al-jazeera | “Kampf der Nibelungen” or “Battle of the Nibelungs,” a reference to old
Germanic and Norse legends, is beloved by white supremacists from across
Europe and beyond – they are both fans and fighters.
With German authorities keeping a close eye on them after banning
their previous event in 2019, organisers are planning to stream their
far-right fight-night of boxing, kickboxing and mixed martial arts (MMA)
online this Saturday.
Observers warn Al Jazeera that Europe’s far-right groups are using
combat sports to recruit young men and train them for literal battle in
the streets.
“They are violent neo-Nazis training for physical violence,” said
Robert Claus, a German journalist and author of a new book on combat
sports and the European far right.
The individuals behind Kampf der Nibelungen are violent and “dangerous”, he added.
There is “a very long list of racist attacks which comes out of the network of Kampf der Nibelungen”.
Moreover, Claus is concerned about the longer-term consequences if Kampf der Nibelungen goes ahead as planned.
“They’re showing a middle finger to German authorities,” he said. “If
they manage to go ahead and broadcast this event in defiance of German
authorities, it undermines the state’s monopoly on violence and the
authority of the state.”
reuters | The primary “terrorist threat” facing the United States, according to an
Oct. 6 Department of Homeland Security report, are lone offenders and
small domestic extremist cells who may act out grievances.
An October
poll by political scientists including Lee Drutman of the New America
think tank published in Politico found around a third of Americans
justified violence to advance political goals, double the number in
December 2019.
“The
most likely outcome is the election happens, there’s no major violence,
but the risk of serious or even low-level violence is probably higher
than it’s been in a very long time,” said Drutman.
“That’s what is galvanizing and driving militia groups and other armed
individuals to think that they have a role to play in this moment of
sweeping social change,” said Joan Donovan, a misinformation expert at
Harvard.
YOU - don't have to follow the detailed equations and everything. The
celestial sphere is a Riemann sphere and the collection of light
rays/points/events comprise a lorentz group in minkowski
space.
Points on the Riemann sphere are conformal comprising a circle
on the sphere. A Riemann sphere is a complex curve or manifold, twistor
space is therefore a complex space.
Quantum mechanics is based on complex numbers and amplitudes and thus we need a complex and non-local space-time manifold.
An entire light ray is a point, a simultaneous
entity. A photon doesn't experience "time" and thus its mechanics are
and can be non-local.
9:45 Stereographic projection on a Riemann spere with discussion of particle spin.
At 11:40 he shows the spinor calculus and breaks
down the components of the spinor. Showing the light cone as a spinor in
Riemann space, making things real and plain.
At 12:40 he explains the twistor and its associated algebra.
At 40:00 he explains cohomology utilizing an impossible triangular solid - can the geometric structure be realized in 3-space
weylmann |The notion of electron spin was first surmised in 1922 when the German physicists Otto Stern and WaltherGerlach noticed that a stream of silver atoms (each having a single electron in the outer 5s orbital) could be separated by a non-uniform magnetic field into two streams, ‘‘up’’ and ‘‘down.’’ At the time, no one knew what to make of this odd behavior, but three years later George Uhlenbeck and Samuel Goudsmit proposed that electrons could exist in two spin states,±1/2, each with the units of angular momentumħh=h/2π.
Still, the concept of electron spin varied between a simplistic physical ‘‘spinning’’ of the electron about some axis (like a child’s top) and a kind of internal angular momentum.
Today we look upon electrons and other spin-1/2 particles as havingan intrinsic angular momentum with no classical counterpart. This gave rise to the notion of such particles living in ‘‘spin space,’’ an abstract two-dimensional internal space that requires a description beyond that of scalars,vectors and tensors. Cartan’s spinor formalism was found to be appropriate for this description.
Many attempts have been made over the years to explain spinors at an intuitive, elementary level, but the simplest approach remains an appeal to basic Lorentz group theory. This is rather a pity, because undergraduate students often express an aversion to group theory because of its mathematical nature. But the theory of Lorentz rotations and boosts is relatively simple, and it has the nice property of being relativistic from the start.
In addition, it neatly admits a formalism that underlies that of the 4-vectors it ordinarily applies to, which is where spinors come in.
Even better, Lorentz theory confirms the intuitive notion that if a spinor represents half of a 4-vector (rather than the square root), then there should be two kinds of spinor: one comprising the upper half and another representing the lower half. This observation is critical, since a single two-component spinor can be shown to violate odd-even parity in quantum physics, and it takes two spinors acting together to preserve it. Thus, the Dirac bispinor—a four-component object consisting of two stacked spinors—fully preserves parity.
Our approach will therefore be based on the Lorentz transformations of rotations and boosts. There are, however,a few subtleties that other, more advanced treatments either gloss over or assert by inference, and I will try toexplain these in a more straightforward and understandable manner as we go along.
The Dirac Equation
When it was discovered that electrons can exist in both+12and12spin states, the Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli suggested in 1927 that the scalar wave functionΨin Schrödinger’s equation be replaced by a two-component spinor, each component representing one of the electron’s allowed spin states.
