The artificial construction of reality was to play a key role in the new form of global intelligence which would soon emerge among human beings. If the group brain's "psyche" were a beach with shifting dunes and hollows, individual perception would be that beach's grains of sand. However this image has a hidden snag - pure individual perception does not exist.
Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see, the thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. Don DeLillo
A central rule of large-scale organization goes like this: the greater the spryness of a massive enterprise, the more internal communication it takes to support the teamwork of the parts. For example, in all but the simplest plants and animals only 5% of DNA is dedicated to DNA's "real job," manufacturing proteins. The remaining 95% is preoccupied with organization and administration, supervising the maintenance of bodily procedures, or even merely interpreting the corporate rule book "printed" in a string of genes.
In an effective learning machine, the connections between internal elements far outnumber windows to the outside world. Take the cerebral cortex, roughly 80% of whose nerves connect with each other, not with sensory input from the eyes or ears. No wonder in human society individuals spend most of their time communicating with each other, not exploring beasts and plants which could make an untraditional dish. This cabling for "bureaucratic maintenance" has a far greater impact on what we "see" and "hear" than most psychological researchers suspect. For it puts us in the hands of a conformity enforcer whose power and subtlety are almost beyond belief.
In our previous episode we mentioned that the brain's emotional center - the limbic system - decides which swatches of experience to "notice" and store in memory. Memory is the core of what we call reality. Think about it for a second. What do you actually hear and see right now? This article. The walls and furnishings of the room in which you sit. Perhaps some music or some background noise. Yet you know sure as those walls. You are certain that your home, if you are away from it, is still there. You can sense each room, remember where most of your things are placed. You know the building where you work - its colors, layout, and the feel of it. Then there are the companions who enrich your life - family, the folks at the office, neighbors, friends, and even people you are fond of whom you haven't talked to in a year or more - few of whom, if any, are in the room with you. You also know we sit on a planet called the earth, circling an incandescent ball of sun, buried in one of many galaxies. At this instant, reading by yourself, where do these realities reside? Inside your mind. Memory in a very real sense is reality. What the limbic system decides to "see" and store away becomes an interior universe pretending to stretch so far outside that it can brush the edges of infinity.
We are accustomed to use our eyes only with the memory of what other people before us have thought about the object we are looking at. Guy de Maupassant
— Top Notch Journal (@topnotchjournal) July 2, 2023
theconservativetreehouse | Let me take you back to 2010 and 2011 when the U.S. State Department, Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, CIA Director Leon Panetta and French President Nicholas Sarkozy wanted to support the Islamist Spring uprisings in Tunis, Libya, Egypt and Yemen.
What happened then is very much related to what we are seeing right now in Europe, specifically France; only this time we are seeing the inverse of the government interests regarding social media on display.
The bad dictators were targeted for removal following the now famous Barack Obama Cairo, Egypt speech. President Barack Obama triggered the removal of the Zookeepers and released the big cats to become apex predators; the downstream consequences eventually showed up with ISIS burning people in cages.
When the leaders of Tunis, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Sudan and a
multitude of other unapproved dictatorships, reacted to the collective
effort of the CIA and U.S. state Dept by shutting down cell phone
communication, the CIA and DoS responded by enlisting Twitter and
Facebook as the messaging platforms for the rebels in each country.
Twitter became the main conduit through which the people on the
ground could organize against their regimes. This was the initial merge
of the U.S. government using social media to effect political change.
[Side Note: this is the atom splitting moment which eventually led to
the government’s ability to control, filter and ultimately censor U.S.
social media content.]
Twitter, and to a lesser extent Facebook, served the interests of
western government by helping the people on the ground to organize
protests, violent uprisings, against the dictators in the Arab Spring.
As we eventually saw in Libya and Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt,
AQIM) and al-Qaeda (Libya, AQAP) were supported by the State Dept/CIA
during that effort.
The key takeaway is: the uprisings were supported by the western
governments, and the social media platforms served the interests of the
western government leadership.
We have the inverse issue for the interests of western government,
specifically France and broad parts of the EU as well as the United
States.
General uprisings, riots and assorted mayhem created by mostly
Islamic immigrants and the subsequent cultural clash, are against the
interests of France and the EU. The ability of the cultural insurgents
to organize on social media is now against the interests of western
government. How are they reacting? They are shutting down the utility of
the platforms and shutting down the internet.
The initial takeaway from this might be perceived as good. The
rioters are creating social unrest, looting, arson and crisis; they must
be stopped and controlled. It seems like the government action will be a
good thing.
However, as with the example of private corporations joining in
alignment with WEF government to target Russia, what do you think will
happen when a populist revolt of yellow vests, or anti-vaxxers, or
freedom rebels take to the streets? Precedents are being set.
You might cheer France using control over communication to target the
violent brown people now; but what happens when those same EU entities
decide to target the communication of a different type of uprising. This
is me, sending warning flares to those who might not care about this
‘beta-test’.
