magistrates acted justly when they executed a blasphemer by a judicial process.’ Many of Calvin’s supporters cited Servetus’s ‘blasphemy’ rather than ‘heresy’, for some thought the term carried an even clearer biblical injunction: ‘Whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death.’
Castellio disagreed. Recently named professor of Greek at the University of Basel on the strength of his Bible translation and other works, Castellio, together with some friends, published a pseudonymous book entitled Concerning Heretics: Whether They Are to be Persecuted and How They Are to be Treated (1554). Under various assumed names, Castellio portrayed executions for heresy as not only cruel and inhumane but positively unchristian. The executions are bad enough by themselves, he writes:
But a more capital offense is added when this conduct is justified under the robe of Christ and is defended as being in accord with his will, when Satan could not devise anything more repugnant to the nature and will of Christ! … What do you think Christ will do when he comes? Will he commend such things? Will he approve of them?
Instead, Castellio declares: ‘I do not see how we can retain the name of Christian if we do not imitate His clemency and mercy.’
Here we get an early glimpse of the ‘modern Jesus’, the kind and merciful Prince of Peace. This was not a new notion of Castellio’s, but throughout the Middle Ages and Reformation period the image of a merciful Christ stood side by side with that of a vengeful savior. Before the Crusades, Pope Urban II insisted that ‘Christ commanded’ the military adventure to destroy the ‘vile race’ of the Muslims. Books published by one of Calvin’s printers in Geneva all bore Jesus’ biblical quotation: ‘I have not come to bring peace but a sword.’ But the sword-wielding, vengeful Christ was foreign to Castellio’s conception.
Instead, he saw the execution of Servetus as a profoundly un-Christ-like act, made worse by the fact that it was instigated by Calvin, who was supposed to be one of the lights of the Church. Castellio wrote a second book on toleration, Against Calvin’s Little Book (Contra Libellum Calvini), in which he countered point by point Calvin’s arguments defending the execution of Servetus. He repeatedly pointed out the brutality of executions for heresy in general and argued that it was bloodlust, cruelty and naked ambition for power that drove Calvin to push for Servetus’s execution.
Most offensive to Castellio was Calvin’s argument that Servetus’s death was necessary to defend Christian doctrine. As Castellio put it in the best-known line from the treatise: ‘To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man.’
The conflict over Servetus’s execution set Calvin and Castellio permanently at odds with one another. Calvin couldn’t stand Castellio’s willingness to overlook the threat to religion and public order posed by those who deviated from the true faith. Castellio couldn’t abide Calvin’s rigid dogmatism. For Castellio believed that, properly understood, Christianity is more about moral behavior than doctrine. The Reformation itself had made that clear to him. After decades of wrangling over doctrine – both between Protestants and Catholics, and among Protestants themselves – it was clear that no sect was ever going to ‘win’.
Castellio believed that it was far more important, therefore, to focus on moral living. ‘We dispute so much about eternal election, predestination, and the trinity,’ he said, ‘insisting on things we can never see and ignoring the things that are right in front of us. From this are born infinite disputes, which result in the bloodshed of the weak and the poor if they don’t agree with us.’
And what are ‘the things that are right in front of us’? The clear moral precepts of Christianity. ‘The precepts of piety are certain: to love God and your neighbor, to love your enemies, to be patient, merciful, and kind, and carry out other similar duties.’ Anyone of any religious sect can practice these things. The way to assess how well a group of Christians lived up to its duties was to judge them by the ‘fruits of the spirit’ listed by St Paul in Galatians 5, namely, ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.’
‘By such fruits,’ Castellio declared, ‘it is possible to judge which sects are the best, namely those which believe and obey Christ and imitate his life, whether they’re called Papist, Lutheran, Zwinglian, Anabaptist or anything else.’ Indeed, these denominational designations meant nothing to Castellio, who insisted that good Christians may be found in any of them, for ‘they all believe in the same God, in the same Lord and Savior Christ.’ For Castellio, these were the core messages of the Bible: believing in God and in Jesus as the Savior, and loving your neighbor as yourself.
