gatestoneinstitute | The US nominally enshrines
the most far-reaching freedom of speech, thanks to the First Amendment
of the Constitution. Yet the average number of Americans who self-censor
is slowly beginning to approximate that of Germany, where... "Nearly
two-thirds of citizens are convinced that 'today one has to be very
careful on which topics one expresses oneself', because there are many
unwritten laws about what opinions are acceptable and admissible".
It is, however, not surprising. American campuses have steered a
"leftist" course for decades. The tilt has had familiar consequences:
the proliferation on campus of "safe spaces", trigger warnings,
de-platforming of conservative voices and a "cancel culture" aimed at
professors and students who do not conform to an on-campus political
orthodoxy that has become increasingly totalitarian. Most recently, the
dean of University of Massachusetts Lowell's School of Nursing, Leslie
Neal-Boylan, was fired by the school after writing "Black lives matter,
but also everyone's life matters" in an email to students and faculty.
When citizens stop voicing their concerns in public about current
events, policies and ideas out of fear that they will lose their
livelihoods and social standing, it is -- or should be -- a huge problem
in a democracy.
A democratic society of fearful citizens who dare not speak about
what is on their minds -- often important issues of their time -- is
doomed to succumb to the will of those who bully the hardest and shout
the loudest.
A recent survey
of 2,000 Americans by Cato Institute/YouGov found that 62% of Americans
say "the political climate these days prevents them from saying things
they believe because others might find them offensive". This is up from 2017,
when 58% agreed with this statement. "Majorities of Democrats (52%),
independents (59%) and Republicans (77%) all agree they have political
opinions they are afraid to share".
People who defined themselves as staunch liberals self-censored considerably less:
off-guardian | New rules passing in the Australian state of Victoria
could see “conspiracy theorists” and those “suspected by health
authorities of being likely to spread the virus” detained in quarantine
centres, according to The Age
The rules are amendments being added to the Omnibus (Emergency Measures) Bill, which was first passed back in April.
The proposed detention would last “for the period reasonably necessary to eliminate or reduce a serious risk to public health”.
To translate that from bureaucrat into English: it means as for long as they want, or can get away with.
Legislation with this kind of vague verbiage is always a red flag,
but then Victoria is currently over-flowing with warning signs of this
kind.
Victoria – The World’s Fascist Test Run?
Maybe you haven’t been following exactly how bad things are getting
in Australia – and most especially Victoria – but they have essentially
aggressively seized their opportunity to create a fascist micro-state. A
social Petri dish, in which to culture some tyranny.
They have declared both a “state of emergency” AND a “state of
disaster” for a disease which has killed fewer than a thousand people in
9 months across the entire country.
Though notionally intended to be “temporary measures” which only
lasted six weeks, they have already extended that timeline for a further
six months. There is some planned “loosening” of these restrictions, but with such vague and mutable conditions it’s unlikely this “new normal” is going away.
Indeed the “emergency” is so comparatively minor that this precedent
means almost any future event can be designated a “disaster” or
“emergency”, and used as excuse to impose authoritarian social controls.
NYPost | CNBC host Jim Cramer called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “Crazy Nancy”
to her face during an interview on Tuesday morning — a taunt for the
California liberal typically used by President Trump.
The outlandish host of “Mad Money” and former hedge fund manager was interviewing Pelosi on stalled negotiations on a fourth coronavirus stimulus package when the insult appeared to slip out.
“What deal can we have, Crazy Nancy — I’m sorry, that was the
president,” Cramer said, scrambling to fix the situation. “I have such
reverence for the office, I would never use that term.”
Pelosi (D-Calif.) kept her composure but looked less than pleased, telling Cramer: “But you just did. But you just did.”
“Oh come on, you know what I mean,” the CNBC anchor replied, trying to turn the embarrassing episode into a joke.
Cramer’s name immediately began trending on Twitter as clips of the
exchange circulated online — with one pundit calling for the 65-year-old
to be fired.
“If Jim Cramer is allowed by CNBC to speak to a woman, on tv, who is
the #SpeakeroftheHouse it shows that CNBC has no respect for women in
this country,” wrote actress Suzanne Cryer.
“It cannot be tolerated. She deserves his respect. Women deserve respect. Jim Cramer should be fire,” she added.
NYTimes |You performed at one of Chappelle’s live shows in July. What was that like for you?
When
you’re in the clubs, you learn the rain crowd is the best crowd. Any
time it’s raining, they really want to be there. The pandemic crowd is really good. “Dude, not only do we want to be here, there is nothing else to do. There’s nothing else to watch. Thank you.”
What did you talk about?
I
talked about our political whatever. America. Part of the reason we’re
in the predicament we’re in is, the president’s a landlord. No one has
less compassion for humans than a landlord. [Laughs.] And we’re shocked
he’s not engaged.
Did you ever see that movie “The Last Emperor,” where
like a 5-year-old is the emperor of China? There’s a kid and he’s the
king. So I’m like, it’s all the Democrats’ fault. Because you knew that
the emperor was 5 years old. And when the emperor’s 5 years old, they
only lead in theory. There’s usually an adult who’s like, “OK, this is
what we’re really going to do.”
And it was totally up to Pelosi and the Democrats. Their thing was,
“We’re going to get him impeached,” which was never going to happen. You
let the pandemic come in. Yes, we can blame Trump, but he’s really the
5-year-old.
Put it this way:
Republicans tell outright lies. Democrats leave out key pieces of the
truth that would lead to a more nuanced argument. In a sense, it’s all
fake news.
summit |GOP Senator John Kennedy used a startling cultural reference
to portray his belief that believes Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is
crazy, saying that he often thinks she has ‘is one of those people who
tried Tide Pods’ laundry detergent.
Appearing with Sean Hannity, Kennedy was addressing Pelosi’s obsession with the $3.4 trillion coronavirus bill.