But while Pauli’s approach worked,it presented a problem having to do withparity; that is, the sign reversal operationΨ(x,t)→Ψ(−x,t)gaveinconsistent results in Pauli’s approach, violating the notion that Nature should be mirror-image invariant.
However, in 1928, at the age of just 25, the great British mathematical physicist Paul Adrienne Maurice Diracmade a monumental discovery, perhaps the greatest discovery in all of modern physics. The student can look upthe details, but what Dirac did was essentially take the square root of the relativistic energy-mass equation
E2=m2c4+c2p
He ended up with the set of four partial differential equations in (1) involving four4×4 matricesγμ(now calledthe Dirac gamma matrices), along with a new four-component wave functionΨa(x,t), where
a=0,1,2,3.
It was soon realized that Dirac’sΨwas abispinor, a four-component mathematical object consisting of theφRandφLWeyl spinors we identified earlier:
Ψ=Ψ0Ψ1Ψ2Ψ3=ïφRφLò
Dirac’s bispinor was found to preserve parity under the sign reversal operation
Ψ(x,t)→Ψ(−x,t).
Far more importantly, the spinorφReffectively represents the spin-up and spin-down components of an ordinary electron,while φL represents the spin-up and spin-down components of an anti-electron (known as a positron)—Dirac’swork thus predicted the existence of antimatter (the positron was subsequently discovered in 1932, for which the Caltech experimental physicist Carl Anderson won the Nobel Prize).
Dirac’s relativistic electron equation alsoexplained electron spin as a form of intrinsic angular momentum called S. Thus, the angular momentum L of an electron alone is not conserved—instead, it is L+S that is conserved.Dirac’s equation and its underlying mathematics today represent the foundation of much of modern quantum field theory.
space | Penrose admits it's a wild suggestion, but believes that like all
good scientific theories, it might be tested through experiment and
observation. These tests stem from the idea that our aeon and the one
preceding it were not completely isolated from one another. "Information
does get through," he said. "It gets through in the form of a shock
wave in our universe's initial dark matter."
Dark matter,
like dark energy, is a shadowy substance, this time needed to account
for the way structures such as galaxies and clusters of galaxies formed
in the early universe. According to Penrose's calculations, that shock
wave would have had an effect on the cosmic microwave background (CMB),
which is the leftover radiation from the Big Bang, released when the
universe was under 400,000 years old. "You'd see rings in the CMB that
are slightly warmer or cooler than the average temperature," he said.
The
equations of CCC predict that a shock wave arriving from a previous
aeon would have dragged matter into our universe. If that caused
material to head toward us, we would see light from that region shunted
to shorter wavelengths — an effect astronomers call blueshift. Equally, a
region carried away from us by a CCC shock wave would be redshifted,
meaning its wavelength would be stretched out.
Blueshifted
regions would appear hotter and redshifted areas cooler. It's these
changes Penrose believes we'd see as rings in the cosmic microwave
background. Multiple shockwaves might even have produced a series of
concentric rings. "I asked whether anyone had looked for these rings in
the sky," Penrose said.
Several years ago, it did seem as if those rings had been found, a
veritable smoking gun for CCC. "Except nobody believed us. They said it
must have been a fluke or something," Penrose said.
"But those
signatures have been confirmed by alternative groups," said Vahe
Gurzadyan a physicist at the Yerevan Physics Institute in Armenia and
Penrose's long time collaborator on CCC.
The scientists point to
the fact that a team of Polish and Canadian researchers confirmed the
presence of the rings to a confidence level of 99.7%. However, there are
still many doubters. Gurzadyan remains steadfast. "These structures are
real – there is no doubt that our calculations are reliable and
correct," he said. Still, Penrose has been exploring other approaches
that might further support the pair's claims about CCC and a time before
the Big Bang.
The transition between aeons would do something more fundamental that
just create a shock wave in our dark matter and rings in the cosmic
microwave background. "A new material, the dominant material in the
universe, is created at the crossover," Penrose said. He regards that
new material as the initial form of dark matter itself.
"But
in order that it doesn't build up from aeon to aeon, it has to decay,"
he said. He calls these initial dark matter particles erebons after
Erebos, the Greek god of darkness.
On
average it would take 100 billion years for an erebon to decay, but
there are some that will have decayed in the 14-billion-year history of
our universe. Crucially, as they decay, Penrose says erebons dump all
their energy into gravitational waves.
Forbes | Ultimately, science moved on while the contrarians became more and
more irrelevant, with their trivially incorrect work fading into
obscurity and their research programme eventually ceasing upon their
deaths.
In the meantime, from the 1960s up through the 2000s, the sciences of
astronomy and astrophysics — and particularly the sub-field of
cosmology, which focuses on the history, growth, evolution, and fate of
the Universe — grew spectacularly.
We mapped out the large-scale structure of the Universe, discovering a great cosmic web.
We discovered how galaxies grew and evolved, and how their stellar populations inside changed with time.
We learned that all the known forms of matter and energy in the
Universe were insufficient to explain everything we observe: some form
of dark matter and some form of dark energy are required.
And we were able to further verify additional predictions of the Big
Bang, such as the predicted abundances of the light elements, the
presence of a population of primordial neutrinos, and the discovery of
density imperfections of exactly the necessary type to grow into the
large-scale structure of the Universe we observe today.
