wikipedia | In speeches, Hitler made apparently warm references towards Muslim
culture such as: "The peoples of Islam will always be closer to us than,
for example, France".[1]
A famous anecdote about Adolf Hitler's perspectives towards Islam and the Arabs is recounted by Albert Speer in his best-selling memoir, Inside the Third Reich.
Speer reports that "Hitler had been much impressed by a scrap of
history he had learned from a delegation of distinguished Arabs."[2] The delegation had speculated that the world would have become "Mohammedan" if the Berbers and Arabs had won the Battle of Tours
in the 8th Century AD, and that the Germans would have become heirs to
"a religion that believed in spreading the faith by the sword and in
subjugating all nations to that faith. Such a creed was perfectly suited
to the German temperament."[3] Speer then presents Hitler's claims on this subject:
Hitler said that the conquering Arabs, because of their racial
inferiority, would in the long run have been unable to contend with the
harsher climate of the country. They could not have kept down the more
vigorous natives, so that ultimately not Arabs but Islamized Germans
could have stood at the head of this Mohammedan Empire.[4]
Similarly, Hitler was transcribed as saying: "Had Charles Martel
not been victorious at Poitiers [...] then we should in all probability
have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the
heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone.
Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world."[5]
According to Speer, Hitler usually concluded his historical
speculation by remarking, "You see, it's been our misfortune to have the
wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who
regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan
religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?"[6]
Hitler's views on the Arab world
This "exchange" occurred when Hitler received Saudi Arabian ruler Ibn Saud’s special envoy, Khalid al-Hud al-Gargani.[7] Earlier in this meeting Hitler noted that one of the three reasons why Nazi Germany had warm sympathies for the Arabs was:
… because we were jointly fighting the Jews. This led him to discuss Palestine
and the conditions there, and he then stated that he himself would not
rest until the last Jew had left Germany. Kalid al Hud observed that the
Prophet Mohammed … had acted the same way. He had driven the Jews out of Arabia ….[8]
Gilbert Achcar wryly observes that the Führer
did not point out to his Arab visitors at that meeting that until then
he had incited German Jews to emigrate to Palestine, and the Reich
actively helped Zionist organizations get around alleged British-imposed
restrictions on Jewish immigration.[9]
Hitler had told his military commanders in 1939, shortly before the start of the war:
We shall continue to make disturbances in the Far East
and in Arabia. Let us think as men and let us see in these peoples at
best lacquered half-apes who are anxious to experience the lash.[10][11]
Prior to the Second World War, all of North Africa
and the Middle East were under the control of European powers. Despite
the Nazi racial theories which denigrated Arabs as members of an
inferior race, individual Arabs who assisted the Reich in fighting the
British for possession of the Middle East were treated with honor and respect. Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, for example, "was granted honorary Aryan" status by the Nazis for his close collaboration with Hitler and the Third Reich.[12][13][page needed]
The German government developed a cordial association and cooperated
with some Arab nationalist leaders based on their common anti-colonial
and anti-Zionist interests. The most notable examples of these
common-cause fights were the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine and other actions led by Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, and the Anglo-Iraqi War, when the Golden Square (four generals led by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani) overthrew the pro-British 'Abd al-Ilah regency in Iraq and installed a pro-Axis government.[14][15][16]
In response to the Rashid Ali coup, Hitler issued Führer Directive No. 30 on 23 May 1941 to support their cause. This order began: "The Arab Freedom Movement in the Middle East is our natural ally against England."[16]
wikipedia | The integral association of the Free India Legion with Nazi Germany
and the other Axis powers means its legacy is seen from two viewpoints,
similarly to other nationalist movements that were aligned with Germany
during the war, such as the Russian Vlasov movement.
One viewpoint sees it as a collaborationist unit of the Third Reich;
the other views it as the realisation of a liberation army to fight
against the British Raj.[31]
Unlike the Indian National Army, conceived with the same doctrine,[13]
it has found little exposure since the end of the war even in
independent India. This is because it was far removed from India, unlike
Burma, and because the Legion was so much smaller than the INA and was
not engaged in its originally conceived role.[31]
Bose's plans for the Legion, and even the INA, were too grandiose for
their military capability and their fate was too strongly tied to that
of the Axis powers.[32]
Looking at the legacy of Azad Hind, however, historians consider both
movements' military and political actions (of which the Legion was one
of the earliest elements, and an integral part of Bose's plans) and the
indirect effect they had on the era's events.
In German histories of the Second World War, the Legion is noted less than other foreign volunteer units. Filmmaker and author Merle Kröger, however, made the 2003 mystery novel Cut!
about soldiers from the Legion in France. She said she found them an
excellent topic for a mystery because scarcely any Germans had heard of
the Indians who volunteered for the German Army.[31] The only Indian film to mention the Legion is the 2011 Bollywood production Dear Friend Hitler, which portrays the Legion's attempted escape to Switzerland and its aftermath.
Perceptions as collaborators
In
considering the history of the Free India Legion, the most
controversial aspect is its integral link to the Nazi Germany, with a
widespread perception that they were collaborators with Nazi Germany
by the virtue of their uniform, oath and field of operation. The views
of the founder and leader of the Azad Hind movement, Subhas Chandra
Bose, were somewhat more nuanced than straightforward support for the
Axis. During the 1930s Bose had organised and led protest marches
against Japanese imperialism, and wrote an article attacking Japanese
imperialism, although expressing admiration for other aspects of the
Japanese regime.[33]
Bose's correspondence prior to 1939 also showed his deep disapproval of
the racist practices and annulment of democratic institutions by the
Nazis.[34]
He nonetheless expressed admiration for the authoritarian methods which
he saw in Italy and Germany during the 1930s, and thought they could be
used in building an independent India.[35]
Bose's view was not necessarily shared by the men of the Free India
Legion, and they were not wholly party to Nazi ideology or in
collaboration with the Nazi machinery. The Legion's volunteers were not
merely motivated by the chance to escape imprisonment and earn money.
