The Antonine Plague Spurred The Rise Of The Roman Catholic West

charleshughsmith |  Things change, supposedly immutable systems crumble and delusions die. That's the lay of the land in the The Empire of Uncertainty I described yesterday.

It's difficult not to be reminded of the Antonine Plague of 165 AD that crippled the Western Roman Empire. The exact nature of the virus that struck down as many as one-third of the Empire's residents is unknown; it's thought to be an early variant of measles or smallpox.

One would have guessed the populace achieved "herd immunity" after the first wave devastated the Empire, but that's not what happened. The plague continued until 180 AD, and recurred a decade later, continuing to sow misery and economic costs.

Valiant co-Emperor Verus fell ill and died in 169 AD, leaving his adopted brother Marcus Aurelius to struggle on as the sole leader of Rome's efforts to repel invasions and maintain its defenses.

What's different now is the extreme fragility of America's financial and social orders. The apparent strength of the economy rests on increasing extremes of financialization and its corrupting fruit, soaring wealth/power inequality.

"The market" would have us believe corporations profiting from "engagement" (i.e. divisiveness and turmoil) are the most valuable assets in the land. If the Empire's most precious assets are the derangements of "engagement," then what else do we need to know about its advanced fragility?

If data stripmined from debt-dependent consumers is the most profitable resource in the nation, that's a definition of distortion and delusion. It's almost as if the American economy and social order have discounted the material world, as if financial leverage, data-mining and "engagement" are all that really matters and the material world will magically take care of itself. 

He-Man Woman-Hater Proud Boy LARPS Even More Confused Than The Oath Keepers...,

WND  |  A co-founder of Proud Boys said Friday he will sue Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and media outlets that have called the organization "white supremacist" and "Nazi."

"I'm suing them. I'm suing Joe Biden. I'm suing CNN. All of these reporters that call this multi-racial patriotic group white supremacists and Nazis," said Gavin McInnes in an interview with Newsmax TV.

 The group, which portrays itself as a patriotic counterbalance to Antifa, was spotlighted in the presidential debate Tuesday when Biden named it as a "white supremacist" group that President Trump should specifically condemn.

McInnes, who left the group in 2018, said the people associated with Proud Boys who are being labeled are "not tolerating it anymore."

"As far as I'm concerned, that's the new 'N' word. You call me a Nazi? That's as bad as any other racial epithet," he told Newsmax TV. Those people killed 6 million Jews, and to call us that is a deep-seated insult.

McInnes left Proud Boys after an October 2018 clash between members of the group and Antifa that followed a speech he made in New York at the Metropolitan Republican Club. He helped found the Proud Boys in 2016.

He said the organization previously sued the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center for describing the Proud Boys as a hate group.

"Now we're gonna start getting litigious with everyone. It's the only way to fight back," he said.

He said Biden labeled the Proud Boys as white supremacist possibly because he's "senile" or "mentally weak."

"When you're incurious and your brain is going, which seems to be about half the American population these days, then the tiki torch guys in Charlottesville, and Patriot Prayer, and militia, and three-percenters, and Trump supporters, they're all the same, and the KKK," McInnes said.

In an interview Thursday with Britain's Sky News, the national chairman of Proud Boys -- who is African American and Cuban -- noted his skin color.

 

 

Oathkeeper LARPS Been Telling Themselves A Story - But They Don't Yet Know The Plot...,

theatlantic  |  I drove from Kentucky into the mountains of Carroll County, Virginia, and, in a field along a winding road, parked at the end of a long row of pickup trucks and SUVs. A hundred people, most of them armed, were looking up at a man giving a speech from the back of a flatbed truck that was painted in camouflage. Between the crowd and me were two young men with semiautomatic rifles. They stopped me in a manner—neither friendly nor unfriendly—that I’d encountered at checkpoints in other parts of the world.

So-called militia musters like this one had been quietly happening all over the state. The legislature was still pushing ahead with gun-control measures, and people were preparing for the possibility of more riots, and for the election. Rhodes was scheduled to give remarks but, as usual, he was late.

One of the young men said something into a walkie-talkie, and a muscular Iraq War veteran named Will joined me and explained the reason for the guards and the men posted in the woods on the far side of the field. They weren’t worried about law enforcement—a deputy from the sheriff’s department stood not far from me, leaning against his cruiser. It was leftists, antifa, who might record your license plate, dox you, show up at your home.

This was a different kind of crowd than Rhodes had drawn to the VFW hall. Many were in their 20s and 30s and had come in uniforms—some Three Percenters wore black T‑shirts and camouflage pants, and members of another group stood together in matching woodland fatigues. From the latter, a man climbed onto the flatbed and introduced himself as Joe Klemm, the leader of a new militia called the Ridge Runners.

He was a 29-year-old former marine and spoke with a boom that brought the crowd to attention. “I’ve seen this coming since I was in the military,” he said. “For far too long, we’ve given a little bit here and there in the interest of peace. But I will tell you that peace is not that sweet. Life is not that dear. I’d rather die than not live free.”

“Hoo-ah,” some people cheered.

“It’s going to change in November,” Klemm continued. “I follow the Constitution. We demand that the rest of you do the same. We demand that our police officers do the same. We’re going to make these people fear us again. We should have been shooting a long time ago instead of standing off to the side.”

“Are you willing to lose your lives?” he asked. “Are you willing to lose the lives of your loved ones—maybe see one of your loved ones ripped apart right next to you?”

After he finished, Rhodes rolled up in his rented Dodge Ram and parked in the grass beside me. He walked to the flatbed but didn’t climb it. Then he turned and faced the crowd. His speech meandered back to revolutionary times, evoking the traditions of a country founded in bloodshed. He urged them to build a militia for their community.

