vorticular spin polarization quantum mechanics and the sothic great provider....,

Reich of the Black Sun

sciencedaily | Orch OR was harshly criticized from its inception, as the brain was considered too "warm, wet, and noisy" for seemingly delicate quantum processes.. However, evidence has now shown warm quantum coherence in plant photosynthesis, bird brain navigation, our sense of smell, and brain microtubules. The recent discovery of warm temperature quantum vibrations in microtubules inside brain neurons by the research group led by Anirban Bandyopadhyay, PhD, at the National Institute of Material Sciences in Tsukuba, Japan (and now at MIT), corroborates the pair's theory and suggests that EEG rhythms also derive from deeper level microtubule vibrations. In addition, work from the laboratory of Roderick G. Eckenhoff, MD, at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests that anesthesia, which selectively erases consciousness while sparing non-conscious brain activities, acts via microtubules in brain neurons.

"The origin of consciousness reflects our place in the universe, the nature of our existence. Did consciousness evolve from complex computations among brain neurons, as most scientists assert? Or has consciousness, in some sense, been here all along, as spiritual approaches maintain?" ask Hameroff and Penrose in the current review. "This opens a potential Pandora's Box, but our theory accommodates both these views, suggesting consciousness derives from quantum vibrations in microtubules, protein polymers inside brain neurons, which both govern neuronal and synaptic function, and connect brain processes to self-organizing processes in the fine scale, 'proto-conscious' quantum structure of reality."

After 20 years of skeptical criticism, "the evidence now clearly supports Orch OR," continue Hameroff and Penrose. "Our new paper updates the evidence, clarifies Orch OR quantum bits, or "qubits," as helical pathways in microtubule lattices, rebuts critics, and reviews 20 testable predictions of Orch OR published in 1998 -- of these, six are confirmed and none refuted."

An important new facet of the theory is introduced. Microtubule quantum vibrations (e.g. in megahertz) appear to interfere and produce much slower EEG "beat frequencies." Despite a century of clinical use, the underlying origins of EEG rhythms have remained a mystery. Clinical trials of brief brain stimulation aimed at microtubule resonances with megahertz mechanical vibrations using transcranial ultrasound have shown reported improvements in mood, and may prove useful against Alzheimer's disease and brain injury in the future.

Lead author Stuart Hameroff concludes, "Orch OR is the most rigorous, comprehensive and successfully-tested theory of consciousness ever put forth. From a practical standpoint, treating brain microtubule vibrations could benefit a host of mental, neurological, and cognitive conditions."

The review is accompanied by eight commentaries from outside authorities, including an Australian group of Orch OR arch-skeptics. To all, Hameroff and Penrose respond robustly.

Penrose, Hameroff and Bandyopadhyay will explore their theories during a session on "Microtubules and the Big Consciousness Debate" at the Brainstorm Sessions, a public three-day event at the Brakke Grond in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, January 16-18, 2014. They will engage skeptics in a debate on the nature of consciousness, and Bandyopadhyay and his team will couple microtubule vibrations from active neurons to play Indian musical instruments. "Consciousness depends on anharmonic vibrations of microtubules inside neurons, similar to certain kinds of Indian music, but unlike Western music which is harmonic," Hameroff explains.  Fist tap John.

any given hieroglyphic symbol became a synthesis of polarities of particular oppositions of forces, held in balance by the glyph - the information - itself...,

The n.h.zed struggle - Work

artima |  For those following my blog, you know that my academic experience resulted in a degree in Physics. 

Even though I professionally engage in programming, I would prefer to play in the world of physics. Not long after graduating, a friend pointed me to "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. It was a very mind-opening read, but, to cut to the chase, it got me to thinking about the nature of the universe. I've been particularly stumped with current physics thinking about particle/wave duality. There is something about it all that just "bugs" me. My brain just can't accept the human tendency to completely break ideas down into component parts. My brain just keeps taking me back to where we need to be able to hold both concepts in our mind AT THE SAME TIME. The reason why physics has been stuck with this for the last 100 years is because these really smart people haven't done it, both, at the same time...

Ok, so particle/wave is one thing... not sure exactly what that means, but it's a starting point. In a simplified essence that my brain can hold, that duality is probably more easily stated as matter/energy. I'm not sure why, but the first thought that jumped into my head was space/time. Is it the same thing as matter/energy... hmmm, yes - and no! What about other levels of organization in the universe... molecule/reaction, social groups/communication, and so on? It seems that at different levels of organization, this same pattern emerges. No matter how I conceptually zoom in on the universe, there it is. A self-similar system - a fractal. Dual natures encompassing a single phenomenon.

This fractal duality concept extends through the universe at many levels of complexity. The static aspect captures stable states, the dynamic aspect disrupts and moves between stable states within the duality's realm of influence and each aspect of the duality can morph from one aspect to the other.

Another feature I recognized is that, amazingly, the higher order complexity fractal duality "behaviors" are intertwingled with and driven by the lower order fractal duality behaviors. Viruses interact in social populations, photons interact with cellular organisms, and so on, all of these intertwinglings creating diverse new kinds of fractals!

Interestingly, the higher order dualities rarely appear to intertwingle in the lower order dualities and when they do, it is only in a limited fashion. Organization at the higher orders need to have 'knowledge' of the lower orders to effect them. The greater the knowledge (sustainable fractal pattern), the more adept the manipulation of the lower order duality.

As for knowledge, it also seems that the lower order sustainable fractal patterns are 'unaware of' the higher order fractal patterns even though they are a necessary component. Is this a "can't see the forest for the trees" effect?

Hmmm...,  Dale.

Jablonski taking a sledgehammer to race - MUCH more impressed with this woman than I am with myself...,

Edge | Race has always been a vague and slippery concept. In the mid-eighteenth century, European naturalists such as Linnaeus, Comte de Buffon, and Johannes Blumenbach described geographic groupings of humans who differed in appearance. The philosophers David Hume and Immanuel Kant both were fascinated by human physical diversity. In their opinions, extremes of heat, cold, or sunlight extinguished human potential. Writing in 1748, Hume contended that, "there was never a civilized nation of any complexion other than white."

Kant felt similarly. He was preoccupied with questions of human diversity throughout his career, and wrote at length on the subject in a series of essays beginning in 1775. Kant was the first to name and define the geographic groupings of humans as races (in German, Rassen). Kant's races were characterized by physical distinctions of skin color, hair form, cranial shape, and other anatomical features and by their capacity for morality, self-improvement, and civilization. Kant's four races were arranged hierarchically, with only the European race, in his estimation, being capable of self-improvement.

