it's lonely out there – the evolutionary explanation for the fermi paradox (redux 12/21/11)

 

Baen | What kick-started intelligence in humans? Given that our powerful brains have so many disadvantages and not much payback in terms of survival, at least in the early stages before technology, why was increasing brain power been selected for, generation by generation, until the evolution of the human mind?

The primary selection pressure is survival but the second is reproductive success: Darwin pointed this out in the Origin of Species. Complex animals reproduce sexually so success involves mating. Vertebrates have complex signalling systems and behavior to persuade another individual to choose them as a suitable partner. This can result in the evolution of anatomical features that are neutral or even disadvantageous to survival. For example, the growth of antlers in deer have a high metabolic cost, offer little survival advantage, but are essential for a male deer to intimidate competitors to win the hooves of fair deer maidens.

The more complicated an organism's reproductive system the more likely the sexes of a species are to have different reproductive strategies, and the mammalian system is very complicated. The best explanation of human intelligence is that it is the result of sexual selection by women. Men tend to be attracted to women who are fit, healthy, young and not yet pregnant (slim waist).

These characteristics are not unimportant to women (well, except the last) but women get stuck with the baby so, given that people are social animals, women are attracted to high status men who will be able to provide support for them and their children. In a social animal, high status revolves around sophisticated interaction, for which intelligence is an advantage because of the need to manipulate, and enjoy good relations with, other members of society.

Even our verbal facility is probably the result of female sexual selection. In British English, boys attempt to "chat up" girls at parties. If women kept selecting for intelligence in men then this would overcome any counter-survival effect of "wasting" resources on high energy brains.

But note that the exact choice of a sexual selection feature is a haphazard process. Women might have selected on developing an oversized red nose, the ability to hop around in a circle with effortless grace, or antlers. Female birds often select on feather coloration patterns and there is evidence that therapod dinosaurs had similar behavior. Bipedal therapods were mostly predators, like wolves or tigers, whereas we are social omnivores and that is probably the key difference.

The take home message is that intelligence is a rather unlikely end result that depends on a conjunction of haphazard ecological and evolutionary features.

Maybe an intelligent species of social therapod dinosaur might still have evolved if the Cretaceous Great extinction had not happened — but major catastrophes from local events up to mass extinctions are a regular feature of life on Earth.

Species survival over time, particularly for a large organism, is to a large extent a matter of sheer luck. We almost didn't make it. About seventy-five-thousand years ago there was a catastrophe, the Toba super-volcanic eruption. The Toba Event seems to have taken human beings to the very brink of extinction. Genetic evidence suggests that we were reduced to between one and ten thousand breeding pairs. All modern humans are genetically closely related, which is why inbreeding is so very dangerous for us.

Toba was a volcanic pinprick compared to the Deccan Traps associated with the Cretaceous great extinction, or the Siberian Traps with the larger Permian extinctions, but it was enough to nearly do for a large animal geographically restricted to Africa. Toba may even have given the kick needed to evolve the human mind and civilization, but our survival was touch and go.

And here, I think, is the explanation for the Fermi Paradox. There does not need to be anything special about Earth or H. sapiens. Applying the Principle of Mediocrity, the universe probably teems with life, quite complex life. But intelligent life is simply unlikely because the evolutionary dice are rigged against it. It is very unlikely that a large complex animal, with the right sexual selection system, will survive long enough for circumstances to kick start the path to a technological civilization.

You don't need a special, unique planet to evolve an intelligent organism. You just need a lot of life on a lot of planets and one or two will win the lottery no matter how unlikely the probability. It's just a matter of random luck. There is nothing special about someone who wins the national lottery.

I suspect it is the "probability of evolving intelligent life" that is the key variable that governs the Drake Equation: the probability must be close to zero. Should we survive long enough to break free of our solar system cradle, the last variable, I suspect we will find life in abundance but will probably never ever meet intellectual peers.

It's going to be lonely out there.

the vast active living intelligence system revisited (redux 4/24/13)

realitysandwich |  For most people, Philip K. Dick (hereafter known as PKD) is best known through films like Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly, which were all based on his writings. Classic movies like The Matrix and Vanilla Sky also owe a great debt to PKD's work. What is not so well known is that PKD was a bit of a latter-day mystic, a man who spent the last decade or so of his life struggling to come to terms with a series of visionary experiences (not related to psychedelics) that befell him in the early 1970s. In these experiences, PKD felt as if some vast cosmic intelligence was communicating with him, as if a deity was slipping him secret information. Such was the impact of these theophanies that he chose to incorporate their thematic content into a number of novels as well as an eight-thousand-page exegesis. To the consternation of his peers, PKD began to be not a little obsessed with ideas of "divine invasion" and the like, his last books testifying to his escalating interest in theology and theistic philosophy (interestingly, his last novel, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, partly concerns the search for a sacred mushroom).

Since his death it has been speculated that PKD suffered from what is known as temporal lobe epilepsy -- a brain disorder that can lead to hallucinatory experiences -- and that this explains his mystical encounters. However, leaving aside the contentiousness of this claim, it does not deal with the burning issue of immediate mystical experience. To label an experience in order to explain it away is to avoid the very real nature of the mystical experience, however it should arise. In fact, as Huxley noted in The Doors of Perception, we should not be surprised if there is always unusual neuronal activity concurrent with a mystical experience, for, as we have seen, modified neuronal firing patterns are related to expanded forms of consciousness. Altered forms of awareness demand altered brain processes, and such a change in brain state can be achieved in many different ways, whether through psilocybin mushrooms, endogenous DMT, yoga, meditation, fasting, or spontaneous epileptic disturbances. Mystical experience is therefore not to be conveniently disposed of with a diagnostic label.

Even before his visionary experiences, PKD had long fought to discover the true nature of reality. It was his pet fascination. In a talk he delivered in the late 1970s, he admitted that for all the years he had thought about the question "what is reality?" he had gotten no further than concluding that reality was that which remained even if you stopped believing in it. Admittedly a thin definition, it is nonetheless indicative that the true nature of reality is not so easily pinned down.

PKD juggled with countless explanations for his mystical experiences. Some involved a Judeo-Christian God, others involved the Logos outlined in some of the Gnostic gospels (these are the "alternative" gospels dug up at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945), while others even opted for an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence. Whatever the case, PKD was certain that he had been "contacted" by some form of advanced transcendental intelligence-cum-Other.

One of his more enduring theories concerned VALIS, which is an acronym for "vast active living intelligence system," a notion that accords well with our intelligent Other. In the semiautobiographical novel of the same name, VALIS is a hidden entity of immense power and sentience that is in the process of infiltrating our reality by establishing communication with certain individuals. These disclosures are experienced as theophany. For our purposes, the key point is that VALIS is essentially outside of our dimension, but able to penetrate our world. The question arises as to the feasibility that a superior intelligence exists in another dimension with the capacity to move across into ours. This is one of our fanciful options concerning the Other.

conscious and subconscious awareness (redux 12/13/11)

Medicalxpress | What distinguishes information processing with conscious awareness from processing occurring without awareness? And, is there any role for conscious awareness in information processing, or is it just a byproduct, like the steam from the chimney of a train engine, which is significant, but has no functional role?