Rhodes stayed at the muster long after most people had left, meeting every last person, his history lessons stretching on and on. Eventually the conversation turned to the problems in the area—the drug overdoses and mental-health crises and the desperate state of the local economy. The people there seemed to believe that taking up arms would somehow stave off the country’s unraveling rather than speed it along.

When the protests erupted in Kenosha a month later, many of the demonstrators brought guns, and vigilante groups quickly formed on the other side. They called themselves the Kenosha Guard. There was a confrontation near a gas station like the one at Pepperoni Bill’s, and a teenager allegedly opened fire and killed two people. A man affiliated with antifa allegedly gunned down a Trump supporter in Portland later that week, and Rhodes declared that “the first shot has been fired.”

By then, some writers popular on the militant right had been warning that wars don’t always start with a clear, decisive event—an attack, a coup, an invasion—and that you might not realize you’re in one until it’s under way. Civil conflict is gradual. The path to it, I thought, might begin with brooding over it. It could start with opening your mind.

The Future Of Government-Like Organizations (GLO's) Same As The Past...,

nakedcapitalism  |  This is the fourth installment of a six-part interview. For the previous parts, see Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Red indicates exact quotes from Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s 2001 book “Democracy: The God That Failed.” 

ANDREW: The GLOs in your future libertarian society will be continuations of GLOs that exist now – basically large corporations and high net worth individuals. And the modern GLOs are continuations of GLOs that existed in the past.

On The Question Of Property Rights 

ANDREW: Can you give me some real historical examples of how GLOs have justly appropriated rights?

CNC: [T]he English settlers [in] North America… demonstrated how… private property originated naturally through a person’s original appropriation… of previously unused land (wilderness). [267]

ANDREW: North America was uninhabited when the English settlers got there?

CNC: Opponents of libertarianism love saying “What about the Indians?” They get excited at the thought that libertarians will be forced to defend the property rights of dispossessed native peoples, which a lot of libertarians would rather not do. What they don’t realize is that John Locke solved this problem three hundred years ago. Locke explained that …the Benefit Mankind receives from [an acre of land in England], is worth 5 [pounds], [whereas the benefit from an acre of land in America] possibly not worth a Penny, if all the Profit an Indian received from it were to be valued, and sold here; at least, I may truly say, not 1/1000. ‘Tis Labour then which puts the greatest part of Value upon Land, without which it would scarcely be worth any thing…

ANDREW: Wait. Did Locke just start to suggest that since the Indians did not do efficient agriculture, they did not really own the land?

CNC: Exactly. To properly claim land, you have to do real economic work on the land, and the Indians did not do that because they were too primitive. So Locke proved that that the Indians did not own the land. That meant the settlers could treat the land as if it was unclaimed.

ANDREW: Are you sure that’s what Locke meant? Locke is famous for defending liberty and natural rights.

CNC: Why are you surprised? In this example, Locke defended the liberty of settlers to claim unused land, and their natural right to keep that land once they had claimed it. And yes, I’m sure that’s what Locke meant – go read his second Treatise on Government.

ANDREW: Were the original territory GLOs in Europe also security GLOs?

Is Q-Anon A Virus Specifically Designed For The Evangelical Mind?

technologyreview  |   The first family to quit Pastor Clark Frailey’s church during the pandemic did it by text message. It felt to Frailey like a heartbreaking and incomplete way to end a years-long relationship. When a second young couple said they were doubting his leadership a week later, Frailey decided to risk seeing them in person, despite the threat of covid-19. 

It was late May, and things were starting to reopen in Oklahoma, so Frailey and the couple met in a near-empty fast food restaurant to talk it over. 

The congregants were worried about Frailey’s intentions. At Coffee Creek, his evangelical church outside Oklahoma City, he had preached on racial justice for the past three weeks. He says the couple didn’t appreciate his most recent sermon, which urged Christians to call out and challenge racism anywhere they saw it, including in their own church. Though Frailey tries to keep Coffee Creek from feeling too traditional—he wears jeans, and the church has a modern band and uses chairs instead of pews—he considers himself a theologically conservative Southern Baptist pastor. But at one point, the couple Frailey spoke to said they believed that he was becoming a “social justice warrior.” 

Pastors and congregants disagree all the time, and Frailey doesn’t want to be the sort of Christian leader whom people feel afraid to challenge. But in that restaurant, it felt to him as if he and they had read two different sacred texts. It was as if the couple were “believing internet memes over someone they’d had a relationship with for over five years,” Frailey says. 

At one point he brought up QAnon, the conspiracy theory holding that Donald Trump is fighting a secret Satanic pedophile ring run by liberal elites. When he asked what they thought about it, the response was worryingly ambiguous. “It wasn’t like, ‘I fully believe this,’” he says. “It was like, ‘I find it interesting.’ These people are dear to me and I love them. It’s just—it felt like there was someone else in the conversation that I didn’t know who they were.”

Frailey told me about another young person who used to regularly attend his church. She was sharing conspiracy-laden misinformation on Facebook “like it’s the gospel truth,” he said, including a quote falsely attributed to Senator Kamala Harris. He saw another post from this woman promoting the wild claim that Tom Hanks and other Hollywood celebrities are eating babies. 

Before the pandemic, Frailey knew a little bit about QAnon, but he hadn’t given such an easily debunked fringe theory much of his time. The posts he started seeing felt familiar, though: they reminded him of the “Satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s, when rumors of secret occult rituals tormenting children in day-care centers spread quickly among conservative religious believers who were already anxious about changes in family structures. “The pedophile stuff, the Satanic stuff, the eating babies—that’s all from the 1980s,” he says. 

That conspiracy-fueled frenzy was propelled in part by credulous mainstream news coverage, and by false accusations and even convictions of day-care owners. But evangelicals, in particular, embraced the claims, tuning in to a wave of televangelists who promised to help viewers spot secret satanic symbols and rituals in the secular world. 

