PP NewsBrief: 2021-06-23

We need to begin to reclaim control over the institutions which have such oversized roles in our lives. As you read this people work tirelessly to see to it that you are dumb and docile. Let's stop them.

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Pushing Through the Decadence

"I believe the first thing that I read by Jacques Barzun was a short book called On Writing, Editing, and Publishing (1971). I cannot lay my hands on it at the moment, but I remember from it a good piece of advice for those young ’uns (and their name is legion) who think they want to be writers.

It is important, Barzun noted, to decide whether you want to write or to have written. A little honest self-scrutiny on that point can save a world of heartache. Obviously, the point can be generalized for all the arts. (How many self-identifying waiters or waitresses have you met in trendy New York restaurants? They scarcely exist. But there are plenty of novelists, painters, and actors who just happen to be waiting tables until their genius is acknowledged.)

Jacques Barzun was a type of public intellectual that is rare in any age and is more or less extinct today. He was in but not of the academy. He wrote beautifully, for one thing, cared passionately about the life of the mind, and never succumbed to the dead-end of what is sometimes called “specialization” but really should be denominated arid irrelevancy. Barzun wrote for the general educated reader about the things that matter most: truth, beauty, the perennial challenges to the human spirit with which life confronts us.

Barzun always had a teacher’s gift of dramatizing ideas and championing what, in Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941), he called “the pluralism of the world of experience.” Although deeply immersed in intellectual matters himself, he seems never to have succumbed to the intellectual’s chief occupational temptation of mistaking abstractions for the realities they adumbrate. This resistance had stylistic as well as substantive consequences. Barzun once noted that “Intellect watches particularly over language because language is so far the only device for keeping ideas clear and emotions memorable.”

...

...In Barzun’s hands, intellectual history was less an academic than an existential pursuit; reading him, you understand that curiosity about the past is at the same time a species of self-interrogation. The questions with which intellectual history confronts us can be parsed as elements of that large, perennial question, “How should I live my life?”

Barzun’s magnum opus, published in 2000 when he was 93, is From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present. The book is a magnificent summa of Barzun’s concerns as a thinker and historian. It synthesizes as well as summarizes a long lifetime’s reflection about the fate of those distinctive energies that define Western culture: “the great achievements and the sorry failures of our half millennium.”...

...

One of the things that distinguishes From Dawn to Decadence from myriad other cultural histories of the West is its structure. Barzun clearly expended a great deal of thought on the organization of the book. The result is an intricate verbal architecture with many interconnecting passages, points of entry, exhibition hallways, and impressive vistas. There is even a folly or two. On the most pedestrian level, Barzun divided his story into four large historical segments. The first segment takes us from Luther’s Protestant revolution to Newton—from the early 16th century to the end of the 17th century. Part two opens with the ascent of Louis XIV and the rise of the nation-state; it ends with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution (fittingly symbolized by its chief tool of emancipation, the guillotine). Part three, which opens with a section called “The Work of Mind-and-Heart,” details the Romantic reaction—that is to say, the Romantic reactions, for they were many and disparate—to Enlightenment rationalism. Here Barzun takes his story from the time of Goethe and Wordsworth to the pre-World War I period he calls the Cubist Decade. Part four brings the story up to the 1990s.

The titles of the book’s last two sections indicate the tenor of the assessment: “Embracing the Absurd” and “Demotic Life and Times.”

Barzun shuttles deftly between religion, philosophy, literature, music, political intrigue, and the development of scientific rationalism and modern technology. He is as interested in Petrarch’s role in the rise of humanism as in the historical accidents that led to Madrid’s becoming a capital city in the 16th century (Charles V hoped that the air of the tiny village, which newcomers disparaged as “nine months of winter, three of hell,” might be good for his health). He weaves his story partly around a handful of recurrent themes: primitivism, individualism, emancipation (“the modern theme par excellence”), self-consciousness, specialization, abstraction, analysis, and scientism (“the fallacy of believing that the method of science must be used on all forms of experience and, given time, will settle every issue”). These are the leitmotifs that—expressed in different registers and with varying degrees of emphasis—have provided intellectual fuel for the development of modern Western culture.

For example, Luther’s challenge to Catholic orthodoxy can be seen as an expression of primitivism—a desire to recapture the essentials of Christian faith—together with strong elements of individualism (“the priesthood of all believers”) and emancipation. We forget that Luther started not as a revolutionary but as a reformer; in the beginning, Barzun pointed out, he “only wanted to elicit the truth about the sacrament of penance.” But events acquire a momentum of their own. Had it not been for the new technology of printing, which spread ideas with unprecedented speed, Luther’s 95 theses might never have ignited the soul of Europe. In the event, Luther’s reformation became a revolution: what Barzun called “The West Torn Apart.” Among much else, the Reformation illustrates the conundrum of contingency: the fact that a quantum of unpredictable novelty can always be counted on to baffle human complacency. Why here? Why now? Speculation is always confident, always inconclusive. Barzun observes, “How a revolution erupts from a commonplace event—tidal wave from a ripple—is cause for endless astonishment.”

...

...Barzun’s book triumphs marvelously in its two main purposes. One is to exhibit the sheer richness of that cultural explosion we summarize in two words as “the West.” The picture of the West promulgated by its enemies—“a solid block having but one meaning”—cannot survive scrutiny. It is central to Barzun’s task to show that the West has in fact been “an endless series of opposites—in religion, politics, art, morals, manners.” Moreover, to denounce Western culture “does not free the self from what it hates, any more than ignoring the past shuts off its influence.”

"Even the terrorist who drives a car filled with dynamite toward a building in some hated nation is part of what he would destroy: his weapon is the work of Alfred Nobel and the inventors of the internal combustion engine. His very cause has been argued for him by such proponents of national self-determination as President Wilson and such rationalizers of violence as Georges Sorel and Bakunin, the Russian anarchist."

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Although the picture Barzun paints is one of cultural desolation, he nevertheless managed to end on a note of cautious optimism. Even if present trends continue and society becomes more routinized and culturally sterile, human ingenuity surely can be counted upon to precipitate a rebellion against the spread of bureaucratized futility. Sooner or later, some few intrepid souls will turn with new curiosity to the neglected past and use it “to create a new present,” discovering along the way “what a joy it is to be alive.”

The forces of decadence that Barzun described are formidably potent. But decadence is no more inevitable than progress. Myopia is perennial, despair a temptation to be resisted. One never knows what reparations await the touch of fresh energies. Eugène Delacroix put it well: “Those very ones who believe that everything has been said and done, will greet you as new and yet will close the door behind you. And then they will say again that everything has been done and said.”"

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Dr. McCullough: COVID Vaccines Have Already Killed Up to 50,000 Americans, According to Whistleblowers

"In an extraordinary interview last week, Dr. Peter McCullough, an American professor of Medicine and Vice Chief of Internal Medicine at Baylor University, declared that the world has been subjected to a form of bioterrorism, and that the suppression of early treatments for COVID-19—such as hydroxychloroquine— “was tightly linked to the development of a vaccine.”

Dr. McCullough made the explosive comments during a webinar on June 11, with  Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, a German trial lawyer, who believes the pandemic was planned, and is “a crime against humanity.”

McCullough said he believes the bioterrorism has come in two stages—the first wave being the rollout of the coronavirus, and the second, the rollout of the dangerous vaccines, which he said may already be responsible for the deaths of up to 50,000 Americans.

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“The first wave of the bioterrorism is a respiratory virus that spread across the world, and affected relatively few people—about one percent of many populations—but generated great fear,” McCullough explained during the Oval Media webinar with other doctors. He noted that the virus targeted “mostly the frail and the elderly, but for otherwise well people, it was much like having the common cold.”

Dr. McCullough later elaborated that he has treated many patients with the disease, written papers on it, had the disease himself, and has also seen a death in his own family due to COVID.

The doctor said he believes that fear of the virus was used very quickly to generate policies that would hugely impact human life, such as the draconian lockdowns.

“Every single thing that was done in public health in response to the pandemic made it worse,” he pointed out.

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“What we have discovered is that the suppression of early treatment was tightly linked to the development of a vaccine, and the entire program—and in a sense, bioterrorism phase one— was rolled out, [and] was really about keeping the population in fear, and in isolation preparing them to accept the vaccine, which appears to be phase two of a bioterrorism operation.”

