tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77609864032903521522024-03-25T07:06:42.548-07:00oriana-poetrypoems by American and European poets; book reviews; poetry theory; personal reflections on poetry, the immigrant experience, psychology, religion, mythology, cultureUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger649125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-60796725822164419292024-03-23T17:56:00.000-07:002024-03-23T22:58:31.350-07:00GREAT GATSBY: MISUNDERSTOOD; CAN THERE BE TOO MUCH SOLITUDE? IMPERIALIST FIRE ANTS; SLOW-DOWN OF THE OCEAN CURRENTS AND GLOBAL WARMING; INCREASING SOLUBLE AMYLOID BETA: A NEW TREATMENT FOR ALZHEIMER'S; REWRITING GENESIS; BENEFITS OF GOAT MILK<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_ecvymReciunjhjHhmPny32J4C81FgeAKCEPWbPc55a_ODS0SZDJZ2UbtxmCCGdp3FvzglHb1pKqooVGItalzSvHvDmmXM3PGtFkHfy1v06A2pZ4q9FFKivJjf6hE6FekGSvvX2MpGlw7fqAvupmR_mJIR3WXHCtPJbRvrSzxztbnd5uiS7JleHJ99Xx8/s1536/common%20starling%20Sturnus%20vulgaris%20Mark%20Williams.webp" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1259" data-original-width="1536" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_ecvymReciunjhjHhmPny32J4C81FgeAKCEPWbPc55a_ODS0SZDJZ2UbtxmCCGdp3FvzglHb1pKqooVGItalzSvHvDmmXM3PGtFkHfy1v06A2pZ4q9FFKivJjf6hE6FekGSvvX2MpGlw7fqAvupmR_mJIR3WXHCtPJbRvrSzxztbnd5uiS7JleHJ99Xx8/w400-h328/common%20starling%20Sturnus%20vulgaris%20Mark%20Williams.webp" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Common starling (Sturnus vulgaris); photo: Mark Williams<br /></i><br />*<br />OFTEN REBUKED, YET ALWAYS BACK RETURNING<br /><br />Often rebuked, yet always back returning<br /> To those first feelings that were born with me,<br />And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning<br /> For idle dreams of things which cannot be:<br /><br />To-day, I will seek not the shadowy region;<br /> Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;<br />And visions rising, legion after legion,<br /> Bring the unreal world too strangely near.<br /><br />I’ll walk, but not in old heroic traces,<br /> And not in paths of high morality,<br />And not among the half-distinguished faces,<br /> The clouded forms of long-past history.<br /><br />I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading:<br /> It vexes me to choose another guide:<br />Where the gray flocks in ferny glens are feeding;<br /> Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side.<br /><br />What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?<br /> More glory and more grief than I can tell:<br />The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling<br /> Can center both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.<br /><br />~ Emily Brontë, Often Rebuked, Yet Always Back Returning</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI4F3Y8XsiegweMu-wq87SvXA42WSN6XCHQ2jT7rQpUg21MtNSToXkaxw3NPxGXc8OkpZ62Wx3h_LJKIrU5ET1tjAYB9caEeFq7NjtYUWoTMnMLeg0gZTub-KuTBXAZaCiH2y1sckb4dDncqD-rhduvY4qI7xpX0brQITxDN5cE0gEbzAKEqmVb1_hAndB/s674/yorkshire%20moors%20green.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="428" data-original-width="674" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI4F3Y8XsiegweMu-wq87SvXA42WSN6XCHQ2jT7rQpUg21MtNSToXkaxw3NPxGXc8OkpZ62Wx3h_LJKIrU5ET1tjAYB9caEeFq7NjtYUWoTMnMLeg0gZTub-KuTBXAZaCiH2y1sckb4dDncqD-rhduvY4qI7xpX0brQITxDN5cE0gEbzAKEqmVb1_hAndB/w400-h254/yorkshire%20moors%20green.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Yorkshire Moors<br /></i><br />*<br /><b>THE GREAT GATSBY AS THE WORLD’S MOST MISUNDERSTOOD NOVEL<br /></b><br /><b><i>The Great Gatsby is synonymous with parties, glitz and glamour – but this is just one of many misunderstandings about the book that began from its first publication.<br /></i></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2manlPlGEO76Jpd7iBh0G57jEaYUQE2GpnwpqyyPrzWjc5GTLd5V3MUl3KxiAllXLHj6ns_kHe3GWI9QdckfkqM8jXbexJFPvTxPnqGBlAPF-ZkO7KZIrwr8Il0lVVJ3v2Tz_IHtUbUWtokZk_faZU2fiNt_dWMCBaXszbE4LrA1uv_BOO1X8X084G9Qz/s1920/GREAT%20GATSBY%20mia%20farrow%20robert%20redford.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2manlPlGEO76Jpd7iBh0G57jEaYUQE2GpnwpqyyPrzWjc5GTLd5V3MUl3KxiAllXLHj6ns_kHe3GWI9QdckfkqM8jXbexJFPvTxPnqGBlAPF-ZkO7KZIrwr8Il0lVVJ3v2Tz_IHtUbUWtokZk_faZU2fiNt_dWMCBaXszbE4LrA1uv_BOO1X8X084G9Qz/w400-h225/GREAT%20GATSBY%20mia%20farrow%20robert%20redford.jpg" width="400" /></a></i></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Robert Redford and Mia Farrow in the 1974 film of The Great Gatsby<br /></i><br />Few characters in literature or indeed life embody an era quite so tenaciously as Jay Gatsby does the Jazz Age. Almost a century after he was written into being, F Scott Fitzgerald's doomed romantic has become shorthand for decadent flappers, champagne fountains and never-ending parties. Cut loose by pop culture from the text into which he was born, his name adorns everything from condominiums to hair wax and a limited-edition cologne (it contains notes of vetiver, pink pepper and Sicilian lime). It's now possible to lounge on a Gatsby sofa, check in at the Gatsby hotel, even chow down on a Gatsby sandwich – essentially a supersize, souped-up chip butty [a potato chip sandwich, regarded as working-class food].<br /><br />Incongruous though that last item sounds, naming anything after the man formerly known as James Gatz seems more than a touch problematic. After all, flamboyant host is just one part of his complicated identity. He's also a bootlegger, <b>up to his neck in criminal enterprise, not to mention a delusional stalker whose showmanship comes to seem downright tacky.</b> <b>If he embodies the potential of the American Dream, then he also illustrates its limitations: here is a man, let's not forget, whose end is destined to be as pointless as it is violent.</b><br /><br />Misunderstanding has been a part of The Great Gatsby's story from the very start. Grumbling to his friend Edmund Wilson shortly after publication in 1925, <b>Fitzgerald declared that "of all the reviews, even the most enthusiastic, not one had the slightest idea what the book was about." Fellow writers like Edith Wharton admired it plenty, but as the critic Maureen Corrigan relates in her book So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures, popular reviewers read it as crime fiction, and were decidedly underwhelmed by it at that. </b>Fitzgerald's Latest A Dud, ran a headline in the New York World. The novel achieved only so-so sales, and <b>by the time of the author's death in 1940, copies of a very modest second print run had long since been remaindered.</b><br /><br /><i><b>Gatsby's luck began to change when it was selected as a giveaway by the US military. With World War Two drawing to a close, almost 155,000 copies were distributed in a special Armed Services Edition, creating a new readership overnight. </b></i><b> </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>As the 1950s dawned, the flourishing of the American Dream quickened the novel's topicality, and by the 1960s, it was enshrined as a set text. </b>It's since become such a potent force in pop culture that even those who've never read it feel as if they have, helped along, of course, by Hollywood. It was in 1977, just a few short years after Robert Redford starred in the title role of an adaptation scripted by Francis Ford Coppola, that the word Gatsbyesque was first recorded.<br /><br /><b>Along with Baz Luhrmann's divisive 2013 movie extravaganza, the book has in the past decade alone spawned graphic novels, a musical, and an immersive theatrical experience. </b>From now on, we're likely to be seeing even more such adaptations and homages because at the start of this year, the novel's copyright expired, enabling anyone to adapt it without permission from its estate . Early calls for a Muppets adaptation may have come to nothing (never say never), but a big-budget TV miniseries was in the works as of 2021, and author Min Jin Lee and cultural critic Wesley Morris are both writing fresh introductions to new editions.<br /><br />If this all leaves Fitzgerald purists twiddling their pearls like worry beads, it's quite possible that while some such projects may further perpetuate the myth that throwing a Gatsby-themed party could be anything other than sublimely clueless, others may yield fresh insights into a text whose very familiarity often leads us to skate over its complexities. Take, for instance, Michael Farris Smith's new novel, Nick. The title refers, of course, to Nick Carraway, the narrator of Gatsby, who here gets his own fully formed backstory. <b>It's the tale of a Midwesterner who goes off to Europe to fight in World War One and comes back changed, as much by a whirlwind love affair in Paris as by trench warfare.</b> There's room for an impulsive sojourn in the New Orleans underworld before he heads off to Long Island's West Egg.<br /><br /><b>An impossible dream?</b></span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Like many, Smith first encountered the novel in high school. "I just completely didn’t get it", he tells BBC Culture, from his home in Oxford, Mississippi. "They seemed like a lot of people complaining about things they really shouldn't be complaining about." It was only when he picked it up again while living abroad in his late twenties that he began to understand the novel's power. "It was a very surreal reading experience for me. It seemed like something on almost every page was speaking to me in a way I had not expected," he recalls.<br /><br />Reaching the scene in which Carraway suddenly remembers it's his thirtieth birthday, Smith was filled with questions about what kind of a person Gatsby's narrator really was. "It seemed to me that there had been some real trauma that had made him so detached, even from his own self. The thought crossed my mind that it would be really interesting if someone were to write Nick's story," he says. In 2014, by then a published author in his forties, he sat down to do just that, telling neither his agent nor his editor. It was only when he delivered the manuscript 10 months later that he learned copyright law meant he'd have to wait until 2021 to publish it.<br /><br />Smith points to a quote from one of Fitzgerald's contemporaries as having provided the key to understanding Carraway. “<b>Ernest Hemingway says in [his memoir] A Moveable Feast that we didn't trust anyone who wasn't in the war, and to me that felt like a natural beginning for Nick.</b>” Smith imagines Carraway, coping with PTSD and shell shock, returning home to a nation that he no longer recognizes. It's a far cry from the riotous razzmatazz of all that partying, yet Carraway is, Smith suggests, the reason Fitzgerald's novel remains read. <b>“Maybe it's not the champagne and the dancing, maybe it is those feelings of wondering where we are, the sense that anything can crumble at any moment, that keep Gatsby meaningful from one generation to the next.”</b><br /><br />William Cain, an expert in American literature and the Mary Jewett Gaiser Professor of English at Wellesley College, agrees that Nick is crucial to understanding the novel's richness. <br /><br />"Fitzgerald gave some thought to structuring it in the third person but ultimately he chose Nick Carraway, a first-person narrator who would tell Gatsby's story, and who would be an intermediary between us and Gatsby. We have to respond to and understand Gatsby and, as we do so, remain aware that we're approaching him through Nick's very particular perspective, and <b>through Nick's very ambivalent relationship to Gatsby, which is simultaneously full of praise and full of severe criticism, even at some moments contempt</b>," he says.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy3pnAP16YhDC_jj3udx01VhHlOctTIC_Gjb2G-q08Odi9t8CjQ7JL6PsLITozODYYAd9fsurgz093oQ5u8CKV6PU_Dqv_Ep3J5m3uOPCpTZDO4Ysh77maRh9WY5SRVRZeCATBoNrIp94N1fnpxIZ6ARyZ-tSTImpKhZK8c2C9LUVLrKHYEydbBEmHdruJ/s1920/Great%20Gatsby%20Leonardo%20DiCaprio%20and%20Carey%20Mulligan.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy3pnAP16YhDC_jj3udx01VhHlOctTIC_Gjb2G-q08Odi9t8CjQ7JL6PsLITozODYYAd9fsurgz093oQ5u8CKV6PU_Dqv_Ep3J5m3uOPCpTZDO4Ysh77maRh9WY5SRVRZeCATBoNrIp94N1fnpxIZ6ARyZ-tSTImpKhZK8c2C9LUVLrKHYEydbBEmHdruJ/w400-h225/Great%20Gatsby%20Leonardo%20DiCaprio%20and%20Carey%20Mulligan.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan starred in Baz Luhrmann's divisive 2013 film.<br /></i><br />Like Smith, Cain first encountered the novel as a student. It was a different era – the 1960s – but even so, <b>little attention was paid to Nick. Cain recalls instead talk of symbolism – the legendary green light, for example, and Gatsby's fabled automobile. It's a reminder that, in a way, the education system is as much to blame as pop culture for our limited readings of this seminal text. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b> </b>It may be a Great American Novel but, at fewer than 200 pages, its sublimely economical storytelling makes its study points very easy to access. Ironically, given that <b>this is a novel of illusion and delusion, in which surfaces are crucial, we all too often overlook the texture of its prose</b>. As Cain puts it, "I think when we consider The Great Gatsby, we need to think about it not just as a novel that is an occasion or a point of departure for us to talk about big American themes and questions, but <b>we have to really enter into the richness of Fitzgerald's actual page-to-page writing. We have to come to Gatsby, yes, aware of its social and cultural significance, but also we need to return to it as a literary experience.</b>”<br /><br />Cain re-reads the novel every two or three years but frequently finds himself thinking about it in between – last summer, for instance, when US President Biden, accepting the Democratic nomination at the DNC, spoke of <b>the right to pursue dreams of a better future.</b> The American Dream is, of course, another of Gatsby's Big Themes, and one that continues to be misunderstood. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">"</span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Fitzgerald shows that that dream is very powerful, but that it is indeed a very hard one for most Americans to realize. It feeds them great hopes, great desires, and it's extraordinary, the efforts that so many of them make to fulfill those dreams and those desires, but that dream is beyond the reach of many, and many, they give up all too much to try to achieve that great success</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">," Cain points out. Among the obstacles, Fitzgerald seems to suggest, are hard-and-fast class lines that no amount of money will enable Gatsby to cross. It's a view that resonates with a mood that Cain says he's been picking up on among his students – a certain "melancholy" for the American Dream, the feeling fanned by racial and economic inequalities that the pandemic has only deepened.