At the same time, there were observations that were no doubt true,
but that the Big Bang had no predictive power to explain. The Universe
allegedly reached these arbitrarily high temperatures and high energies
at the earliest times, and yet there are no exotic leftover relics that
we can see today: no magnetic monopoles, no particles from grand
unification, no topological defects, etc. Theoretically, something else
beyond what is known must be out there to explain the Universe we see,
but if they ever existed, they’ve been hidden from us.
The Universe, in order to exist with the properties we see, must have
been born with a very specific expansion rate: one that balanced the
total energy density exactly, to more than 50 significant digits. The
Big Bang has no explanation for why this should be the case.
And the only way different regions of space would have the same exact
temperature is if they’re in thermal equilibrium: if they have time to
interact and exchange energy. Yet the Universe is too big and has
expanded in such a way that we have many causally disconnected regions.
Even at the speed of light, those interactions couldn’t have taken
place.
Unfortunately, Nobel Laureate Roger Penrose, although his work on
General Relativity, black holes, and singularities in the 1960s and
1970s was absolutely Nobel-worthy, has spent a large amount of his
efforts in recent years on a crusade to overthrow inflation: by
promoting a vastly scientifically inferior alternative, his pet idea of a
Conformal Cyclic Cosmology, or CCC.
The biggest predictive difference is that the CCC pretty much
requires that an imprint of “the Universe before the Big Bang” show
itself in both the Universe’s large-scale structure and in the cosmic
microwave background: the Big Bang’s leftover glow. Contrariwise,
inflation demands that anywhere where inflation ends and a hot Big Bang
arises must be causally disconnected from, and cannot interact with, any
prior, current, or future such region. Our Universe exists with
properties that are independent of any other.
The observations — first from COBE and WMAP, and more recently, from
Planck — definitively place enormously tight constraints (to the limits
of the data that exists) on any such structures. There are no bruises on
our Universe; no repeating patterns; no concentric circles of irregular
fluctuations; no Hawking points. When one analyzes the data properly,
it is overwhelmingly clear that inflation is consistent with the data,
and the CCC is quite clearly not.
nautil.us | Once you start poking around in the muck of consciousness studies, you
will soon encounter the specter of Sir Roger Penrose, the renowned
Oxford physicist with an audacious—and quite possibly crackpot—theory
about the quantum origins of consciousness. He believes we must go
beyond neuroscience and into the mysterious world of quantum mechanics
to explain our rich mental life. No one quite knows what to make of this
theory, developed with the American anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff,
but conventional wisdom goes something like this: Their theory is almost
certainly wrong, but since Penrose is so brilliant (“One of the very
few people I’ve met in my life who, without reservation, I call a
genius,” physicist Lee Smolin has said), we’d be foolish to dismiss
their theory out of hand.
Penrose, 85, is a mathematical
physicist who made his name decades ago with groundbreaking work in
general relativity and then, working with Stephen Hawking, helped
conceptualize black holes and gravitational singularities, a point of
infinite density out of which the universe may have formed. He also
invented “twistor theory,” a new way to connect quantum mechanics with
the structure of spacetime. His discovery of certain geometric forms
known as “Penrose tiles”—an ingenious design of non-repeating
patterns—led to new directions of study in mathematics and
crystallography.
The breadth of Penrose’s interests is extraordinary, which is evident in his recent book Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe—a
dense 500-page tome that challenges some of the trendiest but still
unproven theories in physics, from the multiple dimensions of string
theory to cosmic inflation in the first moment of the Big Bang. He
considers these theories to be fanciful and implausible.
Penrose doesn’t seem to mind being branded a maverick, though he
disputes the label in regard to his work in physics. But his theory of
consciousness pushes the edges of what’s considered plausible science
and has left critics wondering why he embraces a theory based on so
little evidence.
Most scientists regard quantum mechanics as
irrelevant to our understanding of how the brain works. Still, it’s not
hard to see why Penrose’s theory has gained attention. Artificial
intelligence experts have been predicting some sort of computer brain
for decades, with little to show so far. And for all the recent advances
in neurobiology, we seem no closer to solving the mind-brain problem
than we were a century ago. Even if the human brain’s neurons, synapses
and neurotransmitters could be completely mapped—which would be one of
the great triumphs in the history of science—it’s not clear that we’d be
any closer to explaining how this 3-pound mass of wet tissue generates
the immaterial world of our thoughts and feelings. Something seems to be
missing in current theories of consciousness. The philosopher David
Chalmers has speculated that consciousness may be a fundamental property
of nature existing outside the known laws of physics. Others—often
branded “mysterians”—claim that subjective experience is simply beyond
the capacity of science to explain.
phys.org | In the 1960s, in an attempt to understand quantum gravity, physicist
Roger Penrose proposed such a radical alternative. In Penrose's twistor
theory, geometric points are replaced by twistors—entities that most
closely resemble stretched, light ray-like shapes. Within this twistor
space, Penrose discovered a highly efficient way to represent fields
that travel at the speed of light, such as electromagnetic and
gravitational fields. Reality, however, is composed of more than
fields—any theory needs also to account for the interactions between
fields, such as the electric force between charges, or, in the more
complicated case of General Relativity, gravitational attraction
resulting from the energy of the field itself. However, including the
interactions of General Relativity into this picture has proven a
formidable task.
