#<- this concludes my knowledge of the USSR

[riverkingmarley]

Squealer alt power where she makes trains.

[thesupernaturaluniversity]

How UFO Reports Change With the Technology of the Times

In 1896, newspapers throughout the United States began reporting accounts of mysterious airships flying overhead. Descriptions varied, but witnesses frequently invoked the century’s great technological achievements. Some sources reported dirigibles powered by steam engines. Others saw motorized, winged crafts with screw propellers. Many recalled a flying machine equipped with a powerful searchlight.

As technologies of flight evolve, so do the descriptions of unidentified flying objects. The pattern has held in the 21st century as sightings of drone-like objects are reported, drawing concern from military and intelligence officials about possible security threats.

While puzzling over the appearance of curious things overhead may be a constant, how we have done so has changed over time, as the people doing the puzzling change. In every instance of reporting UFOs, observers have called on their personal experiences and prevailing knowledge of world events to make sense of these nebulous apparitions. In other words, affairs here on earth have consistently colored our perceptions of what is going on over our heads.

Reports of weird, wondrous, and worrying objects in the skies date to ancient times. Well into the 17th century, marvels such as comets and meteors were viewed through the prism of religion—as portents from the gods and, as such, interpreted as holy communications.

By the 19th century, however, “celestial wonders” had lost most of their miraculous aura. Instead, the age of industrialization transferred its awe onto products of human ingenuity. The steamboat, the locomotive, photography, telegraphy, and the ocean liner were all hailed as “modern wonders” by news outlets and advertisers. All instilled a widespread sense of progress—and opened the door to speculation about whether objects in the sky signaled more changes.

Yet nothing fueled the imagination more than the possibility of human flight. In the giddy atmosphere of the 19th century, the prospect of someone soon achieving it inspired newspapers to report on tinkerers and entrepreneurs boasting of their supposed successes.

The wave of mysterious airship sightings that began in 1896 did not trigger widespread fear. The accepted explanation for these aircraft was terrestrial and quaint: Some ingenious eccentric had built a device and was testing its capabilities.

But during the first two decades of the 20th century, things changed. As European powers expanded their militaries and nationalist movements sparked unrest, the likelihood of war prompted anxiety about invasion. The world saw Germany—home of the newly developed Zeppelin—as the likeliest aggressor. Military strategists, politicians, and newspapers in Great Britain warned of imminent attack by Zeppelins.

The result was a series of phantom Zeppelin sightings by panicked citizens throughout the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand in 1909, then again in 1912 and 1913. When war broke out in August 1914, it sparked a new, more intense wave of sightings. Wartime reports also came in from Canada, South Africa, and the United States. In England, rumors that German spies had established secret Zeppelin hangars on British soil led vigilantes to scour the countryside.

In the age of aviation, war and fear of war have consistently fueled reports of unidentified flying objects. A year after Nazi Germany’s surrender, Sweden was beset by at least a thousand accounts of peculiar, fast-moving objects in the sky. Starting in May 1946, residents described seeing missile- or rocket-like objects in flight, which were dubbed “ghost rockets” because of their fleeting nature. Rockets peppering Swedish skies was well within the realm of possibility—in 1943 and 1944, a number of V-1 and V-2 rockets launched from Germany had inadvertently crashed in the country.

At first, intelligence officials in Scandinavia, Britain, and the United States took the threat of ghost rockets seriously, suspecting that the Soviets might be experimenting with German rockets they had captured. By the autumn of 1946, however, they had concluded it was a case of postwar mass hysteria.

The following summer, a private pilot by the name of Kenneth Arnold claimed to have seen nine flat objects flying in close formation near Mt. Rainier. Looking back on the event years later, Arnold noted, “What startled me most at this point was the fact that I could not find any tails on them. I felt sure that, being jets, they had tails, but figured they must be camouflaged in some way so that my eyesight could not perceive them. I knew the Air Force was very artful in the knowledge and use of camouflage.”

Given the name “flying saucers” by an Associated Press correspondent, they quickly appeared throughout the United States. Over the following two weeks, newspapers covered hundreds of sightings.

News of these reports circled the globe. Soon, sightings occurred in Europe and South America. In the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, atomic bomb tests, and tensions between the United States and the USSR, speculation ran rampant.

Finding themselves on the front line of the Cold War, Germans on both sides of the Iron Curtain considered the United States the most likely culprit. West Germans thought the discs were experimental missiles or military aircraft, while Germans in the communist Eastern bloc considered it more likely that the whole thing was a hoax devised by the American defense industry to whip up support for a bloated budget.

Others had more elaborate theories. In 1950, former U.S. Marine Air Corps Major Donald Keyhoe published an article and book titled The Flying Saucers Are Real, in which he contended that aliens from another planet were behind the appearance of the UFOs. Based on information from his informants, Keyhoe contended that government authorities were aware of this, but wished to keep the matter a secret for fear of inciting a general panic.

Such a claim about UFOs was new. To be sure, at the turn of the century during the phantom airship waves, some had speculated that the vessels spotted might be from another planet. Already at that time, people were deeply interested in reports of prominent astronomers observing artificial “canals” and structures on Mars. Evidence of Martian civilizations made it seem conceivable that our interplanetary neighbors had finally decided to pay us a visit. Still, relatively few bought into this line of reasoning.

But by going further, Major Keyhoe struck a chord in a timely fashion. In the aftermath of World War II and over the course of the 1950s, it seemed that science and engineering were making remarkable strides. In particular, the development of guided rockets and missiles, jet airplanes, atomic and hydrogen bombs, nuclear energy, and satellites signaled to many that there were no limits—not even earth’s atmosphere—to technological progress. And if our planet were on the verge of conquering space, it would hardly be a stretch to imagine that more advanced civilizations elsewhere were capable of even greater feats.

But all this raised a question. Why were the extraterrestrials visiting us now?

Keyhoe believed that aliens had been keeping us under observation for a long time. Witnessing the recent explosions of atomic weapons, they had decided the inhabitants of planet Earth had finally reached an advanced enough stage to be scrutinized more closely. Still, there was no reason for alarm. “We have survived the stunning impact of the Atomic Age,” Keyhoe concluded. “We should be able to take the Interplanetary Age, when it comes, without hysteria.”

The flying saucer era had begun. Not everyone would remain as sanguine as Keyhoe. As concerns over global nuclear annihilation and environmental catastrophe grew during the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, claims about UFOs took on ever more ominous tones.

Times changed. And so, again, did the UFO phenomenon.

By Greg Eghigian, Zócalo Public Square

Original post here

[ayman-eckford]

This is my very old post. I’m not a Muslim now, and I don’t identity myself as “lesbian” because I realized that I am a non-binary person. But everything else in this post is true. And I want to re-publish it without any changes.

________

[CN: Homophobia; Islamophobia; Ableism]

My name is Аyman. I am Autistic; I am a Muslim, and a lesbian. While I am Russian by birth, I do not belong to Russian culture. I don’t understand it although many people suggest that it is my culture. My perception of culture is reflected in little things; in that sort of stuff that seems irrelevant at the first sight, but it very clearly defines me as a “foreigner.”

My differences are almost invisible from the outside. People are not aware of my sexual orientation. I do not look like the stereotypical “butch” or “femme” lesbians that people expect me to be, or the “masculine women” that people of my mother’s generation imagine when they hear the word “lesbian”.

I was born into a conservative Russian Orthodox family. I suffered from serious psychological problems because of religion, and initially I was afraid even to think about leaving Christianity. Transitioning to Islam has influenced my worldview more than the way I look, dress or speak.

But I do not look like what people expect a typical Muslim to look like. I have light brown hair, light skin, and I speak with no accent. I do not act like a typical Muslim woman as the majority of people think she would. I listen to metal rock music. I talk a lot about politics and about human rights, and I wear European clothes most of the time.

My national identity is fairly American. I chose it myself, but at the same time, I didn’t.

I have never understood my family’s culture. Looking at my parents and other adults, I did not copy the norms of behaviour. If I didn’t understand the goals of such behaviour, then those norms were alien to me. You have probably witnessed little kittens imitating their mother’s behaviour or children copying their parents. Like many Autistic children, I have a badly developed mechanism of imitation.

The idea that people who I share my apartment with (even if they are my parents) should define the way I think seems like a meaningless abstraction – almost magic – to me.

That’s not the only example.