McCullough explained that both the coronavirus and the vaccines deliver “to the human body, the spike protein, [which is] the gain of function target of this bioterrorism research.”

He acknowledged that he couldn’t come out and say all that on national television because the medical establishment has done such a thorough job of propagandizing the issue.

“What we have learned over time is that we could no longer communicate with government agencies. We actually couldn’t communicate with our propagandized colleagues in major medical centers, all of which appear to be under a spell, almost as if they’ve been hypnotized.”

“Good doctors are doing unthinkable things like injecting biologically active messenger RNA that produces this pathogenic spike protein into pregnant women. I think when these doctors wake up from their trance, they’re going to be shocked to think what they’ve done to people,” he said, echoing what he, and Dr. Harvey Risch, professor at the Yale School of Public Health, told Fox News host Laura Ingraham during an interview last month.

McCullough told Fuellmich that last summer, he started an early treatment initiative to keep COVID patients out of the hospital, which involved organizing multiple groups of medical doctors in the United States and abroad.  The doctor noted that some governments tried to block these doctors from providing the treatments, but with the help of the Association of Physicians and Surgeons, they were able to put out a home patient guide, and in the U.S., organized four different tele-medical services, and fifteen regional tele-medical services.

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“Without the government really even understanding what was going on, we crushed the epidemic curve of the United States,” McCullough claimed. “Toward the end of December and January, we basically took care of the pandemic with about 500 doctors and telemedicine services, and to this day, we treat about 25 percent of the U.S. COVID-19 population that are actually at high risk, over age 50 with medical problems that present with severe symptoms.”

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“Basically it’s the largest application of a biological product with the greatest amount of morbidity and mortality in the history of our country.”

“We are at over 5,000 deaths so far, as you know, and I think about 15,000 hospitalizations. In the EU it’s over 10,000 deaths. We are working with the Center for Medicaid (CMS) data, and we have a pretty good lead that the real number is tenfold.”

McCullough explained that because the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database only amounts to about 10 percent of the bad reactions to the vaccines, his team has had to go to other sources for information.

“We have now a whistleblower inside the CMS, and we have two whistleblowers in the CDC,” the doctor revealed. “We think we have 50,000 dead Americans. Fifty thousand deaths. So we actually have more deaths due to the vaccine per day than certainly the viral illness by far. It’s basically propagandized bioterrorism by injection.”"

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EU drugs regulator says it won’t impose 50% efficacy threshold for Covid-19 vaccines after disappointing result in CureVac trial

"The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has said it will not bring in a minimum efficacy threshold for Covid-19 vaccines. The comment comes after clinical trials showed Germany’s CureVac jab to be only 47% effective against the virus.

CureVac announced data on the efficacy of its jab on Wednesday after it was tested in second- and third-phase trials involving 40,000 people across ten countries.

The company suggested variants of the virus may be behind the poor result."

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Illinois city goes ahead with Juneteenth and LGBTQ parades, festivities after canceling in-person July 4 events over Covid-19

"Community leaders in the Democrat bastion of Evanston, Illinois have apparently decided that Covid-19 is a greater public-health risk on Independence Day than during Juneteenth and Pride Month celebrations.

The city celebrated Juneteenth, the new federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the US, on Saturday, holding a parade and a community gathering that featured live performances, art displays and food vendors.

The partying will resume next Saturday, when Evanston hosts its annual Pride celebration, including a car parade, a community picnic and an evening candle-lighting ceremony. The event theme is "Proud to Be," which organizers say will celebrate "the deep intersectionality of the LGBTQIA+ community with other marginalized communities."

But Evanston's annual parade for Independence Day, the holiday commemorating America's founding, has been canceled for a second straight year because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Related activities, including a fun run, concert and fireworks show, were also nixed. Organizers said they made the decision "based on concern for public health and the unpredictability of the pandemic's impact, vaccination rates and in cooperation with our local authorities."

Separate community groups oversee Evanston's various public events, so some differences in decision-making might be expected, but observers found irony in the disparate thinking. Evanston native Tom Bevan, co-founder of conservative media outlet RealClearPolitics, pointed out the uneven Covid-19 standards."

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Fatal truck incident at Florida pride parade was ‘tragic accident, not criminal attack’ – police

"Despite being proclaimed a “terrorist attack” against the LGBT community by politicians, an incident in which a truck ran two people over at a Pride parade in Florida was deemed by police to be “a tragic accident,” not an attack.

One person was killed and another injured when a truck drove into a crowd gathered for the Wilton Manors Stonewall Pride Parade near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Saturday evening. A white pickup truck reportedly veered toward the car of Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was attending the parade, before swerving into a building and hitting two people, one of whom died.

Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis, a Democrat, instantly portrayed the incident as a homophobic “terrorist attack.” Speaking from the scene, he declared “it was deliberate, it was premeditated and it was targeted against this specific person,” referring to Rep. Wasserman Schultz.

Trantalis’ proclamation was repeated by national and international media, before the Wilton Manors Police Department made him eat his words on Sunday afternoon. After a joint investigation with the FBI, the department stated “we know that yesterday’s incident was a tragic accident, and not a criminal act directed at anyone, or any group of people.”

However, even as Trantalis spoke, evidence of the crash being a tragic accident was apparent. The driver emerged from his vehicle wearing a ‘Fort Lauderdale Gay Men’s Chorus’ t-shirt, and the chorus’ president told the media that both driver and several parade participants were part of the singing group."

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Fiat Dollars to Finance Feudalism

"People throw political labels around a lot these days, to the point that they lose their meaning and impact. We’re trying to understand where we are headed as a society, but we get lost in the ideology labyrinth. As we throw the labels around—some of us with certainty and others with caveats and nuance—reality marches on. And the reality is grim. We are being turned into livestock by oligarchs who share the perception that ordinary people are on the verge of becoming completely useless.

Who needs manufacturing workers when factories are within a decade of achieving complete machine autonomy? Who needs caregivers when robotics are within a decade or two of delivering androids that are smarter and better looking? Who needs universal healthcare when we are within a few decades of significantly extending the human lifespan and when all these billions of ordinary humans will do with their extra 50 years is eat, shit, and play games? Who needs billions of humans when their consumptive appetites are but a pestilence on a brilliant blue planet?

What do you do, if you’re a multibillionaire, and all of your multibillionaire friends agree: It’s easier and better for us if we herd these useless people into megacities, take away their jobs, give them a universal basic income, and cram them into subsidized apartments. We’ll immerse them in online fantasies, algorithmically calibrated to dopamine them into quiescence.

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Wealth is power, and the wealthiest people on earth today have more power than the average nation-state. Wealth and power, to cite a recent example that ought to leave any objective observer both livid and terrified, was deployed by high-tech billionaires and the companies they control to determine the outcome of America’s 2020 presidential election.

Wealth and power, deployed by pharmaceutical companies and the medical establishment, and with the absolute complicity of the corporate media and high tech oligarchs, successfully suppressed early treatment protocols and alternative quarantine options, in order to shut down the nation, crush independent businesses, and engineer one of the biggest and most abrupt transfers of wealth in history: trillions passed from average citizens to the wealthy elite.

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The ideology labyrinth does not explain this phenomenon. The intellectual resistance to this “reset” is focused on explaining it using obsolete terms, or, worse, terms that are, however accurate, mere distractions.

Calling it “socialism” or claiming it can be stopped if we all voted “libertarian” is the activist equivalent of masturbation. We are being turned into livestock. That is the reality. Theoretical analysis is futile. Practical countermeasures are necessary.

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...it would require volumes to explain the dismal science of fractional reserve lending and how it went from being a useful financial innovation to an instrument of economic war on the middle class.

Instead, consider where most of this fiat money is going. It is being scooped up by banks with access to funds that are, for all practical purposes, infinite and are buying up America’s housing stock.

This fact does not get the attention it deserves. America’s housing prices are being driven up not merely from overregulation, or thanks to foreign buyers driving up demand, but by international banks and hedge funds. Just as mega-corporations with access to cheap borrowed cash are buying back their stock to create more market value with which they acquire their competitors, big banks are buying up America’s real estate in order to consolidate and control the housing market. And it’s working.