<br /><br />In other certain respects, the novel hasn't worn quite so well. While Fitzgerald showed where his allegiances lay by highlighting <b>the brute ugliness of Tom Buchanan's white supremacist beliefs, he repeatedly describes African Americans as "bucks"</b>. The novel makes for frustrating reading from a feminist perspective, too: its female characters lack dimensionality and agency, and are seen instead through the prism of male desire. The path is now open to endless creative responses to those more dated and unpleasant aspects, and an ITV and A+E Studios TV mini-series announced in 2021 looks set to be one of the first. Written by Michael Hirst and with Fitzgerald's great-granddaughter Blake Hazard on board as a consulting producer, it has been described as a "reimagining" of the classic novel. "I have long dreamt of a more diverse, inclusive version of Gatsby that better reflects the America we live in, one that might allow us all to see ourselves in Scott's wildly romantic text," Hazard told The Hollywood Reporter.<br /><br />To an impressive degree, however, the renewed attention brought by the change in law shows not just how relevant and seductive the text of Fitzgerald's novel remains, but how very alive it's always been. Pick it up at 27, and you'll find a different novel to the one you read as a teenager. Revisit it again at 45, and it'll feel like another book altogether. Copyright has never had any bearing on the impact of the words it governs.<br /><br />Finally able to publish Nick, Smith returned once more to The Great Gatsby before turning in his last edit. "I think it will be <b>a novel that's always evolving in my head, and always changing based on who I am," he says. "That's what great novels do.</b>”</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3rv2C3Xd1XCrjxCJYjT9b3KKpjs2JeUIvseAU_Loqvx2DGWuakOB3erdueCy6KbJ4-S9_Y_aW_EERiCDJchYxtoQ2R-nAp11PrgQLcm_Dl7Yirn-pPfb9hyphenhyphenb4mgJ4t56jUzrFa-20yfZUB1JrgyPi3MwJVuXxC9T6iEsxmBz8vZONGtyGf6kI-KLaaVS_/s800/GREAT%20GATSBY%20cover.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="534" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3rv2C3Xd1XCrjxCJYjT9b3KKpjs2JeUIvseAU_Loqvx2DGWuakOB3erdueCy6KbJ4-S9_Y_aW_EERiCDJchYxtoQ2R-nAp11PrgQLcm_Dl7Yirn-pPfb9hyphenhyphenb4mgJ4t56jUzrFa-20yfZUB1JrgyPi3MwJVuXxC9T6iEsxmBz8vZONGtyGf6kI-KLaaVS_/w268-h400/GREAT%20GATSBY%20cover.jpeg" width="268" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-world-s-most-misunderstood-novel?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-world-s-most-misunderstood-novel?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /><br /></a><br />*<br /><b>APHRA BEHN (1640-1689): WOMAN, WRITER, PLAYWRIGHT, SPY<br /></b></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8zzfTHNxaGlw9yOJrtblB_t7Hwrb1gsFdHmhmJsiZnVhkfnfW-zyHnN4oa2Y3xL2jrcLvfrPthDt-jgp-qBUZ3ulo6dDB6YrDW9T9KN-kRg3SXhk3uupAHPdsLIu7yWTRbpGt2uMVJtg-H-FU8ZJhkpF-MzqMds8ge8sKoC_yJ6tG3NNftkuTaqW6XvHY/s448/Aphra%20Ben%20pensive.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="448" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8zzfTHNxaGlw9yOJrtblB_t7Hwrb1gsFdHmhmJsiZnVhkfnfW-zyHnN4oa2Y3xL2jrcLvfrPthDt-jgp-qBUZ3ulo6dDB6YrDW9T9KN-kRg3SXhk3uupAHPdsLIu7yWTRbpGt2uMVJtg-H-FU8ZJhkpF-MzqMds8ge8sKoC_yJ6tG3NNftkuTaqW6XvHY/w400-h261/Aphra%20Ben%20pensive.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">~ Any study of Aphra Behn is really a study of shifting disguises and political guesswork. She is remembered in history as <b>the first woman to make a living by writing in English, all the way back in the seventeenth century.</b> Few know that she became a writer while exploring her first intriguing career: Spy for the British crown.<br /><br />Fittingly for a spy, Behn was secretive and her reputed garrulity among friends did not extend to anything autobiographical for future generations to rely on. Most of what we know of her is uncertain, gleaned from the literature she left us.<br /><br /><b>Her espionage career might have begun in 1659, when she was about nineteen years old. The death of Oliver Cromwell sent the bumbling Sealed Knot secret society into a flurry of activity on behalf of the Royalist cause. </b>Her foster-brother Sir Thomas Colepeper and his half-brother Lord Strangford were caught up in covert activities. Behn would have been able to travel to France to liaise with Lord Strangford more easily than Colepeper, who was being watched. <b>She also may have served as a living dropbox for letters exchanged between plotters.</b><br /><br />But true to the nature of spies and covert plots, no solid evidence of this role survives. Her presence in it is only hinted at by her relationships with others involved.<br /><br />A version of Behn’s life story says that she was one of the children of John Johnson, a gentleman appointed Lieutenant General of Surinam, a short-lived English colony in what is now Suriname, South America. In this tale, Johnson died during the transatlantic voyage to his appointment, which meant <i><b>his widow and his children, including young Aphra, were temporarily stranded in South America. This tale is almost certainly false though. Crucially, there is no record of a Johnson destined for a high office in Surinam, nor any Johnsons among the recorded settlers of the colony.</b></i><br /><br />However, that Behn did go to Surinam in the 1660s is not in question. The descriptions of the colony in her most famous novel, Oroonoko, are too detailed for her to have gleaned them only by reading other people’s reports. In the other stories she wrote, Behn didn’t trouble herself much with research. Stories she wrote set in France and Spain are no different from stories set in England. The setting often remains a mere suggestion, but <b>Oroonoko is different: It gives the impression of the author writing down what she heard and saw around her, lending it a reality that she clearly wasn’t achieving through meticulous research.<br /></b><br />It is how and why Behn ended up in Surinam that is up for debate. Her biographer, Janet Todd, argues that Behn went to Surinam as part of a spying mission for King Charles II. This would explain why, on her return to England, she had an audience with the king to “give him ‘An Account of his Affairs there,'” an incredibly unusual outcome for a young woman’s family trip to South America. Surinam was supposedly overrun with spies at the time, probably because a far-flung colonial outpost was a perfect place for any dissidents in Restoration Era England who had plans for seizing control of a colony or fomenting a revolution.<br /><br /><b>She may have been there to spy on any number of brewing conflicts. The governor of Surinam at the time, Lord Willoughby, was absent, leaving a power vacuum filled by various personalities. This was also a time of “gold, glory, and God” and various people were reporting back to King Charles II about the possibilities of any and all of these plans succeeding</b>. Spain had already grown immensely rich from riches found in North America, but England hadn’t struck gold yet. <i><b>Many were taken in by promises of El Dorado, including Behn, who would find herself disappointed that Charles II was already tired of the empty promises of the mythical city.</b></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Behn was profoundly impacted by her trip to Surinam. Though she did have a mission to complete, with few friends and more time on her hands than usual, she began writing. <br /><br />Possibly she was already considering plays or translations as sources of income in case she could no longer engage in spy craft due to age, shifting political tides, or notoriety. She also had connections to the theater world back in England, and may have already been considering how to further insert herself in those circles. <b>Interestingly, she does not seem to have been considering marriage as part of her future at all at this stage</b>, though it would have been the thing to do for a woman her age in Restoration society.<br /><br /><b>She found much inspiration in the social mobility colonists found in the Americas, especially Virginia, where transported criminals found themselves impossibly rich from tobacco and beaver hunting. Behn hated this sort of class mobility and frequently lampooned it in her work for the rest of her life.<br /></b></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsu8gKN0pUbOQRcnfCsoOHvSNcNGdJSpOUbspS2bq7H_KDden9XaMaL-b97eF4eOSPEHQBMuJzvpg0OQ6D9m6P-TQtCIEJupPB7r2szyfhjBgyyUsWWOZ35jPBDywsaLWqvqkjD64mDnevg1DDW5JwamZBRtivLy3GieJHbh7nDJkVwqUzBYWO3RGoU-uK/s800/Aphra%20Behn.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="800" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsu8gKN0pUbOQRcnfCsoOHvSNcNGdJSpOUbspS2bq7H_KDden9XaMaL-b97eF4eOSPEHQBMuJzvpg0OQ6D9m6P-TQtCIEJupPB7r2szyfhjBgyyUsWWOZ35jPBDywsaLWqvqkjD64mDnevg1DDW5JwamZBRtivLy3GieJHbh7nDJkVwqUzBYWO3RGoU-uK/w400-h200/Aphra%20Behn.jpeg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">She also made time to meet the Indigenous population living near the English colony. <b>Like many European colonists of her time, she found in the Surinamese a sort of pastoral innocence, and she carefully recorded her exchange of her garters for a set of feathers which she took with her back to England.</b> Her work often reflected a paternalistic attitude toward any person of color.<br /><br />An avid reader, especially of pastoral romances like the works of dramatist Gauthier de Costes, seigneur de la Calprenède’s, Behn tended to see her own surroundings through that lens. When she transposed the reality of Surinam back into fiction, the very real political dramas took on the pastoral lens of the fiction she enjoyed.<br /><br />While in Surinam, she probably wrote her play The Young King, a tragicomedy of heroic lovers in Arcadian pastoral settings. It was written with an eye toward pleasing Charles II–he was known to love Spanish-style drama. <b>Though the play wasn’t staged for at least fifteen years after her return to England, she never seems to have edited it–it retains youthful criticisms of power and privilege that she refused to engage in again later in life.<br /></b><br />While Behn was in Surinam, she almost certainly met William Scot, the exiled son of an executed republican. His father Thomas Scot had been a member of the House of Commons and instrumental in the trial and execution of Charles I. William also had political aspirations, and though he probably would have been safer somewhere further from English society, he was in Surinam, probably making deals and trying to find his way back into political influence.<br /><br />Rumor had it at the time that Behn and Scot were having an affair. He was married with a child, though living apart from them. The affair was remarked upon by their contemporaries in letters home, though Behn’s given name is Astrea, taken from the seventeenth-century French pastoral romance L’Astrée by Honoré d’Urfé. She later adopted the name as her pen name; she may have already been using it as a pseudonym in Surinam.<br /><br /><b>The immensely long novel centers on a fictionalized pastoral idyll in France during the fifth century, where a young shepherdess and shepherd—Astrée and Celadon—fall in love. Celadon is a perfect lover, but Astrée is “a curious combination of vanity, caprice and virtue; of an imperious, suspicious and jealous nature, she is not at all the ideal creature of older pastorals.” </b>It makes sense that Behn would choose such a codename. She would challenge many of the “superficial associations of such a name” throughout her life, and though a lot of her writing relied on pastoral imagery and tropes, she often challenged those as well.<br /><br />Behn returned to England in 1665. She gave her report of English affairs in Surinam to Charles II. What she was up to for the next year is unclear, though we know that she kept up with the ongoing dramas of the colony through the pamphlets that were published about it.<br /><br />Some of these intrigues found their way into Oroonoko, her novel published in 1688. The failed rebellion of the eponymous enslaved prince, Oroonoko, was foretold in an unsuccessful assassination attempt against Surinam’s Governor Lord Willoughby. <b>The would-be assassin, the troublesome Thomas Allin, was someone Behn may have reported on during her time there. </b><br /><br />He died by suicide rather than be executed for his attempt; her protagonist was executed instead.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">She must have made inroads in the political and theatrical spheres, because in 1666, Thomas Killigrew sent Behn to the Netherlands as a spy. Killigrew was the dramatist heading up the King’s Company troupe and secretly working in intelligence for the King. This was during the darkest point of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, so Behn probably only landed this precarious role because she had done good enough work in Surinam.<br /><br /><b>Her mission on behalf of the English king was to meet with her old flame William Scot, who now claimed to have information for the Royalists about a Dutch-sponsored uprising in England.</b> She was to assess what information he had and whether it was worth anything. Killigrew knew of their romance in Surinam and was happy to exploit it for the king’s gain.<br /><br />Behn was ill-equipped for this dangerous mission. Though adept at role-playing, she was somewhat naive. She was a bad judge of character and more easily fooled by false sincerity than someone undertaking a third espionage mission should have been. She was also quite talkative and would never be remembered as discreet.<br /><br />Unsurprisingly, she was not successful. Scot was hard to deal with, and Behn didn’t have the resources to succeed even if he had been helpful. They both asked for too much from their spymasters and received nearly nothing. It was a plight shared by all Royalist agents taking risks for the Crown. <b>Behn returned to London in May 1667, having had the good fortune of missing the catastrophic Great Fire of London the year before, but with little else to show from her trip.</b><br /><br />Writing became an urgent necessity after her return from the Netherlands. Charles II was infamously stingy with payments to his spies, often simply not paying them at all. <b>Behn’s stay in Antwerp had left her in immense debt, and she spent time in a London debtor’s prison before being released with a patron’s help</b>. She had good handwriting, so she began copying manuscripts for fast money before looking toward the theater for her next adventure.<br /><br />On September 20, 1670, Behn had her theatrical debut: her play, The Forc’d Marriage, was staged by the Duke’s Company. Like many of her works, it was a tragicomedy that ends in <b>two noblemen marrying commoners against their parents’ directives, a scandalous concept at the time. She would return to the concept of escaping a bad marriage numerous times in her work; her biographer Janet Todd assumes the repeating theme was inspired by Behn’s own bad luck in love.