#nuclear was a buzzword in his concept

[70roxy07]

I LOVE HIM

*traumatizes him*

It's one in the morning I'm gonna die tomorrow

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Should ex-second generation members be asked to forgive their abusers?

                       Updated January 27, 2022

Concerning abuse, the elephant in the room was Sun Myung Moon. He was the master manipulator and abuser. As someone said, “shit rolls downhill from the top”. A good place to start is to look at Sun Myung Moon’s behavior and “the fruit of his tree”, his family, his organizations and his families’ financial empires. Moon hated and abused the Japanese. Moon said he could never forgive the Japanese. How can Moon himself be worthy of being forgiven? His legacy of the destruction of families and individuals in Japan continues under Hak Ja Han. (The present UC regime in Brazil may also be harsh.)

Jesus had a thousand times more love and compassion than Sun Myung Moon.

Moon and Hak Ja Han do not honor a Christian God. Theirs is more like an angry Korean volcano-nim with some shamanism thrown in. See investigations HERE and HERE.

The Moon / Hak Ja Han families primarily run businesses. Follow the money. A tax-exempt religious façade is very convenient.

Almost everyone wants “World Peace”. It is an appealing buzzword. Have the Moons achieved world peace? Anywhere?

What is the content of the Moons’ “Cheon Il Guk Constitutions”? It seems there would not be much freedom or peace for any citizens of a possible future Cheon Il Guk. The realm of CIG is not recommended for the second gen, or anyone.

The UC organization, including CAUSA, donated money to support the Bolivian “cocaine coup” and worked with the Nazi “Butcher of Lyons”. They shipped thousands of CAUSA books to Bolivia, then had to beat a hasty retreat when the cocaine flowed into the US doing terrible harm to many citizens.

In November 2019 the UC President of IAPP (the International Association of Parliamentarians for Peace) was prosecuted by the FBI in New York for money laundering and drug smuggling.

Moon and his Washington Times raised money to fight against the legitimately elected government of Nicaragua. Thousands of innocent people died or were harmed for life. Ronald Reagan and the CIA even mined a Nicaraguan harbor. Bo Hi Pak praised numerous right wing dictators who had tortured and murdered thousands in Central and South America. Dropping living people into the ocean from helicopters was one regime’s disposal method. Children were taken from mothers and given to childless regime leaders – then the parents were murdered. These are the people Bo Hi Pak and CAUSA and the Moon organization supported. One regime torturer became a leader in the Unification Church of Uruguay. See investigation HERE.

Sun Myung Moon helped North Korea with technology for launching nuclear missiles from submarines. See investigation HERE.

Where is world peace and justice? It will never be found under any of the Moon family.

Many second gen are damaged because they are the fruit of Moon’s often disastrous matchings of unsuitable people who were then guilted/shamed into staying together.

For ex-members to be liberated they need to understand that almost every single one of them are morally superior to, and have more integrity than Sun Myung Moon ever did. That is a good place to start towards healing.

Then understand the process of manipulation and the erosion of self-esteem done by Moon’s church. Jen Kiaba (UC second gen) gives an excellent introduction. LINK

Some look at everything through the lens of the Divine Principle. Let’s use that flawed DP book to look at the life of the leader.

First Blessing The Divine Principle is toxic because it promotes and idea of perfection. No one will ever be perfect, but if you are a leader who wants to guilt or shame underlings, it is a useful concept. Sun Myung Moon lied thousands of times. He claimed authority through meeting Jesus when he was 15, 16 or 17 at Easter but maybe it was another time, his birthday, he says. He has told the story in so many different ways, it seems to have been made up, probably by using a combination of the experiences of Lee Yong-do and Kim Baek-moon whose stories have some credibility. (Moon knew about Lee’s life, and he studied under Kim.) Moon’s story has no credibility. See investigation HERE.

Moon lied about carrying Pak Chung-hwa for 600 miles from Pyongyang to the south of Korea. HERE

Moon lied about going to Waseda University in Japan. HERE

Moon lied about being a virgin until he was 40 and married Hak Ja Han. HERE

Moon promised to give money to an orphanage in Guyana and got lots of good press. He never gave the money.

Moon had no integrity. He was a liar and a deceiver. He did not fulfill the first blessing.

Second Blessing Sun Myung Moon had six ‘wives’ and had sex, according to at least two of his own children and other witnesses, with hundreds of women. One woman testified on national Japanese TV, another was Sam Park’s mother. In North Korea Moon was jailed for adultery in 1946 and bigamy in 1948. Moon’s family is a disaster. Hak Ja Han threatened to divorce her husband. Moon’s children were abusive and one committed suicide. Nansook Hong shines a light on some of the many dark places in his family. LINK

Moon messed up the second blessing more than most people ever could.

Third Blessing Sun Myung Moon said, “live for the sake of others”. He had the “Original Palace” built by the lake at Cheongpyeong and then another one built up the hill. The second palace cost one billion dollars. Then he had another palace built on Geomun Island off the south coast and the Moons have other luxury mansions and apartments around Korea. Moon instructed Kwak Chung-hwan to buy him 84 luxury homes around the world. When Moon went fishing, he threw his drink cans and bottles and other things into the ocean. He watched them float away. Moon never cared about the creation. (Following Moon’s example, on Ocean Church most trash was thrown in the ocean.), etc.

Some say the world is fallen? How? In what way is it fallen? Was there ever a literal Adam and Eve? Was there a sexual fall? Sun Myung Moon’s explanation of the fall does not make any sense at all because the Bible states Adam and Eve were married before the Fall. And Lucifer was already fallen before he “seduced Eve”. See Genesis. The Biblical ‘Fall’ is an allegorical tale, but a sexual interpretation opens the door for Sun Myung Moon to have lots of sex. LINK

How was the original sin transmitted from the “fall” to present generations? Since there is no such thing as original sin, it does not matter.

The Divine Principle refers to a “foundation of faith” and “a foundation of substance”. Sounds like jargon or perhaps “loaded language”. Is it connected to the Cain-Abel mind-fuck theology? Absolutely obey your leader, who is in the Abel position. Know you are in the Cain position and don’t have murderous Cain-type thoughts.

“Absolute faith, absolute love, absolute obedience” is a Unification Church mantra.