Why did the scientific racism of Hume and Kant prevail in the face of the logical and thoughtful opposition of von Herder and others? During his lifetime, Kant was recognized as a great philosopher, and his status rose as copies of his major philosophical works were distributed and read widely in the nineteenth century. Some of Kant's supporters agreed with his racist views, some apologized for them, or—most commonly—many just ignored them. The other reason that racist views triumphed over anti-racism in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was that racism was, economically speaking, good for the transatlantic slave trade, which had become the overriding engine of European economic growth. The slave trade was bolstered by ideologies that diminished or denied the humanity of non-Europeans, especially Africans. Such views were augmented by newer biblical interpretations popular at the time that depicted Africans as destined for servitude. Skin color, as the most noticeable racial characteristic, became associated with a nebulous assemblage of opinions and hearsay about the inherent natures of the different races. Skin color stood for morality, character, and the capacity for civilization; it had become a meme. The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the rise of "race science." The biological reality of races was confirmed by new types of scientific evidence amassed by new types of scientists, notably anthropologists and geneticists. This era witnessed the birth of eugenics and its offspring, the concept of racial purity. The rise of Social Darwinism further reinforced the notion that the superiority of the white race was part of the natural order. The fact that all people are products of complex genetic mixtures resulting from migration and intermingling over thousands of years was not admitted by the racial scientists, nor by the scores of eugenicists who campaigned on both sides of the Atlantic for the improvement of racial quality.

The mid-twentieth century witnessed the continued proliferation of scientific treatises on race. By the 1960s, however, two factors contributed to the demise of the concept of biological races. One of these was the increased rate of study of the physical and genetic diversity human groups all over the world by large numbers of scientists. The second factor was the increasing influence of the civil rights movement in the United States and elsewhere. Before long, influential scientists denounced studies of race and races because races themselves could not be scientifically defined. Where scientists looked for sharp boundaries between groups, none could be found.

Despite major shifts in scientific thinking, the sibling concepts of human races and a color-based hierarchy of races remained firmly established in mainstream culture through the mid-twentieth century. The resulting racial stereotypes were potent and persistent, especially in the United States and South Africa, where subjugation and exploitation of dark-skinned labor had been the cornerstone of economic growth.

After its "scientific" demise, race remained as a name and concept, but gradually came to stand for something quite different. Today many people identify with the concept of being a member of one or another racial group, regardless of what science may say about the nature of race. The shared experiences of race create powerful social bonds. For many people, including many scholars, races cease to be biological categories and have become social groupings. The concept of race became a more confusing mélange as social categories of class and ethnicity. So race isn't "just" a social construction, it is the real product of shared experience, and people choose to identify themselves by race.

Clinicians continue to map observed patterns of health and disease onto old racial concepts such as "White", "Black" or "African American", "Asian," etc. Even after it has been shown that many diseases (adult-onset diabetes, alcoholism, high blood pressure, to name a few) show apparent racial patterns because people share similar environmental conditions, grouping by race are maintained. The use of racial self-categorization in epidemiological studies is defended and even encouraged. In most cases, race in medical studies is confounded with health disparities due to class, ethnic differences in social practices, and attitudes, all of which become meaningless when sufficient variables are taken into account.

Race's latest makeover arises from genomics and mostly within biomedical contexts. The sanctified position of medical science in the popular consciousness gives the race concept renewed esteem. Racial realists marshal genomic evidence to support the hard biological reality of racial difference, while racial skeptics see no racial patterns. What is clear is that people are seeing what they want to see. They are constructing studies to provide the outcomes they expect. In 2012, Catherine Bliss argued cogently that race today is best considered a belief system that "produces consistencies in perception and practice at a particular social and historical moment".

Race has a hold on history, but it no longer has a place in science. The sheer instability and potential for misinterpretation render race useless as a scientific concept. Inventing new vocabularies of human diversity and inequity won't be easy, but is necessary.

altruistic (prosocial) behavior in rats modulated by social experience

elifesciences | In mammals, helping is preferentially provided to members of one’s own group. Yet, it remains unclear how social experience shapes pro-social motivation. We found that rats helped trapped strangers by releasing them from a restrainer, just as they did cagemates. However, rats did not help strangers of a different strain, unless previously housed with the trapped rat. Moreover, pair-housing with one rat of a different strain prompted rats to help strangers of that strain, evidence that rats expand pro-social motivation from one individual to phenotypically similar others. To test if genetic relatedness alone can motivate helping, rats were fostered from birth with another strain and were not exposed to their own strain. As adults, fostered rats helped strangers of the fostering strain but not rats of their own strain. Thus, strain familiarity, even to one’s own strain, is required for the expression of pro-social behavior.

toward a cross-species understanding of empathy

nih | Empathy reflects the capacity of one animal to experience the emotional feelings of another, a process with many cognitive refinements in humans. Thus, investigators commonly distinguish between emotional and cognitive forms of empathy (see below) [1,2]. Studies of empathy make up a relatively new subdiscipline in neuroscience, with human brain imaging providing many correlates of relevant, higher psychological functions [3–5]. Neuroscience research on empathy in other animals has lagged far behind, but simplified animal behavior models based on emotional contagion, the presumed foundations of empathy, have been developed (Figure 1) [6]. Our goal here is to summarize such novel empirical approaches for studying empathy in laboratory rats and mice, and to highlight an integrated neuro-evolutionary strategy for understanding human empathy.

Before proceeding, we consider the meteoric rise of neuro-empathy studies during the past few decades. The study of empathy was sparse in the biologically-oriented sciences of the 20th century until E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology (1975), where constructs such as kin selection and reciprocal altruism were seen as major evolutionary explanations for individuals behaving unselfishly, even ‘altruistically’, toward others, provided that such behaviors supported the survival of one’s own genes [7]. Indeed, in Descent of Man, Darwin suggested that ‘We are thus impelled to relieve the sufferings of another, in order that our own painful feelings may at the same time be relieved’ and ‘those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring’ ([8], p. 88). Thus, inspired by writings of philosophers such as John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith, together with American social psychologists such as William McDougall [9] and Russian evolutionist Pyotr Kropotkin [10], a prosocial perspective emerged in late 20th century suggesting that individuals might be constitutionally more cooperative and emotionally interdependent than previously considered.

By the late 1990s human brain imaging offered robust approaches for identifying brain regions aroused during emotional states, encouraging systematic neuropsychological studies of empathy [11,12] that have now yielded diverse affective, cognitive, and social neuroscience perspectives [1,13–15]. Concurrently, primatologists recognized signs of empathic sensitivities [16,17] and now neuroscientists, inspired by classic early behavioral studies [18–20], are fashioning reliable simplified models to study the evolutionary roots of empathy (Box 1 and Figure 1)

learn some moral psychology and step outside your blindered matrix...,

edge | What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity"—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.

Diagnosis is a pleasure. It is a thrill to solve a mystery from scattered clues, and it is empowering to know what makes others tick. In the psychological community, where almost all of us are politically liberal, our diagnosis of conservatism gives us the additional pleasure of shared righteous anger. We can explain how Republicans exploit frames, phrases, and fears to trick Americans into supporting policies (such as the "war on terror" and repeal of the "death tax") that damage the national interest for partisan advantage.