</b><br /><br />The women in Behn’s stories often live bleak lives, even when they’re removed to pastoral idylls. They are forced to manipulate and negotiate through places where men have all the power. Behn led a similar life working in the theater; <b>calling her a whore would have been only a slightly lower insult than calling her a poetess at the time.</b><br /><br />Yet, it was threatening to men that this female writer was so popular. In an essay, Rutgers University professor Elin Diamond writes,<br /><br />The conflict between (as she puts it) her “defenseless” woman’s body and her “masculine part” is staged in her insistence, in play after play, on the equation between female body and fetish, fetish and commodity….<b>Like the actress, the woman dramatist is sexualized, circulated, denied a subject position in a theater hierarchy.<br /></b><br />Similarly, female spies were—and continue to be—positioned as fetishes and commodities, constantly sexualized and reduced to a roadblock to be overcome by the dominant male spy. Behn’s experience in both worlds would have led her to navigate them as only she could–an independent agent set on getting what was hers.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR3HOZL17Kuf8y-V0FfBimELBj4EPyqKz1o275sO4bhbHRbWDxNTTN5TkZ5vvMeh-_lqrey-_Q-zlvPBLHdu2rGA5a7mqwAoFF8t5JKqF3tkWBBuATkHNepyFs4cxk_Kzb2JUMtXk4EJDArZEPEADes_8w2w3barCiDd_mhmsejtTwgr8F6TvIlRU2DBVu/s500/unruly%20figures.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR3HOZL17Kuf8y-V0FfBimELBj4EPyqKz1o275sO4bhbHRbWDxNTTN5TkZ5vvMeh-_lqrey-_Q-zlvPBLHdu2rGA5a7mqwAoFF8t5JKqF3tkWBBuATkHNepyFs4cxk_Kzb2JUMtXk4EJDArZEPEADes_8w2w3barCiDd_mhmsejtTwgr8F6TvIlRU2DBVu/s320/unruly%20figures.jpg" width="213" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">(It seems I've lost the link to the text above, but a more literary appraisal of Aphra Behn can be found here: <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/aphra-behn">https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/aphra-behn</a>)<br /><br />*<br /><b>CAN THERE BE TOO MUCH SOLITUDE?<br /></b><br />With growing numbers of people living without partners and children, and working from home, <b>more of us are spending time alone. But is this actually a problem?<br /></b><br />What did I do on the weekend? On Saturday morning, I called my sister, then my parents. A man stopped by to pick up a rug he’d bought from me online, and we had a brief conversation about the merits of buying secondhand.<br /><br />Then I went for a run with members of my gym, our chat dwindling with each kilometer.<br /><br />I spent the rest of the weekend alone and – aside from pleasantries with customer service staff and delivery drivers – in almost unbroken silence. All told, my social interaction probably amounted to two hours out of a total 48.<br /><br />Whether this idea strikes you as heavenly or nightmarish probably depends on your own relationship to “alone time”. For someone working long hours in a highly social job, or parenting young children, <b>a day alone might register as a luxury. But if you spend most of your time by yourself, and not by choice, it may feel like a burden.<br /></b><br />More of us are spending more time by ourselves, thanks to cultural trends like remote work and growing numbers of people choosing to stay single and live solo. Of 2000 American adults surveyed by Newsweek last year, nearly half (42%) reported being less sociable than they were in 2019. That’s certainly been the case for me – though not for the worse.<br /><br />My life became smaller and in some ways quieter when, in 2021, I moved to a new city and started living by myself for the first time – but instead of feeling lonely, I’ve mostly been more productive and more content. In the new peace and quiet, I realized that I need much more time alone than I’d previously been allowing myself.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />Now a new book is asking us to reconsider solitude. In Solitude: The Science and Power of Being Alone, authors Netta Weinstein, Heather Hansen and Thuy-vy T Nguyen argue that time spent by ourselves is not necessarily a threat to our wellbeing, nor an inherent good.<br /><br />According to the authors,<b> “alone time” and the extent to which it’s beneficial or detrimental is highly personal and not well understood by researchers.<br /></b><br />“It’s something that society tends to frown upon. We tend to conflate the word ‘solitude’ with loneliness,” says Nguyen, an associate professor of psychology at Durham University and principal investigator of its Solitude Lab.<br /><br />But they are different. Loneliness pertains to the distress felt at one’s social needs not being met and solitude is a state of simply being by oneself.<br /><br />“You can be with other people and feel lonely,” says Nguyen. <b>“Loneliness is more about the quality of our relationships: how connected you feel to people around you.”</b><br /><br />For centuries the two have been used interchangeably, complicating analyses today. But <b>while loneliness has been studied for decades, “the literature on solitude is just starting to catch up,”</b> Nguyen says.<br /><br />People speak of it as an experience best avoided, either unbearable or unsavory, or else as the escape of the privileged – think of tech billionaires going off-grid to “detox” solo.<br /><br /><b>But these are extreme, even pejorative representations: “There’s been no coverage of solitude as a very ordinary thing that we all experience,” says Nguyen.<br /></b><br />As a state, it’s neither negative nor positive. “But some people struggle with that time, even if it’s just 15 minutes,” she adds.<br /><br />Your own baseline may depend on what you’re accustomed to. You might be less comfortable with your own company if you never get any chance to practice.<br /><br />*<br />While you might assume that introverts are more comfortable in their own company than extraverts, Nguyen’s study last year found no evidence of a link between introversion and a preference for solitude. Instead, a negative association was found with neuroticism, suggesting that <b>people who are better at regulating their emotions tend to spend more (and higher quality) time alone.</b></span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The finding demonstrates the nuance that has been lacking in discussion of solitude, with past research often linking it to psychological problems. Nguyen’s research shows that our preference and tolerance not only varies between individuals, but also from day to day.<br /><br /><b>“The more we study solitude, the more I’m convinced that it has very much a regulatory capacity,” she says.</b><br /><br />From a biological perspective, <b>socializing is draining, even if we enjoy it; solitude “allows us opportunity for rest and recovery,” says Nguyen. There may also be psychological needs that are easier to satisfy in solitude, such as feelings of freedom and autonomy.<br /></b><br />Solitude can seem unnatural in the context of our species’ sociable nature, but one study found that <b>people who spend time alone tend to have higher-quality relationships.</b> “In that sense, solitude fits perfectly into our framework of thinking of ourselves as social animals,” Nguyen says. We just don’t tend to see it that way.<br /><br />Though it is slowly changing, a cultural stigma against solitude persists. We might even struggle to see time spent alone as equal to that spent in the company of others. “In my calendar, I put in events when I’m meeting other people; I don’t put in things that I do on my own,” says Nguyen.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I’ve found that one monastic weekend every month is enough for me to fully recharge. After three consecutive days alone, I start to go a bit loopy, my thoughts falling into well-worn grooves (about past mistakes, or future fears) that are rarely productive.<br /><br />This is the balance I’ve struck now; it may not serve me in 30, 10 or even five years’ time. At Durham’s Solitude Lab, Nguyen is currently studying people’s transition to retirement, as well as first-time mothers: both examples of how changeable our experience of “alone time” can be.<br />New retirees tend to express trepidation about the sudden increase of solo time, and even concern about how to fill those hours, she says, while <b>new mothers can report feeling alone despite never being apart from their baby.</b><br /><br />Solitude can feel relatively unstructured, aimless and even empty – “almost like we have to create our own path” through it, Nguyen adds.<br /><br />It’s true that too much time alone can focus our attention on how we feel our social connections to be lacking, in quantity or especially quality: a condition for loneliness.<b> There is also the risk of rumination, contributing to the development of depression or anxiety.</b><br /><br />If someone is struggling with their mental health, they shouldn’t soldier on alone, says Nguyen. <b>But solitude itself – even when it’s a “chronic condition”, as might be said of people who, like me, live alone – isn’t necessarily deleterious to wellbeing.<br /></b><br />“That, to me, is the biggest misunderstanding of the relationship between solitude and loneliness: loneliness is not something that just emerges, in and of itself – it’s usually symptomatic,” says Nguyen.<br /><br /><b>Those contributing factors might be physical health conditions that affect people’s ability to socialize; difficulties forming or maintaining relationships; and, for younger people, bullying or problems at home.</b> There can also be structural challenges, such as the isolation often faced by immigrants and the decline in low-cost and accessible “third spaces” in which to pass time.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But too often, says Nguyen, talk of the reported loneliness “epidemic” neglects those broader factors in favor of focusing on individuals’ risk factors. “The focus is very much on the social interactions,” says Nguyen.<br /><br /><i><b>Efforts to bring down living costs and improve access to healthcare could be effective in tackling the problem by giving people more time and opportunity to foster connection. The US surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, has called for a shift in societal priorities, “to restructure our lives around people” instead of work and technology.</b><br /></i><br />In the meantime, I wonder if the stigma against solitude is holding us back from making the most of it. The worst I ever feel about all the time I spend alone is when I think about others’ judgments, and what I ought to be doing with my weekends. Am I wasting the best years of my life, waiting for strangers to come and collect my furniture?<br /><br />But Nguyen doesn’t think so. <b>If it’s your own company that you’re craving, “allow yourself to have it”, she says. “Being away from other people doesn’t signal that there is something wrong with your social life … that’s actually nurturing of our solitude as well.”<br /></b><br />My quiet weekend might have been nothing to write home about, but I began the week feeling rested, replenished and – what with the rug trade – richer, in more ways than one.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2024/mar/19/how-much-alone-time-loneliness?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2024/mar/19/how-much-alone-time-loneliness?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>HOW TO FIND A BETTER STORY ABOUT YOURSELF <br /></b><br /><b>Your sense of who you are is deeply entwined in the stories you tell about yourself and your experiences. Storytelling is a big part of how we develop a view of our lives, says Jonathan Adler</b>, a psychologist at Olin College of Engineering in Needham, Massachusetts. If you’ve ever struggled with low self-esteem, you’ll know just how important it can be to <b>try to find a positive story to tell about yourself.</b><br /><br />This was certainly true for me as a young girl. When I was old enough to understand, my <b>mother occasionally talked about how, on her side, we were descended from Meriwether Lewis, of the 1804 Lewis and Clark Expedition to map the western territories of the United States.</b> I recall her providing only one piece of evidence for this – her mother had named one of her sons Lewis after the explorer and spelled it the way his name was spelled, instead of the alternative (Louis). This was enough to convince me, and I clung to this story to help me cope with an otherwise bleak home life.<br /><br />My parents suffered from what back then we called alcoholism, with all the turmoil that can entail. They would start drinking before dinner most nights, and when I would beg them not to, they’d berate me. If I was hoping my two brothers and I would become close to compensate for the chaos at home, I was out of luck. They were both pretty wild growing up. My older brother joined a motorcycle group as a teen and then enlisted in the Marines. His military career didn’t last long, however, and his life wasn’t much better afterward. My younger brother was a risktaker and always in trouble.<br /><br /><b>I had no self-esteem back then. But believing this story – that I was related to a famous explorer – lifted me up. There was one person I was related to whom I could be proud of (and by association, I felt I could be proud of myself).</b><br /><br />With a little research, I’ve discovered I’m far from alone in finding solace in these kinds of family stories. Take Michael Harper, executive director of the Salvation Army in Portland, Maine, and a pastor for the organization. <b>When Harper was a kid, he heard he was descended from John Winthrop, a governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the 1600s.</b> Harper’s parents divorced when he was eight, and he, his mother and his five siblings moved 30 times during his childhood while trying to manage on welfare. ‘It was one apartment after another. I could never establish roots and always felt like I didn’t belong,’ he says.<br /><br />In his 50s, Harper was able to confirm through the Genealogy Roadshow, which aired on PBS from 2013 to 2016, that the family legend was true: he was descended from Winthrop, among other famous people. ‘It made a big difference,’ Harper recalls. Being able to trace that thread gave him ‘a great deal of satisfaction’.<br /><br />‘When I was living in Boston,’ he tells me, ‘after I learned that I was descended from someone famous who landed there from England, I joked that, when I drove through the city, I felt like I owned the place. It made me feel very proud, and that thought has never left.’<br /><br />Being related to a famous explorer was similarly my ace in the hole for gaining significance. Until it wasn’t. When I was in fifth grade and my class started studying the Lewis and Clark Expedition, I couldn’t wait to tell my teacher and classmates about my enviable lineage. However, I could tell by my teacher’s nonchalant nod and lackadaisical response that she didn’t believe me. I just wanted to get up and run out of the room.