The Divine Principle is an instrument for shaming, guilting and manipulating – and recruiting and retaining members. There is no liberation in the Divine Principle. Only enslavement to serve and worship the new “Emperor of the Universe” – Sun Myung Moon.

Sun Myung Moon stole all the ideas for the Divine Principle and had Eu Hyo-won, Choi Won-pok, Kim Young-oon and others systematize the book. Within its own circular logic, the Divine Principle is clever – but it adds nothing useful to human knowledge.

The parallels of history do not add up. LINK

The 1952 edition of the Divine Principle stated that Jesus was married, but that changed in the 1957 edition. LINK The Divine Principle is a human concoction which morphed to suit Moon’s agenda. There was never any divine revelation.

God is not an impotent being who needs to be rescued by Sun Myung Moon who himself does not embody parental love. Just look at his family.

The four or more types of sin itemized in the Divine Principle are all hokum. They are in the DP for the purpose of manipulation. See it for what it is. No one should not be guilt tripped through the DP. The UC lecturers pile on guilt and shame when they come to teach chapter two, the so-called Fall of Man.

No responsibility should be put on the second generation to forgive their abusers. They need to be helped to discover how they were made to feel guilt and shame, and to be supported and embraced on their journey to rebuilding their self-esteem as they move towards liberation. Their painful experiences may never be forgotten (but they should be recognized and acknowledged). The second gen need to be heard. Hopefully the pain will lessen as the years pass. For victims of rape, it is doubly hard. For the first and second gen who died in the Unification Church it is too late. For those on the way out of the matrix, love and time will help the healing.

It is important to know Sun Myung Moon, the founder, and to really study his behavior. His words may now ring very hollow. His teachings do not bring enlightenment or liberation.

How well do you know your Moon?

__________________________________________

Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church accused of involvement in drugs trade in Paraguay        The Irish Times   October 14, 2004

Sun Myung Moon’s theology used to control members

Sun Myung Moon makes me feel ashamed to be Korean

The six ‘wives’ of Sun Myung Moon

[terfslying]

Extremist Traits & TERFs

 The traits are taken from (here), which is a list of extremist traits by Laird Wilcox. Most examples are from interactions with people on this blog, because I’ve got to limit myself to something.

Character Assassination

“Extremists often attack the character of an opponent rather than deal with the facts or issues raised. They will question motives, qualifications, past associations, alleged values, personality, looks, mental health, and so on as a diversion from the issues under consideration”

TERF Examples: Character attacks on Susie Green, of Mermaids UK, to attempt to imply that her motive for Mermaids UK is to force her own child to transition. & Claiming Mermaids UK was a significant part of forcing a young UK child to be trans, when in fact he was being abused by his mother and Mermaids UK only ever were contacted by phone by the mother, and were not otherwise involved in any way.

Name-Calling and Labelling

“Extremists are quick to resort to epithets (racist, subversive, pervert, hate monger, nut, crackpot, […] and so on) to label and condemn opponents in order to divert attention from their arguments and to discourage others from hearing them out. These epithets don’t have to be proved to be effective; the mere fact they have been said is often enough”

TERF Examples: "pedophile apologist”, “infertile, fat white loser”, “rapist” (all directed at me!)

Irresponsible Sweeping Generalisations

“Extremists tend to make sweeping claims or judgements on little or no evidence, and they have a tendency to confuse similarity with sameness […] they assume that because two (or more) things, events, or persons are alike in some respects, they must be alike in most respects.”

TERF Examples: “trans women are just men”; use of crimes by cis men to attempt to demonstrate trans criminality

Inadequate Proof For Assertions

“Extremists tend to be very fuzzy about what constitutes proofs, and they also tend to get caught up in logical fallacies […] they tend to project wished-for conclusions and to exaggerate the significance of information that confirms their beliefs while derogating or ignoring information that contradicts them.”

TERF Examples: “This research is reliable because I agree with it, and I don’t care that the authors have deliberately published politically motivated anti-gay propaganda studies before”

Advocacy of Double Standards

“Extremists generally tend to judge themselves or their interest groups in terms of their intentions, which they tend to view very generously, and others by their acts, which they tend to view very critically. They would like you accept their assertions on faith, but they demand proof of yours. They tend to engage in special pleading on behalf of themselves or their interests, usually because of some alleged special status, past circumstances, or present disadvantage.”

TERF Example: Refusal to criticise WoLF + Julia Beck’s association with the Heritage Foundation due to presumed good intentions

Tendency to View Their Opponents and Critics As Essentially Evil

“To the extremist, opponents hold opposing positions because they are bad people […] not merely because they simply disagree, see the matter differently, have competing interests, or are perhaps even mistaken.”

TERF Example: I deserve to “rot in hell” because I don’t agree with TERFs

Manichaean Worldview

“Extremists have a tendency to see the world in terms of absolutes of good and evil, for them or against them, with no middle ground or intermediate positions. All issues are ultimately moral issues of right and wrong, with the ‘right’ position coinciding with their interests.”

TERF Example: Willingness to use and spread sources from the alt-right with no regard for the source, since if it coincides with their interest, it’s ‘right’

Advocacy Of Censorship or Repression of Their Opponents or Critics

“They may include a very active campaign to keep opponents from media access [… or] actually lobby for legislation against speaking, writing, teaching, or instructive ‘subversive’ or forbidden information or opinions.”

TERF Example: Pressure to isolate young trans teens from media access

Tend to Identify Themselves In Terms Of Who Their Enemies Are

“[E]xtremists may become emotionally bound to their opponents, who are often competing extremists themselves. Because they tend to view their enemies as evil and powerful, they tend, perhaps subconsciously, to emulate them, adopting to same tactics to a certain degree.”

TERF Example: "TRA’s”, “libfems”, “transcult”; emulating anti-feminist tactics by joining groups like Hands Across The Aisle to directly partner with anti-abortion, anti-feminist conservatives and divide-and-conquer

Tendency towards argument by intimidation

“Extremists tend to frame their arguments in such a way as to intimidate others into accepting their premises and conclusions. […] They use a lot of moralising, pontificating, and tend to be very judgemental. This shrill, harsh rhetorical style allows them to keep their opponents and critics on the defensive, cuts off troublesome lines of argument, and allows them to define the perimeters of debate.”