If the panic was back with fresh branding as QAnon, it had a new ally in Facebook. And Frailey wasn’t sure where to turn for help. He posted in a private Facebook group for Oklahoma Baptist pastors, asking if anyone else was seeing what he was. The answer, repeatedly, was yes. 

The pastors traded links. Frailey read everything he could about QAnon. He listened to every episode of the New York Times podcast series Rabbit Hole, on “what happens when our lives move online,” and devoured a story in the Atlantic that framed QAnon as a new religion infused with the language of Christianity. To Frailey, it felt more like a cult. 

He began to look further back into the Facebook history of the young former member who had posted the fake Harris quote. In the past, he remembered, she had posted about her kids every day. In June and July, he saw, that had shifted. Instead of talking about her family, she was now promoting QAnon—and one member of the couple that had met with him in May was there in the comments, posting in solidarity. 

Suddenly he understood that his efforts to protect his congregation from covid-19 had contributed to a different sort of infection. Like thousands of other church leaders across the United States, Frailey had shut down in-person services in March to help prevent the spread of the virus. Without these gatherings, some of his churchgoers had turned instead to Facebook, podcasts, and viral memes for guidance. And QAnon, a movement with its own equivalents of scripture, prophecies, and clergy, was there waiting for them.

Masks A Dry Run For The Mark Of The Beast?

pulpitandpen |  The gist is this: Prior to the return of Christ, his followers are going to become increasingly unpopular and the world will grow increasingly wicked. It will be characterized by unruly children, self-centered vanity (food selfie, much?), homosexuality, and general ungodliness. Although all ages have had these sins to varying degrees, the generation before Christ returns will actually take pride in them.

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.² For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,³ Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,⁴ Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;⁵ Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.⁶ For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,⁷ Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
2 Timothy 3:1-7

This will be accomplished by incredible technology that allows the comings-and-goings of people to be micromanaged and they will be excluded from buying or selling things in the marketplace. This is to accomplish a “soft extermination,” basically starving out believers or forcing them to assimilate.

¹⁶ And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:¹⁷ And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Revelation 13:16-17

After it’s clear from muscling non-conformists into a corner by restricting their access to the market, a global, powerful government will then begin a “hard extermination,” rounding up believers and murdering them like dogs in a persecution worse than anything the world has ever seen (including the Holocaust). 

Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake…²¹ For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.Matthew 24:9,21

 

This will, in part, be possible by some kind of contraption – whether natural or supernatural – that will detect believing non-conformists who have refused to identify with the global grand poobah (known as the anti-christ) and it will sound an alarm, alerting people that an ‘unauthorized person’ is nearby.

¹⁵ And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.
Revelation 13:15

You can figure out how that will be done, because it doesn’t leave much to the imagination in a period in which we’re talking about “health passports” scanning temperatures of passing crowds of people, putting everyone into a facial recognition database (even liberals in America’s cities are scared over this one and have started to ban the tech), and are micro-chipping Lassie. I’m not a prophet or the son of one, but I surmise it will be one of these things, a combination thereof, or something eerily similar. In one way or another, those little images are going to scream out and snitch, something that John was seeing in his revelation and trying to convey to us with his 1st Century vocabulary.

And when all this fails to round up believers for the gas chamber, people will snitch on each other. Even family members will turn one another in for not conforming to the government regulations.

Drug Gang Governance Livestock Management In The PanicDemic

Time |  In spring, as Colombia settled into a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown, some Colombians received troubling new guidelines—and not from the government. In remote parts of 11 of the country’s 32 states, armed groups began enforcing their own quarantine measures, according to a report published July 15 by Human Rights Watch. Through pamphlets and WhatsApp messages, the groups laid out curfews, restrictions on movement, categories of essential work, and more. These restrictions were sometimes stricter than government rules, and punishments for breaking them far more serious.

One pamphlet seen by HRW, released in early April by Marxist guerrillas the National Liberation Army (ELN) in the northern Bolívar department, warned that fighters would be “forced to kill people in order to preserve lives” because residents had not “respected the orders to prevent Covid-19.”

Latin America is the current center of the pandemic, with more than 3.5 million cases across the region and numbers in many countries still rising sharply. Analysts say COVID-19 is worsening the region’s problem with “criminal governance” – where the state loses control over a part of its territory as non-state armed groups, such as drug gangs and guerrilla forces, take over and effectively govern small areas. Groups in Colombia, Brazil, Mexico and elsewhere have taken on the fight against COVID-19, allowing them to claim an interest in the public good, and strengthen their violent grip on local communities—in a way that could be permanent.

Which armed groups control territory in Latin America?

The nature of criminal governance varies hugely between regions and countries across Latin America, according to Chris Dalby, managing editor of investigative news site InSight Crime, which examines organized crime in the region. But it tends to take hold, he says, in poor or remote areas where the state presence is weak; that is, where the government has failed to provide effective law enforcement, public services, and economic opportunity.

In Colombia, armed groups are mostly a legacy of the country’s decades-long conflict with rebel groups. Though the Colombian government reached a landmark peace deal with the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2016, other guerrilla groups, including the ELN, and paramilitary forces remain powerful in some rural areas. In Brazil, drug traffickers exert more influence than the police in some of the favela neighborhoods that lie on the outskirts of large cities, with the largest gang being the First Capital Command (PCC) in São Paulo. In Mexico, drug cartels, such as the Sinaloa Cartel in the northwest of the country, have similar control over poor communities.

These distinct groups use their territories for a range of illicit businesses: drug trafficking, people trafficking, illegal mining, extortion rackets and more. But they often also provide resources and public services for communities, as a way of legitimizing their control and buying loyalty. During the pandemic, with many money-making activities harder to carry out thanks to national restrictions on movement and businesses, many groups have leaned into this role of governing, Dalby says. “They’ve taken the opportunity to reaffirm that control.”