So can we express in twistor language a full-fledged quantum
gravitational theory, perhaps simpler than General Relativity, but with
both fields and interactions fully taken into account? Yes, according to
Neiman.
Neiman's model builds on higher spin gravity, a model developed by
Mikhail Vasiliev in the 1980s and '90s. Higher spin gravity can be
thought of as the "smaller cousin" of String Theory, "too simple to
reproduce General Relativity, but very instructive as a playground for
ideas," as Neiman puts it. In particular, it is perfectly suited for
exploring possible bridges between holography and twistor theory.
On one hand, as discovered by Igor Klebanov and Alexander Polyakov in 2001, higher spin gravity, just like string theory,
can be described holographically. Its behavior within space can be
captured completely in terms of a boundary at infinity. On the other
hand, its equations contain twistor-like variables, even if these are
still tied to particular points in ordinary space.
From these starting points, Neiman's paper takes an additional step,
constructing a mathematical dictionary that ties together the languages
of holography and twistor theory.
"The underlying math that makes this story tick is all about square
roots," writes Neiman. "It's about identifying subtle ways in which a
geometric operation, such as a rotation or reflection, can be done
'halfway.' A clever square root is like finding a crack in a solid wall,
opening it in two, and revealing a new world."
Using square roots in this way has a longstanding history in math and
physics. In fact, the intrinsic shape of all matter particles—such as
electrons and quarks—as well as twistors, is described by a square root
of ordinary directions in space. In a subtle technical sense, Neiman's
method for connecting space, its boundary at infinity, and twistor
space, boils down to taking such a square root again.
Neiman hopes that his proof of concept can pave the way toward a quantum theory of gravity that does not rely on a boundary at infinity.
"It will take a lot of creativity to uncover the code of the world," says Neiman. "And there's joy in fumbling around for it."
oakridger | “If nuclear fission can occur naturally near the surface, why wouldn’t it occur deep in the earth?” Hollenbach asked.
Using
SCALE nuclear safety analysis codes, Hollenbach simulated a georeactor
that would function as a fast neutron breeder reactor and have an energy
output (under 3 terawatts) that would enable it to heat the planet’s
core and power its magnetic field for 4.5 billion years, the widely
accepted age of Earth. The initial density and relative abundance of
uranium isotopes that he assumed for his simulation were based on what
is determined to be present in a certain kind of meteor that is almost
oxygen-free (as Earth was during its formation).
By
absorbing neutrons, the uranium isotope U-235 would break into lighter
elements more readily than the much more abundant uranium isotope U-238,
releasing considerable heat energy and neutrons that will trigger more
fission, or self-sustaining chain reactions. Free neutrons absorbed by
U-238 nuclei can cause the formation of plutonium-239, another nuclear
fuel. This process, known as breeding, can significantly extend the
lifetime of a nuclear reactor.
Hollenbach’s
calculations also generated data on the fission products that would
result from uranium fission deep within Earth, as well as from
radioactive decay. He showed that two helium isotopes, He-3 and He-4,
would be produced in the same relative proportion by georeactors as
helium isotopes found in basalt extruded from volcanic lavas in Hawaii
and Iceland. Because helium is a light noble gas that does not react
with other materials, it could migrate from a georeactor to hot spots on
Earth’s surface. “The only way helium is produced on the Earth is
through fission or decay of heavy elements,” he said.
When helium was first discovered in the 1960s on
Earth’s surface, it was assumed that helium gas in space was trapped in
the surface during Earth’s formation. Hollenbach said trapped helium
would have outgassed during Earth’s molten stage. He found that the
ratio of He-3 to He-4 at the surface corresponds to the ratio calculated
to be produced by deep-Earth fission. It’s not the same as the ratio of
helium isotopes formed in the air by cosmic rays (which is up to 34
times lower).
Because most fission products
are lighter and less dense than nuclear fuel in a georeactor, Hollenbach
said, they most likely migrate away from a georeactor after
accumulating there. As a result, the georeactor’s energy output will
stop decreasing and start to rise again.
The
Earth’s magnetic field varies in strength and has flipped its polarity
over millions of years. These changes, he suggested, could be explained
by georeactors that turn on and off.
“The
cyclic nature of geomagnetic field reversals and periodic high volcanic
and plate tectonic activity indicate a varied power source,” he said.
If
beryllium-10 and certain noble gases were discovered in deep mantle
magmas and volcanic lavas and if anti-neutrinos could be detected, such
evidence would help validate the georeactor model, he added. A FORNL
participant suggested that Hollenbach confer with researchers at the
IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica.
Hollenback
asserted that an even better understanding of georeactors could be
attained through simulations using advanced software on today’s
supercomputers — if funding for such a study is available.
bbc | UK-born
mathematical physicist Sir Roger, from the University of Oxford,
demonstrated that black holes were an inevitable consequence of Albert's
Einstein's general theory of relativity.
Reacting
to the win, he told the BBC: "It was an extreme honour and great
pleasure to hear the news this morning, in a slightly unusual way - I
had to get out of my shower to hear it."