Indeed, when the first POWs were brought to Annaburg and met with Subhas
Chandra Bose, there was marked and open hostility towards him as a Nazi
propaganda puppet.[36]
Once Bose's efforts and views had gained more sympathy, a persistent
query among the POWs was 'How would the legionary stand in relation to
the German soldier?'.[36]
The Indians were not prepared to simply fight for Germany's interests,
after abandoning their oath to the King-Emperor. The Free India
Centre—in charge of the legion after the departure of Bose—faced a
number of grievances from legionaries. The foremost were that Bose had
abandoned them left them entirely in German hands, and a perception that
the Wehrmacht was now going to use them in the Western Front instead of sending them to fight for independence.[37]
The attitude of the Legion's soldiers was similar to that of the Italian Battaglione Azad Hindoustan, which had been of dubious loyalty to the Axis cause—it was disbanded after a mutiny.[7][8]
In one instance, immediately prior to the first deployment of the
Legion in the Netherlands in April 1943, after the departure of the 1st
Battalion from Königsbrück, two companies within the 2nd Battalion
refused to move until convinced by Indian leaders.[37]
Even in Asia, where the Indian National Army was much larger and fought
the British directly, Bose faced similar obstacles at first. All of
this goes to show that many of the men never possessed loyalty to the
Nazi cause or ideology; the motivation of the Legion's men was to fight
for India's independence.[37] The unit did allegedly participate in atrocities, especially in the Médoc region in July 1944,[38] and in the region of Ruffec[28] and the department of Indre during their retreat,[39] and in addition, some elements of the unit undertook anti-partisan operations in Italy.
Role in Indian independence
However, in political terms Bose may have been successful, owing to events that occurred within India after the war.[7][8]
After the war, the soldiers and officers of the Free India Legion were
brought as prisoners to India, where they were to be brought to trial in
courts-martial
along with Indians who were in the INA. Their stories were seen as so
inflammatory that, fearing mass revolts and uprisings across the empire,
the British government forbade the BBC from broadcasting about them after the war.[28] Not much is known of any charges made against Free India Legion soldiers, but the Indian National Army trials
that were initiated had the sentences they issued commuted or charges
dropped, after widespread protest and several mutinies. As a condition
of independence readily agreed to by the INC, members of the Free India
Legion and INA were not allowed to serve in the post-independence Indian
military, but they were all released before independence. Once the
stories reached the public, there was a turnaround in perception of the
Azad Hind movement from traitors and collaborators to patriots. Although
the authorities expected to improve the morale of their troops by
prosecuting the Azad Hind volunteers, they only contributed to the
sentiment among many members of the military that they had been on the
wrong side during the war.[40][41]
According to historian Michael Edwardes, the "INA and Free India Legion
thus overshadowed the conference that was to lead to independence, held
in the same Red Fort as the trials".[40]
Inspired to a large extent by the stories of the soldiers at trial, mutiny broke out in the Royal Indian Navy,
and received widespread public support. While the troops who fought for
the Allies were being demobilised, the Navy mutiny was followed up by
smaller mutinies in the Royal Indian Air Force, and a mutiny in the
Indian Army that was suppressed by force. In the aftermath of the
mutinies, the weekly intelligence summary issued on 25 March 1946
admitted that the Indian military was no longer trustworthy, and for the
Army, "only day to day estimates of steadiness could be made".[42][8]
The armed forces could not be relied upon to suppress unrest as they
had been before, and drawing from experiences of the Free India Legion
and INA, their actions could not be predicted from their oath to the
King-Emperor.[43][44] Reflecting on the factors that guided the British decision to relinquish their rule in India, Clement Attlee,
then the British Prime Minister, cited as the most important reason the
realisation that the Indian armed forces might not prop up the Raj.[45] Although the British government had promised to grant dominion status to India at the end of the war,[46][47] the views held by British officials after the war show[citation needed]
that although militarily a failure the Indians who fought for the Axis
likely accelerated Indian independence. This is contrary to the usual
narrative of India's independence struggle, which focuses only on the
INC and Mahatma Gandhi.[citation needed]
T.H. Tetens’ Germany Plots with the Kremlin (1953) treats
the pivotally important German “Ostpolitik,” which German power
structure has traditionally exploited in order expand and develop its
influence. The German threat to either remain neutral during the Cold
War, or to ally with the USSR, was a significant factor in persuading
conservative American power brokers to go along with the reinstatement
in Germany of the Nazi elements that prosecuted World War II. Under the
circumstances, some of these conservatives felt that permitting Nazi
elements to return to power behind a democratic façade was the lesser of
two evils, although many would have preferred a more traditionally
conservative German political establishment. This German “Ostpolitik,”
in turn, is characteristic of the geopolitical foresight and cynicism
with which pan-Germanists have successfully pursued their goal of world
domination through the centuries.