Oh, and don’t forget the Senate Intelligence Committee recent effort with the “Restrict Act“, total internet and domestic social media control pushed under the auspices of controlling TikTok data collection.
wikipedia | Whitley Strieber is currently a practicing Catholic. He is also associated with the Gurdjieff Foundation.[54] He left regular work in the Foundation shortly before the experiences reported in Communion but remains involved in the mystical teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky and makes frequent references to them in his non-fiction writings.[citation needed]
Strieber contends that he was abducted from his cabin in upstate New York on the evening of December 26, 1985, by non-human beings. He wrote about this experience and related experiences in Communion (1987), his first non-fiction book. Although the book is perceived generally as an account of alien abduction, Strieber draws no conclusions about the identity of the alleged abductors. He refers to the beings as "the visitors", a name chosen to be as neutral as possible to entertain the possibility that they are not extraterrestrials. Neurologist Steven Novella remarks that the details of Whitley's tale of waking up seemingly paralyzed fits the description of hypnagogia, a fairly common neurological phenomenon that has been mistaken by some for an intervention by demons or aliens.[13]
Both the hardcover and paperback edition of Communion reached the number one position on The New York Times Best Seller list (non-fiction), with more than 2 million copies collectively sold.
Although it was published as non-fiction, the book editor of the Los Angeles Times pronounced the follow-up title, Transformation (1988),[14] to be fiction and removed it from the non-fiction best-seller list (it nonetheless made the top 10 on the fiction side of the chart). "It's a reprehensible thing," Strieber responded. "My book is a true story ... Placing this book on the fiction list is an ugly example of exactly the kind of blind prejudice that has hurt human progress for many generations."[15] Criticism noting the similarity between the non-human beings in Strieber's autobiographical accounts and the non-human beings in his initial horror novels was typically acknowledged by the author as a fair observation, but not indicative of his autobiographical works being fictional: "The mysterious small beings that figure prominently in Catmagic seem to be an unconscious rendering of [the visitors], created before I was aware that they may be real."[16]
Since the 1987 publication of Communion, Strieber wrote four additional autobiographies detailing his experiences with the visitors: Transformation (1988), a direct follow-up; Breakthrough: The Next Step (1995),[17] a reflection on the original events and accounts of the sporadic contact he'd subsequently experienced; The Secret School (1996),[18] in which he examines strange memories from his childhood; and lastly, Solving the Communion Enigma: What Is to Come (2011).[19]
In Solving the Communion Enigma, Strieber reflects on how advances in scientific understanding since his 1987 publication may shed light on what he perceived, noting, "Among other things, since I wrote Communion, science has determined that parallel universes may be physically real and that time travel may in some way be possible". The book is a consolidation of UFO sightings and related phenomena, including crop circles, alien abductions, mutilations and deaths in an attempt to discern any kind of meaningful overall pattern. Strieber concludes that the human species is being shepherded to a higher level of understanding and existence within an endless "multiverse" of matter, energy, space and time. He also writes more candidly about the deleterious effects his initial experiences had upon him while staying at his upstate New York cabin in the 1980s, noting, "I was regularly drinking myself to sleep when we were there. I would listen to the radio until late hours, drinking vodka..."[20]
Other visitor-themed books of Strieber's include Majestic (1989),[21] a novel about the Roswell UFO incident; The Communion Letters (1997, reissued in 2003),[22] a collection of letters from readers reporting experiences similar to Strieber's; Confirmation (1998),[23] in which Strieber reviews a variety of evidence that is suggestive of alien contact, and considers what more would be required to provide 'confirmation'; The Grays (2006)[24] a novel in which his impressions of alien contact are presented through a fictional thriller/espionage narrative, and; Hybrids (2011)[25] a fictional narrative that imagines human/alien hybrids being born into the modern world.[citation needed]
Additional visitor-themed writings include a screenplay for the 1989 film Communion, directed by Philippe Mora and starring Christopher Walken as Strieber. The movie covers material from the books Communion and Transformation. Strieber has stated that he was dissatisfied with the film, which utilized scenes of improvised dialogue and includes themes not present in his books. Strieber also wrote a screenplay for his novel Majestic, which to date has not been filmed.[26]
Whitley Strieber has repeatedly expressed frustration that his experiences have been taken as "alien contact" when he does not actually know what they were. Strieber has reported anomalous childhood experiences and suggested that he may have suffered some sort of early interference by intelligence or military agencies.[27]
He was extensively tested for temporal lobe epilepsy and other brain abnormalities at his own request, but his brain was found to be functioning normally. The results of these tests were reported in his book Transformation.[citation needed]
florenceinferno | The ‘’Madonna of the UFO’’ or ‘’Madonna of the flying saucer’’ is a painting located in Palazzo Vecchio in Florence in the Hall of Hercules. Also called “Madonna and Child with the Infant St John”, the painting has been the topic of much debate between art experts and ufologists. While the painting depicts the Nativity with the infant St. John in the foreground, in the background one can see a man curiously watching an unidentified flying object (UFO).