These questions - which have long puzzled psychologists, philosophers, and neurobiologists - were recently addressed in a study by Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers and published by the journal Psychological Science.

The study was headed by Prof. Leon Deouell from the Hebrew University's Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC) and Department of Psychology and Prof. Dominique Lamy from the Department of Psychology at Tel Aviv University, and conducted by research student Liad Mudirk of Tel Aviv University with collaboration of research student Assaf Breska from the Hebrew University.

We are not consciously aware of most of the input that hits upon our sensory systems. Yet subjectively, conscious awareness dominates our mental activity. "One of the dominant theories in cognitive sciences and psychology posits that parts of the information perceived without awareness may be processed to a certain extent," says Prof. Deouell. "Yet to bind the different parts of a complex input into something meaningful and coherent requires conscious awareness.

To test this theory, the research team ran a study in which they presented participants with pictures of natural scenes including some human action, like a picture of basketball players jumping to reach a ball.

In other tests, the same scenes were presented -- except that the central object was replaced by another, unlikely object. For example, the basketball was replaced by a watermelon.

The participants viewed the pictures through a mirror stereoscope, a simple device that allowed the research team to present the pictures to only one eye. At the same time, the other eye viewed rapidly flickering patterns of colors which drew the subjects' attention, so that the participants were not aware for many seconds that anything was presented to their other eye. This allowed the researchers to measure how long it takes normal and unusual scenes to "win the competition" against the flickering pattern and break into awareness.

"We found that participants became aware of the unusual scenes earlier than to the usual scenes," commented Deouell. "The conclusion was that even before the participants were aware of the existence of the picture, the semantic relationships between parts of the scene were interpreted."

The study shows that, counter to previous theories, integration is not the prerogative of conscious awareness but is achieved even without awareness. When and why then do we need conscious awareness?

The findings of this research suggest that when the results of the integration between parts of the input are incompatible with expectations or prior knowledge, awareness is required in order to account for the conundrum. Thus, the study expands the realm of unaware processes, yet shows that conscious awareness is not a meaningful luxury - it allows us to deal with novel and unexpected situations. 

Ad Astera Per Aspera = Mastery Of Negentropic Centripetence

alkimist  |  In the Tabula Smaragdina, the oldest of Arian Writs, we find the following significant words cut in the emerald: "Combine the heavenly with the earthly in accordance with the Laws of Nature, and health and happiness shall be yours as long as you  live." Only the finest elements should be mated and blended if one wishes to obtain each time a finer and higher product. To mate, means to unite and to stimulate two opposites, the positive and the negative. The negative attracts the positive and the latter is drawn to the negative. Sunlight, which is positive, fertilizes the negative grain seed in the womb of the
earth. A constant exchange of emissions between the positive atmosphere and the negative geosphere brings the seed to life. In this case it can be truly said: "She partly drew him down, he partly let himself sink." (Goethe: The Ballad of the Fisherman)

Union between the offspring of the earth and the descedants of the sun gives rise to life in the physical realm which is directed by the Etheric forces. The latter, on the other hand, have their own higher counterpart. The negative offspring of the earth capture the positive descendants of the sun and this pro-
duces a constant automatic movement. In the spring of the year, when the temperature and light conditions are relatively favorable, the positive rays of the sun (light) induce germination in the negative grains or seed. Therefore, to combine, means to stimulate and produce various gradients of potential. This in turn produces movement which is the very basis of life, so that everything is in constant flux (panta rhei).

Although the world is animated by a single universal force, this force can be divided into two contrasting elements — the pressure component, and the suction component. In this case, Nature's dipolarity expresses itself in the form of two different exit types of motion. Each of these types manifests itself through certain specific phenomena and represents one of the two components of the force which animates and activates the whole universe. The secret of the normal and good life con-
sists of achieving the proper balance or blend of these two components. (see "Tabula Smaragdina". This is pure Cabala.

All occult science, East and West, bases itself on this principle, Chokmah and Bina, Osiris and Isis, Orpheus and Eurydice. 

The whirling Hooked Cross, the Swastika, is the symbol. Revolving counter-clockwise, centrifugal, it is negative. Revolving clockwise, centripetal, it is positive.)

USE CENTRIPETENCE TO OVERCOME GRAVITY
The pressure component leads to Centrifugence, friction, increased heat and gravitation; while the suction compoment leads to Centripetence, cooling, absence of friction and levitation -- which makes it possible to overcome gravity. While friction may produce even white heat, fire. Centripetence pro-
duces a temperature drop which may reach what is known as the State of Anomaly which, in the case of water, +4° Centigrade.

However, this is possible only if one Uses Schauberger's suction spiral, a device which, on the whole, is still unknown. Each living entity has its specific and characteristic point of Anomaly. This should be understood as the temperature or fever-less condition, that is, the optimum degree of warmth required by its species to develop and proliferate. Until now technology has recognized only one type of motion,
the type which raises the temperature through friction and pressure. Even ancient tribes knew that fire could be produced by rubbing together wood or stones; but it took Viktor Schauberger to discover a new type of motion producing not heat, but a temperature drop, reaching at times the point of Anomaly. 

This can be accomplished by tightly winding or coiling either air or water through a spiral curved channel of special design.  In this process the medium — air or water — is drawn almost without friction toward a central point, condensed in a special manner and at the same time cooled. A biological vacuum (negative pressure) is created which, on its part, augments the suction acting on air or water. Until now this possibility has been overlooked in technology, and yet it offers totally new perspectives in regard to energy production. Friction creates in a machine conditions comparable to fever, conditions
which cannot be normal, since they tax materials excessively and burn them out. People and animals do not develop fever because of work. They may get hot but their blood temperature remains relatively
constant. Normal conditions in machinery can be achieved by or through implosion and impansion with the best possible results in regard to the preservation of materials. It would seem obvious that man's duty is not to waste and squander as quickly as he can the resources of the earth, but to preserve and conserve them. Machinery design, therefore, should avoid all material waste and should ensure at the same time durability. Our unscrupulous modern technology and ceonomy, unfortunately, have
been moving in the opposite direction.

THERE ARE TWO WAYS TO GO
The two types of motion which nature employs give rise to the following phenomena: 

(a) "Centrifugence" - resistance to friction pressure
temperature rise
biological deterioration
(b) "Centripetence" - absence of friction suction
temperature drop
biological improvement

"Centrifugence", which is a scattering of force, is slowed down by natural causes, because the resistance it encounters grows as the square of its velocity, following the well known formula W=MV2. 

Were it not for this fact, matter would risk being destroyed, or would be in danger of being broken up into atoms. The opposite is true of "Centripetence". Its effective force undergoes no deceleration, since there is virtually no friction, and grows, instead, as the square of its velocity. 

