telegraph | Our animal ancestors, and most of their
descendants, laughed simply because they were enjoying themselves,
according to a new study.
But over millions of years humans have perfected how to use the sound to wound as well. Great apes which roamed the earth 16 million years ago are thought to be the first who developed the ability to laugh.
Modern-day Orangutans, the only species of Asian great ape, laugh when
they are having fun, while African great apes, which include gorillas
and chimpanzees, have learned that the sound can be used to influence
others, but still only use laughter while playing.
However, human have gone much further, using laughter for a range of negative emotions, including to ridicule or sneer.
SA | For instance, how can the sometimes opposite functions of humor, such
as promoting social bonding and excluding others with derision, be
reconciled? And when laughter enhances feelings of social connectedness,
is that effect a fundamental function of the laughter or a mere
by-product of some other primary role (much as eating with people has
undeniable social value even though eating is primarily motivated by the
need for nourishment)?
There is much evidence for a fundamental function. Robert Provine of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, showed in Current Directions in Psychological Science,
for example, that individuals laugh 30 times more in the company of
others than they do alone. In his research, he and his students
surreptitiously observed spontaneous laughter as people went about their
business in settings ranging from the student union to shopping malls.
Forabosco notes that there is also some confusion about the relation
between humor and laughter: “Laughter is a more social phenomenon, and
it occurs for reasons other than humor, including unpleasant ones.
Moreover, humor does not always make us laugh.” He notes the cases where
a person is denigrated or where an observation seems amusing but does
not lead to laughter.
A further lingering area of debate concerns humor’s role in sexual
attraction and thus reproductive success. In one view, knowing how to be
funny is a sign of a healthy brain and of good genes, and consequently
it attracts partners. Researchers have found that men are more likely to
be funny and women are more likely to appreciate a good sense of humor,
which is to say that men compete for attention and women do the
choosing. But views, of course, differ on this point.
Even the validity of seeking a unified theory of humor is debated.
“It is presumptuous to think about cracking the secret of humor with a
unified theory,” Forabosco says. “We understand many aspects of it, and
now the neurosciences are helping to clarify important issues. But as
for its essence, it’s like saying, ‘Let’s define the essence of love.’
We can study it from many different angles; we can measure the effect of
the sight of the beloved on a lover’s heart rate. But that doesn’t
explain love. It’s the same with humor. In fact, I always refer to it by
describing it, never by defining it.”
Still, certain commonalities are now accepted by almost all scholars
who study humor. One, Forabosco notes, is a cognitive element:
perception of incongruity. “That’s necessary but not sufficient,” he
says, “because there are incongruities that aren’t funny.” So we have to
see what other elements are involved. To my mind, for example, the
incongruity needs to be relieved without being totally resolved; it must
remain ambiguous, something strange that is never fully explained.”
Other cognitive and psychological elements can also provide some
punch. These, Forabosco says, include features such as aggression,
sexuality, sadism and cynicism. They don’t have to be there, but the
funniest jokes are those in which they are. Similarly, people tend to
see the most humor in jokes that are “very intelligent and very wicked.”
“What is humor? Maybe in 40 years we’ll know,” Forabosco says. And
perhaps in 40 years we’ll be able to explain why he laughs as he says
it.
TNR | The Buddha recommends practicing greater
mindfulness throughout our waking day. The ultimate insight, however, is
that when we peer within and try to gauge or pin down the elusive ego,
there is nothing there. As Zen master D. T. Suzuki put it, the fruit of
concerted and disciplined meditation is to see the “I” flapping like a
loose door in the wind, coming off its hinges with each breath.
Halo,
by contrast, promises to deliver only narcissism and self-obsession.
The device doesn’t offer real insight into your inner states but reports
on how you seem to other people. As Amazon’s medical officer Maulik
Majmudar explains,
“People are relatively unaware of how they sound to others and the
impact that may have on their personal and professional relationships.”
If you sound irritated, angry, restrained, or overbearing, you can
adjust your tone and delivery to seem otherwise.
Doesn’t this
invite you to second-guess every utterance and interaction and fret over
how you look in the eyes of judging peers? This is the least helpful
kind of self-knowledge since it is wholly insecure, constantly shifting,
eternally uncertain. I can and never will know how others assess
me—this is beyond my control. Trying to grasp this, or influence it with
any consistency or certainty, is a futile chase and a recipe for
madness. It evokes the anxiety that therapists attribute to social media
use.
But if Halo is of little use to me, who is it principally for? Amazon has vowed
that it will not pillage the data collected; Halo spies only for you.
For now. But it establishes an important precedent and inures us to
constant surveillance. Thus, it opens the door for hungry marketers.
