Richard Prins

🇳🇱 in 🇨🇦. 👨‍💻⚛️☮️🌎🌹✊🍉

The usual social media caveats apply.

🖼️: Yojimbo

[Richard Prins @Richard_Prins]

A favourite. https://t.co/7g3UGSZt0x

[Helmut-Harry Loewen @LoewenHelmut]

Bertolt Brecht: On the Congress of the Peoples for Peace / Zum Kongress der Völker für den Frieden, Vienna, 1952 ~ Poster by Pablo Picasso

Humanity’s memory of the suffering it has endured is astonishingly short. Its capacity to imagine future suffering is even further somewhat diminished. The reports New Yorkers hear about the horrors of the atomic bomb apparently do little to shock them. Residents of Hamburg are still surrounded by ruins, and yet they hesitate to raise a hand against a new war. The global horrors of the 1940s seem to have been forgotten. "Yesterday’s rain won’t make us wet," say many.

It is this apathy that we must combat. Taken to its extreme, it is death. All too many today appear to us like the dead, like people who have already lived through what lies ahead of them; there is little they do to prevent it.

And yet nothing will convince me that it is futile to stand by reason against its enemies. Let us repeat what has been said a thousand times over, so that it is never claimed not to have been said often enough! Let us renew the warnings, even if they already taste like ashes in our mouths! Humanity is threatened by wars against which past conflicts are but minor skirmishes. They will no doubt come unless the hands of those who are preparing them in full view of the public are crushed.

Zum Kongress der Völker für den Frieden

Das Gedächtnis der Menschheit für erduldete Leiden ist erstaunlich kurz. Ihre Vorstellungsgabe für kommende Leiden ist fast noch geringer. Die Beschreibungen, die der New Yorker von den Gräueln der Atombombe erhielt, schreckten ihn anscheinend nur wenig. Der Hamburger ist noch umringt von den Ruinen, und doch zögert er, die Hand gegen einen neuen Krieg zu erheben. Die weltweiten Schrecken der vierziger Jahre scheinen vergessen. Der Regen von gestern macht uns nicht nass, sagen viele.

Diese Abgestumpftheit ist es, die wir zu bekämpfen haben, ihr äußerster Grad ist der Tod. Allzu viele kommen uns schon heute vor wie Tote, wie Leute, die schon hinter sich haben, was sie vor sich haben, so wenig tun sie dagegen.

Und doch wird nichts mich davon überzeugen, dass es aussichtslos ist, der Vernunft gegen ihre Feinde beizustehen. Lasst uns das tausendmal Gesagte immer wieder sagen, damit es nicht einmal zu wenig gesagt wurde! Lasst uns die Warnungen erneuern, und wenn sie schon wie Asche in unserem Mund sind! Denn der Menschheit drohen Kriege, gegen welche die vergangenen wie armselige Versuche sind, und sie werden kommen ohne jeden Zweifel, wenn denen, die sie in aller Öffentlichkeit vorbereiten, nicht die Hände zerschlagen werden.

~ Bertolt Brecht, “Zum Kongress der Völker für den Frieden,” Ausgewählte Werke in sechs Bänden. Volume 6. Schriften: 1920-1956. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2005, pp. 593-594.

Translated by Helmut-Harry Loewen. Brecht wrote this text for presentation at the People’s Peace Congress in Vienna, December 12-18, 1952. It was published on November 29 in Neues Deutschland, the organ of the governing Socialist Unity Party (SED) in the German Democratic Republic. As Brecht was unable to travel from Berlin to Austria due to an illness, his wife and artistic collaborator, Helene Weigel, who was a member of the joint East-West German delegation, read the address to the delegates. Note that although many German and English versions of this text have been published in stanza form with the title "Das Gedächtnis der Menschheit" ("Humanity's Memory"), Brecht's text was not published in that form.

[Richard Prins @Richard_Prins]

@geraldposner Are you a fascist?

[Mitch Presnick 柏力 @mitchpresnick]

Considering how quickly China has caught up in AI, EVs, and other strategic industries, the many comments I’ve read here on X about how much longer it took China to catch up with SpaceX—or whether it copied American technology—totally miss the point.

Whether it took five years or twenty, and whether the path was invention, iteration, or a combination of both, the outcome is what matters. China has built another world-class capability which no one but the U.S. has been able to achieve.

The Owl View 🦉:

Serious competitors study capabilities and outcomes like scientists. Comforting narratives and coping mechanisms don’t help anyone.

[Saganism @Saganismm]

“We are liquidating the Earth’s natural capital. We are tearing down the biological library before we have even read the books. No amount of economic growth can compensate for the loss of a self-sustaining biosphere.”

— E.O. Wilson

[Richard Prins @Richard_Prins]

@johnkonrad "A proper nation"
https://t.co/h5Df2M2DBh

[Alan MacLeod @AlanRMacLeod]

US soldiers force Vietnamese woman to become "human minesweepers", walking through minefields, Vietnam War (1966).