Centripetence contracts, conserves, condenses and thereforebenefits life. It attracts and absorbs without producing pressure. It is obvious therefore that as a result of the natural laws the effective power of centrifugal motion is never as great as that of centripetal motion, the first being destructive, the
second constructive. Were the destructive force more powerful than the constructive force the universe would not exist. (The Christ is Centripetence. The Anti-Christ is Centrifugence.) 

Unfortunately our whole technology has committed the error of choosing the destructive force as a means to its own ends, and this tragic choice of the mode of propulsion and motivation, having completely disrupted the ratios and balance of nature, has brought it to a blind alley. Instead of applying by preference, as nature does, centripetence which permits producing energy almost at no cost, it has done the opposite. This has resulted in an over consumption of raw materials, in an explosion and exploitation of natural resources, until now the very destruction of atoms has been reached. 

Centrifugence increases pressure and heat. Centripetence has a cooling effect and generates condensing reactive forces. It never cools beyond the point of anomaly.

Imperial Storm Troopers Kicking Subjugated Ass Is All That The Empire Has Left....,

theguardian  |  It is no surprise that the pursuit and deadly beating of Tyre Nichols was set in motion by a police traffic stop.

Despite repeated criticism of this practice, and the widespread availability of body-cam and cellphone footage, the number of fatalities from such encounters shows no sign of declining.

Between 2017 and November 2022, 730 people were killed by police during these incidents. More than once a week during that time, someone not being pursued or investigated for a violent crime met their death after a traffic stop. An alarming number were stopped on the pretext of any one of a hundred or more petty traffic code violations.

How did police achieve the power, and impunity, to stop motorists seemingly at will?

Beginning in the 1920s, police departments experienced rapid growth because the mass uptake of car ownership called for adequate traffic enforcement. Until then, uniformed officers on wheels had mostly been chasing gangsters and robbers. Would they have the legal right to stop otherwise law-abiding motorists driving in their own private vehicles? Even without a warrant? Yes, the courts decided, because the cars were being operated on public roads.

As Sarah Seo has shown, over the ensuing decades, judges granted more and more powers to the police to stop and search vehicles. In particular, they were given the authority to do so on the mere pretext of suspecting criminal activity – in what is now known as a pretextual traffic stop. But what constitutes a “reasonable” pretext is still a legal gray area. The fourth amendment is supposed to protect us against searches and seizures that are “unreasonable”. The problem is that when fourth amendment cases are brought against police, courts and juries routinely defer to the officer’s testimony.

This judicial tilt in favor of discretionary authority inevitably led to abridgments of civil liberties, and worse.

That it would lead to racial profiling was foreordained. The ability to hit the road is often seen as an American birthright, manifest in the freedom to travel from coast to coast, unrestricted and unsurveilled. Yet the right to enjoy this liberty has never been enjoyed evenly, because of the restrictions historically placed on the movement of Black (and, in many regions, brown) people by vigilantes, police and other government agents.

Today’s warrantless traffic stops are part of the lineage of the many efforts to limit the access of people of color to the heavily mythologized freedom of the open road. So, too, the well-known perils of “driving while Black” or brown are amplified by the paramilitary technology embedded in today’s police cars. Such features include drone-equipped trunks, bumper-mounted GPS dart guns, automatic license plate readers, voice diction technology, facial and biometric recognition, thermal imaging, augmented reality eyewear, smart holsters, ShotSpotter gunfire detectors, and advanced computers and software that allow instant access to government and law enforcement databases. “Hot spot” policing requires hi-tech cars to move in formation, through targeted urban neighborhoods. In 1960, James Baldwin compared an officer “moving through Harlem” to “an occupying soldier in a bitterly hostile country”. Today’s saturation patrols, like Scorpion, the Memphis unit that hunted down Nichols, bear more of a resemblance to counter-insurgency missions by special operations forces.

 

Pharmakeia: By Thy Sorceries Were All Nations Deceived

topical-bible-studies  |  A study of the Greek words pharmakeia (Strong's 5331) and pharmakeus (Strong's 5332).

Strong's Exhaustive Concordance:
"5331. pharmakeia ... from 5332; medication ('pharmacy'), i.e. (by extension) magic (literal or figurative)."
"5332. pharmakeus ... from pharmakon, (a drug, i.e. spell-giving potion); a druggist ('pharmacist') or poisoner, i.e. (by extension) a magician."

Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary:
"pharmaceutical ... from Greek pharmakeutikos ... a medicinal drug."
"pharmaco- ... Greek pharmako-, from pharmakon ... medicine : drug."
"pharmacology ... the science of drugs."
"pharmacy ... from Greek pharmakeia ... the art or practice of preparing, preserving, compounding, and dispensing drugs ... a place where medicines are compounded or dispensed ... DRUGSTORE." 

The words in bold in the following verses, unless otherwise noted, are the King James Version translations of the Greek word pharmakeia, and represent every occurrence of pharmakeia in the New Testament.

Galatians 5:19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
20 Idolatry, witchcraft [RSV: sorcery], hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
21 Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

Revelation 9:20 And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:
21 Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

Revelation 18:1 And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.
2 And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.
3 For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
5 For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.
Revelation 18:21 And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.
22 And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee;
23 And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.

---

The word in bold in the following verses is the King James Version translation of the Greek word pharmakeus, and represents the only occurrence of pharmakeus in the New Testament.

Revelation 21:7 He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.
8 But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

 

The Biden-DNC Level Of Political Croney Parasitism Makes Vulture Capitalism Seem Respectable

dailywire |  A bombshell report from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (HSGAC) and the Committee on Finance makes a series of damning new allegations against Hunter Biden, the son of Democrat presidential nominee.

The investigation launched after Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA) publicly raised conflict-of-interest concerns about the sale of a U.S. company to a Chinese firm with ties to Hunter Biden a month before Congress was notified about a whistleblower complaint that was the catalyst for Democrats’ impeachment of President Donald Trump. The Senate’s investigation relied on records from the U.S. government, Democrat lobbying groups, and interviews of numerous current and former officials.

The report also stated that the investigation found that the Obama administration “knew that Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board was problematic and did interfere in the efficient execution of policy with respect to Ukraine.”

Hunter Biden, Burisma and Corruption: The Impact On U.S. Government Policy And Related Concerns

Once You See The Deep State Government Criminal Enterprise You Cannot Unsee It

George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton go back a long way.  George H.W.Bush headed the CIA and Bill Clinton was Gov.of Arkansas when the drug smuggling operation with the Nicaraguan Contras occurred. Mena Airport in Arkansas was a valued node on that drug trafficking network.

• Foreign aid money laundering is part of the deal – it’s like a grub stake courtesy of the US tax payer.
• Congress appropriates money
• Money goes out as foreign aid
• Foreign aid dispersed to companies that employ family and friends (Hunter Biden)
• Family of Congress critters invested in companies that received the foreign aid.
• Biden and company pulled the scam in Ukraine, Clinton’s did it in Haiti, Panama Papers etc….

shadowproof |  According to documents filed by former NSA Director Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA was speculating in commodities linked to China and Russia while receiving asymmetric information on the countries as part of his job. The use of asymmetric or non-public information for financial gain is a crime known as insider trading.