Among scientific awards, he said, this is "the prime one".
Penrose
receives half of this year's prize, with the other half being shared by
Genzel and Ghez. Prof Ghez is only the fourth woman to win the physics
prize, out of more than 200 laureates since 1901.
The other female recipients are Marie Curie (1903), Maria Goeppert-Mayer (1963) and Donna Strickland (2018).
"The
history of black holes goes way back in time to the end of the 18th
Century. Then, through Einstein's general relativity, we had the tools
to describe these objects for real," said Ulf Danielsson, a member of
the Nobel Committee.
But
the mathematics of black holes was incredibly complex. Many researchers
believed they were nothing more than mathematical artefacts, existing
only on paper. It took researchers decades to realise they could persist
in the real world.
"That's
what Roger Penrose did," said Danielsson. "He understood the
mathematics, he introduced new tools and then could actually prove this
is a process you can naturally expect to happen - that a star collapses
and turns into a black hole."
Sir
Roger explained: "People were very sceptical at the time, it took a
long time before black holes were accepted... their importance is, I
think, only partially appreciated."
Penrose
was born in 1931 in Colchester and comes from a distinguished
scientific family. He is the son of the psychiatrist and geneticist
Lionel Penrose and Margaret Leathes, who was the daughter of a
well-known English physiologist. His brother Jonathan is a chess
grandmaster.
Sir Roger shied away from competition as a child and struggled in exams. He told BBC Radio 4's The Life Scientific programme
in 2016: "I was good at maths, but I didn't necessarily do very well in
my tests." However, he added: "The teacher realised if he gave me
enough time, I would do well.
"I
think I had to do all my arithmetic working it out from first
principles," he chuckled, adding: "I just was slow, and I'm slow at
writing."
In
the 1950s, he came up with the Penrose triangle, an impossible object
which could be depicted in a perspective drawing but could not exist in
reality. The triangle, along with other observations by Sir Roger and
his father Lionel, influenced the Dutch artist MC Escher, who
incorporated them into his artworks Waterfall, and Ascending and
Descending.
Inspired
by the British scientist Dennis Sciama, Penrose next applied his
mathematical ability to physics. In 1965, he published a landmark paper
in which he was able to show that a black hole always hides a
singularity, a boundary where space and time ends.
quantummagazine | Every day, dozens of like-minded mathematicians gather on an online
forum called Zulip to build what they believe is the future of their
field.
They’re all devotees of a software program called Lean. It’s a “proof
assistant” that, in principle, can help mathematicians write proofs.
But before Lean can do that, mathematicians themselves have to manually
input mathematics into the program, translating thousands of years of
accumulated knowledge into a form Lean can understand.
To many of the people involved, the virtues of the effort are nearly self-evident.
“It’s just fundamentally obvious that when you digitize something you can use it in new ways,” said Kevin Buzzard of Imperial College London. “We’re going to digitize mathematics and it’s going to make it better.”
Digitizing mathematics is a longtime dream. The expected benefits
range from the mundane — computers grading students’ homework — to the
transcendent: using artificial intelligence to discover new mathematics
and find new solutions to old problems. Mathematicians expect that proof
assistants could also review journal submissions, finding errors that
human reviewers occasionally miss, and handle the tedious technical work
that goes into filling in all the details of a proof.
But first, the mathematicians who gather on Zulip must furnish Lean
with what amounts to a library of undergraduate math knowledge, and
they’re only about halfway there. Lean won’t be solving open problems
anytime soon, but the people working on it are almost certain that in a
few years the program will at least be able to understand the questions
on a senior-year final exam.
And after that, who knows? The mathematicians participating in these
efforts don’t fully anticipate what digital mathematics will be good
for.
“We don’t really know where we’re headed,” said Sébastien Gouëzel of the University of Rennes.
CTH | With 30-days left before the election
perhaps it’s worthwhile remembering what all of this opposition is
about…. Something 99% of American voters do not quite understand.
Congress doesn’t actually write
legislation. The last item of legislation written by congress was
sometime around the mid 1990’s. Modern legislation is sub-contracted to a
segment of DC operations known as K-Street. That’s where the lobbyists
reside.
Lobbyists write the laws; congress sells
the laws; lobbyists then pay congress lucrative commissions for passing
their laws. That’s the modern legislative business in DC.
When we talk about paying-off politicians
in third-world countries we call it bribery. However, when we undertake
the same process in the U.S. we call it “lobbying”.
CTH often describes the system with the
phrase: “There are Trillions at Stake.” The process of creating
legislation is behind that phrase. DC politics is not quite based on the
ideas that frame most voter’s reference points.
With people taking notice of DC politics
for the first time; and with people not as familiar with the purpose of
DC politics; perhaps it is valuable to provide clarity.
Most people think when they vote for a
federal politician -a House or Senate representative- they are voting
for a person who will go to Washington DC and write or enact
legislation. This is the old-fashioned “schoolhouse rock” perspective
based on decades past. There is not a single person in congress writing
legislation or laws.
In modern politics not a single member of
the House of Representatives or Senator writes a law, or puts pen to
paper to write out a legislative construct. This simply doesn’t happen.