TERF Example: Using the words “trans women” and “literal pedophiles and rapists” interchangeably in arguments

Use of Slogans, Buzzwords, and Thought-Stopping Cliches

“For many extremists, shortcuts in thinking and in reasoning matters out seem to be necessary in order to avoid or evade awareness of troublesome facts and compelling counter-arguments. Extremists generally behave in ways that reinforce their prejudices and alter their own consciousness in a manner that bolsters their false confidence and sense of self-righteousness.”

TERF Examples: “Peak trans”, “autogynephiles”, the bathroom & prison rapist tropes, to discredit trans women; “handmaids” and “libfems” to discredit cis women who disagree with them

Assumption of Moral or Other Superiority over Others

“Most obvious would be claims of general racial or ethnic superiority […] Less obvious are claims of ennoblement because of alleged victimhood,”

TERF Examples: Expanding real victimisation of women to include historically inaccurate concepts, such as ‘witch hunts were methods of controlling women’s knowledge’ to increase superiority; complete disownment of any moral responsibility for violence perpetrated or encouraged by TERFs

Doomsday Thinking

“Extremists often predict dire or catastrophic consequences from a situation or from failure to follow a specific course, and they tend to exhibit a kind of ‘crisis-mindedness’. It can be a Communist takeover, a Nazi revival, nuclear war, earthquakes (… etc. …) Whatever it is, it’s just around the corner unless we follow their program and listen to the special insight and wisdom, to which only the truly enlightened have access.”

TERF Example: Fair Play For Women’s unrealistic theory that if Gender Recognition Certificates were easier to get, women’s prisons would be flooded with trans sex offenders instantly.

Belief that it’s okay to do bad things in service of a good cause

“Extremists may deliberately lie, distort, misquote, slander, defame, or libel their opponents or critics, engage in censorship or repression, or undertake violence in “special cases”.”

TERF Example: Wetmeadow ‘distorting’ my post on the cotton ceiling to imply that I was saying same-sex attraction is a mental illness, to discredit me.

Emphasis on Emotional Response (and less on logical analysis and reasoning)

“Extremist have an unspoken reverence for propaganda, which they may call ‘education’ or ‘consciousness-raising’. Symbolism plays an exaggerated role in their thinking and they tend to think imprecisely and metamorphically.”

TERF Example: ‘consciousness-raising’ has a long history in extreme radfem spaces; in recent online spaces it’s more often called ‘peak trans’.

Hypersensitivity and Vigilance

“Extremists perceive hostile innuendo in even casual comments; imagine rejection and antagonism concealed in honest disagreement and dissent; […] Although few extremists are clinically paranoid, many of them adopt a paranoid style with its attendant hostility and distrust.”

TERF Example: Exposinglesphob’s entire blog

Problems Tolerating Ambiguity and Uncertainty

“[T]he ideologies and belief systems to which extremists tend to attach themselves often represent grasping for certainty in an uncertain world, or an attempt to achieve absolute security in an environment that is naturally unpredictable […] Extremists exhibit a kind of risk-aversiveness that compels them to engage in controlling and manipulative behaviour, both on a personal level and in a political context.”

TERF Example: “What do you mean, someone’s gender or sex might be ambiguous?? Woman is a biological term for adult human females, it’s simple”

Inclination towards “GroupThink”

“‘Groupthink’ involves a tendency to conform to group norms and to preserve solidarity and concurrence at the expense of distorting members’ observations of facts, conflicting evidence, and disquieting observations [… Extremists may] only talk with one another, read material that reflects their own views, and can be almost phobic about the ‘propaganda’ of the ‘other side’. The result is a deterioration in reality-testing, rationality, and moral judgement.”

TERF Example: Any source I give is bad, even if they’re genuinely trying to say that wikipedia is ‘good research’.

Tendency to Personalise Hostility

“Extremists often wish for the personal bad fortune of their ‘enemies’ and celebrate when it occurs.”

TERF Example: The fact that pretty much every person who isn’t a TERF and who discourses has been told to kill themselves.

Extremists often feel that the system is no good unless they win

“If public opinion turns against them, it was because of ‘brainwashing’. If their followers become disillusioned, it’s because of ‘sabotage’.”

TERF Example: Ex-terfs like myself either are just too dumb to understand radical feminism, or we never even existed in the first place.

[bharatiyamedia-blog]

India's overseas coverage for the following 5 years: From counter-insurgency ties to massive investments, New Delhi should maintain Sri Lanka heat to maintain China at bay