The shares Alexander bought and sold while head of the NSA include those connected to the secretive and politically sensitive potash market. The potash market is largely controlled by Russia and Belarus and one of the largest consumers of potash is China. With Russia and China – two countries the NSA targets for intelligence – as major players it is not hard to see how information coming across Director Alexander’s desk could be useful in getting an information edge on other speculators. Did he use his edge to profit?

Alexander also bought and sold shares in other commodities where asymmetric information on Russia and China could have been beneficial.

On the same day he sold the potash company shares, Alexander also sold shares in the Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd., a state-owned company headquartered in Beijing and currently the world’s second-largest producer of aluminum. U.S. government investigators have indicated that the company, known as Chinalco, has received insider information about its American competitors from computer hackers working for the Chinese military. That hacker group has been under NSA surveillance for years, and the Justice Department in May indicted five of its members…
U.S. officials have long insisted that the information that intelligence agencies steal from foreign corporations and governments is only used to make political and strategic decisions and isn’t shared with U.S. companies. But whether that spying could benefit individual U.S. officials who are privy to the secrets being collected, and what mechanisms are in place to ensure officials don’t personally benefit from insider knowledge, haven’t been widely discussed.

And who knows if these were the only times Alexander was in a position to have non-public information while trading? The NSA comes across quite a bit of information that could be advantageous if someone was looking to make some financial trades. Did Alexander ever use that non-public information to trade in the financial markets?

Also troubling is former NSA Director Alexander’s attempts to seemingly privatize knowledge and relationships gleaned from his government service. Alexander has filed technology patents related to network intrusion and was recently forced to back off having an employee at his new company, IronNet Cybersecurity Inc, that still currently works for the NSA.

Alexander appears to be having some nice private benefits from his public service.

That Reset Diagram Is WONDERFUL -So Much Bullshit In So Small A Space - It Might Be A Record.

nakedcapitalism |  That said, the World Economic Forum seems especially worthy of attention, both as a newsworthy event, and as the home ground of “Davos Man,” a phrase coined by Samuel P. Hunting (of all people) in “Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the American Elite” (2004):

The rewards of an increasingly integrated global economy have brought forth a new global elite. Labeled ‘Davos Men’, ‘gold-collar workers’ or . . . ‘cosmocrats’, this emerging class is empowered by new notions of global connectedness. It includes academics, international civil servants and executives in global companies, as well as successful high-technology entrepreneurs. Estimated to number about 20 million in 2000, of whom 40 percent were American, this elite is expected to double in size by 2010. Comprising fewer than 4 percent of the American people, these transnationalists have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations. In the coming years, one corporation executive confidently predicted, “the only people who will care about national boundaries are politicians.” Involvement in transnational institutions, networks and activities not only defines the global elite but also is critical to achieving elite status within nations. Someone whose loyalties, identities and involvements are purely national is less likely to rise to the top in business, academia, the media and the professions than someone who transcends these limits. Outside politics, those who stay home stay behind. Those who move ahead think and act internationally. As sociologist Manuel Castells has said, “Elites are cosmopolitan, people are local.”

“Why don’t they just move?” being the quintessential question of Davos Man, aspirational or no, or has been until recently. Perhaps now Davos Man (or, today, Person) is hearing the faint, far-off sound of blades being sharpened, and is about to display adaptability. Or will, if the WEF has anything to do with it. If so, that’s interesting and something to think about. (FOX is already excited; they seem to think that the WEF is going to bring about socialism. Pas si bête.)

In this post I’m going to take a brief look at the WEF’s upcoming 2021 potlatch, dubbed “The Great Reset,” first at its ideological, and then at its institutional characteristics. As I said, this post will be quite superficial, since I’m not a global elites maven. Indeed, reading the WEF site made me feel like I was trapped in a large and luxurious conference hotel where all the signage was in a language that looked like English, but wasn’t. So I hope readers will chime in. No yarn diagrams, please!

Pay Attention: Grown Folks Talking..., (not the beta in the video)

theorganicprepper |  Does that stuff look familiar? It should because we’re more than three-quarters of the way through this escalation.

The thing that makes this technique so effective is that the causes themselves are not unjust. They are things that would rightly anger any reasonable, compassionate human being.

Most white people don’t want to see people of other races suffer indignities and violence based on the color of their skin. (I say “most” because there are always outliers and extremists.) Most Americans in general do not want to see police brutality. They don’t want to see families split up or people imprisoned for decades for victimless crimes.

Let me be perfectly clear when I say that it is not unreasonable or wrong to be outraged and want things to change. I hate some of the things I’ve seen our government and police officers do and have written about these misdeeds for years.

But this article isn’t about whether or not our anger is justified. It is an assessment of a playbook.

All of this outrage over injustice forms the foundation of something that can be used against us. The agitation has been building up for years – far longer than President Trump has been in office – so as much as people love to hate him, he isn’t the cause of all this. But he’s certainly not making things go any more smoothly.

Everything I’m writing about today is about how our government in the past has encouraged a resistance in other countries, and how a resistance is being nurtured here in the United States right now.

So what does it take to cause people to be angry enough to resist?

Resistance generally begins with the desire of individuals to remove intolerable conditions imposed by an unpopular regime or occupying power. Feelings of opposition toward the governing authority and hatred of existing conditions that conflict with the individual’s values, interests, aspirations, and way of life spread from the individual to his family, close friends, and neighbors. As a result, an entire community may possess an obsessive hatred for the established authority. Initially, this hatred will manifest as sporadic, spontaneous nonviolent and violent acts of resistance by the people toward authority. As the discontent grows, natural leaders, such as former military personnel, clergymen, local office holders, and neighborhood representatives, emerge to channel this discontent into organized resistance that promotes its growth. The population must believe they have nothing to lose, or more to gain. (source)

There can be more than one resistance going on at a time, too. Currently, everything that is in the news is about the resistance that has sprung up over the death of George Floyd. A few months ago, it was about the sanctuary cities in Virginia standing up against state legislators.

Resistance organizations have been around for years: Black Lives Matter, the NRA, Antifa, the Boogaloo movement, the Black Bloc, the Gun Owners of America. I’m just listing off examples of organizations here, not passing judgment whether they’re good or bad. I’ll bet that most people who join do so because of their own deeply held beliefs. They sincerely feel they’re doing the right thing and have the best of intentions.

Who Is Funding And Orchestrating Protest Movement Logistics?

unz |  “The logistical capabilities of antifa+ are also impressive. They can move people around the country with ease, position pallet loads of new brick, 55 gallon new trash cans of frozen water bottles and other debris suitable for throwing on gridded patterns around cities in a well thought out distribution pattern. Who pays for this? Who plans this? Who coordinates these plans and gives “execute orders?” 