An authority on pan-Germanism employed by the U.S. government during
World War II, Tetens analyzes German Ostpolitik in the aftermath of the
war in the context of centuries of German policy toward Russia and the
former Soviet Union. Tracing the roots of Ostpolitik, Tetens begins with
Frederick the Great’s secret pact of 1762 with Czar Peter III, which
disrupted the European coalition that almost crushed Prussia in the
Seven Years War. This pact saved Prussia from total defeat and led to
the first partition of Poland. In 1867, German chancellor Otto von
Bismarck made a secret pact (called a “re-insurance treaty”) with
Russia, which secured Germany’s Eastern frontier, helping to make
Germany the strongest military power on the continent. Following in the
footsteps of their predecessors, General Hans von Seeckt (head of the
German general staff) created a new army after the German defeat in
World War I. That army trained and armed in Soviet Russia after the
Rapallo Treaty between Germany and the USSR in 1922. While German
Chancellor Gustav Stresemann feigned neutrality, von Seeckt contemplated
“war against the West in alliance with the East.” Perhaps the
best-known example of Ostpolitik was the Hitler Stalin pact of 1939,
which secured Germany’s Eastern border on the eve of World War II.
After World War II, the German geopoliticians (acting at the
direction of the leaders of the Underground Reich under Martin Bormann)
pursued a similar tack. Threatening neutrality, or even an alliance with
the Soviets, the Germans were able to manipulate the U.S. into wooing
Germany as an ally- –granting it renewed economic and military power and
re-installing Nazis in positions of great influence. Kevin Coogan’s
remarkable text Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker and the Postwar Fascist International
contains an excellent contemporary account of this phenomenon.
Listeners are emphatically encouraged to read the Coogan text as a
supplement to the Tetens book (which was published in 1953.)
In 1950, the Madrid Geo-political Center (a Nazi think tank operating
in exile under the friendly auspices of fascist dictator Franco)
discussed the successful realization of the Reich’s plan to go
underground. (These plans were described by Curt Reiss in The Nazis Go Underground.
The Nazi grooming and installation of Franco, whose country was an
important base for the postwar Reich activities, is discussed in Falange
by Alan Chase.) The following passage appears on page 73 of the Tetens
text: “According to the Madrid Circular Letter, referred to above, the
German planners have never ceased their political warfare against the
Allies. They admit that they had ‘blueprinted the bold plan and created a
flexible and smoothly working organization,’ in order to safeguard
Germany from defeat and to bring Allied post-war planning to nought.
They boast that they were able to create total confusion in Washington,
and that they saved German heavy industry from destruction: ‘By no means
did the political and military leadership of the Third Reich skid into
the catastrophe in an irrational manner as so many blockheads and
ignoramuses often tell us. The various phases and consequences of the
so-called ‘collapse’ . . . were thoroughly studied and planned by the
most capable experts . . . Nothing occurred by chance; everything was
carefully planned. The result of this planning was that, already a few
months after Potsdam, the coalition of the victors went on the rocks.’. .
.”
The Madrid Circular Letter goes on to set forth the course to be
pursued by Germany, more startlingly relevant from the vantage point of
early 2006 than in it was in 1950. The following is from page 52 of
Tetens’ book:
“ ‘In view of the present political situation . . . the policy of
orientation towards the West has lost all meaning or sense. . . . We
must not forget that Germany has always considered orientation towards
the West as a policy of expedience, or one to be pursued only under
pressure of circumstances. Such was the case in Napoleon’s time, after
1918, and also after 1945. All of our great national leaders have
constantly counseled the long-range policy of close cooperation with the
East . . . .’” Fear of this dynamic drove the U.S. to accede to all of
Germany’s demands for renewed power. “Anti-Communism Uber Alles!”
A stunning measure of the success of the Underground Reich and German
Ostpolitik can be obtained by reading Dorothy Thompson’s analysis of
Germany’s plans for world dominance by a centralized European economic
union. (In this, we can see the plans of pan-German theoretician
Friedrich List, as realized by the European Monetary Union.) Ms.
Thompson was writing in The New York Herald Tribune on May 31, 1940! Her comments are reproduced by Tetens on page 92.
“The Germans have a clear plan of what they intend to do
in case of victory. I believe that I know the essential details of that
plan. I have heard it from a sufficient number of important Germans to
credit its authenticity . . . Germany’s plan is to make a customs union
of Europe, with complete financial and economic control centered in
Berlin. This will create at once the largest free trade area and the
largest planned economy in the world. In Western Europe alone . . .
there will be an economic unity of 400 million persons . . . To these
will be added the resources of the British, French, Dutch and Belgian
empires. These will be pooled in the name of Europa Germanica . . .”
“The Germans count upon political power following economic power, and
not vice versa. Territorial changes do not concern them, because there
will be no ‘France’ or ‘England,’ except as language groups. Little
immediate concern is felt regarding political organizations . . . . No
nation will have the control of its own financial or economic system or
of its customs. The Nazification of all countries will be accomplished
by economic pressure. In all countries, contacts have been established
long ago with sympathetic businessmen and industrialists . . . . As far
as the United States is concerned, the planners of the World Germanica
laugh off the idea of any armed invasion. They say that it will be
completely unnecessary to take military action against the United States
to force it to play ball with this system. . . . Here, as in every
other country, they have established relations with numerous industries
and commercial organizations, to whom they will offer advantages in
co-operation with Germany. . . .”
Again, check out the current European Monetary Union and the
“borderless” EU against the background of what Ms. Thompson forecast in
1940 and Mr. Tetens reproduced in 1953.
It turns the clock back to April 2, 1917---the date when the Woodrow
Wilson foolishly declared war on Germany and led America into a bloody
cauldron on the Western Front that had absolutely no bearing on its
national security; and thereafter into a destructive "peace" at
Versailles that guaranteed perpetual war.
America First, when followed to its logical and correct conclusion,
would put the War Capital of the world out of business; it would result
in a massive slashing of the hideously bloated national security budget;
it would ash-can the endless complex of think-tanks, NGOs, intelligence
contractors and lobbyists for foreign interests.
