wikipedia | In physics, interference is a phenomenon in which two coherentwaves are combined by adding their intensities or displacements with due consideration for their phase difference. The resultant wave may have greater intensity (constructive interference) or lower amplitude (destructive interference) if the two waves are in phase or out of phase, respectively.
Interference effects can be observed with all types of waves, for example, light, radio, acoustic, surface water waves, gravity waves, or matter waves as well as in loudspeakers as electrical waves.
The word interference is derived from the Latin words inter which means "between" and fere which means "hit or strike", and was coined by Thomas Young in 1801.[1][2][3]
The principle of superposition of waves states that when two or more propagating waves of the same type are incident on the same point, the resultant amplitude at that point is equal to the vector sum of the amplitudes of the individual waves.[4] If a crest
of a wave meets a crest of another wave of the same frequency at the
same point, then the amplitude is the sum of the individual
amplitudes—this is constructive interference. If a crest of one wave
meets a trough of another wave, then the amplitude is equal to the
difference in the individual amplitudes—this is known as destructive
interference. In ideal mediums (water, air are almost ideal) energy is
always conserved, at points of destructive interference energy is stored
in the elasticity of the medium. For example when we drop 2 pebbles in
a pond we see a pattern but eventually waves continue and only when
they reach the shore is energy absorbed away from the medium.
Constructive interference occurs when the phase difference between the waves is an even multiple of π (180°), whereas destructive interference occurs when the difference is an odd multiple of π.
If the difference between the phases is intermediate between these two
extremes, then the magnitude of the displacement of the summed waves
lies between the minimum and maximum values.
Consider, for example, what happens when two identical stones are
dropped into a still pool of water at different locations. Each stone
generates a circular wave propagating outwards from the point where the
stone was dropped. When the two waves overlap, the net displacement at a
particular point is the sum of the displacements of the individual
waves. At some points, these will be in phase, and will produce a
maximum displacement. In other places, the waves will be in anti-phase,
and there will be no net displacement at these points. Thus, parts of
the surface will be stationary—these are seen in the figure above and to
the right as stationary blue-green lines radiating from the centre.
Interference of light is a unique phenomenon in that we can never
observe superposition of the EM field directly as we can for example in
water. Superposition in the EM field is an assumed and necessary
requirement, fundamentally 2 light beam pass through each other and
continue on their respective paths. Light can be explained classically
by the superposition of waves, however a deeper understanding of light
interference requires knowledge of wave-particle duality of light which is due to quantum mechanics. Prime examples of light interference are the famous double-slit experiment, laser speckle, anti-reflective coatings and interferometers. Traditionally the classical wave model is taught as a basis for understanding optical interference, based on the Huygens–Fresnel principle however an explanation based on the Feynman path integral exists which takes into account quantum mechanical considerations.
The New York Times had run a story on one of his shady deals with the
Chinese and his father, then vice president, was pulled into the
vortex.
It appears that Hunter was in a free fall and his uncle Jim Biden reportedly reached out in newly discovered messages to offer him a “safe harbor.”
The exchange is an insight into a train wreck of a life of the scion of one of the most powerful families in the country.
However, it is also insight into a world of influence peddling where
millions simply evaporated in the coffers of the Biden family.
On their face, the messages seem to contradict public statements from President Biden on the foreign-influence peddling that was used to fund Hunter’s drug-infused, self-destructive lifestyle.
The Times story caused a panic in the Biden family.
Despite a largely supportive media, the Bidens have long been known for influence peddling.
Jim Biden has been repeatedly criticized for marketing his access to his brother in pitches to clients.
Hunter knew that the Times story was only the tip of an iceberg.
As revealed recently by the House Oversight Committee, the Bidens
constructed a labyrinth of corporations and accounts to transfer
millions from these deals to a variety of Biden family members,
including grandchildren.
The laptop includes pictures and appointments of Hunter’s foreign business associates with Joe Biden.
It also includes a recording concerning a Times report on Dec. 12,
2018, detailing Hunter’s dealings with Ye Jianming, the head of CEFC
China Energy Company.
Ye would later be arrested for corruption.
As Biden associates pushed the Times to change aspects of the story, Joe Biden called to report on the results.
In his message, Biden ends his call to Hunter with the statement “I
think you’re clear. And anyway if you get a chance, give me a call, I
love you.”
The new messages indicate that the Bidens were worried that Hunter
was in a free fall as these dealings were becoming known and revenue was
declining.
Jim Biden appears to be rushing to get Hunter to work the problem with the family.
He assures him that they can find him “a safe harbor” and that “I can work with you[r] father alone!”
Hunter previously complained that he was giving as much as half of
his proceeds to his father and was now facing towering financial
demands.
He appears to have cut off the family.
That is a dangerous development for a man who had a long struggle with drugs and alcohol.
sputnik | Tara
Reade, a US citizen, writer, and ex-assistant to Joe Biden, who has
recently arrived in Russia, told Sputnik she no longer feels safe in
Biden's America, adding that many Americans are ready to follow in her
footsteps.
Tara
Reade, a former Senate staffer, came forward in April 2020 and filed a
criminal complaint against then-presumptive Democratic presidential
hopeful Joe Biden, accusing him of sexual assault in 1993. Even though some Democratic congresswomen
said they believe her, not only were her claims downplayed by the US
mainstream press, but she was also subjected to smears, a criminal
probe, and intimidation.
After Biden's 2024 re-election announcement, Reade reiterated her accusations and expressed willingness to testify in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives. However, in early May, Tara released a cryptic message saying that if something happens to her, all roads would lead to Biden. Reade opted to come to Russia to protect her life.
On May 30, Member of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs Maria Butina, who herself fell victim to the US punitive machine,
promised to discuss the possibility of granting Russian citizenship to
Reade and ask Russian President Vladimir Putin to fast track her
citizenship request.