One of the big players, using fiat money to turn us all into serfs living on the Lord’s Manor, is BlackRock, the world’s largest real estate investor. For about a decade, the firm has been on a buying binge, purchasing homes—entire neighborhoods, even—all over the United States. With the expectation of inflation in the future, and all the money they need, they’re outbidding ordinary aspiring homeowners from Tennessee to California, from Arizona to the Carolinas.

Unlike stocks and bonds, where ownership is already concentrated in the hands of the wealthiest Americans, real estate ownership to date has been widely held. Using fiat money, America’s multibillionaires are changing that as fast as they can.

Turning America’s housing stock into rentals is only the beginning. In California, in order to deliver “housing equity,” a reparations bill is working its way through the state legislature that will authorize the state to purchase, outright, 45 percent of a home, allowing qualified applicants to purchase the other 55 percent. This will cut the effective price they pay for the home nearly in half, making it affordable. To qualify? The primary criteria is to be a “person of color.”

It isn’t hard to imagine the “public-private partnerships” that will ensue, as progressive state and local governments, and presumably, federal agencies, cut deals with massive real estate trusts such as BlackRock to create “equity” in housing....

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In California, a package of bills is working through the legislature, yet again, that would allow multiple apartment units to be built on single-family lots. Anywhere. The reason for this is, of course, to save the planet and to promote racial equity. The practical impact? More investment firms will swoop in, financed with fiat money supplemented by government funds, to buy single-family homes that are worth more demolished and replaced with apartments than if they’re preserved. If you object, you’re a racist who denies the climate emergency.

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This money is being spent to force Americans down to a lifestyle that is “sustainable,” while at the same time transferring even more wealth and power into the hands of a new oligarchy. Fiat dollars to finance feudalism.

To avoid being turned into livestock, or, to abandon the metaphor, to avoid being turned into serfs, Americans have to worry less about ideology and more about practical solutions. Is putting a ban on any individual or corporation owning more than, say, a dozen income properties or 100 rental units “socialism?” Maybe. But the impact of socialism is felt most acutely when people have no ownership. And serfs own nothing. According to the new oligarchs, we’ll own nothing and be happy. But we will not be free.

Dispense with the labels. Join forces."

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Georgia Election Official Admits Chain of Custody Docs Are Missing for 2020 Absentee Ballots

"A Fulton County election official has admitted in writing that “a few” chain of custody documents are missing for thousands of absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes in the November 3, 2020 election in Georgia. According to The Georgia Star News’ analysis, however, the county has lost more than “a few” transfer forms—the news outlet puts the number at 385, representing 18,901 votes, or about 25 percent of the absentee ballots cast in Fulton County in the 2020 election.

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According to the Star News, “an estimated 145,000 absentee ballots – between 75,000 and 78,000 of which were originally deposited in drop boxes and between 67,000 and 70,000 of which were sent via the United States Postal Service – were transferred from the centralized counting facility at the State Farm Arena in downtown Atlanta to the EPC [the Election Preparation Center warehouse located at 1365 English St. NW, Atlanta] at some point after the counting of votes for the November 3 election was completed.”

In February, Fulton County responded to the Star News’ Open Records request by providing two PDF files showing ballot transfer form records for 36,635 absentee votes by mail ballots deposited in drop boxes, which was significantly less than what was expected for the county.

The Star News followed up with Fulton County, by alerting them to the incomplete records.

In early May, Fulton County responded by providing a thumb drive they said included a re-scan all of the documents from their first attempt plus those that were missing.

"The thumb drive contained 30 files of drop box transfer forms, and also also included a spreadsheet that Fulton County used to document the number of absentee ballots and the ballot applications collected from the 37 drop boxes over the 41-day voting period. According to that spreadsheet, those 30 files should have contained 1,565 drop box transfer forms.

The Star News’s detailed analysis of the files provided by Fulton County revealed that they included only 1,180 drop box transfer forms provided chain of custody documents for 59,042 absentee ballots placed into drop boxes.

Yet, the Fulton County spreadsheet showed that about 79,000 absentee ballots were collected from drop boxes (When a mathematical error in the Fulton County spreadsheet that double counted a number of votes is corrected, the total number of absentee ballots Fulton County says were collected from drop boxes is about 75,000.)

On May 17, The Star News notified Fulton County via email that transfer forms for about 25 percent of the absentee ballots placed into drop boxes where chain of custody documentation in the form of 385 drop box transfer forms were still missing."

That email to Fulton County led to their stunning admission finally on June 9, that they had misplaced the important forms.

"As we review the documents provided to you and our daily log. We noticed that a few forms are missing, it seems when 25 plus core personnel were quarantined due to positive COVID-19 outbreak at the EPC, some procedural paperwork may have been misplaced.

Please feel free to contact me at if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Mariska Bodison

Registration & Elections""

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Only 41.9% of French nursing home workers vaccinated, data reveals, as health minister threatens compulsory Covid-19 jabs

"Public Health France (SpF) has said that less than half of health professionals working in nursing homes are vaccinated against Covid-19 after the health minister called on workers to come forward and get their shot.

In data published on Thursday evening, SpF stated that only 41.9% of people working in nursing homes in France had been fully vaccinated against the deadly Covid-19 virus, despite the country’s vaccination program being nearly six months old, and 55.3% had received one shot. Healthcare workers were among the first in the country to be offered the jab.

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Earlier on Thursday morning, Health Minister Olivier Veran, speaking on BFM TV, made a “solemn appeal” to caregivers, in particular in nursing home staff, who have not yet been vaccinated. He also threatened to make inoculations compulsory for them.

He said it could not be the case that there was more vaccine uptake in the general population than there was among care home workers. As of Wednesday, approximately 46% of France’s population has received at least one shot."

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Let’s Join Our Fellow Human Beings in Order to Survive as a Human Species!

"“One day fear knocked at the door. Courage got up and opened it, but there was no one outside.”

This originally English proverb was attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe at the beginning of 2020. Endowed with the authority of the German poet prince, it quickly became a popular motivational saying against the fear of the Corona virus. The quotation reflects a wisdom of life, which is psychologically reinforced and deepened in the following. If we humans muster the courage to overcome the fear of fellow human beings acquired in our upbringing, if we associate with them in freedom and elevate public spirit to the guiding idea, then the human species has a chance to survive.

Step outside your own front door and see what is available!

Every human being is called upon to make a contribution to solving the urgent problems of our time. And of course we are able to do so if we are aware that it depends on each and every one of us. Why not muster the courage to use our own intellect, not to suppress the current problems of humanity, but to stand up against injustice – intellectually, emotionally, politically. Overcome the inertia of the heart and act! Against all odds, muster the determination to seek the truth and thereby preserve our dignity as human beings and create a future worth living for ourselves and our children.

The Swiss poet and novelist Gottfried Keller (1819-1890) believed:

“No government and no battalions (…) are able to protect law and freedom where the citizen is unable to step outside the front door himself and see what is available.” (Zurich Novellas)

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Free citizens who stand up against injustice and tyranny have nothing against those in power. They do nothing to them. But neither do they want to live in a system of rule in which they have to remain silent. They fight for a more just order, for their right to life, to freedom, peace and security. Moreover, they have common sense and are autonomous. Autonomy is the state and feeling of life of self-determination, independence and self-government. Philosophically, it is the ability to see oneself as a being of freedom and to act out of this freedom.

Equipped with these abilities, no human being freely hands over to another the power to decide on his or her life and future. Not to another human being or politician, but also not to a supernatural being who is supposed to guide and protect him as a “deity” from earliest childhood to the end of days. After all, we humans are embedded in the community of our fellow species, of whom we do not have to be afraid, but on whose support and solidarity we can build.

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We just have to muster the courage to face this task and associate ourselves with fellow human beings. This means taking upon ourselves a path that is often arduous, long and not easy to walk, to believe in the goodness in the other person, to empathise with them, to associate with them and to appeal to them without coercion. There is no short, easy and simple path to the goal – no so-called royal road.

The other person, our counterpart, our fellow citizen and conspecific is gladly prepared to accept our offer if he is given the opportunity to decide for it freely and without any coercion. He too wants to live well with his children. He, too, is happy to help the other.

