On April 20, 1657, freedom of religion was granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam, which was later renamed New York City.
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New Amsterdam
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The Q Bomb?
“We have weaponry that nobody has any idea of what it is. And it is the most powerful weapons [sic] in the world that we have, more power than anybody even . . . not even close,” President Donald John Trump informed journalists, in his usual informal manner.
While it may seem that the president just dropped a memetic “bomb” of huge importance, it’s mostly being taken with a grain of salt, as a curiosity. As just one of the things Trump says.
But he said it in a context. It was his response to a question about rising concerns about an escalation of conflict resulting from Trump’s increase in duties on goods from China. Trump appeared unruffled.
“President Xi,” he said, referring to China’s head man, is “a very smart guy” and is “one of the very smartest people of the world, and I don’t think he’d allow that to happen.”
The president had made a similar statement back in his first term, in September 2020, referring to awesome weapons of destruction that had best remain secret.
President Trump made these statements on April 9, 2025. A few days later, on April 14, Michael Kratsios, Trump’s new Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, stated that “Our technologies permit us to manipulate time and space.”
Uh, what?
It is no wonder, then, that the ufology community has taken notice. But all this has played out in science fiction in the past — both as “super science” and psy-op.
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Hannah Arendt
Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (1958), part 3, chapter 16.
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The Revolution Begins
On April 19, 1775, the American Revolution began when the “shot heard around the world” was fired between the 700 British troops and the 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the Lexington town green.
The British troops were on a mission to capture Patriot leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock and to seize a Patriot arsenal.
The Battle of Lexington ended with eight Americans killed and ten wounded, along with one wounded British soldier.
In Concord, a couple of hours later, British troops were encircled by hundreds of armed Patriots. The British commander ordered his men to return to Boston without directly engaging the Americans, but on the 16-mile journey they were constantly attacked by Patriot marksmen firing at them Indian-style from behind trees, rocks, and stone walls. By the time the British reached the safety of Boston, nearly 300 soldiers had been killed, wounded, or were missing in action. The Patriots suffered fewer than 100 casualties.
On April 19, 1782, John Adams secured the Dutch Republic’s recognition of the United States as an independent government.
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Don’t Blame DOGE
Sometime during the Trump administration’s fast and furious spending cuts and cancellations, the Rocky Mountain Institute lost millions in Biden-era federal climate-nonsense grants — cut not by DOGE but by the Department of Energy under Secretary Chris Wright.
Tears have been shed, garments rent: $5.3 million would have been used to retrofit a building to make it more green; $1.5 million would have funded research on the practicality of “electric vehicle carshare programs” and the “resilience” and “equity” of U.S. business models.
These initiatives are just the tip of the spear. RMI is also a good buddy of the Chinese government. RMI even has an office in Beijing.
As James Roth puts it over at our sister publication StoptheCCP.org, “Yes, RMI works with the communist government and proudly. It’s all over their website. It’s their specialty.”
Hold on, Roth. We must all try to understand that this is the kind of thing we must do if we wish to pretend to effectuate real global change in order to pretend to finetune world climate. If we let reality infect our thinking, what happens to mankind’s noble dream of instituting a globe-girdling weather-control machine while fatuously enabling the policies, conduct, and lies of tyrants? It would evaporate in the morning sun.
We’d be stuck with facts.
We’d be stuck treating RMI as responsible for its actions, as U.S. Senator Ted Cruz did in a letter to the institute’s CEO in 2023, asking “whether RMI has ever received any funding from any entity or individual associated with the Chinese government. Please answer with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’. . . .”
There’s at least one such funder. RMI has gotten money from Energy Foundation China, which has CCP ties and is “run by former Chinese Communist Party officials.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Herman Melville
What though Reason forged your scheme?
Herman Melville, the complete epigram titled “A Reasonable Constitution” in Collected Poems of Herman Melville, Howard P. Vincent Ed. (Chicago 1947).
’Twas Reason dreamed the Utopia’s dream:
’Tis dream to think that Reason can
Govern the reasoning creature, man.
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The Mueller Report
On April 18, 2019, a redacted version of the Mueller Report was released to the United States Congress and the public. President Donald Trump claimed that it exonerated him. “It was called, ‘No collusion. No obstruction.’ I’m having a good day. There never was [collusion], by the way, and there never will be. . . . This should never happen to another president again, this hoax.”
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Out of Poverty
“So, who brought who out of poverty?” asks Frank Dikötter about China’s economic rise.
The Dutch historian and author of four excellent books on Chinese history — Mao’s Great Famine; The Tragedy of Liberation; The Cultural Revolution; and China After Mao — Dikötter recently spoke at length with Peter Robinson, host of the Hoover Institution’s “Uncommon Knowledge” podcast.
Calling it “conventional wisdom,” Robinson offers that “the number that I found over and over again was eight to 900 million people lifted out of poverty since Deng Xiaoping announce[d] his reforms in ’78.”
“That’s all propaganda,” declares Dr. Dikötter. “The people in the countryside have lifted themselves out of poverty.”
Even before Mao’s death in 1976, the Cultural Revolution ended and the “army, which was deployed in every farm, every factory, every office from 1968 onwards, that army goes back to the barracks and is purged in turn,” he explains. “People in the countryside realize there’s nobody there to supervise them. There’s nobody there to tell them, go and work in the collective fields.”
Mr. Robinson chimes in: “The boot is off their neck.”
“So,” Dikötter expounds “they start operating underground factories; they open black markets; they trade among themselves.”
Deng “merely [put] the stamp of approval on something that escapes them altogether, namely the drive of ordinary villagers to claim back the freedoms they had before 1949.
“Allow ordinary people to get on with it,” he says, “they will!
“But this is not a party,” concludes Dikötter, “that will allow ordinary people to get on with it.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Anthony Trollope
No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.
Anthony Trollope, The Bertrams (1859), Ch. 27.
On April 17 1824, Russia abandoned all North American claims south of 54° 40’N.
The 17th of April (other years):
1907 — The Ellis Island immigration center processed 11,747 immigrants, more than on any other day.
1942 — French prisoner of war General Henri Giraud escaped from his castle prison in Königstein Fortress.
1969 – Communist Party of Czechoslovakia chairman Alexander Dubček was deposed.