Tara
Reade is not the only American truth-seeker who has come to Russia in
order to evade political persecution from the US authorities. Earlier,
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden found refuge in the Russian Federation
after revealing a US global spying program which targeted American
citizens in sharp violation of the US Constitution. In September 2022,
Vladimir Putin signed a decree granting Russian citizenship to Edward.
He is now a full-fledged citizen of Russia.
As
per Reade, there are a lot of people in the US who feel unsafe. Her
message to them is to take action to protect themselves and their
families "and to really look at who you're voting for."
"We
need systemic change. So participate in that process and try to take
command of your democracy if you want a democracy, because right now
it's in disarray," Reade said, addressing her fellow Americans. "And
that's the problem. And as far as like going to another safe haven, I
mean, there are many Americans here, and I don't want to out a bunch of
Americans, but there are people here that are coming to Russia - much
like back in the day when Soviet Union people defected over to the US -
now you have the opposite. Now you have US and European citizens looking
for safe haven here. And luckily, the Kremlin is accommodating. So
we're lucky."
unz |The Jews won’t tolerate you disagreeing with them.
They
are now going after Roger Waters – a pointed critic of Israel – for
being against Nazism, saying that satirizing Nazism is the same thing as
being a Nazi.
They’ve been trying to get at this guy for years. This is what they’ve come up with.
These people will not tolerate dissent. They will crush you, whoever you are.
German police have launched a criminal investigation into
English rock legend and Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters on suspicion
of glorifying Nazism during two concerts in Berlin. The musician has
insisted the performance was in opposition to fascism.
On
Friday, in a statement quoted by several media outlets, the Berlin
police said that Waters was suspected of inciting hatred, and that the
probe was centered on his performances on May 17 and 18 in the German
capital.
In
footage posted on social media, the musician can be seen wearing a
leather trench coat resembling a Nazi uniform with two crossed hammers
and a red armband. He then proceeds to take a mock gun and shoot into
the crowd.
“The
context of the clothing worn is deemed capable of approving, glorifying
or justifying the violent and arbitrary rule of the Nazi regime in a
manner that violates the dignity of the victims and thereby disrupts
public peace,” the police said.
…
The
Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon suggested that Waters wanted to
compare Israel to the Nazis, describing the musician as “one of the
biggest Jew haters of our time.”
On
Friday, the musician addressed the controversy, writing on Twitter that
he had become a target of “bad faith attacks” from those who disagreed
with his political views.
“The
elements of my performance that have been questioned are quite clearly a
statement in opposition to fascism, injustice and bigotry in all its
forms”, he said, adding that he had spent his entire life speaking out
“against authoritarianism and oppression.”
What he should have explained, frankly, is the fact that he’s been doing this bit for literally decades. Roger Waters has been performing this show, in this costume, in Germany, for 42 years.
Now, inexplicably, it’s a problem.
Of
course, the reason it is a problem is that since 1981, and particularly
over the last decade or so, Waters has gotten aggressively political. He
is extremely anti-Israel, and he is against this Jewish war in the
Ukraine. If you want more information on that, you can really just check
the Roger Waters archive on the Daily Stormer.
Probably, the fact that I’ve been so supportive of him is one of the reasons the Jews are so obsessed with him.
jonathanturley | We have previously discussed how comedians have been objecting that
woke activists are killing comedy. The complaint is that a group of
perpetually pissed off, humorless people are remaking the world in their
own image. It began with college campuses which comedians are now
saying are dead as venues
since you cannot safely make any joke that insults any group other than
white straight males or Christians or conservatives. Others have objected to hate speech laws limiting comedians, particularly after some comedians have been prosecuted for “malicious communications” or insulting groups or religious figures. Six out of ten students
view offensive jokes as hate speech. This week, however, activists
appear to have met their match in a legend of comedy who has opposed the
cutting of a scene from the movie The Life of Brian. No,
activists are not upset with the endless jokes about Italians,
Christians, and Jews. It is the scene involving a man who wants to
become a women and have a child. John Cleese is refusing to yield.
The scene shows Stan declaring “I want to be a woman… It’s my right
as a man. I want to have babies… It’s every man’s right to have babies
if he wants them.” After Cleese’s protest, the character snaps, “Don’t
you oppress me!”
Some reported that Cleese had agreed to cut the scene. However, Cleese tweeted out a correction of the “misreporting.”
SCMP | Russia’s interior ministry has put US Senator Lindsey Graham on a wanted list, Russian media reported on Monday, citing the ministry’s database.
In an edited video released by the Ukrainian president’s office of Graham’s meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, Graham was shown saying “the Russians are dying” and then saying US support was the “best money we’ve ever spent”.
Russia MFA Spokeswoman ZAKHAROVA: "“The Russians are dying... it’s the best money we’ve ever spent,” US Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said with a pleased smirk during his meeting with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.
After Russia criticised the remarks, Ukraine released a full video of the meeting which showed the two remarks were not linked.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said on Sunday that it was opening a criminal probe into Graham’s comments. It did not specify what crime he was suspected of.
In Russia, the comments caused a swell of outrage. Before the criminal proceedings were initiated, the Russian leadership had already verbally criticised Graham.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov spoke of a “disgrace” that such senators represented the United States. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova declared that US investments had caused World War II and the Holocaust.
Now
the US was funding “the neo-Nazi Kiev regime,” Zakharova added,
reprising the Russian position that its full-scale invasion of Ukraine
in February last year was necessary to defeat Nazism.
Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev called Graham, a 67-year-old Republican, an old fool.
“The
old fool Senator Lindsey Graham said that the United States has never
spent money so successfully as on the murder of Russians,” Medvedev
said. “He shouldn’t have done that.”