I didn’t notice the peculiarities of post-Soviet culture. At that time, I did not know why. However, the reason was that I did not recognise nonverbal signals and shades of meaning in other people’s talk. I could not “read” the culture of people who surrounded me. That was why I could not understand it.

I read books because they were easy to grasp. I watched movies. I researched information on the topics that interested me, and I formed my own culture based on what I could understand and what interested me. This culture originated from the culture of all humanity – from all the facts that I knew and which I could understand based on my knowledge. That culture had something that was missing in the Orthodox post-Soviet culture of my family, and my family considered that culture as wrong. It was something that we did not discuss at home; something that I learned from books and that I came up with on my own. I did not choose my culture, like you did not choose yours. It formed by itself. However, some elements of that culture were the result of deliberate choice.

Later, I started to realise that my culture is strangely similar to American culture. I can easily understand characteristics of American culture in books and in films, even those that seemed strange to the majority of my friends. It is easier for me to communicate with Americans rather than Russians. That is how I acquired some sort of a national identity.

I also have another identity that, perhaps, influenced everything else in my life. It is autism, which defines me almost entirely. I cannot separate my personal characteristics from autism, because it influences everything. It affects the way I communicate with people and how I perceive communication. Being autistic influences my attitude towards my interests and the effects that sounds and colours produce in me. It defines what helps me to relax and guides what interests me. That’s why the idea of “curing autism” seems brutal to me. If you take autism from me, what would be left of me? When I am told that autistic people would be happier without autism, I hear that they would have been happier if we didn’t exist.

Most often, I have heard this from people who know almost nothing about autism. These people base their judgments on what they think it means to be Autistic without even knowing how autism looks like. They often don’t even know why there are five times less girls diagnosed with autism than that of boys. We are rarely diagnosed because all of the first books about autism were based on observations of the control groups which included mostly boys, and in most cases autism in boys manifests itself differently than that of the majority of girls. My autism follows the “female pattern”, like in many Autistic girls. And it means that – again – I find myself invisible.

If you belong to several minorities, you cannot avoid wrong assumptions. Especially, if you are not a typical representative of these minorities.

Homosexuality was unthinkable in our family. My father called it “sodomy”. When the United States legalised same-sex marriage, he predicted a great economic crisis which would eventually destroy the U.S. economy. He spoke of Greece and Rome, which had “fallen because of gays”.

This conversation took place a few months before I finally accepted my homosexuality. I was afraid to talk about it to my parents. After coming out, I was afraid to go home. I did not know what consequences to expect. I was ready to end the relationship with my parents. However, everything went much more smoothly than I thought because it seemed as though my father didn’t take me seriously.

I should have expected this because I have faced similar situations all my life. Denial is one of the most common types of wrong assumptions. This was the first kind of wrong assumptions that I faced because it permeated my entire life with my family.

Looking at me, my parents saw a completely different child – the child who they wanted to see in front of them. They saw a Russian Orthodox girl – which I never was. More specifically, I was Orthodox for many years, but even though I was Russian by birth, I was never Russian in a cultural sense of this word. My parents, of course, did not notice. They talked about all sorts of things that were supposed to be clear and dear to me because I am “Russian”. I explained in vain that those things were alien to me, and that I understood different views and traditions better. They ignored my explanations.

They also ignored my autism. At school they told teachers that I was “an unusual child,” but at home they blamed me for everything. They scolded me for problems with communication that made me a target for bullying and made me want to die. When I did not do things on time, they accused me of having problems with planning. Because of that, I started to experience panic attacks. They did not believe that I could not hear their voices when there was noise around. I walked strangely. I did not look into their eyes, and I ran back and forth across the room in order to calm myself down. They explained that away as signs of my “immorality”. They often said that I was a weird kid, but they could not explain me what was wrong with me. I demanded accurate explanations, but I was never able to get them.

I received these explanations when I received my autism diagnosis. In the beginning, my parents also refused to believe that I am Autistic. It took for them several years and many articles read by my mother in order to accept it.

My parents could not support me because of their wrong assumptions about me. All these years, their misconceptions hurt me the most.

I often encountered them in my life. Usually people need a few minutes to conclude about my sexual orientation, neurotype, religion and cultural background based on my appearance. Most of the time their conclusions are wrong.

Like my parents, other people do not want to recognize their mistakes, even if I clearly point them out.

“You are too normal to be Autistic. Why do you invent all those diseases?”

They ask, even when I have already told them that I do not consider autism a disease. Usually I hear that from people who have never read the diagnostic criteria.

“You do not look like a lesbian”

They say, meaning that I am not “masculine” enough.

People who say that do not understand that a person’s gender expression does not define their sexual orientation.

“Of course, you belong to Soviet culture! We all belong to Soviet culture, because we have absorbed it, even from our cartoons. There are so many implicit “Soviet” themes and substance there!”

When people tell me that, they forget that as a child I didn’t know how to recognize those themes or substance.

For some reason, people think that they know who I am – better than I do. Wrong assumptions emerge because people do not want to listen.

Sometimes people deny my experience out of their best intentions.

Once a doctor told my mother that he had noticed “Autistic signs” in me (as in the USSR Asperger syndrome was often referred to), but he did not tell that to my face, so that I would not feel “abnormal”.

One of my close relatives tried to “comfort” me saying that I was still “able to understand my culture”. In addition, a stranger in the street advised me to “return to Russian roots”.

Many of my LGBT friends were advised to see a therapist in order to become “normal”. Some people are convinced that LGBT people suffer from their sexual orientation and gender identity. Even if LGBT people themselves told the opposite.

Some of my LGBT friends think that I would have felt better if I stopped believing in God.

Wrong assumptions arise because people think I would feel better if I become someone else. They arise from the fact that people think I suffer from being myself.

Some people in the LGBT community call Islam “the religion of the devil”. One of my LGBT friends told me this right to my face, not knowing that I was going to convert to Islam.

I have heard homophobic jokes from my former friends, and I heard their calls for “jailing all faggots”.

They did not even suspect that a lesbian was among them.

I have heard and read that people without disabilities are calling to take us all to “one large island and leave” us there because “nobody wants them, except for their parents”. I have heard and read that all Autistic people are considered to be unable to think, unable to feel, or unable to make their own decisions.

People who wrote and said it did not think that an Autistic might hear or read their words. Looking at me, they would never have thought that I was Autistic.

This is one of the main dangers of hate speech. People who would never say such a thing to the face of those whom they “do not like” say it unaware of who is present around them.

Perhaps that is why I feel an alien almost everywhere.

And perhaps that’s why so many people tend to hate – for them, people whom they hate are actually aliens. Not aliens from science fiction stories, but aliens from computer games that can only spoil everything, and whom they should kill. They do not think that we can be their friends, colleagues or comrades in activism.

Wrong assumptions arise because people think that they can learn everything from a person’s appearance. They arise because people start to hate those of whom they know nothing about.

You can read END of this post here, in my friend’s blog.

[whatisonthemoonarchive]

While some continue to complain about the profound effects of indoctrination into the totalistic worldview of the Moon ideology,  it is puzzling that they seem  unconcerned about the  mind control and ideological indoctrination inflicted from all directions outside the Moon movement on society at large. After all, it is difficult to not notice that a massive world-wide combination of educational institutions, media, the entertainment industry, government agencies, computer companies,  the United Nations and its accredited non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are all involved in the indoctrination of the masses into a totalitarian, one world government ideology. Are the effects of indoctrination in the Moon ideology dangerous in comparison to the effects of indoctrination into the totalitarian one world government ideology?    When considering this, take into account that the totalitarian, one world government ideology promotes and facilitates various lifestyles and practices considered to be sinful according traditional Christian standards, whereas the Moon ideology, whether it be true or not, upholds traditional Christian morality and takes a hard line against sin.

The one world government indoctrination program begins in elementary school with a planned, step-by-step process of replacing the traditional family-taught beliefs, morality, Biblical values and world view with a new way of thinking designed to support the totalitarian world government agenda [see 'Brainwashing in America']   The techniques of brainwashing developed in totalitarian countries are routinely used in psychological conditioning programs imposed on American school children to bring about these results. These include emotional shock and desensitization*, psychological isolation from sources of support, stripping away defenses, manipulative cross-examination of the individual's underlying moral values, and inducing acceptance of alternative values by psychological rather than rational means.