Antifa+ can create massive propaganda campaigns that fit their agenda. These campaigns are fully supported by the MSM and by many in the Congressional Democratic Party. The present meme of “Defund the Police” is an example. This appeared miraculously, and simultaneously across the country. I am impressed. Yesterday the frat boy type who is mayor of Minneapolis was booed out of a mass meeting of radicals in that fair city because he refused to endorse abolishing the police force. Gutting the civil police forces has long been a major goal of the far left, but now, they have the ability to create mass hysteria over it when they have an excuse.” (“My take on the present situation”, Sic Semper Tyrannis)

Colonel Lang is not the only one to marvel at Antifa’s “logistical capabilities”. The United States has never experienced two weeks of sustained protests in hundreds of its cities at the same time. It’s beyond suspicious, it points to extensive coordination with groups across the country, a comprehensive media strategy (that probably preceded the killing of George Floyd), a sizable presence on social media (to put people on the street), and agents provocateur whose task is to incite violence, loot and create mayhem. 

None of this has anything to do with racial justice or police brutality. America is being destabilized and sacked for other purposes altogether. This a destabilization campaign similar to the CIA’s color revolutions designed to topple the regime (Trump), install a puppet government (Biden), impose “shock therapy” on the economy pushing tens of millions of Americans into homelessness and destitution, and leave behind a broken, smoldering shell of a country easily controlled by Federal shock troops and wealthy globalist mandarins. Here’s a short excerpt from an article by Kurt Nimmo at his excellent blog “Another Day in the Empire”:

“The BLM represents the forefront of an effort to divide Americans along racial and political lines, thus keeping race and identity-based barbarians safely away from more critical issues of importance to the elite, most crucially a free hand to plunder and ransack natural resources, minerals, crude oil, and impoverish billions of people whom the ruling elite consider unproductive useless eaters and a hindrance to the drive to dominate, steal, and murder….

It is sad to say BLM serves the elite by ignoring or remaining ignorant of the main problem—boundless predation by a neoliberal criminal project that considers all—black, white, yellow, brown—as expliotable and dispensable serfs.” (“2 Million Arab Lives Don’t Matter“, Kurt Nimmo, Another Day in the Empire)

The protest movement is the mask that conceals the maneuvering of elites. The real target of this operation is the Constitutional Republic itself. Having succeeded in using the Lockdown to push the economy into severe recession, the globalists are now inciting a fratricidal war that will weaken the opposition and prepare the country for a new authoritarian order.

The 1994 Biden Crime Bill Flooded Cities With Militarized Policing

truthout |  The unending killing of Black people at the hands of police forces, and the sustained, relentless and highly visible police violence inflicted on protesters represent a grave and immediate national crisis. 

The Justice in Policing Act put forth by House Democrats attempts to address this moment, but falls frighteningly short. We will not see any end to this crisis until the federal government reckons with one of its most important roles in fueling police violence: money. 

There are aspects of the Justice in Policing Act, including ending qualified immunity and establishing a federal registry of police misconduct, that are not harmful. But the myriad ways in which it provides additional funds and legitimacy towards the current system of policing — whether through trainings, standards, data collection or accreditation programs — is neither responsive to the demands of the millions of people taking to the streets in protest, nor to the simple reality of what federal interventions would be most impactful — and most needed. 

To begin, Congress must grapple with an uncomfortable truth: By sending billions of federal dollars to local policing over the last 25 years, it has helped precipitate the policing crisis that we find ourselves in today. 

In 1994, Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which established the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Program. The program was designed to incentivize state and local law enforcement agencies to purchase new equipment, develop and distribute new technologies, and ultimately increase the number of officers deployed throughout the United States. After an initial appropriation of $8.8 billion between 1995 and 2000, the COPS Program has granted over $14 billion to state and local governments since its establishment.

The program was successful in its mission — especially in flooding communities with policing.

Police Unions Exemplify The Nostrum About Fish Rotting From The Head

counterpunch |  Floyd’s alleged murder by a white Minneapolis police officer turned the city into the center of the “defund the police,” with nine of its councilmembers supporting this proposal.  Floyd’s death is about the hypocrisy on race in America, even with Democrats. But equally fascinating is how a Democratic Party city is going after the police union whom it blames for a history of officer shootings and use of excessive force against African-Americans.  Minneapolis’ police chief announced he would no longer negotiate with the union.  Minnesota’s Democratic Governor also locates much of the blame with the union.  Former Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybek sees the union as an obstacle to reform, and even other labor unions, such as the AFL-CIO are calling for the current head of the police union to resign.   In Minneapolis and across the country police unions are seen by members of the civil rights community as hostile to civil rights reform.

George Floyd’s death is perhaps the final fracturing of the Democratic Party,  labor, and the civil rights supporters.    Maybe this split needed to happen.  But as it does it bodes a dramatic turn in  party politics that complicates the electoral map for Democrats and progressive politics going forward.  Smart politicians, such as Donald Trump, see this opportunity and will surely exploit it in the 2020 election.

Joe Biden's First Choice For VP Amy Klobuchar Declined To Prosecute Derek Chauvin For Prior Murder

mintpressnews |  The latest example of America’s racist police brutality problem was caught on camera in Minneapolis Monday, as Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on 46-year-old African-American George Floyd’s neck for over seven minutes until he passed out and died. In its headline on its website, Minneapolis police described the event as “man dies after medical incident during police interaction,” laundering themselves of any responsibility. Chauvin continued his assault even as Floyd desperately pleaded that he could not breathe, while bystanders protested his brutality. “You’re fucking stopping his breathing there, bro,” warned one concerned passer-by. Even after passing out, Chauvin did not release pressure on his neck. Chauvin has killed multiple times before while in uniform, has shot and wounded others and is well-known to local activist groups.

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who Joe Biden recently asked to undergo vetting to be his running mate for November, issued a very tepid statement about the incident, describing the police killing of an unarmed black man over an alleged forged check as merely an “officer involved death,” – a copaganda word often used by police as a euphemism for “murder.”

Klobuchar also called for a “complete and thorough outside investigation into what occurred, and those involved in this incident must be held accountable.” However, this is unlikely to occur, in no small part because of Klobuchar herself and the precedent she set while serving as the state’s chief prosecutor between 1999 and 2007. In that time, she did not bring charges against more than two dozen officers who had killed citizens while on duty – including against Chauvin himself.

Chauvin was involved in a fatal accident in 2005, killed Wayne Reyes in 2006, shot another man while in uniform in 2008, and had a litany of complaints against him. To be fair to Klobuchar, the Reyes shooting happened in October 2006, as her time as state prosecutor was coming to an end and she was campaigning for the senate. By the time Chauvin’s case finally made it to a grand jury, she had relinquished her role.

Nextdoor Was Karen's Confidential Informant Deaddrop From The Word Go!