The painting is of unknown origin, but it probably dates from as early as the sixteenth century. The caption under the picture attributes authorship to either Sebastiano Mainardi or Jacopo del Sellaio; conversely, some scholars attribute it to Filippo Lippi, also known as “Maestro del Tondo Miller,” after the title of one of his last works.
Moreover, we only know that the work comes from the forgotten convent of Sant’Orsola in the district of San Lorenzo in Florence.
The painting is round, is one meter in diameter, and is adorned with a precious golden frame; it is located in the Hall of Hercules on the second floor of the Palazzo Vecchio, which takes its name from the coffered ceiling depicting the Twelve Labours of Hercules.
The circular painting bears the usual iconographic motif of the Renaissance: in the foreground the Virgin is seen kneeling with folded hands and leaning toward the baby, who is lying on a hem of her garment.
While the baby Jesus is reaching his hand toward his mother, St. John is attempting to support him. Behind the head of the Madonna, an ellipsoidal object can be seen in the sky, one that is very similar to modern depictions of UFOs. There is also a man painted in the background, a shepherd, with his hand on his forehead and his head turned toward the sky. Next to him is a dog that is also looking in the direction of the flying object .
It makes sense. After all, who’s for hate speech? What possible downside can there be to disallowing expressions of racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, transphobia?
C.J.
Hopkins can answer that. Following a similar case involving Roger
Waters, the American playwright, Substack contributor, and editor of Consent Factory has been placed under investigation by a Berlin prosecutor for tweeting an image of his book, The Rise of the New Normal Reich.
We had uncomfortable
correspondence after Covid-19 hit, when I wasn’t so sure we were dealing
with the same kinds of official lies this time, and worried about the
wisdom, say, of writing “pandemic” in quotation marks. I rolled my eyes
when I saw him cite an old quote from Hermann Goering, saying, “All you
have to do is tell [people] they are being attacked and denounce the
pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”
But he placed it astride this real quote from California State Senator
Richard Pan, about “anti-vaxxers”:
These
extremists have not yet been held accountable, so they continue to
escalate violence against the body public… We must now summon the
political will to demand that domestic terrorists face consequences for
their words and actions.
In hindsight it’s
incredible how many of us swallowed the notion that people who didn’t
take the shot were “terrorists,” and needed the incentive of
ever-harsher “consequences” to repent of their “violence.” That this was
more religious movement than science was hard for some to see at the
time. The tell eventually was that none of the messaging relented when
details about the inefficacies of the vaccines came to light. Only a few
were willing to say anything about this. C.J. was one, and even if you
don’t agree with all he says — style-wise he often conducts literary
operations miles behind hyperbolic lines — he said a great many things
that were true and needed hearing. Now, he’s looking at charges for
doing so.
One thing The New Normal Reich
is not is a celebration of Nazi imagery. Hopkins is taking current
governments around the world that used the pandemic to assert sweeping
power and comparing them to Nazi rule. Here’s an example, from a column
called “The Germans are Back!” in November 2020:
On
November 18, the German parliament passed a new law, revising the
so-called “Infection Protection Act” (“Das Infektionsschutzgesetz” in
German), that formally granted the government the authority to issue
whatever edicts it wants under the guise of protecting the public
health…
Now, this revised “Infection Protection Act…” is not in any way comparable to the “Enabling Act of 1933,”
which formally granted the Nazi government the authority to issue
whatever edicts it wanted under the guise of remedying the distress of
the people. Yes, I realize that sounds quite similar, but, according to
the government and the German media, there is absolutely no equivalence
whatsoever, and anyone who even suggests there is… “a neo-Nazi
conspiracy theorist” ... or whatever.
In
no way does this kind of passage “further the aims of a former National
Socialist organization.” It compares the current German government to
Nazi Germany. The current German government in turn is openly validating
that comparison by criminally investigating C.J. for the critique.
What’s more dangerous than outlawing hate speech? Giving someone the authority to define hate speech. Germany has already jailed one lockdown critic (Michael Ballweg, arrested in a dubious fraud case), while microbiologist Sucharit Bhakdi was taken to trial
— acquitted, but still — for describing Israel as worse than Nazi
Germany. The Roger Waters case investigates clearly satirical imagery.
Set all those cases aside, however. C.J.’s situation is, openly, a case
of a government seeking to criminalize criticism of itself, the dumbest
and least defensible version of censorship possible. At the very least,
other writers should be taking his side, and journalists should bring
this case up anytime anyone even thinks about claming the United States
is “lagging” behind Europe on the speech-law front. I spoke with Hopkins
about his situation:
I am charged with “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which
are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist
organization,” which is punishable by “imprisonment for not more than
three years or a fine.”
The “propaganda” in question is the image
on the cover of my book, which image will be familiar to the thousands
of readers who have bought and read it. It was a Barnes & Noble and
Amazon bestseller upon its release in 2022, and continues to sell quite
well internationally.
The
Prosecutor’s notice orders me to respond to the charge within two
weeks, though it’s possible the deadline to respond was today, June 8,
2023 (i.e, the day I received the notice of the investigation, dated May
25, 2023, in the mail).