After years of fighting with Calvin over toleration, personal attacks and predestination – he utterly rejected Calvin’s idea that God had predestined both those who would be saved and those who would be condemned to eternity in hell – at the end of his life Castellio returned to focus on the Bible. His thoughts on biblical interpretation mark his most radical departure from tradition and most clearly anticipated later liberal Protestantism. For Castellio rejected the idea that the entire Bible was divinely inspired, and taught that one should use the tools of human reason to understand the human authors who produced it.
Castellio had seen what unquestioning trust in cherry-picked biblical quotations could lead to. Calvin had used it to defend killing heretics. It lay at the root of the interminable debates on how to interpret what happens to the bread and wine of holy communion. Each sect of the Reformation had its favorite verses to justify its own doctrines. Castellio recognized that flinging competing biblical quotations at each other was getting Christians nowhere. ‘Unless some other rule is discovered,’ he declared, ‘I see no way here of attaining concord.’
In an astonishing book for its time, The Art of Doubting and Believing, of Knowing and Not Knowing, Castellio suggested that Christians should not get hung up on exact words and phrases but should consider the overall message and ‘tenor’ of the biblical text. There are things in the Bible, he said, that seem contradictory or absurd. It’s also clear that the biblical authors sometimes made mistakes, and that ‘something may have escaped their memory or judgment.’ Moreover, St Paul himself tells us that he sometimes wrote things from his own judgment, without a command from the Lord. And so, Castellio argued: ‘I don’t see why we attribute to these authors more than they attributed to themselves.’
Rather than consider the entire Bible the inspired word of God, Castellio believed it could be divided into three kinds of texts: revelation/prophecy, knowledge, and instruction. Only the sections he describes as revelation or prophecy are to be understood as the actual word of God. All the other sections – which constitute a large majority of the Bible – are to be understood as the words of humans, which can be evaluated and interpreted in the same way as other ancient texts.
And if most of the Bible is a human product, we may use human reason to understand it. Indeed, reason precedes and is more trustworthy than the actual words of Scripture: ‘Reason is, so to speak, the daughter of God … Reason, I say, is a sort of eternal word of God, much older and surer than letters and ceremonies … Reason is a sort of interior and eternal word of truth always speaking.’
Therefore, in any Christian controversy, the place to start is not with the Bible but with reason: ‘Our method will be the following: we start by treating according to reason alone the debated questions. Then we add the authorities taken from Scripture.’ Here we see the method of medieval scholastic theology turned upside down. Whereas the medieval scholastics were engaged with ‘faith seeking understanding’ – starting with the principles of the faith and then trying to understand them using reason – Castellio starts with reason and then adds biblical authorities in support.
Castellio knew that he would be criticized for his ideas: ‘They will cry out that this is blasphemy. The Holy Scriptures, according to them, were written under the divine breath.’ But he realized someone had to deviate from tradition; the old ways were leading to nothing but division and persecution. ‘We must dare something new if we want to help humanity,’ he wrote. ‘We see that advances in the arts, as in other things, are made not by those content with the status quo, but by those who dare to alter and correct those things that have been found defective.’
There was one other key to moving forward, Castellio believed: keeping an open mind and learning how to doubt – hence the title of his book, The Art of Doubting. Even with his new rational approach to the Bible, some things would never be clear. There were many doctrines – for example, predestination, the trinity, and the nature of the Eucharist – over which Christians would always disagree.
But that’s OK. The problem is not disagreement but closed minds. ‘A person whose mind is closed holds tenaciously to his opinion and prefers to give the lie to God himself and all the saints and angels if they are on the other side rather than to alter his opinion. Flee this vice,’ Castellio counsels, ‘as you would death itself.’