“Sean, with respect, there are times, particularly recently, when I
think Speaker Pelosi is one of those people who tried Tide pods,”
Kennedy hilariously stated.
“I want you to think about what she proposed today, this is what the
speaker is threatening to do,” he continued, adding “She is threatening
to keep the House Democrats in session and prevent them from going home
and running for reelection unless the Senate Republicans agree to the
speaker’s $3.4 trillion coronavirus bill.”
“On the one hand we can vote for Pelosi’s $3.4 trillion bill or we
can agree to allow her to put the House Democratic majority into
jeopardy. That’s just bone deep down to the marrow foolish,” Kennedy
urged.
Kennedy further emphasised that Nothing is going to get done while
the Democrats refuse to back down over something that is never going to
come to fruition.
“Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi aren’t going to agree to anything
until we agree to spend a trillion dollars bailing out New York and
California and that’s not going to happen in your or my natural life,”
Kennedy added.
thehill |The campaign group Latinos for Trump on Wednesday tweeted an ad bringing attention to previous claims of inappropriate touching by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden using the Spanish-language pop song “Despacito,” referencing a Tuesday address the nominee gave at a Hispanic Heritage Month celebration in Florida.
“Actually,
‘Despacito’ is the perfect song for Joe Biden,” the group said in a
tweet, along with a video that begins with Biden playing the hit song
from his phone after being introduced at the campaign event by the
song’s singer, Luis Fonsi.
The
video then includes footage of Biden putting his arms over women at
public events, along with lyrics of the song translated into English: “I
want to breathe slowly on your neck” and “let me whisper in your ear.”
In
the interview, Flores said that at the event, she could “feel Joe Biden
put his hands on my shoulders, get up very close to me from behind,
lean in, smell my hair and then plant a slow kiss on the top of my
head.”
After more women came forward with similar claims in 2019, Biden released a video in which he did not directly apologize for his past behavior, but said he would be more mindful of women’s personal space.
“Social
norms have begun to change, they’ve shifted, and the boundaries of
protecting personal space have been reset, and I get it,” he said in the
video. “I hear what they’re saying. I understand it. I’ll be much more
mindful. That’s my responsibility, and I’ll meet it.”
nypost | President Trump on Sunday made his case to Hispanic voters at a
“Latinos for Trump” roundtable in Las Vegas — often at the expense of
his Democratic challenger.
“While Joe Biden failed Hispanic-Americans, I’ve delivered for
Hispanic-Americans more than any other president,” Trump said. “I’m
fighting for you every single day, and you understand that better than
anybody.”
Touting his “unwavering devotion” to the Latino community, Trump
specifically cited his administration’s cuts of taxes and regulations,
and the speed with which the economy has bounced back following the
worst of the coronavirus shutdown.
But Trump also picked up where he left off at a Saturday night rally in Reno, Nev., slamming the record of former Vice President Biden.
“Joe Biden has spent 47 years betrayed the Hispanic-American
community totally, sending their jobs to China, raising taxes on their
family and small businesses, making their communities less safe,
attacking their values and trapping their children in failing government
schools,” Trump charged.
“He’s in his basement right now and he’s saying, ‘What do I do?'”
metrotimes | Since he left office in 2019, former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has
largely kept a low profile. But on Thursday, the Republican broke his
silence to to announce in a USA Today op-ed that he was bucking his party and endorsing Democratic candidate Joe Biden for president.
In the op-ed, Snyder called President Donald Trump a "bully" who "lacks a moral compass" and "ignores the truth."
"As a proud nerd, I had to deal with bullies over many years; it
is tragedy watching our world suffer from one," Snyder wrote.
The thing about tragedies, though, is that they can be wrought even by nerds like Snyder.
His greatest claim to infamy, of course, is his administration's
handling of the Flint water crisis, which was a direct result of
Michigan's emergency manager law. The people of Michigan rejected a
similar law at the ballot in 2012; when that happened, Snyder and the
Republican-led Congress just rammed through a new version that couldn't
be rejected by voters. Then, while under emergency management, the city
of Flint made the disastrous decision to switch its water supply — which
led to its drinking water being poisoned with lead, harming thousands.
Even worse, a bombshell VICE report
published earlier this year suggests a coordinated, years-long cover-up
of the crisis that goes all the way up to Snyder, who may have known
about the crisis much earlier than he testified.
Unsurprisingly, as Snyder's public profile was soured in the wake of the crisis, he has called for a return to "civility" in political discourse. But as the statute of limitations for criminal charges in the Flint crisis passed in April, followed by Michigan announcing a massive $600 million settlement for the victims in August, Snyder remained off the hook.
Yesterday morning I read back to back dissertations on the Green Economy and the Green New Deal from the Brookings (neoliberal fascist) and Open Democracy (center left) respectively. These got me thinking about the overarching objectives of the entire Great Reset Operation, the tools it has employed over the past three years for human livestock management, and, its endlessly escalating opposition to MAGA or Brexit nationalism.
In the area of endless escalation, the abrupt impoverishment of tens of millions via unnecessary quarantines and lockdowns, billowing political and interpersonal polarization fast approaching civil war/race war, and the use of engineered biological agents (which presumably can be ratcheted up to increasing levels of contagiousness and lethality) - all point toward an endgame that is far more drastic than anything currently countenanced in the mainstream narrative. We're not talking here about a "new normal", instead, we're talking about mass starvation, everyone against everyone ultraviolence, and when austerity gets REALLY severe, cannibalism.
Central Banks are fighting a battle they will lose. Conventional (easy cheap oil) peaked in 2005. To compensate for that we smash rocks and suck out the oil --- we steam oil out of sand - and we drill miles beneath the ocean for oil. The EROEI from those extractive methods is very low. At the moment, we still have enough high energy return oil to subsidize those methods so
civilization continues. (with greatly reduced travel, disrupted supply chains, and massive amounts of stimulus to help cope with the low EROEI oil mix.