Along with my response to the charge, I
am ordered to provide the Prosecutor with all my personal identification
papers and documentation of my net monthly income.
Obviously, the
cover of my book is not “propaganda intended to further the aims of a
former National Socialist organization.” Anyone vaguely familiar with my
work over the last 30 years is aware of my fierce opposition to
fascism, totalitarianism, and all other forms of authoritarianism.
Given
the circumstances, I have to assume the Berlin State Prosecutor has
launched this absurd investigation in order to punish me for my
aggressive opposition to the roll-out of the New Normal, or intimidate
me into silence. There’s quite a lot of that going around these days …
just ask Matt Taibbi, Roger Waters, Sucharit Bhakdi, and Kit Klarenberg, among others.
Whatever
the actual reason is, I am, needless to say, angry. I will be
responding to this baseless and unsupportable charge in a robust
fashion. I’ll keep you posted.
In its original form, twistor theory encodes physical fields on Minkowski space into complex analytic objects on twistor space via the Penrose transform. This is especially natural for massless fields of arbitrary spin. In the first instance these are obtained via contour integral
formulae in terms of free holomorphic functions on regions in twistor
space. The holomorphic twistor functions that give rise to solutions to
the massless field equations can be more deeply understood as ÄŒech representatives of analytic cohomology classes on regions in . These correspondences have been extended to certain nonlinear fields, including self-dual gravity in Penrose's nonlineargraviton construction[6] and self-dual Yang–Mills fields in the so-called Ward construction;[7] the former gives rise to deformations of the underlying complex structure of regions in , and the latter to certain holomorphic vector bundles over regions in . These constructions have had wide applications, including inter alia the theory of integrable systems.[8][9][10]
The self-duality condition is a major limitation for
incorporating the full nonlinearities of physical theories, although it
does suffice for Yang–Mills–Higgsmonopoles and instantons (see ADHM construction).[11] An early attempt to overcome this restriction was the introduction of ambitwistors by Edward Witten[12] and by Isenberg, Yasskin & Green.[13]
Ambitwistor space is the space of complexified light rays or massless
particles and can be regarded as a complexification or cotangent bundle
of the original twistor description. These apply to general fields but
the field equations are no longer so simply expressed.
Twistorial formulae for interactions beyond the self-dual sector first arose from Witten's twistor string theory.[14] This is a quantum theory of holomorphic maps of a Riemann surface into twistor space. It gave rise to the remarkably compact RSV (Roiban, Spradlin & Volovich) formulae for tree-level S-matrices of Yang–Mills theories,[15] but its gravity degrees of freedom gave rise to a version of conformal supergravity limiting its applicability; conformal gravity is an unphysical theory containing ghosts, but its interactions are combined with those of Yang–Mills theory in loop amplitudes calculated via twistor string theory.[16]
Despite its shortcomings, twistor string theory led to rapid
developments in the study of scattering amplitudes. One was the
so-called MHV formalism[17]
loosely based on disconnected strings, but was given a more basic
foundation in terms of a twistor action for full Yang–Mills theory in
twistor space.[18] Another key development was the introduction of BCFW recursion.[19] This has a natural formulation in twistor space[20][21] that in turn led to remarkable formulations of scattering amplitudes in terms of Grassmann integral formulae[22][23] and polytopes.[24] These ideas have evolved more recently into the positive Grassmannian[25] and amplituhedron.
Twistor string theory was extended first by generalising the RSV
Yang–Mills amplitude formula, and then by finding the underlying string theory. The extension to gravity was given by Cachazo & Skinner,[26] and formulated as a twistor string theory for maximal supergravity by David Skinner.[27] Analogous formulae were then found in all dimensions by Cachazo, He & Yuan for Yang–Mills theory and gravity[28] and subsequently for a variety of other theories.[29] They were then understood as string theories in ambitwistor space by Mason & Skinner[30] in a general framework that includes the original twistor string and extends to give a number of new models and formulae.[31][32][33] As string theories they have the same critical dimensions as conventional string theory; for example the type II
supersymmetric versions are critical in ten dimensions and are
equivalent to the full field theory of type II supergravities in ten
dimensions (this is distinct from conventional string theories that also
have a further infinite hierarchy of massive higher spin states that
provide an ultraviolet completion). They extend to give formulae for loop amplitudes[34][35] and can be defined on curved backgrounds.[36]
wikipedia | In physics, interference is a phenomenon in which two coherentwaves are combined by adding their intensities or displacements with due consideration for their phase difference. The resultant wave may have greater intensity (constructive interference) or lower amplitude (destructive interference) if the two waves are in phase or out of phase, respectively.
Interference effects can be observed with all types of waves, for example, light, radio, acoustic, surface water waves, gravity waves, or matter waves as well as in loudspeakers as electrical waves.