Surveillance is at the heart of the digital economy; it’s what makes, or
promises to make, digital services superior. The more we divulge, the
more precisely, efficiently, and effectively these services help us.
They can tell you what you want before you know you want it. On the
promise of personalized service and greater convenience, we invariably
comply.
Why might marketers want to know about your
emotional states? How are they benefited by knowing you are sad for 1.6
seconds at 12:30 p.m.? Marketers can take advantage of you in such
moments and pitch products and services that you are susceptible to. As
media scholar Zeynep Tufekci argues,
it’s but a short step from identifying your vulnerabilities to creating
them. If Amazon determines you are depressed, for example, it may know
exactly what movies you will indulge in, what snack foods you will load
up on—what “retail therapy” soothes you at that moment.
They call me the Back Door Santa
I make my runs about the break of day
They call me the Back Door Santa
I make my runs about the break of day
I make all the little girls happy
While the boys are out to play
I ain't like the old Saint Nick
He don't come but once a year
I ain't like the old Saint Nick
He don't come but once a year
I come runnin' with my presents
Every time they call me dear
I keep some change in my pocket, in case the children are
Home
I give 'em a few pennies so that we can be alone
I leave the back door open so if anybody smells a mouse
And wouldn't old Santa be in trouble if there ain't no
Chimney in the house
They call me the Back Door Santa
I make my runs about the break of day
I make all the little girls happy
While all the boys are out to play
They call me the Back Door Santa
Yeah, that's what they call me
They call me the Back Door Santa
Yeah, that's what they call me
A man who is able to do all
that is demanded of a Christian, both with his mind and his essence, is called a
Christian without quotation marks. A man who, in his mind, wishes to do all that
is demanded of a Christian, but can do so only with his mind and not with his
essence, is called pre-Christian. And a man who can do nothing, even with his
mind, is called a non- Christian.”
G.I.Gurdjieff /Views from the
Real World / Separation of Oneself from oneself
"If instead of religion in general we take
Christianity, then again there exists a
“Christianity number one,
that is to say, paganism in the guise of Christianity. Christianity number two
is an emotional religion, sometimes very pure but without force, sometimes full
of bloodshed and horror leading to the Inquisition, to religious wars. Christianity number
three, instances of which are afforded by various forms of Protestantism, is
based upon dialectic, argument, theories, and so forth. Then there is
Christianity number four, of which men number one, number two, and number three
have no conception whatever. "In actual fact Christianity number one, number
two, and number three is simply external imitation. Only man number four
strives to be a Christian and only man number five can actually be a Christian.
For to be a Christian means to have the being of a Christian, that is, to live
in accordance with Christ's precepts. "Man number one, number two, and number
three cannot live in accordance with Christ's precepts because with them
everything 'happens.' Today it is one thing and tomorrow it is quite another
thing. Today they are ready to give away their last shirt and tomorrow to tear
a man to pieces because he refuses to give up his shirt to them. They are
swayed by every chance event. They are not masters of themselves and therefore
they cannot decide to be Christians and really be Christians.”
G.I.Gurdjieff/
In search for the Miraculous / Chapter 4
"First of all it is
necessary to understand that a Christian is not a man who calls himself a
Christian or whom others call a Christian. A Christian is one who lives in
accordance with Christ's precepts. Such as we are we cannot be Christians. In
order to be Christians we must be able 'to do.' We cannot do; with us everything
'happens.' Christ says: 'Love your enemies,' but how can we love our enemies
when we cannot even love our friends? Sometimes 'it loves' and sometimes 'it
does not love.' Such as we are we cannot even really desire to be Christians
because, again, sometimes 'it desires' and sometimes 'it does not desire.' And
one and the same thing cannot be desired for long, because suddenly, instead of
desiring to be a Christian, a man remembers a very good but very expensive
carpet that he has seen in a shop. And instead of wishing to be a Christian he
begins to think how he can manage to buy this carpet, forgetting all about
Christianity. Or if somebody else does not believe what a wonderful Christian he
is, he will be ready to eat him alive or to roast him on hot coals. In order to
be a good Christian one must be. To be means to be master of oneself. If a man
is not his own master he has nothing and can have nothing. And he cannot be a
Christian. He is simply a machine, an automaton. A machine cannot be a
Christian. Think for yourselves, is it possible for a motorcar or a typewriter
or a gramophone to be Christian? They are simply things which are controlled by
chance. They are not responsible. They are machines. To be a Christian means to
be responsible. Responsibility comes later when a man even partially ceases to
be a machine, and begins in fact, and not only in words, to desire to be a
Christian."