The global
economy does NOT like low energy return oil because it leaves less to
run the world. In 2019 shale oil was peaking so the stop-gap, make-work party was ending. At that time, political elites began handwaving toward Universal Basic Income and Modern Monetary Theory to prep us for what we are experiencing now. They trotted out pasty and uncharismatic Greta Thunberg to exhort us about shutting down the planet.
Meanwhile and in parallel we get the MAGA man and his competing exhortations to take America back to 1954 along every politically expedient metric. At that point, in his "greatest economy ever" spiel, he could point to a periodic glut and claim 'we are
swimming in oil'. A glut does not mean we have found more oil - it
simply means producers are pumping their reserves out faster. They
usually do this when prices are low as they need
the cash flow to pay the bills so they need to push our more volume. The truth is that there is very little new oil being
found. What would you do if you were on your last tank of gas? Of
course you would ration it.
Enter Covid and the Great Reset. Covid was created in a lab to provide cover for the collapsing energy availability "new normal". Covid has provided mimetic cover under authority of science for central banks to roll out MMT UBI Helicopter
Money. In addition, we are being groomed to accept
lockdowns. Anyone who resists is met with a big fine, arrest and in
some countries beatings. Your neighbour will be told by the
authorities to rat on you going forward. Why? Because when the Central Banks and their puppet politicians lose control of this situation they will enact martial
law -- a total lockdown. (the police state pincer movement)
For a time there may be food delivery pacification to those in the most extreme condition, but like stimulus checks and the MMT UBI, these will stop in fairly short order too. Politicians will promise 'the deliveries will resume in a couple of
days'. Like good sheep, you will trust these sock puppet rascals and wait... and wait...
and wait... and when you realize there is
no food coming you will be too weak and exhausted to do anything. In any event there will be nothing you can do - there will be no food
because the system has collapsed.
This will be for your own good. Resisting is futile. Nobody wants
extreme violence and cannibalism. You and your family will lie down
and wait to die from starvation.
americanmind | Michael Anton’s new article “The Coming Coup?” went viral almost as soon as we posted it a week ago today. This is not simply because figures like Lara Logan, Mollie Hemingway, Newt Gingrich, Dan Bongino, and the editors of the New York Post
took note. It spread because concerned citizens began sharing it
throughout the nation. We could tell it was especially effective because
so many in the mainstream media maintained studious radio silence.
But hyperventilating ruling-class supporters of the Biden/BLM/Antifa
coalition did predictably lash out. The epitome of these reactions is an
article in New York magazine’s Intelligencer, by political columnist Ed Kilgore, entitled “Trump Backers Make Case for Stealing Election, Before Biden Gets the Chance.”
The title itself reveals the stubborn simplicity of the Democratic
Party’s coup narrative. Their elites have worked themselves and their
base into a frothing lather of existential fright. In article after
article, liberal intellectuals and activists have been talking for
months about how Trump could steal the election or refuse to leave the White House even if he loses. But if the Right dares to point out that Democrats are actually changing the rules of the electoral process and actually speaking publicly about refusing to concede even if they lose, well, this only proves that the Right is going to steal the election and refuse to concede if they lose!
Counterpunch | Entitled Future Strategic Issues/Future Warfare [Circa 2025],
the PowerPoint presentation anticipates: a) scenarios created by U.S.
forces and agencies and b) scenarios to which they might have to
respond. The projection is contingent on the use of hi-technology. According to the report
there are/will be six Technological Ages of Humankind: “Hunter/killer
groups (sic) [million BC-10K BC]; Agriculture [10K BC-1800 AD];
Industrial [1800-1950]; IT [1950-2020]; Bio/Nano [2020-?]; Virtual.”
In the past, “Hunter/gatherer” groups fought over “hunting grounds”
against other “tribal bands” and used “handheld/thrown” weapons. In the
agricultural era, “professional armies” also used “handheld/thrown”
weapons to fight over “farm lands.” In the industrial era, conscripted
armies fought over “natural resources,” using “mechanical and chemical”
weapons. In our time, “IT/Bio/Bots” (robots) are used to prevent
“societal disruption.” The new enemy is “everyone.” “Everyone.”
Similarly, a British Ministry of Defence projection to the year 2050 states: “Warfare could become ever more personalised with individuals and their families being targeted in novel ways.”
“KNOWLEDGE DOMINANCE”
The war on you is the militarization of everyday life with the
express goal of controlling society, including your thoughts and
actions.
A U.S. Army document
on information operations from 2003 specifically cites activists as
potential threats to elite interests. “Nonstate actors, ranging from
drug cartels to social activists, are taking advantage of the
possibilities the information environment offers,” particularly with the
commercialization of the internet. “Info dominance” as the Space
Command calls it can counter these threats: “these actors use the
international news media to attempt to influence global public opinion
and shape decision-maker perceptions.” Founded in 1977, the U.S. Army
Intelligence and Security Command featured an Information Dominance Center, itself founded in 1999 by the private, veteran-owned company, IIT.
“Information Operations in support of civil-military interactions is
becoming increasingly more important as non-kinetic courses-of-action
are required,” wrote two researchers for the military in 1999. They also
said
that information operations, as defined by the Joint Chiefs of Staff JP
3-13 (1998) publication, “are aimed at influencing the information and
information systems of an adversary.” They also confirm that “[s]uch
operations require the continuous and close integration of offensive and
defensive activities … and may involve public and civil affairs-related
actions.” They conclude: “This capability begins the transition from
Information Dominance to Knowledge Dominance.”
“ATTUNED TO DISPARITIES”
The lines between law enforcement and militarism are blurred, as are
the lines between military technology and civilian technology. Some
police forces carry military-grade weapons. The same satellites that
enable us to use smartphones enable the armed forces to operate.