Over the past several decades a system of constructing legislation has taken over Washington DC that more resembles a business operation than a legislative body. Here’s how it works right now.
Outside groups, often called “special
interest groups”, are entities that represent their interests in
legislative constructs. These groups are often representing foreign
governments, Wall Street multinational corporations, banks, financial
groups or businesses; or smaller groups of people with a similar
connection who come together and form a larger group under an umbrella
of interest specific to their affiliation.
Sometimes the groups are social interest
groups; activists, climate groups, environmental interests etc. The
social interest groups are usually non-profit constructs who depend on
the expenditures of government to sustain their cause or need.
The for-profit groups (mostly business)
have a purpose in Washington DC to shape policy, legislation and laws
favorable to their interests. They have fully staffed offices just like
any business would – only their ‘business‘ is getting legislation for their unique interests.
These groups are filled with highly-paid
lawyers who represent the interests of the entity and actually write
laws and legislation briefs.
ineteconomics | Sarah Chayes: When I was writing my 2015 book, Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security,
I realized we are on the same spectrum as those other countries. I just
did not yet realize exactly how relevant that analysis was to the U.S.,
and how swiftly the calamities would come.
On Corruption in America begins with the 2016 decision in McDonnell v U.S.,
in which the corruption conviction of a former Virginia governor was
overturned by a unanimous Supreme Court. What stunned me was the
divergence between ordinary people’s understanding of corruption —
basically, if it quacks like a duck… — and the unanimous view
of elites across the political divide that corruption is something of
minor consequence, beneath notice. The opinion, accepted by all eight
justices, including the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg, warned that America
was in more danger from the fight against corruption than from
corruption itself.
I knew we were in for very serious trouble.
LP: What kind of trouble, exactly?
SC: I had been looking at countries with systemic corruption and no
civic means of redress. These kinds of conditions led to violent
explosions, ideological insurgencies, a massive movement that erupted
across the Arab world, peaceful civic protests that in a couple of cases
spiraled into world-shaking civil wars, mass migrations out of those
regions, and what have you.
In the places I’ve studied, there tended to be not so much a veer
toward the extreme, but a jolt. That’s the kind of trouble I saw ahead
for the U.S. I think we already experienced it to some extent in 2016,
and I suspect it’s not over.
LP: Your book looks at networks of people who exploitpolitical
and economic systems to increase their wealth by working across private
and public sectors. Help us understand this in a historical context.
What is new or distinct with corruption in America today? What are some
of its features?
SC: I looked at the Gilded Age in particular — understood broadly,
from about 1870-1935 — and here’s the shocker: almost nothing is
different today. Then, as now, intertwined, even intermarried, networks
of billionaire-equivalents seized the main levers of power and bent them
to their own objectives.
They wove themselves into incredibly resilient webs, which included
business magnates, top government officials (or sometimes people serving
in the two capacities at once), and even outright criminals. Often,
they traded places in these various sectors, working in business for a
while, then government, then back in business, and so on. They bent and
distorted public institutions and laws, or eviscerated them. They
physically crushed resistance. They brilliantly divided the egalitarian
coalition against itself, across class and especially racial lines. They
veiled themselves in secrecy. They bought people off.
Then, as now, their chief revenue streams were public procurement,
finance, energy, and high-end real estate. Pharma/processed foods and
the tech sector might be today’s most significant additions.
LP: You note that both political parties are intertwined with
corrupt networks. How does this manifest in the current election cycle?
Some hope a Biden presidency would be a blow to corruption. What’s your
take?
SC: This is one of the most difficult aspects of this book — for me,
and doubtless for readers. Americans so crave a good-guy-bad-guy story,
now more than ever. We’re desperate for some sense of redemption. In the
broad “blue” camp, what people want to hear is unadulterated
Trump-loathing, and almost nothing else. But in the Biden-Harris ticket,
I’m afraid I see a bit of a fantasy: that we can just wake up from this
nightmare and it’s 2015, and none of this ever happened. But this book
asks readers to see how 2015 and the prior two decades or so delivered
the nightmare. And it highlights the role of many Democrats in creating
the conditions. That is, Trump is not the lone villain in these pages,
and all other sins are not wiped away before the sole objective of
removing him from the office he is unfit to hold.
The next problem here, of course, is false equivalency. I do not mean
and am not saying that all sides are equally corrupt. There is a small
coalition of uberwealthy Americans that, since the late 1970s, has been
systematically working to dismantle the institutions and practices that
promote citizens’ well-being. Few if any of them are Democrats. But, on
the “blue” side of the house, we have witnessed mass infection with what
I call the “Midas disease” (see below) and consequently, an
opportunistic validation of the radical moves made by that coalition of
the rich.
Biden and many of those around him are among those validators. Among
Democrats, we’ve seen the glorification of the “financial industry,” the
avid participation not just in pay-to-play politics but in the
influence-peddling economy that delivered us Joe Biden’s son Hunter
serving on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. There was the Clinton Foundation before that.
