Axel Bertamini-Corluyan

Certain precautions were taken 😁

Parts of DC look like a painting at the moment

Once again, Erdoğan's Turkey takes the lead in insanity.

“They were monitoring all Nato naval ships and aircraft,” Lloyd’s List was told. “They had all details on them. They were just matching their frequencies. “Russians, Turkish, Indian radio officers were operating it.” www.lloydslist.com/LL1151955/Ru...

So it looks like my earliest/closest known ancestor died in Pompeii, 79 AD. Must be that luck that follows me to this day 🤣

Such appetite for dystopia

From transnational surveillance (or digital TNR as some might call it) all other forms of transnational repression flow. It is not sine qua non but most states as far as we can tell build their transnational repression on digital foundations—just as they do other forms of administration/governance

Maybe you're corvophilic more than dyslexic :P

The cost for less capable aircraft being higher, anything as capable would be even more expensive. It's a matter of how much capability is required/expected of aircraft these days. And unlike what Musk et al think, drones won't solve that issue, yet.

The unit cost has steadily come down as production numbers increased however, to the point where, with some differences depending on variant, the F-35 is cheaper than less capable --though effective-- platforms like the Rafale or Eurofighter.

Yep. But no administration before Erdogan dabbled in interventionism to this extent, or fanned the flames of irredentism to the point of attempting a self fulfilling prophecy.

It's possible that he meant elements of the dome that were updated during the Ottoman period, but given the history of architectural preservation and restoration in Turkey, I am concerned about this project as a whole, to put it mildly.

Dome of Hagia Sophia to be dismantled for restoration - Türkiye News The iconic dome of the Hagia Sophia Mosque will be dismantled as part of an extensive restoration project aimed at preserving the historical and structural integrity of the world-renowned monument.

Güleç emphasized the care being taken to preserve the dome’s historical authenticity and said, “We will use materials and techniques consistent with the Ottoman-era contruction to ensure the dome is both stable and true to its original character.”
www.hurriyetdailynews.com/dome-of-hagi...
🤔😬😱

(I hate typos)

The Disreputable Phoenix: A Transnational History of Propaganda by the Deed This dissertation explores the connections of anarchism and violence, especially in the form of propaganda by the deed. The existing scholarship on this subject either focuses on national/ethnic units...

I hope this will offer some interesting reading for people who are curious about the history and mindset of such characters, and help connect the dots of propaganda by the deed over a timespan of a centuries:

www.academia.edu/1917347/The_...

As the title of my dissertation suggests, the era of the "Disreputable Phoenix" has come back (as I argued it would). All the indicators in the 90s to the 00s were there--I traced the 150-year span of this fascinating, albeit tragic thread from the 19th to the 21st century.

But looking at the widespread public reaction to the "deed," the way it was done, the way it has been built in the public imagination, and the way its central actor is perceived, I know that if Galleani was alive today, he would immediately recognize elements of his legacy.

I don't claim to know Mr. Mangione's ideology, psychological profile, or which books he has read. I don't know if he read his namesake, Luigi Galleani, or Errico Malatesta, or any of the more recent literature that connects a thread over a hundred years.

These bandits weren't heroes in the traditional sense. Going back centuries, they represented the antihero, characters who were not black & white, symbols of rebellion and autonomy, romanticized by the public as folk heroes even though they were sometimes involved in bad deeds.

the only means of individual empowerment in an era where they felt they had no recourse to change the power relationships that oppressed them. In a way, they also connect to the older "bandit" archetype (Eric Hobsbawm's Bandits is still a great read after all these years).

have precise formulations for a revolution, or a precise formula for a social organization. They were not utopians by any means, however. I've argued that their thoughts and actions, often misunderstood or relegated to analytically dead conceptualizations of terrorism, presented

but not in the sense of their collectivist cousins, the socialists. They were individualists and anti-collectivists with a deep mistrust of masses and where socialist revolutions could lead (they weren't wrong, for the most part). Unlike socialists or syndicalists, they did not

Propaganda by the deed anarchists, a branch of one of the most fragmented & varied political movements in history, believed that the right ACT, at the right time, could ignite the pent-up frustration & anger in society, and trigger a transformation. They called this a revolution,

If you are interested in understanding Luigi Mangione beyond the superficial, soundbite-oriented social media & news media coverage and commentary--well, I dedicated over decade or my life to write a dissertation on individual political violence, on propaganda by the deed. 🧵

How a Criminal With Close Ties to China Became a New York Power Broker John Chan was a Chinatown gangster before remaking himself into a powerful force in New York politics — one closely aligned with the Chinese Communist Party.

It’s now the turn of the US to try to navigate the problem of quite overt United Front influence in politics, especially local politics

www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/n...

So we would essentially be saying a regime is strong... until it's not strong. (Why: because it was fragile all along.) It's a convenient argument that changes the scenario when it finally makes an appearance, but following through, it becomes a circular, endless loop.

In other words, there is a hint of deus ex machina in the "all-along fragile" argument.

attribute an ever-present quality to it and think of such regimes as being fragile all along. But until fragility becomes a factor, (i.e. when they've become "weak" enough for that fragility to become a factor) for all practical purposes, they are "strong."

Let me offer a friendly devil's advocate point as an intellectual exercise:

If authoritarian regimes merely appear strong until their fragility is exposed, the flipside is also true: the underlying fragility is not a factor while the regime remains "strong;" only when it becomes a factor do we