<br /><br />Amy Morin, a licensed clinical social worker in Florida and host of the Mentally Stronger podcast, has practiced therapy for more than 20 years. She tells me that <b>anyone whose self-worth is dependent on someone else (or being related to someone else), like I did, is going to be on ‘shaky ground’.</b><br /><br />‘You might later discover you aren’t actually related at all, which could affect your self-esteem [even more]. Or, you might feel deflated when someone else isn’t as impressed as you think they should be,’ she says.<br /><br />‘It’s important to develop self-worth based on who you are as a person, not who people in your lineage were. Everyone’s family has people who have struggled and people who have accomplished things,’ notes Morin.<br /><br />Barbara Becker Holstein, a psychologist in private practice in New Jersey whose specialties include positive psychology and self-esteem, sees this as a problem of not recognizing, and probably needing to learn how to recognize, one’s own talents, capabilities, limitations and potential.<br /><br />‘The more we understand and develop our own potential, the more we can see that who we may or may not be related to is interesting, even fascinating. But … critical to our own development – and what is most important – is to <b>realize you are unique and have much to offer in life.’</b><br /><br />I grew to understand that my parents’ absence in our lives was likely a big factor in my siblings’ and my development (or lack thereof). Living with four people whose lives had gone terribly wrong was so sad sometimes that I could hardly stand it, and I was embarrassed and ashamed when others found out, even though I knew intellectually that I was not a reflection of my family.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Thankfully I found a different story to tell about my family and about my life. This rewriting of my story has parallels with the process of ‘narrative therapy’ – which has to do with finding more positive ways to interpret and tell our life experiences.<br /><br />Alongside his university role, Adler is also chief academic officer of the Health Story Collaborative, an organization in Boston that organizes events and gathers resources to help people find and tell their own healing narratives.<br /><br />We’re born without words, let alone stories, Adler explains, ‘and storytelling is a skill we learn from other people. So it always comes from outside at the beginning. <b>Indeed, even when we tell a story to ourselves, we then put that story out into the world and get feedback on it. In a way, then, our stories are always these negotiations with other people.’ </b>Sometimes they unfold directly through dialogue with the people in our immediate lives, such as our family or friends – but, other times, they’re broader cultural stories.<br /><br />‘In the particular phenomenon of [looking to a famous person for self-esteem], it seems that there’s some cultural storyline, or maybe in specific instances there’s an actual family storyline that is somehow resonating for the person,’ Adler says. He doesn’t necessarily think of storytelling as all positive or negative; it’s something we all do that can have positive and/or negative consequences for us.<br /><br />Annie Brewster, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, is the founder and executive director of the Health Story Collaborative. She says ‘It [can be] hard and painful to have to “rejigger” our stories and retell them, but it can also be health-promoting. Through the challenge, it can also cause us to see ourselves more fully.’ Ultimately, she concludes, ‘it’s a <b>developmental and appropriate shift if we can have more of our internal story come authentically instead of trying to fit into another narrative from the outside such as looking to link with a famous person.</b>’</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This resonates with the way Harper and I have both found good endings to the stories we have told ourselves about our lives. Despite his difficult start, not only does Harper look back on an impoverished childhood without bitterness, he praises his mother for ‘holding her brood of six together’. Also, in choosing a career that is the epitome of helping others, he’d likely be the first to say he gets back more than he gives.<br /><br />Like him, I, too, have chosen a positive path – and told a different story – when I could have ended up quite differently. Watching my two brothers screw up gave me self-discipline and two more examples of how I didn’t want to be. Determined not to experience difficulties with addiction like them, I saw their lives as a lesson. I told myself I would make good decisions and not be waylaid. I began plotting a new narrative.<br /><br />I was teaching in my mid-20s when, in a night class for an MBA degree, a classmate who worked at AT&T mentioned that there were openings for writers in her department. I interviewed, was hired as a contractor, and didn’t go back to classroom teaching that September. After a few years, I started getting up at 5am to write occasional essays and articles for magazines before leaving for work.<br /><br />Then, one day around that time, I saw a business column in The New York Times and realized there was an opportunity. I called the paper and asked to speak to the column’s editor. He had me write a sample column that got published, and that was the start of a dream job. For 20 years, I freelanced for the business section and eventually I earned my own column. I wrote a book with an addiction specialist, Sober Siblings: How to Help Your Alcoholic Brother or Sister – and Not Lose Yourself (2008). Today I ghost-write for executives and write executive columns for several publications.<br /><br />I still think of that incident in fifth grade. Years later, my cousin went on a road trip to research our family’s ancestry. I learned about a reunion of Lewis’s descendants to whom we were supposedly related, and I contacted the reunion organizers in the hope that my cousin and I could attend. I sent my cousin’s findings to a genealogist there to prove our lineage, with the outcome that <b>I learned – definitively – that we were not related to the Lewis family after all. </b>Today, I can laugh about our family legend being false. After all, <b>I found a better story to tell.</b> And if I could say something to that fifth-grader today, I would tell her: ‘You’re special just the way you are. And don’t let anyone make you feel otherwise.’<br /><br /><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/i-rebuilt-my-self-esteem-by-changing-the-story-of-who-i-am?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=0f2828e08a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_03_22&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-a9a3bdf830-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D">https://psyche.co/ideas/i-rebuilt-my-self-esteem-by-changing-the-story-of-who-i-am?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=0f2828e08a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_03_22&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-a9a3bdf830-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D</a><br /><br />*<br /><b>WHY BABIES SMELL SWEET, BUT TEENAGERS STINK<br /></b><br />Moms find the smell of babies irresistible but pull away from the stink of their teens, which could affect their parent-child bond, a new study says.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Some smells automatically bring a smile to our faces: Puppy breath. New car smell. The aroma of fresh-baked cookies.<br /><br />For moms, it's the scent of their babies. Research shows most moms find the smell of their bundle of joy irresistible, while babies find their moms' odor unique -- one more way nature strengthens a bond that assures survival of the species. In fact, <b>90% of new moms can pick out their baby by smell within 10 minutes to an hour after birth.</b><br /><br />But do we continue to like the smell of our children as they age?<br /><br />Not so much, a new study finds, especially when those children are teenagers in or past puberty.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">"This has something to do with the changed composition of the infantile sweat due to the increased release of sexual hormones," said professor Ilona Croy, who studies the sense of smell at the Dresden University of Technology in Germany.<br /><br />THE SWEET SMELL OF BABIES<br /><br />It's possible that all women are evolutionarily wired to respond favorably to "new baby smell."<br />A 2013 study found the reward centers of the brain lit up in a small group of new moms and women who had never given birth when they smelled pajamas that newborn infants had worn for two nights. The PJs had been frozen and were presented to the women some six weeks later. None of the women were related to the babies.<br /><br />Of course, the bonding benefits are not available to parents who cannot smell, either due to a physical or psychological issue.<br /><br />"We did a study where we could show that <b>mothers who have — because of various mental disorders — problems bonding with their child, show an abnormal olfactory perception</b>," said Croy.<br /><br />Ordinarily "mothers prefer the odor of their children before the odor of others," she added. "Those mothers are neither able to identify their child, nor do they prefer it.”<br /><br />The new study blindfolded 164 German mothers and asked them to smell body odor on clothing from their own child and four unfamiliar, sex-matched children. Clothing samples consisted of onesies that infants had slept in for one night, or cotton T-shirts slept in for one night by kids up to age 18.<br /><br />Moms accurately picked out a strange child's developmental level from the smell 64% of the time; success rate was even higher when the child was their own.<br /><br /><b>Mothers also scored higher when identifying odors in children who had not yet hit puberty, and found those much more pleasant — "sweet" was the most common response</b>, said Croy, who supervised the study.<br /><br />THE STINKY SMELL OF TEENS<br /><br />Stronger, "high intensity" body odor samples were identified as coming from children in, or past, puberty.<br /><br />"Body odor is perceived more intensively due to the developmental changes," explained lead author Laura Schäfer, a doctoral student in Croy's lab. "Pleasantness and intensity perception are often negatively related.”<br /><br />In fact, moms got it wrong if an older child past puberty had a "pleasant" smell, classifying those odors as coming from a younger, pre-pubescent child.<br /><br /><b>Schäfer said the study may be the first to investigate whether parents can determine a child's developmental maturity by smell. </b>Putting this in context with prior research, she said, the implications for parent-child bonding as children grow could be significant.<br /><br />"Many parents report that their baby's odor smells pleasant, rewarding and adorable," Schäfer said. "This suggests infantile body odors can mediate affectionate love towards the child in the crucial periods of bonding.<br /><br />"This seems to decline with increasing age," she added, which could be interpreted as a "mechanism for detachment, when the child becomes more independent and separates itself from parental care.”<br /><br />So perhaps we are evolutionarily supposed to find our children stinky as they age, so we'll let go and allow them to become independent?<br /><br /><b>"Smelling can be an unconscious factor that can influence perception and thus also the relationship," Schäfer said, adding that parents shouldn't be "irritated if they do not find the smell of their own child in puberty very pleasant.”<br /></b><br />"It is important to note, however, that the entire relationship between parents and child is, of course, always a complex interplay, where both several senses and, of course, contextual conditions play an essential role.”<br /><br /><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/babies-smell-sweet-teens-stink-and-blindfolded-moms-can-tell-the-difference-study-says/">https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/babies-smell-sweet-teens-stink-and-blindfolded-moms-can-tell-the-difference-study-says/<br /></a><br /><br />*<br /><b>HOW TO ENHANCE MEMORY<br /></b><br />As a Harvard-trained neuroscientist with more than 20 years of experience, when people ask how they can enhance their ability to remember, I like to share these strategies with them. Here are my most commonly used memory tricks. <br /><br />SEE IT<br />When you create a mental image of what you’re trying to remember, you add more neural connections to it. You’re deepening the associations, making the formation of that memory more robust, so you’ll better remember later. <br /><br />If you’re writing down something that you want to remember, write it in all caps, highlight it in pink marker or circle it. Add a chart or doodle a picture. Make what you’re trying to remember something you can easily see in your mind’s eye.<br /><br />IMAGINE IT<br />People with the best memories have the best imaginations. To help make a memory unforgettable, use creative imagery. Go beyond the obvious and attach bizarre, surprising, vivid, funny, physically impossible and interactive elements to what you’re trying to remember, and it will stick. <br /><br />For example, if I need to remember to pick up chocolate milk at the grocery store, for example, I might imagine Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson milking a chocolate brown cow in my living room. <br /><br />MAKE IT ABOUT YOU<br />I rarely endorse self-centeredness, but I make an exception when it comes to enhancing your memory. You are more likely to remember a detail about yourself or something that you did, than you are to retain a detail about someone else or something someone else did.<br />So make what you’re learning unique to you. Associate it with your personal history and opinions, and you’ll strengthen your memory.<br /><br />LOOK FOR THE DRAMA<br />Experiences drenched in emotion or surprise tend to be remembered: successes, humiliations, failures, weddings, births, divorces, deaths.<br /><br />Emotion and surprise activate your amygdala, which then sends a loud and clear message to your hippocampus: “Hey! What is going on right now is extremely important. Remember this!” <br /><br />PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT<br />Repetition and rehearsal strengthen memories. Quizzing yourself enhances your memory for the material far better than simply rereading it.<br /><br />Muscle memories become stronger and are more efficiently retrieved the more you rehearse a skill. Because these memories tell the body what to do, your body gets better at doing these physical tasks with practice.