Graham disputed Russian criticism of his support for Ukraine on Sunday, saying he had simply praised the spirit of Ukrainians in resisting a Russian invasion with assistance provided by Washington.
“As usual the Russia propaganda machine is hard at work,” Graham told Reuters in an emailed statement on Sunday, referring to Medvedev’s comments about his Kyiv visit, which he had used to urge Washington to send more weapons to Ukraine.
Graham said he had mentioned to Zelensky “that Ukraine has adopted the American mantra, ‘Live Free or Die”. It has been a good investment by the United States to help liberate Ukraine from Russian war criminals”.
thehill | Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) took aim at the defense spending proposed in the debt ceiling deal, saying on Sunday that adopting what he labeled as President Biden’s defense budget would be a “joke.”
“I want to raise the debt ceiling, it would be irresponsible not to
do it,” Graham told Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.” “I want to
control spending, I’d like to have a smaller IRS, I’d like to clawback
the unused COVID money. And I know you can’t get to perfect, but what I
will not do is adopt the Biden defense budget and call it as success.”
Graham’s comments comes despite a deal with Biden being struck by fellow Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.)
who came to an agreement in principle late Saturday to raise the debt
ceiling for two years and apply new caps on federal spending. Graham
pushed back on McCarthy saying that the defense is fully funded,
reiterating that he will give Congress a “hard time” if they send the
proposed defense budget to the Senate.
“So the Biden defense budget was a joke before and if we adopted it
as Republicans will be doing a great disservice to the party of Ronald
Reagan. The biggest winner of the Biden defense budget is China,” he
said.
He added that he wants to raise the debt ceiling, but not at the
expense of the military. He said that he will not be “intimidated” by
June 5, the deadline set by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to avoid a
national default.
“We should raise the debt ceiling but we should not cripple the
military’s ability to defend the nation as a trade off, spending below
inflation is not fully funding the military,” he continued.
err.ee | "Whataboutism" is not just a feature of Russian rhetoric. The U.S.
invasion of Iraq universally undercut U.S. credibility and continues to
do so. For many critics of the United States, Iraq was the most recent
in a series of American sins stretching back to Vietnam and the
precursor of current events. Even though a tiny handful of states have
sided with Russia in successive UN resolutions in the General Assembly,
significant abstentions, including by China and India, signal
displeasure with the United States. As a result, the vital twin tasks of
restoring the prohibition against war and the use of force as the
critical cornerstone of the United Nations and international system, and
of defending Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, get lost
in a morass of skepticism and suspicions about the United States.
In
the so-called "Global South," and what I am loosely referring to as the
"Rest" (of the world), there is no sense of the U.S. as a virtuous
state. Perceptions of American hubris and hypocrisy are
widespread. Trust in the international system(s) that the U.S. helped
invent and has presided over since World War II is long gone. Elites
and populations in many of these countries believe that the system was
imposed on them at a time of weakness when they were only just securing
their independence. Even if elites and populations have generally
benefitted from pax Americana, they believe the United States and its
bloc of countries in the collective West have benefitted far more. For
them, this war is about protecting the West's benefits and hegemony, not
defending Ukraine.
Russian
false narratives about its invasion of Ukraine and about the U.S.
resonate and take root globally because they fall on this fertile soil.
Russia's disinformation seems more like information—it comports with
"the facts" as others seem them. Non-Western elites share the same
belief as some Western analysts that Russia was provoked or pushed into
war by the United States and NATO expansion. They resent the power of
the U.S. dollar and Washington's frequent punitive use of financial
sanctions. They were not consulted by the U.S. on this round of
sanctions against Russia. They see Western sanctions constraining their
energy and food supplies and pushing up prices. They blame Russia's
Black Sea blockade and deliberate disruption of global grain exports on
the United States—not on the actual perpetrator, Vladimir Putin. They
point out that no-one pushed to sanction the United States when it
invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq, even though they were opposed to U.S.
intervention, so why should they step up now?
Countries in the
Global South's resistance to U.S. and European appeals for solidarity on
Ukraine are an open rebellion. This is a mutiny against what they see
as the collective West dominating the international discourse and
foisting its problems on everyone else, while brushing aside their
priorities on climate change compensation, economic development, and
debt relief. The Rest feel constantly marginalized in world affairs. Why
in fact are they labeled (as I am reflecting here in this speech) the
"Global South," having previously been called the Third World or the
Developing World? Why are they even the "Rest" of the world? They are
the world, representing 6.5 billion people. Our terminology reeks of
colonialism.
The
Cold War era non-aligned movement has reemerged if it ever went away.
At present, this is less a cohesive movement than a desire for distance,
to be left out of the European mess around Ukraine. But it is also a
very clear negative reaction to the American propensity for defining the
global order and forcing countries to take sides. As one Indian
interlocutor recently exclaimed about Ukraine: "this is your conflict! …
We have other pressing matters, our own issues … We are in our own
lands on our own sides … Where are you when things go wrong for us?"
Most
countries—including many in Europe—reject the current U.S. framing of a
new "Great Power Competition"—a geopolitical tug-of-war between the
United States and China. States and elites bristle at the U.S. idea that
"you are either with us or against us," or you are "on the right or
wrong side of history" in an epic struggle of democracies versus
autocracies. Few outside Europe accept this definition of the war in
Ukraine or the geopolitical stakes. They don't want to be assigned to
new blocs that are artificially imposed, and no-one wants to be caught
in a titanic clash between the United States and China. In contrast to
the U.S., as well as others like Japan, South Korea and India, most
countries do not see China as a direct military or security threat. They
may have serious qualms about China's rough economic and political
behavior and its blatant abuse of human rights, but they still see
China's value as a trading and investment partner for their future
development. The United States and the European Union don't offer
sufficient alternatives for countries to turn away from China, including
in the security realm—and even within Europe the sense of how much is
at stake for individual countries in the larger international system and
in relations with China varies.