The goal of education is no longer to teach the kind of literacy, wisdom and knowledge we once considered essentials of responsible citizenship.  It is to train world citizens--a compliant international workforce, willing to flow with change and uncertainty. These citizens must be ready to believe and do whatever will serve a  government determined 'common good' or 'greater whole'.  Educators may promise to teach students to think for themselves, but if these state educators continue what they have started, then tomorrow's students will have neither the facts nor the freedom needed for independent thinking.  Like Nazi youth, they will be taught to react, not to think, when told to do the unthinkable.

Are the effects of indoctrination into the Moon ideology really so dangerous in comparison to the effects of the ongoing state run indoctrination into the totalitarian one world government ideology?  

__________________________

*A common method used in training students to reject truth is emotional shock therapy which is described in the following example:  Ashley, a California tenth-grader, heard her teacher announce the following writing assignment: 'You're going to consult an oracle. It will tell you that you're going to kill your best friend. This is destined to happen, and there is absolutely no way out. You will commit this murder. What will you do before this event occurs? Describe how you felt leading up to it. How did you actually kill your best friend?'  Ashley became very upset. Why would her English teacher tell her to imagine something so horrible. 'I don't want to do this.', she told herself and long after she had told this to her parents, the awful feelings continued.

This method of emotional shock therapy has become standard fare in public schools from coast to coast. It produces cognitive dissonance -- mental and moral confusion -- especially in students trained to follow God's guidelines. While classroom topics may range from homosexual or occult practices to euthanasia and suicide, they all challenge and stretch a student's moral boundaries. But why?

'[Our objective] will require a change in the prevailing culture--the attitudes, values, norms and accepted ways of doing things,' says Marc Tucker, the master-mind behind the school-to-work and 'workforce development' program implemented in every state. Working with Hillary Clinton and other globalist leaders, he called for a paradigm shift--a total transformation in the way people think, believe, and perceive reality. This new paradigm rules out traditional values and biblical truth, which are now considered hateful and intolerant. (See "Clinton's War on Hate Bans Christian Values") All religions must be pressed into the mold of the new global spirituality.  Since globalist leaders tout this world religion as a means of building public awareness of our supposed planetary oneness, Biblical Christianity doesn't fit. It is simply too 'exclusive' and 'judgmental.'

Immersing students in imaginary situations that clash with home-taught values confuses and distorts a student's conscience. Each shocking story and group dialogue tends to weaken resistance to change. Biblical absolutes simply don't fit the hypothetical stories that prompt children to question and replace home-taught values. Before long, God's standard for right and wrong is turned upside-down, and unthinkable behavior begins to seem more normal than the Christian tradition that formed the basis of western civilization.

But it takes more than a twisted conscience to produce compliant world citizens. New values must replace God's timeless truths, as described in the following example:

 Matt Piecora, a fifth grader from the Seattle area, was told to complete the sentence, 'If I could wish for three things, I would wish for…'  Matt wrote 'infinitely more wishes, to meet God, and for all my friends to be Christians.'  Matt's wish didn't pass. The teacher told him that his last wish could hurt people who didn't share his beliefs. Matt didn't want to hurt anyone, so he agreed to add 'if they want to be.'  Another sentence to be completed began, 'If I could meet anyone, I would like to meet…'.

Matt wrote: 'God because he is the one who made us!' The teacher told him to add 'in my opinion.' When Matt's parents saw his work, they noticed the phrases that had been added to Matt's sentences and asked,  'Why did you add this?'. 'The teacher didn't want me to hurt other people's feelings,' he answered. 'But these are just your wishes…'  'I thought so, Mom.'  Matt looked confused. Later, the teacher explained to Matt's parents that she wanted diversity' in her class and was looking out for her other students. But the excuse didn't make sense. If the papers were supposed to 'express the students' diverse views,' why couldn't Matt share his views? Didn't his wishes fit? Or was Christianity the real problem?  'I try to instill God's truths in my son,' said Matt's father, 'but it seems like the school wants to remove them.'

 He is right. The old Judeo-Christian beliefs don't fit the new beliefs and values designed for global unity. The planned oneness demands 'new thinking, new strategies, new behavior, and new beliefs'  that turn God's Word and values upside-down and no strategy works better than the old dialectic (consensus) process explained by Georg Hegel, embraced by Marx and Lenin, and incorporated into American education during the nineteen eighties.  Directed group discussion based on the dialectic (consensus) process is key to the transformation. Professor Benjamin Bloom, called 'Father of Outcome-based Education', summarized it as follows:

'The purpose of education and the schools is to change the thoughts, feelings and actions of students.  ....a large part of what we call good teaching is the teacher's ability to attain effective objectives through challenging the students' fixed beliefs and getting them to discuss issues.'  Matt's last comment was especially threatening to the teacher. His statement, 'God made us' is an absolute truth. It can't be modified to please the group. Therefore it doesn't fit the consensus process -- the main psycho-social strategy of the new national-international education system designed to mold world citizens.  It demands that all children participate in group discussions and agree to: · be open to new ideas · share personal feelings · set aside home-taught values that might offend the group · compromise in order to seek common ground and please the group. · respect all opinions, no matter how contrary to God's guidelines · never argue or violate someone's comfort zone

First tested in Soviet schools, this mind-changing process required students in the USSR, China and other Communist nations to 'confess' their thoughts and feelings in their respective groups. Day after day, trained facilitator-teachers would guide these groups toward a pre-planned consensus. Opposite opinions or ideas -- 'thesis' and 'antithesis' -- were blended into ever-evolving higher 'truths'. Each new truth or 'synthesis' would ideally reflect a blend of each participant's feelings and opinions. In reality, the students were manipulated into compromising their values and accepting the politically correct Soviet understanding of the issue discussed. Worse yet, the children learned to trade individual thinking for a collective mindset. Since the concluding consensus would probably change with the next dialogue, the process immunized them against faith in any unchanging truth or fact. This revolutionary training program was officially brought into our education system in 1985, when President Reagan and Soviet President Gorbachev signed the U.S. - U.S.S.R. Education Exchange Agreement. It put American technology into the hands of Communist strategists and, in return, gave us all the psycho-social strategies used in Communist nations to indoctrinate Soviet children with Communist ideology and to monitor compliance for the rest of their lives. Today, American children from coast to coast learn reading, health, and science through group work and dialogue. Most subjects are 'integrated' or blended together and discussed in a multicultural context. Thus, fourth graders in Iowa 'learn' ecology, economy, and science by 'real-life' immersion into Native American cultures. They role-play tribal life and idealize the religion modeled by imaginary shamans. Seeking common ground with the guidance of a trained facilitator-teacher, they share their beliefs, feelings, and 'experiences' with each other. They might agree that 'there are many gods' or 'many names for the same god' and compare the exaggerated spiritual thrills of shamanism with their own church experiences. Which religion would sound most exciting to the group? The consensus would merely be a temporary answer in a world of 'continual change' -- one of many steps in the ongoing evolution toward better understanding of truth -- as defined by leaders who envision a uniform global workforce and management system operating through compliant groups everywhere.     http://www.inplainsite.org/html/mind_control_in_schools.html

[chrisengel]