G.I.Gurdjieff/
In search for the Miraculous / Chapter 6
"Generally speaking we know very little about Christianity and the form of Christian worship; we know nothing at all of the history and origin of a number of things. For instance, the church, the temple in which gather the faithful and in which services are carried out according to special rites; where was this taken from? Many people
do not think about this at all. Many people think that the outward form of
worship, the rites, the singing of canticles, and so on, were invented by the
fathers of the church. Others think that this outward form has been taken partly
from pagan religions and partly from the Hebrews. But all of it is untrue. The
question of the origin of the Christian church, that is, of the Christian
temple, is much more interesting than we think. To begin with, the church and
worship in the form which they took in the first centuries of Christianity could
not have been borrowed from paganism because there was nothing like it either in
the Greek or Roman cults or in Judaism. The Jewish synagogue, the Jewish temple,
Greek and Roman temples of various gods, were something quite different from the
Christian church which made its appearance in the first and second centuries.
The Christian church is—a school concerning which people have forgotten that it
is a school. Imagine a school where the teachers give lectures and perform
explanatory demonstrations without knowing that these are lectures and
demonstrations; and where the pupils or simply the people who come to the school
take these lectures and demonstrations for ceremonies, or rites, or
'sacraments,' i.e., magic. This would approximate to the Christian church of our
times.
"The Christian church, the Christian form of worship, was not invented by the fathers of the church. It was all taken in a ready-made form from Egypt, only not from the Egypt that we know but from one which we do not know. This Egypt was in the same place as the other but it existed much earlier. Only small bits of it survived in historical times, and these bits have been preserved in secret and so well that we do not even know where they have been preserved.
"It will seem strange to
many people when I say that this prehistoric Egypt was Christian many thousands
of years before the birth of Christ, that is to say, that its religion was
composed of the same principles and ideas that constitute true Christianity.
Special schools existed in this prehistoric Egypt which were called 'schools of
repetition.' In these schools a public repetition was given on definite days,
and in some schools perhaps even every day, of the entire course in a condensed
form of the sciences that could be learned at these schools. Sometimes this
repetition lasted a week or a month. Thanks to these repetitions people who had
passed through this course did not lose their connection with the school and
retained in their memory all they had learned. Sometimes they came from very far
away simply in order to listen to the repetition and went away feeling their
connection with the school. There were special days of the year when the
repetitions were particularly complete, when they were carried out with
particular solemnity—and these days themselves possessed a symbolical meaning.
"These 'schools of
repetition' were taken as a model for Christian churches—the form of worship in
Christian churches almost entirely represents the course of repetition of the
science dealing with the universe and man. Individual prayers, hymns, responses,
all had their own meaning in this repetition as well as holidays and all
religious symbols, though their meaning has been forgotten long ago." G.I.Gurdjieff/
In search of the Miraculous / Chapter 15
thedebrief |In an exclusive feature for The Debrief,
U.S. military and intelligence officials, as well as Pentagon emails,
offer an unprecedented glimpse behind the scenes of what’s currently
going on with The Pentagon’s investigation into UFOs, or as they term
them, “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (UAP).
For the last two years, the
Department of Defense’s newly revamped “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
Task Force” (or UAPTF) has been busy briefing lawmakers, Intelligence
Community stakeholders, and the highest levels of the U.S. military on
encounters with what they say are mysterious airborne objects that defy
conventional explanations.
Along with classified briefings,
multiple senior U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter say
two classified intelligence reports on UAP have been widely distributed
to the U.S. Intelligence Community. Numerous sources from various
government agencies told The Debrief
that these reports include clear photographic evidence of UAP. The
reports also explicitly state that the Task Force is considering the
possibility that these unidentified objects could, as stated by one
source from the U.S. Intelligence Community said, be operated by
“intelligences of unknown origin.”
Significantly, a retired U.S. Air
Force brigadier general and head of RAND corporation’s Space Enterprise
Initiative has—for the first time—gone on record to discuss some of the
most likely explanations for UAP.
His responses were surprising.
Overwhelmingly, everyone The Debrief
spoke with said the most striking feature of the recently released
UAPTF intelligence position report was the inclusion of new and
“extremely clear” photograph of an unidentifiable triangular aircraft.
The photograph, which is said to
have also been taken from inside the cockpit of a military fighter jet,
depicted an apparent aerospace vehicle described as a large equilateral
triangle with rounded or “blunted” edges and large, perfectly spherical
white “lights” in each corner. Officials who had seen it said the image
was captured in 2019 by an F/A-18 fighter pilot.
Two officials that received the
report said the photo was taken after the triangular craft emerged from
the ocean and began to ascend straight upwards at a 90-degree angle. It
was indicated that this event occurred off the eastern coast of the
United States. Several other sources confirmed the photo’s existence;
however, they declined to provide any further specifics of the
incident.