More than 100 years ago, the Russian anarchist, geographer and writer Prince Peter Kropotkin (1842 to 1921) wrote in his book “Mutual Aid in the Animal and Human World” that in nature and society there is by no means only a struggle of all against all (social Darwinism), but that the principle of “mutual aid” also prevails. Those living beings who implement this principle would survive more successfully. Kropotkin observed both nature and natural beings and applied his findings to human beings.

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It is possible to suppress the exhortations of the human sense of community; they can never be completely eradicated, for the gift of evolution consists in the moral consciousness of the individual, in the insight into the responsibility of all towards all. Our task for the future, therefore, seems to be above all the cultivation and strengthening of communal feelings. No means must be too small for us, no effort too arduous, in order to better integrate man into the social fabric.

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...parents and educators instil great fear in the child with every use of force, be it in the form of strictness or also spoiling. The child learns to be afraid; it learns to feel threatened by fellow human beings; it experiences that it is not good to eat with human beings. The emotional reaction of fear becomes part of its character. The image of man that the child acquired from its parents in the earliest years of childhood is unconsciously carried into every relationship.

Even today, the child is brought up with violence and disregard for its personality. As a result, the child begins to turn away from the human being. This results in a negating tendency that influences his later life. It no longer expects much from the human being. The violent treatment deeply shakes his personality and awakens in him aversion to his fellow man. Trust in human beings, which is actually the foundation of the personality and the natural conception of life, cannot develop.

The child also experiences that parental authority is above everything. It experiences that there is only one correct opinion, and that is that of the father, the authority. It learns that certain opinions should not be held. They learn to fear the violence and sanctions that come from their parents to such an extent that they no longer dare to contradict them, neither in thought nor in action. As an adult, man is no longer able to form his own thought because his fear of the consequences – earthly or supernatural – paralyses him. He becomes nervous and indignant when he even hears a different opinion.

On this ground it is not possible for the human being to deal with other opinions. He can only accept something from the other person with difficulty. His fear becomes the dominating problem in relationships. He does not know free discussion, he only knows command and obedience. He is used to accepting the opinion of authority unchecked. He also experienced as a child that he was burdened with many opinions that he could not check in any way. So he comes to terms with the fact that many things cannot be understood and that the incomprehensible must not be doubted."

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Linux Foundation unveils COVID Certificate Network

"The Linux Foundation, historically known for its support of openness, freedom, and privacy, has ironically been developing a global COVID-19 vaccine certification system, which is almost ready for deployment.

COVID-19 vaccine certification, aka a vaccine passport, is already being used in many countries and regions, pushing aside the legal, ethical, and privacy concerns.

The Linux Foundation has decided to take the lead to create a system that works across countries and regions. Its public health wing, the Linux Foundation Public Health (LFPH), is ready to deploy the Global COVID Certificate Network (GCCN).

The system is being developed by LFPH, in collaboration with other industry experts, including IBM and Blockchain Labs. GCCN says it solves the problem of the lack of a trustworthy vaccine certification system, that can be used to build certifications that can be easily verified in other countries and regions.

For example, the EU has created a certification architecture to be used by member states. However, their system might be incompatible or fail to recognize certification systems created in non-EU countries.

“For health passes to work globally, helping countries to restart economies and reopen borders, they need to be trusted globally,” said VP of Emerging Business Networks at IBM Watson Health Eric Piscini.

...

Both the EU and United Nations (UN) are considering the GCCN."

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Masochistic Nationalism—A Review

"In his 1945 essay, “Notes on Nationalism,” George Orwell contrasted “positive nationalism”—pride in one’s country—with the “negative” and “transferred” nationalisms displayed by supporters of the Soviet Union—the denigration of one’s country and the embrace of another. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their merits, but according to who performed them. “Within the intelligentsia,” he wrote, “a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases.”

In his new book, Swedish academic Göran Adamson calls this combination of negative and transferred nationalisms “masochistic nationalism,” a term he then uses to analyse developments in modern Western Europe. Masochistic nationalism is defined as unjustifiable hostility to one’s own nation infused with a sense of pleasure and grandeur, combined with loyalty to another nation (or other nations) which are said to offer a more positive example of what nationalism ought to be. Adamson identifies some similarities between positive and masochistic nationalism but, as the title indicates, his focus is on the latter. He argues that many Westerners become fascinated by non-Western cultures because they assume this will provide them with an aura of self-critical virtue. Just as Orwell understood negative nationalism to mean that one’s own country must be wrong, Adamson understands masochistic nationalism to mean that “everything native must be criticised and everything exotic must be hailed.”

Adamson offers several examples in support of his case, but the divergent responses to two violent crimes committed in his native Sweden in 2015 are particularly instructive. First, a failed asylum seeker stabbed two native Swedes to death in an IKEA store in Västerås; then, a right-wing extremist murdered three immigrants in Trollhättan. In the latter case, the assailant and his victims became household names within days, and cities throughout the country held a minute’s silence to commemorate the dead. In the capital, Stockholm, the Social Democrats headed a candle-lit vigil “Against Racist Violence, and in Defence of Sweden as a Society characterised by Openness and Solidarity.” Hundreds of thousands answered a Facebook call to oppose “Racism and Xenophobia.” Any right-minded person would find this response laudable.

But in Västerås, all was quiet—there were no vigils, no minute’s silence, and no outpouring of grief on social media—and the victims (a mother and son) remained anonymous. Prime Minister Stefan Löfven rushed to Trollhättan but did not bother to visit Västerås. Adamson concludes that, notwithstanding their obvious similarities, one act is deemed a hate crime but the other is not. A meaningless, terrible act against non-Swedes produced nationwide soul-searching but an equally terrible act against two Swedes was quickly glossed over as if it were an embarrassment. And this is his deeply discomfiting point: “Sweden is influenced by an attitude whereby non-Swedes are systematically being favoured in relation to Swedes, that is, by masochistic nationalism.”

...

The simultaneous debasement of one’s own culture and the sanctification of those imported from poorer, non-white countries was graphically illustrated in 2002 by the former candidate for Prime Minister, Mona Sahlin. At a meeting of the Turkish youth organisation, she declared, “I think this is in a sense the reason why so many Swedes are so jealous of immigrant groups. You have a culture, an identity, a history, something that binds you together. And what do we have? We have midsummer night and ridiculous stuff like that.” Adamson notes that this was not an isolated absurdity but reflects decades of masochistic political discourse within Sweden’s political elite. At the same time, ideological blinkers help liberal Swedes avoid the uncomfortable realities of what might euphemistically be called the “troublesome” aspects of exotic cultures....

...

...masochistic nationalism has led to the replacement of the unfair treatment of minorities with unfair treatment of the majority....

My only concern about the book is the author’s repeated attempts to draw similarities between positive and masochistic nationalisms. While Orwell was correct to draw attention to these, given Adamson’s focus and aims, there was no need to stress discourses around the former. Moreover, positive nationalism is not necessarily reactionary: it is a simple fact of life that individuals absorb the culture and modus vivendi of the society in which they are raised and that these naturally contribute to their identity. In Western Europe, in particular, the large numbers of people who have settled in the region in recent decades, often with markedly different values and mores, have produced much anxiety. This is surely understandable, since the multicultural emphasis on tolerance of difference and the relativist suspension of moral judgement has led governments to be tentative at best in their efforts to integrate these new citizens.

...

Back in 1973, the European Community drafted the Declaration on European Identity which pledged to uphold “the diversity of cultures within the framework of a common European civilization, the attachment to common values and principles, the increasing convergence of attitudes to life.” This was a benign form of positive nationalism that reflected reality. But almost half a century later, with rapid demographic change sweeping the continent, it is no longer possible to retain confidence in such an identity based on deep commonalities. The fracturing of such unifying values and principles has occurred because of the increasing prevalence of negative and masochistic nationalism, and it is to Göran Adamson’s credit that he makes this resoundingly clear."

The collapse of unity is felt across society and only benefits those who wish to exploit.