We refer, of course, to the likes of the Podesta brothers, Paul
Manafort and 20,000 more like and similar operators and racketeers.
Indeed, having it way with the Warfare State, America First would bring a
hair-curling recession to the Imperial City which would make Youngstown
Ohio look like a model of prosperity.
To be sure, we seriously doubt that the Donald had any idea of where
American First was leading him when he stumbled upon the slogan; and we
are afraid that his xenophobic fear-mongering about the Mexican border
would have distracted him, anyway.
But the Deep State was taking no chances. That's why the partisan
shills who ran the CIA and FBI under Obama were able to launch their
insidious anti-Trump witchunt as an "insurance policy" in July 2016; and
it's also why the Obama Administration pulled out all the stops in its
waning days in office to insure that the verdict of November 8 would be
re-litigated on the back of the Russian Meddling story.
In Part 3 we intend to summarize the ludicrously threadbare nature of
the whole Mueller investigation, but suffice it here to note the
Smoking Bunker Buster that puts the lie to the whole scam.
To wit, it is absolutely the fact that neither Donald Trump, nor his
sons, nor his daughter and son-in-law went to Russia at any time after
the Donald's unlikely campaign was launched in June 2015. At that time
no one including Vlad Putin gave him a snowball's chance of ending up in
the Oval Office; and since then Trump has proven that no one matters in
his comings and goings except the Donald and his family.
So if there was any collusion after the announcement, it had to be by
email or phone between the Trumps and high state officials in the
Kremlin. That is to say, every word of such conversations would be
stored in the vast NSA (national security agency) server farms where
everything which crosses the worldwide web gets snatched and stored.
Needless to say, if Robert Mueller were truly doing god's work in
behalf of the rule of law and American democracy, he would have
ordered-up the NSA taps on day one, and resolved the matter of
"collusion" with the Russians within one week's time.
That he didn't do because no such taps exist and no such
conversations between the Trumps and the Russian state ever happened.
Period. Full stop.
To the contrary, the entire prolonged, ballyhooed, ever-expanding,
leak-ridden, media-fueling Mueller investigation is designed to mortally
wound Donald Trump and drive him from office. That is, to crush America
First in its infancy and to obliterate even the crude and half-baked
form in which its emerged from the modest gray matter nested under the
Orange Comb-Over. The Deep State Closes In On The Donald Part 1
Tonight all I ask you to follow the advice I gave in this article:
EVERYBODY WAIT! DO NOT JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS!
We have no facts. What US politicians (including generals – US generals are all politicians) say does not matter and is not “fact”.
The truth is that we won’t know for sure for at least 24 hours what
took place. The aggressors will present the attack as a huge success.
Don’t believe it! The last time around it took several days to find out
what really happened.
This is still my best advice to you: wait for the facts and don’t listen to the Ziocon propaganda machine!
None of the above should distract us from what is by far the biggest
danger currently facing us all – the risks of a US-Russian war in Syria.
In fact, this reality seems to be slowly dawning even on the most
obtuse of presstitutes who are now worrying about a spill-over effect. No, not in Europe or the USA, but on Israel, of course.
Still, the fact that there are folks who understand that Israel might
not survive a superpower clash on its doorstep is a good thing. Maybe
the Israel lobby in the USA, or a least the part of it which cares for
Israel (many/most only pretend to), will be more vocal than all the
silent Anglo shabbos-goyim who don’t seem to be able to muster even a
minimal amount of self-preservation instinct? Bibi Netanyahu felt the
need to call Putin after the Israeli ambassador to Russia was read the
riot act by Russian officials following the (admittedly rather lame)
Israeli airstrike on the T-4 Syrian air force base. Not much of a hope, I
admit..
This is not about good guys versus bad guys anymore. It’s about sane
versus insane. I think that we can safely place Trump, Bolton, Haley and
the rest of them in the “terminally delusional” camp. But what about
the top US generals? I asked two well-informed friends, and they both
told me that there is probably nobody above the rank of Colonel with
enough courage left to object to the Neocon’s insanity, even if that
means WWIII. Again, not much hope here either…
There is a sura (Al-Anfal 8:30) of the Qur’an which Sheikh Imran Hosein often mentions which I want to quote here: And
[remember, O Muhammad], when those who disbelieved plotted against you
to restrain you or kill you or evict you [from Makkah]. But they plan, and Allah plans. And Allah is the best of planners.
And since we are talking about Syria where Iran and Hezbollah are
targets as much (or more) as the Russians, it is also fitting here to
quote a very popular Shia slogan which calls to remember that the battle
against oppression must be fought ceaselessly and everywhere: “Every Day Is Ashura and Every Land Is Karbala”. And, of course, there are the words of Christ Himself: “And
fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul:
but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Matt 10:28).
Such religious references will, no doubt, irritate the many
“enlightened” westerners for whom such language reeks of obscurantism,
fanaticism, and bigotry. But in Russia or the Middle-East, such
references are very much part of the national or religious ethos. To
illustrate my point I want to quote from Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s “Divine Victory Speech”
spoken in 2006 following the crushing victory by a relatively small
Hezbollah force of the combined might of the Israeli ground, air and
naval forces:
We are today celebrating a big strategic, historic,
and divine victory. How can the human mind imagine that a few thousand
of your Lebanese resistance sons – if I wanted, I would give the exact
number – held out for 23 days in a land exposed to the skies against the
strongest air force in the Middle East, which had an air bridge
transporting smart bombs from America, through Britain, to Israel;
against 40,000 officers and soldiers – four brigades of elite forces,
three reserve army divisions; against the strongest tank in the world;
and against the strongest army in the region? How could only a few
thousand people hold out and fight under such harsh conditions, and [how
could] their fighting force the naval warships out of our territorial
waters? By the way, the army and the resistance are capable of
protecting the territorial waters from being desecrated by any Zionist.