Death found Castellio before he finished writing The Art of Doubting. He died at the age of 48 in December 1563, five months before Calvin died. He left behind a wife and eight children, including a one-year-old and three others under 10. Calvin and his allies hounded him to the end; at the time of his death, Castellio was under investigation in Basel for allegations of heresy that originated with Calvin’s friend Theodore Beza.
Castellio’s final book was not published in full until 1981, but we know it circulated in manuscript after his death. This long delay in publication is one reason for Castellio’s relative obscurity. Censorship and pressure from his enemies meant that several of his works – often the most interesting and radical ones – were not published until many years after his death.
Even so, in certain circles, Castellio has long been appreciated. Michel de Montaigne called him an ‘outstanding’ scholar. John Locke referred to him as ‘so learned a man’ and owned several of his books. Voltaire assessed that he was ‘more learned’ than Calvin. The Enlightenment era saw the flourishing of several of Castellio’s ideas, most notably the primacy of reason.
Enlightenment rationalism and advances in science cast deeply into doubt Moses’ authorship of Genesis, the literal truth of the Bible’s creation account and of early biblical history, and the divine inspiration of the Bible. Thomas Chubb, an English deist writing during the 18th century, found a manuscript of Castellio’s Art of Doubting and noted that the ‘excellent Castellio’ was ‘of the same opinion’ as himself regarding the divine inspiration of the Bible.
In addition, Enlightenment thinkers downplayed Christian dogma in favor of the faith’s moral precepts. Unlike controversial doctrines, moral precepts such as those from the Ten Commandments not to kill, steal, commit adultery or bear false witness were agreed upon by all and seen as consonant with human reason. Thomas Jefferson rejected miracles and the Christian doctrines based on them but considered Jesus’ teachings ‘the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.’
By 1835, on the 300th anniversary of the Reformation in Geneva, Castellio’s vision of Christianity had overtaken that of the city’s own far more famous reformer, John Calvin. As the historians Philip Benedict and Sarah Scholl note: ‘By the turn of the 19th century, a liberal, non-dogmatic faith had come to dominate the national church. The all-Protestant organizing committee [for the anniversary] consequently spoke of “promoting the grand principles of tolerance which are those of true Protestantism”.’ A ‘liberal, non-dogmatic faith’ grounded in the ‘grand principles of tolerance’ was exactly what Castellio – but decidedly not Calvin – had preached 300 years before.
We should not push the comparison between Castellio and liberal Protestantism too far, however. Castellio knew of few of the scientific advances available to his 19th-century successors. Like everyone else of his time, he was what we would call today a ‘young-Earth creationist’ and even joined in the popular game of trying to date Earth based on the biblical generations (his answer: 5,529 years, 6 months and 10 days). It is also difficult to trace Castellio’s direct influence on later generations of liberal Protestant theologians. It seems that few of them arrived at their ideas by reading Castellio.
But his ideas had prompted an initial reconsideration of long-held religious truths and lingered just below the surface for centuries. More than any direct influence he had on later generations, Castellio’s enduring significance is that he was one of the first to appreciate some of the profound problems caused by the traditional understandings of Christianity, the Bible and, especially, heresy.
Taken literally, the Bible can be used – and, in fact, has been used – to justify the practices of slavery and polygamy, the repression of women, the execution of heretics and witches, and the persecution of Jews, among other horrors. The faith can easily be weaponized for political purposes and the exclusion of those who ‘aren’t like us’ or who ‘don’t think like us’. Castellio’s Christianity, by contrast, was short on doctrine and long on openness and morality. That was the message of the Bible for him. Any reading of the Bible or understanding of the faith that did not produce these, he believed, failed to convey the true message of Christianity.
https://aeon.co/essays/sebastian-castellio-and-the-deep-roots-of-religious-tolerance?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=18a18700a3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_10_03&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-19d630b572-838110632
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EMOTIONAL HEALTH AS IMPORTANT FOR LONGEVITY AS PHYSICAL HEALTH
When it comes to aging and healthy living, we’re often given the same advice: Eat better, exercise every day and sleep more. But solely focusing on your physical health isn’t enough to achieve longevity, a new study has found.