During my plane ride home on El Al, I read Lacan’s interviews from 1971-1972, those delivered in the chapel of St. Anne and subsequently published by Jacques-Alain Miller under the title I’m talking to the walls (Je parle aux murs (Seuil, 2011). I had, in reading a certain passage, if not an epiphany, at least an intuition which seized me, and from which I draw the hypotheses which will follow. 1. As I was the first to speak in Tel Aviv on Lacan and the philosophers, and our hosts were solicitous to know what we (namely Marie-Hélène Brousse and myself) thought of the murders and assassinations in Paris on November 13th, on behalf of Daesh, or the “Islamic State,” I proposed to speak about it purely in Lacanian terms, and ventured the following remarks: each of us knows Lacan’s commentaries on forced choices such as money or life, or freedom or death, in Seminar XI (concerning alienation), and the reference to Hegel concerning the Terror. Well! It seems to me that the motto of “freedom or death” still leaves a choice, even if, whatever one chooses, it is death which prevails. 2. Let us remember what Lacan calls “the lethal factor”: “For example, freedom or death! There, because death comes into play, it produces an effect of a structure a little bit different [from that of money or life]. This is because, in both cases, I will have both. […] You choose freedom. Well! You’ve got freedom to die […] it is called the Terror.” 3. The disciples of Jihad, who are not revolutionaries (except in the Lacanian sense of a circular return to the same thing), offer a choice which would be the following: death or death! This is to say that the two circles coinciding such as those illustrating money or life are identical here, completely overlapping. There is no more contiguity between the two. Hegel goes so far as to conceive of this extreme point, expressed as: “The sole work and deed of universal freedom is therefore death, a death too which has no inner significance or filling, for what is negated is the empty point of the absolutely free self. It is thus the coldest and meanest of all deaths, with no more significance than cutting off a head of cabbage or swallowing a mouthful of water.” [Phenomelogy of Spirit, Chapter VI: “Absolute Freedom and Terror”]. 4. It is fitting then, that the jihadists kill at first sight. It turns out, incidentally, according to the evidence, that they still demand this sight, asking those whom they are going to shoot at point-blank range to look them in the eyes. They invoke this “final mirror stage,” in order to be sure of killing a man, before dying in their turn. 5. But we cannot stop there, as there are at least two additional factors to consider: the universal hatred of capitalism, and the reference to the Crusades. Apparently nothing is shared between these two ideas, of their erroneously commonplace notion, calling us the “Crusaders”, as they do, and as they did on their statements concerning the events in Paris, this is an excessive embellishment, a religious fiction that must be sent back to older days. The idea is a flat repetition from Voltaire, who said, “These are usually rogues who drive the fanatics and who put the dagger in their hands.” [Article on ‘Fanaticism’ from the Philosophical Dictionary]. 6. I will first lay into the idea specific to a certain politics of the world, diffuse, latent, fearful, but cherished by many oppressed Muslims and by those French who defend them in the final analysis or pity them. The idea that we have a clash of civilizations (why not) between, on one side, the Occident (Christian), the United States (the great Satan, fundamentally, unknown to the Koranic world), “the International Community”, warmonger and perpetrator of abuses, unrepentant colonialism, etc. and, on the other side, the colonized, the oppressed, the poor, the workers, etc. The terms vary infinitely. 7. We could well lash out at universal capitalism, at the world market, at globalization, provided that we consider that Daesh represents its final and most accomplished, most monstrous, most aggressive and most possessive stage. For the simple reason that they have at their disposal all the necessary capital for their acts of violence, receive daily fortunes thanks to petrol, that they are allocated by their supporters, who are also their disciples and their admirers, their allies and their clients, an entire arsenal of innumerable men and arms, that they particularly exploit and sacrifice to their ends an entire youth, and that their aim is to move from a stage that I would call rhizomatous (rather well proposed, all in all, in Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, I say without pleasure), which we knew during the time of al-Qaeda, to the stage of the State, hence the attempt to obviously constitute an Islamic State, accompanied by the additional fantasy of the caliphate (the latter refused incidentally by traditional Muslims). 8. It’s here that the Lacan text read in the plane intervenes: “Again history shows that it has survived for centuries, this discourse [the discourse of the master], in a way that is advantageous for everyone, until a certain point where, by reason of a tiny slippage in meaning which passed unnoticed by those involved, it became the discourse of capitalism, of which we would have not the slightest idea if Marx hadn’t applied himself to completing it, in giving it its subject, the proletariat, thanks to which the discourse of capitalism has blossomed everywhere the form of the Marxist State reigns.” Certainly the USSR is defunct, and we have something better at present. Here comes the passage which baffled me: “That which distinguishes the discourse of capitalism is this – Verwerfung, foreclosure, foreclosure of all the fields of the symbolic, with the result I have already referred to. Foreclosure of what? Of castration. Every order, every discourse that relates to capitalism leaves aside what we will simply call matters of love, my good friends. You see, eh, this is not insignificant.” [“I’m speaking to the walls, 6 January 1972.] Who would contest that the discourse of the “Islamic State” is exactly that, and that the events of Paris illustrate in a blinding manner the extent of the forced foreclosure there of matters of love, precisely (friendship, love, cafés, walks, cinema, theatre, dancing, nightclubs, distractions, meetings, hooking up, “Your place or mine?”), with the repression of women to top it all off. And Lacan continues: “That is why, two centuries after this shift, let’s call it Calvinist –why not?–, castration made its irruptive entry under the form of the analytical discourse.” And the result, to which I refer. I will not insult dear Calvin with what Lacan reproaches Calvinism with, but I will readily say of Islam that of which he speaks in a quasi-prophetic way. And I well distinguish—as the ethic of Speaking-Well invites us in the current state of things—Islamism and Islam. 9. I know how those who still have a world political vision at their disposal will be reluctant to analyze some phenomenon so intensified in such tenuous terms, but the politics of the unconscious, which speak less strong, but which nonetheless insists—would it not still impose itself on our fellows? A rare politics if ever there was, restrained, intermittent. In the same way that, to speak of Nazism, Lacan’s insistent reference and fascination with sacrifice to a god or Dark God will always leave suspicions. Idealism, they say, rather than materialism (but which one: historical or dialectical?). 10. I will even go so far as to say that the poem entitled ‘Antoine Tudal,’ advanced in the interview of Lacan, reflects what we see! “Between man and woman, there is love. That communicates at full blast.” Being, that, this is Paris! Then, “between man and love, where is a world,” and there, is made, in the (radical) Islamist version, of this “That he knows the world, namely, quite simply this sort of dream of knowledge which arrives there in the place of what was, here in this little schema, marked by the W of the woman.” So it consists of fully covering the women and of omitting them, as to know the world in the sense that everyone knows that at the end of the world, there will only be Muslims. (“The Triumph of Religion” as Lacan stated elsewhere, but not for the Apostolic Roman Catholic Church!). Universal submission, as the other says! This echoes the dream of a millennia long Reich and I owe it to an analyst from Tel Aviv for having cited a bewildering passage from Claudel’s journal, which I found; it is a note from May 21st, 1935: “21st of May. Speech by Hitler. He creates at the centre of Europe a kind of Islamism, a community that makes its conquest a sort of religious duty.” And finally, my fellows, “Between man and the world, there is a wall,” and it is, simply, the place of castration. “This is not a wall, it is simply the locus of castration,” Lacan indeed concludes. 11. Those who seek death, with or without words, those who tell us that that we don’t know at what point, more than we love life, they love death, those who expect that their suicide will necessarily be successful, those, in nuce, who hate and kill us, have determined that “it is easier to accept interdiction than to run the risk of castration.” Such would then be that which analytic discourse could expect from them: their disappearance. 12. Unlike the leftists of ’68, some of whom turned to analytic discourse, our enemies prefer the bloody rod to the calm sea [“bonace”] assured by Lacan. As we are not, for now,  , ‘we’re even getting slaughtered there. So what to do? Of course the “Islamic State” will not subsist, and Daesh will be destroyed, without us having to believe as much that we are the Romans, nor assuming, of them, a new Carthage! Meanwhile, I only wish to recall this conclusive and moving section from Lacan’s 1949 article on the mirror stage, “In the subject to subject recourse we preserve, psychoanalysis can accompany the patient to the ecstatic limit of the “Thou art that,” where the cipher of his mortal destiny is revealed to him, but it is not in our sole power as practitioners to bring him to the point where the true journey begins.” We will need, for this journey, to switch from our present impotence to some new kind of impossible. November 23rd, 2015.

http://www.lacan.com/actuality/2015/12/matters-of-love-hypotheses-on-the-recent-events-of-paris-seen-from-el-al/#more-1191

MATTERS OF LOVE” HYPOTHESES ON THE RECENT EVENTS OF PARIS, SEEN FROM EL AL

François Regnault

[zoobus]

why are you friends with ranmaofficial? you're a black girl and he's an infamously combative white dude with a god complex and fascist dreams so like what are you doing lmao

Ranma is not a dude

True answer: I don’t remember why but Ranma came into my messages with three 15-page length peer researched articles for me to read with no respect to whether I understood the jargon used and then started discussing the concepts and ideas as if I already understood them which was extremely jarring and very obviously above my head but I didn’t want to admit defeat and read one piece about how full of shit the marshmallow experiment is and how we can extrapolate on that shittiness to address the alleged discrepancies in intelligence between races or the correlation between med students and eating disorders (for the former it was along the lines of “interesting that white supremacists love harping on how the children of Black-American/Black-American and Black-American/White-American children statistically have lower IQs than just White-American children but not the fact that Black/White-European raised in Europe children don’t have this discrepancy…Almost as if black children in America face a distinct consistent and constant degradation throughout their lives that negatively impacts their mental state that other races do not deal with🤔”).                                                                         It was a great essay even if it took me three days to get through it and nobody ever lets me talk in-depth about a topic before getting bored and cutting me off except ranma, sometimes. So hypothetically, if anyone wanted to talk to me, you’re better off ransacking my inbox with a long article about something you’re passionate about with follow-up questions rather than small-talk because I’m incompetent at chitchat