[Applause] [And how could their fighting] also lead to the destruction
of the Mirkava tanks, which are an object of pride for the Israeli
industry; damage Israeli helicopters day and night; and turn the elite
brigades – I am not exaggerating, and you can watch and read the Israeli
media – into rats frightened by your sons? [How did this happen] while
you were relinquished by the Arabs and the world and in light of the
political (human solidarity was profound though) division around you?
How could this group of mujahidin defeat this army without the support
and assistance of Almighty God? This resistance experience, which should
be conveyed to the world, depends – on the moral and spiritual level –
on faith, certainty, reliance [on God], and readiness to make
sacrifices. It also depends on reason, planning, organization, armament,
and, as is said, on taking all possible protective procedures. We are
neither a disorganized and sophistic resistance, nor a resistance pulled
to the ground that sees before it nothing but soil, nor a resistance of
chaos. The pious, God-reliant, loving, and knowledgeable resistance is
also the conscious, wise, trained, and equipped resistance that has
plans. This is the secret of the victory we are today celebrating,
brothers and sisters.
These words could also be used to describe the relatively small
Russian task force in Syria. In fact, there are numerous parallels which
could be made between Hezbollah’s role and position in the Middle-East
and Russia’s role and position in the world. And while both are
well-trained, well-armed and well-commanded, it is their spiritual power
which will decide the outcome of the wars waged against them by the
Hegemony. AngloZionist secularists will never understand that – they
just can’t – and that will bring their inevitable downfall. The only
question is the price mankind will have to pay to have that last Empire
finally bite the dust.
foreignaffairs | Today, more people are living healthy, productive lives than ever
before. This good news may come as a surprise, but there is plenty of
evidence for it. Since the early 1990s, global child mortality has been cut in half. There have been massive reductions in cases of tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS.
The incidence of polio has decreased by 99 percent, bringing the world
to the verge of eradicating a major infectious disease, a feat humanity
has accomplished only once before, with smallpox. The proportion of the
world’s population in extreme poverty, defined by the World Bank as
living on less than $1.90 per day, has fallen from 35 percent to about
11 percent.
Continued progress is not inevitable,
however, and a great deal of unnecessary suffering and inequity remains.
By the end of this year, five million children under the age of five
will have died—mostly in poor countries and mostly from preventable
causes. Hundreds of millions of other children will continue to suffer
needlessly from diseases and malnutrition that can cause lifelong
cognitive and physical disabilities. And more than 750 million
people—mostly rural farm families in sub-Saharan Africa and South
Asia—still live in extreme poverty, according to World Bank estimates. The women and girls among them, in particular, are denied economic opportunity.
Some
of the remaining suffering can be eased by continuing to fund the
development assistance programs and multilateral partnerships that are
known to work. These efforts can help sustain progress, especially as
the world gets better at using data to help guide the allocation of
resources. But ultimately, eliminating the most persistent diseases and
causes of poverty will require scientific discovery and technological
innovations.
That includes CRISPR and other
technologies for targeted gene editing. Over the next decade, gene
editing could help humanity overcome some of the biggest and most
persistent challenges in global health
and development. The technology is making it much easier for scientists
to discover better diagnostics, treatments, and other tools to fight
diseases that still kill and disable millions of people every year,
primarily the poor. It is also accelerating research that could help end
extreme poverty by enabling millions of farmers in the developing world
to grow crops and raise livestock that are more productive, more
nutritious, and hardier. New technologies are often met with skepticism.
But if the world is to continue the remarkable progress of the past few
decades, it is vital that scientists, subject to safety and ethics
guidelines, be encouraged to continue taking advantage of such promising
tools as CRISPR.
medium |Blockchain
is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future. Its
failure to achieve adoption to date is because systems built on trust,
norms, and institutions inherently function better than the type of
no-need-for-trusted-parties systems blockchain envisions. That’s
permanent: no matter how much blockchain improves it is still headed in
the wrong direction.
Let’s start with this: Venmo is a free service to transfer dollars, and bitcoin transfers are not free. Yet after I wrote an article last December saying bitcoin had no use, someone responded that Venmo and Paypal are raking in consumers’ money and people should switch to bitcoin.
What
a surreal contrast between blockchain’s non-usefulness/non-adoption and
the conviction of its believers! It’s so entirely evident that this
person didn’t become a bitcoin enthusiast because they were looking for a
convenient, free way to transfer money from one person to another and
discovered bitcoin. In fact, I would assert that there is no single person in existence
who had a problem they wanted to solve, discovered that an available
blockchain solution was the best way to solve it, and therefore became a
blockchain enthusiast.
There is no single person in existence
who had a problem they wanted to solve, discovered that an available
blockchain solution was the best way to solve it, and therefore became a
blockchain enthusiast.
The number of retailers accepting cryptocurrency as a form of payment is declining, and its biggest corporate boosters like IBM, NASDAQ, Fidelity, Swift and Walmart have gone long on press but short on actual rollout. Even the most prominent blockchain company, Ripple, doesn’t use blockchain in its product. You read that right: the company Ripple decided the best way to move money across international borders was to not use Ripples.
A blockchain is a literal technology, not a metaphor
Why all the enthusiasm for something so useless in practice?