In March, after COVID-19 started to spread through Brazil, gangs in Rio de Janeiro favelas drove through streets using a loudspeaker to tell residents they were putting a curfew in place and threatening violence if they did not comply, according to Brazilian newspaper UOL. Traffickers reportedly also handed out hand soap, and issued edicts banning tourists from entering the area in case they infect the residents. In Mexico, in April, drug cartels handed out boxes of food and other basic supplies to people struggling with the economic impact of the pandemic. Images circulated in Latin American media showed packages branded with the names of cartels.

In Colombia, some armed groups implemented stricter restrictions than the government did on people’s movement, humanitarian workers and community leaders told HRW, allowing no exceptions for accessing health services or banks during curfews, for example. People who did not comply with the rules faced brutal punishments: HRW documented at least 8 killings of civilians who apparently did not abide by COVID-19 measures imposed by armed groups between March and June.

Police Unions Cause An Overwhelming Majority Of Trouble

plsonline |  By the mid-1960s police officers had responded with an aggressive and widespread police unionization campaign. Aided by court rulings more favorable to the organizing of public employees; fueled by resentment of the authoritarian organization of departments; and united in a common resistance to increasing charges of police brutality, corruption and other forms of misconduct, nearly every large-city police department had been unionized by the early 1970s. Police officers struck in New York City in 1971; in Baltimore in 1974 and in San Francisco in 1975. "Job actions" such as "blue flue" and work slowdowns (i.e. not writing tickets, making few arrests) were common in other cities.

Initially, the response to this union activity was to reduce centralization in the police bureaucracy and to include officers in discussions of rules, procedures and departmental practices. What had been the exclusive fiefdom of the police executive was now subject to negotiation with a union. But reduced municipal tax bases, caused primarily by the exodus of white, affluent executives and professionals to the suburbs in the 1970s; a prolonged economic recession in the 1970s and early 1980s; and fiscal mismanagement in many cities, led to layoffs of police and other municipal workers, and rollbacks in benefits. In fact, unions became an attractive scapegoat for municipal problems. Politicians, administrators and the media all blamed demands by public workers for the financial straits in which the cities had been floundering. Despite the fact that the fiscal crisis had been caused by much larger social and economic trends, blaming police and other workers allowed police administrators and politicians to once again reorganize the police. This reorganization has been dubbed the "Taylorization of the police" by historian Sydney Harring (1981).

Under the "Taylorization" reforms, police departments reduced the size of their forces; went from two-person to one-person patrol cars; and increased the division of labor within police departments. Police work was broken down into ever more specific, highly specialized tasks; patrol became more reactive; technology was used to restore the control of police administrators (i.e., 911 emergency lines; computerization); and some traditional police tasks were turned over to civilian employees. All of this served to further isolate the police from the citizenry; to further reduce the effectiveness of police practices; and to continually justify ever more "Taylorization" as a response to increasing inefficiency.

Concurrent with reform efforts aimed at professionalization, was an increased reliance on technology and scientific aspects of police investigation. The idea of police as scientific crime fighters had originated with August Vollmer as early as 1916, with the introduction of the crime laboratory. By 1921 Vollmer was advocating the widespread use of lie detectors and the establishment of a database for collecting national crime data (Crank and Langworthy 1992). Over the years science became synonymous with professionalism for many police executives. The use of fingerprints, serology, toxicology chemistry and scientific means for collecting evidence were emphasized as part of a professional police force. In terms of technological advancements, new ways of maintaining police record systems and enhancing police communications, such as the police radio, became priorities.

The emphasis was on efficiency and crime-fighting, with the social work aspects of policing deemphasized and discouraged. The hope was also that the professional, scientific crime-fighters would be less susceptible to corruption. It is therefore a further irony of policing that in Philadelphia new communications technologies were put to use in establishing what is arguably the first "call girl" system in the United States, calling out for prostitutes using police communications systems.

The Resurrection Of Christ Cathedral

                       

wikipedia |  According to the official website, "the church was designed in a monumental Russian style, organically incorporating modern architectural approaches and innovations unique to the Orthodox church creation". The facades of the building are finished with metal, the arches are glazed. The walls of the church, decorated with murals, include battle scenes from military history and scripture texts. The decoration of the lower (small) church is made of ceramics and is decorated with Gzhel painting, with pieces of glass smalt used in the manufacture of mosaic panels. The central apse dedicated to the Resurrection of Christ is made in the form of a metal relief. The decoration of the church, the icon and the iconostasis (icon wall) are made of copper with enamels, as was done on the marching military icons. The image of the Saviour-Not-Made-by-Hands in the central dome of the church is the largest image of the Christ's face executed in mosaic.

Glass mosaics

Stained glass mosaics in the cathedral's vault feature various Red Army orders, accompanied by their respected ribbons that denote their class. Many of the orders display the faces of prominent military leaders from the Imperial Russian Army. The following orders are depicted in the mosaics: The Order of Alexander Nevsky (First Class), Order of Bogdan Khmelnitsky (First Class), Order of Ushakov (First Class), Order of Nakhimov (First Class), Order of Suvorov (First Class), Order of Kutuzov (First Class), Order of Victory, Order of the Red Banner, Order of the Red Star, and the Order of the Patriotic War (First Class).

Sizes

Some of the sizes are symbolic. The height of the church along with the cross is 95 meters. The diameter of the drum of the main dome is 19.45 meters, symbolizing the year when the Great Patriotic War ended – 1945. The height of the belfry is 75 meters, a reference to the 75 years that passed in 2020 since the end of World War II. The height of the small dome is 14.18 meters – 1418 days and nights hostilities lasted in Great Patriotic War. The area of the church complex is 11,000 m². The capacity of the interior of the church is up to 6,000 people.