But with pleasure comes seduction, and with righteous pleasure comes seduction wearing a halo. Our diagnosis explains away Republican successes while convincing us and our fellow liberals that we hold the moral high ground. Our diagnosis tells us that we have nothing to learn from other ideologies, and it blinds us to what I think is one of the main reasons that so many Americans voted Republican over the last 30 years: they honestly prefer the Republican vision of a moral order to the one offered by Democrats. To see what Democrats have been missing, it helps to take off the halo, step back for a moment, and think about what morality really is.

can a blind person be a racist?

scientificamerican | Do blind people understand race? Given the vast and sprawling writings on race over the past several decades, it is surprising that scholars have not explored this question in any real depth. Race has played a profound and central role to human relationships. Yet how is it possible that this basic question has escaped deeper contemplation?

This gap in the scholarly literature and public discourse points to a fundamental assumption that we almost all make about race, its significance, and its salience. Race has been central to human relationships. Yet, there seems to be at least one thing that most people can agree upon: that race is, to a large extent, simply what is seen. There are surely many variables that inform individuals’ racial consciousness, such as religion, language, food, and culture. But race is primarily thought to be self-evidently known, in terms of reflecting the wide variation in humans’ outward appearance tied to ancestry and geographic origin such as skin color, hair texture, facial shapes, and other observable physical features. Thus, race is thought to be visually obvious; it is what you see, in terms of slotting visual engagements with human bodies into predefined categories of human difference, such as Black, White, and Asian. Given the dominant role these visual cues play in giving coherence to social categories of race, it is widely thought that race can be no more salient or significant to someone who has never been able to see than the musical genius of Mozart or Jay-Z can be salient to someone who has never been able to hear. Therefore, one plausible explanation for why questions concerning blind people’s understanding of race have not been explored is that, from a sighted person’s perspective, the answer seems painfully obvious: blind people simply cannot appreciate racial distinctions and therefore do not have any real racial consciousness.

This pervasive yet rarely articulated idea that race is visually obvious—a notion that I call “race” ipsa loquitur, or that race “speaks for itself”—has at least three components: (1) race is largely known by physical cues that inhere in bodies such as skin color or facial features, (2) these cues are thought to be self-evident, meaning that their perceptibility and salience exist apart from any mediating social or political influence, and (3) individuals without the ability to see are thought, at a fundamental level, to be unable to participate in or fully understand what is assumed to be a quintessentially ocular experience. Through this “race” ipsa loquitur trope, talking about race outside of visual references to bodily differences seems absurd, lest we all become “colorblind” in the most literal sense. Much of the ideological value in the emerging colorblindness discourse works from the idea that race and racism are problems of visual recognition, not social or political practices.

But, how much does the salience of race—in terms of it being experienced as a prominent and striking human characteristic that affects a remarkable range of human outcomes—depend upon what is visually perceived? To play upon the biblical reference to 2 Corinthians 5:7, do we simply “walk by sight” in that the racial differences are self-evident boundaries that are impressionable on their own terms? Or, is there a secular “faith” about race that produces the ability to “see” the very racial distinctions experienced as visually obvious? And if we take this idea seriously, that the visual salience of race is produced rather than merely observed, precisely what is at stake—socially, politically, and legally—when we misunderstand the process of “seeing race” as a distinctly visual rather than sociological phenomenon?

In my work, I have pushed the boundaries of the “race” ipsa loquitur trope by investigating the significance of race outside of vision. I critique the notion that race is visually obvious and suggest that the salience of race, in terms of its visually striking nature and attendant social significance, functions more by social rather than ocular mechanisms. Though perhaps counterintuitive, I begin with the hypothesis that our ability to perceive race and subsequently attach social meanings to different types of human bodies depends little on what we see; taking vision as a medium of racial truth may very well obscure a deeper understanding of precisely how race is both apprehended and comprehended, and thus how it informs our collective imaginations and personal behaviors as well as how it plays out in everyday life.

Dieudonné: banksterism IS zionism...,

Fist tap Bro. Makheru.

Joyeux anniversaire Monsieur Gurdjieff

wikipedia | George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (January 13, 1866 – October 29, 1949), also commonly referred to as Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff and G. I. Gurdjieff, was an influential spiritual teacher of the early to mid-20th century who taught that most humans live their lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep", but that it is possible to transcend to a higher state of consciousness and achieve full human potential. Gurdjieff developed a method for doing so, calling his discipline "The Work"^[1] (connoting "work on oneself") or "the Method".^[2] According to his principles and instructions,^[3] Gurdjieff's method for awakening one's consciousness is different from that of the fakir, monk or yogi, so his discipline is also called (originally) the "Fourth Way".^[4] At one point, he described his teaching as being "esoteric Christianity".^[5]

At different times in his life, Gurdjieff formed and closed various schools around the world to teach The Work. He claimed that the teachings he brought to the West from his own experiences and early travels expressed the truth found in ancient religions and wisdom teachings relating to self-awareness in people's daily lives and humanity's place in the universe.^[6] The title of his third series of writings, Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I Am', expresses the essence^{[citation needed]} of his teachings. His complete series of books is entitled All and Everything.

the psychopathocracy insists on being feared and cannot stand being mocked...,

macleans | Dieudonné first performed the quenelle—literally, “dumpling”—in 2005 during one of his shows. He did so offhandedly during a stream of consciousness bit about the great mammalian plot against humans. “Today, dolphins look down on human beings. They know they can shove their fins right up our asses,” he said, indicating on his right arm with his left hand exactly how far those dolphin fins could reach. The quenelle was born.

Dieudonné has since used the gesture in his campaign posters in 2009, when he ran unsuccessfully for European parliament. In the posters, which call for a “Liberated Europe,” the comic notably stands next to Alain Soral, a notorious anti-Zionist whose knack for self-promotion nearly rivals that of Dieudonné.

The quenelle has since taken on different meanings for different people: for some, it’s a show of solidarity for the oppressed. For others, it’s a cutesy way to demonstrate one’s displeasure with the political status quo, or a grab bag of apparent sacred cows (including, naturally, the Holocaust.) It’s this last bit that is most troubling: given Dieudonné’s obsession with all things Jewish and Zionist, many see it as a blatantly anti-Semitic gesture akin to the Nazi salute.

Regardless of the meaning, those who perform the gesture are likely all supporters of Dieudonné, which is perhaps the reason why the comic is so gleeful these days: many, many people are doing it. Superstar soccer players, politicians, military members, reality TV stars, and thousands upon thousands of regular Joes: in France, the quenelle is everywhere.

Given the origins of the gesture, you’d think the French government would give the quenelle the attention it deserves—that is to say, none. Yet the French government has long given up on ignoring Dieudonné, and has instead become one of his chief promoters.

Successive French Presidents from Jacques Chirac onwards have attempted to shut Dieudonné up, resulting in dozens of cancelled shows. In 2009, Nicolas Sarkozy’s government attempted to have him banned from running for European parliament. Dieudonné was giddy at the news, going so far as to call Sarkozy spokesperson Claude Guéant “my press attaché” when I interviewed the comic that year. “Attention, buzz, it’s not positive or negative. It just is. I’ll take either. I’ll play the bad guy if they want,” he said.