Outside Europe, the interest in
new regional orders is more pronounced. In this context, the
BRICS—which, for its members offers an alternative to the G7 and the
G20—is now attractive to others. Nineteen countries, including Saudi
Arabia and Iran, purportedly showed interested in joining the
organization ahead of its recent April 2023 summit. Countries see the
BRICS (and other similar entities like the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization or SCO) as offering flexible diplomatic arrangements and
possible new strategic alliances as well as different trade
opportunities beyond the United States and Europe. BRICS members and
aspirants, however, have very disparate interests. We need to consider
these as we look ahead to finding a resolution to the war in Ukraine and
as we consider the kinds of structures and networks we will have to
deal with in the future.
I am going to run through some of the factors that are most relevant to thinking about Ukraine in the BRICS context.
pbs | Judy Woodruff: Ultimately, what was your assessment of Donald Trump as a person and as a president?
Fiona Hill: Well, as a person, he was extremely vulnerable to manipulation. And that became a problem for him as a president.
And what I mean by that is, he had a very fragile ego, and he was very susceptible to flattery, as well as taking massive offense, as we all saw, to any kind of criticism. So, on a personal level, that was also a pretty dangerous flaw.
When you're the president of the United States, it becomes a fatal flaw, because President Trump couldn't disassociate or disentangle himself from many of the issues that were the critical ones to address. So, when people were concerned about Russian influence in the United States election, he only thought about how that affected him, for example.
When people talked about the changes in the U.S. economic structure, he would always think, first of all, about how that might affect him and about how that might affect how people would vote for him. So, as a president, he was uniquely preoccupied with himself, not with the country.
And that, of course, made all of the problems of intelligence risks even higher, because the Russians or others from the outside could also manipulate those tendencies.
Judy Woodruff: So, if you can answer this, is the world safer or is it more dangerous because of his presidency?
Fiona Hill: Well, I think it's become more dangerous, because he was also extremely divisive, because President Trump was very focused on getting reelected, and he wasn't going to do that by appealing to all Americans.
He wanted to appeal to a particular base of people who were attracted by his personality or attracted by the things that he said he was going to do for them. And, of course, that's on different parts of the economic scale and the socioeconomic lower levels. It's the people — he said he was going to find them a job. He was going to fix the economy, so they would have jobs.
At the top end, among millionaires and billionaires, it was that he was going to protect their fortunes, from — being from those circles himself.
Judy Woodruff: What I find so striking is that you weren't so concerned about Donald Trump being controlled by Vladimir Putin, being influenced by Vladimir Putin, as you were concerned about the United States following on the same political path that you see Russia follow under Vladimir Putin.
Fiona Hill: That's absolutely right, because Russia went through a similar wrenching economic period and political periods in the 1990s.
So, Russia had its equivalent of a kind of the Great Recession, and, at the end of that decade, President Putin comes in and says, I'm going to fix everything. I'm going to make America great again, which, of course, is what President Trump said in 2016. And what Putin did was basically tie himself up into all of these politics.
He, of course, has extended his terms in office through amending the Constitution. He can essentially be president until 2036. And Donald Trump has also said that he wants to be president in perpetuity. He wouldn't accept that he had lost the 2020 election. He's saying he's going to come back, that he has a right to come back because he was never kicked out of office in the first place.
And he's been spreading lies about essentially his own role in all the events that we have seen over the last years, January 6, for example, and the storming of the Capitol.
Judy Woodruff: Do you believe our democracy is in danger as a result of this?
Fiona Hill: I do.
And I think that danger is increasing by the day, because we're constantly seeing other political figures trying to emulate Trump. We're now in a situation where lies and deceit have become the coin of governance.
Judy Woodruff: It's a disturbing conclusion in this book.
kunstler | Would it surprise you to learn that
children well beneath the age of puberty are not inclined to think about
sex at all? In a well-ordered society that recognizes children as
different from adults, they don’t. And if something sexual comes to
their attention, they are generally perplexed by it. Unless they’re born
into an era when adults are busy erasing boundaries, guard-rails, and
cultural inhibitions, in which case I must imagine that young children
exposed to, say, pornography in a chaotic household find it
traumatically sinister. So, why the gleeful celebration about
sexualizing children now?
I’ll tell you why: because we are living in a very badly-ordered society these days, a society in which anything goes and nothing matters,
which is a poor principle for civilization. It’s the same principle
that has people shitting all over the sidewalks of San Francisco,
looting Walgreens stores in broad daylight, pushing ineffective and
unsafe vaccines (and lying about it), and arresting people for thought
crimes. It’s a degenerate society. Morally bankrupt. Wicked.
You might ask, how did it get that way?
The concise answer is that a broken business model for daily life and a
collapsing economy have so disordered millions of minds that values are
seen as having no value. The scaffold for truth, beauty, honor,
dignity, courage, prudence, generosity, etc., folded some time ago, in
slow-motion, so we didn’t notice.
The keepers of our culture have
replaced it with a tacky system of ritual virtue-signaling fakery that
they don’t really believe in, that persists simply because the moral
vacuum it stands for provokes such unbearable anxiety. The main lesson
of the recent Durham Report — missed by even the most punctilious
observers — is that our country does not want to fix itself, indeed the
whole broken apparatus of fixing it is in the hands of the people who
broke it.
This epic negligence leaves the doors
wide open for the broad range of lower-order criminal mischief we’re
seeing expressed all around us. Now I will venture into shadowland.
There is a rumor floating around the Internet that this seemingly
coordinated campaign to sexualize children and initiate them into
marginal behaviors was started to soften up the public for forthcoming
shocking revelations contained in the much-whispered-about Jeffrey
Epstein archive of videos that show eminent international figures caught
in compromising sexual situations that include sexual acts with
children.