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The Importance of Understanding the Nonspecific Effects of Vaccines

"...very few doctors, and certainly not the public, have any awareness at all of the nonspecific effects of vaccines (NSEs). The specific effect of a vaccine is immunity to a target infection; the nonspecific effect refers to the off-target effects of all vaccines. These can be positive or negative. The beneficial effects are improved immunity to a variety of infections and all-round health, and the negative effects are the inverse—a predisposition to off-target diseases and immune dysregulation, whilst still conferring immunity to the targeted pathogen. These discoveries have surprised the scientific community and left researchers scratching their heads as to how and why such important effects could have been overlooked by epidemiologists for over a century.

It began with observations made in the small West African nation of Guinea-Bissau from 1979. Anthropologist Peter Aaby was sent to investigate malnutrition in the country but found none. Instead, he ran headlong into a measles epidemic compounding pre-existing endemic infections, which resulted in half of all children dying before the age of five. Guinea-Bissau had the sad distinction of having the fourth highest child mortality rate in the world. Aaby must have felt like a lone mariner in a tropical storm. Blindsided, he immediately set about obtaining measles vaccines. At the time, the conventional wisdom was that such vaccination efforts against measles were not the main priority for African countries.

Aaby was taken aback by what occurred following mass vaccination against measles: the rate of all-cause mortality among the children dropped by far more than could be explained by the measles decline alone. Children were not only not dying from measles, but they weren’t succumbing to a number of other diseases either. In an interview at the 2019 European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Disease (ECCMID), Aaby pointed out that measles epidemiological models predict a mortality decline of 15 percent in the first 12 months. Instead, Aaby witnessed a reduction in all-cause mortality in children of more than 50 percent. Aaby had stumbled upon the NSE of a vaccine. This discovery prompted the creation of the Bandim Health Project (BHP), a health and demographic surveillance system.

Greatly encouraged by the measles experience, Aaby set about introducing the DTP vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis. But to his surprise, all-cause deaths increased from 200 to 275 per 1,000! Aaby had discovered that the live vaccines such as those used to combat measles, smallpox, BCG (TB), and oral polio reduced all-cause mortality, and non-live (inactivated) vaccines had the opposite effect. From then until 2015, all-cause mortality in Guinea-Bissau continued to decline in a saw-toothed fashion to 75 per 1,000—an 85 percent overall reduction. This was a staggering result. As Aaby states: “I don’t think this is something that has ever been achieved before.”

...

A summary of Aaby and Benn’s work was published in the Lancet recently, encapsulated in the form of the following six principles:

--Live vaccines enhance immunity against off-target infections.

--Inactivated or non-live vaccines increase the susceptibility of girls to off-target infections.

--The most recently administered vaccine has the strongest NSE.

--Combining live and non-live vaccines have variable NSEs.

--The vaccination of children with live vaccines when maternal immunity is present (such as following birth) improves beneficial NSEs.

--All vaccines may interact with other interventions or supplementation.

...

Most people associate vaccination with childhood, but increasingly, more adults are being advised to get more vaccines. This trend accelerated with the development of the influenza vaccine, prior to which most baby boomers had only received a handful of vaccines as children and perhaps the occasional DTP vaccine as adults, for tetanus protection following a wound. With the COVID vaccines quite possibly becoming an annual occurrence, this trend will continue. In an email, Dr. Schaltz-Buchholzer told me he questions whether the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines can be considered live vaccines (and therefore imparting beneficial NSEs) in the accepted sense, and furthermore that the overall NSEs remain uncertain at this stage. Perhaps they offer none of the advantages of their forebears, or perhaps we’ll see a new era of vector vaccines with more promising NSEs.

Medical science has made the same mistakes with vaccines as it has made with various drugs such as opioids: the overreach of use, often in low-risk situations. However, there is a way forward through the more frequent administration of live vaccines, together with the development of new ones, and careful re-sequencing so that live vaccines are administered last.

Set against Benn’s optimism is the persistence of the antivax movement which has arguably arisen from the seemingly glib dismissal of patients’ concerns about negative NSEs. In contrast, they are not aware of positive NSEs. The BHP research has shown the smallpox, oral polio, BCG (TB), and measles vaccines greatly reduce all-cause mortality and morbidity, with the former three being responsible for large reductions in hospital admissions over the course of a recipient’s lifetime. During his interview at the ECCMID, Peter Aaby said, “Any system of medicine which does not allow for the fact it may be wrong isn’t a good system. … You all think we know what our vaccines are doing—we don’t!” Cherry-picked quotes by the antivax movement are clarion calls to the lay public. The medical approach of browbeating and belittling those with concerns hasn’t worked, but they press on with the same strategy. A new strategy is required that balances authority with humility."

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(Not) Living Large on Social Security

"It turns out that 23.4% of all retired workers receive less than $1,000 a month in Social Security (SSA) benefits. Note that $148.50 is deducted monthly from the SSA benefit for Medicare Part B for retirees age 65 and older, so the net cash received is $148.50 less than the full benefit for everyone in Medicare (age 65 and older).

Roughly half of all retired workers receive $1,500 or less per month.

76% of all retired workers receive less than $2,000 a month.

91% of all retired workers receive less than $2,500 a month.

98% of all retired workers receive less than $3,000 a month.

4,201 beneficiaries receive $4,000 or more per month.

For roughly half of the elderly, Social Security provides 50 percent of their income, and for about 1 in 4, it provides at least 90 percent of their income. The top 10% of senior households enjoy average incomes of about $230,000. Social Security Benefits Are Modest (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)

In summary, few are living large on Social Security benefits."

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Ore. lawmakers expel state Rep. who let protesters enter Capitol

"The Oregon House of Representatives have voted to expel a member who allegedly let rioters in the State Capitol. This week, both Republicans and Democrats voted to oust Republican Mike Nearman in connection with the December incident.

Nearly all of the state’s 60 lawmakers voted to remove Nearman, with the censored lawmaker casting the only vote in his favor. Nearman said he will not apologize for the event, saying the capitol should have been open to the public despite coronavirus orders allowing only lawmakers and staff to occupy the building.

Nearman commented, “now you’re considering expelling a member for the first time in history, because he thinks that people should have access to their Capitol, especially during session.” He argued, “I think that the citizens of Oregon should be able to instruct their representatives.”"

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‘Speed over safety’? SpaceX IGNORED FAA warnings prior to Starship prototype launch that ended with explosion, media says

"Elon Musk’s company SpaceX reportedly turned a blind eye to warnings over safety risks from federal regulators during a launch, documents obtained by The Verge reveal. The test flight in question ended with a fiery crash.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued at least two warnings to SpaceX during the company’s testing of its reusable Starship system in Texas last year, US news website The Verge reported, citing “exclusively obtained” documents.

The documents, which apparently include confidential letters between the FAA and SpaceX chiefs, among other things, suggest that the company “prioritized speed over safety,” according to The Verge. Its “actions show a concerning lack of operational control and process discipline that is inconsistent with a strong safety culture,” a letter from the FAA space division head, Wayne Monteith, to SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell reportedly states.

In December 2020, the Starship prototype serial number 8 (SN8) took off from private grounds belonging to SpaceX in Boca Chica, Texas. While the high-altitude suborbital test flight launched successfully, the vehicle disassembled and crashed while attempting to land. Elon Musk then tweeted that his company “got all the data we needed” from the test, adding, “Mars, here we come!”

However, according to the latest report, events apparently violating the company’s launch license, and potentially endangering the public, occurred minutes before takeoff, as the SN8 wasn’t cleared for launch by the FAA due to the weather conditions.

On the launch day, FAA officials questioned SpaceX’s weather and launch modeling data, and said the SN8 wasn’t safe to launch, according to a report. The federal regulators, upon studying their own models, said that if an explosion occurred, nearby homes could be endangered due to wind speed potentially strengthening the shockwave. The countdown was paused, but an unnamed SpaceX director of launch operations restarted the launch shortly afterwards, despite FAA safety inspectors saying the risks remained."

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Texas allows residents to possess handguns with no license after Gov. Abbott signs controversial ‘constitutional carry’ bill

"Texans will soon be permitted to carry handguns without a license, with Governor Greg Abbott signing a bill into law that scraps most of the state’s permit requirements despite vocal opposition from police groups and the public.

After passing through the state Senate late last month, Abbott put his name to HB 1927 on Wednesday, legalizing what proponents call “Constitutional Carry,” which allows residents to possess pistols with no license or mandatory training.