Researchers looked at older adults’ optimal well-being, which they define as having social support; positive perceptions of aging, physical and mental health, happiness, and life satisfaction; and the ability to carry out daily activities without severe limitations.
“Our study of over 8,000 older adults found that many who were not in optimal well-being at the start of the study were able to regain it within just three years,” said Dr. Mabel Ho, the study’s first author, in an email, referring to the 1 in 4 older adults whose health significantly improved. “These findings challenge the notion that well-being inevitably declines with age and highlight the potential for positive change later in life.”
The study, published on September 24 in the journal PLOS One, was a secondary analysis of data collected from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging.
“These findings apply to older adults aged 60 and over who are not currently in optimal health or well-being,” said Dr. Esme Fuller-Thomson, the study’s senior author, in an email. “The study offers hope and practical insights for older adults, caregivers, and policymakers by showing that with the right supports and lifestyle choices, many older adults can regain a high level of well-being even after experiencing sub-optimal well-being.”
More than 1 in 5 Americans will be 65 or older by 2040, and nearly 3 in 5 of them will need long-term services and support, according to a previous CNN report.
In 2023, about 93% of adults age 65 or older in the United States reported having at least one chronic disease, such as heart disease and diabetes. While not all chronic conditions can be avoided, many can be prevented by altering your lifestyle.
“Individuals who began with strong psychological and emotional well-being were nearly five times more likely to reach optimal overall health by the end of the study,” said Ho, a recent doctoral graduate at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and the Institute of Life Course and Aging.
The results “also underscored the critical influence of supportive relationships, socioeconomic conditions, and healthy lifestyle choices such as regular physical activity, not smoking, and good sleep,” she added.
But the study’s findings may not be applicable to all adults age 65 and older since the researchers focused their efforts in Canada, where patients have access to universal health care.
“These findings provide valuable insight into aging and well-being in the context of a high-income country with universal healthcare,” Ho said via email. “However, it remains unclear how well these results translate to the United States, where life-long universal healthcare is not available; similarly, more research is needed to understand how older adults in diverse global settings experience and regain well-being in low- and middle-income countries, where healthcare access, social supports, and economic conditions can differ significantly from Canada.”
https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/05/health/emotional-well-being-older-adults-wellness
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WHY ISOMETRIC EXERCISE IS SO BENEFICIAL
Isometric exercises such as wall sits and planks can be more beneficial for heart health than other types of cardiovascular exercise.
Exercise is great for improving heart health. But the thought of hitting the gym or going for a jog might put some people off from doing it. And, if you have a heart condition already, such dynamic exercises may not be safe to do.
The good news is, you don’t necessarily need to do a vigorous workout to see heart benefits. You can even improve your heart health by holding still and trying really hard not to move.
Isometric training, as this is called, is becoming increasingly popular as a way of reducing blood pressure and hypertension, and improving strength and muscle stability.
Normally, to build strength and force, our muscles need to change length throughout a movement. Squats and bicep curls are good examples of exercises that cause the muscle to change length throughout the movement.
But isometric training involves simply contracting your muscles, which generates force without needing to move your joints. The harder a muscle is contracted, the more forceful it becomes (and the more forceful a muscle is, the more powerfully we can perform a movement).
If you add weight to an isometric exercise, it causes the muscle to contract even harder. A wall sit and a plank are examples of isometric contractions.
Isometric exercises are associated with a high degree of “neural recruitment”, because of the need to maintain the contraction. This means these exercises are good at engaging specialized neurons in our brain and spinal cord, which play an important role in all the movements we do – both voluntary and involuntary. The greater this level of neural activation, the more muscle fibers are recruited – and the more force generated. As a result, this can lead to strength gains.