Regarding the overall theme of the
recent report, officials who read it say the report primarily focused
on “Unidentified Submersible Phenomena,” or unidentified “transmedium”
vehicles capable of operating both under water and in the air.
The three officials we spoke with
said the report suggested the UAP Task Force appears to be concerned
that the objects being termed as UAP may be originating from within the
world’s oceans. Strange as this may sound, the idea of “USOs” or
“unidentified submersible objects” is not something exclusive to the
current UAPTF.
We
have several active Freedom of Information Act requests with the
Department of Navy to pursue more information related to the research
that led to these patents. As those are being processed, we've continued
to dig through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's (USPTO) Public
Patent Application Information Retrieval database to get as much context
for these patents as possible.
In doing so, we came across documents that seem to suggest, at least
by the Navy's own claims, that two highly peculiar Navy patents, the room temperature superconductor (RTSC) and the high-energy electromagnetic field generator (HEEMFG),
may in fact already be in operation in some manner. The inventor of the
Navy's most bizarre patent, the straight-out-of-science
fiction-sounding hybrid aerospace/underwater craft, describes that craft
as leveraging the same room temperature superconductor technology and
high energy electromagnetic fields to enable its unbelievable speed and maneuverability.
If those two technologies are already operable as the Navy claims,
could this mean the hybrid craft may also already operable or close to
operable? Or is this just more evidence that the whole exotic 'UFO'
patent endeavor on the Navy's behalf is some sort of ruse or even gross
mismanagement of resources?
At the heart of these questions is the term “operable.” In most
patent applications, applicants must assert proof of a patent’s or
invention’s “enablement,” or the extent to which a patent is described
in such a way that any person who is familiar with similar technologies
or techniques would be able to understand it, and theoretically
reproduce it.
However, in these patent documents, the inventor
Salvatore Pais, Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division's (NAWCAD)
patent attorney Mark O. Glut, and the U.S. Naval Aviation Enterprise's
Chief Technology Officer Dr. James Sheehy, all assert that these
inventions are not only enabled, but operable. To help me understand what that term may mean in these contexts, I reached out to Peter Mlynek, a patent attorney.
Mlynek
informed me that the terms “operable” or “operability” are not common
in patent applications, but that there is little doubt that the use of
the term is meant to assert to the USPTO that these inventions actually
work:
counterpunch | The notion that the COVID-19 pandemic was ‘the great equalizer’
should be dead and buried by now. If anything, the lethal disease is
another terrible reminder of the deep divisions and inequalities in our
societies. That said, the treatment of the disease should not be a
repeat of the same shameful scenario.
For an entire year, wealthy celebrities and government officials have
been reminding us that “we are in this together”, that “we are on the
same boat”, with the likes of US singer, Madonna, speaking from her
mansion while submerged in a “milky bath sprinkled with rose petals,”
telling us that the pandemic has proved to be the “great equalizer”.
AAA estimates that the average cost of maintaining a vehicle in the United States is $706 per month. https://t.co/WfD7POPMix
“Like I used to say at the end of ‘Human Nature’ every night, we are
all in the same boat,” she said. “And if the ship goes down, we’re all
going down together,” CNN reported at the time.
Such statements, like that of Madonna, and Ellen DeGeneres
as well, have generated much media attention not just because they are
both famous people with a massive social media following but also
because of the obvious hypocrisy in their empty rhetoric. In truth,
however, they were only repeating the standard procedure followed by
governments, celebrities and wealthy ‘influencers’ worldwide.
But are we, really, “all in this together”? With unemployment
rates skyrocketing across the globe, hundreds of millions scraping by
to feed their children, multitudes of nameless and hapless families
chugging along without access to proper healthcare, subsisting on hope
and a prayer so that they may survive the scourges of poverty – let
alone the pandemic – one cannot, with a clear conscience, make such
outrageous claims.
Not only are we not “on the same boat” but, certainly, we have never
been. According to World Bank data, nearly half of the world lives
on less than $5.5 a day. This dismal statistic is part of a remarkable
trajectory of inequality that has afflicted humanity for a long time.
WaPo | The
beachside dance floor was packed. The pulse of electronic music
throbbed. In the middle of the pandemic, in the crowd of maskless
dancers, some tourists commented to each other: "Tulum is back."
“It
felt like covid was over. The borders are open. The world is back to
normal. Let’s just have fun,” said Alexandra Karpova, 31, a public
relations executive who flew from New York to attend the November
festival, called Art With Me, on Mexico’s Riviera Maya on the Caribbean
coast.
But in the days after the festival, dozens of attendees tested positive for the coronavirus. Some brought it back to the United States.
The
incident prompted a question at the heart of Mexico’s economic
recovery: Is the country — with among the highest coronavirus caseloads
in the world — taking too many risks to re-energize its lucrative tourism sector?