We’ve also witnessed the wanton sabotage of regulatory safeguards
that protected Americans from the worst abuses of profit-seeking
corporations. All this has ratified the program of the largely
Republican cabal I just mentioned. That is, what could have been
isolated after the Reagan Administration as a radical project that
violated every American principle of government to benefit the governed
has instead been turned into bipartisan orthodoxy. No wonder half the
American electorate doesn’t vote.
jonathanturley | In a recent column in the New York Times, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer criticized
President Donald Trump for not issuing a national order making the
wearing of masks mandatory – a pledge made by Vice President Joe Biden
raising serious constitutional questions. Now, Whitmer is having her
broad interpretation of state executive authority checked by the
Michigan Supreme Court, which found that she violated the Constitution
with her extension of the state of emergency.
The Supreme Court found that Whitmer lacked authority under two laws —
the Emergency Management Act from 1976 and the Emergency Powers of the
Governor Act from 1945. Notably, before the court’s opinion, advocacy
groups submitted more than 539,000 signatures in a bid to repeal the 1945 law.
Yet the Michigan
Supreme Court has now ruled that neither law gave Whitmer the authority
to continue the state of emergency or issuing unilateral orders past
April 30th.
NEJM |Six Trigger Criteria for State Covid-19 Vaccination Mandates.
Covid-19 is not adequately contained in the state.
The
Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has recommended
vaccination for the groups for which a mandate is being considered.
The supply of vaccine is sufficient to cover the population groups for which a mandate is being considered.
Available evidence about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine has been transparently communicated.
The
state has created infrastructure to provide access to vaccination
without financial or logistic barriers, compensation to workers who have
adverse effects from a required vaccine, and real-time surveillance of
vaccine side effects.
In a time-limited evaluation,
voluntary uptake of the vaccine among high-priority groups has fallen
short of the level required to prevent epidemic spread.
theconversation | The plague of Justinian, named after the Roman emperor who reigned
from A.S. 527 to 565, arrived in the Roman Empire in A.D. 542 and didn’t
disappear until A.D. 755. During its two centuries of recurrence, it
killed an estimated 25% to 50% of the population – anywhere from 25 million to 100 million people.
This massive loss of lives crippled the economy, triggering a
financial crisis that exhausted the state’s coffers and hobbled the
empire’s once mighty military.
In the east, Rome’s principal geopolitical rival, Sassanid Persia,
was also devastated by the plague and was therefore in no position to
exploit the Roman Empire’s weakness. But the forces of the Islamic
Rashidun Caliphate in Arabia – which had long been contained by the
Romans and Sasanians – were largely unaffected by the plague. The
reasons for this are not well understood, but they probably have to do with the caliphate’s relative isolation from major urban centers.
Caliph Abu Bakr didn’t let the opportunity go to waste. Seizing the moment, his forces swiftly conquered the entire Sasanian Empire while stripping the weakened Roman Empire of its territories in the Levant, the Caucasus, Egypt and North Africa.
Pre-pandemic, the Mediterranean world had been relatively unified by
commerce, politics, religion and culture. What emerged was a fractured
trio of civilizations jockeying for power and influence: an Islamic one
in the eastern and southern Mediterranean basin; a Greek one in the
northeastern Mediterranean; and a European one between the western
Mediterranean and the North Sea.
This last civilization – what we now call medieval Europe – was defined by a new, distinctive economic system.
Before the plague, the European economy had been based on slavery.
After the plague, the significantly diminished supply of slaves forced
landowners to begin granting plots to nominally “free” laborers – serfs
who worked the lord’s fields and, in return, received military
protection and certain legal rights from the lord.
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.
chicagounheard | Teachers unions don’t like to affiliate themselves with police unions. The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) recently advocated for pulling Chicago police from
the city’s schools. As we see the police brutality against Black
people continue unabated even as the light of transparency increases,
police unions are not very popular. They protect rogue and abusive
police officers and have for hundreds of years. They fight reform and
any sorts of limits on their power.
And they do their job well. Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police
officer, who brutally killed George Floyd, had 18 prior complaints
against him and still had his job. Police unions are effective at
protecting their members.
And it is the same with teachers unions. When police officers or
teachers are accused of wrongdoing, it is the union that supplies the
public relations spin, the lawyers and the defense.
Teacher unions want you to believe that they are about students, that they are social justice warriors, fighting for sanctuary cities, DREAMers and
others, but their fundamental purpose is to increase teachers’ pay,
lower their class sizes and protect their jobs. And in these roles,
they are successful. When I was a teacher, that is what I wanted from
my union.
It is not the union’s job to protect students; their job is to help
teachers keep their jobs. Sadly, this is still the teacher union’s job,
even when teacher members are sexual molesters and otherwise
abusive. In the 2018 series Betrayed,
the Chicago Tribune uncovered hundreds of cases of sexual assault and
abuse by teachers and school staff in Chicago’s public schools over the
previous 10 years; there are myriad examples of predators moving from
school to school. It is impossible to know the exact number because
records are spotty.
In Betrayed, there is evidence of the failings of every step of the
school system while the CTU remained silent. Apparently, their leader,
Jesse Sharkey, “missed” the emails from investigators. What could he say?
It is not hard to argue that these recent actions of both police and
teacher unions are not in the public interest. Both enjoy significant
political power from supporting elected officials who advocate for them.