I wouldn’t commit to saying there’s
anything to that, but there have been an awful lot of signs and portents
pointing in that direction, and so I also wouldn’t dismiss it
altogether. There can be little doubt that the videos exist, or did
exist — we know that Epstein’s various mansions were rigged to the eaves
with cameras, and that he was an “asset” of more than one nation’s
intel service trafficking in blackmail — and I’d expect that there are
at least a few copies of the videos out there, just like there are many copies of Hunter Biden’s laptop hard-drive out there.
There’s something definitely
programmatic about the way the drag queens were rolled out into the
kiddie korners the past year. It doesn’t feel organic, shall we say, but
rather directed, like a sinister grand opera. And the effort
to enlist and initiate schoolchildren into a psychodrama of hyperbolic
sexual confusion looks absolutely orchestrated.
What we might be seeing is the
convergence of a world-beating political scandal with an economy-killing
financial crisis that will destroy the entire post-WW2 armature of
money and credit. That event would usher in a period of appalling
turbulence in our everyday life, severing supply chains, killing
businesses, and disturbing every imaginable social arrangement as well
as public order. If that comes to pass, and it’s looking likely, then
that will be the last we hear about personal pronouns and trans
influencers for a thousand years.
NYTimes | Ever since Justin, a 15-year-old high school freshman, tried marijuana on his birthday two years ago, he has smoked almost every day, several times a day, he said.
“If I smoke a blunt, after that blunt I’m going to be chill,” he said on a recent morning at a corner deli near his school, the Bronx Design and Construction Academy. “I’m not going to be stressing about nothing at all.”
Another boy came by and flashed two glass tubes of smokable flower. More students were smoking across the street in a doorway and on a stoop. On another corner, a smoke shop frequented by children in backpacks and uniforms opened about half an hour before the first bell.
While it has long been common for some teens to smoke marijuana, teachers and students say that more and younger students are smoking throughout the day and at school.
There is little definitive data on marijuana use among children, and what information is available can sometimes offer a contradictory picture. Disciplinary data from the city education department reflects a 10 percent increase in alcohol- and drug-related offenses this year compared to 2019. But a city survey found teen cannabis use had declined in 2021, the same year that the state legalized marijuana for recreational use, to the lowest level recorded since the question was added to the survey in 1997.
Still, two dozen students and teachers at public, private and charter schools across the city said in interviews that some classrooms were in disarray as more pupils showed up late and high.
They said that with the proliferation of unlicensed smoke shops and the availability of vape pens and edible products, cannabis has never been more accessible and inconspicuous. They relayed accounts of students taking hits of vaping pens when teachers turned their backs, of bathrooms and stairwells becoming smoking lounges and of the smell of weed wafting through school hallways.
“It really feels like this unstoppable tide that we’re futilely trying to suppress,” said America Billy, 44, who has been teaching at a public high school in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, for over a decade. She said it was hard to know whether a student was out of it because of a lack of sleep, family stress or drugs.
In December, a former principal, April McKoy, described in a letter how students’ cannabis use had spiraled out of control during her last two years in charge of City Polytechnic High School of Engineering, Architecture, and Technology in Brooklyn.
“It felt like more and more were using without knowing the source, impact or consequences of early marijuana use,” Ms. McKoy said in the letter, adding that students had returned after the pandemic “sad, isolated and trying to find ways to cope.”
Freshmen were selling cannabis to each other, and she said she witnessed a smoke shop sell edibles to 14-year-olds with police officers nearby. On another occasion, she sent four students to the hospital because they were sickened from contaminated edibles, she said.
The proliferation of unlicensed smoke shops, which the city says may number as many as 1,500, could be one factor driving marijuana use among children, officials said.
Gale Brewer, a city councilwoman, said that though she had counted fewer than 10 of them in her district on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in September, there were 64 by March. Several school administrators have complained to her about merchants selling joints and infused candies as well as high-potency concentrates and vapes to students.
“We were all saying we need social workers, we need psychologists, we need mental health support in the schools,” she said. But dealing with smoke shops selling to children “was not on the list.”
richardhanania |Ron: That’s very interesting, Marius. But I’d
like to go back to the strangeness of this group and their complaints.
When you’re talking about crime and the destruction of our great cities,
aren’t you really talking about, well, since you like the euphemism of
“Foundational American,” I’ll call them “1619 Americans”…
Brahmin:
In a way, yes, but preserving the Foundational American stock is
important. Whenever there is diversity, you see division, chaos,
bloodshed. That’s the rule here, that’s the rule everywhere. Have you
ever read Precambrian Pederast? He taught us about all that is wrong
with this disgusting era. Ethnic homogeneity must be preserved, above
all else.
Ron: That certainly
doesn’t seem to be the rule here. Today, I live in the Bay Area.
California is a majority-minority state. And yet we see very little of
the violence you fear. In 1970, California was 76% white. It’s now 35%
white. You know what’s happened to the murder rate in that time? It’s
been cut by two-thirds! As far as racial strife, you may have seen
recent news stories about the California reparations commission and San
Francisco wanting to offer blacks ungodly amounts of money to compensate
them for past and present racism. The Bay Area is like 8% black,
they’re the smallest population of the major American “races.” Yet if
you follow racial issues in the state, if you went into a coma in the
late 1960s and woke up in 2020, you would be amazed at how little had
changed. Well, pronouns and that stuff would be new. But on race, you
have income and test score disparities, crime that we can’t be honest
about, so-called “police brutality.” Only if anything, California is a
lot more peaceful due to the demographic change you all decry so much…
Allison: But they vote, Ron! Who gave us these crazy policies?
Ron: I
won’t dispute that Hispanic and Asian immigrants tend to vote Democrat.