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">USE PLENTY OF RETRIEVAL CUES<br /><br />Cues are crucial for retrieving memories. The right cue can trigger the memory of something you haven’t thought of in decades. Cues can be anything associated with what you’re trying to remember — the time of day, a pillbox, concert tickets by the front door, a Taylor Swift song, the smell of Tide detergent. <br /><br />Smells are especially powerful memory cues because your olfactory bulb, where smells are perceived (you smell in your brain, not your nose), sends strong neural inputs to the amygdala and the hippocampus, the parts of your brain that consolidate memories.<br /><br />EXTERNALIZE YOUR MEMORY</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">People with the best memories for what they intend to do later use aids like lists, pillboxes, calendars, sticky notes, and other reminders.<br /><br />You might be worried that this is somehow cheating or that you’ll worsen your memory’s capabilities if you rely too much on these external “crutches” instead of using your brain. <b>Our brains aren’t designed to remember to do things later. Write them down.<br /></b><br />Here are a few other helpful reminders:<br /><br /><b>Context matters.</b> Memory retrieval is far easier and faster when the internal and external conditions match whatever they were when that memory was formed. Your learning circumstances matter, too. For example, if you like to drink a mocha Frappuccino while studying for a test, have another one when you take the exam to get your brain back into that mindset.<br /><br /><b>It helps to chill out.</b> <i><b>Chronic stress is nothing but bad news for our ability to remember</b></i>. <i><b>In addition to making you more vulnerable to a whole host of diseases, it impairs memory and shrinks your hippocampus.</b></i><br /><br />While we can’t necessarily free ourselves from the stress in our lives, we can change how we react to it. Through yoga, meditation, exercise, and practices in mindfulness, gratitude and compassion, we can train our brains to become less reactive, put the brakes on the runaway stress response, and stay healthy in the face of chronic, toxic stress.<br /><br /><b>Get enough sleep.</b> You need seven to nine hours of sleep to optimally consolidate the new memories you created today. If you don’t get enough sleep, you’ll go through the next day experiencing a form of amnesia. Some of your memories from yesterday might be fuzzy, inaccurate or even missing. Getting enough sleep is critical for locking whatever you have learned and experienced in your long-term memory, and it reduces your risk of developing Alzheimer’s.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/19/harvard-trained-neuroscientist-top-tricks-i-use-to-remember-better-.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/19/harvard-trained-neuroscientist-top-tricks-i-use-to-remember-better-.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br /><br />*<br /><b>SUPERCOLONIES OF ANTS AND HUMAN PARALLELS<br /></b><br />It is a familiar story: a small group of animals living in a wooded grassland begin, against all odds, to populate Earth. At first, they occupy a specific ecological place in the landscape, kept in check by other species. Then something changes. The animals find a way to travel to new places. They learn to cope with unpredictability. They adapt to new kinds of food and shelter. They are clever. And they are aggressive.<br /><br /><b>In the new places, the old limits are missing. As their population grows and their reach expands, the animals lay claim to more territories, reshaping the relationships in each new landscape by eliminating some species and nurturing others. </b>Over time, they create the largest animal societies, in terms of numbers of individuals, that the planet has ever known. And at the borders of those societies, they fight the most destructive within-species conflicts, in terms of individual fatalities, that the planet has ever known.<br /><br /><b>This might sound like our story: the story of a hominin species, living in tropical Africa a few million years ago, becoming global. Instead, it is the story of a group of ant species, living in Central and South America a few hundred years ago, who spread across the planet by weaving themselves into European networks of exploration, trade, colonization and war. </b>Some even stowed away on the 16th-century Spanish galleons that carried silver across the Pacific from Acapulco to Manila. During the past four centuries, these animals have globalized their societies alongside our own.<br /><br />It is tempting to look for parallels with human empires. Perhaps it is impossible not to see rhymes between the natural and human worlds, and as a science journalist I’ve contributed more than my share. But just because words rhyme, it doesn’t mean their definitions align. <b>Global ant societies are not simply echoes of human struggles for power. They are something new in the world, existing at a scale we can measure but struggle to grasp: there are roughly 200,000 times more ants on our planet than the 100bn stars in the Milky Way.<br /></b><br /><i><b>In late 2022, colonies of the most notorious South American export, the red fire ant, were unexpectedly found in Europe for the first time, alongside a river estuary close to the Sicilian city of Syracuse. People were shocked when a total of 88 colonies were eventually located, but the appearance of the red fire ant in Europe shouldn’t be a surprise. It was entirely predictable: another ant species from the fire ants’ native habitats in South America had already found its way to Europe.</b></i><br /><br />What is surprising is how poorly we still understand global ant societies: there is a science-fiction epic going on under our feet, an alien geopolitics being negotiated by the 20 quadrillion ants living on Earth today. It might seem like a familiar story, but the more time I spend with it, the less familiar it seems, and the more I want to resist relying on human analogies. Its characters are strange; its scales hard to conceive. <b>Can we tell the story of global ant societies without simply retelling our own story?</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />Some animal societies hold together because their members recognize and remember one another when they interact. Relying on memory and experience in this way – in effect, trusting only friends – limits the size of groups to their members’ capacity to sustain personal relationships with one another. Ants, however, operate differently – <b>they form what the ecologist Mark Moffett calls</b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b> “anonymous societies”</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>, in which individuals from the same species or group can be expected to accept and cooperate with each other even when they have never met before. What these societies depend on, Moffett writes, are “shared cues recognized by all its members”.</b><br /><br /><b>Recognition looks very different for humans and insects. Human society relies on networks of reciprocity and reputation, underpinned by language and culture. Social insects – ants, wasps, bees and termites – rely on chemical badges of identity. In ants, this badge is a blend of waxy compounds that coat the body, keeping the exoskeleton watertight and clean</b>. The chemicals in this waxy blend, and their relative strengths, are genetically determined and variable. This means that <b>a newborn ant can quickly learn to distinguish between nestmates and outsiders as it becomes sensitive to its colony’s unique scent. Insects carrying the right scent are fed, groomed and defended; those with the wrong one are rejected or fought.</b></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUYmiZw-8_S5apBpu7OvcdcAVNSKia1FK6MehsZ3A3HoYoBEaBQUow7wdl5-L1hQAJYo8Uuqb6Ev3UvFBy_hvbdhNZZFyxgJWuBXCTNeAQYvkg7QI4Kt0pTsWsN9XBtl1BP_uU0hVQzm8ZBLwc4meYM6gqLT9Hyk0KnhxcZm38DBYLRTLbJzgOCht2dC3c/s2104/ants%20greenery.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2104" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUYmiZw-8_S5apBpu7OvcdcAVNSKia1FK6MehsZ3A3HoYoBEaBQUow7wdl5-L1hQAJYo8Uuqb6Ev3UvFBy_hvbdhNZZFyxgJWuBXCTNeAQYvkg7QI4Kt0pTsWsN9XBtl1BP_uU0hVQzm8ZBLwc4meYM6gqLT9Hyk0KnhxcZm38DBYLRTLbJzgOCht2dC3c/w400-h288/ants%20greenery.png" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The most successful invasive ants, including the tropical fire ant and red fire ant, share this quality. They also share social and reproductive traits. Individual nests can contain many queens (in contrast to species with one queen per nest) who mate inside their home burrows. In single-queen species, newborn queens leave the nest before mating, but in unicolonial species, mated queens will sometimes leave their nest on foot with a group of workers to set up a new nest nearby. Through this budding process, a network of allied and interconnected colonies begins to grow.<br /><br />In their native ranges, these multi-nest colonies can grow to a few hundred meters across, limited by physical barriers or other ant colonies. This turns the landscape to a patchwork of separate groups, with each chemically distinct society fighting or avoiding others at their borders. Species and colonies coexist, without any prevailing over the others. However, for the “anonymous societies” of unicolonial ants, as they’re known, transporting a small number of queens and workers to a new place can cause the relatively stable arrangement of groups to break down. <br /><br />As new nests are created, colonies bud and spread without ever drawing boundaries because <b>workers treat all others of their own kind as allies. </b>What was once a patchwork of complex relationships becomes a simplified, and unified, social system. The relative genetic homogeneity of the small founder population, replicated across a growing network of nests, ensures that members of unicolonial species tolerate each other. Spared the cost of fighting one another, these ants can live in denser populations, spreading across the land as a plant might, and turning their energies to capturing food and competing with other species. <b>Chemical badges keep unicolonial ant societies together, but also allow those societies to rapidly expand.</b><br /><br />All five of the ants included in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) list of 100 of the world’s worst invasive alien species are unicolonial. Three of these species – the aforementioned red fire ant, the Argentine ant and the little fire ant – are originally from Central and South America, where they are found sharing the same landscapes. It is likely that the first two species, at least, began their global expansion centuries ago on ships out of Buenos Aires. Some of these ocean journeys might have lasted longer than a single worker ant’s lifetime.</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Unicolonial ants are superb and unfussy scavengers that can hunt animal prey, eat fruit or nectar, and tend insects such as aphids for the sugary honeydew they excrete. They are also adapted to living in regularly disrupted environments, such as river deltas prone to flooding (the ants either get above the waterline, by climbing a tree, for example, or gather into living rafts and float until it subsides). For these ants, disturbance is a kind of environmental reset during which territories have to be reclaimed. Nests – simple, shallow burrows – are abandoned and remade at short notice. If you were looking to design a species to invade cities, suburbs, farmland and any wild environment affected by humans, it would probably look like a unicolonial ant: a social generalist from an unpredictable, intensely competitive environment.<br /><br />When these ants show up in other places, they can make their presence felt in spectacular fashion. An early example comes from the 1850s, when the big-headed ant, another species now listed on the IUCN’s Top 100, found its way from Africa to Funchal, Madeira’s capital. “You eat it in your puddings, vegetables and soups, and wash your hands in a decoction of it,” complained one British visitor in 1851. When the red fire ant, probably the best-known unicolonial species, spread through the US farming communities surrounding the port of Mobile, Alabama, in the 1930s, it wreaked havoc in different ways. “Some farmers who have heavily infested land are unable to hire sufficient help, and are forced to abandon land to the ants,” was how the entomologist EO Wilson described the outcome of their arrival. Today, the red fire ant does billions of dollars of damage each year and inflicts its agonizing bite on millions of people. But the largest colonies, and <b>most dramatic moments in the global spread of ant societies, belong to the Argentine ant.</b><br /><br />Looking at the history of this species’ expansion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it can seem as if the spread of global trade was an Argentine ant plot for world domination. One outbreak appeared in Porto, after the 1894 Exhibition of the Islands and Colonies of Portugal. The insects had likely traveled on produce and wares displayed at the exhibition from Madeira – ornamental plants, which tend to travel with a clump of their home soil, are particularly good for transporting invasive species. In 1900, a Belfast resident, Mrs Corry, found a “dark army” of the same species crossing her kitchen floor and entering the larder, where they covered a leg of mutton so completely that “one could scarcely find room for a pin-point”. <br /><br />In 1904, the US Bureau of Entomology dispatched a field agent, Edward Titus, to investigate a plague of Argentine ants in New Orleans. He heard reports of the ants crawling into babies’ mouths and nostrils in such numbers that they could be dislodged only by repeatedly dunking the infant in water. Other reports described the ants entering hospitals and “busily carrying away the sputum” from a tuberculosis patient. When the species arrived on the French Riviera a few years later, holiday villas were abandoned and a children’s hospital was evacuated.<br /><br />In 1927, Italy’s king Vittorio Emmanuel III and its prime minister Benito Mussolini signed a law setting out the measures to be taken against the Argentine ant, splitting the cost equally with invaded provinces. The state’s effectiveness, or lack of it, is shown in <b>the novella The Argentine Ant (1952) by Italo Calvino, one of Italy’s great postwar writers</b>. Calvino, whose parents were plant biologists, sets his tale in an unnamed seaside town much like the one where he grew up, in the north-western province of Liguria. The ant in his story has outlasted Mussolini and the monarchy, and saturates the unnamed town, burrowing underground (and into people’s heads). Some residents drench their houses and gardens with pesticides or build elaborate traps involving hammers covered in honey; others try to ignore or deny the problem. And then there is Signor Baudino, an employee of the Argentine Ant Control Corporation, who has spent 20 years putting out bowls of molasses laced with a weak dose of poison. <b>The locals suspect him of feeding the ants to keep himself in a job.