The current government of François Hollande has only ramped up the anti-Dieudonné offensive. It has put its military and civil service on notice: doing the quenelle is a potential firing offence. French interior minister Manuel Valls successfully urged the cities of Bordeaux, Tours, Orléans and Nantes to cancel his upcoming shows. “It’s a victory for the republic,” said French interior minister Manuel Valls.

Dieudonné’s longevity and burgeoning popularity would suggest, however, that it’s a victory only for Dieudonné. His career has only benefitted from these attempts to silence him. In 2005, the year he first quenelled, Dieudonné “was disappearing from the media spotlight,” as Le Figaro pointed out recently. “His shows were getting cancelled. He was forced to perform his shows on a bus. So he cultivated a counter-culture that bloomed on the Internet.”

It was here where the quenelle went from being a reference to perverse dolphin acts to… well, whatever people wanted it to be: soccer celebration, anti-authoritarian jab, a middle finger to the deeply unpopular Hollande government and, distressingly, ersatz Nazi salute. Absurdly, quenelle hysteria forced a Parisian store to temporarily close it doors. It seems staff received several death threats after one of its mannequins was left in the quenelle position. (The mannequin in question was actually modeling a purse someone forgot to install.)

should Dieudonné be silenced by the law?

guardian |  Technically, in the context of Dieudonné's tour, the reasoning given for a ban is not a breach of the law on hatred and Holocaust denial, but a potential threat to public order. The invocation of a threat to public order as an ad hoc censorship tool is not exactly ideal, is it? But of course, the Loi Gayssot forms the backdrop and the intellectual and legal justification for everything that follows. So apart from the moral argument about censorship, the questions are: what is the purpose of the law? And has it worked? If the purpose of the law is to discredit Holocaust "revisionists" then I would suggest it has not achieved its aim. Dieudonné sells out shows; the aforementioned Bruno Gollnisch is elected to the European parliament.

Is the aim to prevent the rise of the far right? Again, it's arguable that it has failed. The Front National has maintained a percentage of the vote in the teens, about the same as it did when the law was introduced.

One could say that without the law, Holocaust revisionism and antisemitism might be even stronger, but the fact is, this isn't a lab experiment: there's no "control" where we can see what alternative outcome might be. What we do know is that we have hundreds of young French people getting transgressive kicks by posting pictures of themselves giving "inverted Nazi salutes" at Jewish sites.

AH I think the law obviously has its limits here. The reality is that antisemitism lies deep at the core of French history and society and no legislation is ever going to change that – it's damage limitation at best. But I don't buy the argument either that French law has created this situation, or that it's making it worse. I'm thinking here of the example of LF Céline – arguably the greatest French novelist of the 20th century, and a vicious antisemite whose pro-Hitler tracts were so virulently anti-Jewish that they shocked the Nazi authorities. These books have quietly not been reprinted since the 1930s – or sell at inflated prices in dodgy editions at rightwing meetings across Europe. The point I'm making here is that, in a sense you're right – no law will ever control this mindset. I think Sartre gets it right in his essay Portrait of an Antisemite, when he says that French antisemitism (including Céline) comes from a sense of "inauthenticity" – unconvinced of his own place in society, the antisemite finds comfort in the reality of Jew-hatred. This is what is happening in the banlieue – cut off from and humiliated by the perceived French establishment. The way out of this is hard and complicated – bringing those who feel excluded back into the centre of political and cultural life. It's even harder to do this when the likes of Dieudonné, who thrives on division and disposession, is obviously working against this, evoking all the old ghosts of the French past. I'm not really making the case for censorship, just sounding a note of caution. In the end it may well be that what France needs is not political or legal solutions, or even psychiatry, but an exorcist.

understanding bds

bdsmovement |  The broad consensus among Palestinian civil society about the need for a broad and sustained Campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resulted in the Palestinian Call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel that was launched in July 2005 with the initial endorsement of over 170 Palestinian organizations. The signatories to this call represent the three major components of the Palestinian people: the refugees in exile, Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the discriminated Palestinian citizens of the Israeli state.

The efforts to coordinate the BDS campaign, that began to grow rapidly since the 2005 Call was made public, culminated in the first Palestinian BDS Conference held in Ramallah in November 2007. Out of this conference emerged the BDS National Committee (BNC) as the Palestinian coordinating body for the BDS campaign worldwide.

The BNC’s mandate and role is:

• To strengthen and spread the culture of boycott as a central form of civil resistance to Israeli occupation, colonialism and apartheid;
• To formulate strategies and programs of action in accordance with the 9 July 2005 Palestinian Civil Society BDS Call;
• To serve as the Palestinian reference point for BDS campaigns in the region and worldwide;
• To serve as the national reference point for anti-normalization campaigns within Palestine;
• To facilitate coordination and provide support & encouragement to the various BDS campaign efforts in all locations.

The BNC’s main activities include:

• Campaigning with BDS activists locally and worldwide by preparing and disseminating BNC statements; public speaking; organizing the annual Global BDS Action Day on 30 March (Palestinian Land Day);
• Advocacy by briefing and lobbying policy makers;
• Monitoring & Rapid Response by means of BNC calls for action against projects and initiatives which amount to recognition of or cooperation with Israel’s regime of apartheid, colonialism and occupation (i.e., normalization);
• Media Outreach in Palestine and abroad, based on a professional media strategy;
• Coordination with BDS activists locally and worldwide, including preparation of regional and international organizing meetings and conferences;
• Awareness Raising & Training activists and organizations about BNC analysis, standards and BDS campaign work; through workshops, BNC information materials and the BDS campaign website (www.bdsmovement.net)
• Developing the BDS Campaign in Arab countries;
• Research and BDS Strategy Development.

another academic group calls for censure

NYTimes | A movement to pressure and isolate Israel gained further ground among American academics on Saturday, when the Modern Language Association took a step toward approving a resolution calling on the State Department to contest what it characterized as Israel’s discriminatory “denials of entry” to American scholars seeking to visit the West Bank to work at Palestinian universities.

After nearly three hours of fractious debate and procedural maneuvering, the group’s delegate assembly voted 60 to 53 to adopt the resolution, which will be submitted to the group’s nearly 28,000 members after review by its executive council. If it is approved, the Modern Language Association would be the fourth, and by far the largest, such group to endorse a measure critical of Israel in the past year.

The travel resolution did not call for a boycott like the one announced last month by the American Studies Association, which has prompted a backlash, including statements from more than 100 university presidents criticizing boycotts as a threat to academic freedom.

The group’s delegate assembly also voted against considering a second resolution, introduced by its Radical Caucus, to condemn the “attacks on the A.S.A.” and defend the right of individual scholars and groups to “take positions in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle against racism.”