You should never forget the political orientation of the Amy Coopers and Jean Quans of this world.  Former director Cooper will be looking for a dance gig at a local backwoods pole, her net worth having plummeted into the deep two piece and a biscuit range,  while former Mayor Quan will be opening a marijuana dispensary to prey upon and enlarge the suffering of supposed constituents in San Francisco. 

columbusfreepress |  Neighborhoods are small communities. Communities have bonds. They also have rivalries. They also have gossip and intrigue, albeit on a petty scale. Through the efforts of Mayor Jean Quan and NextDoor.com, the intelligence community and the Oakland Police Department (OPD) are now privy to these tiny pieces of personal information and the larger patters they reveal. Under the auspices of community building and public safety, the public's participation is can now be freely enlisted in the creation of a database of that information.

Through the new partnership, the OPD and the CIA now know what Oakland residents had for breakfast, who their children have a playdate with, and if their dog wanders around the block. NextDoor.com is Oakland's social media surveillance experiment.

Time will tell what the results of that experiment will be. A metropolitan police department can easily fail at social media as the New York Police Department recently showed with their social media debacle with the #myNYPD twitter campaign.

At its core, San Francisco-based Nextdoor.com is a social networking site for neighborhoods. The model pairs a social media neighborhood community center, with law enforcement and existing neighborhood watch programs. Tailored to individual neighborhoods, it allows people to virtually post lost pet notices, rate babysitters, share news and become more in touch with their immediate real world lives. Nextdoor as a company has a focus on crime, safety and virtual block watches within the neighborhood setting – a crossover between a Myspace of neighborhood associations and a Facebook for George Zimmerman groupies.

The partnership comes on the heels of the defeat of the Quan administration’s proposal to create the Domain Awareness Center intended to provide OPD with a city-wide system of real time intelligence and comprehensive city wide surveillance. That project, which draws on a grant for domestic port security, was scaled back by Oakland City Council after public outcry and was limited to the port of Oakland.

Nadia Kayyali, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, expressed concerns about Nextdoor having potential links to the scaled back Domain Awareness Center and the program’s implications for racial profiling.

At a press event featuring Mayor Jean Quan on April 24 this year, Nextdoor announced their new partnership with OPD.

The OPD's part of the Nextdoor partnership is not just public relations or community policing. As participants in the program, they take an active role in promoting the site and building the social network. On a fully integrated level, Nextdoor has created a platform that combined social media outreach with intelligence gathering.

Oakland is not the first major city to form a partnership with Nextdoor.com. Austin, Houston and Dallas, Texas all preceded it. The company is well-funded, with a string of Menlo Park venture capital firms lined up behind hopes of its success.

According to NextDoor.com's press statements, they are backed by Google Ventures, Bezos Expedition, Allen and Company, Greylock Capital Partners, and Benchmark Capital Partners. All of these firms have ties to the Central Intelligence Agency. None of these ties are secret. Nearly all are published openly by the companies themselves. As a group, these investment companies put their venture capital into tech companies and technologies that the intelligence community wishes to succeed. They profit by doing so.

Is There An Erotic Christian Religion?

Erotic Christianity |  Tantra is generally understood less in terms of ‘sex’ than in terms of power or energy. That is, it is a series of teachings and techniques aimed at awakening, harnessing, and utilizing the spiritual power believed to flow through the entire cosmos and the human body.”10

We cannot, however, avoid noticing that the embrace of the lawless power is very much in tune with the Gnostic attack on the god of the law who binds his dupes to the Earth, preventing consumption of the fruit, and who works through the lowest level of created existence, manifest in the unredeemed genitals that under normal circumstances, waste seed or push it into unhappy reproductions of unredeemed souls. It is also important to recognize then that in Tantra’s consciousness of kundalini (the serpent), we may see the Gnostic itinerary placed firmly within the human body, as it may be supposed members of Gnostic groups did as well, judging by what we have seen. Much of what the heresiologists took to be crazy physics, cod theology, perverted scripture, and barmy creation structures were almost certainly taken by the cognoscenti of the movement as codes and metaphors for physical practices coupled to a nascent psychology—as Carl Jung recognized and strongly believed.

The whole drama of the Gnostic creation and redemption myths can be seen as taking place not in the objective, arguably illusory, universe, or even beyond it in spatial terms, but chiefly within the awakened being of the Gnostic, wherein paradise is in the genitals, the unknown Father is accessed through the crown of the head, and the serpent-Sophia redeems the seed that comes from on high and brings it back up the spinal column (tree) through the aeons, corresponding to the “cakkras” (chakras) to its source, from which the precious pearl of creation has dripped to the lower regions, governed by a dark ignorance, enslaved to the cycle of birth and death. The way to eternal life is up, and it takes a lot of courage to make the journey; the world doesn’t want you to do it. The world wants you to do as you’re told. The world wants you scared, for your “own good” (an offer we are not meant to refuse). Hence the Tantrik master is a hero and his mistress a heroine, for she in-personates Shakti, as he in-personates for her Shiva, whose symbol is the erect shiva lingam. Now perhaps we can see what the worship of Simon and Helen was all about, once we remove the skin of eighteen hundred years of orthodox smothering.

Gordan Djurdjevic has written most effectively concerning the Tantric use of decadence as a spiritual technique for ascending from the lowest cakkra (chakra) (“wheel” or “flower”), the mūlādhāra, at the genitals, to the highest cakkra where supreme joy awaits the successful practitioner: “According to Tantric theory, the semen, which in its original state [and situated at the top of the head], has ambrosial properties, turns into poison when it reaches the lower parts of the body [cf. the Demiurge and the unredeemed seed] specifically the genitals. For this situation to be remedied, the semen needs to be brought back to the top of the head.”11

Practices for achieving this have involved the voluntary retention of semen and imaginary rechanneling of its essence up the spine, and even sucking back the combined fluids from the vagina after quite extraordinary yogic training. These practices are generally regarded as later developments of Tantric practice. The Kaula method is thought to be the most ancient. Oral consumption of semen (bindu), menstrual blood (rajas), and vaginal sexual fluids (yonitattva) conferred divine status on participants. Such may account for the claims of Simonians that their followers possessed eternal life. Walter O. Kaelber’s account of Vedic asceticism in ancient India informs us how “Male seed is also capable of generating spiritual rebirth and immortality.”12 Understood from this perspective, Ireneaeus’s and Epiphanius’s taunts fired at Gnostics’ belief in their eternal life register as the carping of ignoramuses. It is an ancient belief of the Indian subcontinent that loss of semen contributes to disease, aging, and premature death, for semen is life and the promise of fertility.