Remarkably,
the number of American tourists visiting the state of Quintana Roo,
where Tulum and Cancun are located, has increased by 23 percent compared
with 2019. With Europe closed to most Americans, Mexico has
successfully marketed itself as a desirable alternative. Roughly 100
flights from the United States are now landing in Quintana Roo every
day.
Many
tourists are coming to stay at coastal resorts, where masks are
mandatory in public places. Others are going on scuba diving tours or
taking kite surfing lessons. But Tulum’s global reputation as a party
destination has not changed during the pandemic.
“There
are parties almost every night,” said Maria Prusakova, 30, the founder
of a public relations firm, who traveled to Tulum in July from San
Francisco.
When
the restaurants closed at 11 p.m., she said, the parties started at
private villas. No one wore masks. Prusakova got sick at the same time
as 12 of her friends. They all tested positive — in her case, only after
she returned to San Francisco.
“I’m still so happy I went,” she said. “I was so glad to see people. The food was amazing.”
Prusakova
is returning to Tulum for New Year’s Eve, when the city is typically
packed with parties. This year, authorities say they won’t permit them.
State officials say they are scanning social media to find any mention
of large gatherings. Event organizers are quietly telling tourists that
they will find a way to host parties.
“We
need to find a way to create jobs. Otherwise, the situation will
continue getting worse,” said Marisol Vanegas, the state secretary of
tourism. “But we always prioritize public health.”
California’s surge stems from two sources, first the number of Mexicans living in poverty and/or severely packed households. La familia is the most important part of Mexican culture and it is not at all uncommon for one packed household to spread it to other households in the same extended family.
Second, well-to-do, working from home, don’t-know-anyone-who’s been sick white Californians spent the summer traveling both in state and flying to other places like Hawaii and Mexico. Always important to keep in mind that largely wealthy travelers were the initial vector in the US.
The well-to-do, working from home crowd would absolutely crumble if their mostly Latino nannies, housekeepers, and maids weren’t able to go to work every day. The servants and their employers are interacting in close quarters and are almost certainly exposing each other to the virus. Always important to keep in mind that largely wealthy business travelers were the initial vector in the US.
I also thought it really interesting that in the under-18 year olds, Mexicans have nearly 2X as many cases as all other ethnies combined! (110,000 vs 57,000.. Among known race cases.) Always important to keep in mind that largely wealthy business travelers were the initial vector in the US.
I’d guess it’s because the Mexican cases are primarily younger (almost half Mexican infections are 34 years old or younger). I’d also say that it makes me question a lot of these statistics…For example, are Mexican children more susceptible to inflection or, are they more likely to have been tested? Always important to keep in mind that largely wealthy business travelers were the initial vector in the US.
Finally, Mexicans skew younger than whites and blacks at the top demographic level. Always important to keep in mind that largely wealthy business travelers were the initial vector in the US.
politico | Pentagon officials are making an
11th-hour push to potentially break up the joint leadership of U.S.
Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, a move that would raise
inevitable questions about Army Gen. Paul Nakasone's future as head of
the country’s largest spy agency.
Five people familiar with the matter
told POLITICO that senior Defense Department leaders are reviewing a
plan to separate the two agencies, a move lawmakers and DoD had
contemplated for years but had largely fallen by the wayside since
Nakasone assumed command of both organizations in 2018. The Wall Street Journal reported that a meeting about the proposal is scheduled for this week. Defense One first reported the effort was afoot.
If
successful, the move could create major upheaval just as national
security officials try to determine the full scope of a monthslong hack
of several major U.S. agencies — including Homeland Security Department
and the nuclear weapons branch of the Energy Department — by Russia’s
elite spy agency.
Trump
“talking about trying to split up the cyber command from the national
security agency, in the midst of a crisis to be talking about that type
of disruption makes us vulnerable again,” House Armed Services Chair
Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said Saturday night during an interview with CNN.
On
Friday, Smith sent letters to acting Defense Secretary Christopher
Miller and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley,
warning them against severing the leadership of NSA and Cyber Command.
The two agencies have shared leadership under a so-called dual-hat
arrangement since the Pentagon stood up Cyber Command in 2009.
Nakasone
has led the military’s top digital warfighting unit and the federal
government’s largest intelligence agency for roughly two and a half
years. He has re-imagined how both organizations can deploy their own
hackers and analysts against foreign adversaries via a doctrine of
“persistent engagement” — putting U.S. forces in constant contact
against adversaries in cyberspace, including tracking them and taking
offensive action.
The
four-star is beloved by both Democrats and Republicans, especially
after defending the 2018 and 2020 election from foreign interference.