I’ve actually had a couple people come to me about this so FYI, Ranma is not a fascist, not a right libertarian, not alt-right, not a conservative. They’re Russian, raised in the immediate aftermath of the USSR’s demise, which is going to have a strong impact on one’s opinions of communism, regardless of whether you consider it “true” communism or not. Not liking communism does not inherently indicate a liberal or someone on the right. Also,

Ranma is a Rorschach kind of person. It’s more important for them to be correct than to only hammer on right-wingers being stupid. I think more than few people take them attacking leftist posters (and also, I’ll admit, penning some…touchy replies about sexism that I’ve vocally disagreed with) as evidence of being right-wing which, again, is wrong. If someone/thing on the left is incorrect, they see it as crucial to loudly disparage incorrectness rather than trivializing it as non-important which is why you might see “actually [MAGA avatar’d twitter user] is correct, leftists know jack shit about alt-right politics.” That’s them saying “leftists need to learn more about the particulars and nuances of alt-right conventions to better destroy it” not “you fucking commies know shit about my /pol/itics lmao” but I can understand why some would conclude the latter. I do not think Ranma’s is bad reasoning to be [infamously] combative. 

I’m fully aware of their reputation and regardless of it they have a multitude of great qualities, hold certain similar interests that are difficult to find, and has a comparable online history which means we share a lot of background.                                                         Let me self-drag a second and admit I don’t have friends irl and it’s difficult for me to make them online as well. Due to my upbringing, I’m super socially stunted, very immature and shy, and I worry a lot about coming across as a creep. I could write an entirely separate post about how often posts about “creepy men,” “mansplaining,” “dudebros,” or just posts starting with “I hate men” and end in something I do but didn’t know bothered others make me so nervous despite my being a girl, and make it very difficult to talk to people without feeling I’m inadvertently making them uncomfortable or pissing them off. I responded to a “mutuals post a number and I’ll describe you” ask and immediately felt like a manipulative freak when my mutual said something really sweet about me like I do not know how to handle normal people.                                                 In comes ranma who straight out the gate doesn’t give a shit about being perceived the wrong way which means I don’t have to worry either. I can relax, I can finally “be myself.” Bluntness can be a virtue.

It’s easy to get caught in an echo chamber but ranma often drag me out by the hair. Ranma is literally the only person who fully explained the dangers of "punching nazis” rhetoric to me without relying on You Are What You Hate, just-as-bad logic. Anyway, my point is that instead of riding the coattails of a smarter users’ posts like brett or taxloopholes or memecucker by adding a dumb quip like I often do, I am coerced into questioning my own beliefs and even though sometimes I wish it said with a little more kindness, ranma’s post often make me do my own research, if they haven’t already sent me the dissertation themselves (literally Ranma has never sent me something to read that was less than five pages, not once). Sometimes even when I agree with the subject matter, I’m pushed to think more critically, to understand why beyond gut instinct

contrary to whatever your opinion is, I’m not a Stepin Fetchit blindly Yes-Suh!ing everything that comes out of their mouth and I’ve publicly argued with them multiple times. It’s with them I’m without fear that disagreeing will be held against me or used to disregard anything else I say. Please don’t weaponize my identity, it’s hard enough to voice opinions antithetical to accepted thought in marginalized communities without you aggressively asking what the hell a black and a white could have in common. 

they’re very strangely more knowledgeable about my country than I am. Like about us still having Columbus day because of Italian-American pride, I really had no clue and about the southern strategy which is sadJust one of those types who seems to know something about everything and well-read in a way that makes me feel a bit guilty. Rattling off their favorite Mark Twain books they’ve read when I vaguely remember that Tom Sawyer painted a fence

it’s very difficult to find a friend who enjoys anime/manga and isn’t ashamed about it at this age

reblogs my selfies with comments

Come off anon you coward don’t lmao me in my inbox

[travelworldnetwork]

By Sarah Stodola

4 March 2019

The descent into Fiji’s Nadi International Airport en route from Sydney is a spectacular one. After hundreds upon hundreds of kilometres of nothing but water, a string of barrier reefs announce themselves, made visible by the waves breaking against them. Then, the volcanic islands beyond them, mountainous and green and rocky all at once. Up ahead is Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu looms, too big to take in completely, even from this distance. Twin senses of vastness and remoteness mark this first impression.

It’s a remarkable landscape, and it’s made even more so by the fact that it ushered aviation into the 21st Century. The airspace above the islands was the first to incorporate the Global Positioning System, or as we all commonly know it, GPS, into its aviation system. In doing so, Fiji changed forever the way we get from Point A to distant Point B.

View image of The Pacific island nation of Fiji ushered aviation into the 21st Century (Credit: Credit: Kim Petersen/Alamy)

You may also be interested in: • The village that changed European travel • Where wireless communication was born • How France created the metric system

GPS was developed by the United States military in the 1970s with the intention of improving upon existing navigation procedures. At the time, flight navigation relied largely on radar and visual routing. Since the 1940s, pilots had followed routes determined by land-based ‘beacons’, either in the form of radio signals or visual markers. It was an imperfect system. In Fiji, for example, only five control towers were equipped with a radio beacon, meaning that in 80% of the country’s huge airspace, pilots had no radar to rely on.

Things were trickiest over large bodies of water. With no radio beacons at all, pilots used dead reckoning, a navigational technique that uses the last known location to estimate the current location; and celestial navigation, which references the positions of celestial bodies like the sun, moon or a planet, as they measure up with the visible horizon. Until the second half of the 20th Century, the flight crew on trans-oceanic flights often included what was known as a flight navigator, who relieved the pilot of the considerable burden of navigation.

With GPS, an aircraft’s location could be continually and precisely updated by triangulating data between the satellites and its location on Earth. In 1978, the first of an eventual 24 satellites that would complete the GPS system went into orbit, kicking off a 15-year launch project.

View image of Until the late 20th Century, flight crews often included a flight navigator whose job it was to keep the plane on course (Credit: Credit: Museum of Flight Foundation/Getty Images)

Initially, the US Department of Defense considered charging the public to use its GPS system. But after a Korean airliner flew off course in 1983 and was shot down over the USSR – at the time, Soviet airspace was restricted – President Reagan announced that GPS would be made openly available with the hope of avoiding such mishaps in the future. This decision paved the way for companies to develop equipment for civilian use.

By the end of 1990, 16 GPS satellites were in place and functional, enough for GPS to work in most cases around the world. Individual receivers were now available to the general public from companies like Trimble Navigation. They proved helpful in a military capacity during the Persian Gulf War, and commercial pilots here and there were also using them unofficially. The potential of GPS was becoming apparent. But on the wider platform of commercial aviation, it needed to be tested in a controlled environment before widespread adoption could be on the table.

View image of Fiji's flight navigators often relied on ‘dead reckoning’ to traverse vast stretches of water (Credit: Credit: Jan Jerman/Alamy)

Enter Fiji. With its growing tourism industry increasing demand for flights within its borders, the small island nation was eager to improve its navigation system. As Norman Yee, former Civil Aviation Authority of Fiji (CAAF) chief executive officer, recalls in his memoir, Catching the Wind, a flight operations officer named Jack Snow came to work in Fiji from New Zealand around this time, bringing with him an enthusiasm for the new GPS technology. For the price of equipping just one airport with a radar-based ‘beacon’, it was estimated Fiji would be able to give every aircraft in its domestic fleet a GPS receiver.

And Fiji was well positioned to be the pioneer. For a small nation, its domestic aviation industry was well developed, with 19 commercial airfields, plus seven private airports. And with more than 300 islands spread over more than 500,000 sq km of ocean, testing could span land, sea, mountains, intense tropical weather patterns and long flight routes, all within a single airspace.

Fiji approached the US and its Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to volunteer as the testing ground for GPS navigation. The FAA agreed to fund the upgrade, supplying equipment and technical support in return for the knowledge it could take away from the trial. It would take well over a year to get the system ready; in addition to the installation of the equipment, new flight routes had to be charted, manuals developed and pilots and crew trained.