While the law exempts those already prohibited to carry firearms under state or federal law, such as convicted felons, all other state residents aged 21 and up will be free to tote handguns, openly or concealed, once the legislation takes effect on September 1.

...

A group of five police orgs led by the Dallas Police Association lobbied strongly against the bill, though ultimately compromised after state Senators included a number of amendments to the law to address their concerns, which largely centered on officer safety. Without the amendments, the groups said “many dangerous and unstable Texans will have unfettered access to weapons and face little or no punishment when apprehended.”

...

The compromise bill that was ultimately passed retained a provision that allows police to question residents solely based on their possession of a handgun, and also boosts criminal penalties for felons found to be carrying. State Senators also introduced a measure requiring the Texas Department of Public Safety to offer a free online gun safety course, in line with calls from other policing groups for residents to receive training.

...

Texas lawmakers have also passed a bill to make the state into a “Second Amendment sanctuary,” which will exempt it from any new federal gun legislation. Governor Abbott has already declared his intent to enact the law, saying “I look forward to signing it” in April, though it has yet to reach his desk."

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Bleached New World

"In Todd Haynes’ 1995 film, “Safe,” Julianne Moore plays an affluent housewife, Carol White. Carol leads a comfortable life with her husband and stepson. They live in an upscale home with a servant; she spends her days gardening, taking aerobics classes, and seeing her female friends. But Carol feels isolated from her environment. The relationship with her husband is polite and respectful but distant. Her stepson doesn’t much like her, and her friendships are based on social standing. Carol’s concerns are trivial, like attending a baby shower, getting a perm and a manicure, and causing an uproar over the fact that the furniture company delivered a wrong-colored couch.

Carol is suffering from malaise, and everything she does takes extra effort. She begins to feel physically sick, first from the exhaust fumes on the freeway, and then from the entire environment that surrounds her. She begins to watch videos about environmental disasters and how they influence our lives. The power of suggestion is strong and her mind leads her to think she is allergic to chemicals. In order to alleviate her symptoms, she checks into Wrenwood, a  health center whose patients all suffer from supposed “chemical sensitivities.”

Carol doesn’t get better, however, and she further descends into what she considers the safe zone, away from the environment, the people in it, and ultimately even her family. She ends up in a small geodesic dome akin to a concrete cell. She is alone, sitting on a metal bed, barely illuminated, muttering words of self-love and affirmation as the film ends.

Haynes’ film could be taken on a literal level but, of course, it also functions as a metaphor for an unstable life. Carol’s malaise is not in her body but in her mind. Without being fully conscious of it, she participates in an annihilation of herself. Although the film is supposed to take place in the late 1980s, with allusions to the AIDS epidemic and social commentary on the affluent apathy so popularly criticized in those years, as well as the advent of self-help books, videos, and gurus, the ideas of safety and risk-taking are very much part of our current society’s rhetoric and reality.

The COVID-19 crisis, which still appears to be going on in some absurdly undefined fashion, has brought out not only the political divisions among people but also the emotional and psychological divisions. At the beginning of the crisis, we observed people as being either afraid or not afraid of the virus itself, but as time went on, it became clear that the real division was between people who are afraid of life and those who are not.

...

At the outset of the virus crisis and now, one of the primary challenges has been how to deal with authoritarian powers. But there is more to this. Totalitarianism and authoritarianism cannot multiply without willing participants. As Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges observed, “dictatorships breed oppression, dictatorships breed civility, dictatorships breed cruelty; more loathsome still is the fact that they breed idiocy.” Those who were afraid of life to begin with and who were seeking their salvation either through ideology or government ended up being the very same people who were most afraid of the virus. Much like Carol White, they wanted to create a perpetual zone of safety to avoid their deep fear and denial of death.

...

At the heart of this problem is alienation. This may be a human condition that takes different forms in different epochs, but current alienation driven by technology has positioned itself in a good place to serve as one of the factors promoting alienation through the vehicle of COVID-19. Attempting to bleach the world that surrounds them, those who unquestioningly follow the so-called scientific leadership (which has repeatedly lied to the people) have no qualms in treating others as mere germs. One of the biggest spiritual aftereffects of the COVID-19 crisis is the dehumanization of others (this is especially true of the morally reprehensible treatment of children during the pandemic, which still continues).

By nature, human beings are social and relational. To continue on a trajectory of dehumanization would be disastrous for the human mind and soul, and for our society. The pandemic has given us a glimpse of an anti-life dystopia in which people are weaponized against each other in order to achieve the political goals of certain power brokers....

...

In The Origins of Totalitarianism (1948), Hannah Arendt observed that “ideologies are never interested in the miracle of being,” and this is precisely what we are witnessing today. The sooner we recognize that the problems brought on by the COVID-19 crisis are not only political, cultural, or economic but also deeply existential and spiritual, the sooner we might be able to fight the chaos of dystopian and joyless thinking, and continue to affirm the culture of life."

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Keep Social-Justice Indoctrination Out of the Therapist’s Office

"A concerned London-based psychotherapist, Val Thomas, has warned of a new trend that she terms Critical Social Justice Therapy, or CSJT: “a practice that views people not as individual actors but rather as representatives of particular groups which are nested within systems of power and trains therapist-activists to diagnose patients through a collective lens.” Last year, Thomas founded an online community, Critical Therapy Antidote, as a hub for practitioners and clients dedicated to “protecting the integrity of talking therapies.”

(Before proceeding further, it is worth setting out the somewhat confusing professional typology at play here. The word “therapist” describes anyone who talks to patients or clients with a view toward providing psychological aid. The term “psychotherapy” sounds more specific to a layperson—but, in practice, that term, too, is also applied widely. A “counselor” usually has a Master’s degree in counseling, and a counseling psychologist usually has a PhD—though practitioners in these areas will use different terms, including “psychodynamic psychotherapy” or “behavioral therapy,” to describe their work. Many psychiatrists, who are physicians by training, also provide psychotherapy. Finally, there are “analysts,” who can come from a variety of educational backgrounds, but generally must attend a lengthy program of formal psychoanalytic training at a recognized institute. For a time, only medical doctors could train as analysts, but that has changed.)

To picture CSJT in its purest form, imagine a black patient whose white therapist systematically conceives of the patient’s problems in love, work, and family life as products of racism. Odd as that may sound to anyone familiar with conventional psychotherapy, this overtly ideological approach is becoming increasingly prominent among a cadre of counseling professionals. At the Graduate Counseling Program at the University of Vermont, for instance, the coordinator has issued a proposal to “structurally align” the program with the Black Lives Matter movement and begin “the work of undoing systemic white supremacy.”

...

Aaron Kindsvatter, a professor in the University of Vermont’s department of Education and Social Services, recently spoke out against these pending changes in an interview with YouTuber Benjamin Boyce. “Eventually counselors are going to feel that it is their job to help clients who are experiencing mental distress understand themselves in these terms of racist or antiracist,” Kindsvatter said. “Children and people who are in mental distress need nuanced conversations about morality and ethics and this is an ideology that says no there is no nuance to those conversations. Two years ago, I would have said this could never happen.” (Needless to say, critics at the university are now calling for his resignation.)

The American Counseling Association, the organization representing licensed American counseling professionals, features a division called “Counselors for Social Justice,” which “works to promote social justice in our society through confronting oppressive systems of power and privilege.” Some counseling programs now teach students how to organize protests. And journal articles are appearing with titles such as Black Lives Matter: A Call to Action for Counseling Psychology Leaders. Gauging applicants’ commitment to social-justice advocacy has become part of some admissions processes.

Alexander Adams, a pseudonymous recent graduate of an American Master’s program in counseling, recently wrote an essay for Critical Therapy Antidote entitled, My Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology Taught me a lot about ‘Social Justice’ But Very Little about Counseling or Psychology. He describes two and a half years of “incompetence and mediocrity”—at a cost of $70,000 in (borrowed) money—during which teachers felt free to lecture students about their political beliefs, and trainees were instructed on “the dynamics and dilemmas of microaggressions,” and “developing a nonracist and antiracist white identity.”

...