Some lawmakers even joke they wish they could put Nakasone in charge of
more parts of the federal government.
strategic-culture | Out of respect for the American electoral process being consummated,
Russian President Vladimir Putin had waited until this week to make any
comment. However, after the Electoral College executed its duties, Putin
promptly telegrammed congratulations to Biden on his victory. The
Russian leader expressed the hope that Russia and the United States
would begin to normalize relations for the sake of global security.
Ominously, the auspicious occasion was immediately marred by a U.S.
media frenzy alleging a massive cyber-assault on the heart of American
government and industries. Russia was predictably blamed as the
offender.
The Kremlin dismissed the claims as yet another anti-Russia
fabrication. For the past four years, the U.S. media have regularly
peddled sensational claims of Russian malfeasance, from alleged
interference in elections, to alleged assassination programs against
U.S. troops in Afghanistan, among many other such tall stories. Never
has any verifiable evidence been presented to back up these lurid
allegations. The cyber domain is a particular favorite for such
anti-Russia claims, most likely because these stories are handily told
without any real evidence. All that is required is for anonymous cyber
security agents to be quoted. The abstract and arcane cyber world also
lends itself to mystery for most people. In short, it is amenable to
false claims because of its elusive technical nature.
Now, it is feasible that some kind of malign cyber event did indeed
happen in the U.S. government departments, agencies, infrastructure and
private sector as reported this week. Though, what is very much in doubt
is the question of who actually carried it out. The U.S. media and
anonymous officials are fingering Russia. But where is the proof of
Russia’s culpability?
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security briefed members of
Congress about the cyber-attacks. Senators emerged from the briefings
fulminating against Russia. The second-highest ranking Democrat in the
Senate, Dick Durbin, told media that “it was virtually a declaration of
war by Russia on the United States”.
What is going on here is a classic case of “gas-lighting” whereby
people are being manipulated to believe in something utterly false; for
an ulterior agenda.
Edward Snowden, the courageous whistleblower formerly at the U.S.
National Security Agency, has revealed with copious proof how the CIA
and other American intelligence agencies have the technical capability
to carry out cyber-assaults using digital signatures with the deliberate
aim of falsely implicating other actors. That is, the ability to carry
out digital false-flag attacks.
kansascity | Today The Star presents a six-part package. It is the result of a
team of reporters who dug deeply into the archives of The Star and what
was once its sister paper, The Kansas City Times. They pored over
thousands of pages of digitized and microfilmed stories, comparing the
coverage to how those same events were covered in the Black press — most
notably by The Kansas City Call and The Kansas City Sun, each of which chronicled critical stories the white dailies ignored or gave short shrift.
Our
reporters searched court documents, archival collections, congressional
testimony, minutes of meetings and digital databases. Periodically, as
they researched, editors and reporters convened panels of scholars and
community leaders to discuss the significant milestones of Black life in
Kansas City that were overlooked or underplayed by The Star and The
Times.
Critically, we sought some of those who lived through the
events the project explored. They include victims of the 1977 flood, and
students (now long into adulthood) of the illegally segregated Kansas
City Public Schools. We talked to retired Star and Times reporters and
editors, many of whom, along with other colleagues in their time,
recognized institutional inertia, and fought for greater racial
inclusion.
Reporters were frequently sickened by what they found —
decades of coverage that depicted Black Kansas Citians as criminals
living in a crime-laden world. They felt shame at what was missing: the
achievements, aspirations and milestones of an entire population
routinely overlooked, as if Black people were invisible.
Reporters
felt regret that the papers’ historic coverage not only did a
disservice to Black Kansas Citians, but also to white readers deprived
of the opportunity to understand the true richness Black citizens
brought to Kansas City.
Like most metro newspapers of the early
to mid-20th century, The Star was a white newspaper produced by white
reporters and editors for white readers and advertisers. Having The Star
or Times thrown in your driveway was a family tradition, passed down to
sons and daughters.
But not in Black families. Their children
grew up with little hope of ever being mentioned in the city’s largest
and most influential newspapers, unless they got in trouble. Negative
portrayals of Black Kansas Citians buttressed stereotypes and played a
role in keeping the city divided.
Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article247928045.html#storylink=cpy
AIER | On Monday, December 7th, North Carolina teachers
did not show up in their classrooms, but instead logged onto Facebook
and posted photographs of themselves dressed in red with the caption, “A
show of solidarity with our colleagues.” This gesture was in defiance
of the Orange County Superintendent’s call for teachers to return to
schools and a way to protest school openings, on the grounds that it was
too dangerous for teachers to do their jobs in person because of the
coronavirus pandemic.
The local teacher’s union, Orange County Association of Educators, supported the movement in a Facebook post
saying, “We have yet to hear sufficient rationale for how teaching from
our classrooms helps our students, who can tell when our morale is low
and our stress levels are high.”