Bells

The bells are made at the Voronezh Foundry. The decoration of the bells repeats ornaments decorating the cathedral. The bells reflect the theme of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, icons of patrons of the Russian Army. The main bell-evangelist was decorated with bas-reliefs depicting key events of the Great Patriotic War. Work on the manufacture of bells was carried out for six months. The ensemble weighs more than 20 tons, it includes 18 bells, the largest of which weighs 10 tons.^[7] 17 of the 18 bells are dedicated to the types and arms of the troops. On the one hand the emblem is applied to the bell, on the other, the image of the patron saint.^[7] On 23 August 2019, bells are set on the belfry of the cathedral.

Dome

On 15 November 2019, a 80-ton central dome was erected on the cathedral, the height and diameter of which are 12 meters.^[8] In total, the cathedral has six domes, four of which are identical, each of which weighs 34 tons, the central one is the largest and one is on the belfry. The design has a high alloy steel frame with a strength factor from 300 to 1500 years.

Main icon

See also: Russian icons

The central icon of the Main Church of the Russian Armed Forces is the "Holy Saviour" in the main dome. The Icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands is a canonical image of the Holy Face of Jesus Christ, miraculously imprinted on a piece of material and transmitted by the Saviour himself to King Abgar V of Osroene. The face on the icon surrounds the images of the Most Holy Mother of God of Kazan, of Vladimir, of Smolensk and of Tikhvin, placed on artistic reliefs that depict significant events in the history of the Russian state. In the ark, which invariably accompanies the icon, there are eight particles of holy patrons: the great martyr George the Victorious, St. Andrew the First-Called, St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, St. Sergius of Radonezh, the great martyr Barbara, the apostle Peter, the great martyr Panteleimon the Healer, and also Fyodor Ushakov, the righteous commander of the Black Sea Fleet and one of the most revered saints in the fleet.

The image of the Savior is placed in a bronze fold and weighs about 100 kg. The icon itself without a fold has dimensions of about 98 × 84 × 10 cm.'

Judaism As A Group Evolutionary Strategy

nih | MacDonald argues that a suite of genetic and cultural adaptations among Jews constitutes a “group evolutionary strategy.” Their supposed genetic adaptations include, most notably, high intelligence, conscientiousness, and ethnocentrism. According to this thesis, several major intellectual and political movements, such as Boasian anthropology, Freudian psychoanalysis, and multiculturalism, were consciously or unconsciously designed by Jews to (a) promote collectivism and group continuity among themselves in Israel and the diaspora and (b) undermine the cohesion of gentile populations, thus increasing the competitive advantage of Jews and weakening organized gentile resistance (i.e., anti-Semitism). By developing and promoting these movements, Jews supposedly played a necessary role in the ascendancy of liberalism and multiculturalism in the West. While not achieving widespread acceptance among evolutionary scientists, this theory has been enormously influential in the burgeoning political movement known as the “alt-right.” Examination of MacDonald’s argument suggests that he relies on systematically misrepresented sources and cherry-picked facts. It is argued here that the evidence favors what is termed the “default hypothesis”: Because of their above-average intelligence and concentration in influential urban areas, Jews in recent history have been overrepresented in all major intellectual and political movements, including conservative movements, that were not overtly anti-Semitic.

Keywords: Jews, Anti-Semitism, Group conflict, Gene-culture coevolution, Kevin MacDonald, Culture of critique

 

In the 1990s, Kevin MacDonald wrote a trilogy of books arguing that Judaism is a “group evolutionary strategy,” and the pursuit of this strategy by Jews had far-reaching consequences for world history. In A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy (1994) he proposed that, since its inception, Judaism has promoted eugenic practices favoring high intelligence, conscientiousness, and ethnocentrism. As a consequence, the contemporary Jewish population (at least the Ashkenazi population) is marked by a high level of these traits, including a mean IQ of 117 (weighted on verbal intelligence). In Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism (1998b) he argued that anti-Semitism is a reaction by gentiles to competition for resources with less populous but more organized and competent Jewish groups. In The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements (1998a), he argued that post-Enlightenment Jews who abandoned the religion of Judaism invented a substitute: liberal political, intellectual, and scientific movements with the same social and organizational structure as Judaism, and the same ultimate purpose to promote the evolutionary success of Jews.

According to The Culture of Critique, the most influential of these intellectual movements—Boasian anthropology, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Frankfurt School critical theory—were headed by charismatic and authoritarian leaders (analogous to rabbis), they placed great value on verbal brilliance and internal consistency rather than testability or agreement with external reality (analogous to Talmudic scholarship), and they promoted Jewish group interests at the expense of gentiles. The movements advocated separatism and ethnocentrism for Jews, discouraged ethnic identification among white gentiles (in order to prevent group consciousness among white gentiles that might lead to a sense of competition with Jews and thus anti-Semitism), undermined and destabilized traditional European culture to weaken resistance to Jewish control, “pathologized” anti-Semitism, and denied that Jewish behavior plays a role in anti-Jewish attitudes.

MacDonald argues that Jewish intellectual and political movements were responsible for major trends in twentieth-century scientific, political, and demographic history. These movements, he says, were responsible for the rejection of Darwinian thinking among most mainstream social scientists, and also for large-scale nonwhite immigration to European and European-colonized countries (the United States, Australia, etc.).

AIPAC and CPAC America's N-1 SARS-CoV2 Super Spreader Nodes

forward | The tens of thousands of devotees who attended last week’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference and the Conservative Political Action Conference at the end of February have all gone back home, bringing with them new ideas about U.S.-Israel relations and strategies for Republican victories in the 2020 election, respectively. Some have also brought back the coronavirus.