http://tinyurl.com/yxac3pym Editor’s notice: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tour of the Maldives is his first worldwide go to after having taken oath for the second time. His 2014 swearing-in ceremony featured leaders from SAARC nations as particular invitees, whereas in 2019, it was the BIMSTEC leaders and people from Kyrgyzstan and Mauritius who had been in attendance, underlining the significance the prime minister locations on worldwide relations. That is the seventh in a series of articles that appears at key overseas coverage targets for the Modi authorities because it appears to be like to the following 5 years. *** Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s transient stopover in Sri Lanka would have in any other case gone unnoticed if not for the sturdy symbolism it exuded. Modi was the primary overseas chief to go to the island nation after the lethal Easter Sunday bombings. Furthermore, his unscheduled go to to St Anthony’s Church, one of many websites of the bombings, signalled India’s assist for Sri Lanka’s battle in opposition to terrorism. That Modi selected Sri Lanka – and Maldives – for his first worldwide tour after re-election underlined India’s renewed push for higher involvement within the Indian Ocean Area (IOR). Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits St Anthony’s Church, in Colombo, Sunday, 9 June, 2019. PTI Bilateral ties beneath Modi 1.0 However, 5 years again, bilateral relations between the 2 neighbours had been looking at long-term stagnation. Former president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s alliance with the Chinese language (learn Hambantota and so forth.) and the resultant of him being pro-China didn’t go down properly with the Indian overseas coverage institution. In truth, Rajapaksa had an explanation for the breakdown in relations after Modi’s victory. “Sadly, the working relationship that existed between my authorities and the outgoing authorities didn’t roll over to the brand new authorities fashioned in 2014. Lack of communication between each events appears to have led to this case,” Rajapaksa claimed throughout an occasion in February 2019. This will clarify why Modi waited till March 2015 to embark on his first tour to Sri Lanka. By then, Sri Lanka had elected Maithripala Sirisena as president. Sirisena, in flip, appointed “pro-India” Ranil Wickremasinghe as prime minister. Curiously, Sirisena selected India for his first State go to in February 2015. When Modi paid a return journey a month later, he turned the primary prime minister since Rajiv Gandhi to go to the island nation. India’s relations with Sri Lanka beneath the Sirisena-Wickremasinghe dispensation seemingly improved. Eager to offset China’s ‘debt lure’, Sri Lanka turned to India for investments, which grabbed the chance to counter Beijing’s affect within the Indian Ocean neighbourhood. The primary trace of a rejuvenated partnership beneath the brand new dispensation was seen throughout Sirisena’s 2015 go to when each nations signed a civilian nuclear deal. Since then, India has solely bolstered its financial profile in Sri Lanka by committing to speculate billions in infrastructure initiatives throughout the island. India apparently additionally underplayed the “Tamil minority card”, out of worry of pushing the Sinhala-majority nation-state additional into the arms of Beijing. Thus, aside from as soon as in 2015, when Modi urged “full implementation of the 13th Modification and going past it”, India largely soft-peddled on the Lankan Tamil difficulty. Concurrent to its financial pursuits within the island nation, India additionally utilised its 2,500-year-long civilisational ties to its fullest. Buddhism, consequently, turned the frequent hyperlink between the 2 nations. As an illustration, India employed an out-of-the-box concept of hosting Lankan navy officers in Bodh Gaya in 2018. However India’s relations with Sri Lanka are usually not with out their peculiarities. The bilateral relationship has all the time confronted a “false impression drawback”, owing to their incomparable geographical sizes and India’s shut hyperlinks with the Tamil ethnic minority. Maybe, the worry of India turning Sri Lanka right into a “consumer state” might have prompted friction between Sirisena and Wickremasinghe. Notably, a 2018 report claimed that Sirisena expressed considerations over India’s involvement in upgrading the Colombo container terminal. Nevertheless, the federal government later denied any such arguments between the 2 leaders. That Colombo mistook New Delhi’s intelligence inputs forward of the Easter Sunday bombings as a bid to pit the nation in opposition to Pakistan was a proof of the “false impression drawback”. India-Sri Lanka relations beneath Modi 2.0 Sri Lanka sits on the centre of a geopolitical tug of warfare between India, China and america. The explanations are usually not straightforward to overlook. Sri Lanka is strategically positioned within the Indian Ocean Area, just some miles away from the regional large – India. With not less than 4 pure harbours – Trincomalee, Hambantota, Galle and Colombo – the island nation may probably function a maritime logistics hub. Notably, two-thirds of the oil and container visitors passes six to 10 nautical miles south of Sri Lanka yearly. The seemingly optimistic relationship that India constructed with the Sirisena-Wickremasinghe dispensation has in impact laid the inspiration for India’s sustained engagement for the following 5 years. It’s now as much as India to scale up the connection and take it to the following stage. For that to occur, India should worker four-pronged strategy in the direction of Sri Lanka: financial diplomacy, SAGAR doctrine, cultural diplomacy and counter-terrorism. Financial Diplomacy: Sri Lanka supplies the proper platform for India to good the artwork of financial diplomacy. India stays the one largest buying and selling companion of the island nation. “India is among the many high 4 traders in Sri Lanka with cumulative investments of over US$ 1 billion since 2003,” says a 2016 Ministry of Exterior Affairs report. With an FTA already in place, India should push for the early passage of the Financial and Know-how Co-operation Settlement (ETCA). Not solely wouldn’t it assist India to realize a robust foothold within the Sri Lankan market, but in addition assist Sri Lanka change into a hub for FDI. Thus, the ETCA may function a win-win for each nations, serving to India rating diplomatic brownie factors over China’s “debt-trap diplomacy”. SAGAR doctrine: Traditionally, the Indian Ocean Area has been an irrefutable a part of India’s “manifest future”. With the specter of Chinese language domination looming massive over the area, India should totally utilise the doctrine, which goals to maintain the IOR ‘peaceful and secure’. India’s steady investments into constructing Sri Lanka’s infrastructure, together with the strategically vital Colombo and Trincomalee ports, matches properly into the doctrine. Finishing the initiatives – though India is enterprise lots of them in partnerships – on time would resolve whether or not India stays a critical participant on the island. This should change into a precedence as the standard retort is that India’s initiatives often finish in bureaucratic limbo whereas China is constant in its supply. Maritime safety coordination, the important thing to the SAGAR doctrine, have to be strengthened with Sri Lanka so as to shield India’s maritime pursuits. Curiously, each nations are already a part of the 2011 India-Sri Lanka-Maldives trilateral, which goals to keep up maritime safety in IOR. Cultural diplomacy: India should construct upon the well-established cultural – particularly its historical Buddhist heritage – ties it shares with Sri Lanka. Cultural diplomacy would profit India economically too, since lakhs of Buddhist devotees go to the “Buddhist pilgrimage circuit” in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The projection of soppy energy would seemingly assist improve India’s picture within the eyes of the Sinhala majority. Counter-terrorism: Within the aftermath of the 21 April bombings in Colombo and the spectre of Islamic State looming massive over South Asia – India, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bangladesh, counter-terrorism would as soon as once more change into a key component in India-Sri Lanka ties. At present, there appears to be no bilateral mechanism in the intervening time for regional safety. As a substitute, reviving the NSA-level trilateral talks between Maldives, India and Sri Lanka will assist New Delhi deliver renewed focus into the IOR. With Wickremasinghe requesting India’s assist in counter-terrorism coaching, the time is ripe for New Delhi to deepen its involvement with the Colombo’s safety equipment. Want for India to claim itself in IOR Strategic autonomy is the buzzword typically related to the Modi period overseas coverage. It denotes “the flexibility of a state to pursue its nationwide pursuits and undertake its most well-liked overseas coverage with out being constrained in any method by different states”. By definition, it very a lot appears the repackaged model of non-alignment. Nevertheless, strategic autonomy additionally helps India to stay multi-aligned. India’s strategic autonomy in Sri Lanka will significantly be examined by america and – to a lesser extent – Japan. Whereas america’ Indo-Pacific technique, as Ambassador MK Bhadrakumar famous not too long ago, dovetails India’s IOR coverage, each powers would by no means wish to play second-fiddle to one another. In truth, India has all the time been averse to extra-regional powers getting into its yard. Nevertheless, if the report within the Nikkei Asian Review is to be believed, the US needed to enter Sri Lanka after India did not include China in its personal yard. However, the US – additionally Japan – and India are prone to gang up in opposition to a resurgent China. Nevertheless, it’s time for India to reassert itself because the pre-eminent energy within the area and never function as an also-ran within the area. Sri Lanka will proceed to be the main target of the bigger IOR within the subsequent 5 years. The duty appears to chop out for Modi and Exterior Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. *** Part I: India’s foreign policy targets with respect to Pakistan Part II: India’s foreign policy targets with respect to Pakistan’s obstructionist role in Central Asia Part III: Chumming up to US sure is beneficial for New Delhi but it can’t ignore robustness of ties with Russia Part IV: Expanding bilateral ties with Bangladesh vital for New Delhi’s ‘Act East’ targets Part V: India’s foreign policy for next 5 years: New Delhi should convey to US in no uncertain terms how importance of better ties hinges on favourable trade policies Part VI: India’s foreign policy for the next 5 years: Imran Khan’s offer for talks needs profound backing from China, Russia for serious consideration Your information to the most recent cricket World Cup tales, evaluation, studies, opinions, dwell updates and scores on https://www.firstpost.com/firstcricket/series/icc-cricket-world-cup-2019.html. Observe us on Twitter and Instagram or like our Facebook web page for updates all through the continued occasion in England and Wales. !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function() {n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)} ; if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '259288058299626'); fbq('track', 'PageView'); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "http://connect.facebook.net/en_GB/all.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.9&appId=1117108234997285"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); window.fbAsyncInit = function () { FB.init({appId: '1117108234997285', version: 2.4, xfbml: true}); // *** here is my code *** if (typeof facebookInit == 'function') { facebookInit(); } }; (function () { var e = document.createElement('script'); e.src = document.location.protocol + '//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js'; e.async = true; document.getElementById('fb-root').appendChild(e); }()); function facebookInit() { console.log('Found FB: Loading comments.'); FB.XFBML.parse(); } Source link