But look at it another way. Republicans in 2016 nominated the guy whose
main message was “Mexicans are rapists.” In 2020, he still won 40% of
them. Can you imagine if Republicans could actually pretend to like
these people? Italians ended up pretty evenly divided between the two
parties, and even Jews are headed in the conservative direction thanks
to differential birth rates. I see no reason why there’s some impossible
barrier to overcome between Mestizos and white Americans. I mean look
at this room…
[In addition to the clearly swarthy Romero
and Brahmin, at least a third of the room looks to be of either Hispanic
or South Asian descent.]
Ron: You doubt
that you can have a multiracial country? You all have built a
multiracial movement based on the idea of maintaining racial purity.
Don’t check your phones, you might see another alert of a Neo-Nazi
Mexican mass shooter, there have been a few of those lately, and a
right-wing Indian just tried to kill Biden I believe. Remember not that
long ago when there was a mass shooting, and everyone would either hope
it was a right-wing white male or a Muslim, depending on their politics?
Well, now we have the brown white supremacist, which right-wingers on
Twitter tell me can’t possibly exist, even though it’s like half their
movement now.
When was the last time you even heard of
Muslim terrorism? Is a brown mass shooter these days more likely to be a
Muslim extremist or someone whose brain has been melted by the online
right? This question would’ve been laughable a few years ago, and I
guess it’s still laughable now, but for a different reason.
And
the funniest part is that I suspect that all of this results from a fear
of talking about what is arguably the main issue at the heart of the
American experiment. That’s right, it’s the weird, sadomasochistic
relationship between whites and blacks that was so well dramatized by
Tom Wolfe when he was alive. Oh sure, you guys talk about race and
crime. But it seems like you need your “racism” to be more inclusive.
You need to pretend to exclude everyone, because it seems more
consistent with universalist principles. “We just want to preserve the
demographic majority, the same right that anyone else has. Oh, it’s not
any particular group that’s the problem, it’s the principle of
diversity. Can’t we just have a world where every nation is homogenous
to the greatest extent possible and then we can all get along?”
[At this point I burst out laughing]
Me: Ron, so wait, what you’re saying
is that when we see a Klansman walking around in a hood and screaming
about defending the white race, we should pity him for how much his mind
has been captured by political correctness? That’s quite a funny image,
in fact, it alone has made my night here worthwhile.
Ron:
Indeed, Richard, that is what I’m saying. And these poor kids worried
about the future of the American right, are digging their own grave,
because, guess what? The die has been cast, and we’re headed to a
non-white majority. And so conservatism is shaping up to be a movement
that represents a coalition of overweight rural whites from left behind
areas of the country and short Mestizos, all crying about the passing of
whiteness and also about how much the country sucks because everyone is
so fat. This probably isn’t a winning message. Of course, there’s
overwhelming public support for clamping down on crime and making
institutions color-blind, or, as you would put it, going after civil
rights law. This is what turned whites towards the Republican Party in
the first place, or the disgusting ways in which white elites have let
our cities be destroyed and gone to war with every American principle —
merit, freedom of speech, rule of law, you name it — in the name of
anti-racism.
But instead of focusing on those things and
fixing the country, the American right has decided to get distracted by
doubling down on becoming a movement of brown white nationalists, in a
country where the majority of children born are already non-white.
[At
this point, I can feel the energy go out of the room. A few of the
attendees pick at one or another of Ron’s points, but they’re clearly
deflated and realize that he has given them a lot to think about. An
hour and a half later, he is driving me home.]
Me: Wow,
Ron, that was something else. I really wish you would’ve elaborated on
the vaccine thing a little bit more. Their desire to “own the libs” has
really swallowed every other part of their brain, even though they like
to think they’re more sophisticated than regular conservatives, and I
appreciated you recently taking apart some of the most ridiculous claims
of the anti-vaxxers.
Ron: Thank you, Richard. We’ll have to do this again some time.
Me: Oh yeah, I had a lot of fun. What do you think you should try to convince people of next time?
Ron: I believe that covid-19 has a non-zoonotic origin.
Me:
So lab leak? That’s it? That’s very mainstream at this point, it’s
impossible to find a right-winger who doesn’t believe that this was all
the fault of the Chinese.
Ron: Who said anything about the Chinese?
Me: Wait,
is this another one of your anti-American conspiracy theories? You’re
now going to tell me that the US government accidentally inflicted covid
on the world?
Ron: Who said anything about it being an accident?
Me:
Please stop Ron, there are only so many mind-blowing ideas I can digest
in one night. Let’s talk about the pleasant California weather for the
rest of our trip, and how nice it is to live in a state with such
natural beauty and low levels of violent crime.
iu.edu |The omission of clothing from historians’ discussion of the effect of Nazi propaganda is not by accident. It was Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis’ Reich Minister of Propaganda, who famously said, “Propaganda becomes ineffective the moment we become aware of it.” Thepower in the uniform therein lies in its silence. The uniform is not a poster, a film, or a speech, but a silent, omnipresent actor that, like these media, is a piece of the Nazi propaganda machine. Goebbels’ quote perfectly encapsulates the propagandistic impact of the uniforms worn during the time of the Third Reich. Consequently, Nazi dress and regalia are not the most talked about aspects of the Nazis’ propaganda machine, but more than likely, the least touched upon.
Regardless of silence and scarcity in conversation however, Nazi uniforms may have been the most effective for the very reason that Goebbels outlined: German citizens, enemies of the Nazi regime and foreigners alike were unaware that the Nazis they viewed were walking advertisements for the Reich. These uniforms may have been mute, but they constantly operated in service of the regime through their utilisation of both style and menace.