Schools across the country – in New York City, DC suburbs, Pittsburgh,
and so on – are closing again for fear that a new wave of infections
will occur from holiday travel and more people staying indoors. In
Orange County, the teachers are still unwilling to hold in-person
classes even though the county is seeing a low positive test rate of
3.1%, well below the state’s positive test rate goal of 5%.
It would be reasonable for teachers to oppose schools being open if
Covid-19 posed a significant risk to students. However, we knew early on
that the science demonstrates there is virtually no risk of severe
illness or death to children. On April 22nd, a study from The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found:
“Most children with COVID-19
presented with mild symptoms, if any, generally required supportive care
only, and typically had a good prognosis and recovered within 1 to 2
weeks.”
Likewise, two months later, a study from the Lancet stated: “COVID-19 is generally a mild disease in children, including infants.”
In the US alone, only 254
young people under the age of 17 have died of Covid-19. This number
accounts for roughly 0.085% percent of Covid-19 deaths in the United
States.
At the same time, school closures cause great harm to children and teenagers, especially in the long term.
School districts across the country are observing much higher class
failure rates compared to previous years. Salt Lake City schools
reported the percentage of students falling below grade level jumped from 23 percent in 2019 to 32 percent in the first trimester of 2020. In Fairfax County,
Virginia, the number of students who have two or more failing grades
has increased by 83%. Significant evidence shows that a truncated school
year supplemented with online learning is vastly inferior to the education children get in-person. Virtual learning is particularly harmful to students from poor socioeconomic backgrounds who do not have sufficient resources to support their learning.
Slate | “Teachers
do not need to be sitting on a panel with a scientist, getting
convinced to shut up and go with their position,” longtime union
president and former Brookline High teacher Jessica Wender-Shubow told
me recently. (She drew a distinction between individual teachers being
asked to participate, which she didn’t support, and the union as a union
getting an invitation—which didn’t happen.) She believed that parents
didn’t understand the logistical realities of teaching, and the
impossibility of getting perfect adherence from even the most perfect
children. Brookline parents, she said, “are in in the business of
ventilation and spacing. They decide what transmissibility looks like.
They say the children are safe. But there are debates about that.”
The
rest of the students, from third grade on up, returned in phases to
Brookline’s school buildings for hybrid learning starting at the end of
October. And then on Nov. 3—Election Day, and the day after the last
group of students returned to in-person learning—the teachers went on
strike. It was only for a day, and the kids weren’t scheduled to be
there anyway; it was a professional development day for teachers. But
the message was clear: The union wasn’t happy with the way reopening was
going.
This
fall, school reopening became a flashpoint, especially in blue America.
The same public health experts who warned of the pandemic and had
advocated closing everything in March made it increasingly clear that
reopening schools was—if case counts were low, if testing were available, if buildings could be ventilated—a manageable risk, at least before it got cold and another wave of the virus hit. Reporting in places like the New Yorker showed
how remote learning was likely to be a disaster for low-income
students. Meanwhile, many teachers and labor allies were skeptical about
the safety of reopening. States were facing budget crunches, Donald
Trump and Betsy DeVos were advocating for blanket reopenings while
refusing to provide funding or help, and states like Iowa and Georgia
had refused to mandate masks in high schools.
But if there was any place that could do in-person learning
safely, surely it was Brookline. The town was well resourced and
civic-minded, and the state of Massachusetts had kept counts relatively
low and hired a giant corps of contact tracers. The parents—at least a
significant chunk of them—wanted it. (In Brookline, as everywhere, there
were parents who were publicly leery about in-person schooling, but the
ones clamoring for in-person learning seemed to be the loudest parental
demographic.) And then there were those expert panels, which rivaled the state’s advisory board, especially Panel 4—“Public Health, Safety and Logistics.”
And
yet for all that credentialing, when the 1,000 or so Brookline
educators went on strike in November, it appeared to be an implicit
response to Panel 4’s expert advice. Panel 4 had recently advised
that 6 feet of distancing might be revisited in certain specific
circumstances, especially given new science that showed the disease was
less transmissible in younger children. Soon thereafter, the school
district had refused to put language permanently guaranteeing 6 feet of
distance into the union contract that was under (protracted)
negotiation. “Six feet is just a proxy for how many people are in the
classroom,” said Eric Colburn, a ninth grade English teacher who has
worked in the district for 18 years. “I could easily be convinced it
should be less in some cases, but I certainly think my union should be
involved in making that decision.”