View image of With a well-developed domestic aviation industry, Fiji was well positioned to be the pioneer in adopting GPS technology (Credit: Credit: Sarah Stodola)

Ilaitia Tabakaucoro was an air traffic controller at the Nadi Airport when the GPS technology was put into place. During my visit to Fiji, I met with him at the airport, where CAAF’s headquarters are located. The main office sits next to the airport’s traffic control tower, perhaps the first in the world to handle commercial aircraft relying on GPS.

It put us right among the big boys as far as aviation is concerned

He remembers the first time he flew in a plane with GPS, with a couple of pilot friends heading from Nadi to a smaller island to the north-east. The plane had recently been equipped with GPS, but no-one was using it yet. They took off and followed the northern shore of Viti Levu until they reached the town of Volivoli – a visual beacon – at which point they veered left over the ocean. They waited to spot their destination island. But something was unusual with the winds that day and the plane was blown further north than expected. It became clear that they were lost up in the air. That’s when Tabakaucoro remembered the GPS receiver and switched it on. Within minutes, they were back on track. This was a revelatory experience for a group accustomed to the old ways of navigating the skies.

The 24th and final satellite came online in late 1993, and in April 1994, Fiji officially became the first country in the world to incorporate GPS into its navigation system. It immediately served the small nation well. “We were quite excited about what we achieved,” Yee told me. “It put us right among the big boys as far as aviation is concerned.” It was a boon to the country’s flourishing tourism industry, as well.

View image of Fiji officially became the first country in the world to incorporate GPS into its navigation system (Credit: Credit: Marc Anderson/Alamy)

Fiji proved that GPS could improve aviation in myriad ways, making it faster, more efficient and safer. In the quarter century since Fiji adopted GPS navigation for its domestic flights, the technology has been adopted around the globe, often with the direct help of Fiji’s new experts. There are also 31 satellites, with most of the original 24 having been retired and replaced.

Weather is no longer the hindrance it once was. “Before, the tendency was to return [to the originating airport] when you hit bad weather,” Tabakaucoro said. “GPS ensured you’d get to the destination.” Even in a storm. Even with terrible visibility.

Planes can now fly for hours over ocean with precise navigation, and more aircraft can safely be in the air at any given time. Instead of 100 miles between any two aircraft flying in the same direction, the officials at CAAF told me, international regulations now require just 23. A plane once had to fly 18 minutes behind the plane ahead of it. Today, that number has been reduced to 10. In addition, flight times have shortened since planes can now fly directly to a destination rather than from beacon to beacon.

View image of Thanks to Fiji, air travel is now faster and safer than ever before (Credit: Credit: Aurora Photos/Alamy)

Before GPS, aircraft were required to fly with enough fuel for a return trip in the event of being unable to land at their destination. After GPS made such a precaution unnecessary, they were able to lose that extra load. A UN report from 1996 concluded that the increased fuel efficiency meant that the GPS receivers in Fiji paid for themselves in just three months.

For all of our complaints about contemporary airports and flying, it might be a comfort to remember that thanks to the little Pacific island nation of Fiji, we are actually getting to our destinations faster and more safely than ever before.

Places That Changed the World is a BBC Travel series looking into how a destination has made a significant impact on the entire planet.

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BBC Travel – Adventure Experience

[radiodespieds]

How much more important is the climate change fight compared to other issues ?

Wowee what a rant. Sorry in advance

The lede

Climate change is, by the numbers, by far the biggest threat humanity has been facing. That makes it more threatening than say, World War I, all of the terrorism attacks put together, the Holocaust, Stalin’s Ukraine famine, the Vietnam war, Leopold II’s colonization of Congo, the Cultural Revolution, the Khmers, etc. The only thing that ever came close in terms of credibility and danger is that time when we didn’t know if nuclear weapon testing would ignite the atmosphere, or if the nuclear arms race would lead to planet-wide destruction on a whim.

How we measure and balance the importance of issues

There is long-standing, widespread philosophical debate on how we are supposed to weigh options against each other when it comes to morality. Some simply try to quantify the amount of suffering / pleasure each option would bring. Some imply that not all suffering / pleasure can be freely exchanged, and that you cannot actively sacrifice something irreducible (like a life) to preserve a perceived greater good (even several threatened lives). Some look to the transgressions of a chosen moral code as absolute and not related to numbers at all. I argue that, even though they might disagree on the course of action, all of these interpretations would conclude that climate change is the scariest thing ever. But for a deeper understanding, let’s see how these can apply to past issues, and how people have reacted.

What’s a reasonable reaction to other issues ?

You don’t need to look too far back to find issues that are worth bickering with family over, voting over, protesting over, radically altering one’s lifestyle over. Only in the last year, billions of people have participated in isolation and social distancing in order to curtail the millions more deaths that the Covid-19 could bring over. Hundreds of thousands have shown up around the world to protest against systemic racism and lethal violence against black people. Hundreds thousand more showed up to defend or bring in the right for women to not die in botched illegal abortions. In a lot more understated fashion, billions of people have kept on putting their safety belt when driving, even though these buckle things are a hassle and why should we have to do anything when it’s the other people who are driving dangerously.

These are big issues, because each individual affected by them might be risking their life, and because there are many such individual affected. That’s the crude way in which we evaluate the importance of topics. And while it definitely leaves some issues out of the limelight every year, what it has brought forward is indeed worth acting over. They are worth making little sacrifices every day, they are worth making big sacrifices over the whole year, and they are worth getting into shouting fights with opposing protesters.

The only thing is, some of the issues that are left out of that limelight, if they were put under some deeper scrutiny, would outweigh the ones in the headlines like a whale is outweighed by the weight of all the emerged landmass on earth.

(To be clear, the other issues aren’t less important in themselves)

(It’s like having been stabbed in the arm and start crying out and twisting because of it, only to realize later that a whole cliff is falling on you, your family and your whole neighborhood. The cliff doesn’t make it that you’re less stabbed in the arm, and while it might shift your focus it’s not going to make the knife less painful or less damaging to your arm tissue.)

How much bigger is climate change compared to these issues ?

Climate change is *pretty* big. And by pretty, I mean extremely ugly. Like 7 billion deaths ugly. Climate change’s damage, and the speed at which this damage is arriving, depends a lot on the famed temperature increase that the news and the international treaties love to mention but not actually do anything about. The current target is to stay under 1.5°C of temperature increase, which would already incur dramatic changes and yet is far from being secured. The more likely scenarios, given current trends, is that we would end up at 2 - 2,5°C.

If we do get there, that would be a problem, because many scientists are finding out that the planet might have some positive feedback loops that would kick into gear at that temperature and accelerate the warming further. There’s currently about 15 of these potential feedback loops that are being monitored, but we can take maybe the most famous one to illustrate how that works : imagine that the temperature does increase ; as a result, massive amounts of ice at the poles start to melt, and release all the gasses that were stored in the water’s solid form. Among these gases, methane goes into the air, significantly increases the greenhouse effect of our atmosphere, trapping more heat, and increasing the global temperature yet again. That’s what we mean by “positive” feedback loop : it’s positive only in the sense that the more it goes, the more it accelerate.

Take all these hidden feedback loops kicking into gear together, and they take us from 2°C... to 4 - 4,5°C.

It’s hard to overstate how bad that is, for everybody. And I do mean EVERYBODY. First world privilege, White privilege, male privilege, etc. all of these headstarts are not gonna get you far when the earth can only sustain 1 billion humans.

No, that’s not a typo : if climate change gets its way, there won’t be 1 billion deaths, there will only be 1 billion people left to survive. If you’re keeping count, at 7.8 billion persons alive right now, that’s at least 6.8 billion deaths. And that’s not taking into account the population increase in that period. It’s also just the number of people that the earth’s resources can sustain and doesn’t count all the lives that would be lost to resource wars, global supply chain breakdowns and generally being in the wrong place whenever the crisis reaches you. 1 billion is not so much the number of survivors as it is the number to which the human population will come back to after the hot, searing dust has settled over our mess.

6.8 billion people is a bit hard to wrap one’s head around. Let’s come back to our other issues to see if we can use them as comparison points. What’s the deadliest event in history that you can think of ?

What about the Holocaust ? You could redo the ‘41-45 Holocaust back to back over and over again, Jewish and non-jewish deaths included, and you would need about 459 of them, or about 1 600 years of non-stop extermination, before you start matching the potential threat of climate change.