Isometric exercises have long been of interest to strength and power athletes as a means of preparing their muscles to generate high forces by activating them. But research also shows isometric exercises are beneficial for other areas of our health – including reducing hypertension and promoting better blood flow.
There are a couple reasons why isometric exercises are so good for the heart.
When a muscle is contracted, it expands its size. This causes it to compress the blood vessels supplying this muscle, reducing blood flow and raising the blood pressure in our arteries – a mechanism known as the “pressor reflex”.
Then, once the contraction is relaxed, a sudden surge of blood flows into the blood vessels and muscle. This influx of blood brings more oxygen and (crucially) nitric oxide into the blood vessels – causing them to widen. This in turn reduces blood pressure. Over time, this action will reduce stiffness of the arteries, which may lower blood pressure.
Over time, isometric exercises may help lower blood pressure
When blood flow is reduced during an isometric movement, it also reduces the amount of available oxygen that cells need to function. This triggers the release of metabolites, such as hydrogen ions and lactate, which stimulate the sympathetic nervous system – which controls our “fight of flight” response. In the short term, this leads to an increase in blood pressure.
But when an isometric exercise is done repeatedly over many weeks, there’s a reduction in sympathetic nervous system activity. This means blood pressure is lowered and there’s less strain on the cardiovascular system – which makes these exercises good for the heart.
Isometric exercises may be even more beneficial for heart health than other types of cardiovascular exercise. A study which compared the benefits of isometric exercise versus high-intensity interval training found isometrics led to significantly greater reductions in resting blood pressure over the study period of between two and 12 weeks.
How to use isometric exercise
If you want to use isometric training to reduce blood pressure, it’s recommended that you should do any isometric contraction for two minutes at around 30-50% of your maximum effort. This is enough to trigger physiological improvements.
You can start by doing this four times a day, three-to-five times per week – focusing on the same exercise. As you progress, you can start to vary the exercises you do, add weights to the exercise, or add in more than one isometric exercise.
Some good isometric exercises to begin with include a static squat, a wall sit or a plank. Even during these small bouts of exercise, your heart rate, breathing and arterial pressure will all increase – the same responses that occur during more conventional whole-body exercises, such as cycling and running.
The beneficial improvements in blood pressure start to manifest around 4-10 weeks after starting isometric training – though this depends on a person’s health and fitness levels when starting out.
Isometric training appears to be a simple, low-intensity mode of exercise that offers big benefits for cardiovascular health – all while requiring little time commitment compared with other workouts.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-isometric-exercises-are-so-good-for-you?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
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WHY WE NEED CORE SLEEP
If you’ve ever woken up feeling groggy and sluggish even after a full night of rest, you might not be getting enough core sleep. What is core sleep? It’s a term that encompasses the most restorative stages, including slow-wave sleep (SWS), the deep sleep your body needs to feel truly rested. While young adults spend about 30 percent of their night in this crucial phase, that number can drop to just two percent (or less!) by age 60.
What is core sleep, and how does it differ from REM sleep?
You might have seen the term core sleep before, mainly if you track your sleep using a smartwatch or tracker app. But “core sleep isn’t a technical sleep medicine term, and it isn’t standardized from one tracker to the next,” explains Shelby Harris, PsyD, DBSM, licensed clinical psychologist and director of sleep health at Sleepopolis.
Instead, it refers to “the most important stages of sleep that help you function well during the day,” says Harris. “This includes the deep, restorative parts of sleep [stage 3 of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep] and the early periods of rapid eye movement sleep.”
Not only is healthy sleep important to keep your energy up, but these deep stages are vital for “physical recovery, mental sharpness, memory and managing emotions.”
THE FOUR STAGES OF SLEEP
Stage One: “This is a light, transitional stage of sleep during which you tend to drift in and out of sleep and may experience brief muscle jerks or the sensation of falling,” says Sanam Hafeez, PsyD, a clinical neuropsychologist and founder and director of Comprehend the Mind.