[testinbeta]

Infor-War, Cyberwar, Netwar, Anti-War

Information War, Cyberwar, Netwar, Anti-War, Technowar, Postmodern War are all new buzzwords in the field of military theory, buzzwords that are now becoming more commonplace and are entering the cultural mainstream.

I will not regurgitate the propaganda about the ‘information age’ and all the talks about superhighways, but stick to the field of military theory and then draw attention to the fact how much this concerns us…

The connection of concepts of information and the conduct of war was certainly not lost on the military theoreticians in the past from Sun Tse onwards. Napoleon is quoted as saying that three hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

What is Information War?

As concepts of information war are filtering into the cultural mainstream, often in form of manipulation and control of information by governments against their own citizens, nurturing cynicism about the democratic process, it is far from clear in military circles what we are talking about. Definitions such as the following are common, but not satisfying:

“Information warfare is the offensive and defensive use of information and information systems, while protecting one’s own. Such actions are designed to achieve advantages over military or business adversaries.”

The actual confusion is well illustrated at the beginning of an essay by Martin Libicki of the Institute for National Strategic Studies:

“In the fall of 1994, I was privileged to observe an Information Warfare game sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defence. Red, a middle-sized, middle-income nation with a sophisticated electronics industry, had developed an elaborate five-year plan that culminated in an attack on a neighboring country. Blue — the United States — was the neighbor’s ally and got wind of Red’s plan. The two sides began an extended period of preparation during which each conducted peacetime information warfare and contemplated wartime information warfare. Players on each side retreated to game rooms to decide on moves.

Upon returning from the game rooms, each side presented its strategy. Two troubling tendencies emerged: First, because of the difficulty each side had in determining how the other side’s information system was wired, for most of the operations proposed (for example, Blue considered taking down Red’s banking system) no one could prove which actions might or might not be successful, or even what “success” in this context meant. Second, conflict was the sound of two hands clapping, but not clapping on each other. Blue saw information warfare as legions of hackers searching out the vulnerabilities of Red’s computer systems, which might be exploited by hordes of viruses, worms, logic bombs, or Trojan horses. Red saw information warfare as psychological manipulation through media. Such were the visions in place even before wartime variations on information warfare came into the discussion. Battle was never joined, even by accident.”

The concept of Information War turns out to have little analytical coherence, and Libicki then goes on to propose 7 different types of Information War, saying that as a separate technique of waging war it doesn’t exist, and that instead there are several distinct forms, each laying claim to the larger concept – conflicts that involve the protection, manipulation, degradation, and denial of information.

“(i) command-and-control warfare (which strikes against the enemy’s head and neck), (ii) intelligence-based warfare (which consists of the design, protection, and denial of systems that seek sufficient knowledge to dominate the battlespace), (iii) electronic warfare (radio- electronic or cryptographic techniques), (iv) psychological warfare (in which information is used to change the minds of friends, neutrals, and foes), (v) “hacker” warfare (in which computer systems are attacked), (vi) economic information warfare (blocking information or channelling it to pursue economic dominance), and (vii) cyberwarfare (a grab bag of futuristic scenarios). All these forms are weakly related.”

Not only that: More often than not they have been part of the conduct of wars for centuries, and are, with few exceptions, by no means new. What has changed are the availablity of technology than allows worldwide transmission of information in real time, the potential lethality of conventional war, the role of the media, a context where a new emphasis for conflict and propaganda emerges: The management of information and visibility.

Old forms of propaganda and control are not vanishing but supplemented with new forms. Still there are security forces with rising budgets controlling the streets, but increasingly attempting to control the “information highways”. Still there are saturation bombings of the public mind by the mass media that are owned by less and less corporations with their own stake and quasi-political stance, as illustrated by the rise and fall of media mogul Berlusconi in Italy or the power of Rupert Murdoch and his involvement (not only) in British politics. There is an almost indiscriminate proliferation of spectacular information that is a kind of black magic creating social, political and cultural reality,consensus and identity. At the same time your data shadow is getting longer and longer as all you transactions and movements are recorded by cash machines and surveillance cameras. We have a double strategy of the noise of the spectacle supplemented by the silent totalitarianism of liberal fascism, because that is what Clinton and Blair are getting at when they talk about a “Third Way”. Capitalism’s shortcomings have been becoming clearer and clearer once more over the last few months, but now – since the fall of the Eastern Bloc – the West doesn’t have to prove anymore that it is indeed “better” and “freer”. Not that the east/west dichotomy offered any real choice, but now your only choice is to be on the side of the law or on the side of terrorists, pedophiles, drug cartels, criminals. With the disappearance of the other super-power as the main enemy, and the emergence of Rogue States and Super-Hackers the difference between hot war and cold war is disappearing as well.