Uniforms, which have come to be known as one of the most visually-striking elements of Nazi aesthetics, served as one of the principal vectors of propaganda in the Third Reich. In biology, a vector is an organism, typically of the biting sort, that transfers a disease from one being to another– Nazi uniforms did just that. However, instead of fleas transferring the plague, the Nazis used clothing to present propaganda that conveyed their message of racial dominance and militarism without uttering a word. Uniforms operated as an arm of the Nazi ideals of Volksgemeinschaft, in English, a people’s community andGleichschaltung, the idea of bringing everything in line with the values of national socialism. The Nazi uniform aided in the destruction of personal identity and smoothed out the differences between German citizens thereby constructing both an egalitarian and passive society.
The main question of this paper is: how did the Nazi Party use its uniforms to exude elegance whilst eliciting fear in order to further its ideology into the minds of wearers, viewers and enemies? In other words, how was the uniform a piece of propaganda? I will argue that the Nazis used uniforms to produce a fashionable aesthetic to serve as another arm of the Third Reich’s propaganda machine– specifically, through the stark uniform that so occupies our memory of the image of the Nazis. I will look at the structure and implementation of the Nazi uniform and how it pertained to the promotion of the ideals of the Reich. By then using primary sources from vantage points, the perception and effect of these uniforms can be analysed and their propagandistic effect better understood.
This paper arises out of my own interests in the ability fashion to speak. A natural reaction of impressedness from seeing images of Nazi men clad in strong and svelte clothing forced me to recognise this regalia as different from ordinary uniforms. In other words these were the propagandistic impacts of Nazi fashion, generated from viewing images of Nazi elites and soldiers, felt decades after their design to have just that effect. I was interested in separating the crimes of the Third Reich and understanding how the regime’s look could be evil, investigating whether the fear we associate with the Nazi uniform was an intention in design, or a function of the crimes committed by the Nazis. Did the Nazi uniform have a unique look for its time? Would an allied uniform look ‘evil’ if it was placed into the context of crimes such as the Holocaust? This question can be answered through the juxtaposition of the uniform against those of concurrent, non-German armies and peoples. Isolating an intention to create a uniform that functioned in such a multifaceted way spurred an interest within me to explore the possible depth of the Nazi uniform.
What I believe makes this paper special is that it explores an important and relevant topic: the usage of inanimate and non-vocal (through sound, text or image) techniques to disseminate information. My hope is that this paper will enlighten the reader to look more critically at the ability of potential actors at play in the political sphere. When it comes to gaining and maintaining power, anything can be in service of a regime– including fashion.
johnganz | A little while ago, I came up with the idea that that the difference
between Italian Fascism and German Nazism was that Fascism essentially
had “Jock-Douche” vibes while Nazism had “Creep-Loser” vibes. Now, I’m
going to try to develop this fancy into a full-blown (or rather,
half-baked) theory.
“But, John, this is absurd,” you might
immediately object, “How can you reduce an entire political ideology to
categories drawn from American high school movies.” Well, try to think
of them as ideal-types like the sociologist Max
Weber developed. Here’s what Weber wrote of his ideal-type methodology:
“An ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more
points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete,
more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual
phenomena, which are arranged according to those onesidedly emphasized
viewpoints into a unified analytical construct...” That is to say, they
are sort of made up. Still, I believe that this theory, while it does
not pretend to be a definitive explanation, may help to illuminate
aspects of the far right today.
The Categories Considered in their Ideal-Typical Formation
First,
some preliminary definitions. The Jock-Douche ideal-type proceeds in
the world with confidence and the presumption of immediate physical
domination, while the Creep-Loser ideal-type has been thwarted some way
and is therefore reflective, and is resentful, a plotter, a schemer, and
a fantasist dreaming up grand historical vistas of triumph or doom.
Again, keep in mind these are purely ideal-types. Rarely does an
individual totally embody either one or the other idea. One could
speculate that in many cases the superficial confidence of the
Jock-Douche type is merely psychological compensation for the feelings
of inadequacy of the Creep-Loser. On the converse, the intellectual
limitations of the Jock-Douche type leads to an imaginative perspective
that cannot escape the relatively crude thought-world of Nerd-dom.
Considered from either an existential or psychoanalytic lens, it seems
likely that these two are actual facets of single complex or form of
being-in-the-world, manifested in different ways under different
circumstances. Fascism as its own ideal-type can be understood as a
synthesis between the Jock-Douche and the Creep-Loser: a cult of sheer
physical of strength and action wedded to a wounded and brooding
consciousness of impotence and humiliation.
I should address the
specifically national character of the division proposed here, that
Italian Fascism and German Nazism represent two different affective
dimensions of the fascist consciousness or self. Again, this is purely
ideal-typical: both movements and nationalities naturally contain
examples of the opposite tendency, but for the sake of illustration it
is convenient to divide them in this manner. I also believe one finds
that these two different spirits do actually predominate more or less in
these respective national movements. Now, one might object here that
making a division according to national origin recapitulates the very
sort of national or even racial essentialism of fascist ideology itself,
and that I am stereotyping Italians as impulsive, hot-blooded, and
unintellectual while painting Germans, from “the land of poets and
thinkers,” as either speculative dreamers or ratiocinators. I would just
say to that to a large degree that these different modes of behavior
and thinking are representations and projections of fascists’ own
fantasies about their national qualities.
The Categories Expressed in Historical Examples
The
most obvious representation of the Jock-Douche and Creep-Loser duality
is in the leadership of the respective movements: Benito Mussolini vs.
Adolf Hitler. Mussolini was socially successful, a popular and esteemed
figure in the Italian socialist party. In fact, his turn to nationalism
and war-mongering can be considered as a result of the desire for
continued popularity, or even identification with popular enthusiasm as
such, when his initial pacifist line as editor of the socialist
newspaper failed to capture the national imagination.