But among partisans on both sides, the debate on the resolution was seen as an important skirmish in the larger battle over the international boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, known as B.D.S. 

“The main goal of the process is raising awareness of egregious and decades-long complicity of Israeli institutions in the regime of occupation, colonialism and apartheid,” Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian founder of B.D.S., said on Thursday after participating in a round-table discussion of academic boycotts.

speaking of smug faces and unnaturally charmed political lives...,

The Shadow Campaign

WaPo |  To a greater extent than any modern politician, with the possible exception of her husband and the late Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and scandal are inseparable. While first lady, she was caught up in the Rose Law Firm file flap and the White House travel office firings, about which she denied knowing anything. At the State Department there was Benghazi, the lack of candor about Benghazi, the phony Accountability Review Board (which conveniently didn’t question her) and the apparent scapegoating of four State Department employees who seemed to have no real responsibility for the death of four Americans. Unlike her first-lady excuses, she couldn’t very well say she didn’t know what was going on in her own department. The stench of fundraising scandals and the prison sentences of some of Clinton’s donors almost get lost in the torrent of excuse-mongering. If she is not one of the most dishonest pols of our time, than she must be a perpetual victim (no doubt of the “vast right-wing conspiracy”) or the most unlucky woman on the planet.

Since Clinton left office, controversy has swirled about the management of the Clinton Foundation. Now, thanks to the new memoir from former secretary of defense Robert Gates, it spins even faster.

lip gone stay poked out til somebody lifts a nutsack and spreads some cheeks...,

firstpost | The situation as it stands now is a mere stalemate - and totally unsatisfactory from an Indian point of view.There is clearly more we need to do to set Indo-US relations on a foundation of respect and reciprocity. We cannot let the matter rest here and there are lessons to learn from it.

First, we have to go after every US diplomat who breaks our laws with the same diligence the US does even after Khobragade is back. We have to get them booked and brought to court, though we can spare them the "cavity searches." It does not matter if the offences relate to traffic violations or underpayment of Indian staff. If we do not have a US citizen facing arrest here, we cannot have a bargaining chip to get the charges against Khobragade dropped.

Second, the measures taken against US embassy staff and others - withdrawal of liquor permits, removal of the road barriers outside the Delhi embassy, etc - should remain. These were unilateral benefits we gave without any need to do so. The US does not give us any such concessions on its territory. Nor should we. Unlike what US commentators have said, this is not about compromising security since the vigil has actually been enhanced after the removal of barriers.

Third, we have to now develop our own capabilities to track US spies operating in India under the guise of diplomacy. In Pakistan, the CIA and other US spies are tracked and checked at every point. They are watched all the time. While it is true that they (the Pakistanis) have much to hide (their terror outfits, etc), if we do not do the same it will give us no leverage. The reason why the US will not help us bring David Coleman Headley to justice for his role in 26/11 is because he was a double-agent - he spied for the US and helped the jihadis. This is the price we pay for harbouring a naïve belief that US spies operating in India have nothing but our best interests at heart. We cannot be so foolish.

Four, we have to ensure that the Richard family - which was spirited away from India under the plea that Khobragade was indulging in human trafficking and her family was under threat here - continue to face trial in Indian courts. If they can keep Khobragade away from her US husband, we should ensure that the Richards can never return here - unless it is to face justice.

Five, the special entry and freedom from frisking that we offer US officials should be withdrawn. And remain so, unless there is complete reciprocity.

a matter of prestige...,

NYTimes | The incident has uncovered a gaping cultural disconnect between the world’s two largest democracies. While Americans reflexively came to the defense of a maid who the authorities said was subjected to abuse, Indians reflexively sympathized with the diplomat.

This is partly because middle- and upper-class Indians typically have their own servants, who often work long hours for far less than the $573 a month that Ms. Khobragade had promised to pay. But the bigger reason, especially compelling in an election year, is national pride. In the month that has passed since Ms. Khobragade’s arrest, she has been transformed into a symbol of India’s sovereignty, pushed around and humiliated by an arrogant superpower.

“There is always this sense, since the end of the Soviet Union, that America is too big for its britches,” said Sandip Roy, senior editor at Firstpost, a news website. “What happened to Devyani is seen in a larger, cosmic sense as that kind of unilateral thing, like, ‘I will go and invade Afghanistan, and I don’t care what anyone thinks.’ ”

The dispute was brought to a rapid finish in the last 72 hours, in what appeared to be an effort by American officials to relax tensions.

Daniel N. Arshack, Ms. Khobragade’s lawyer in New York, agreed that once negotiations with prosecutors broke down last weekend, “this week turned into a focus on diplomatic solutions.” Mr. Arshack said that his client’s husband, a college professor, and two young daughters, ages 4 and 7, who are all American citizens, had remained in New York.

The domestic worker, Sangeeta Richard, told prosecutors that she was forced to work about 94 to 109 hours a week, with limited breaks for calls and meals, according to an indictment handed up in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Last summer, it said, Ms. Richard told Ms. Khobragade she was unhappy with the work conditions and wanted to return home, but her employer refused the request and would not return her passport.

Ms. Khobragade was arrested Dec. 12 when she was dropping off her daughters at school, and charged with misrepresenting Ms. Richard’s pay to obtain a work visa for a housekeeper. Indian newspapers reported that she was strip-searched, something Indians found especially offensive, and then kept in a police holding pen with drug addicts before being released on bond. India responded with a raft of retaliatory steps, including the removal of security barriers around the embassy in New Delhi, and the case was the lead story in the Indian news media for weeks.

On Wednesday, India granted Ms. Khobragade the full immunity and privileges of a diplomat, a set of rights not accorded those posted in consulates, as she was at the time of the arrest. Though the United States appealed to India to waive that immunity, India refused, and transferred her to a new position at the Foreign Ministry in Delhi. The State Department then told her to leave the United States, which she did Thursday night.

Ms. Khobragade’s father, Uttam Khobragade, said that his daughter was under strict orders not to give interviews, but told an anecdote that suggested she left with bitter feelings — toward Ms. Richard, toward Ms. Richard’s husband and toward the United States government.

“Devyani was seen off at the airport by an official of the State Department,” he told reporters Friday morning. “He told Devyani that, ‘Madam, I am sorry, and it was wrong.’ She told the official, ‘You have lost a good friend. It is unfortunate. In return, you got a maid and a drunken driver. They are in, and we are out.’ ” 

symbolic gestures: is the cathedral a creature of moral conscience or institutional patronage?

WaPo |  For decades, the American Studies Association labored in well-deserved obscurity. No longer. It has now made a name for itself by voting to boycott Israeli universities, accusing them of denying academic and human rights to Palestinians.

Given that Israel has a profoundly democratic political system, the freest press in the Middle East, a fiercely independent judiciary and astonishing religious and racial diversity within its universities, including affirmative action for Arab students, the charge is rather strange.