And paranoia is emerging, as a quote from a paper titled “Political Aspects of Class III Information Warfare: Global Conflict and Terrorism” by Matthew G. Devost held at a conference called InfoWarCon II in Montreal January 18-19, 1995 will illustrate:

“There is no early warning system for information warfare. You don’t know it is coming, so you must always expect it which creates a high level of paranoia.”

The permanent threat to be attacked out of nowhere creates an aggressive siege mentality, where preemptive, surgical strikes, are advocated against the ‘rogue’ forces, global policing is enforced, a permanent state of almost-war (or ‘cool war’?) of which cultural conflicts as well as small scale armed conflicts are part.

In military speak this is often referred to as Low-Intensity Conflict, or LIC.

The rhetoric of Low-Intensity Conflict has taken over from the term Counter Insurgency:

“Low-intensity conflict is a limited politico-military struggle to achieve political, social, economic, or psychological objectives. It is often protracted and ranges from diplomatic, economic, and psychosocial pressures through terrorism and insurgency. Low-intensity conflict is generally confined to a geographic area and is often characterized by constraints on the weaponry, the tactics, and the level of violence.”

- Joint Low-Intensity Conflict Project Final Report (U.S.Army, 1986)

For those involved this can practically mean a situation of almost Total War, as long as it’s not fought with nukes or conventional means of mass destruction. The Gulf War was a ‘Mid-Intensity Conflict’ that involved systematic mass destruction.

July 13, 1970, General Westmoreland made this prediction to Congress:

“On the battlefield of the future, enemy forces will be located, tracked, and targeted almost instantaneously through the use of data links, computer assisted intelligence evaluation, and automated fire control. … I am confident that the American people expect this country to take full advantage of this technology – to welcome and applaud the developments that will replace wherever possible the man with the machine.”

Lethality, speed and scope of warfare is rising: Dr. Richard Gabriel:

“Military technology has reached a point where “conventional weapons have unconventional effects.” In both conventional war and nuclear war, combatants can no longer be reasonably expected to survive.” (1987)

From this follows that wars have to be conducted like terrorist attacks with an element of surprise in order to not have a situation of (prolonged) combat established.

Violence becomes sudden and exterminist.

It is suggested (in Postmodern War) the “reverse of the high tech strategy is to make your military target a political victory. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari call this ‘guerrilla warfare, minority warfare, revolutionary and popular war’ and note that, while war is necessary in this strategy, it is only necessary as a supplement to some other project. Practitioners of political war ‘can make war only on the condition that they simultaneously create something else , if only new unorganic social relations’ (in: Nomadology: The War Machine, 1986, p.121; emphasis in original). This is , after all, a very old form of war, dating back to prehistory. It contains many elements of ritual war, especially those that were borrowed from the hunt: stalking, hiding, waiting , deceiving, ambushing.”

All this has grave implications on Military theory, and we can observe an escalation of non-conventional methods of combat, not only for territories, but also for people’s minds and souls.

Counter-Insurgency, Low-Intensity Conflict, Information War: Behind the rhetoric lies the reality of a global civil war that is fought with acts of terror and mind control.

And in the so-called War on Drugs we can find parallels to the world of Information War, Propaganda and Terrorism. The War on Drugs is part of a strategy that involves Rogue States and Non-Governmental Organisations as well as evil terrorists; there have been various attempts to link those concepts up to create the much needed threat to internal security, such as in the idea of Narco-Terrorism that proposes that it is a combination of leftist guerrilla forces and the drug cartels that pose a threat to the American hegemony mainly in South America. Apart from incidental collusion this theory has been thoroughly rebuked by establishment researchers. No only is the Narco-Terrorism concept a propaganda lie (and pretext for bloody oppression), if we look deeper into it we are tempted to assume that in fact it is a practice used by the security enforcement agencies themselves, as the leaking drugs for guns and hostages deals underline… What is the head of the CIA doing in South Central L.A. parading his ‘innocence’ of alleged involvements of his agency in pumping crack into the neighbourhood? In other places such as Zürich and Liverpool large amounts of Heroin became available at dirt cheap prices around 1981 – just after massive riots had happened, and just as covert programs to finance the Islamic ‘Holy War’ against the Russians in Afganistan – a main producer of the drug – started rolling. Incidentally it was pretty much the same people the CIA was financing and arming then as the ones now accused by the US to be terrorists and drug dealers (see page 4 in this issue)…. Coincidences? Even in the early 80’s the heroin in Liverpool was referred to as ‘Maggie-smack’ (as in Margaret Thatcher, the then conservative prime minister). The War on Drugs was never meant to be ‘won’.

But it is by no means the only example of where double strategies are used by those in power to remain in control at any cost. The ‘strategy of tension’ in 70’s Italy is another example where a coalition of secret services, neo-fascists, mafia-linked right wing politicians, elements in the Vatican and the secret lodge P2 conspired to avert what they saw as an imminent communist takeover. Bombings and assassinations were organized, and radical left wing groups were blamed to create the climate for a military putsch. Neither happened, but hundreds died and thousands got arrested.

A crucial role in this scenario was played by the Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades) an originally radical communist group that was increasingly infiltrated by the secret service and was at least partly and very efficiently used against the rest of (or the real) radical left. Some think at least some of their actions, quite possibly including the kidnapping and killing of Aldo Moro, the president of Democrazia Christiana (the conservative party then in power, Moro being a part of its more liberal wing) , were actually controlled by the secret state. Let’s juxtapose this with the U.S. Department of Defence definition of terrorism: “Terrorism is carried out purposefully, in a cold-blooded, calculated fashion. The men and women who plan and execute these precision operations are neither crazy nor mad. They are very resourceful and competent criminals, systematically and intelligently attacking legally constituted nations that, for the most part, believe in the protection of individual rights and respect for the law. Nations that use terror to maintain the government are terrorists themselves.” We should keep this in mind when we think of the biggest act of terrorism in the US: The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, the anniversary of Waco. Despite Timothy McVeigh getting the death penalty for it there remain a large number of open questions that suggest that maybe a whole different scenario was at work than was brought forward by the mass media, probably the most powerful point being that there seems to have been prior knowledge of the bombing on the side of the authorities… If the authorities only had the slightest advance knowledge – and there there are indications that they did – incidents such as OK or Waco are part of a strategy of power that could be labelled preventive counterinsurgency gone out of control. To control and direct such out-of-control situations a severe management of information has to be applied.