In a projection out to the year 2036, the British Ministry of Defence says that “[t]he clear distinction between combatants and non-combatants will be increasingly difficult to discern,” as “the urban poor will be employed in the informal sector and will
be highly vulnerable to externally-derived economic shocks and illicit
exploitation” (emphasize in original). This comes as Boris Johnson
threatens to criminalize Extinction Rebellion and Donald Trump labels
Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists.
In 2017, the U.S. Army published The Operational Environment and the Changing Character of Future Warfare. The report reads:
“The convergence of more information and more people with fewer state
resources will constrain governments’ efforts to address rampant
poverty, violence, and pollution, and create a breeding ground for
dissatisfaction among increasingly aware, yet still disempowered
populations.”
theintercept |In August, 40 federal agents arrived
in Memphis. Some were already on the ground by the time U.S. Attorney
Michael Dunavant announced the onset of Operation Legend and the city
became, along with St. Louis, the seventh to be targeted by the Justice
Department’s heavy-handed initiative to reduce violent crime. Many of
the agents are on temporary assignment, working in collaboration with
police; nearly half will relocate by November. But they will leave
behind a city flush with grant money for local police — and heightened
surveillance capabilities.
In Memphis, organizers have long battled police surveillance.
The fight came to a head in 2017, when a lawsuit against the city of
Memphis revealed years of close surveillance of Black Lives Matter
activists and union organizers. “We knew we were being watched and
monitored and surveilled,” said Hunter Demster, an activist who was
tracked on social media by MPD. The suit was successful, and in 2018, a
federal judge ordered an independent monitor to oversee policing in the
city. Now, activists there say that Operation Legend is a serious blow.
Operation Legend and its December precursor,
Operation Relentless Pursuit, are both funding surveillance technology
in cities across the country. Through Operation Legend, Memphis and four
other cities received grants for gunshot detection technology, which
lines cities with sensors to detect gunfire, despite longstanding
concerns about its efficacy. Other more opaque grants from the Justice
Department, like a $1.4 million grant to Shelby County, which surrounds
Memphis, in April and a $1 million grant in July to the city of
Cleveland, are to be used in part for “technological solutions” or
“support” for investigations.
Awash in these federal funds, cities have doubled down on their
surveillance investments, even as they face general budget shortfalls in
the tens of millions.
On August 4, two days before Operation Legend was formally announced in
the city, Memphis signed a new contract with Cellebrite, an Israeli forensics manufacturer
popular with law enforcement, whose products can hack and extract data
from smartphones. The estimated $65,000 contract would double previous
annual spending on the technology, per city procurement records. The
Memphis police declined an interview request for this story and did not
respond to several additional inquiries about the purchases.
logically | A
Logically investigation identifies a key QAnon figure as New Jersey
resident Jason Gelinas. The investigation ties QAnon properties to a
company owned by Gelinas, an information technology specialist who has
held prominent positions at both Credit Suisse and Citigroup.
Ever since the shadowy figure known as
Q made his first appearance on the 4chan imageboard in October of 2017,
the author’s identity has remained a mystery. Since then, Q has posted
thousands of ‘drops,’ converting legions of followers to the belief that
Donald Trump is leading a global fight against a satanic cabal of child
trafficking elites, commonly referred to in the QAnon world as the
‘Deep State’.
Over the years, Q’s posts would move from the 4chan forum to 8chan,
and finally to its later iteration, 8kun. But these forums weren’t where
most of Q’s followers would go to access the drops: most would find
them neatly compiled on a site called QMap, now the main platform on
which Q’s drops are published. For years it was believed that QMap was
an endeavour that was independent of both the chan forums and the person
or people posting Q’s drops, but recent discoveries concerning an IP
address behind QMap raised questions as to whether Jim Watkins, the
owner of 8chan and 8kun, an elusive figure in his own right, could also
be Q. As some QAnon researchers have pointed out, however, the story of Q’s operations does not end with Jim Watkins.
In
the world of QAnon, the site qmap.pub is something of a sacred text.
It’s a site designed to collect Q’s posts on other message boards and
collate them in a searchable database; over the years, it has grown to
include glossaries on themes, profiles on people named across the drops
(handily sorted into ‘Evil’, ‘Traitor/Pawn’, and ‘Patriot’), and even a
prayer wall.
Most followers of QAnon tend not to visit Q’s posts on 8kun and the
‘chan’ boards where they are initially posted (the vernacular used on
those sites is deliberately exclusionary and newcomers are often put
off). This makes qmap.pub a crucial port of call for all QAnon
information and a major node in how the movement disseminates its lore.
The site has been hitting over 10 million monthly users since April of
this year.
The developer of QMap has been known only as ‘QAPPANON’ since the
launch of the site in May of 2018. They have a successful Patreon where
they regularly post and update their following on the running of the
website. They pull in over 600 patrons and a $3,320 a month income -
although there is a $4,000 a month target for ‘running costs’ of the
website. In addition to the website, QMap also had an accompanying app
on the Google Play Store (for $2.99) until it was removed in May this year as “harmful content”. The user QAPPANON is synonymous with qmap.pub, acting as its sole developer and mouthpiece.
The
QAnon community recognizes the importance of QAPPANON and how central
QMap is to how the movement functions. In a recent campaign to
deplatform QAPPANON from Patreon, QAnon power-influencer Praying Medic
leapt to their defence, calling on his nearly 400,000 Twitter followers
to help (and funnelling them towards QAPPANON’s Patreon). In addition,
Praying Medic linked to the Patreon on his podcast, describing it as the
“Qmap Patreon”.
Time | In more than seven dozen interviews conducted in Wisconsin in early
September, from the suburbs around Milwaukee to the scarred streets of
Kenosha in the aftermath of the Jacob Blake shooting, about 1 in 5
voters volunteered ideas that veered into the realm of conspiracy
theory, ranging from QAnon to the notion that COVID-19 is a hoax.