The North Indian Tantric tradition of the Nāth Siddhas, credited with developing hatha yoga, considered that while bindu carried immortality, its perpetual dripping from the crown depletes energy by its being consumed in the stomach’s digestive fire or through ejaculation, which, to be at its holiest, must rather be fertile of the spinal lotuses opening them up to induce spiritual awakening as the spirit rises home. Analogies (at least) with Gnostic claims for “realized resurrection in the body” can hardly go unnoticed. Tantriks hold that oral consumption offers rejuvenation as well as enlightenment, for the nectar of the gods is also the elixir of immortality, amrita, or the divine liquor soma, giving the drinker “eternal life in heaven on earth.”13

We may also wonder about the tendency in Gnostic thought to emphasize Jesus’s other body, which watches the crucifixion at a distance in the Nag Hammadi Apocalypse of Peter and in The Second Treatise of the Great Seth.14 Normally attributed to the heresy of Docetism (Jesus only appears as human), the emphasis on Jesus’s being outside of his body may also be attributed to a common store of ideas implicit in Tantra, wherein the gross body conceals a subtle body, and a goal of alchemy is to refine the subtle from the gross. Thus, the subtle body extends invisibly from the genitals via the spine to the crown of the head. When we consider the spine in terms of the Barbelite tree, we may be able to make fresh sense of the following utterance of Jesus in the Apocalypse of Peter, which might as well have been called the awakening of Peter:

He whom you saw on the tree, glad and laughing, this is the living Jesus. But this one into whose hands and feet they drive the nails is his fleshly part, which is the substitute being put to shame, the one who came into being in his likeness. But look at him and me. But I, when I [Peter] had looked, said, “Lord no one is looking at you. Let us flee this place.”

No one is looking at the spiritual body. That was the Gnostics’ complaint, so preoccupied with flesh were the fleshly materialists that they failed, from the Gnostic point of view, to see what was really happening: the spiritual glory of the living Jesus, not the death of the fleshly tunic. In worshipping the man, they blinded themselves to themselves. The last words of the Apocalypse are: “When he [Jesus] had said these things, he [Peter] came to himself.” That is the point. He came to himself. John 3:14 seemed to Gnostics to give the game away: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness: even so must the Son of man be lifted up.” For Tantriks, of course, the primal spiritual energy is the snake coiled at the base of the spine. Was Tertullian, I wonder, cognizant of this idea when, in Adversus Valentinianos (II.76), he mercilessly parodied the supposed esoteric “wisdom” of the Valentinians’ serpent: To sum up, the dove used to reveal Christ; the serpent used to tempt him. The former from the first was the herald of divine love; the latter from the first was the thief of God’s image. Therefore, innocence by itself can easily both recognize and exhibit God. Wisdom by itself can rather attack and betray him.

Now, let the serpent hide himself as much as he can; let him twist his entire wisdom into the windings of his lairs. Let him live deep in the ground, push into dark holes, unroll his length coil by coil; let him slither out—but not all of him at once, the light-hating beast. Our dove, however, has a simple home, always in high and open places toward the light since this symbol of the Holy Spirit loves the sunrise, the symbol of Christ. Just so, truth blushes at nothing except being hidden away, because no one is ashamed to listen to her, to learn to recognize as God the one whom nature has already pointed out to him as God, the one whom he sees daily in all his works.

For Tantriks, who would easily qualify for Tertullian’s lesson, kundalinī śakti is the microcosmic correspondent of the Great Goddess, whose divine partner Shiva has his esoteric home on the top of the human head. One can hear Tertullian’s reaction to this: “Microcosmic correspondent! Microcomic, more like!” Heresy, remember, began in Eden, so the Carthaginian lawyer would have no truck with the idea that when Shiva and Shakti appear separate, the world appears illusory, pain-ridden: the world of ordinary people whom, Tertullian asserts, Christ came to save, not with esoteric subtleties (“for the serpent was more subtle than any beast in the field”), but with the truth delivered plainly. But the Gnostic might reply to the Tertullian tirade: “Did not the dove whom you say is the Holy Spirit alight upon the top of Jesus’s head at the baptism, when Jesus emerged from the waters below, and was not the voice heard: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”?

In his book Kālī’s Child, Jeffrey J. Kripal urges us not to see Tantra as a philosophical, text-based school, but as a “dirty path” to ontological truths that are as terrifying as they are profound.”15 Djurdjevic quotes Alexis Sanderson on the benefits of decadent rejection of rules of purity: “The conscientiousness essential to the preservation of purity and social system was to be expelled from his identity by the Tantric Brahman as impurity itself, the only impurity he was to recognize, a state of ignorant self-bondage through the illusion that purity and impurity, prohibitedness and enjoinedness were objective qualities residing in things, persons and actions.”16

Tantra is quintessentially about a kind of marriage, and the sādhāna (sexual rite) is often today performed within otherwise conventional marriages. As we shall see when we investigate Valentinian practices, a kindred setting was enjoyed among Valentinians enjoined to celebrate a kind of mystical marriage involving something like an alchemy of the bodies of the married couple that thoroughly internalized the idea of marriage while transforming it into its spiritual essence. In Tantra, it is the human body that is the setting and the means of achieving gnosis. And when we speak of alchemy, we shall be on the right lines to consider what is intended by a base metal that can be transformed into gold, for as the alchemists have never ceased repeating, the first matter of the Great Work is something universally diffused, but universally unvalued. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, but the world knew him not.

Who is he? What is he?  

Whole Burrows Full Of Uselessly Eating Oxygen Thieves And Their Nubile Labile Wymyn...,

nypost |  When the going gets tough, the rich get going … to luxurious underground bunkers. Suddenly, heading six feet under doesn’t sound so bad, especially when the new digs often include pre-stocked food and blast-proof doors.

Helicopters are on standby “if that moment comes,” says one bunker specialist, to whisk elites into subterranean palaces with below-ground swimming pools, tennis courts and gourmet food rations in spaces you’d never know were originally designed for the military, both American and Soviet.

If you’re not in the 1 percent, no problem, there are modest bunkers available, as well, and even some reasonably-priced getaways above ground.

Fast-talking entrepreneurs, boutique hotel owners and survivalists are hoping to profit from the coronavirus pandemic by giving people a route out of despair — and boredom — with varying degrees of success.

Real estate salesman Robert Vicino is literally sitting pretty when it comes to his business — selling underground bunkers from the Black Hills of South Dakota to a remote underground city in Rothenstein, Germany. Unlike the millennial owner of a Manhattan startup who had to pull the plug on his luxe, mask-free spa last week, Vicino says business is booming in what survivalists call the “bug-out” business.

His company, Vivos, also sells bunkers in Indiana and is planning new bunkers in Asia and Marbella, Spain. He said sales are up 400% this year although his cheaper properties (35,000 euros for a big bunker in South Dakota) are selling faster than the 2 million euros, five-star Vivos Europa One underground apartments carved into a German mountain, part of a facility originally used by the Soviets to store munitions in case they invaded western Europe.

Vicino has been at the doomsday game since 2007 and it’s paying off after a slight blip when a Mayan-predicted apocalypse in 2012 never materialized and he had to dump plans for a 5,000-person bunker in Atchison, Kansas.

We Fail Because Our Elites Are Decadent, Parasitic, Ignoble Frauds

ianwelsh |  Let’s chalk this up to aristocratic elites. Aristocrats, unlike nobles, are decadent, but don’t stop with that word; understand what it means.