Made more so when you consider the state of human rights in Israel’s neighborhood. As we speak, Syria’s government is dropping “barrel bombs” filled with nails, shrapnel and other instruments of terror on its own cities. Where is the ASA boycott of Syria?

And of Iran, which hangs political, religious and even sexual dissidents and has no academic freedom at all? Or Egypt, where Christians are being openly persecuted? Or Turkey, Saudi Arabia or, for that matter, massively repressive China and Russia?

Which makes obvious that the ASA boycott has nothing to do with human rights. It’s an exercise in radical chic, giving marginalized academics a frisson of pretend anti-colonialism, seasoned with a dose of edgy anti-Semitism.

And don’t tell me this is merely about Zionism. The ruse is transparent. Israel is the world’s only Jewish state. To apply to the state of the Jews a double standard that you apply to none other, to judge one people in a way you judge no other, to single out that one people for condemnation and isolation — is to engage in a gross act of discrimination. 

And discrimination against Jews has a name. It’s called anti-Semitism.

since my people are better than yours, your people are expendable, deal with it!

foreignpolicy | I have been reading My Promised Land, Ari Shavit's extraordinary account of the founding and growth of Israel. It is a book one reads not simply for historical instruction but for moral guidance. Shavit is an ardent Zionist who is nevertheless imbued with a sense of Israel's tragic condition. "Tragedy," as Shavit uses it, does not refer to the suffering of the Jewish people but rather to the suffering -- the unavoidable suffering -- of the Palestinian people as a result of the Zionist project. In his narrative of the brutal conquest of the Arab city of Lydda by Israeli forces in May 1948, Shavit returns again and again to the idealistic, even utopian young men who killed Arab civilians and forced the entire population into a death march in the desert. Their anguish, shame, confusion is Shavit's own; and so is their acknowledgment that it could not have been otherwise. Both conquest and expulsion "were an inevitable phase of the Zionist revolution that laid the foundation for the Zionist state." No Lydda, no Israel. 

What would it mean for an American to apply this tragic understanding to his own circumstances? In regard to the national founding, the analogy to Israel is glaringly obvious. If the American pioneers had accepted that the indigenous people they found on the continent were not simply features of the landscape but people like themselves, and thus had agreed to occupy only those spaces not already claimed by the Indians, then today's America would be confined to a narrow band along the Eastern seaboard. No Indian wars, no America. And yet, like slavery, the wars and the forced resettlement constitute a terrible reproach to the founders' belief that America was a uniquely just and noble experiment. 

But when I say that I am reading Shavit for moral guidance, I'm thinking of the American present, not just the past. The tragic sense is largely alien to Americans, and to American policymakers. Americans have an almost unique faith in the malleability of the world, and of the intrinsic appeal of their own principles (a faith which Shavit writes that Israel's settlers shared until the Palestinians first rose up against them in 1936). In Diplomacy, Henry Kissinger argued that all American presidents from the time of Woodrow Wilson (possibly excepting his own pupil, Richard Nixon) have been idealists, because the American people refuse to elect someone who speaks the tragic language of 19th century European statecraft.

zionist terrorism drove the creation of the british surveillance state

foreignpolicy | Recently declassified intelligence records reveal that at the end of the war the main priority for MI5 was the threat of terrorism emanating from the Middle East, specifically from the two main Zionist terrorist groups operating in the Mandate of Palestine, which had been placed under British control in 1921. They were called the Irgun Zevai Leumi ("National Military Organization," or the Irgun for short) and the Lehi (an acronym in Hebrew for "Freedom Fighters of Israel"), which the British also termed the "Stern Gang," after its founding leader, Avraham Stern. The Irgun and the Stern Gang believed that British policies in Palestine in the post-war years -- blocking the creation of an independent Jewish state -- legitimized the use of violence against British targets. MI5's involvement with counterterrorism, which preoccupies it down to the present day, arose in the immediate post-war years when it dealt with the Irgun and Stern Gang. 

MI5's involvement in dealing with Zionist terrorism offers a striking new interpretation of the history of the early Cold War. For the entire duration of the Cold War, the overwhelming priority for the intelligence services of Britain and other Western powers would lie with counterespionage, but as we can now see, in the crucial transition period from World War to Cold War, MI5 was instead primarily concerned with counterterrorism. 

As World War II came to a close, MI5 received a stream of intelligence reports warning that the Irgun and the Stern Gang were not just planning violence in the Mandate of Palestine, but were also plotting to launch attacks inside Britain. In April 1945 an urgent cable from MI5's outfit in the Middle East, SIME, warned that Victory in Europe (VE-Day) would be a D-Day for Jewish terrorists in the Middle East. Then, in the spring and summer of 1946, coinciding with a sharp escalation of anti-British violence in Palestine, MI5 received apparently reliable reports from SIME that the Irgun and the Stern Gang were planning to send five terrorist "cells" to London, "to work on IRA lines." To use their own words, the terrorists intended to "beat the dog in his own kennel." The SIME reports were derived from the interrogation of captured Irgun and Stern Gang fighters, from local police agents in Palestine, and from liaisons with official Zionist political groups like the Jewish Agency. They stated that among the targets for assassination were Britain's foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, who was regarded as the main obstacle to the establishment of a Jewish state in the Middle East, and the prime minister himself. MI5's new director-general, Sir Percy Sillitoe, was so alarmed that in August 1946 he personally briefed the prime minister on the situation, warning him that an assassination campaign in Britain had to be considered a real possibility, and that his own name was known to be on a Stern Gang hit list.

new delhi better stop flinging feces and shell out for a competent attorney instead...,

timesofindia | In a major setback to Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade, a federal judge has rejected her plea to extend the January 13 deadline for a preliminary hearing on the visa fraud issue, the date by when she has to be charged.

Shortly after the issuance of the order in which the judge said "good cause" has not been demonstrated in the plea, Khobragade's laywer Daniel Arshack said he is "considering" other options.

The three-page order, by which Khobragade will have to appear in court, means the indictment against her will now have to filed before or on January 13. It was issued late yesterday.

"We are considering our options," Khobragade's lawyer Daniel Arshack told PTI when asked about the request for extending the indictment deadline being denied by the judge. He did not elaborate.

However, sources said one of the options Khobragade, 39, now has is to file another motion in court seeking extension of the indictment deadline and preliminary hearing.

In her order, magistrate judge Sarah Netburn of the US district court for the southern district of New York said adjournment of the date will not grant her the "relief she seeks" regarding plea negotiations between her and the government to resolve the visa fraud case.

been tryna tell you valodya not scurred...,

caseyresearch | In the global war for energy supremacy, Russia has won another victory over the United States.

This time, the battleground has been South Africa, where Russia's state-owned nuclear power company, Rosatom, has just signed an agreement to build eight new reactors. Once all of them are operational, South Africa's nuclear capacity will increase more than sixfold—from 1.8 gigawatts (GW) to 11.4 GW over the next 15 years.

This means that Russia will help develop the entirety of South Africa's nuclear energy sector, including financing and training.

