Thomas_More
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” Thomas Hobbes: A strict materialist. He argued that everything in the universe—including human thoughts, emotions, and the soul—is just physical matter in motion. To Hobbes, the “mind” is simply physical processes in the brain.”
Voilà! The 17th century in France produced philosophical debate largely thanks to the “Cavendish Circle” consisting of English exiles. Free from the strictures of fanaticism, Margaret Cavendish, Thomas Hobbes and Pierre Gassendi lay the foundations of later, 18th century, materialist thought and expression which was impossible in theocratic Puritan England.
https://www.nytimes.com/1974/03/16/archives/in-french-town-demons-linger-the-talk-of-loudun.html
Dissident priest on the front line of national centralisation.
Royalty’s roots lay in feudalism, but we see that the monarchical absolutism which had repressed its own feudal class in favour of centralised state building and to the advantage of the bourgeoisie prepared its own eventual demise. We see the centralised nation-state being constructed before the bourgeoisie capture state power. It is then consolidated by them after they stage their national revolutions and overthrow the autocracies. But it is those autocratic monarchies that have established the nation-state, which the capitalist class take over and which they make the unit of their control in each land.
Henry VII in England achieves what Louis XI in France had failed to do. The Tudors consolidate the work. The French monarchy resumes the repression of the feudals after Henri IV establishes the Bourbon dynasty and Richelieu and Mazarin complete the centralisation of state power while, in England, the bourgeoisie take control of it (after a remaining political skirmish with the annoying Stuarts).
Germany:
Meanwhile, British army taking part in scenario imagining “defending” Estonia in 2030.
Side by side with a general blasé attitude toward the imminent use of the world’s nuclear arsenals goes, in the UK and Europe, the idea that war with Russia could be “fought” – as though we were in the 1940s. Were Estonia under attack, millions of Europeans across the continent will already be incinerated before you can say the four syllables in “Estonia”!
Birds who sew, using spider webs.
Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun focuses on a milestone in the emergence of the centralised state. Loudun’s priest found himself in the midst of it, and sealed his fate by opposing the demolition of the town’s fortifications. The rest was an excuse to get rid of him as an embarrassing obstacle to “progress.”
The chapter “Red Flag at Bordeaux” in H.N. Brailsford’s “The Levellers & the English Revolution” provides a précis of the Fronde.
https://tass.com/politics/2133403
Tass: Lithuanian calls on NATO to strike Kaliningrad.
https://tass.com/politics/2132889
Ukraine to launch drones from Latvia, claims.
Counter-claim:
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/05/19/russias-spy-agency-claims-ukraine-plans-to-launch-drone-attacks-from-latvia-a92787