Two women in Ozaukee County calmly informed me that an evil cabal
operates tunnels under the U.S. in order to rape and torture children
and drink their blood. A Joe Biden supporter near a Kenosha church told
me votes don’t matter, because “the elites” will decide the outcome of
the election anyway. A woman on a Kenosha street corner explained that
Democrats were planning to bring in U.N. troops before the election to
prevent a Trump win.
It’s hard to know exactly why people believe what
they believe. Some had clearly been exposed to QAnon conspiracy
theorists online. Others seemed to be repeating false ideas espoused in
Plandemic, a pair of conspiracy videos featuring a discredited former
medical researcher that went viral, spreading the notion that COVID-19
is a hoax across social media. (COVID-19 is not a hoax.) When asked
where they found their information, almost all these voters were
cryptic: “Go online,” one woman said. “Dig deep,” added another. They
seemed to share a collective disdain for the mainstream media–a
skepticism that has only gotten stronger and deeper since 2016. The
truth wasn’t reported, they said, and what was reported wasn’t true.
This matters not just because of what these voters
believe but also because of what they don’t. The facts that should
anchor a sense of shared reality are meaningless to them; the news
developments that might ordinarily inform their vote fall on deaf ears.
They will not be swayed by data on coronavirus deaths, they won’t be persuaded by job losses or stock market gains, and they won’t care if Trump called America’s fallen soldiers “losers” or “suckers,” as the Atlantic reported,
because they won’t believe it. They are impervious to messaging,
advertising or data. They aren’t just infected with conspiracy; they
appear to be inoculated against reality.
Democracy relies on an informed and engaged public responding in
rational ways to the real-life facts and challenges before us. But a
growing number of Americans are untethered from that. “They’re not on
the same epistemological grounding, they’re not living in the same
worlds,” says Whitney Phillips, a professor at Syracuse who studies
online disinformation. “You cannot have a functioning democracy when
people are not at the very least occupying the same solar system.”
wired | Every spacecraft that has ever left Earth has relied on some type of
propellant to get it to its destination. Typically a spacecraft moves by
igniting its fuel in a combustion chamber and expelling hot gases.
(Even more exotic forms of propulsion, such as ion thrusters, still
require propellant.) That’s why humans have remained stuck so close to home.
A spacecraft can only accelerate as long as it has fuel to burn or a
planet to loop around for a gravitational assist. Those methods can’t
even carry a vehicle all the way to Alpha Centauri, our closest
neighbor, in any reasonable amount of time. The fastest spacecraft ever
built, the Parker Solar Probe, which will hit speeds over 400,000 miles
per hour, would take thousands of years to get there.
Woodward’s
MEGA drive is different. Instead of propellant, it relies on
electricity, which in space would come from solar panels or a nuclear
reactor. His insight was to use a stack of piezoelectric crystals and
some controversial—but he believes plausible—physics to generate thrust.
The stack of crystals, which store tiny amounts of energy, vibrates
tens of thousands of times per second when zapped with electric current.
Some of the vibrational frequencies harmonize as they roll through the
device, and when the oscillations sync up in just the right way, the
small drive lurches forward.
This
might not sound like the secret to interstellar travel, but if that
small lurch can be sustained, a spacecraft could theoretically produce
thrust for as long as it had electric power. It wouldn’t accelerate
quickly, but it could accelerate for a long time, gradually gaining in
velocity until it was whipping its way across the galaxy. An onboard
nuclear reactor could supply it with electric power for decades, long
enough for an array of MEGA drives to reach velocities approaching the
speed of light. If Woodward’s device works, it’d be the first propulsion
system that could conceivably reach another solar system within the
lifespan of an astronaut. How does it work? Ask Woodward and he’ll tell
you his gizmo has merely tapped into the fabric of the universe and
hitched a ride on gravity itself.
Sound impossible? A lot of theoretical physicists think so too. In fact, Woodward is certain most
theoretical physicists think his propellantless thruster is nonsense.
But in June, after two decades of halting progress, Woodward and Fearn
made a minor change to the configuration of the thruster. Suddenly, the
MEGA drive leapt to life. For the first time, Woodward seemed to have
undeniable evidence that his impossible engine really worked. Then the
pandemic hit.
On a clear night in March 1967, Woodward was stargazing on the rooftop
of Pensión Santa Cruz, a hotel in the heart of Seville, in Spain. The
26-year-old physicist was struggling with his chosen profession and had
taken a break from graduate work at New York University. He found
himself drawn to fringe research topics, particularly those having to do
with gravity, which he knew would make it hard to get a job. “It became
clear to me simply by looking at the physics department around me that a
bunch of people like that were unlikely to hire someone like me,”
Woodward says. So he decided to try something else. He had picked up
flamenco guitar as an undergrad and even performed in clubs in New York.
Inspired by his aunt, a CIA officer who had learned to play the
instrument while stationed in Madrid, he headed to Spain to pursue a
career in it.
At the time, the space race was only a decade old and satellite
spotting was a popular sport. As Woodward gazed up from atop his Spanish
hotel, he saw a speck of light arcing across the sky and mentally
calculated its path. But as he watched the satellite, it began deviating
from its expected trajectory—first by a little and then by a lot.
Everything
Woodward knew about satellites told him that what he was seeing should
be impossible. It would take too much energy for a satellite to change
its orbit like that, and most satellites weren’t able to shift more than
a couple of degrees. And yet, he had just seen a satellite double back
with his own eyes. He didn't conclude that engineers at NASA or in the
Soviet Union must have secretly achieved a breakthrough in satellite
propulsion. Instead, he believes he saw a spacecraft of extraterrestrial
origin. “Critters at least as clever as us had figured out how to get
around spacetime far better than we are capable of doing,” Woodward
says. That changed the question, he says, from if it was possible to how.