And just as importantly, South Africa will be using Russia's nuclear fuel.

Rosatom has been busy signing these types of deals with other foreign countries as well—Finland, Turkey, Ukraine, even the United Kingdom—which guarantees that Russia will be able to keep a stranglehold on these countries' nuclear industries.

The strategy is clear: Rosatom is aiming to become the world's largest supplier of uranium in the coming years.

Remember what we said about the ongoing "Putinization" of Europe's oil and gas; how Russia is planning to leverage its control over Europe's energy to gain political and economic benefits?

The same thing is happening in uranium, except the stakes are even higher—because Putin is now looking to dominate the global nuclear market.

Russia and the former Soviet nations (colloquially called "the -stans") already control nearly half of the world's uranium supply:

from happy days to oil apocalypse as brazil clings to petrobras...,

dailyimpact | Here’s what they were saying about Brazil six years ago: it was entering a new oil bonanza, it was going to be bigger than Saudi Arabia, it was going to enjoy energy independence, all the graphs of oil production were going straight up, through the roof, to the moon, Alice. It’s oil reserves were 50 billion…no, 100 billion…wait, 240 billion barrels. (How do you sing “Happy Days are Here Again” in Portuguese?)

Sound familiar? Sound like what the same folks are saying about the United States today? Funny how they’re not singing about feliz dias in Brazil any more. How did things work out for them down there?

Not good, according to a long piece in the Washington Post yesterday. Oil production is flat or falling; Imports of gasoline, sold to the public below cost to prevent inflation (and revolution) are climbing; the state oil company, Petrobras, is debt-ridden and has lost one-third of its value on the stock market; the second-largest oil company, OGX, declared bankruptcy in October.

The euphoria was based on the “discovery” of vast new oil “reserves.” (In Portuguese, the root words from which “discovery” and “reserves” are derived also translate as “a vague hope there’s something down there.” This is also true of Arabic and English, as spoken in the oil patch.)

The newly discovered Brazilian “reserves” were under a mile and a half of water, plus two miles of rock, and another mile and a half of salt. Drilling into this oil and getting it to market would require the most expensive and difficult corporate project in the world, at an estimated cost of $237 billion. Still, as Brazil’s president declared at the time of the “discoveries,” it seemed Brazil had won the lottery.

They must have misplaced the winning ticket.

Explanations abound for the sad state of the Brazilian bonanza. A favorite: onerous government regulation of Petrobras. For example, Petrobras is required to build its drilling platforms, ships and heavy equipment in Brazil, which has created jobs but has not guaranteed that the jobs will be done well, efficiently or on time. Losses on gasoline imports have cost the company $20 billion since 2006. Brighter prospects in America have lured away flighty investors. And there is some truth to all these excuses.

But the real problem is dry wells. For all its titanic struggles, massive spending and relentless optimism, Petrobras is managing to wring a paltry 300,000 barrels of oil per day from its vast undersea “reserves.” In 2008 OGX raised more than $4 billion dollars, in Brazil’s largest ever initial public offering of stock, for drilling in the deep blue sea. It went bankrupt last year because the wells it drilled didn’t hit oil.

north america to drown in oil as mexico begins denationalizing pemex...,

bloomberg |  The flood of North American crude oil is set to become a deluge as Mexico dismantles a 75-year-old barrier to foreign investment in its oil fields. 

Plagued by almost a decade of slumping output that has degraded Mexico’s take from a $100-a-barrel oil market, President Enrique Pena Nieto is seeking an end to the state monopoly over one of the biggest crude resources in the Western Hemisphere. The doubling in Mexican oil output that Citigroup Inc. said may result from inviting international explorers to drill would be equivalent to adding another Nigeria to world supply, or about 2.5 million barrels a day. 

That boom would augment a supply surge from U.S. and Canadian wells that Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) predicts will vault North American production ahead of every OPEC member except Saudi Arabia within two years. With U.S. refineries already choking on more oil than they can process, producers from Exxon to ConocoPhillips are clamoring for repeal of the export restrictions that have outlawed most overseas sales of American crude for four decades. 

“This is going to be a huge opportunity for any kind of player” in the energy sector, said Pablo Medina, a Latin American upstream analyst at Wood Mackenzie Ltd. in Houston. “All the companies are going to have to turn their heads and start analyzing Mexico.” 

Unprecedented Output  

An influx of Mexican oil would contribute to a glut that is expected to lower the price of Brent crude, the benchmark for more than half the world’s crude that has averaged $108.62 a barrel this year, to as low as $88 a barrel in 2017, based on estimates from analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Five of the seven analysts who provided 2017 forecasts said prices would be lower than this year. 

The revolution in shale drilling that boosted U.S. oil output to a 25-year high this month will allow North America to join the ranks of the world’s crude-exporting continents by 2040, Exxon said in its annual global energy forecast on Dec. 12. Europe and the Asia-Pacific region will be the sole crude import markets by that date, the Irving, Texas-based energy producer said. 

Related: Oil Supply Surge Brings Calls to Ease U.S. Export Ban

Exxon’s forecast, compiled annually by a team of company economists, scientists and engineers, didn’t take into account any changes in Mexico, William Colton, the company’s vice president of strategic planning, said during a presentation at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Dec. 12. 

Opening Mexico’s oilfields to foreign investment would be “a win-win if ever there was one,” said Colton, who described the move as “very good for the people of Mexico and people everywhere in the world who use energy.”

speaking of busted beezies in an intellectually bankrupt and utterly hypocritical Cathedral....,

Robert Gates called out Hellury's gross inconsistency on the GWOT much as Gov. Brian Schweitzer did.

dailymail | Hillary Rodham Clinton, a likely Democratic Party standard-bearer in the 2016 presidential contest, staked out her military-related positions in the 2008 race based on how they would play politically, according to a former secretary of defense who served in both the Obama and Bush administrations.

Describing a 'remarkable' exchange he witnessed, Robert Gates writes in a book due out next week that 'Hillary told the president that her opposition to the [2007] surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary.'

Obama, too, 'conceded vaguely that [his] opposition to the Iraq surge had been political,' Gates recounts. 'To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying.'

And Gates recounts how, as the president lost faith in Gen. David Petraeus' handling of hostilities in Afghanistan, he – Gates – lost faith in Obama's commitment to accomplishing much of anything.

'As I sat there,' he recalls, 'I thought: The president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand [President Hamid] Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy and doesn’t consider the war to be his.'

'For him, it’s all about getting out.'

serious public intellectuals address the educated masses and bring serious heat

Michelle Alexander is a civil rights attorney. She has serious vocational skills, i.e., independence and the capacity to pay the bills - when and if she says unpopular things or speaks truth to power.  She has powerfully documented unpopular history, practice, and facts that directly speak truth to power - and done so in a way that is broadly accessible to the American public.

These are minimum baseline requirements for serious public intellectuals, doing serious work for the common good.