This also means that the character of “minority warfare” is changing, in fact from a ‘hot’ strategy (e.g. armed insurrection) to a cold technological one, but only as a tendency – after all we should have noted that five out of the seven types of Information War proposed by Libicki are quite traditional forms of conflict that include sabotage, espionage, blockades and propaganda. Keep this in mind when we look at the concepts brought forward by RAND researchers John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt.

In their text ‘Cyberwar is Coming’ available on the web and more recently as a part of the book/anthology ‘In Athena’s Camp – Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age’ along with a collection of essays by various authors. The two main concepts they formulate are ‘Cyberwar’ and ‘Netwar’. Cyberwar is explained as referring to “conducting, and preparing to conduct, military operations according to information-related principles. It means disrupting, if not destroying, information and communications systems, broadly defined to include even military culture, on which an adversary relies in order to know itself: who it is, where it is, what it can do and when, why it is fighting, which threats to counter first, and so forth. It means trying to know everything about an adversary while keeping the adversary from knowing much about oneself.”

What is interesting is that they don’t pretend this to be fundamentally new form of war, in fact as the primary example for Cyberwar they mention the Mongols with their hugely successful army that was partly based on their fast information system that kept commanders in close contact over thousands of miles, although they do go so far as to claim: “As an innovation of warfare, we anticipate that cyberwar may be to the 21st century what Blitzkrieg was to the 20th.”

Netwar however is the kind of civilian, or civil war side of cyberwar. While cyberwar is concerned with traditionally military aspects like Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence, also called C3I, intelligence collection, processing and distribution, tactical communications, positioning, identifications friend-or-foe (IFF) and so called ‘smart’ weapons systems, netwar “refers to information-related conflict at a grand level between nations and societies. It means trying to disrupt, damage, or modify what a target population knows or thinks it knows about itself and the world around it. A netwar may focus on public or elite opinion, or both. It may involve public diplomacy measures, propaganda and psychological campaigns, political and cultural subversion, deception of or interference with local media, infiltration of computer networks and databases, and efforts to promote dissident or opposition movements across computer networks.”

It has to be emphasized here that Arquilla and Ronfeldt are researchers of the notorious RAND corporation, a private think tank, proclaiming to be a non profit organization, but always closely linked to the military- industrial complex, and under this point of view it becomes more surprising what conclusions they arrive at. In fact they see the monolithic, hierarchical structure of institutions and the military as ill equipped to deal with the new scenarios of Netwars and Low Intensity Conflicts between NGO’s (Non-Governmental Organizations), drug cartels, “racial and tribal gangs, insurgent guerrillas, social movements and cultural subversives” which are all organized as networks. They conclude:

”Perhaps a reason that military (and police) institutions have difficulty engaging in low intensity conflicts is because they are not meant to be fought by institutions. The lesson: Institutions can be defeated by networks, and it may take networks to counter networks.”

A new type of info-guerrilla is emerging, the small units proposed by the Critical Art Ensemble faintly echoing Carlos Marighela’s (the original theoretician of the urban guerrilla) Firing Unit, except they are firing data, not bullets. Conflicts such as Kosovo (a classic LIC), the Gulf Conflicts (basically adhering to the AirLand Battle doctrine as well as Cyberwar to some degree) and the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico (where the idea of Netwar comes in), all happening at present, show that it is likely that different types of warfare will be fought simultaneously for the forseeable future. Localized conflicts don’t stop because the technical possibility of globalized action exists. There is a tendency towars more international interaction and a disappearance of distance and reaction times, but wars are unlikely to be fought solely by machines, smart weapons, robots and ‘ants’ alone. They cannot be sanitised, however much the official media tries to portray it that way. It is one of the strengths of Arquilla/Ronfeldt’s analysis that they take these complexities into account.

It’s no surprise that the RAND researchers have found a fascinated readership with left wing researchers such as Chris Hables Gray and Jason Wehling. I was certainly intrigued.

And while I can’t discount the thought that RAND has to present the danger to the establishment as worse than it is, their call to reorganization points to a genuine analysis. And it shouldn’t just flatter us. We have to take it serious when we are taken serious.

[metastable1]

Links 04/04

[some fresh, some old]

On the Impossibility of Supersized Machines

Abstract: In recent years, a number of prominent computer scientists, along with academics in fields such as philosophy and physics, have lent credence to the notion that machines may one day become as large as humans. Many have further argued that machines could even come to exceed human size by a significant margin. However, there are at least seven distinct arguments that preclude this outcome. We show that it is not only implausible that machines will ever exceed human size, but in fact impossible.

G.K. Chesterton On AI Risk

by Slate Star Codex

Elon Musk’s Billion-Dollar Crusade to Stop the A.I. Apocalypse

Some in Silicon Valley were intrigued to learn that Hassabis, a skilled chess player and former video-game designer, once came up with a game called Evil Genius, featuring a malevolent scientist who creates a doomsday device to achieve world domination. Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist and Donald Trump adviser who co-founded PayPal with Musk and others—and who in December helped gather skeptical Silicon Valley titans, including Musk, for a meeting with the president-elect—told me a story about an investor in DeepMind who joked as he left a meeting that he ought to shoot Hassabis on the spot, because it was the last chance to save the human race. [...] When I went to Peter Thiel’s elegant San Francisco office, dominated by two giant chessboards, Thiel, one of the original donors to OpenAI and a committed contrarian, said he worried that Musk’s resistance could actually be accelerating A.I. research because his end-of-the-world warnings are increasing interest in the field. “Full-on A.I. is on the order of magnitude of extraterrestrials landing,” Thiel said. “There are some very deeply tricky questions around this . . . . If you really push on how do we make A.I. safe, I don’t think people have any clue. We don’t even know what A.I. is. It’s very hard to know how it would be controllable. ”He went on: “There’s some sense in which the A.I. question encapsulates all of people’s hopes and fears about the computer age. I think people’s intuitions do just really break down when they’re pushed to these limits because we’ve never dealt with entities that are smarter than humans on this planet.”