The unions often fight any legislation aimed at increasing teacher
accountability and transparency or eroding the robust job protections
that teachers and police officers enjoy.
Sadly, almost everyone has a story of a bad teacher. When I was a
teacher, I had a colleague who was just waiting to retire. For two
years, I saw the energetic and intellectually curious 6th graders in her class shrivel. It was heartbreaking.
The barriers to firing ineffective–not to mention harmful or
predatory– teachers are almost insurmountable thanks to tenure laws,
which give teachers almost 100% job protection once they have taught for
a few years. This probationary period is different in different
districts, but teacher unions always fight for the shortest probationary
period possible.
Both teachers and police officers work with the public when they are at their most vulnerable.
influencewatch | The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) is a membership association and
labor union comprised of more than 330,000 law enforcement officers.
Officers are members of local chapters known as “lodges,” which act as
labor unions or fraternal organizations, and number over 2,200
nationwide. The FOP claims to improve working conditions for police
officers as well as maintain safety for the public through education,
community involvement, and legislation, among other things.[1] Lodges engage in collective bargaining on behalf of police officers in states that permit such bargaining.[2]
The FOP has a full-time lobbying component, the Steve Young Law
Enforcement Legislative Advocacy Center, which advocates for or against
legislation to protect government worker labor unions, law enforcement,
and the FOP’s interests.[3] The FOP has spent nearly $6 million lobbying since 1998.[4] In the 116th
Congress, FOP supported legislation like the Social Security Fairness
Act, legislation that would eliminate the exemption for state and local
government workers from Social Security;[5] the Law Enforcement Officers Equity Act covering police retirement administration;[6]
and the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act, legislation
that would require states and municipalities to engage in collective
bargaining with police unions like the FOP local lodges.[7][8]
The FOP opposes any potential legislation that may negatively affect
law enforcement, including legislation that would weaken protections for
police officers regarding healthcare and overtime, create or support
civilian review boards, or normalize relations with countries like Cuba
and Mexico, which the FOP deems safe havens for “cop-killers.” [9] The FOP also opposes any amendment or legislation that would weaken the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act (CAFRA) of 2000.[10]
CAFRA was seen as favoring law enforcement over citizens by only
increasing law enforcement’s burden of proof to a preponderance of
evidence, as opposed to clear and convincing evidence, when seizing
property alleged to have been used for criminal purposes. CAFRA also
allowed formerly secret information to be shared between prosecutors and
authorities seeking civil asset forfeiture.[11]
Though the FOP has supported some Republicans (most prominently
endorsing Republican candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential
election[12]),
its federal political action committee has in most election cycles
contributed the larger share of its donations to Democrats; in 2014, it
made no contributions to any federal Republicans, according to data
compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.[13]
The FOP was established in 1915 by two police officers in Pittsburgh. It became a national organization in 1917.[14]
influencewatch | The National Education Association (NEA) is America’s largest labor
union representing nearly three million employees, principally teachers.
With affiliates in every state across 14,000 communities [1],
NEA represents teachers, education support professionals, retired
teachers, education faculty and staff, substitute teachers, and
administrators.[2] It exercises enormous political clout in everything from contract negotiations to issue advocacy and lobbying.[3]
The NEA is a major political player, with its associated political
action committees contributing nearly $143.5 million to federal
candidates and committees—97% of which supported Democrats and
liberals—from 1990 through February 2019. [4]
The NEA is also deeply entangled in state and local politics and is a
major contributor to left-of-center nonprofit organizations.[5]
influencewatch | The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is the second-largest
teachers’ union in the United States. The union represents roughly 1.5
million members, most of whom work in teaching and education-related
jobs as well as nursing.[1] The union is a member of the AFL-CIO.
The AFT, like most public-sector unions, is a major player in liberal
policy and Democratic Party politics. The union and union president Rhonda “Randi” Weingarten are associated with the Democracy Alliance network of liberal mega-donors.[2]
AFT and its associated political committees are also substantial
contributors to Democratic candidates and party committees: According to
the Center for Responsive Politics, those committees have spent upwards
of $80 million on federal elections, with $79 million going to
Democrats and left of center groups.[3]
The union’s political positions focus on preserving privileges for
teachers largely regardless of teacher quality. The AFT is a staunch
defender of “tenure” policies that make it exceptionally difficult to
remove ineffective teachers from the classroom.[4] Additionally, the union opposes many efforts to bring pension contributions and expenditures into long-run balance.[5]
Numerous AFT local unions have been affected by serious corruption committed by senior officers in the local unions. The Washington Teachers Union, the United Teachers of Dade, and the Broward Teachers Union all suffered substantial financial losses from financial corruption committed by their officers.[6] The AFT locals in Chicago and New York City have also been embroiled in highly controversial local politics.
Union president Randi Weingarten is a longtime union official, having
served previously as president of the AFT-affiliated local teachers
union in New York City, the United Federation of Teachers.
In her work as New York’s teacher union president, Weingarten gained
infamy for her aggressive defense of teachers awaiting dismissal
hearings for misconduct in the city’s “rubber rooms.” One principal went
so far as to suggest Weingarten “would protect a dead body in the
classroom.”[7]
A Foundation of Joy
-
Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
-
Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