People have made a number of implausible claims about the future of blockchain—like that you should use it for AI
in place of the type of behavior-tracking that google and facebook do,
for example. This is based on a misunderstanding of what a blockchain
is. A blockchain isn’t an ethereal thing out there in the universe that
you can “put” things into, it’s a specific data structure: a linear
transaction log, typically replicated by computers whose owners (called
miners) are rewarded for logging new transactions.
themaven | I completely agree with much of what you wrote here. I’d like to point out a couple things:
First, in regards
to “There is no single person in existence who had a problem they wanted
to solve, discovered that an available blockchain solution was the best
way to solve it, and therefore became a blockchain enthusiast.” There
is in fact at least one such person: me. In 2010 I was looking for a
payment system which did not have any possibility for chargebacks. It
turns out that bitcoin is GREAT for that, and I became a blockchain
enthusiast as a result.
The ugly truth
about blockchain is that it is immensely useful, but only when you are
in some way trying to circumvent an authority of some sort. In my case, I
wanted to take payments for digital goods without losing any to
chargebacks. It’s also great for sending money to Venezuela
(circumventing the authority of the government of Venezuela, which would
really rather you not). It’s great for raising money for projects (ICOs
are really about circumventing various regulatory authorities who make
that difficult). It’s great for buying drugs, taking payment for
ransomware, and any number of terrible illegal things related to human
trafficking, money laundering, etc.
Frankly, the day
that significant trading of derivatives (gold futures, oil futures,
options, etc) starts happening on blockchain, I expect a bubble that
will make previous crypto bubbles look tiny in comparison. This is not
because blockchain is an easier way to trade these contracts! It is
because some percentage of rich traders would like to do anonymous
trading and avoid pesky laws about paying taxes on trading profits and
not doing insider trading.
I sum it up like
this: are you trying to do something with money that requires avoiding
an authority somewhere? If not, there is a better technical solution
than blockchain. That does NOT mean that what you are doing is illegal
for you (it’s perfectly legal for me to send money to Venezuela). It
just means that some authority somewhere doesn’t like what you are
doing.
Blockchain is
inherently in opposition to governmental control of the world of
finance. The only reason governments aren’t more antagonistic towards
blockchain is that they don’t truly understand how dangerous it is. I
wrote at length about this back in 2013 in an article called “Bitcoin’s
Dystopian Future”:
WaPo | You might think cracking down on child sex traffickers would be a
legislative layup. You’d be wrong. The bill — authored by Republican
Sens. Rob Portman (Ohio), John McCain (Ariz.) and John Cornyn (Tex.) and
Democrats Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Heidi
Heitkamp (N.D.) — was hard to pass. (Full disclosure: My wife works for
Portman.)
The act faced a wall of opposition from Silicon Valley because it amended Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act,
which gave blanket immunity to online entities that publish third-party
content from civil and criminal prosecution. Big Tech wanted to
preserve that blanket immunity, even if it gave legal cover to websites
that were using it to sell children for sex. When child sex trafficking
survivors tried to sue Backpage, and state attorneys general tried to
prosecute the owners, federal courts ruled against them, specifically
citing Section 230. This did not move Big Tech. Chief among the culprits
was Google, which apparently forgot its old corporate motto of “Don’t
Be Evil” and lobbied fiercely against the bill.
How did the
senators overcome Big Tech’s lobbying campaign? First, Portman and
McCaskill, the chairman and then-ranking minority-party member of the
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, used their subpoena power to
gather corporate files, bank records and other evidence that Backpage
knowingly facilitated criminal sex trafficking of vulnerable women and
children, and then covered up that evidence. They fought Backpage all
the way to the Supreme Court to enforce their subpoenas. The
subcommittee then published a voluminous report detailing the findings
of its 20-month investigation, including evidence that Backpage knew it
was facilitating child sex trafficking and that it was not simply a
passive publisher of third-party content. Instead the company was
automatically editing users’ child sex ads to strip them of words that
might arouse suspicion (such as “lolita,” “teenage,” “rape,” “young,”
“amber alert,” “little girl,” “fresh,” “innocent” and “school girl”)
before publishing them and advised users on how to create “clean”
postings.
Then Portman, McCaskill and their co-authors used the result of their
investigation to craft a narrow legislative fix that would allow bad
actors such as Backpage to be held accountable. The bill they produced
allows sex trafficking victims to sue the websites that facilitated the
crimes against them and allows state law enforcement officials, not just
the Justice Department, to prosecute websites that violate federal sex
trafficking laws. The committee also turned over all its raw documents
to the Justice Department last summer, urging it to undertake a criminal
review, which Justice did.
Despite
all the Silicon Valley money against them, the senators never wavered.
Through the sheer power of the testimony of trafficking survivors; Mary
Mazzio’s documentary “I Am Jane Doe;”
the evidence of crimes committed by Backpage; and the support of law
enforcement, anti-trafficking advocates, 50 state attorneys general, the
civil rights community and faith-based groups — as well as carefully
negotiated language — they wore down most of Big Tech’s opposition. In
November, Facebook finally came on board. But Google shamefully never
relented in its opposition. Despite this, the act overwhelmingly passed
both chambers of Congress.
theatlantic | But the raw data that Facebook uses to create user-interest inferences is not available to users. It’s data about them, but it’s not their data. One European Facebook user has been petitioning to see this data—and Facebook acknowledged that it exists—but so far, has been unable to obtain it.
