zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — unequal sides of a coin spinning, methinks ]
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Aw, c’mon, Friedman, c’mon now:

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Sources:

Business Insider, Former DNI James Clapper: Putin is handling Trump like a Russian ‘asset’

New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman, Is Putin a C.I.A. Agent?

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Supporting James Clapper, we have this from Barry McCaffrey:

Reluctantly I have concluded that President Trump is a serious threat to US national security. He is refusing to protect vital US interests from active Russian attacks. It is apparent that he is for some unknown reason under the sway of Mr Putin.

— Barry R McCaffrey (@mccaffreyr3) March 16, 2018

And this, by way of explanation, from Megyn Kelly:

The host of “Megyn Kelly Today” recently sat down for an interview with Putin, and told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that she thinks the Russian president “knows some things” that Trump would not want out in public. In the interview, she confronted Putin about why Trump speaks so highly of him, and said she does not think the Russian president likes Trump. “I would not say that Putin likes Trump,” she said. “I did not glean that at all from him. I did glean that perhaps he has something on Donald Trump.”

“I think there’s a very good chance Putin knows some things about Donald Trump that Mr. Trump does not want repeated publicly,” she added. Kelly said that she doesn’t think Putin’s information has to do with the infamous dossier linking Trump to Russian nationals. “My money’s not on the dossier,” she said. “I think it has to do with money and Trump’s early years dealing with the Russians back in the ’90s, his facilities here in the United States.”

And from Brennan:

John O. Brennan, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said Wednesday that he thought Russia may have some kind of compromising information on President Trump, setting off furious speculation about whether the former spy chief was basing that assertion on inside information.

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Supporting Friedman?

Bupkis.

But anyway.The two quotes in the DoubleQuote — they make a nice tai-chich symbol — ☯ — an ouroboros of sorts: Trump is Putin’s asset; Putin is Trump’s asset; Trump is Putin’s asset; ad infinitum or nauseam, whichever comes first.

Hence The Wilderness of Mirrors, via XX Committee. Tbis bears repeating:

Greg Treverton, a brainy wonk who has worked on the high margins of the U.S. Intelligence Community, famously explained that puzzles and mysteries are fundamentally different: the former, with their pieces, can be solved, while the latter, with inexact pieces and no firm map, defy easy solution. And some mysteries will defy solution indefinitely.

One of the best things about working in counterintelligence, if you’re comfy with imprecision, is that it’s all about mysteries (one of the worst things is that it can make you crazy), some so vexing and intellectually challenging that they elude agreed-upon solutions for decades, in some cases in perpetuity. James Angleton, the poet-turned-counterspy who became CIA’s genius/flake chief of CI for much of the Cold War, referred to this experience as “the wilderness of mirrors,” which captures the enduring mystery of never quite grasping up from down in a case, or knowing who’s really running the show, no matter how closely you look at it (the memorable phrase also happens to be the title of the best book about the CIA’s Angleton experience).

[ by Charles Cameron — Putin, Mueller, Trump, and Nada Bakos ]
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IMO it is a pure coincidence that these two barely related headlines popped up on the same day:

That’s “not a target” squared. Not that I generally believe in coincidence — I favor synchronicity, but admittedly switch between magical and naturalistic worldviews as suits the moment.
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Sources:

The Week, Report: Mueller named Trump a subject, not criminal target

NY Times, For Russia, Trump Was a Vehicle, Not a Target

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while we’re on the subject of targets, here’s the Targeter par excellence, Nada Bakos, whose can’t wait book is currently targeted for redaction by the relevant CIA publications review office::

Hers is the definitive al-Zarqawi-ISIS story.

[ by Charles Cameron — from MLK via St Basil the Great to Mullah Nasruddin ]
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Three lines from the Apostles Creed locate the Resurrection between a descent into hell and an ascent into heaven. These lines are worth pondering in concert:

He descended into hell;
on the third day He rose again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven,

In what world of three worlds are these three utterances, so poetically juxtaposed, credible as declarative propositions?