At least five attendees of AIPAC and one from CPAC — two of Washington’s marquee annual political events — have tested positive for the virus, diagnoses that have rippled out to create quarantines and school closings from Cleveland to California. Neither AIPAC nor CPAC would address reports on social media that the infected CPAC attendee also attended AIPAC, which started the next day.

With New Rochelle, N.Y., being declared a “contamination zone” on Tuesday, scores of schools and universities going online only, many businesses asking employees to work remotely and thousands of gatherings large and small getting postponed indefinitely, there have been some complaints about the approach taken by the two advocacy organizations.

CPAC in particular has come under fire for a lack of adequate communication with individuals who came into contact with the affected attendee. Raheem Kassam, a conservative author and commentator, and Brandon Darby, a reporter for the right-wing outlet Breitbart, are among several people who were at CPAC and claim that VIP attendees have gotten access to more information faster than have the rest of the 20,000 people in attendance. The American Conservative Union, which organizes the conference, did not respond to inquiries on Tuesday.

Politico reported that the CPAC attendee with the virus ate at a Shabbat dinner Feb. 28, and held a gold-level ticket that provided access to Republican lawmakers including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Paul Gosar of Arizona and Doug Collins of Georgia. All four are self-quarantining. The Washington Beacon, a conservative Website, reported Tuesday that the infected person was at a VIP congressional reception on the opening night of the conference, Feb. 26.

Sex, Religion, Money - Jim Bakker's Lil'Pimphand Still In The Game

abcnews |  Two state attorneys general ordered a prominent televangelist to stop peddling an alleged coronavirus elixir on his show. 

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Jim Bakker for misrepresentations about the effectiveness of "Silver Solution" as a treatment for coronavirus. 

Schmitt's lawsuit came a week after the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James sent a cease-and-desist order to Bakker, ordering him to stop promoting the supplement as a COVID-19 treatment.

 During a Feb. 12 episode of the "The Jim Bakker Show," guest Sherrill Sellman claimed the so-called Silver Solution was able to eliminate some strains of coronavirus. 

Asked if the Silver Solution would be effective against COVID-19, specifically, Sellman replied, "Let's say it hasn't been tested on this strain of the coronavirus, but it's been tested on other strains of the coronavirus and it has been able to eliminate it within 12 hours." 

According to the World Health Organization, there are no current cures or direct treatments for the novel coronavirus, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there's no known cure for other coronavirus variants that cause SARS and MERS. 

"Your show's segment may mislead consumers as to the effectiveness of the Silver Solution product in protecting against the current outbreak," the the New York cease-and-desist order said. "Any representation on the Jim Bakker Show that its Silver Solution products are effective at combating and/or treating the 2019 novel coronavirus violates New York law."

DC Wrecked By One Infected Episcopal Rector...,

cbsnews |  The first person to test positive for coronavirus in Washington, D.C., is the prominent leader of a historic Episcopal church in Georgetown, the church said Sunday.

The Reverend Timothy Cole, rector of Christ Church Georgetown, was diagnosed at the hospital Saturday night and is in stable condition, according to the Reverend Crystal Hardin, the assistant to the rector, who spoke at a press conference outside the church Sunday. 

In an email to parishioners obtained by CBS News, Cole confirmed he has tested positive, and said services were suspended "out of an abundance of caution for the most vulnerable among us." All services were canceled Sunday, the first time the church has closed since a fire in the 1800s, Hardin said. 

"I can now confirm that I am the individual who tested positive for the Coronavirus," Cole wrote in his email. "First, I want to assure you that I will be okay. I am receiving excellent care and am in good spirits under the circumstances. I will remain quarantined for the next 14 days as will the rest of my family."

The church was founded in 1817 and is a fixture of the upscale Washington community, with a congregation that includes many government officials. Cole has been rector of the church since 2016.

First Confirmed Case In Missouri (Catholic N-1 Might As Well Been a Shiite Licking Shit...,)

stltoday |  Villa Duchesne and Oak Hill School will close Monday after administrators learned that a St. Louis County woman infected with the coronavirus is the older sister of a Villa Duchesne student.

Moreover, a message from the schools to parents, circulating on social media, warns that the father and sister of the infected patient attended a school father-daughter dance Saturday night at the Ritz-Carlton in Clayton. They also apparently attended a pre-dance gathering at the house of a Villa student.

St. Louis County Executive Sam Page said Sunday that the patient’s family had been told on Thursday to self quarantine at their home in Ladue. Page said the patient’s father had not followed health department instructions. Page spoke at a news conference Sunday evening.

County health officials told the man on Sunday, Page said, “that he must remain in his home or they will issue a formal quarantine that will require him and the rest of his family to stay in their home by the force of law.”

The Villa Duchesne message advises students and parents, “If you attended the dance, please be attentive to any symptoms you are experiencing.”

abcnews |   According to Missouri statute, someone who is issued a formal quarantine and "evades or breaks quarantine" could be found guilty of a class A misdemeanor. 

He called it "a tale of two reactions" and "a study of how people should and should not react to the coronavirus." 

"From everything we can gather, the patient had conducted herself responsibly and maturely and she is to be commended for complying with the health department's instructions," Page said. "The patient's father did not act consistently with the health department's instructions." 

The county is planning to implement state-of-the-art strategies and provide information through it's various channels including the hotline, website and social media to disseminate resources and updates on coronavirus. 

Page reiterated the importance of hand washing, covering mouths when sneezing or coughing, staying home if sick and following all the CDC recommendations -- especially if you have been in contact with anyone who is symptomatic. 

County health officials have communicated their expectations for the family in a letter and Page said he expects them to follow the quarantine guidelines. 