<br /></b><br />In reality, people who found themselves living in the path of such ant plagues learned to stand the feet of their cupboards, beds and cots in dishes of paraffin. However, this was not a longterm solution: killing workers away from the nest achieves little when most, along with their queens, remain safe at home. Slower-acting insecticides (like Baudino’s poison), which workers take back to the nest and feed to queens, can be more effective. But because unicolonial workers can enter any number of nests in their network, each containing many queens, the chances of delivering a fatal dose gets much slimmer.<br /><br />In the early 20th century, an intensive period in the human war against ants, pest-control researchers advocated using broad-spectrum poisons, most of which are now banned for use as pesticides, to set up barriers or fumigate nests. Nowadays, targeted insecticides can be effective for clearing relatively small areas. This has proved useful in orchards and vineyards (where the ants’ protection of sap-sucking insects makes them a hazard to crops) and in places such as the Galápagos or Hawaii, where the ants threaten rare species. Large-scale eradications are a different matter, and few places have tried. <b>New Zealand, the world leader in controlling invasive species, is the only country to have prevented the spread of the red fire ant, mostly by eradicating nests on goods arriving at airports and ports. The country is also home to a spaniel trained to sniff out Argentine ant nests and prevent the insects from reaching small islands important for seabirds.</b><br /><br />Human inconvenience pales in comparison with the ants’ effects on other species. Exploring the countryside around New Orleans in 1904, Titus found the Argentine ant overwhelming the indigenous ant species, bearing away the corpses, eggs and larvae of the defeated to be eaten: “column after column of them arriving on the scene of battle”. Other entomologists at the time learned to recognize the disappearance of native ants as a sign of an invader’s arrival. <br /><br /><b>Unicolonial species are aggressive, quick to find food sources and tenacious in defending and exploiting them. Unlike many ant species, in which a worker who finds a new food source returns to the nest to recruit other foragers, the Argentine ant enlists other workers already outside the nest, thus recruiting foragers more quickly.</b> <i><b>However, the decisive advantage of unicolonial ant species lies in their sheer force of numbers, which is usually what decides ant conflicts. They often become the only ant species in invaded areas</b></i>.<br /><br />The effects of these invasions cascade through ecosystems. Sometimes, the damage is direct: on the Galápagos, fire ants prey on tortoise hatchlings and bird chicks, threatening their survival. In other cases, the damage falls on species that once relied on native ants. In California, the tiny Argentine ant (typically under 3mm long) has replaced the larger native species that once formed the diet of horned lizards, leaving the reptiles starving – it seems they do not recognize the much smaller invader as food. In the scrublands of the South African fynbos heathland, which has some of the most distinctive flora on Earth, many plants produce seeds bearing a fatty blob. Native ants “plant” the seeds by carrying them into their nests, where they eat the fat and discard the rest. Argentine ants – almost certainly imported to South Africa around 1900 along with horses shipped from Buenos Aires by the British empire to fight the Boer war – either ignore the seeds, leaving them to be eaten by mice, or strip the fat where it lies, leaving the seed on the ground. This makes it harder for endemic flora such as proteas to reproduce, tipping the balance towards invasive plants such as acacias and eucalypts.<br /><br />In the past 150 years, the Argentine ant has spread to pretty much everywhere that has hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters. A single supercolony, possibly descended from as few as half a dozen queens, now stretches along 3,800 miles of coastline in southern Europe. Another runs most of the length of California. The species has arrived in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, and even reached Easter Island in the Pacific and Saint Helena in the Atlantic. Its allegiances span oceans: workers from different continents, across millions of nests containing trillions of individuals, will accept each other as readily as if they had been born in the same nest. Workers of the world united, indeed. But not completely united.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjhzPWF_XRji8zm4jFK-mHswEh4HQCrIu5Z79QJ2iQGyElTunWrYZ3AzYMNTJR0PkgCEeyOKOi3pDjokUciA7aSxWqf4LuoZrDfPnOi0rHgColfj9_LRe5J-K3ewfEotYt3Q53uiVokQqVUbXfUnO_3T28kp8OjIDkO2rnVD3HHxpGM-ojcrSlpJXz_P-g/s678/leaf%20cutter%20ant.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="452" data-original-width="678" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjhzPWF_XRji8zm4jFK-mHswEh4HQCrIu5Z79QJ2iQGyElTunWrYZ3AzYMNTJR0PkgCEeyOKOi3pDjokUciA7aSxWqf4LuoZrDfPnOi0rHgColfj9_LRe5J-K3ewfEotYt3Q53uiVokQqVUbXfUnO_3T28kp8OjIDkO2rnVD3HHxpGM-ojcrSlpJXz_P-g/w400-h266/leaf%20cutter%20ant.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>leaf cutter ant</i><br />Expanding in parallel with the world-spanning supercolony are separate groups of the Argentine ant that bear different chemical badges – the legacy of other journeys from the homeland. Same species, different “smells”. In places where these distinct colonies come into contact, hostilities resume.<br /><br />In Spain, one such colony holds a stretch of the coast of Catalonia. In Japan, four mutually hostile groups fight it out around the port city of Kobe. The best-studied conflict zone is in southern California, a little north of San Diego, where the Very Large Colony, as the state-spanning group is known, shares a border with a separate group called the Lake Hodges colony, with a territory measuring just 18 miles around. Monitoring this border for a six-month period between April and September 2004, a team of researchers estimated that 15 million ants died on a frontline a few centimeters wide and a few miles long. There were times when each group seemed to gain ground, but over longer periods stalemate was the rule. Those seeking to control ant populations believe that provoking similar conflicts might be a way to weaken invasive ants’ dominance. There are also hopes, for example, that artificial pheromones – chemical misinformation, in other words – might cause colony mates to turn on one another, although no products have yet come to market.<br /><br />In the very long term, the fate of unicolonial societies is unclear. A survey of Madeira’s ants between 2014 and 2021 found, contrary to fears that invasive ants would wipe the island clean of other insects, very few big-headed ants and, remarkably, no Argentine ants. Invasive ants are prone to population crashes for reasons that aren’t understood, but may be related to genetic homogeneity: a single colony of Argentine ants in their homeland contains as much genetic diversity as the whole of California’s state-spanning supercolony. As with inbred species everywhere, this may make them prone to disease. Another potential issue is that the ants’ lack of discrimination about whom they help may also favour the evolution of free-riding “lazy workers” in colonies, who selfishly prosper by exploiting their nestmates’ efforts. Though it’s assumed that this uneven distribution of work may eventually lead to social breakdown, no examples have been found.<br /><br />Unless natural selection turns against them, <b>one of the most effective curbs on unicolonial ants is other unicolonial ants. In the south-eastern US, red fire ants seem to have prevented the Argentine ant forming a single vast supercolony as it has in California, instead returning the landscape to a patchwork of species.</b> In southern Europe, however, the Argentine ant has had a century longer to establish itself, so, even if the fire ant does gain a European foothold, there’s no guarantee that the same dynamic will play out. In the southern US, red fire ants are themselves now being displaced by the tawny crazy ant, another South American species, which has immunity to fire ant venom.<br /><br />*<br /><b>It is remarkable how irresistible the language of human warfare and empire can be when trying to describe the global history of ant expansion. </b>Most observers – scientists, journalists, others – seem not to have tried. Human efforts to control ants are regularly described as a war, as is competition between invaders and native ants, and it is easy to see why comparisons are made between the spread of unicolonial ant societies and human colonialism. People have been drawing links between insect and human societies for millennia. But what people see says more about them than about insects.<br /><br />A beehive is organized along similar lines to an ant nest, but human views of bee society tend to be benign and utopian. When it comes to ants, the metaphors often polarize, either towards something like communism or something like fascism – one mid-20th-century US eugenicist even used the impact of the Argentine ant as an argument for immigration control. <b>For the entomologist Neil Tsutsui, who studies unicolonial ants at the University of California, Berkeley, insects are like Rorschach tests. Some people see his research as evidence that we should all get along, while others see the case for racial purity.</b><br /><br />In addition to conflating a natural “is” with a political “ought”, the temptations of ant anthropomorphism can also lead to a limited, and limiting, view of natural history. Surely<b> the habit of worker ants in Argentine nests to kill nine-tenths of their queens every spring –</b> <b>seemingly clearing out the old to make way for the new </b>– is enough to deter parallels between ant societies and human politics?<br /><br />The more I learn, the more I am struck by the ants’ strangeness, rather than their similarities with human society. There is another way to be a globalized society – one that is utterly unlike our own. I am not even sure we have the language to convey, for example, a colony’s ability to take bits of information from thousands of tiny brains and turn it into a distributed, constantly updated picture of their world. <b>Even “smell” seems a feeble word to describe the ability of ants’ antennae to read chemicals on the air and on each other.</b> How can we imagine a life where sight goes almost unused and scent forms the primary channel of information, where chemical signals show the way to food, or mobilize a response to threats, or distinguish queens from workers and the living from the dead?<br /><br />As our world turns alien, trying to think like an alien will be a better route to finding the imagination and humility needed to keep up with the changes than looking for ways in which other species are like us. But trying to think like an ant, rather than thinking about how ants are like us, is not to say that I welcome our unicolonial insect underlords. Calamities follow in the wake of globalized ant societies. <br /><br /><b>Most troubling among these is the way that unicolonial species can overwhelmingly alter ecological diversity when they arrive somewhere new. Unicolonial ants can turn a patchwork of colonies created by different ant species into a landscape dominated by a single group.</b> As a result, textured and complex ecological communities become simpler, less diverse and, crucially, less different to each other. This is not just a process; it is an era. </span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The current period in which a relatively small number of super-spreading animals and plants expands across Earth is sometimes called the Homogecene. It’s not a cheering word, presaging an environment that favors the most pestilential animals, plants and microbes. Unicolonial ants contribute to a more homogenous future, but they also speak to life’s ability to escape our grasp, regardless of how we might try to order and exploit the world.</b> And there’s something hopeful about that, for the planet, if not for us.<br /><br />The scale and spread of ant societies is a reminder that humans should not confuse impact with control. We may be able to change our environment, but we’re almost powerless when it comes to manipulating our world exactly how we want. The global society of ants reminds us that we cannot know how other species will respond to our reshaping of the world, only that they will.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">If you want a parable of ants’ ability to mock human hubris, it’s hard to improve on the story of Biosphere 2. This giant terrarium in the Arizona desert, funded by a billionaire financier in the late 1980s, was intended as a grand experiment and model for long-distance space travel and colonization. It was designed to be a self-sustaining living system, inhabited by eight people, with no links to the world’s atmosphere, water, soil. Except that, soon after it began operations in 1991, the black crazy ant, a unicolonial species originally from south-east Asia, found a way in, reshaped the carefully engineered invertebrate community inside, and turned the place into a honeydew farm.<br /><br />It is possible to be both a scourge and a marvel.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/19/empire-of-the-ants-what-insect-supercolonies-can-teach-us?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/19/empire-of-the-ants-what-insect-supercolonies-can-teach-us?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br /><br />*<br /><b>THE COLLAPSE OF THE ATLANTIC MERIDIONAL OVERTURNING CIRCULATION WOULD BE A CLIMATE DISASTER<br /></b></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDchTVI8LA7f2HxIC9C1hyk8ld-6N-gVXrvlsyfqKjabzlvCm8zICYIwjiHTlUPPElA02K6zE6_w7yhTN_nxI36aK4GiwHhVULnD948Xt1XdK80xM5RfT8AT-CWfSVwNC9u1GL31M0pC8SX6I8ebjdI2bDG8XaQa4Tae4xLio3AswK1KTlNrTYkt9qMibi/s723/river%20and%20ocean%20turbulent.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="482" data-original-width="723" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDchTVI8LA7f2HxIC9C1hyk8ld-6N-gVXrvlsyfqKjabzlvCm8zICYIwjiHTlUPPElA02K6zE6_w7yhTN_nxI36aK4GiwHhVULnD948Xt1XdK80xM5RfT8AT-CWfSVwNC9u1GL31M0pC8SX6I8ebjdI2bDG8XaQa4Tae4xLio3AswK1KTlNrTYkt9qMibi/w400-h266/river%20and%20ocean%20turbulent.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)—the engine that drives our oceans—could happen as soon as 2100</b>, according to a study from Utrecht University published last month in the journal Science Advances. And while the world may not suffer a fatal flash freeze like in the 2004 action flick The Day After Tomorrow, an AMOC breakdown would probably reduce average air temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere by around 40 degrees Fahrenheit or more, spelling out disaster for life on our planet.