[Iran Embassy SA @IraninSA]

Were you looking for official evidence that some countries, including the UAE, helped USA and Israel in attacking Iran?

Here is the official document regarding the UAE's military aggression against Iran.

[Alon Mizrahi @alon_mizrahi]

Ukraine, Pahlavis, Arab Zionists, pro-US, Anti-Scheinbaum Mexicans, fascist evangelical Argentinians and Brazilians, Falun Gong Chinese, Free Tibet - the list goes on and on. None of those is an actual authentic native political movement: all are 100% fake, imperial, CIA and Mossad operations

[Seyed Mohammad Marandi @s_m_marandi]

Does that mean Israel will soon assassinate Trump?

[Richard Prins @Richard_Prins]

@BowesChay https://t.co/ABESIij882

[Mukhtar @I_amMukhtar]

Large "We Will Kill Trump" banners are hanging from buildings and being held up by crowds during the state funeral for Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran.

[Richard Prins @Richard_Prins]

@AssalRad Here's the intelligence:
https://t.co/ABESIij882

[Mukhtar @I_amMukhtar]

Large "We Will Kill Trump" banners are hanging from buildings and being held up by crowds during the state funeral for Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran.

[Richard Solomon 🌹 @SolomonsGardens]

As an MIT doctoral student, I'm compelled to say that @WSJ and @nytimes are doing fluff promotions for a self-published ebook by a former Israeli military officer, now professor, that accuses thousands of MIT students who voted for divestment and protested against the Gaza Genocide of being antisemitic bigots. But we are not bigots, and the book is riddled with lies. Most MIT undergrads (63%) and grad students (70%) voted to demand MIT end drone swarm and bacteria engineering research for the Israeli Ministry of Defense.

This is basic research ethics. If MIT puts restrictions on Saudi, Chinese, and Russian governments sponsoring MIT research, it should apply the same rule for another foreign state committing grave atrocities against the Palestinians. But MIT officials have met student demands with expulsions, arrests, and deaf ears. That's the story, not the brittle feelings and attention-seeking antics of tenured professors claiming they are 'unsafe' on campus.

[Richard Prins @Richard_Prins]

@hasanthehun The usual Ziønist preconditions.

[Belly of the Beast @bellybeastcuba]

According to Trump, Rubio and the anonymous sources of The New York Times, there's a Russian base in Cuba. We went to the supposed site of the base. Here’s what we found.

👉This is the first in a series on Cuba’s so-called spy bases. Stay tuned for the next dispatches.

[The Space Guy 🚀 @The_Guy_Space]

Smartest reusable solution by 🇨🇳China

1. They eliminate landing legs, saving weight

2.They don't need very precise hovering like Super Heavy

3. They can hover in a specific area, and the tower will adjust itself accordingly. Achieving SpaceX capability with less complexity

[Genocide Archive @Archivepaletc]

This is a video of the interview where Smotrich claims that Witkoff told him, "I will not allow two million Nazis to live next to your children along the border fence."
Smotrich says this was on January 30, 2025, and days later Trump publicly endorsed the ethnic cleansing of Gaza

[Dave DeCamp @DecampDave]

Smotrich is claiming that Steve Witkoff told him he wouldn't let "two million Nazis" live along the Israeli border, referring to the people of Gaza.

[Brian Berletic @BrianJBerletic]

🇺🇸🇷🇺 The Ukraine War is a US War on Russia

▪️FT repeats admissions made by the NYT that US Intel is behind drone strikes deep inside Russia;

▪️Beyond admitting it, it is obvious the US is the only nation with the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities required to carry out such large scale and precise operations which require not only finding and striking targets but locating and circumventing Russia's extensive air defense network;

▪️Despite the very loud, constant theater of a supposed "US-European split" - the US is simply preparing to feed the rest of Europe into its war on Russia necessitating the removal of US troops along the frontline and creation of sufficient motivation for increased costs for the European public and plausible deniability for Washington itself;

▪️Regardless of this theater, the US will continue fueling, directing and participating in what has been and continues to be its own war on Russia;

▪️The events surrounding continued aggression toward Iran despite agreeing to an "MOU" should be further evidence of how the US simply uses "diplomacy" and deception to buy time and space to continue its agenda, not change it;

[Richard Prins @Richard_Prins]

Liddle Marco McCarthy https://t.co/Bs669ryVJX

[The Washington Post @washingtonpost]

Breaking news: Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invited ministers from more than 60 countries to a meeting next week about what the Trump administration views as a major peril: the “resurgence of transnational far-left terrorism,” according to documents reviewed by The Post. https://t.co/2S6rXEJXfC

[Hanan Ashrawi @DrHananAshrawi]

Such unbridled hate, so much viciousness & obsessive violence & destruction. The Israeli occupation army is collectively & individually deranged. How can they live with themselves, let alone their "neighbors"?

[Dave DeCamp @DecampDave]

Continuing and escalating the proxy war in Ukraine is probably Trump's biggest betrayal of what he campaigned on, yet you don't hear a peep about it. He didn't end the war, but he did successfully end Republican opposition to it.