What about “Communism deaths“, a famous ill-defined talking point from right-wing advocates ? Figures thrown around are usually in the 100 to 150 million range, mostly comprised of USSR and PRC deaths over their combined 100-year history. You would need about 50 communism eras to catch up to what climate change would do to us. That would take you about 5 000 years of cyclical regime-induced famines and mass killings before you catch up to what could happen in just the next 30 years with 4°C. 

What about pandemics, since they’re so trendy ? The deadliest pandemic for which we have estimates for is the 14th century Black Death in Europe and Asia. Back then, it killed around 200 million people in 5 years. Very good score. It still takes about 34 Black deaths back-to-back to catch up to a climate change wipeout. That’s a 170 years of non-stop, barely contained outbreaks of the plague.

But these are not really current issues anymore, they aren’t very useful to decide for us how we should be acting. The PRC is still going on, but most of it’s death toll happened before the 21st century. (A quick look at their recent history will teach you that they definitely haven’t exactly stopped either, but that’s a whole other topic).

Since we were on the topic of pandemics, why not look at the current one ? It makes little sense to try and do the count for a pandemic that’s not even over yet, especially with all the hidden “excess deaths” that will come into full light only afterwards. But for the sake of using it as a visualization tool for the looming climate crisis, let’s see how it might stack up. The current confirmed death toll is soon to reach 2 million deaths, about 1/100th of a Black Death. That number is not yet decelerating, and is in fact still slightly accelerating, so with no knowledge of how soon the various vaccination campaigns will affect it and by how much, it would be foolish to make an attempt at a reasonable projection. My unreasonable bet, though, is that we are at best sitting at the middle of this confirmed death count, add to that a number of unknown proportion of excess deaths and I’m going to make my bad bet at 5 million worldwide deaths when the pandemic is over. That’s still 40 times before you reach the Black Deaths, and consequently 1 400 times before you reach climate change. Imagine the earth has to relive 2020 a thousand four hundred times.

Or rather, imagine what it feels like if we had to live through ten 2020 at the same time. That means ten times more of the people you know die of covid. The hospitals receive ten times more extreme cases. The Now imagine a hundred 2020 simultaneous epidemics. Remember the mortuary refrigerators on TV ? They’re stacked in towers now, and they’re overflowing with corpses. Now multiply that by ten once again. One in ten people in your neighborhood have disappeared. Now imagine we have to live through this hundred-fold 2020 for 14 years straight. That’s what the years after 2040 are gonna feel like.

And that, I think, is where the kicker is. During this pandemic, we are undergoing what I would qualify as one of the biggest self-imposed lifestyle changes in history (please do send me any other competing example if you can think of any). And yet we’re still telling ourselves we can’t do it, or even a 10th of it, when it comes to climate change. Even though climate change is going to be literally a thousand time more devastating, Even though climate change is most likely going to kill each of us at some point, as well as our children if we have any, and as well as every other person under 50 that doesn’t die in the time in between.

Is climate change really out of the limelight though ?

As of 2021, a lot of people are aware of the existence of climate change. It’s been widely discussed about by researchers since the 1970s. There’s been major international treaties on it since the 1990s. In the US, a 2000 presidential candidate ran a good part of his campaign on it. Environmental activists have made it a major part of their battles for 30 years. So why am I saying it’s out of the limelight ?

Because, when you compare the amount of chatter it gets to the amount of people it’s about to kill, the underestimation of the problem is appalling. Treaties keep on missing their already widely insufficient targets. Political campaigns keep on placing climate action as a side-piece to their program. Scientists yell their heart out that we’re heading for the wall, and we all cover our eyes and keep our feet on the gas.

Compare the amount of publicity other issues get to their impact. Out of all the issues that get more coverage today than climate change, how many are likely to literally destroy the human world ?

Again, this doesn’t mean the issues are less important than they are portrayed to be. But how exactly are they going to matter if everybody they affect is going to die in 30 years ? Given that a climate apocalypse would render all efforts of all current and past causes moot, you would think that people would be paying attention. How about if you’re “not into politics at all” ? You would think that people who don’t yet participate in any cause would maybe consider this one, given that it’s about to kill them and all their children.

In any case, climate change is getting slightly more coverage every year, but compared to the actual size of the threat we might as well be looking at it through welding masks.

What’s the reasonable reaction to climate change then ?

It’s hard to capture exactly what would be a good response to this, because it’s hard to compare it to other stakes that individual have to deal with throughout their life. Whatever decision you have to make, side you have to choose, demeanor you have to craft, you’re rarely dealing with the end of your life if you get it wrong. You’re even more rarely (hopefully) dealing with the end of all human life. So comparing the stakes and asking “how much more involvement should climate change get over this” the answer is always going to be “More”. That in itself is kinda scary, but it doesn’t even give you a good idea of how much more, how much more extreme behavior would be appropriate.

So really, what’s not an acceptable level of intensity in the face of climate change ? Try to ask this question in earnest and you’ll realize how extreme things could be going and still be a reasonable answer to climate change.

I’ll say this : think of any intense activist, even if you don’t personally know one. Somebody that devotes a good part of their life to it, going to major protests, talking about it on a regular basis, donating to campaigns, donating to NGOs tackling field issues, voting based on their engagement, shifting their way of life in some places etc. Imagine they would be doing all that for the cause of climate change. Would it be too extreme an answer to what they are battling ? Which, if you remember well, is the death of 7 billion people ?

Obviously not. Counting the deaths makes the question almost moot. It even appears that their response is far below the emotionally-appropriate response. If you and everybody you know is about to have their life cut decades short, it doesn’t feel enough to just be smiling at an annual rally. What’s appropriate regarding your own feelings would go into pretty aggressive and violent territory pretty quickly. Fortunately, that’s not taking into account what would work, and that has to be a part of the reasonable answer as well. But for this long-ass rant, I just want to settle how intense you would be allowed to go if you had to.

I fail to see a clear upper limit. When your life is in immediate danger, pretty much any behavior becomes appropriate, whatever gets you out of danger quickly. Here your life is not in immediate danger, you still have around 30 years to spare, but it is in unequivocal danger. You will die. And it’s not like you were the only one in that life-threatening situation : if a stranger is about to die, any action that you might take to remove them from harm would be welcome and hailed as heroic. If a loved one was about to die, then all actions become obviously acceptable. Here 7 billion strangers and all your loved ones are about to die, so at what should we be stopping ?

This might be starting to scare you the other way rather than helping.  What is this person going to be asking that I do ? Am I gonna be asked to commit crimes ? Should I expect eco-conscious people to be committing amateur terrorism now ? So I want to take that time to remind you of the deep reason why we would be fighting climate change. We’re fighting climate change to prevent lives to be lost and way of lives to be wrecked. If the fight itself is putting lives in danger, what’s the point ? That would be like cutting the tree to escape a falling branch.

My point is, whatever you think you’re doing for climate change now, it’s time to admit it’s not enough. You will have to go all-in. You will have to make the craziest activists up their game just to compete with you. You’re gonna have to be comfortable with doing and saying stuff people will hate you for. You’re gonna have to show up. You’re gonna have to move where your money goes. You’re gonna have to deprive yourself of some stuff. You’re gonna have to try to deprive other people of some stuff. Some of it won’t be easy, it will feel bad, it will be tough to pull off, it will take time and effort. But you’ll do it because if you don’t, everybody you know will die young.

See you soon.

[we-arnold-lockshin-blog]

Insights Into The Secret Political Police 33

Why do the CIA-FSB keep coming after Arnold Lockshin? (1)

To begin with, the US imperialist Gestapo and their merciless lackeys aim to eliminate all opponents, even potential ones.  As a matter of principle.

To Hell with “democracy”!

I have to emphatically affirm that the CIA-FSB do in fact keep coming after me.  The multitude of contrived and acute – not infrequently, murderous – provocations thrown my way cannot be explained away as accidental.

Moreover, in this series I have not given a comprehensive accounting of everything that has been maliciously contrived for me.

In addition, I have undoubtedly eluded many additional hostile thrusts by avoidance and circumspection: not using the telephone, not communicating intentions or plans; posting on the internet only for political-ideological discussion, living a modest and quiet lifestyle...