Elites who are not aligned with the actual productive activities of society and are engaged primarily in activities which are contrary to production, are decadent. This was true in Ancien Regime France (and deliberately fostered by Louis XIV as a way of emasculating the nobility). It is true today of most Western elites; they concentrate on financial numbers, and not on actual production. Even those who are somewhat competent tend not to be truly productive: see the Waltons, who made their money as distributers–merchants.

The techies have mostly outsourced production; they don’t make things, they design them. That didn’t work out for England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and it hasn’t worked well for the US, though thanks to Covid-19 and US fears surrounding China, the US may re-shore their production capacity before it is too late.

We also have a situation where Western elites are far removed from the actual creation of the systems they run. This is most true in in the US, and to a lesser extent in the UK, which did not suffer the massive bombing and destruction of most of the rest of Europe (the Blitz was minor compared to the bombs dropped on Germany, for example). Of course, reconstructing bombed societies is not the same as pulling oneself out of poverty.

The best handling of the coronavirus crisis in the world was possibly Vietnam, who are run by a generation that just pulled themselves out of poverty. Other excellent handling has happened in societies which still remember times of poverty or which were conquered and set free (Japan/Germany). China’s Xi, probably the most incompetent, also managed the crisis badly, but still better than the US/UK: Once he got serious, he got really serious. Xi, while a princeling, had a hard early life and was forced to work on the communes and so on.

This is all standard three-generation stuff: The first generation builds, the second generation manages, and the third generation wastes and takes it for granted because they’ve never known anything else. Sometimes that extends to four generations or more, but that requires a system which properly inculcates its elites, plus something to force the elites into at least some of the same experiences as the peons. We do not have that kind of a system.

Nobles, as Stirling Newberry explained to me years ago, are elites who make a point of being better than the people below them: better fighters, better farmers, and so on. Aristocrats are people who play court games, which is what financialized economies supported by central banks and bought politicians are. These people aren’t even good at finance. They were actually wiped out in 2008, but used politics to restore their losses and they were/are wiped out by this crisis, but are using politics (the Fed/Congress/the presidency) to restore their losses. The Fed is doing one trillion of operations a day.

Precarity - Neofeudal Slave Nouveau

nakedcapitalism |  precarity is the result of the shift in the last couple of generations of business revenues away from workers and towards profits, or capital, if you prefer. And that most people are far too complacent about that because they have deeply internalized prevailing market/neoliberal ideology.

Robert Heilbroner identified this tendency in his 1988 book, Behind the Veil of Economics. A major focus was contrasting the source of discipline under feudalism versus under capitalism. Heilbroner argues it was the bailiff and the lash, that lords would incarcerate and beat serfs who didn’t pull their weight. But the lord had obligations to his serfs too, so this relationship was not as one-sided as it might seem. By contrast, Heilbroner argues that the power structure under capitalism is far less obvious:

This negative form of power contrasts sharply with with that of the privileged elites in precapitalist social formations. In these imperial kingdoms or feudal holdings, disciplinary power is exercised by the direct use or display of coercive power. The social power of capital is of a different kind….The capitalist may deny others access to his resources, but he may not force them to work with him. Clearly, such power requires circumstances that make the withholding of access of critical consequence. These circumstances can only arise if the general populace is unable to secure a living unless it can gain access to privately owned resources or wealth…

The organization of production is generally regarded as a wholly “economic” activity, ignoring the political function served by the wage-labor relationships in lieu of bailiffs and senechals. In a like fashion, the discharge of political authority is regarded as essentially separable from the operation of the economic realm, ignoring the provision of the legal, military, and material contributions without which the private sphere could not function properly or even exist. In this way, the presence of the two realms, each responsible for part of the activities necessary for the maintenance of the social formation, not only gives capitalism a structure entirely different from that of any precapitalist society, but also establishes the basis for a problem that uniquely preoccupies capitalism, namely, the appropriate role of the state vis-a-vis the sphere of production and distribution.

The bygone decade is marked by a radical change in relations between employers and employees. According to recent research by the Bank of England, the labour share of income in the last thirty to forty years significantly fell in the USA and in other advanced economies as well. The decline of influence of labour as well as new technologies adopted by big corporations have led to new forms of employment: mostly flexible, low-payed, unstable jobs that are underregulated by labour legislation.

The state of things in capital-labour relations with constant redistribution of wealth and power to capital owners is without exaggeration class warfare (an expression, with a good reason, constantly used by Bernie Sanders). Ideology is ready as a powerful weapon in this class war. Media, internet, books and experts strive to persuade workers that this state of insecurity is necessary, normal or even desirable. And the defenders of flexible and unstable jobs claim that this is objective logic of economy which has nothing to do with political decision-making.

 

Does the Symbolism at Gobekli Tepe Correlate with Asterisms?

phys.org |  A team of researchers with the University of Edinburgh has found what they describe as evidence of a comet striking the Earth at approximately the same time as the onset of the Younger Dryas in carvings on an ancient stone pillar in southern Turkey. The group has published their findings in the journal Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry. 

Prior evidence based on ice cores taken from Greenland has suggested that a strike by a comet may have led to the onset of the Younger Dryas—a period of Earth cooling that lasted for approximately 1000 years. Other evidence also suggests that the cooling period caused groups of people to band together to cultivate crops, leading to the development of agriculture, which in turn led to huge leaps in technological innovations and societal developments, i.e. Neolithic civilization. In this new effort, the researchers describe evidence they found on a stone pillar at Gobekli Tepe (the oldest known temple site) that aligns with the ice core findings—that a comet struck the Earth in approximately 10,950BC.

The pillar was created by the people of Gobekli Tepe and now appears to have served as a means of commemorating a devastating event—perhaps a comet breaking up and its remnants crashing into the Earth, causing an immediate environmental impact around the globe and possible loss of life (one of the characters on the pillar was of a headless human.) The team fed likenesses of the images carved onto the pillar (known as the vulture stone) into a computer to determine if they might be linked with constellations. Doing so revealed associations between characters on the pillar and astronomical symbols in the sky for the year 10,950 BC. The fact that the people took the time and considerable effort to create the characters on the pillar suggests something very important must have happened during the same time period that the Greenland ice core suggests a comet struck, approximately 10,890BC.

We have interpreted much of the symbolism of Göbekli Tepe in terms of astronomical events. By matching low-relief carvings on some of the pillars at Göbekli Tepe to star asterisms we find compelling evidence that the famous 'Vulture Stone' is a date stamp for 10950 BC ± 250 yrs, which corresponds closely to the proposed Younger Dryas event, estimated at 10890 BC. We also find evidence that a key function of Göbekli Tepe was to observe meteor showers and record cometary encounters. Indeed, the people of Göbekli Tepe appear to have had a special interest in the Taurid meteor stream, the same meteor stream that is proposed as responsible for the Younger-Dryas event. Is Göbekli Tepe the 'smoking gun' for the Younger-Dryas cometary encounter, and hence for coherent catastrophism?