A therapist is free to personally believe that Black Lives Matter and Ibram X. Kendi should (or should not) serve as guiding lights in the creation of a new kind of social contract. But in regard to clinical practice, Critical Social Justice Therapy violates core tenets of sound psychotherapy. Instead of addressing the individual person in need, it applies a pre-programmed ideological agenda that classifies individuals as oppressor or oppressed based on identity group.

The task of the therapist, said Anthony Storr, the late British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, is “to get the patient to talk as freely as possible whilst he himself stays in the background.” But talking freely is possible only if a therapist assumes a posture of caring neutrality, openness, and curiosity. And learning to maintain compassionate detachment lies at the heart of practitioner training. The mature therapist keeps her private passions from distorting the work. She is attuned to the development of what Freud called “countertransference,” wherein her own emotional reaction to a patient clouds her clinical judgment. Even seasoned therapists engage trusted supervisors to help them understand and manage such complexities as they emerge in therapeutic relationships.

...

When a therapist comes to the first session armed with an ideological program that dictates what the patient should become, such an alliance is doomed. Even insofar as a patient may agree to this program before treatment begins, what they will be receiving isn’t psychotherapy so much as anti-racism cant delivered under the pretext of therapeutic treatment. Where the patient should be inculcated in the habit of self-observation, he will instead be taught to search outside himself for sources of all duress; instead of traveling a path to greater autonomy, he will be instead rewarded for adopting the victim role.

How could a therapist wedded to anti-racist sentiments relate empathically to, say, a white, straight young man who voted for Donald Trump? How could a patient regard a therapist as benign and caring if she tells him, or even strongly implies, that she thinks he is a bigot—and, furthermore, that many of his personal problems are rooted in this presumed bigotry?

Velma Olden (a pseudonym) writes of being alienated by group therapy with a counselor who pronounced himself an avowed Black Lives Matter supporter (which is fine, of course, so long as the instructor does not use his professional role as a means to proselytize). He also encouraged the group to discuss race issues in the service of what Olden described as “extreme left activism.” In one case, there was a discussion about how to talk to one’s family “about social justice” over an upcoming weekend.

Olden, like most people who pursue psychotherapy, wanted to find clarity, relief from suffering, and freedom from the habits that had imprisoned her for years. Instead, she was told that we were “victims of vague societal forces outside of our control.”

This is not to say that psychotherapists shouldn’t be sensitive to matters of race, and racism more generally—much as they should be familiar with the other important dynamics that shape one’s mental life. Before the dawn of the civil rights era, psychotherapy was overwhelmingly the province of white practitioners and the white patients who could afford their care. After World War II, the number of public mental-hygiene clinics expanded markedly. Some of the new clients were black workers who sought assistance in adjusting to newly integrated workplaces. The American Psychological Association recognized the importance of doctoral students becoming “familiar with the broad problems of social structure and organization, with cultural conditions, and with the heterogeneity of subgroup patterns within our culture.” And rightly so.

In 1950, psychologist Ralph W. Heine addressed the issue in a Journal of Clinical Psychology article entitled, The Negro Patient in Psychotherapy. Heine considered whether “the notion of communicating real feelings or interpersonal problems [to a white therapist] would be difficult for [a black patient] to accept.” In turn, he wondered whether the therapist could respond to a black patient as an individual rather than a member of a minority group. Perhaps, Heine speculated (prophetically, I might add), the white therapist might feel “too guilty to be of help.”

He also offered this cautionary remark, which seems apt in light of the modern identitarian thrust in counseling education: “No attempt will be made here to generalize on the character structure of Negroes as a group. [This] writer, at least, has never found characterological studies of entire groups of specific help in working with one member of that group.” Later in the article, Heine affirms that “the therapist must clearly communicate to his patient that he is interested in him only as an individual … and not as symbols or as representatives of the racial minority.”

Even by the 1970s and 1980s, Heine’s benign vision was giving way to a dubious movement called “multicultural counseling,” effectively a precursor to today’s CSJT. In a 1981 textbook entitled Counseling the Culturally Different, authors Derald Wing and David Sue directed (white) counselors in training to ask themselves, “as a member of the white group, what responsibility do you hold for the racist depressive and discriminating manner by which you personally and professionally deal with minorities?” As for the “worldview of the culturally different client,” write the authors, it “boils down to one important question: ‘What makes you any different from all the others out there who have oppressed and discriminated against me.” Their textbook, now in its eighth edition (the words “culturally different” having been changed to “culturally diverse”) is still in wide use.

...

According to the plain wording contained in the most recent iteration of the American Counseling Association Code of Ethics, the ACA should condemn CJST:

"Counselors are [to be] aware of—and avoid imposing—their own values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Counselors respect the diversity of clients, trainees, and research participants and seek training in areas in which they are at risk of imposing their values onto clients, especially when the counselor’s values are inconsistent with the client’s goals or are discriminatory in nature."

...

Certainly, it speaks volumes about the current ideological environment that officials at the University of Vermont’s Counseling Program would feel at liberty to endorse the adoption of Kendi-esque imperatives without any apparent fear of censure from the ACA. Yet it is difficult to gauge how deeply the CJST ethos has penetrated the real world of practicing counselors.

I’ve heard reports of patients being scolded by therapists for voting the “wrong” way. And I’ve exchanged emails with a former academic who has an informal side gig referring conservative (and ideologically non-compliant liberals) to “non-woke,” neutral therapists. But these examples may be outliers: Many, perhaps most, practitioners may well be reasonable and humane clinicians. Even in a university setting, where the pursuit of ideological fads is always more pronounced, the majority of professionals may simply be mouthing CJST platitudes for public consumption by their own colleagues and bosses, but then, behind closed doors, getting on with the real work of helping people in an ethical, clear-eyed way. Even so, politicizing the counseling curricula siphons precious time away from preparing trainees to treat their future patients."

There's a difficulty here for sure. A criticism often lobbed at therapy is that it seeks to get you to successfully adapt to an unhealthy world. One result of that seems to be this CSJT. Though it would also seem clear that this approach is flawed as well.

In addition there's the concern that we're medicalizing & professionalizing what would have in the past occurred among friends and family. But we've taken the skills of listenig and empathy and offering ways to help people grapple with their issues and turned them into checklists & diagnostic tools & "best practices".

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Torture Enters the Courtroom

"For the first time in American history, a federal judge...authorized the government to admit as evidence in a criminal case in a public courtroom words uttered by the defendant that were obtained under torture.

The fruits of torture — which is any cruel or degrading or intentionally painful or disorienting behavior visited upon a person in captivity to induce compliance or to gratify the torturer — are not permitted in any court in the United States, and their inducement is criminal.

Here is the backstory.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a low-level former member of the Taliban, is accused with others of plotting the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 that killed 17 American sailors. He has been in U.S. custody since 2002 and at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2004. When he was first captured, he was turned over to the CIA for interrogation, not the Department of Justice for prosecution.

The practice of the federal government immediately following 9/11, when it captured anyone overseas from whom it believed it could extract national security information, was to hand the person over to the CIA for torture — the feds call it “enhanced interrogation” — at a “dark site” in a foreign country with which the U.S. does not have an extradition treaty.

...

However, because either the tortured person or someone connected to whatever the tortured person revealed was to be tried in a federal court, and because no federal court can admit evidence against a defendant that was obtained under torture, the feds devised a scheme around this.

That scheme called for FBI “clean teams” to interrogate the tortured person after the torture was completed, using conventional and lawful interrogation techniques. These techniques often proved more successful than CIA torture. Because these techniques were lawful, and the person being interrogated was advised of his rights and treated humanely by the FBI, the information thus obtained from him was usable in federal court.

...

Al-Nashiri’s lawyers told the court and the prosecutors at Guantanamo Bay that they intend to argue at trial to the jury that the government has the wrong man and that the true plotters have already been killed by U.S. forces. The feds, in order to counter that argument, told the court that they have statements that al-Nashiri made during his torture that can arguably be used to question his defense.

...

...the trial judge in this case did not follow American law and rejected American values and all sense of human decency when he authorized the government to introduce at trial a partial transcript of the statements al-Nashiri allegedly made under torture. He also broke with 230 years of precedent. He also gave judicial credibility to governmental barbarism and nihilism in the extreme, which holds that individual human beings are subject to the state and, since their rights come from the state, they and their rights exist at the pleasure of the state.