<br /><br />But last year, a brother-sister science team in Denmark made their own prediction about the tipping point. <b>Their model found that the AMOC could shut down as early as 2025 (though the duo says it’s more likely to happen toward the middle of the century).</b> The controversial study, published in Nature Communications in June 2023, sparked a media frenzy and a sizable amount of backlash.<br /><br />If correct, either of those studies’ findings would mean catastrophic consequences for our climate. But why do the two studies arrive at such drastically different timelines for the AMOC’s demise, and which conclusion is more credible? ~</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW0oDDFidMqjM7WUk01pUG8y65X05fj9OSj9Zgvsg6p7mOdEjYAnNgSeWucKDBsv_dpySzr9RUfQRBf_I-F-o-r0uEOX8gCaZtmzqZCRKNGBElV45QY7LvJIWF_V41I09wUmFHVxv6UqEeuWXjP_RC5VBkmDexHpAcSbjLqZH8BHDgUnoEMK17FEK2-Sn9/s1875/Ocean%20gyres.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1225" data-original-width="1875" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW0oDDFidMqjM7WUk01pUG8y65X05fj9OSj9Zgvsg6p7mOdEjYAnNgSeWucKDBsv_dpySzr9RUfQRBf_I-F-o-r0uEOX8gCaZtmzqZCRKNGBElV45QY7LvJIWF_V41I09wUmFHVxv6UqEeuWXjP_RC5VBkmDexHpAcSbjLqZH8BHDgUnoEMK17FEK2-Sn9/w400-h261/Ocean%20gyres.png" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a60212795/ocean-circulatory-system-shutdown/?source=nl&utm_source=nl_pop&utm_medium=email&date=032124&utm_campaign=nl34755063&GID=df404ca4c6a7ea7fd7c7fddd0178d54e5e4b11c249c39eb055ba3cb06818db2d&utm_term=TEST-%20NEW%20TEST%20-%20Sending%20List%20-%20AM%20180D%20Clicks%2C%20NON%20AM%2090D%20Opens%2C%20Both%20Subbed%20Last%2030D">https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a60212795/ocean-circulatory-system-shutdown/?source=nl&utm_source=nl_pop&utm_medium=email&date=032124&utm_campaign=nl34755063&GID=df404ca4c6a7ea7fd7c7fddd0178d54e5e4b11c249c39eb055ba3cb06818db2d&utm_term=TEST-%20NEW%20TEST%20-%20Sending%20List%20-%20AM%20180D%20Clicks%2C%20NON%20AM%2090D%20Opens%2C%20Both%20Subbed%20Last%2030D<br /></a><br />*<br /><br /><b>OCEAN CIRCULATION</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b></b><b>The ocean gyres move clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. Ocean gyre circulation moves cold surface water from the poles to the equator, where the water is warmed before the gyres send it back toward the poles.</b><br /><br />By moving heat from the equator toward the poles, ocean currents play an important role in controlling the climate. Ocean currents are also critically important to sea life. They carry nutrients and food to organisms that live permanently attached in one place, and carry reproductive cells and ocean life to new places.<br /><br /><a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/ocean-currents/">https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/ocean-currents/<br /></a><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Rivers flow because of gravity. WHAT MAKES OCEAN CURRENTS FLOW?<br /><br />Tides contribute to coastal currents that travel short distances. <b>Major surface ocean currents in the open ocean, however, are set in motion by the wind, which drags on the surface of the water as it blows. The water starts flowing in the same direction as the wind.<br /></b><br />But currents do not simply track the wind. Other things, including the shape of the coastline and the seafloor, and most importantly the rotation of the Earth, influence the path of surface currents.<br /><br /><b>In the Northern Hemisphere, for example, predictable winds called trade winds blow from east to west just above the equator. The winds pull surface water with them, creating currents. As these currents flow westward, the Coriolis effect—a force that results from the rotation of the Earth—deflects them. The currents then bend to the right, heading north. At about 30 degrees north latitude, a different set of winds, the westerlies, push the currents back to the east, producing a closed clockwise loop.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsyrE93PtEHBQdQ7cyeXECRXYsEksawDG75sUsMQ16vB9zjSMx6yfeJGxcUzFKi6sAzPY8IHFjQyiuE8JPvTCSIanAjmVi9CqUCMCU_K9lfP8by6VdlP_X6bXm2a8NxOXycNhWWsWkr3rbus3MflA9-3KqIjKp6o-j4XSHbM-vLeXnbCBMQxxLod00ceIq/s724/ocean%20currents%20loops.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="724" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsyrE93PtEHBQdQ7cyeXECRXYsEksawDG75sUsMQ16vB9zjSMx6yfeJGxcUzFKi6sAzPY8IHFjQyiuE8JPvTCSIanAjmVi9CqUCMCU_K9lfP8by6VdlP_X6bXm2a8NxOXycNhWWsWkr3rbus3MflA9-3KqIjKp6o-j4XSHbM-vLeXnbCBMQxxLod00ceIq/w400-h199/ocean%20currents%20loops.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />The same thing happens below the equator, in the Southern Hemisphere, except that here the Coriolis effect bends surface currents to the left, producing a counter-clockwise loop.<br /><br />Large rotating currents that start near the equator are called subtropical gyres. There are five main gyres: the North and South Pacific Subtropical Gyres, the North and South Atlantic Subtropical Gyres, and the Indian Ocean Subtropical Gyre.<br /><br />These surface currents play an important role in moderating climate by transferring heat from the equator towards the poles. Subtropical gyres are also responsible for concentrating plastic trash in certain areas of the ocean.<br /><br />In contrast to wind-driven surface currents, deep-ocean currents are caused by differences in water density. The process that creates deep currents is called<b> thermohaline circulation</b>—“thermo” referring to temperature and “haline” to saltiness.<br /><br />It all starts with surface currents carrying warm water north from the equator. The water cools as it moves into higher northern latitudes, and the more it cools, the denser it becomes.<br /><br />In the North Atlantic Ocean, near Iceland, the water becomes so cold that sea ice starts to form. The salt naturally present in seawater does not become part of the ice, however. It is left behind in the ocean water that lies just under the ice, making that water extra salty and dense. The denser water sinks, and as it does, more ocean water moves in to fill the space it once occupied. This water also cools and sinks, keeping a deep current in motion.<br /><br />This is the start of what scientists call <b>the “global conveyor belt,” a system of connected deep and surface currents that moves water around the globe. These currents circulate around the globe in a thousand-year cycle.</b></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/ocean-currents/">https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/ocean-currents/<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>SLOWDOWN OF THE OCEAN CURRENTS<br /></b></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXN2J6gxKJm8SaUkRMhuBkcsPq46-nHikSmrlJ2fJHyfsLJ4bFnZMJ2rYl1q0K1zsI_RdM-Ux_BFXiRKKQPs0FdX2m6bJWLzxH4heM5qL9-wfR1aKO1kvm9uXWCgeswfxyHT_XY-qItvlR5skGMsPqN-PhxuAJkY9VmYYs-7eDtv8JpJEJDSpWzq5O8wJd/s1024/ocean%20currents%20in%20the%20North%20Atlantic.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="1024" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXN2J6gxKJm8SaUkRMhuBkcsPq46-nHikSmrlJ2fJHyfsLJ4bFnZMJ2rYl1q0K1zsI_RdM-Ux_BFXiRKKQPs0FdX2m6bJWLzxH4heM5qL9-wfR1aKO1kvm9uXWCgeswfxyHT_XY-qItvlR5skGMsPqN-PhxuAJkY9VmYYs-7eDtv8JpJEJDSpWzq5O8wJd/w400-h225/ocean%20currents%20in%20the%20North%20Atlantic.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Visualization of ocean currents in the North Atlantic. The colors show sea surface temperature (orange and yellow are warmer, green and blue are colder).</i><br /><br />As the ocean warms and land ice melts, ocean circulation — the movement of heat around the planet by currents — could be impacted. Research with NASA satellites and other data is currently underway to learn more.<br /><br />Dynamic and powerful, the ocean plays a vital role in Earth’s climate. It helps regulate Earth’s temperature, absorbs carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, and fuels the water cycle.<br /><b>One of the most important functions of the ocean is to move heat around the planet via currents.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The Atlantic Ocean's currents play an especially important role in our global climate. The movement of water north and south throughout the Atlantic might be weakening due to climate change, which could become a problem. To help understand why, let’s explore what drives large-scale ocean circulation<br /><br /><b>Winds and Earth’s rotation create large-scale surface currents in the ocean. Warm, fast currents along the western edges of ocean basins move heat from the equator toward the North and South Poles</b>. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>One such current is the Gulf Stream, which travels along the eastern coast of North America as it carries warm waters from the tropics toward Europe.</b> This warm water, and the heat it releases into the atmosphere, is the primary reason Europe experiences a more temperate climate than the northeastern U.S. and Canada. For example, compare the climates of New York City and Madrid, Spain, which are both about the same distance north of the equator.<br /><br />Differences in density drive slow-moving ocean currents in the deep ocean. Density is an object’s mass (how much matter it has) per unit of volume (how much space it takes up). Both temperature and saltiness (salinity) affect the density of water. Cold water is denser than warm water, and salty water is denser than fresh water. Thus, <b>deep currents are typically made of cold and salty water that sank from the surface.</b><br /><br />One location where surface water sinks into the deep ocean is in the North Atlantic. When water evaporates and gives up some heat to the air, the sea gets colder and a little saltier. Plus, when sea ice forms, it freezes the surface water leaving behind salt, which makes the remaining seawater saltier. Once this colder, saltier water becomes dense enough, it sinks to the deep ocean. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Warmer, less dense water from the Gulf Stream rushes in to replace the water that sinks. This motion helps power a global “conveyor belt” of ocean currents – known as thermohaline circulation – that moves heat around Earth</b>. Scientists measure the flow of Atlantic waters north and south, at the surface and in the deep, to assess the strength of this Atlantic Meridional Ocean Circulation (AMOC).<br /><br />As the concentration of carbon dioxide rises in the atmosphere from human actions, global air and ocean temperatures heat up. Warmer water is less dense, and thus harder to sink. At the same time, Greenland’s ice sheet is melting due to warming air and ocean temperatures, and <b>the melted ice is adding fresh water into the North Atlantic. This change reduces the water’s saltiness, making it less dense and harder to sink.<br /></b><br /><b>If enough water stops sinking, then the AMOC will weaken.</b> Depending on how much the AMOC weakens, it can change regional weather patterns, such as rainfall, and affect where and how well crops can grow. According to the latest report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — which includes research from hundreds of scientists — the AMOC is “very likely to weaken over the 21st century” due to climate change.<br /><br />Scientists using temperature and sea level records have inferred the AMOC’s strength over the past century, and the evidence suggests that it might have already weakened. However, direct measurements over the past 30 years have not yet confirmed such a decline.<br /><br />When and how much the AMOC will weaken is an area of ongoing research. Satellites such as the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), GRACE-FO, and ocean height-measuring altimeters can observe ocean features related to the AMOC — complementing measurements from ocean buoys and ships.<br /><br />Current projections from the IPCC show that the AMOC is unlikely to stop, or collapse, before the year 2100. However, “if such a collapse were to occur," the IPCC says, "it would very likely cause abrupt shifts in regional weather patterns and the water cycle.”<b> These could include “a southward shift in the tropical rain belt, weakening of the African and Asian monsoons, strengthening of Southern Hemisphere monsoons, and drying in Europe,” impacts that would greatly alter food production worldwide.</b><br /><br />As more data are gathered and analyzed, scientists will be able to better predict current changes and impacts of those changes in the future. ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-atmosphere/slowdown-of-the-motion-of-the-ocean/">https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-atmosphere/slowdown-of-the-motion-of-the-ocean/<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>HOW LIFE EMERGED</b><br /><br />Researchers on a quest to understand the origins of life just learned a little lesson about <b>photosynthesis from 1.75 billion years ago.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b>In a new study published in Nature, a team of researchers claim that microfossils found in the desert of north Australia show off the earliest known signs of photosynthesis. And that could means a better understanding of how all of life could have begun.<br /><br />These microfossils are remnants of a type of organism called cyanobacteria, which experts believe have been around for as long as 3.5 billion years (though the oldest confirmed fossil examples are from about 2 billion years ago). At some point in their evolution, some varieties of these organisms developed <b>thylakoids—structures within cells in which photosynthesis occurs—which may have allowed them to contribute huge amounts of oxygen to Earth’s atmosphere through photosynthesis in what has become known as the Great Oxidation Event.</b><br /><br />These new findings offer up the oldest evidence of photosynthesis found to date. The researchers claim that their discovery extends <b>the fossil record by at least 1.2 billion years, and that these very first photosynthesizing cells appeared roughly 1.75 billion years ago.<br /></b><br />“[This discovery] allows the unambiguous identification of early oxygenic photosynthesizers and a new redox proxy for probing early Earth ecosystems,” the authors wrote in the paper, “highlighting the importance of examining the ultrastructure of fossil cells to decipher their paleobiology and early evolution.”<br /><br /><b>These exciting fossils were discovered in ancient rocks—located in the McDermott Formation in northern Australia—and feature the pigment chlorophyll, which allows organisms to absorb the sunlight during photosynthesis.</b> The presences of chlorophyll was enough for researchers to determine that photosynthesis had occurred in these little compartments, which would mean that the process evolved much earlier than was previously demonstrable.