Compare and contrast that with booboo the fool who was crying and reading a tele-prompted apology to the Romneys this past Saturday morning. When it's your job to compromise, clown, and entertain to fill up time on teevee, when you're answerable to a media boss, and when you lack legitimate skills to practice or teach a trade independent of a patron i.e., when your scholarship is in the dubious fields of gender, race, or sexual identity (subjects which don't even qualify as liberal arts humanities) and which guarantee the requirement of a patron who wants to use you as an organ of propaganda - YOU DON'T QUALIFY AS A SERIOUS PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL PERIOD. 

For damn certain nothing remotely approaching America's foremost public intellectual, and anybody pretending otherwise in public is simply exhibiting their own intellectual failings - until of course they get their ass handed to them in their own disqus comments which they then promptly and predictably close to forestall further humiliation....,

america's foremost public intellectual on the drug war...,

rawstory | “There are things,” Chomsky said, “the white liberal establishment just doesn’t want to be part of history.”

Another aspect of American history that was “blanked out” was “the criminalizing of black life.” He noted that abolition robbed the industrial class of cheap labor, and [they] needed a way to replace it. “Slaves were capital, but if you could imprisoned labor, states could utilize them — you get a disciplined, extremely cheap labor force that you don’t have to pay for.”

“Part of the whole industrial revival was based on the reinstitution of slave labor. That went on until the start of the Second World War,” he continued, “after which black men and women were able to work their way into the labor force, the war industries.”

“Then came two decades, the ’50s and the ’60s, of substantial economic growth. Also, egalitarian growth — the lower quintile did about the same as the upper quintile, and the black population was able to work its way into the society. They could work in the auto factories, make some money, buy a house. And over the course of those same 20 years the Civil Rights Movement took off.”

After correlating the rise of the Civil Rights Movement with the establishment of a black middle class, Chomsky went on to claim that it was on the issue of class that the black liberation movements stalled.

“The black movement hit a limit as soon as it turned to class issue,” he said. “There is a close class-race correlation, but as the black and increasingly Latino issues…began to reach up against the class barriers, there was a big reaction. Part of it was reinstitution of the criminalization of the black population in the late 1970s.” 

“If you take a look at the incarceration rate in the United States, around 1980 it was approximately the same as the rest of developed society. By now, it’s out of sight — it’s five-to-ten times as high as the rest of wealthy societies.” 

“It’s not based on crime,” Chomsky continued. “The device that was used to recriminalize the black population was drugs. The drug wars are fraud — a total fraud. They have nothing to do with drugs, the price of drugs doesn’t change. What the drug war has succeeded in doing is to criminalize the poor. And the poor in the United States happen to be overwhelming black and Latino.”

Chomsky then made his most explosive statement, claiming that the war on drugs is, in fact, “a race war.”

why did the correctional population start to rise in the 1980's together with the onset of neoliberalism?

bnarchives | The United States is often hailed as the world's largest 'free market'. But this 'free market' is also the world's largest penal colony. It holds over seven million adults – roughly five per cent of the labour force – in jail, in prison, on parole and on probation. Is this an anomaly, or does the 'free market' require massive state punishment? Why did the correctional population start to rise in the 1980s, together with the onset of neoliberalism? How is this increase related to the upward redistribution of income and the capitalization of power? Can soaring incarceration sustain the unprecedented power of dominant capital, or is there a reversal in the offing? The paper examines these questions by juxtaposing the ‘Rusche thesis’ with the notion of capitalism as a mode of power. The empirical analysis suggests that the Rusche thesis holds under the normal circumstances of ‘business as usual’, but breaks down during periods of systemic crisis. During the systemic crises of the 1930s and the 2000s, unemployment increased sharply, but crime and the severity of punishment, instead of rising, dropped perceptibly.

the last gasp of american democracy

truthdig |  This is our last gasp as a democracy. The state’s wholesale intrusion into our lives and obliteration of privacy are now facts. And the challenge to us—one of the final ones, I suspect—is to rise up in outrage and halt this seizure of our rights to liberty and free expression. If we do not do so we will see ourselves become a nation of captives.

The public debates about the government’s measures to prevent terrorism, the character assassination of Edward Snowden and his supporters, the assurances by the powerful that no one is abusing the massive collection and storage of our electronic communications miss the point. Any state that has the capacity to monitor all its citizenry, any state that has the ability to snuff out factual public debate through control of information, any state that has the tools to instantly shut down all dissent is totalitarian. Our corporate state may not use this power today. But it will use it if it feels threatened by a population made restive by its corruption, ineptitude and mounting repression. The moment a popular movement arises—and one will arise—that truly confronts our corporate masters, our venal system of total surveillance will be thrust into overdrive. 

The most radical evil, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, is the political system that effectively crushes its marginalized and harassed opponents and, through fear and the obliteration of privacy, incapacitates everyone else. Our system of mass surveillance is the machine by which this radical evil will be activated. If we do not immediately dismantle the security and surveillance apparatus, there will be no investigative journalism or judicial oversight to address abuse of power. There will be no organized dissent. There will be no independent thought. Criticisms, however tepid, will be treated as acts of subversion. And the security apparatus will blanket the body politic like black mold until even the banal and ridiculous become concerns of national security. 

walt disney: family planning

openculture | In 1951, Carl Djerassi, a chemist working in an obscure lab in Mexico City, created the first progesterone pill. Little did he know that, a decade later, 1.2 million women would be “on the Pill” in America, exercising unprecedented control over their reproductive rights. By 1967, that number would reach 12.5 million women worldwide. It was fortuitous timing, seeing that the post-war global population was starting to surge. It took 125 years (1800-1925) for the global population to move from one billion to two billion (see historical chart), but only 35 years (1925-1960) for that number to reach three billion. Non-profits like the Population Council were founded to think through emerging population questions, and by the mid-1960s, they began publishing a peer-reviewed journal called Studies in Family Planning and also working with Walt Disney to produce a 10-minute educational cartoon. You can watch Family Planning above.

walt disney: the story of menstruation

openculture | Throughout the past two years, we’ve shown you various Walt Disney propaganda films from World War II. Now it’s time to visit a very different mid-1940s Disney production – The Story of Menstruation. From 1945 to 1951, Disney produced a series of educational films to be shown in American schools. How to bathe an infant. How not to catch a cold. Why you shouldn’t drive fast. Disney covered these subjects in its educational shorts, and then eventually got to the touchy subject of biology and sexuality. If there was ever a company suited to talk about “vaginas” in the 1940s in a copacetic way, it was Disney. Hence The Story of Menstruation. The film runs 10 minutes, combining scientific facts with hygiene tips, and it was actually commissioned by the International Cello-Cotton Company, the forerunner of Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Kotex products. An estimated 105 million students watched the film in sex ed classes across the US. And, according to Tinker Belles and Evil Queens, the film remained a mainstay in schools until the 1960s. It’s now in the public domain. And you’ll find it in the Animation section of our collection of 475 Free Online Movies.