On
the Brookline schools’ Facebook group, the comments read like a church
going through a schism. “I trust teachers to teach, and scientists to
guide us on science,” wrote one person, capturing a common view among
parents. “[T]he point is that teachers aren’t being heard, all I hear is
how amazing panel 4 is, I get it, a collection of brilliant minds
working diligently on the matter,” shot back another
Brookline resident. “If you all trust your teachers so much open up
your ears and listen to what they are telling everyone,” that commenter
added. Wender-Shubow, in our conversation this past September, took
pains to say that Panel 4 had the best intentions. But, she said, “what
they don’t know is how you teach children.” Their expertise stopped at
the schoolhouse door. These kinds of fights, she said, “were happening
everywhere, with a group of privileged white parents who are extremely
skilled at promoting their position. They are squeaky wheels who know
how to operate within civil society.”
The Revolutionary Struggle Is A Fight Between Movement And Inertia
"Most of the energy going into this debate has been focused on personalities; on AOC, on Dore and on his critics. But really this is just the latest manifestation of a perennial dynamic."https://t.co/kpwDU77h8i
caitlinjohnstone | There's also the debate that's been raging
in US left circles over the call initiated by commentator Jimmy Dore
for House progressives to force a floor vote on Medicare for All
legislation, a big part of the argument being that it's more important
than ever to start pushing for a normal healthcare system in the United
States right now. Millions of people are being thrown off their
employer-provided insurance during the economic downturn and it is both a
necessary and opportune time to either implement universal healthcare
or at least draw public attention to which elected officials are
standing in its way.
Both the campaign to get the US government to
implement a proper healthcare system, and the fight to get meaningful
financial support during the pandemic, will fail. Necessarily.
They
will not fail because there's a lack of public support for these
things. They will not fail because of the number of seats controlled by
members of a given party in the House or the Senate. They will not fail
because "It's just not realistic right now".
They will fail, ultimately, because an entire globe-spanning empire depends upon keeping Americans struggling financially.
The US has a system of deliberately institutionalized poverty
because if wealth were more evenly distributed in the most powerful
nation on earth, there'd be no ruling class to ensure the domination of
the globe-spanning empire. Plutocrats wouldn't be able to use their
massive wealth advantage to buy up influence over the political class
and control public thought by purchasing mass media outlets and other
mechanisms narrative control in order to ensure the continuation of the
global status quo upon which those plutocrats have built their kingdoms.
The system would belong to the people.
This is the real wall US
progressives keep crashing into in their fight for economic justice in
America. Ultimately their efforts to work within the official political
system to implement economic justice fail because that system is set up
to preserve economic injustice. It's not ultimately about this
or that political faction or any one particular politician, it's the
fact that there's a massive amount of power riding on the ability to
keep Americans too poor and powerless to interfere in the operation of
the nation which serves as the hub of a massive global empire.
strategic-culture | If we look at the late 20th and now the 21st century it is critical to acknowledge that the main means of coercion of the population of a given nation is comfort.
Throughout all of human history from the point when we first started to
slap together farm implements there has had to be some form of
repression/coercion to keep the system, that we call society, on its
feet. The serfs needed to toil, the knights needed to defend, the
traders to trade and the elite to oversee it all. This is one of the
paradoxes of Democracy, we created a system that tells us the people are
in charge and free to do whatever they want when in reality society
exists as it does, exactly because people cannot do what they want and
do not have the power to topple the system.
Fancy textbooks call the willingness of individuals to submit to
society “coercion”. Traditionally we, not surprisingly, think of this
coercion in the most blunt and obvious form that is easy to understand –
the police. In most nations there is an army for external threats, but
the police have the same hierarchy of ranks, fancy uniforms and weapons
only their enemy is you. The good news is they don’t want to kill you,
just coerce you into enough obedience for society to function. After the
truncheon club, many point the finger at religion or media as the great
repressor. Many of our views and opinions are formed for us by these
two factors and it cannot be denied that they shape our way of thinking,
which can and does create coercion. Comfort though is usually not
mentioned anywhere despite it being probably the most powerful form of
repression we have ever seen, but this is not surprising.
Again, this isn’t to say that coercion/repression is a great evil.
Without it, the complex societies that give us many benefits, could not
stand and none of us wants to go live in a cave. And it is
exactly this fact, that very few people are willing to go “live off the
land”, that gives comfort so much power as a means of control.
The overall global migration trend is for those with less to try to
force themselves into countries with more, thus increasing their level
of comfort. The migrants may not put it in these terms, but humans like
all of God’s creatures tend to take the easy way out. Racoons prefer to
attack the dumpster behind McDonald’s for food because it can’t fight
back and is always available. This probably has a horrible effect on the
racoons’ health but it is the most comfortable option. They become very
dependent on the dumpster and would probably shriek in terror if the
fast food “restaurant” was ever to be closed down forcing them to go
back to dealing with food that can run/squirm away. And this sort of
situation is what has happened in the decadent West.
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 ...