The government lies, cheats, steals and kills; and it has written laws that permit it to do so and make legal recourse against it nearly impossible.

But nothing it does is more damnable than torture.

Torture is the ultimate triumph of the state over a person and the ultimate degradation of personhood. It is a complete rejection of the values of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And it doesn’t work.

...

Many appeals remain for al-Nashiri before his jury trial comes to pass; and torture — with all its sufferings by victim and perpetrators — is part of the history of his case. I trust that saner judicial heads in the appellate process will prevail and this precedent-shattering and monstrous decision will soon be overturned. But its damage is done.

The government of the United States engages in torture and will continue to do so until the torturers are punished. And the prosecutors for whom the torturers work will someday try again to get the fruits of their barbaric behavior legitimized in an American courtroom."

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British MoD Report: Embrace of “Human Augmentation” to Fully Exploit Drones and A.I. for Warfighting

"The MoD’s internal think-tank, the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC) along with the German Bundeswehr Office for Defence Planning (BODP) has published a disturbing new report urging greater investigation of – and investment in – human augmentation for military purposes. The following is a brief summary of the 100+ page document with short comment at the end.

‘Human Augmentation – The Dawn of a New Paradigm’ argues that humans are the ‘weakest link’ in modern warfare, and that there is a need to exploit scientific advances to improve human capabilities.

“Increasing use of autonomous and unmanned systems – from the tactical to the strategic level – could significantly increase the combat effect that an individual can bring to bear, but to realise this potential, the interfaces between people and machines will need to be significantly enhanced. Human augmentation will play an important part in enabling this interface.”

Suggested human augmentation to explore for military purposes includes the use of brain interfaces, pharmaceuticals and gene therapy.  Humans, argues the report, should be seen as a ‘platform’ in the same way as vehicles, aircraft and ships, with three elements of ‘the human platform’ to be developed: the physical, the psychological and the social...

The report defines human augmentation as ‘the application of science and technologies to temporarily or permanently improve human performance.’ It then differentiates between human optimisation which can “improve human performance up to the limit of biological capabilities without adding new capabilities” and human enhancement which can take the humans “beyond the limits of biological potential.”  While noting that night vision googles and binoculars should be technically be included in the definition of human augmentation, the reports states it is focusing  “on the implications of novel science and technology that are more closely integrated with the human body.”

The authors of the report argue:

“We want ‘war fighters’ – whether they be cyber specialists, drone pilots or infantry soldiers – to be stronger, faster, more intelligent, more resilient and more mobile to overcome the environment and the adversary. As technology has become more sophisticated our thinking has become more focused on the machine rather than the person, but this needs to change if we are going to be effective in the future.”

...

Arguing that the deployment of armed forces is being made increasingly difficult by the proliferation of long-range precision weapons, the report suggests that greater use of unmanned systems in conjunction with lighter, mobile and more versatile ground forces is the solution. “Human augmentation will directly support these solutions” the report asserts. Through brain interfaces, personnel will be able “to increase the combat power they can bring to bear by networking them with autonomous and unmanned systems.”

...

However, the report acknowledges that such human augmentation will have an impact on personnel as they prepare for life after the military.

“The use of invasive human augmentation may require surgery to remove or downgrade implants that may not be permitted in civilian life. Reintegration to society could be complicated from a technical perspective but learning to live without military-grade augmentation could present even bigger mental health challenges.”

Attempting perhaps to put a positive spin on it, the reports goes on: “equally, veterans who have benefitted from human augmentation in Service life may be highly sought after by civilian employers.”

...

“Defence cannot wait for ethics to change before engaging with human augmentation – we must be in the conversation from the outset to inform the debate and understand how ethical views are evolving.”

In a sign of how it is going to make its argument in the debate, it likens opposition to human augmentation to the opposition by some to vaccines, saying that the discovery of smallpox saved millions of lives but was condemned at the time by some of the world’s leading thinkers.  “We cannot assume human augmentation will be automatically effective or accepted in its intended use, no matter how beneficial its effects may be. Human augmentation may be resisted by elements in society that do not trust the effectiveness and motive of augmentation.

...

“The imperative to use human augmentation may ultimately not be dictated by any explicit ethical argument, but by national interest. Countries may need to develop human augmentation or risk surrendering influence, prosperity and security to those who do.”

Ominously, the report argues that “relationships with industry and academia will be key to understanding how emerging augmentation technologies could be repurposed or developed for Defence.”  Life sciences, unlike nuclear physics or cryptography has “relatively little experience of classified research and its links with national security apparatus are less developed.”  This relationship – including with “government departments responsible for health and social care” – need to be “revised” declares the report, urging a move towards “a more sophisticated relationship between the public and private sector” in this area.

...

“Successfully exploiting human augmentation will require Defence and society to face up to uncomfortable ethical and legal dilemmas. So far, Defence organisations in liberal democracies have adopted a ‘wait and see’ approach, choosing to let ethical debate and technical developments play out. This passive stance will cede momentum to our adversaries and cause Defence to miss opportunities to improve the well-being and effectiveness of our Armed Forces.”

...

The argument, as this report makes, that we are weak and ineffective in the face of sophisticated and deadly enemies is far from a new one. It has been used for centuries to develop and sell tools to increase our lethality and reach in order to project deadly force around the globe. But there is a qualitative difference between equipping a soldier with night-vision goggles or a high-powered rifle and implanting a computer interface in the brain of a drone pilot in order to increase data processing or network with an AI. That is before we get to the idea of somatic gene engineering to reduce pain thresholds or increase cognition.

The increasing use of computers, robotics, unmanned and remote systems in warfare is – in part – about enabling the erosion of humanity from warfare. Eroding hesitation, empathy, risk to oneself. Eroding the possibility of capture rather than kill. Eroding public knowledge and understanding of what is happening on the ground thousands of miles away.  Such remote warfare distances us, in different senses, from the consequences of our warfare.

Human augmentation – as the report acknowledges – could change our understanding of what it means to be human. But using human augmentation to eliminate so-called weaknesses in order to increase our aptitude for organised violence also threatens our humanity. The notion that humanity  is a weak link to be eradicated in order to be more lethal is simply appalling."

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Vt. Gov. Scott signs bill requiring mass mailing of ballots

"Gov. Phil Scott (R-Vt.) has signed an election bill that requires the states to send out mail-in ballots to all registered voters. The governor went against the GOP trend and signed bill S.15 on Monday, which he claims will make voting more accessible and increase voter participation.

“I’m signing this bill because I believe making sure voting is easy and accessible, and increasing voter participation is important,” he explained. “Having said that, we should not limit this expansion of access to general elections alone, which already have the highest voter turnout.”"

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Viral Twitter post claims 13yo died of ‘cardiac event’ as doctors consider link between rare heart condition & vaccine in boys

"A 13-year-old boy allegedly died from heart problems after getting his second dose of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, according to a viral Twitter post, as health officials begin to link cases of heart inflammation in kids to the jabs.

A Twitter thread went viral on Sunday after a woman claimed that her brother’s 13-year-old son had died less than three days after receiving his second dose of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine.

“The initial autopsy results (done Friday) were that his heart was enlarged and there was some fluid surrounding it. He had no known health problems. Was on no medications,” Tami Burages wrote, with a photo apparently showing her nephew’s Covid-19 vaccination record card.

The card showed that the child, Jacob Clynick – born in 2007 – received his second dose on June 13 at a Walgreens three weeks after his first.

...

Dr. Cody Meissner, a member of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, expressed concern over the long-term effects of myocarditis on young people earlier this month, warning, “Before we start vaccinating millions of adolescents and children, it’s so important to find out what the consequences are.”

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Wolensky, however, attempted to reassure Americans during a White House press briefing last week that such cases are “rare” and “the vast majority have fully resolved with rest and supportive care.”

“My own children received the Covid-19 vaccine because vaccination is the best way to protect our adolescents, teens, and young adults from Covid-19 and its complications,” she continued. Dr. Wolensky added that the CDC “will present details about more than 300 confirmed cases of myocarditis and pericarditis reported to the CDC and FDA among the over 20 million adolescents and young adults vaccinated in the United States.”

A meeting between vaccine advisers and the CDC is scheduled to take place later this week after being delayed due to the new Juneteenth holiday."