The word interference is derived from the Latin words inter which means "between" and fere which means "hit or strike", and was coined by Thomas Young in 1801.[1][2][3]
The principle of superposition of waves states that when two or more propagating waves of the same type are incident on the same point, the resultant amplitude at that point is equal to the vector sum of the amplitudes of the individual waves.[4] If a crest
of a wave meets a crest of another wave of the same frequency at the
same point, then the amplitude is the sum of the individual
amplitudes—this is constructive interference. If a crest of one wave
meets a trough of another wave, then the amplitude is equal to the
difference in the individual amplitudes—this is known as destructive
interference. In ideal mediums (water, air are almost ideal) energy is
always conserved, at points of destructive interference energy is stored
in the elasticity of the medium. For example when we drop 2 pebbles in
a pond we see a pattern but eventually waves continue and only when
they reach the shore is energy absorbed away from the medium.
Constructive interference occurs when the phase difference between the waves is an even multiple of Ï€ (180°), whereas destructive interference occurs when the difference is an odd multiple of Ï€.
If the difference between the phases is intermediate between these two
extremes, then the magnitude of the displacement of the summed waves
lies between the minimum and maximum values.
Consider, for example, what happens when two identical stones are
dropped into a still pool of water at different locations. Each stone
generates a circular wave propagating outwards from the point where the
stone was dropped. When the two waves overlap, the net displacement at a
particular point is the sum of the displacements of the individual
waves. At some points, these will be in phase, and will produce a
maximum displacement. In other places, the waves will be in anti-phase,
and there will be no net displacement at these points. Thus, parts of
the surface will be stationary—these are seen in the figure above and to
the right as stationary blue-green lines radiating from the centre.
Interference of light is a unique phenomenon in that we can never
observe superposition of the EM field directly as we can for example in
water. Superposition in the EM field is an assumed and necessary
requirement, fundamentally 2 light beam pass through each other and
continue on their respective paths. Light can be explained classically
by the superposition of waves, however a deeper understanding of light
interference requires knowledge of wave-particle duality of light which is due to quantum mechanics. Prime examples of light interference are the famous double-slit experiment, laser speckle, anti-reflective coatings and interferometers. Traditionally the classical wave model is taught as a basis for understanding optical interference, based on the Huygens–Fresnel principle however an explanation based on the Feynman path integral exists which takes into account quantum mechanical considerations.
johnganz | A little while ago, I came up with the idea that that the difference
between Italian Fascism and German Nazism was that Fascism essentially
had “Jock-Douche” vibes while Nazism had “Creep-Loser” vibes. Now, I’m
going to try to develop this fancy into a full-blown (or rather,
half-baked) theory.
“But, John, this is absurd,” you might
immediately object, “How can you reduce an entire political ideology to
categories drawn from American high school movies.” Well, try to think
of them as ideal-types like the sociologist Max
Weber developed. Here’s what Weber wrote of his ideal-type methodology:
“An ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more
points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete,
more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual
phenomena, which are arranged according to those onesidedly emphasized
viewpoints into a unified analytical construct...” That is to say, they
are sort of made up. Still, I believe that this theory, while it does
not pretend to be a definitive explanation, may help to illuminate
aspects of the far right today.
The Categories Considered in their Ideal-Typical Formation
First,
some preliminary definitions. The Jock-Douche ideal-type proceeds in
the world with confidence and the presumption of immediate physical
domination, while the Creep-Loser ideal-type has been thwarted some way
and is therefore reflective, and is resentful, a plotter, a schemer, and
a fantasist dreaming up grand historical vistas of triumph or doom.
Again, keep in mind these are purely ideal-types. Rarely does an
individual totally embody either one or the other idea. One could
speculate that in many cases the superficial confidence of the
Jock-Douche type is merely psychological compensation for the feelings
of inadequacy of the Creep-Loser. On the converse, the intellectual
limitations of the Jock-Douche type leads to an imaginative perspective
that cannot escape the relatively crude thought-world of Nerd-dom.
Considered from either an existential or psychoanalytic lens, it seems
likely that these two are actual facets of single complex or form of
being-in-the-world, manifested in different ways under different
circumstances. Fascism as its own ideal-type can be understood as a
synthesis between the Jock-Douche and the Creep-Loser: a cult of sheer
physical of strength and action wedded to a wounded and brooding
consciousness of impotence and humiliation.
I should address the
specifically national character of the division proposed here, that
Italian Fascism and German Nazism represent two different affective
dimensions of the fascist consciousness or self. Again, this is purely
ideal-typical: both movements and nationalities naturally contain
examples of the opposite tendency, but for the sake of illustration it
is convenient to divide them in this manner. I also believe one finds
that these two different spirits do actually predominate more or less in
these respective national movements. Now, one might object here that
making a division according to national origin recapitulates the very
sort of national or even racial essentialism of fascist ideology itself,
and that I am stereotyping Italians as impulsive, hot-blooded, and
unintellectual while painting Germans, from “the land of poets and
thinkers,” as either speculative dreamers or ratiocinators. I would just
say to that to a large degree that these different modes of behavior
and thinking are representations and projections of fascists’ own
fantasies about their national qualities.