Never
one to doubt the power of the human intellect, especially his own,
Woodward reckoned he could build a similar interstellar propulsion
system if he put his mind to it. “If somebody figured out how the hell
to do something like that, they probably aren’t an awful lot smarter
than I am,” Woodward recalls thinking at the time. “So I thought maybe I
should devote a little time to trying to do that.” It was a project
that would occupy him for the rest of his life.
Woodward completed
his master’s degree in physics at NYU in 1969, and he left to do a PhD
in history at the University of Denver shortly after. His decision to
pivot from physics to history was a pragmatic one. As a master’s
student, he spent a lot of his time combing through old scientific
journals in search of promising gravitational research that had been
abandoned or hit a dead end so he could pick up the torch. “I was doing
the history of science already, so I might as well get a degree in it,”
Woodward says. “It was an obvious thing to do.” As an academic
historian, he’d enjoy the job security that comes with uncontroversial
research and still have the freedom to study fringe gravitational topics
as an avocation. He accepted a position in the Cal State Fullerton
history department in 1972.
futurism | It’s not every day that we come across a paper that attempts to redefine reality.
But in a provocative preprint uploaded to arXiv
this summer, a physics professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth
named Vitaly Vanchurin attempts to reframe reality in a particularly
eye-opening way — suggesting that we’re living inside a massive neural
network that governs everything around us. In other words, he wrote in
the paper, it’s a “possibility that the entire universe on its most
fundamental level is a neural network.”
For years, physicists have attempted to reconcile
quantum mechanics and general relativity. The first posits that time is
universal and absolute, while the latter argues that time is relative,
linked to the fabric of space-time.
In his paper, Vanchurin argues
that artificial neural networks can “exhibit approximate behaviors” of
both universal theories. Since quantum mechanics “is a remarkably
successful paradigm for modeling physical phenomena on a wide range of
scales,” he writes, “it is widely believed that on the most fundamental
level the entire universe is governed by the rules of quantum mechanics
and even gravity should somehow emerge from it.”
“We are not just
saying that the artificial neural networks can be useful for analyzing
physical systems or for discovering physical laws, we are saying that
this is how the world around us actually works,” reads the paper’s
discussion. “With this respect it could be considered as a proposal for
the theory of everything, and as such it should be easy to prove it
wrong.”
The concept is so bold that most physicists and machine learning
experts we reached out to declined to comment on the record, citing
skepticism about the paper’s conclusions. But in a Q&A with
Futurism, Vanchurin leaned into the controversy — and told us more about
his idea.
Futurism: Your paper argues that the
universe might fundamentally be a neural network. How would you explain
your reasoning to someone who didn’t know very much about neural
networks or physics?
Vitaly Vanchurin: There are two ways to answer your question.
The
first way is to start with a precise model of neural networks and then
to study the behavior of the network in the limit of a large number of
neurons. What I have shown is that equations of quantum mechanics
describe pretty well the behavior of the system near equilibrium and
equations of classical mechanics describes pretty well how the system
further away from the equilibrium. Coincidence? May be, but as far as we
know quantum and classical mechanics is exactly how the physical world
works.
The second way is to start from physics. We know that quantum
mechanics works pretty well on small scales and general relativity works
pretty well on large scales, but so far we were not able to reconcile
the two theories in a unified framework. This is known as the problem of
quantum gravity. Clearly, we are missing something big, but to make
matters worse we do not even know how to handle observers. This is known
as the measurement problem in context of quantum mechanics and the
measure problem in context of cosmology.
Then one might argue that
there are not two, but three phenomena that need to be unified: quantum
mechanics, general relativity and observers. 99% of physicists would
tell you that quantum mechanics is the main one and everything else
should somehow emerge from it, but nobody knows exactly how that can be
done. In this paper I consider another possibility that a microscopic
neural network is the fundamental structure and everything else, i.e.
quantum mechanics, general relativity and macroscopic observers, emerges
from it.
Counterpunch | It is September 2020. Americans are focused on an election between an
Orange Fascist criminal and an old-school right-wing Democrat war
criminal. Where Donald Trump projects chaos and disorder, Biden projects
stability, order, and a return to normalcy. If Trump is the virus, then
surely Biden is the cure.
It is September 2020. Libya prepares to enter its eighth year of
civil war. Slave markets like the one in Bani Walid are as common as
youth literacy centers were in Gaddafi’s Libya. Armed gangs and militias
wield power even in areas nominally under government control. A warlord
regroups in the East as he looks to Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and
the United Arab Emirates for support.
It is September 2020 and the US-NATO war on Libya has faded to a
distant memory as other issues like Black Lives Matter and police murder
of Black youth have captured the public imagination and discourse.
But these issues are, in fact, united by the bond of white supremacy
and anti-Blackness. The Libya once known as the “Jewel of Africa,” a
country that provided refuge for many sub-Saharan African migrant
workers while maintaining independence from the US and the former
colonial powers of Europe, is no more. In its place is a failed state
that now reflects the kind of vicious anti-Black racism forcefully
suppressed by the Gaddafi government.
Libya as the global exemplar of the exploitation and disposability of the black body.
Squint a little and you can see President Joe Biden getting the old
band back together. Hillary Clinton welcomed into the Oval Office as an
influential voice, someone to give words to the demented thoughts of the
living corpse serving as Commander-in-Chief. Derek Chollet and Ben
Rhodes laughing together as they buy another round at their favorite DC
hangout, toasting to the re-establishment of order in Washington. Barack
Obama as the éminence grise behind the political resurgence of the liberal-conservative dominant structure.
But in Libya, there is no going back, no fixing the past to escape the present.
Perhaps the same might be true of the United States.
Forbes | Mexican drug cartels are using weaponized consumer drones in their latest gang war, according to reports in El Universal and other local news media.