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He is risen!

Bach’s Easter Oratorio, with Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Choir and Orchestra:

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Martin Luther King Jr gently lays out the liberal / modernist perspective on the Resurrection:

The last doctrine in our discussion deals with the resurrection story. This doctrine, upon which the Easter Faith rests, symbolizes the ultimate Christian conviction: that Christ conquered death. From a literary, historical, and philosophical point of view this doctrine raises many questions. In fact the external evidence for the authenticity of this doctrine is found wanting. But here again the external evidence is not the most important thing, for it in itself fails to tell us precisely the thing we most want to know: What experiences of early Christians lead to the formulation of the doctrine?

The root of our inquiry is found in the fact that the early Christians had lived with Jesus. They had been captivated by the magnetic power of his personality. This basic experience led to the faith that he could never die. And so in the pre-scientific thought pattern of the first century, this inner faith took outward form. But it must be remembered that before the doctrine was formulated or the event recorded, the early Christians had had a lasting experience with the Christ. They had come to see that the essential note in the Fourth Gospel is the ultimate force in Christianity: The living, deathless person of Christ. They expressed this in terms of the outward, but it was an inner experience that lead to its expression.

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The Jesuit priest Fr James Schall defends that outward interpretation, as found in the Apostles and Nicene Creeds, taken for dogmatic purposes as declarations of fact:

To the wise Greeks, as St. Paul tells us, the whole aura around Christ’s death and resurrection seemed to be “foolishness.” And it is foolishness unless considerable evidence is found showing that something astonishing was in fact going on. This evidence is basically the testimony of the women and men who attested to the fact that Christ did rise again. This is the same Christ whose death on the Cross they had witnessed a few days before.

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To take these declarations as reporting historical fact, it may help to have an upside-down worldview — that of the wisdom of the fool. Appropriately, this year Easter is celebrated on April Fools Day. Indeed, Fr Schall opens his piece from which I quoted above by noting that fact, then moves to a discussion of Christ himself as a Fool:

A tradition exists about “Christ the Fool.” It probably originates from when Pilate sent Christ to see Herod. Herod was anxious to see him. See him do what? See him perform. He had heard much about this man and his miracles. So naturally the king wanted to see what Christ could do; he wanted a private show to entertain the court. In response, Christ was simply silent.

Christ, we might say, played the naïf for Herod.

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Scripture declares how a naturalistic worldview perceives the eruption of God’s wisdom into this world as folly, and vice versa:

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.

while:

the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

and, in an almost tongue-twisting formulation:

For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.

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All of which leads Christians to imitate the foolishness of Christ:

We are fools for Christ’s sake

That too is St Paul, writing of himself and his contemporaries, followers of the pattern set by Christ — and his message has echoed down the centuries among those who wish to imitate that pattern closely:

One form of the ascetic Christian life is called foolishness for the sake of Christ. The fool-for-Christ set for himself the task of battling within himself the root of all sin, pride. In order to accomplish this he took on an unusual style of life, appearing as someone bereft of his mental faculties, thus bringing upon himself the ridicule of others. In addition he exposed the evil in the world through metaphorical and symbolic words and actions. He took this ascetic endeavor upon himself in order to humble himself and to also more effectively influence others, since most people respond to the usual ordinary sermon with indifference.

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In the Orthodox tradition — in which, this year, Easter and the Resurrection will be celebrated next Sunday — the foolishness of saints is a recurrent story. As I noted, quoting from the National Catholic Register in an earlier post:

In Russian history the greatest of the “holy fools” was Basil the Blessed, a man so revered that the famous Cathedral in Moscow’s Red Square next to the Kremlin was named in his honor. Basil walked through Moscow wearing nothing more than a long beard. He threw rocks at wealthy people’s houses and stole from dishonest traders in Red Square.