A similar case occurred in New Hampshire where one presumptive positive patient, who works at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, allegedly ignored a directive to self-isolate and attended an invitation-only event on Feb. 28, health officials said. Health Department officials then attempted to track down all the attendees and instruct them to follow the recommended 14-day self-isolation.

This Is No Way To Lick The Coronavirus

NYPost |  Shocking footage has emerged of Iranians tempting fate by licking the doors and a burial mound at the Fatima Masumeh Shrine in Qom, the epicenter of the Islamic Republic’s COVID-19 outbreak.

Journalist Masih Alinejad shared video of the disturbing practice, noting that officials have refused to shut down the religious shrines — while the death toll in the country stands at 66, with more than 1,500 infected.

“These pro-regime people are licking the shrines & encouraging people to visit them,” he said in a tweet. “Iran’s authorities are endangering lives of Iranians & the world.”

Pilgrims routinely kiss and lick religious shrines, including in Qom, which is considered a “place for healing,” according to the UK’s Daily Star.

Those who were photographed licking the doors said they “don’t care what happens,” the news outlet reported.

Despite restrictions on who is allowed in and out of Qom, the seventh-largest city in Iran, it has not been locked down during the medical crisis.

“The smell of disinfectants has become my nightmare. The city smells like a cemetery, a morgue,” said retired teacher Ziba Rezaie, according to the Star.

Meanwhile, it was reported Monday that a close adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei died of the illness.

Two key officials also have been confirmed to be infected, including Masoumeh Ebtekar, a vice president better known as “Sister Mary,” who served as spokeswoman for the students who seized the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

Almost Like It Was Optimized to Clip Tards...., (sarc)

In Daegu, 1900 Shincheonji Church members have been tested for coronavirus.

1300 had symptoms & 600 did not.

Among those 1300 with symptoms, 87.5% were confirmed with the virus .

BUT out of the 600 WITHOUT symptoms, 70% were confirmed with coronavirus.

— Laura Bicker (@BBCLBicker) February 29, 2020

Put another way:

Out of a population of 1,900
1,300 were symptomatic
600 asymptomatic

420 tested positive but asymptomatic
1,131 tested positive and symptomatic

= 1,551 infections out of 1,900 = 81%

— Jay Reynolds (@jaycreynolds) February 29, 2020

Insane attack rate

Where is this thing from

— Ani in the coronapocalypse🇨🇦🏳️‍🌈 (@anabellebf) February 29, 2020

South Korean Cults, Conservatives, and Coronavirus

FP |  South Korea initially seemed to have the COVID-19 epidemic under control, armed with efficient bureaucracy and state-of-the-art technology. However, since Feb. 18, the number of coronavirus cases in South Korea has exploded to more than 1,700 as of Thursday. The battle plan against the epidemic was derailed by the oldest of problems: religion and politics.

When it came to preparation, it helped that South Korea had one hell of a practice run: the MERS outbreak in 2015 that caused 38 deaths. At the time, the incompetent response by the conservative administration of then President Park Geun-hye put South Korea in the ignominious position of having the greatest number of cases outside of the Middle East. The fallout, which contributed to the public distrust of government that culminated in Park’s impeachment and removal, pushed the South Korean government to significantly revamp its preparation for the next viral event.

South Korea has been preparing for a potential new strain of coronavirus since as early as November 2019. Without knowing what virus would hit the country next, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) devised an ingenious method of testing for any type of coronavirus and eliminating known strains of coronavirus such as SARS or MERS to isolate the new variant of coronavirus.

For the first four weeks of the outbreak, South Korea marshaled high-tech resources to respond aggressively while promoting transparency. The government tracked the movements of travelers arriving from China, for example by tracking the use of credit cards, checking CCTV footage, or mandating they download an app to report their health status every day. For those infected, the government published an extremely detailed list of their whereabouts, down to which seat they sat in at a movie theater.

The info was also presented (with names removed) in an interactive website that allows the public to trace the movement of every single individual with coronavirus. To be sure, there were real privacy concerns—as when one unfortunate patient in Daejeon had news of their visit to a risqué lingerie store blasted to every smartphone in their city. Yet on balance, these disclosures did much to calm the nerves and prevent unnecessary panic in the population. By Feb. 17, South Korea’s tally of COVID-19 patients stood at 30, with zero deaths. Ten patients were fully cured and discharged, with some of the discharged patients declaring the disease was “not something as serious as one might think.” The government seemed ready to declare victory.

That all came to a crashing halt last week thanks to the 31st case. Patient No. 31, discovered on Feb. 18, was a member of a quasi-Christian cult called Shincheonji, one of the many new religious movements in the country. Founded in 1984, Shincheonji (whose official name is Shincheonji, Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony) means “new heaven and earth,” a reference to the Book of Revelation. Its founder Lee Man-hee claims to be the second coming of Jesus who is to establish the “new spiritual Israel” at the end of days. The cult is estimated to have approximately 240,000 followers, and claims to have outposts in 29 countries in addition to South Korea.

Shincheonji’s bad theology makes for worse public health. Shincheonji teaches illness is a sin, encouraging its followers to suffer through diseases to attend services in which they sit closely together, breathing in spittle as they repeatedly amen in unison. If they were off on their own, that might be one thing—but according to Shin Hyeon-uk, a pastor who formerly belonged to the cult, Shincheonji believes in “deceptive proselytizing,” approaching potential converts without disclosing their denomination. Shincheonji convinces its members to cover their tracks, providing a prearranged set of answers to give when anyone asks if they belong to the cult. Often, even family members are in the dark about whether someone is a Shincheonji follower. The net effect is that Shincheonji followers infect each other easily, then go onto infect the community at large.