A citizens’ militia group
in Tepalcatepec, Michoacán, formed to protect farmers from the cartel,
found two drones in a car used by gunmen belonging to the Jalisco New
Generation Cartel (CJNG), a group estimated to control a third of the drugs consumed
in the U.S. The drones had plastic containers taped to them filled with
C4 explosive and ball bearing shrapnel. The militias say that they have
heard explosions, and believe that the drones are the latest weapons an
ongoing gang war.
“The CJNG has been involved with such devices since late 2017 in
various regions of Mexico,” says analyst Dr. Robert J. Bunker, Director
of Research and Analysis at C/O Futures, LLC.
“This cartel is well on its way to institutionalizing the use of
weaponized drones. None of the other cartels appear to presently even be
experimenting with the weaponization of these devices.”
In 2017, Bunker reported on the arrest of four CJNG members with a drone carrying a ‘papa bomba’ (potato bomb) , an improvised hand grenade. In 2018 an armed drone attacked the residence
of a senior official in Baja, California. The official was not at home,
and the attack seems to have been intended as a warning. Three CNJG drones with explosive were recovered this year , part of an arsenal for use against the rival Rosa de Lima cartel.
Bunker says that suitable consumer drones are now easy to acquire and use, but that the challenge is weaponizing them.
“The limiting factor is not so much the availability of military
grade explosives—commercial or homemade explosives can be
substituted—but the basic technical knowledge necessary to create
improvised explosive devices or IEDs,” says Bunker.
alt-market | The establishment supports social justice violence and unrest, and is
cracking down hard on any resistance to medical tyranny. The hypocrisy
is evident.
But this brings up some questions; such as why they are so keen to
allow the BLM riots to continue? As noted at the beginning of this
article, I think the strategy is evident – It's a two pronged attempt, a
bait and switch: If the Marxists are successful and meet little
resistance from the public then they will tear down the current system,
and the elitists institutions that fund them
like George Soros's Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation
will use the opportunity to build an Orwellian collectivist society from
the ashes.
On the other hand, as in Germany in the 1930s, the civil unrest
caused by hard left groups could also convince the general public that
martial law measures are an acceptable solution and make them willing to
sacrifice constitutional protections in order to rid themselves of the
threat. There have been examples of this recently when federal agents
initiated black bagging of protester in Portland using unmarked vans;
all I saw from most conservatives was cheering. This would undoubtedly
lead to a long term totalitarian structure that, once again, benefits
the elites that inhabit every aspect of government including Trump's White House.
In both cases, the power elites get what they want – a police state.
In terms of the pandemic response, a police state is already being
established in many nations, and with most Western people's
predominantly disarmed there is little chance they will be able to
resist the crackdown that will ensue as they try to protest the
restrictions. But what about in America?
This is why it does not surprise me that the BLM riots are being
encouraged so openly in the US. Look at it this way: If the elites
cannot get us to go along with medical tyranny for fear of sparking an
armed uprising from conservatives with actual training and ability, then
they figure maybe they can trick us into supporting martial law in the
name of defeating the political left.
The only solution is to refuse to support either option. We must
repel the establishment of medical tyranny and stand against any
overstep of state and federal governments against the constitution when
it comes to protests. Riots and looting can be dealt with, and dealt
with within the confines of the Bill of Rights. Also, once again I
would point out that in almost every place where armed citizens organize
and take up security measures in their communities the protests remain
peaceful, or they don't happen at all.
There is no legitimate excuse for a police state. There is always
another way. Anyone that tells you different has an agenda of their
own.
This, of course, is despite the fact that “Covid19 deaths” are incredibly vaguely defined.
Under UK law a person only has to test positive for the Sars-Cov-2 virus at any point in the 28 days prior to their death
for “Covid19” to be on their death certificate, a policy which totally
ignores the fact the majority of Sars-Cov-2 infections are completely
symptomless (and has already resulted in huge over-counts).
Meanwhile boring old influenza is lumbered with having to actually contribute to the death
before being added to the death certificate. And nevertheless, for
three straight months, the UK has recorded more flu deaths than Covid
deaths.
“Ah”, some of your may be saying, “this is just evidence that the lockdown, social distancing and masks have worked.”
But that is obviously not the case. Clearly, if these measures did
anything to halt viral transmission, the flu deaths would have gone down
as well. They have not. They are right in line with the five-year
average.
Despite social distancing and wearing masks and hand sanitizer on
every corner…the spread of the flu virus has not halted one bit in its
usual annual progress through society.
Ergo – the “emergency measures” have little to no impact on viral transmission.
bbc | Social gatherings of more than six
people will be illegal in England from Monday - with some exemptions -
amid a steep rise in coronavirus cases.
The law change will ban larger groups meeting anywhere socially indoors or outdoors, the government said.
But it will not apply to schools, workplaces or Covid-secure weddings, funerals and organised team sports.
It will be enforced through a £100 fine if people fail to comply, doubling on each offence up to a maximum of £3,200.
The new rules - which come into force on 14 September - mark a change to England's current guidance.
At
present, the guidance says two households of any size are allowed to
meet indoors or outdoors, or up to six people from different households
outdoors. Until now the police have had no powers to stop gatherings
unless they exceeded 30.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson will give
further details of the changes at a Downing Street news conference at
16:00 BST on Wednesday, alongside senior advisers Prof Chris Whitty and
Sir Patrick Vallance.
"One of the pieces of feedback we had including from
the police was that we needed the rules to be super simple so that
everybody knows what they are," said Health Secretary Matt Hancock.
nydailynews | “Opening restaurants, I understand the economic benefit and I understand
the economic pressure they’ve been under,” Cuomo said of struggling Big
Apple restaurants that have been shuttered, relegated to takeout or
serving customers outdoors for months.
The governor, who has faced criticism for his hesitation to allow
restaurants to seat diners indoors, set a Nov. 1 deadline to reassess
the COVID-19 infection rate. If the number remains low, indoor dining
capacity could increase to 50%.
