David > Recent Status Updates

This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition.

'How could I, who loved life so intensely, have let myself be entangled for so long in that balderdash of books and paper blackened with ink! In that day of separation, my friend had helped me to see clearly. I was relieved.'

auteurs 😒😒🙄🙄👉🫩

"In the late 1980s two Marxist regimes, those of Cuba and Seychelles, were still actively collectivizing."

To be a traveling scholar of socialism in a time when the marxist bonafides of the Seychelles were an unquestionable fact...

Bekend verhaal, klungelig gebracht

Nog eens een poging om geschiedenis van eigen bodem te lezen. Maar het feit dat de auteur in haar inleidende oplijsting van slachtoffers van WO2 geen enkele vermelding maakt van bewoners van de Sovjet-Unie geeft me al kriebels.

rip de steur :/

No, sure, it's fun, I just didn't expect it to be Chinese

VAN CAUWELAERT: Ludo De Witte's Lumumba-boek is natuurlijk een PVDA-boek. Er zijn een aantal figuren van wie al op voorhand geweten was dat ze schuldig moesten zijn. Lumumba is uiteindelijk wel een iconische figuur geworden, maar hij was totaal ongeschikt om premier te zijn.

"Wij hebben die raketten toen geplaatst en zes maanden later wonnen we glansrijk de verkiezingen. Dat is dus een les die ik heb geleerd: overschat het ook niet. Diegenen die er echt mee begaan zijn, gaan betogen. Op mij maakt een betoging op zich dan ook niet zoveel indruk. Ze staat vaak helemaal los van een brede opinie in een samenleving, ook al brengt ze veel volk op de been."

Van Cauwelaert: Er zit inderdaad een enorme machtsconcentratie bij de Franse president. De nieuwslezer op TF1 verandert als de president verandert.

VAN ROMPUY: Uiteraard had die recessie ook grote gevolgen voor het politieke werk. We wisten vaak echt niet waar we stonden. De begroting ontspoorde volledig in '75 en '76. Tindemans lanceerde vervolgens het herstelplan ... "De regering voert een keynesiaanse politiek", en dus mochten er begrotingstekorten zijn... terwijl we feitelijk compleet onmachtig waren om te saneren. Keynes was een intellectueel vijgenblad!

Wat cijfers: zestien van de negentien Brusselse gemeenten krijgen bijstand vanuit de Brusselse regering, want anders zijn ze failliet. Extra bijstand dus, boven op de toelage die ze normaal krijgen. Daardoor ziet ook de Brusselse regering haar schuld enorm oplopen.

VAN CAUWELAERT: Toen de socialisten en de liberalen vervolgens [1954] samen een regering vormden, met Achiel Van Acker als premier, ging er toch een lichte paniekgolf door de katholieke rangen. Die paarse regering werd echt als een bedreiging gezien. Maar toen beging die regering de fout van haar leven door de schoolstrijd te beginnen.

very normal

"Write very long concatenated sentences" sounds like an absolute gimmick, but man does it resonate. Really unique tone of voice, almost like very distorted shoegaze but for words.

First read failed miserably because having your phone in the room when each sentence runs on for 2 pages is deadly. This time, phone safely locked away, I'm having a blast.

Unlike the United States, Russia even made the first step towards liberating its unfree population the legal abolition of serfdom peacefully and through legislation. ... The Russian empire had to cope with freeing almost 22 million serfs belonging to the nobility and 25 million serfs belonging to the tsar's family and the state.

A Croatian once described to me "protestants" and "ISIS" as cut from the same cloth. Here Carola Dietze is confirming it, John Brown being a very devoted calvinist Atta.

The British abolitionist movement reached a hitherto unknown degree of social engagement. In 1792, the British government received 519 petitions bearing the signatures of 390.000 people, or 13% of the adult male population. In 1833, Parliament received about 5.000 mass petitions signed by nearly 1.5 million people, including a petition that was a mile and a half long and signed by 350.000 women.

"Felice Orsini and John Brown had the French and American environments of transport, communication and media at their disposal, which were quite advanced compared even with other countries in Europe and with Russia. Their emulators would develop terrorism further, but they would not achieve any immediate success using this tactic. No comparable media and communication environment existed where they operated."

The various attempts to officially promote colonization in Africa did not meet with great success. Emigrants preferred Brazil or the United States, where well-organized societies needed them and promptly provided them with jobs and high salaries. By the early-19th century, there were, throughout the Portuguese «empire», less than 10.000 Europeans. Cape Verde, Angola and India absorbed the largest number.

Four years of [napoleonic] war had left the country in poor shape. The French invasions and occupation had devastated a large part of Portugal. The country was both an English protectorate and a Brazilian colony. The government was located in Rio; in Portugal, there was only a regency. British officers served in the Portuguese army, which was becoming entirely English in organisation.

Gold, the much-coveted object, was first brought to Por tugal in 1442. It was exchanged for wheat, which was in great demand by the Africans. This explains why the Portuguese, themselves always short of grain, often brought it from abroad or from Madeira, not for national consumption but for the purpose of obtaining gold.

Lithium, copper, and other metals in lithium-ion batteries can be reused if they can be removed from a battery and recycled. Lithium doesn’t lose its ability to hold a charge just because it’s been sitting in a battery for twenty years. What many countries were missing, though, was the infrastructure to accomplish that goal.

The Pentagon’s growing technological prowess thanks to rare earths caught Beijing off guard, encouraging China to double down on rare earths research. Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping made the prescient observation in the 1980s, “The Middle East has oil. China has rare earths,” and encouraged his country to further exploit this economic advantage.

In Chile, the world’s largest copper producer and second-largest lithium producer, 65 percent of the country’s water is used by its mining sector alone.

The ultimate anti goodreads updates book: one you can read in any direction or order. You will never understand what it means to be on page 160 ...

'De huidige auteur van dit boek verzekert de lezer dat hij niet hoeft te sterven tijdens het lezen, zoals het geval was met zijn voorganger, de gebruiker van de oorspronkelijke editie van Het Chazaars woordenboek uit 1691, toen de eerste samensteller nog leefde."

Oef!

"Belgian Senator Frank Creyelman was so impressed that he wished to share his impressions and positive experiences of Belarus with his colleagues upon his return to Belgium [2006]. This is an important point. The Belarusian system offers a real alternative to the "development" plans of the World Bank and the IMF and is also an inspiring social model."

doing multipolarity before it was cool