Stage Two: This deeper stage of sleep has “specific brain patterns needed for disconnecting from your surroundings and preparing for deep sleep,” says Harris.
Stage Three: Harris says this is also known as deep or slow-wave sleep. It’s “needed for physical restoration, muscle repair and immune system strength.”
REM Sleep: This final stage of your sleep cycle “is characterized by vivid dreaming and rapid eye movements,” says Hafeez. “REM sleep is important for cognitive functions such as memory and learning.”
The sleep cycle repeats itself as the night progresses. The REM period typically happens about 90 minutes after falling asleep, and it becomes longer as the night goes on.
How core sleep fits into your sleep-wake cycle
Since core sleep comprises the most restorative stages of sleep, it intertwines with both the REM and deep sleep stages of restful sleep. “Core sleep mostly consists of deep NREM sleep, but also includes some amounts of REM sleep needed for psychological and emotional wellbeing,” says Harris.
The exact amount of core sleep you need varies by age and from person to person. However, Hafeez says that it typically takes one to two hours of deep sleep and one-and-a-half to two hours of REM sleep per night to fully function the next day.
The benefits of tracking your core sleep
One of the easiest ways to track your core sleep is with a wearable smartwatch (think Fitbit or Apple Watch) or a slim sleep tracker pad you can tuck under your mattress, like Withings Sleep. Although results may not be 100 percent accurate, they can give you a ballpark idea of what you may be lacking.
The perk of tracking your core sleep includes “providing a window into your sleep and information on whether you’re getting enough restorative sleep,” says Hafeez. “You can track the duration of sleep, whether you’re in deep, light or REM sleep and whether your sleep is disturbed.”
Monitoring your sleep patterns can also help clue you into potential warning signs of sleep disorders such as insomnia, sleep apnea or other factors interrupting your sleep. It’s also useful when you want to explore how your sleep environment impacts your slumber. For example, the temperature of your room, the comfort of your pillow and how light or dark your bedroom is.
HOW TO INCREASE CORE SLEEP
Take a bedtime bath
The amount of slow-wave sleep you get is linked to the amount of heat you lose as your body cools itself down. Taking a hot bath before bed raises your body temperature, allowing for more passive cooling as you sleep. This leads to deeper rest, according to a meta-analysis by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin.
Fill up on fiber
Enjoy tasty, high-fiber foods such as beans, avocados, nuts and raspberries by day and you’ll sleep more deeply that night. According to a study in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, just one day of higher fiber intake means more time spent in slow-wave sleep. Fiber helps stabilize blood sugar levels, preventing the ups and downs that can disrupt your sleep cycle.
Stick to a schedule
Going to bed and waking up at roughly the same time every day (yes, even on the weekends!) helps regulate your body’s circadian rhythms, or internal clock. Canadian scientists who reviewed 14 studies found that a regular sleep schedule is strongly associated with deeper sleep and improved overall health.
Check your meds
Many common medications—including prescription drugs for blood pressure, diabetes and depression, as well as over-the-counter cold and allergy medicines—can disrupt your internal clock, lessening slow-wave sleep. Check with your doctor or pharmacist to see if anything you’re taking may be affecting your ability to sleep deeply.
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ending on beauty:
This year's winner of the Nobel Prize in literature is Laszlo Krasnahorkai
“…to the east, swift as memory, the sky brightens, scarlet and pale blue and leans against the undulating horizon, to be followed by the sun, like a beggar daily painting up to his spot on the temple steps, full of heartbreak and misery, ready to establish the world of shadows, to separate the trees one from the other, to raise, out of the freezing, confusing homogeneity of night in which they seem to have been trapped like flies in a web, a clearly defined earth and sky with distinct animals and men, the darkness still in flight at the edge of things, somewhere on the far side on the western horizon, where its countless terrors vanish one by one like a desperate, confused, defeated army.” ~ Laszlo Krasnahorkai, Satantango
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