The announcement comes after business owners filed a $2 billion
class-action lawsuit, alleging the state is violating the constitutional
rights of more than 150,000 New York City restaurateurs. The industry
employs roughly 300,000 people in the city.
New York State Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island), who
joined the suit against the governor earlier this week, said the state
should act faster to assist eateries.
“While we’re happy the city and state have acknowledged the plight of
the restaurant industry, it’s not enough," she said. "We will continue
to proceed with the lawsuit until New York City is granted the 50%
capacity like every other municipality in New York State.”
New Jersey began allowing eateries to welcome back customers last week
with a similar 25% limit on capacity while restaurants upstate and on
Long Island have been operating at 50% since June.
The governor has repeatedly railed against City Hall in recent weeks,
accusing the mayor and NYPD of not doing enough to enforce measures
meant to stem the spread of coronavirus.
On Wednesday, Cuomo said the city will contribute 400 personnel to an
existing task force headed by the State Liquor Authority and state
police to ensure compliance with the new orders, a deal apparently
hammered out not just with Mayor Bill de Blasio, but with other city
officials too.
“We have been talking to all stakeholders up until the moment I just walked out,” Cuomo said.
VOA | A movement that denies the existence of COVID-19 has split Spanish
society as the country is battling to control the highest number of
coronavirus cases in Europe.
Stop Confinamiento España, one of the groups behind the movement, has
said it will hold a protest next month in Madrid, calling it a “peaceful
demonstration against the measures imposed in connection with the false
health crisis caused by COVID-19.”
The strength of feeling among those who claim coronavirus is an
invention by a ruling elite to control the masses was demonstrated when
an estimated 2,500 people staged a protest in Madrid on Sunday.
The movement has gained ground thanks in part to the support of high
profile celebrity supporters like Miguel Bosé, a popular Spanish singer.
Bosé has used his social media platforms in recent weeks to promote what
some describe as conspiracy theories about COVID-19, and he claimed a
planned vaccine was a pretext to control the world’s population using 5G
mobile phone technology.
Sunday’s demonstration echoed those in June staged in cities across
Spain by mainly right wing groups that were protesting restrictions
imposed on personal freedoms by the left wing coalition government in
order to curtail a rising number of coronavirus cases.
Spain last week announced a nationwide ban on smoking and drinking in public if social distancing cannot be guaranteed.
The COVID-19 denial movement in Spain echoes similar libertarian
movements that have sprung up in the U.S., France, Britain and Germany.
The controversial cause has divided Spaniards, with recent polls showing
a quarter of the population objects to the obligatory use of face masks
across the country.
advancingtime | In a well-functioning society, it is expected that people will simply
respect private property and the rights of others. It is the fear of
people coming into our space and not honoring and respecting our customs
and laws that cause many people to have a problem with immigration. As proof their concerns are valid we need only note that officials fromImmigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)told Congress last month that around 87% of illegal aliens detained and then released into the United States
while they await their asylum hearings fail to show up to their court
dates. This then forces the agency to attempt the expensive task of locating and deporting each offender.
The idea that today many immigrants do not aspire to assimilate into our
culture and protect our best values is key to understanding why many
Americans wish to see borders closed. The rejection of traditional
values hits communities hard and damages our way of life. All of us want
to be able to go for a walk and feel safe as we go about our day. When
individuals are selfish, rude, arrogant,
boastful, proud, disrespectful, ungrateful, undisciplined, slothful and
completely obsessed with themselves life becomes very difficult for
those around them. People that feel entitled to everything, but they
don’t want to work for it often don’t see a
problem with treating others like dirt. Unfortunately, this tends to
generate a great deal of discontent that has real consequences for
society.
Many conservatives blame these problems on institutions going to easy on
crime while many progressives claim we must show more compassion,
however, the fact is most people simply do not wish to deal with the
problems wrongdoers bring with them. For years I have advocated police
be able to issue a citation or
ticket for these low-level crimes. after someone receiving several of
these, it would at
least serve as notice to the fact they were a "multiple offender of
society's rules" so that we can focus on ways to bring more pressure
upon them. It has long been my contention that you cannot legislate
decency. Too many laws poorly enforced does little to curb the ills of
our culture which translates into the idea that we must try harder.
In our modern world where people move more often than in the past, the
restraints that caused people to behave have been lifted and ties to
communities are often weak. This topic flows back into how to get people
to comply and has resulted in people embracing more surveillance and
cameras in order to discourage crime. Still, a lack of enforcement that
results in a catch and release scheme usually deters nothing. The
idea of granting people a "social score" like the program being put in
play in China and other parts of the world stinks of Orwellian
totalitarianism. Taking away the freedom of people is not the answer. This
means a good place to start would be redoubling our efforts to teach
the values we hold dear and allow society to function. We must do better
at elevating the importance of these qualities and make a greater
effort to teach young people that our values are key to a healthy
society.
Free To A Good Home
-
I know what gooning is same as I know what felching is but I don't care to
remind myself all that often about it. The Internet just keeps exposing the
ni...
If Free Will Is False, Destiny Is True
-
Free will is like God: perhaps dead, its absence having something to say
about morality (what Nietzsche meant by “Gott ist tot” was that the
Christian God ...
FREE BOOK: On Nonviolence
-
“Michael Barker’s interrogation of nonviolent protest tactics and regime
change is both timely and important. Drawing on cases ranging from American
democr...
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...
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 ...
-
(Damn, has it been THAT long? I don't even know which prompts to use to
post this)
SeeNew
Can't get on your site because you've gone 'invite only'?
Man, ...
First Member of Chumph Cartel Goes to Jail
-
With the profligate racism of the Chumph Cartel, I don’t imagine any of
them convicted and jailed is going to do too much better than your run of
the mill ...