Few doubted Basil’s holiness. Tsar Ivan the Terrible feared no one but Basil. Basil was also given to eating meat on Good Friday. Once he went to Ivan’s palace in the Kremlin and forced the tsar to eat raw meat during the fast saying, “Why abstain from eating meat when you murder men?” Countless Russians died for much less but Ivan was afraid to let any harm come to the saintly Basil.

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I don’t suppose one could speak of left and right wing parties under the Terrible Ivan, but evcen if one could, I don’t think St Basil’s approach would fit either description — he’s acting in a manner that is plain contrary to all sane opinion — and indeed, the term “Contraries” is applied by anthropologists to trickster shamans and holy foots in many traditions. Interestingly, in Sufism the “path of blame” has at times been highly esteemed — its practitioners, like the Russian Holy Fools, draw blame on themselves to awaken those around them while subverting their own propensity to take pride in how “spiritual” they are.

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Mullah Nasruddin really didn’t want to loan his donkey to a neighbor.
My brother borrowed him yesterday and hasn’t brought him back, the Mullah said..
Just then, the donkey brayed.
Who are you going to believe, the Mullah asked hastilyy — me or a donkey?

Now, who in that little vignette is more of an ass?

[ by Charles Cameron — trouble with MS ahead, I suspect ]
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Sources:

Naked Security, Stop swearing on Skype!

Business Insider, Intelligent people tend to be messy

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This post addresses ZP’s interest in creative thinking, and also the matter of freedom of expletive deleted speech on our currently preferred comm7nications channels.

The latest MicroSamurai code:

Don’t publicly display or use the Services to share inappropriate content or material (involving, for example, nudity, bestiality, pornography, offensive language, graphic violence, or criminal activity).

Ouch.

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And boy, am I intelligent1?? I’m in the 93rd percentile messy, in the 100th for night owl — but only in the 43rd for swearing, dammit, which gives me an overall IQ so low I’m going to have to up my use of foul language!

[ by Charles Cameron — ffor whom the music lingers longest in the soul ]
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Yesterday, Maundy Thursday in the western ritual calendar, the Christ washed the feet of his disciples after the Last Supper, and instructed them to do likewise. Today, the day called Good Friday, the Christ, scourged and bone-weary from dragging the wood chosen for his cross uphill to a place called Golgotha or Skull, is finally nailed, hand and foot, hands and feet. and raised up with a mocking inscription above his head proclaiming him King of the Jews in three languages -– and in his almost final gesture on earth, forgives the soldier who has just applied hammer to those terrible nails. He dies – “gives up the ghost” – and then the three days of a prophesied and clearly impossible return from the tomb open before us – a cliff-hanger like no other.

The suspense!

Our western civ loses a lot if we are unable to have, in the cycle of our 24/365 lives, such a moment of suspense, which IMO cuts deeper than any doctrine. Deeper than doctrine, too, is music, which reaches far beyond the bounds of verbal belief. Thus one of western music’s greatest treasures: Bach’s telling of Christ’s passion, as written by Matthew in his gospel. Pause a moment – pause a couple of hours – pause at least long enough for Bach’s great finale – and then wait, if the Christ story can still move you, wait with aching, with dread even – or as Bach suggests, rest with the resting Christ, take consolation in the promise of his resurrection.

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Bach’s finale, Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder, WIki explains:

The work is closed by a grand scale chorus in da capo form, choir I and II mostly in unison for the first part Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder (We sit down in tears), but in dialog in the middle section, choir II repeating Ruhe sanfte, sanfte ruh! (“Rest gently, gently rest!”), choir I reflecting: “Your grave and headstone shall, for the anxious conscience, be a comfortable pillow and the resting place for the soul. Highly contented, there the eyes fall asleep.” These are the last words (before the recapitulation), marked by Bach himself: p pp ppp (soft, very soft, extremely soft).

Bach’s complete Matthew Passion, a Lutheran choral setting for today’s evening service:

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And the end, in Matthew’s telling:

And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.