The Categories Expressed in Historical Examples
The
most obvious representation of the Jock-Douche and Creep-Loser duality
is in the leadership of the respective movements: Benito Mussolini vs.
Adolf Hitler. Mussolini was socially successful, a popular and esteemed
figure in the Italian socialist party. In fact, his turn to nationalism
and war-mongering can be considered as a result of the desire for
continued popularity, or even identification with popular enthusiasm as
such, when his initial pacifist line as editor of the socialist
newspaper failed to capture the national imagination.
The
turn to war-making and nationalism also appealed to Mussolini’s belief
in a mystique of violence and action, leavened by his interest in
Georges Sorel’s irrationalism and political vitalism. Here’s how a
fellow socialist described him in 1914: “Nothing matters to him now
except to win. What matters is to triumph over timidity, fear and
prudence which impede and arrest the revolutionary advance of the
proletariat.” And Mussolini adulated the proletariat, not so much for
its Marxist-assigned historical role of overthrowing the capitalist mode
of production, but for its heroism, masculinity and toughness.
Mussolini’s he-man histrionics as fascist leader, the jaw-jutting and
arm crossing etc. project this pure masculinity. And although he was an
intellectual, his statements reflect a proud and defiant
anti-intellectualism. Speaking of an anti-fascist newspaper, Mussolini
famously remarked, “The democrats of Il Mondo want to know our programme? It is to break the bones of the democrats of Il Mondo. And the sooner the better.” In other words, bullying brought to the level of political theory.
On
the other hand, Hitler was a loser. A marginal type in post-war Munich,
he was a failure at his chosen vocation as artist. In an
unintentionally revealing passage in Mein Kampf, Hitler
describes how he was bullied and chased away from a construction job by
union organizers. The fact this probably never happened in reality is
all the more revealing: it reveals an essential fantasy at play. Mein Kampf itself
is the ranting and grandiose fantasies of an embittered man, which
provided a good deal of its rhetorical appeal to other members of his
pseudo-intellectual milieu, the “intellectual precariat of bohemians and
academic dropouts, throwing together various elements that they have
found in the neurotic overproduction of private mythologies” as Albert
Koschorke describes them in his essay on Mein Kampf.
Even
the most casual observer of Nazism has no doubt noted the absurd
difference in Hitler’s actual meager appearance and silly histrionics
with his professed Aryan ideal. This feature extends across the Nazi
leadership, and is especially notable in the figure of Heinrich Himmler.
Himmler’s unassuming appearance betrays his essential difference from
the mob figures of the early Nazi party, men like the predatory bully
Ernst Röhm. He was a petit bourgeois philistine preoccupied with eugenic
fantasies drawn from his time as a chicken farmer. He also believed
himself to be the reincarnation of an ancient Aryan king.
wikipedia | The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects,[1]
including the construction of public buildings and roads. It was set up
on May 6, 1935, by presidential order, as a key part of the Second New Deal.
The WPA's first appropriation in 1935 was $4.9 billion (about $15 per person in the U.S., around 6.7 percent of the 1935 GDP).[2] Headed by Harry Hopkins, the WPA supplied paid jobs to the unemployed during the Great Depression in the United States,
while building up the public infrastructure of the US, such as parks,
schools, and roads. Most of the jobs were in construction, building more
than 620,000 miles (1,000,000 km) of streets and over 10,000 bridges,
in addition to many airports and much housing.
At its peak in 1938, it supplied paid jobs for three million
unemployed men and women, as well as youth in a separate division, the National Youth Administration. Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA employed 8.5 million people (about half the population of New York).[3] Hourly wages were typically kept well below industry standards.[4]: 196
Full employment, which was reached in 1942 and appeared as a long-term
national goal around 1944, was not the goal of the WPA; rather, it tried
to supply one paid job for all families in which the breadwinner suffered long-term unemployment.[5]: 64, 184
In one of its most famous projects, Federal Project Number One, the WPA employed musicians, artists, writers, actors and directors in arts, drama, media, and literacy projects.[1] The five projects dedicated to these were the Federal Writers' Project (FWP), the Historical Records Survey (HRS), the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), the Federal Music Project (FMP), and the Federal Art Project
(FAP). In the Historical Records Survey, for instance, many former
slaves in the South were interviewed; these documents are of immense
importance to American history. Theater and music groups toured
throughout the United States and gave more than 225,000 performances.
Archaeological investigations under the WPA were influential in the
rediscovery of pre-Columbian Native American cultures, and the
development of professional archaeology in the US.
The WPA was a federal program that ran its own projects in cooperation with state and local
governments, which supplied 10–30% of the costs. Usually, the local
sponsor provided land and often trucks and supplies, with the WPA
responsible for wages (and for the salaries of supervisors, who were not
on relief). WPA sometimes took over state and local relief programs
that had originated in the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) or Federal Emergency Relief Administration programs (FERA).[5]: 63
It was liquidated on June 30, 1943, because of low unemployment during
World War II. Robert D. Leininger asserted: "millions of people needed
subsistence incomes. Work relief was preferred over public assistance
(the dole) because it maintained self-respect, reinforced the work
ethic, and kept skills sharp."[6]: 228
nih | We
analyzed key individual, family, and neighborhood factors to assess
competing hypotheses regarding racial/ethnic gaps in perpetrating
violence. From 1995 to 2002, we collected 3 waves of data on 2974
participants aged 18 to 25 years living in 180 Chicago neighborhoods,
augmented by a separate community survey of 8782 Chicago residents.