The
turn to war-making and nationalism also appealed to Mussolini’s belief
in a mystique of violence and action, leavened by his interest in
Georges Sorel’s irrationalism and political vitalism. Here’s how a
fellow socialist described him in 1914: “Nothing matters to him now
except to win. What matters is to triumph over timidity, fear and
prudence which impede and arrest the revolutionary advance of the
proletariat.” And Mussolini adulated the proletariat, not so much for
its Marxist-assigned historical role of overthrowing the capitalist mode
of production, but for its heroism, masculinity and toughness.
Mussolini’s he-man histrionics as fascist leader, the jaw-jutting and
arm crossing etc. project this pure masculinity. And although he was an
intellectual, his statements reflect a proud and defiant
anti-intellectualism. Speaking of an anti-fascist newspaper, Mussolini
famously remarked, “The democrats of Il Mondo want to know our programme? It is to break the bones of the democrats of Il Mondo. And the sooner the better.” In other words, bullying brought to the level of political theory.
On
the other hand, Hitler was a loser. A marginal type in post-war Munich,
he was a failure at his chosen vocation as artist. In an
unintentionally revealing passage in Mein Kampf, Hitler
describes how he was bullied and chased away from a construction job by
union organizers. The fact this probably never happened in reality is
all the more revealing: it reveals an essential fantasy at play. Mein Kampf itself
is the ranting and grandiose fantasies of an embittered man, which
provided a good deal of its rhetorical appeal to other members of his
pseudo-intellectual milieu, the “intellectual precariat of bohemians and
academic dropouts, throwing together various elements that they have
found in the neurotic overproduction of private mythologies” as Albert
Koschorke describes them in his essay on Mein Kampf.
Even
the most casual observer of Nazism has no doubt noted the absurd
difference in Hitler’s actual meager appearance and silly histrionics
with his professed Aryan ideal. This feature extends across the Nazi
leadership, and is especially notable in the figure of Heinrich Himmler.
Himmler’s unassuming appearance betrays his essential difference from
the mob figures of the early Nazi party, men like the predatory bully
Ernst Röhm. He was a petit bourgeois philistine preoccupied with eugenic
fantasies drawn from his time as a chicken farmer. He also believed
himself to be the reincarnation of an ancient Aryan king.
consentfactory | GloboCap, Inc. and its innumerable subsidiaries, agents, assigns,
political puppets, media goons, and other loyal minions are desperately
endeavoring to enshrine the official Covid-19 narrative in the annals of
“history.” According to new figures from the WHO, “almost 15 million excess deaths” (or “a total of 336.8 million lost life-years”) had been caused by the virus by the end of 2021, none of which had anything to do with ventilators, or the classification of anyone who died of anything (i.e., cancer, heart disease, an auto accident, etc.) who had also tested positive as a “Covid death.”
When the globalist establishment realize they do not control the narrative anymore........ pic.twitter.com/o30WQpRmyt
Previously perfectly healthy young people are dropping dead left and
right from heart attacks and other “natural” (or “undisclosed”) causes
that have nothing to do with the experimental “vaccines” that they did
not need but were coerced into taking, which saved millions or 100 million lives. The masks that didn’t work worked, except that they didn’t, but that was only if you studied how they worked in reality.
Being locked down, forced to wear medical-looking masks, gaslighted and
terrorized by official propaganda, bullied, segregated, censored,
demonized, and otherwise systematically tortured, was actually good for people’s mental health,
except for “people with existing mental health conditions, and
children, and people with disabilities, and adolescents, and people
without financial or social security nets.”
Meanwhile, cognitively dissonant New Normals are taking to the
Internet to claim that no one knew better at the time, and that, OK,
sure, “mistakes were made,” but if we “science-denying conspiracy
theorists,” who they censored, demonized, and systematically persecuted
for over two years, had just spoken up …
I could go on, but you get the picture … or, rather, you either do or
you don’t. Because it’s not just the folks at GloboCap, Inc. that are
fanatically waging this War on Reality. Everybody and their brother is
trying to ram their “reality” down everyone’s throat. You got the
“Viruses Do Not Exist” people. You got the “There Are No Neo-Nazis in
Ukraine” people. The “Putin Is Our Savior” people. The Vote Blue Cult.
The Multipolar people. The Transgendered People’s Army. The Doomsday
Clock Hucksters. The Folks Who Still Listen to NPR. The Insurrection
Truthers. The Insurrection Deniers. The 9/11 Truthers. The Moon-Landing
Truthers. The Cult of Trump. The Church of Russiagate. The Rothschild
Obsessives. The Anti-Racism Racists. The Anti-Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semites. The Mass Formation Movement. The Cult of Marx. The Cult of
Capital. The Climate Change Fanatics. The Musk Cult. The list goes on
and on.
Historically, we humans have not done very well in such psychotic
ontological environments. When “reality” is shattered into a thousand
little shards, and things fall apart, and the center does not hold, we
tend to get rather scared, and confused, and agitated. We start to
panic. We try to put “reality” back together again. This does not work.
This worsens our panic. We start looking around for a new “reality
WaPo | As
government attorneys unravel Jeffrey Epstein’s complex finances and sex
trafficking ring, officials are training their focus on other
high-wealth individuals with whom the disgraced financier may have done
business.
One
of the most closely watched cases comes from the U.S. Virgin Islands,
where Epstein maintained a residence, as it pursues a lawsuit against
JPMorgan Chase, Epstein’s bank of 15 years. The suit alleges that the
institution profited from keeping Epstein on as a client and was
complicit in funding his long history of abuse and child sex
trafficking.
Deutsche Bank, where Epstein took much of his wealth after leaving JPMorgan in 2013, has already settled
a similar case for $75 million. But legal observers say the claims
against JPMorgan are far more sweeping than those against Deutsche Bank,
covering a period when his trafficking operation was more robust and
sophisticated.
Here are the figures surrounding the JPMorgan-Epstein case, and what you need to know about them.
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
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