10 Breakthrough Technologies 2017

Quantum computers for the win:

All the academic and corporate quantum researchers I spoke with agreed that somewhere between 30 and 100 qubits—particularly qubits stable enough to perform a wide range of computations for longer durations—is where quantum computers start to have commercial value. And as soon as two to five years from now, such systems are likely to be for sale. Eventually, expect 100,000-qubit systems, which will disrupt the materials, chemistry, and drug industries by making accurate molecular-scale models possible for the discovery of new materials and drugs. And a million-physical-qubit system, whose general computing applications are still difficult to even fathom? It’s conceivable, says Neven, “on the inside of 10 years.”

DARPA’s Biotech Chief Says 2017 Will “Blow Our Minds”

What project at BTO are you most excited about for 2017? It’s like your kids—you can’t have just one favorite. I have multiple favorites. Let me share a few that will be really important to address in 2017. The first is an area we call “Outpacing Infectious Disease.” Our current approach, whenever a new pathogen hits our shores, is that everybody scrambles. We want to get ahead of any pathogen that may hit our shores and be as ambitious as we can to take pandemics off the table. We have pioneered new work in DNA and RNA approaches to immunization. Specifically, we are thinking about nucleic acid approaches to immunization. The idea is that you can tell your cells that produce antibodies what the right code is for producing the antibodies that would be effective against a pathogen. So you would get a shot, but that shot would have a code in it to tell your cells how to respond to that pathogen—and what that would lead to is a near-instantaneous immunity against that pathogen and an ability to really fight against it.

If you contrast that against the traditional way we think about infectious disease, where it takes months—if not years—to not only identify the pathogen but go through a long manufacturing process to produce vaccines with big bioreactors and so on, [the current] process is far too slow for the kinds of threats that are ultimately coming to our country. That’s why we took this radically different approach to develop this fundamental technology, to have DNA- and RNA-based approaches to fight infectious disease. I’m hoping we will have some big announcements about that in 2017.

What sort of announcements? We are already getting some really good results in mouse models indicating that the nucleic acid approaches are working well. We’re starting down the road of doing some safety work in humans. Those are the early research steps. We have every intention in the coming year of building new programs for this end-to-end platform. We look forward to making some announcements about how we are working in this space in 2017 that show that this isn’t just an aspiration—this is something we’re going after in BTO. If we are successful here, I think it will change the game about how we think about infectious disease.

This protein designer aims to revolutionize medicines and materials

[...] Over the last several years, with a big assist from the genomics and computer revolutions, Baker’s team has all but solved one of the biggest challenges in modern science: figuring out how long strings of amino acids fold up into the 3D proteins that form the working machinery of life. Now, he and colleagues have taken this ability and turned it around to design and then synthesize unnatural proteins intended to act as everything from medicines to materials. Already, this virtuoso proteinmaking has yielded an experimental HIV vaccine, novel proteins that aim to combat all strains of the influenza viruses simultaneously, carrier molecules that can ferry reprogrammed DNA into cells, and new enzymes that help microbes suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and convert it into useful chemicals. Baker’s team and collaborators report making cages that assemble themselves from as many as 120 designer proteins, which could open the door to a new generation of molecular machines. If the ability to read and write DNA spawned the revolution of molecular biology, the ability to design novel proteins could transform just about everything else. “Nobody knows the implications,” because it has the potential to impact dozens of different disciplines, says John Moult, a protein-folding expert at the University of Maryland, College Park. “It’s going to be totally revolutionary.”

I wonder how significant this is for drexlerian nanotech.

Scott Aaronson Answers Every Ridiculously Big Question I Throw at Him

The title is self-explanatory. I also recommend Aaronson’s short story.

Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us

Nearly 20 years ago, in the documentary The Day After Trinity, Freeman Dyson summarized the scientific attitudes that brought us to the nuclear precipice:

“I have felt it myself. The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it’s there in your hands, to release this energy that fuels the stars, to let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power, and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles – this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds.”

Bill Joy’s influential article about dangers of novel technologies. I think author put a little too much emphasis on the idea of self-replication. Worth reading if you are interested in the history of debate on existential risk, or if you want to put into context some events in the history of nanotech. (Article was credited by Eric Drexler and Ralph Merkle as a one of the factors responsible for derailment of research on atomically precise manufacturing - “nanotechnology” was very sexy buzzword and after Joy’s article it became associated with extremely dangerous self-replicating nanobots, so nanotech research community, worried about possible backlash that could be a threat to the funding for U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative, claimed that nanomachines capable of building structures with atomic precision are impossible.)

The new Pandora’s boxes of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics are almost open, yet we seem hardly to have noticed. Ideas can’t be put back in a box; unlike uranium or plutonium, they don’t need to be mined and refined, and they can be freely copied. Once they are out, they are out. Churchill remarked, in a famous left-handed compliment, that the American people and their leaders “invariably do the right thing, after they have examined every other alternative.” In this case, however, we must act more presciently, as to do the right thing only at last may be to lose the chance to do it at all.

Paul Erdős

[...] At three he entertained his mother’s friends by multiplying three-digit numbers in his head, and at four he discovered negative numbers. “I told my mother,” he said, “that if you take 250 from 100, you get –150.” In 1930, at age 17, Erdős entered the Péter Pázmány University in Budapest, where in four years he completed his undergraduate work and earned a Ph.D. in mathematics. [...] Even at this early point in his career, Erdős had definite ideas about mathematical elegance. He believed that God, whom he affectionately called the S.F. or Supreme Fascist, had a transfinite book (“transfinite” being a mathematical concept for something larger than infinity) that contained the shortest, most beautiful proof for every conceivable mathematical problem. The highest compliment he could pay to a colleague’s work was to say, “That’s straight from The Book.” [...] With amphetamines to keep him going, Erdős did mathematics with a missionary zeal, often 20 hours a day, turning out some 1,500 papers, an order of magnitude higher than his most prolific colleagues produced. [...]

Building the Hoover Dam

Neat photos.