The
odds of perpetrating violence were 85% higher for Blacks compared with
Whites, whereas Latino-perpetrated violence was 10% lower. Yet the
majority of the Black–White gap (over 60%) and the entire Latino–White
gap were explained primarily by the marital status of parents, immigrant
generation, and dimensions of neighborhood social context. The results
imply that generic interventions to improve neighborhood conditions and
support families may reduce racial gaps in violence.
The
public health of the United States has long been compromised by
inequality in the burden of personal violence. Blacks are 6 times more
likely than Whites to die by homicide,1 a crime that is overwhelmingly intraracial in nature.2 Homicide is the leading cause of death among young Blacks,3 and both police records and self-reported surveys show disproportionate involvement in serious violence among Blacks.4,5
Surprisingly, however, Latinos experience lower rates of violence
overall than Blacks despite being generally poorer; Latino rates have
been converging with those of Whites in recent years.6
These
disparities remain a puzzle because scant empirical evidence bears
directly on the explanation of differences in personal violence by race
and ethnicity. Aggregate studies based on police statistics show that
rates of violent crime are highest in disadvantaged communities that
contain large concentrations of minority groups,5
but disparities in official crime may reflect biases in the way
criminal justice institutions treat different racial and ethnic groups
rather than differences in actual offending.7
More important, aggregate and even multilevel studies typically do not
account for correlated family or individual constitutional differences
that might explain racial and ethnic disparities in violence.8,9
By
contrast, individual-level studies tend to focus on characteristics of
the offender while neglecting racial and ethnic differences associated
with neighborhood contexts.4,10,11
Individual-level surveys of self-reported violence also underrepresent
Latino Americans even though they are now the largest minority group in
the United States.12
Blacks residing outside inner-city poverty areas tend to be
underrepresented as well, even though there is a thriving and growing
middle-class Black population.13
Recognizing
these limitations, 2 panels from the National Research Council and
other major research groups called for new studies of racial and ethnic
disparities in violent crime that integrate individual-level differences
with a sample design that captures a variety of socioeconomic
conditions and neighborhood contexts.5,14,15
We accomplish this objective in the Project on Human Development in
Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN), a multilevel longitudinal cohort study
that was conducted between 1995 and 2002. The study drew samples that
capture the 3 major racial/ethnic groups in American society
today—Whites, Blacks, and Latinos—and that vary across a diverse set of
environments, from highly segregated to very integrated neighborhoods.
The analysis in this article focuses on violent offending among
participants aged 8 to 25 years. We also conducted an independent survey
of the respondents’ neighborhoods, which, when supplemented with data
from the US Census Bureau and the Chicago Police Department, provide a
broad assessment of neighborhood characteristics to complement
individual and family predictors.
Our theoretical framework does not view “race” or “ethnicity” as holding distinct scientific credibility as causes of violence.16
Rather, we argue they are markers for a constellation of external and
malleable social contexts that are differentially allocated by
racial/ethnic status in American society. We hypothesize that
segregation by these social contexts in turn differentially exposes
members of racial/ethnic minority groups to key violence-inducing or
violence-protecting conditions.17 We adjudicate empirically among 3 major contextual perspectives that we derive from a synthesis of prior research.
First,
the higher rate of violence among Blacks is often attributed to a
matriarchal pattern of family structure; specifically, the prevalence of
single-parent, female-headed families in the Black community.18,19
Some have augmented this view by arguing that female-headed families
are a response to structural conditions of poverty, especially the
reduced pool of employed Black men that could adequately support a
family.20
A
second view focuses on racial differences in family socioeconomic
context. Many social scientists have posited that socioeconomic
inequality—not family structure—is the root cause of violence.21,22
Black female-headed families are spuriously linked to violence, by this
logic, because of their lack of financial resources relative to
2-parent families.
A third perspective is that racial and ethnic
minority groups in the United States are differentially exposed to
salient neighborhood conditions, such as the geographic concentration of
poverty and reduced informal community controls, that cannot be
explained by personal or family circumstances.17 Prior research indicates that Blacks and, to a lesser extent, Latinos, are highly segregated residentially.23
Although never tested directly, the implication is that neighborhood
segregation may explain individual racial/ethnic gaps in violence.24
A
prominent alternative to our approach highlights “constitutional”
differences between individuals in impulsivity and intelligence
(measured as IQ).25–28 Although low IQ and impulsivity may be sturdy predictors of violence,5,26 their potential to explain racial/ ethnic disparities has rarely, if ever, been examined.5,6
We thus assess the constitutional hypothesis that racial/ethnic
differences in measured intelligence and impulsivity, more than
economic, family, or neighborhood social context, stand as explanations
of the observed racial/ethnic gaps in violence.
undrr | Shortly after Hurricane Katrina struck the southern USA, 200 Mexican
troops crossed the US border outside Laredo, Texas, and made their way
towards San Antonio. It was the first time a Mexican army contingent had
entered Texas since the Battle of the Alamo in 1836.