When he responded to Kennedy, Zuckerberg did not acknowledge any of this, but he did admit that Facebook has other types of data that it uses to increase the efficiency of its ads. He said:
My understanding is that the targeting options that are available for advertisers are generally things that are based on what people share. Now once an advertiser chooses how they want to target something, Facebook also does its own work to help rank and determine which ads are going to be interesting to which people. So we may use metadata or other behaviors of what you’ve shown that you’re interested in News Feed or other places in order to make our systems more relevant to you, but that’s a little bit different from giving that as an option to an advertiser.
Kennedy responded: “I don’t understand how users then own that data.”
This apparent contradiction relies on the company’s distinction between the content someone has intentionally shared—which Facebook mines for valuable targeting information—and the data that Facebook quietly collects around the web, gathers from physical locations, and infers about users based on people who have a similar digital profile. As the journalist Rob Horning put it, that second set of data is something of a “product” that Facebook makes, a “synthetic” mix of actual data gathered, data purchased from outsiders, and data inferred by machine intelligence.
With Facebook, the concept of owning your data begins to verge on meaningless if it doesn’t include that second, more holistic concept: not just the data users create and upload explicitly, but all the other information that has become attached to their profiles by other means.
But one can see, from Facebook’s perspective, how complicated that would be. Their techniques for placing users into particular buckets or assigning them certain targeting parameters are literally the basis for the company’s valuation. In a less techno-pessimistic time, Zuckerberg described people’s data in completely different terms. In October 2013, he told investors that this data helps Facebook “build the clearest models of everything there is to know in the world.”
Facebook puts out a series of interests for users to peruse or turn off, but it keeps the models to itself. The models make Facebook ads work well, and that means it helps small and medium-size businesses compete more effectively with megacorporations on this one particular score. Yet they introduce new asymmetries into the world. Gullible people can be targeted over and over with ads for businesses that stop just short of scams. People prone to believing hoaxes and conspiracies can be hit with ads that reinforce their most corrosive beliefs. Politicians can use blizzards of ads to precisely target different voter types.
As with all advertising, one has to ask: When does persuasion become manipulation or coercion? If Facebook advertisers crossed that line, would the company even know it? Dozens of times throughout the proceedings, Zuckerberg testified that he wasn’t sure about the specifics of his own service. It seemed preposterous, but with billions of users and millions of advertisers, who exactly could know what was happening?
Most of the ways that people think they protect their privacy can’t account for this new and more complex reality, which Kennedy recognized in his closing remark.
“You focus a lot of your testimony ... on the individual privacy aspects of this, but we haven’t talked about the societal implications of it ... The underlying issue here is that your platform has become a mix of ... news, entertainment, and social media that is up for manipulation,” he said. “The changes to individual privacy don’t seem to be sufficient to address that underlying issue.”
antimedia | With all the attention paid to Facebook in recent weeks over ‘data
breaches’ and privacy violations (even though what happened with
Cambridge Analytica is part of their standard business model), it’s easy
to forget that there are four other Big Tech corporations collecting
just as much — if not more — of our personal info. Google, Amazon,
Apple, and Microsoft are all central players in
“surveillance capitalism” and prey on our data. New reports suggest
that Google may actually harvest ten times as much as Facebook.
Curious about just how much of his data Google had, web developer Dylan Curran says
he downloaded his Google data file, which is offered by the company in a
hub called “My Account.” This hub was created in 2015, along with a
tool called “My Activity.” The report issued is similar to the one Facebook delivers to
its users upon request. Whether or not these reports are comprehensive
is still up in the air, but Curran says his was 5.5 GB, which is almost
ten times larger than the one Facebook offered him. The amount and type
of data in his file, Mr. Curran says, suggests Google is not only
constantly tracking our online movements but may also be monitoring our
physical locations.
Curran’s Google report contained an incredible amount documentation
on his web activity, going back over a decade. But perhaps more
importantly, Google had also been tracking his real-life movements via
his smartphone device or tablet. This included fairly random places he’d
frequented, many of the foreign countries and cities he visited, the
bars and restaurants he went to while in these countries, the amount of
time he spent there, and even the path he took to get there and back.
This, of course, is not new. It has been well-known for some time that Google silently tracks you
everywhere you go and creates a map of your physical movements through
its Location History feature. You can deactivate it by going to your timeline and adjusting the preferences.
Another Google user downloaded
his file and discovered the company had been archiving his data even
when he browsed in Incognito mode, a setting that advertises itself as
one that does not save browsing history.
Like Facebook, Google gathers your info for
sale to 3rd-party advertisers, including your name, email address,
telephone number, credit card, specific ways you use Google’s services,
your mode of interaction with any website that uses Google technology
(such as AdWords), your device, and your search queries. And if you
don’t enter your account and make adjustments, pretty much anything you
do online while deploying a Google tool is tracked. Google’s policy states:
“If other users already have your email, or other information that
identifies you, we may show them your publicly visible Google Profile
information, such as your name and photo.”
But much of the location data stems from the use of Google apps like
Maps or Now, which broadcast your location. If you want to stop this
information from being shared, you have to go into your account settings
and make adjustments.
The ostensible purpose of this data-sharing is to fine-tune your user
experience, but who is benefitting more is arguable. The same year it
released its new activity hub, Google also unveiled a new program that shares your email with high-value advertisers. Called Customer Match, this system streamlines consumer info so that an advertiser’s “brand is right there, with the right message, at the moment your customer is most receptive.”