It is not yet clear exactly how Shincheonji cultists were infected with COVID-19 in the first instance. (KCDC said Patient No. 31 is likely not the first Shincheonji follower to be infected, given the timeline of her symptoms.) Although investigations are still pending, South Korean authorities have been focusing on the funeral of the brother of Shincheonji’s founder held in early February. Shincheonji has 19 churches in China, including in Wuhan, and it may be possible that followers from around the world attended the funeral.

Shincheonji

Reuters |  An So-young had a gut feeling that the 31st person in South Korea to test positive for the coronavirus might be a member of the controversial religious sect she quit four years ago. 

The person, dubbed “Patient 31,” was the first of an explosive wave of cases that made South Korea’s outbreak the largest outside of China. What caught An’s attention was how health authorities were struggling to track the woman’s movements before she was tested. 

“That’s their culture, they have to hide their movements, and that’s why I guessed she was with Shincheonji,” An, 27, said in an interview, referring to the Shincheonji Church of Jesus. 

Patient 31 attended services at the church’s branch in the southeastern city of Daegu this month, staying for two hours each time, before testing positive on Feb. 18. 

The South Korean disease control chief Jeong Eun-kyeong said the church’s services, where thousands of people sit on the floor, shoulder-to-shoulder, for hours, could have contributed to the surges. 

“You would be 5 centimeters away from the person who sits next to you, and have to say ‘Amen’ after every sentence the pastor speaks - it’s the best environment for the virus to spread,” said An, who is now a theology student. 

In a media interview, Patient 31 said she did not refuse to be tested. But health authorities said she sought care at a traditional medicine hospital in Daegu after a minor car accident, where a medical worker who treated her later tested positive for the virus. While running a fever, she went to a buffet at a hotel and the church services. 

Shincheonji is in the biggest crisis in its 36-year history, as hundreds of members have tested positive for the virus, SARS-CoV-2. All of its 210,000 known followers are being tested amid unprecedented scrutiny from authorities and the public. 

After initial resistance, the church released the addresses of 1,100 facilities around the country - 82 churches and 1,018 “affiliates,” - and asked the public to avoid making “groundless criticism.” It was the “biggest victim of the virus,” it said. 

Calls by Reuters to the church’s headquarters seeking comment went unanswered. 

During a visit to the Daegu branch on Friday, a man who identified himself as a member said he was the only one there and told Reuters that “all of our 9,000 members are taking self-quarantine measures in compliance with the government instruction.” He said the building was disinfected twice last week. 

Interactive graphic about the spread of coronavirus inside South Korea: here

Is 2020 The Year Shit Starts Getting Real For You Other 9%'s Here Too?

I find it hard to listen to establishment fake news front Amy Goodman and crew. However, this is recent Arundhati Roy, and thus, I'm making an exception. The real shizzles and bizzles - where Roy breaks it down even for the slow cats who don't pay close attention - can be found here.  Since I don't expect you to pay $5.00 for this lecture, I surely wouldn't, here's a temporary link that should enable you to listen to it for free for the next couple of weeks. Click on the January 1st 2020 9:00am radio broadcast when it goes live at this location in a few minutes. 

Oh, lastly, you're welcome for the KKFI hookup. Of special note (you need to check out these shows) are The Boogie Bridge, Old-G's Hangout, and Lynn's Beautician's Blues. You will thoroughly enjoy each one of these. Yesterday's Beautician's Blues was straight FYRE!!! Don't say I never did you any favors.

Differentiating Right and Left Populisms

nakedcapitalism |  According to David Harvey, neoliberal globalization is comprised of four processes: accumulation by dispossession; de-regulation; privatization; and an upward re-distribution of wealth. Taken together they have increased both economic insecurity and cultural anxiety via three features in particular: the creation of surplus peoples, rising global inequality, and threats to identity.

The anxiety wrought by neoliberal globalization has created a rich and fertile ground for populist politics of both right and left. Neither Norris and Inglehart nor Laclau adequately account for such insecurity in their theorization of populism. As we have seen, populism can be understood as a mobilizing discourse that conceives of political subjectivity as comprised of “the people.” Yet this figure of “the people,” as Agamben has indicatedin What is a people? (2000) is deeply ambivalent insofar as it can be understood both in terms of the  body politic as a whole (as in the US Constitution’s “We the People”), or in terms of what Ranciere calls the “part that has no part,” or the dispossessed and the displaced; as in “The people united shall never be defeated,” or in the Black Panthers’ famous slogan: “All Power to the People.”

In this dichotomy, the figure of “the people” can be understood in terms of its differential deployments by right and left, which themselves must be understood in terms of the respective enemies through which “the people” is constructed. And this is the decisive dimension of populism.

Right populism conflates “the people” with an embattled nation confronting its external enemies: Islamic terrorism, refugees, the European Commission, the International Jewish conspiracy, and so on. The left, in marked contrast, defines “the people” in relation to the social structures and institutions – for example, state and capital – that thwart its aspirations for self-determination; a construction which does not necessarily, however, preclude hospitality towards the Other.

In other words, right-wing or authoritarian populism defines the enemy in personalized terms, whereas, while this is not always true, left-wing populism tends to define the enemy in terms of bearers of socio-economic structures and rarely as particular groups. The right, in a tradition stemming back to Hobbes, takes insecurity and anxiety as the necessary, unavoidable, and indeed perhaps even favourable product of capitalist social relations. It transforms such insecurity and anxiety into the fear of the stranger and an argument for a punitive state. In contrast, the left seeks to provide an account of the sources of such insecurity in the processes that have led to the dismantling of the welfare state, and corresponding phenomena such as “zero-hours” contracts, the casualization of labour, and generalized precarity. It then proposes transformative and egalitarian solutions to these problems. Of course, left populism can also turn authoritarian – largely though not exclusively due to the interference and threatened military intervention of the global hegemon and its allies – with an increasing vilification of the opposition, as we saw in Venezuela and Ecuador with Rafael Correa.