I have had several decades of experience in fighting off and studying the American and then the American-Russian neo-fascist secret political police.  All of this has allowed me to unearth these insidious monsters – even under harsh and grotesquely one-sided conditions which give virtually all the advantages to the enemy.  The American and American-Russian secret political police are fairly desperate to ensure that my thoughts are quashed and do not reach the general public.

“In the U.S., it has been argued that the 'errors' and provocations we faced were simply chance events that that we misinterpreted.  As for the major incidents of harassment and terror we confronted, these were clearly vicious and totally abnormal...

“It is impossible to conclude that the multiple incidents we had to face were simply bad luck.  Such common sense evaluations are important. As we probed deeper into this abnormal behavior, it became evident that not only particular individuals, but more importantly, groups of people  were involved...

“As the FBI works domestically, so the CIA operates in foreign countries...” (Silent Terror, pp 93-95)

The fundamental modus operandi of the modern-day Gestapo in the United States (CIA, FBI, NSA etc,) and in the USSR-Russia (KGB and then the FSB) are identical.  Nothing accidental.  In these countries the source is the same: the monstrous national-international US lie, spy, criminal, provocation, subversion and regime change, terror, drug-runnning, torture, war and mass murder apparatus – the US secret political police.  

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The American and American-Russian political police continue to harass/torment me and, if possible  to “quietly” (preferably) kill me because I know too much.  Put aside what I write; the fact that I am still alive and speaking out is prima facie evidence that “Lockshin knows too much.”

Without the knowledge I have gained over the decades, I could not have survived.  I seriously doubt whether more than 0.1 % of the population would have been able to remain alive and counteract all that has been viciously concocted against me.

I will continue to face this binational vicious assault for as long as I live.

The assault against me assumes greater urgency due to the circumstances of my forced exile.  Back 30-plus years ago, the American-Russian Gestapo plan called for giving Arnold Lockshin national publicity (sections 4-8 in this series).  While I was an unknown (except to the secret political police!) in the US, that is not the case in Russia. No doubt, with the passage of time and the purposeful exclusion of me from the mass media (with the rare exceptions noted in earlier sections), much of Lockshin's repute (or ill repute) has worn off.  

But my case is so unique and persistent that it is virtually impossible to totally wipe me off the map.

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Перед нами -  коварный и опасный мошенник, расист, лжец и неофашист Дональд Трамп, порочный Конгресс, нацистские ФБР - ЦРУ,  кровавые милитаристы США и НАТО >>> а также и лживые, вредоносные американские С��»И».

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Правительство США жестоко нарушало мои права человека при проведении кампании террора, которая заставила меня покинуть свою родину и получить политическое убежище в СССР. См. книгу «Безмолвный террор — История политических гонений на семью в США» - "Silent Terror: One family's history of political persecution in the United States» - http://arnoldlockshin.wordpress.com

Правительство США еще нарушает мои права, в течении 14 лет отказывается от выплаты причитающейся мне пенсии по старости.  Властители США воруют пенсию!!  

ФСБ - Федеральная служба «безопасности» России - вслед за позорным, предавшим страну предшественником КГБ, выполняет приказы секретного, кровавого хозяина (boss) - американского ЦРУ (CIA). Среди таких «задач» -  мне запретить выступать в СМИ и не пропускать большинства отправленных мне комментариев.   А это далеко не всё...

Арнольд Локшин, политэмигрант из США

BANNED – ЗАПРЕЩЕНО!!

ЦРУ - ФСБ забанили все мои посты и комментарии в Вконтакте!

… и в Макспарке!

[noemi-jakubowska-blog]

With a look at history.

To understand better the dynamics going on in the world from the global perspective in my research I came upon a really good book called ‘Global Sociology’ by Robin Cohen and Paul Kennedy (2017). It is a good source of information concerning the impact of capitalism and neoliberalism on state and global economic and politics as well as topics of migration.

Here I include the table of contents for the book which summarises what topics are described in it:

https://www.macmillanihe.com/resources/CW%20resources%20(by%20Author)/C/Cohen-and-Kennedy/contents.pdf

Also the invaluable text on migration is ‘Migration (Key Ideas in Geography)’ by Michael Samers (2016). 

I also had a look on the work by Sputnik Photos from their “Lost Territory’ project which is also available on Lensculture: 

https://www.lensculture.com/articles/sputnik-photos-lost-territories-in-the-shadow-of-the-ussr

Their work touches on the same topic of post communist states and the impact of that history on current life reality and culture.

I have found this video which highlights some aspects of post communism and the problems it created:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTXHtos6Dz4

Some experience of the post communism in Poland by the citizens and mention of the generation that didn’t have to fight for anything:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei2UjQWZgcU

I also had a look at Mark Power’s ‘Die Mauer Ist Weg!’ which was published for the 25th anniversary of the fall of Berlin Wall and presents photos taken around the accompanying events. The book was designed by Ania Nałęcka:

https://vimeo.com/116742334

There is also very interesting piece of review on it at the ASX website:

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2015/03/mark-power-die-mauer.html

There was a very spot on issue of BJP on Revolution which features Rafał Milach’s new, quite innovative in design, book ‘The First March of Gentlemen’.

It also features a very interesting interview with Boris Mikhailov who talks about the societal consequences of the fall of Soviet Union.

This brings to my mind the work of Mladen Stilinovič- Croatian conceptual artist, and his text The Praise of Laziness’ which since the reading of it resonates with me indefinitely. Upon reading it I felt like he describes in words the certain kind of dissonance that I feel especially in nowadays creative/art industries. 

MLADEN STILINOVIC

THE PRAISE OF LAZINESS

As an artist, I learned from both East (socialism) and West (capitalism). Of course, now when the borders and political systems have changed, such an experience will be no longer possible. But what I have learned from that dialogue, stays with me. My observation and knowledge of Western art has lately led me to a conclusion that art cannot exist... any more in the West. This is not to say that there isn't any. Why cannot art exist any more in the West? The answer is simple. Artists in the West are not lazy. Artists from the East are lazy; whether they will stay lazy now when they are no longer Eastern artists, remains to be seen. Laziness is the absence of movement and thought, dumb time - total amnesia. It is also indifference, staring at nothing, non-activity, impotence. It is sheer stupidity, a time of pain, futile concentration. Those virtues of laziness are important factors in art. Knowing about laziness is not enough, it must be practised and perfected. Artists in the West are not lazy and therefore not artists but rather producers of something... Their involvement with matters of no importance, such as production, promotion, gallery system, museum system, competition system (who is first), their preoccupation with objects, all that drives them away form laziness, from art. Just as money is paper, so a gallery is a room.

Artists from the East were lazy and poor because the entire system of insignificant factors did not exist. Therefore they had time enough to concentrate on art and laziness. Even when they did produce art, they knew it was in vain, it was nothing.

Artists from the West could learn about laziness, but they didn't. Two major 20th century artists treated the question of laziness, in both practical and theoretical terms: Duchamp and Malevich.

Duchamp never really discussed laziness, but rather indifference and non-work. When asked by Pierre Cabanne what had brought him most pleasure in life, Duchamp said: "First, having been lucky. Because basically I've never worked for a living. I consider working for a living slightly imbecilic from an economic point of view. I hope that some day we'll be able to live without being obliged to work. Thanks to my luck, I was able to manage without getting wet".

Malevich wrote a text entitled "Laziness - the real truth of mankind" (1921). In it he criticized capitalism because it enabled only a small number of capitalists to be lazy, but also socialism because the entire movement was based on work instead of laziness. To quote: "People are scared of laziness and persecute those who accept it, and it always happens because no one realizes laziness is the truth; it has been branded as the mother of all vices, but it is in fact the mother of life. Socialism brings liberation in the unconscious, it scorns laziness without realizing it was laziness that gave birth to it; in his folly, the son scorns his mother as a mother of all vices and would not remove the brand; in this brief note I want to remove the brand of shame from laziness and to pronounce it not the mother of all vices, but the mother of perfection". Finally, to be lazy and conclude: there is no art without laziness.

Work is a desease - Karl Marx.

Work is a shame - Vlado Martek.

From: http://www.guelman.ru/xz/english/XX22/X2207.HTM

I find Mladen’s text strong because it recognises the forced creation in contrast to free flowing ideas born without pressure for presence and productivity. It’s also the creative limitation that it brings with itself- the need for production, the need for sale- it becomes a censorship in a way. If you can’t produce what you want to talk about then that’s sad.