Google’s policy also lists the three major categories of data collection: Things you do; Things you create; and Things that make you “you.”
medium |For
several years now, political journalists, analysts, and pundits have
been arguing that U.S. politics has increasingly turned into a struggle
between urban and rural voters. Regional differences were once
paramount, Josh Kron observed in the Atlantic
after the 2012 election. “Today, that divide has vanished,” he
declared. “The new political divide is a stark division between cities
and what remains of the countryside.” Two years later, the Washington Post’s Philip Bump wrote
that there are “really two Americas; an urban one and a rural one,”
going on to observe that since Iowa was growing more urban, Democrats
could count on doing better there. Instead, an ever-more urbanized and
diverse nation turned not just toward Republicans, but also toward the
authoritarian nationalism of Donald Trump, prompting further
hand-wringing over the brewing civil war. “It seems likely that the
cracks dividing cities from not-cities will continue to deepen, like
fissures in the Antarctic ice shelf, until there’s nothing left to
repair,” concluded a lengthy New York story on the phenomena this April.
I
don’t disagree that the United States is in crisis, with fissures
breaking apart our facade of national unity and revealing structural
weaknesses of the republic. Our federation — and, therefore, the
world — is in peril, and the stakes are enormous. As the author of American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America,
however, I strongly disagree with the now-conventional narrative that
what ultimately divides us is the difference between metropolitan and
provincial life. The real divide is between regional cultures — an argument I fleshed out at the outset of this series—as it always has been. And I now have the data to demonstrate it.
scientificamerican | When I was a teenager, my parents often asked me to come along to the
store to help carry groceries. One day, as I was waiting patiently at
the check-out, my mother reached for her brand new customer loyalty
card. Out of curiosity, I asked the cashier what information they
record. He replied that it helps them keep track of what we’re buying so
that they can make tailored product recommendations. None of us knew
about this. I wondered whether mining through millions of customer
purchases could reveal hidden consumer preferences and it wasn’t long
before the implications dawned on me: are they mailing us targeted ads?
This was almost two decades ago. I suppose the question most of us
are worried about today is not all that different: how effective are
micro-targeted messages? Can psychological “big data” be leveraged to
make you buy products? Or, even more concerning, can such techniques be
weaponized to influence the course of history, such as the outcomes of
elections? On one hand, we’re faced with daily news from insiders attesting
to the danger and effectiveness of micro-targeted messages based on
unique “psychographic” profiles of millions of registered voters. On the
other hand, academic writers, such as Brendan Nyhan, warn that the political power of targeted online ads and Russian bots are widely overblown.
In an attempt to take stock of what psychological science has to say
about this, I think it is key to disentangle two prominent
misunderstandings that cloud this debate.
First, we need to distinguish attempts to manipulate and influence
public opinion, from actual voter persuasion. Repeatedly targeting
people with misinformation that is designed to appeal to their political
biases may well influence public attitudes, cause moral outrage,
and drive partisans further apart, especially when we’re given the
false impression that everyone else in our social network is espousing
the same opinion. But to what extent do these attempts to influence
translate into concrete votes?
The truth is, we don’t know exactly (yet). But let’s evaluate what we
do know. Classic prediction models that only contain socio-demographic
data (e.g. a person’s age), aren’t very informative on their own in
predicting behavior. However, piecing together various bits of
demographic, behavioral, and psychological data from people, such as
pages you’ve liked on Facebook, results from a personality quiz you may
have taken, as well as your profile photo (which reveals information
about your gender and ethnicity) can improve data quality. For example,
in a prominent study
with 58,000 volunteers, a Stanford researcher found that a model using
Facebook likes (170 likes on average), predicted a whole range of
factors, such as your gender, political affiliation, and sexual
orientation with impressive accuracy.
In a follow-up study,
researchers showed that such digital footprints can in fact be
leveraged for mass persuasion. Across three studies with over 3.5
million people, they found that psychologically tailored advertising,
i.e. matching the content of a persuasive message to an individuals’
broad psychographic profile, resulted in 40% more clicks and in 50% more
online purchases than mismatched or unpersonalized messages. This is
not entirely new to psychologists: we have long known that tailored
communications are more persuasive than a one-size-fits all approach.
Yet, the effectiveness of large-scale digital persuasion can vary
greatly and is sensitive to context. After all, online shopping is not
the same thing as voting!
So do we know whether targeted fake news helped swing the election to Donald Trump?
WaPo | President Trump says that
in many ways, the United States’ infrastructure is like “a Third World
country” and is an “embarrassment.” I don’t often agree with our Twitter
warrior in chief, but the guy’s got a point. America’s roads are
crumbling. Our airports are retrograde: Only four are in the global top 50, and Denver’s takes the top U.S. spot at No. 29. Sad!
This
gives me an idea. If Trump thinks that the United States is truly like
“a Third World country,” maybe it’s time to start treating him the same
way we treat the leaders of such nations. My immodest proposal: Let’s
save America from itself and the ravages of this presidency by offering
Trump a big bundle of money to leave. I’m serious. There’s an African
precedent for this. Let me explain.
But back to Trump. Comedian Trevor Noah once said Trump,
then a candidate, would be America’s first African president. He
compared Trump to some of Africa’s most notorious leaders and dictators.
Like former South African president Jacob Zuma, Trump blames migrants
for crime. Like Gambia’s former president Yahya Jammeh, who claimed he
had an herbal cure for AIDS, Trump has cast doubt on vaccines. As
president, Trump has attacked the press, run a Cabinet mired in
corruption scandals and given his children incredible — and undeserved —
political power and access. That’s a familiar story in Africa: If you
think Ivanka Trump is getting a sweet deal out of her father’s
presidency, read about Angola’s Isabel Dos Santos,
who was given the control of the country’s state oil firm and became
Africa’s richest woman. Noah was right: Trump, not Barack Obama, is
America’s first African president.
A Foundation of Joy
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Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
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4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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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 ...