In 2005, the Mexican soldiers were on a relief mission to feed tens of
thousands of homeless and hungry Americans displaced by Hurricane
Katrina. They stayed 20 days at the former Kelly Air Force Base in
Texas, one of the first American states in the USA to rescue thousands
of hurricane Katrina refugees.
“We served more than 170,000 meals and distributed more than 184,000
tons of supplies including medical supplies,” recalled Colonel Ignacio
Murillo Rodriguez of the Mexican Ministry of Defense SEDENA.
“We came with a big tractor trailer that we immediately converted into a
huge field kitchen. At the time, thousands of hurricane survivors had
moved to Texas and were living in a very precarious situation with no
job and no revenues, and we were able to help them serving meals, and
water and generally assist them. It was quite an incredible experience
that really made our reputation abroad. Our food trucks are very well
known by now and today constitute a major element of our emergency
capacities ” said Colonel Rodriquez.
Created in 1966, the Mexican Plan to Aid Civilian Disaster known as
DN-III-E is a series of measures to be implemented primarily by the
Mexican Army and the Mexican Air Force, organized as a body under the
name of Support Force for Disaster. It operates mostly in disaster
emergency situations occurring in Mexico but not exclusively.
“We have now trained many troops in Spain, Belize, Venezuela, and
Ecuador and our force has acquired a very established reputation in
terms of capacity building,” says Captain Alejandro Velasquez
Valdicisco.
The DN-III-E has three main roles: prevention, protection and recovery
and it is part of the Federal Response Master Plan dealing with major
contingencies and emergencies in Mexico.
The prevention plan better known as the MX Plan coordinates and
articulates the response in all national instances when an emergency
happens. It embraces the Navy Plan and the Civilian Population Support
Plan of the Federal Police, as well as the plans of government agencies
and public entities such as PEMEX, the Federal Electricity Commission
and CONAGUA ( water agency).
"We have the responsibility to rescue people, to manage shelters, to
make recommendations to populations at risk and to guarantee the safety
and security of affected disaster areas. Every soldier or person working
for the Mexican army receives a special training to protect civilians.
We actually do not have a special unit to deal with emergency situations
as armed forces are all trained to protect civilians when disasters
happen,” said Captain Alejandro Velasquez Valdicisco.
Mexicans remember the role played by the Ministry of Defense when
Volcano Colima erupted in October 2016 forcing hundreds of people to
evacuate. They worked long hours with the Civil Protection and were able
to relocate hundreds of people at risk.
The same happened during the 2007 floods that affected more than 1
million people in the south-eastern Mexican state of Tabasco. More than
13,000 soldiers were deployed in the flooding areas to help evacuating
populations from 13 municipalities.
qz | With AMLO's purchase of 13 Spanish-owned power plants, the majority of Mexico's electricity production is now state-controlled.
The Mexican government agreed to purchase
13 power plants from the Spanish energy company Iberdrola for $6 billion
on Tuesday (April 4), giving its state-owned power company, Commission
Federal de Electricidad (CFE), majority control over the country’s
electricity market.
The acquisition of the power plants will give CFE control of more than 56% of Mexico’s total production—up from approximately 40%, and surpassing AMLO’s previously stated goal of 54%.
The
US and Canada have strongly opposed AMLO’s actions, and have threatened
a trade war if Mexico continues to roll back access for international
corporations in Mexico’s power and oil markets.
Iberdrola said the power plants would be taken over by CFE within five months as it looks to reduce its operations in Mexican energy markets. The company’s CEO, Ignacio Galan, said that the deal was a win-win.
“That
energy policy has moved us to look for a situation that’s good for the
people of Mexico, and at the same time, that complies with the interests
of our shareholders,” Galan said after a joint appearance with AMLO announcing the deal.
AMLO has repeatedly compared Iberdola’s power over Mexican resources to Spanish conquistadors of the 16th century, even threatening to pause diplomatic relations with Spain over perceived neo-colonial actions by foreign energy firms.
Less than a month ago, more than 500,000 people flooded Mexico City to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the nationalization of the oil industry by president Lázaro Cárdenas del RÃo in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution.
“Mexico
is an independent and free country, not a colony or a protectorate of
the United States,” AMLO said in a forceful rebuke of American influence
in the country’s economy. “Cooperation? Yes. Submission? No. Long live
the oil expropriation.”
Begrudgingly Acknowledged Country Bangers
-
When someone says they hate country music, they’re typically referring,
whether they know it or not, to the neotraditionalist “young country” that
arose in...
A Foundation of Joy
-
Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
-
Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...