<br /><br />And that would likely help explain the Great Oxidation Event. <b>Evidence in the fossil record shows us that there was a huge jump in atmospheric oxygen levels around 2.4 billion years ago.</b> It was critical to the existence of life on Earth as we know it, and while scientists aren’t sure what caused it, one theory is that this is around the time that photosynthetic organisms evolved into being and began to exist in large numbers. <b>By dating fossilized cells with the necessary components for photosynthesis to as close to that oxygen-flourishing event as possible, researchers are able to move one step closer to understanding the role of oxygen—and the cells helping create it—in the origins of life on Earth.</b><br /><br />Of course, the next step is more research. Specifically, the team intends to examine fossil cells across the world to see just how well they match up with this new timeline.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“We predict,” the authors wrote, “that similar ultrastructural analyses of well-preserved microfossils might expand the geological record of oxygenic photosynthesizers and of early, weakly oxygenated ecosystems in which complex cells developed.”<br /><br />Take a deep breath, and dive on into the science. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a46317064/photosynthesis-origins-of-life-new-discovery/?utm_source=webstories&utm_medium=organic">https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a46317064/photosynthesis-origins-of-life-new-discovery/?utm_source=webstories&utm_medium=organic<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>RECESSION AND INCREASE IN LONGEVITY</b><br /><br />There's a reason governments spend so many taxpayer dollars digging their economies out of recessions. Families lose their homes. Children go malnourished. New grads spend years struggling to get their careers back on track, forgoing marriage and kids and homeownership. But a growing body of research suggests that recessions are good for at least one thing: longevity. Puzzlingly, it appears that economic downturns actually extend people's lives.<br /><br />The latest evidence comes from "Lives vs. Livelihoods," a new paper by four researchers led by the renowned health economist Amy Finkelstein. They found that during the Great Recession, from 2007 to 2009, age-adjusted mortality rates among Americans dropped 0.5% for every jump of 1 percentage point in an area's unemployment rate. The more joblessness, the longer people lived — especially adults over 64 and those without a college education.<br /><br />"These mortality reductions appear immediately," the economists concluded, "and they persist for at least 10 years." The effects were so large that the recession effectively provided 4% of all 55-year-olds with an extra year of life. And in states that saw big jumps in unemployment, people were more likely to report being in excellent health. Recessions, it would seem, help us stay fitter, and live longer.<br /><br />The question, of course, is why. The economists ruled out a lot of possible explanations. Laid-off workers weren't using their free time to exercise more, or cutting back on smoking or drinking because money was tight. Infectious diseases like influenza and pneumonia kept right on spreading, even though fewer people were going to work and dining out. Retirees didn't seem to be getting better care, even though rising unemployment rates made it easier for nursing homes to staff up. So what could the explanation be? How does higher unemployment lead to longer life?<br /><br /><b>The answer was pollution</b>. <b>Counties that experienced the biggest job losses in the Great Recession, the economists found, also saw the largest declines in air pollution, as measured by levels of the fine particulate matter PM2.5. </b>It makes sense: During recessions, fewer people drive to work. Factories and offices slow down, and people cut back on their own energy use to save money. All that reduced activity leads to cleaner air. <b>That would explain why workers without a college degree enjoyed the biggest drops in mortality: People with low-wage jobs tend to live in neighborhoods with more environmental toxins. </b>It would also explain why the recession <b>reduced mortality from heart disease, suicide, and car crashes</b> — causes of death all linked to the physical and mental effects of PM2.5. Overall, the economists found, <b>cleaner air was responsible for more than a third of the decline in mortality during the Great Recession.</b><br /><br />The new paper, along with other research into recessions, provides an important reminder that <b>economic growth isn't — and shouldn't be — the only measure of our collective well-being. If recessions save lives, that comes with a corollary: Boom times cost lives.</b> An economy firing on all cylinders creates more jobs — but it also generates all sorts of unseen but harmful side effects. "Our findings suggest important trade-offs between economic activity and mortality," the authors conclude. That's economist-speak for two very bad choices: <b>Would you prefer wealth that kills you, or poverty that keeps you alive?<br /></b><br />It's that dilemma that has given rise to what's known as the degrowth movement — the idea that the gross domestic product doesn't provide us with an accurate read on human progress. Sure, economic growth provides jobs. But it doesn't tell us anything about the health of our children or the safety of our neighborhoods or the sustainability of our planet. What's the point of having all this money, the degrowthers ask, if it's making us worse off?<br /><br />I'm sympathetic to that line of reasoning — up to a point. But I don't think that actually shrinking the economy, as some degrowthers advocate, is a good idea. Lower growth inevitably leads to higher unemployment, and that's not a trade-off we should be willing to accept. <b>I grew up in Japan, a country degrowthers often point to as a model for slower growth. It's true that Japan is politically stable, clean, and safe even though its economy has stalled for 30 years</b>. <br /><br />But there's something about long-term economic stagnation that saps a country's hope. Nothing changes — in politics, in culture, in society — even when everyone knows it's bad. Without realizing it, I had settled into this national inertia, the belief that nothing could be done. It was only in 2012, when I moved to San Francisco, that I started to feel real agency over the direction of my life. <b>Everyone around me believed they could change the world, and the sense of optimism was contagious.<br /></b><br />The degrowth movement presents us with a false choice. <b>The solution to bad growth isn't less growth. It's better growth. With stronger regulation and smarter innovation, I'm confident we can find ways to create jobs without destroying the environment and shortening our lives.</b> </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">If the new research tells us anything, it's that we still have a long way to go in striking a healthy balance between economic growth and social welfare. We shouldn't have to choose between working and living. ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/recessions-mortality-degrowth-economy-gdp-unemployment-environment-pollution-2024-3?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://www.businessinsider.com/recessions-mortality-degrowth-economy-gdp-unemployment-environment-pollution-2024-3?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /><br /></a><br />*<br /><b>DOES THE EARLY BIRD ALWAYS GET THE WORM?<br /></b><br /><b>Early risers get a lot of good press: They are supposedly more productive and possibly better problem solvers. But after a month of forcing myself out of bed at 5 a.m., I learned that getting up early isn’t always the best thing for you.</b><br /><br />I’m a morning person, and most days I’m out of bed by 5:45 a.m. I usually have 15 minutes before the rest of my household starts to wake, and I use this time to enjoy a cup of tea as well as the stillness of the morning. I look forward to this time so much that I wondered, What would happen if I expanded the 15 minutes to an hour?<br /><br />While it was a nice thought, getting up at 5 a.m. was harder than I expected. My alarm went off a mere 45 minutes earlier than normal, but I had to drag myself out of bed. With no plan other than tea and stillness, I quickly learned that an hour is too long. The second day I decided to meditate, a practice I’ve wanted to do but never seemed to have the time for. Unfortunately, I fell asleep in my chair. Eventually, I took out a piece of paper and did a brain dump of all the things I wanted to get done in January–at least I had a plan.<br /><br />As the month went on, I used the time to get a head start on work, but by 9 p.m., I was exhausted and would head to bed. That meant I lost out on evening time with my husband and son.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Why was 5 a.m. so much harder than 5:45 a.m.?</b><br /><br /><b>Forty-five minutes can make a huge difference,</b> says Damon Raskin, MD, a sleep expert affiliated with Concierge Choice Physicians in Pacific Palisades, California. “<b>We get our deep restorative sleep in the early-morning waking hours when REM sleep occurs,</b>” he says. “<b>If you shorten that, you are going to feel unrefreshed, and you’re not going to have enough sleep</b>.”<br /><br /><b>A Better Way to Get Up Early</b><br /><br />Turns out that simply adjusting your alarm clock isn’t the best way to make a long-term change. Instead, understand that your brain is always looking for patterns, says Shawn Stevenson, author of Sleep Smarter: 21 Proven Tips to Sleep Your Way to a Better Body, Better Health and Bigger Success.<br /><br />“Your body clock, or circadian rhythm, governs how your body is in sync with all of life, and when you make a shift in that, there will be residual fallout,” he says. “By waking up 45 minutes earlier, you proactively created at-home jet lag. If you keep pressing it for several days, your body will eventually sort itself out, but there is a more graceful way to do it.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">First, withdraw from electronics at least an hour before bed, which affect the quality of your sleep. “When it comes to our health, most of us know that calories aren’t equal; 300 calories of broccoli aren’t the same for your body as 300 calories of Twinkies,” he says. “Sleep is similar, and unfortunately many today are getting Twinkie sleep, not cycling through proper brain activity because electronic devices suppress melatonin (the hormone that controls sleep cycles).”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Every hour you are exposed to blue light from a device, you suppress melatonin production for 30 minutes,</b> says Stevenson. “You may be getting eight hours of sleep, but you will still wake up feeling exhausted,” he says.<br /><br />Morning exercise will also help by regulating your cortisol levels, the hormone that gets you going in the morning, says Stevenson. “Normal cortisol rhythms spike in the morning and then gradually bottom out in the evening,” he says. “If you are changing your wake time, five minutes of exercise can help reset your rhythm. Do body-weight squats or walk around the block.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Implementing a gradual wake time will also help. “Move your wake time up by 15 minutes and go through that for a couple of days to a week,” says Stevenson. “This is especially important if you want to establish a consistent sleep pattern.”</b><br /><br />And not having a strong plan doesn’t help, says Stevenson. “If you don’t have a reason to get up, and your body wants to rest, forget about it,” he says. “You need something that will fill that space that is compelling.”<br /><br /><b>The Benefits of Getting Up Early</b><br /><br />Being the proverbial “early bird” has its advantages, says Shanon Makekau, medical director of the Kaiser Permanente Sleep Lab in Hawaii.<br /><br /><b>“Morning people have been shown to be more proactive, which is linked to better job performance, career success, and higher wages, as well as more goal-oriented,” she says. “These people tend to be more in sync with the typical workday schedule, versus night owls who may be still be waking up at around lunchtime.”<br /></b><br />Early-morning hours also tend to be more productive because there are fewer distractions. <br /><br />Jeremy Korst, CMO of the automated tax software provider Avalara and former general manager of the Windows 10 group at Microsoft, gets up between 3:30 and 4 a.m. for two reasons: clarity of thought during that part of the day and quiet time. He does strategic work from 4 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. that requires focus, then he works out and heads to the office.<br /><br />“No one else is awake yet, and it’s quiet,” he says. “This isn’t a time for clearing my inbox; this is heads-down work time, during which I’m more productive than any other time of day. Without distraction and a bit of separation from the flurry of the prior workday, I can truly focus on important work.”<br /><br />Getting up early makes Korst feel like he’s got a jumpstart on the day: “I’m in the office early, so I am already ahead of the day and the schedule a bit,” he says. “This helps as calendars are nearly always jammed–getting ahead of it is critical.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>What Happened When the 30 Days Were Over<br /></b><br />Unfortunately, my experiment didn’t produce long-lasting results. When my month was over, I immediately returned to my normal 5:45 a.m., which felt like sleeping in. I even slept until 10 a.m. on weekend mornings–a very rare occurrence for me. I feel more productive now that I’m back to my normal routine.<br /><br />“The jury is still out regarding whether or not simply shifting one’s wake time earlier is enough to garner all of the positive benefits of the early bird,” says Makekau. “It may be that one’s internal tendency toward productivity is inherent or, more importantly, is tied to the congruency between the internal sleep/wake clock and one’s external schedule. Night owls could be just as productive as long as they are allowed to work on a delayed schedule.”<br /><br /><a href="https://getpocket.com/explore/item/what-happened-when-i-forced-myself-to-wake-up-at-5-a-m-every-day-for-a-month?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://getpocket.com/explore/item/what-happened-when-i-forced-myself-to-wake-up-at-5-a-m-every-day-for-a-month?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br /><br />*<br /><b>THE POWER OF REST<br /></b><br />Our society may encourage hustle and grind as the only means to be productive but if you really want to maintain your well-being and efficiency, stop and rest. Sleep deprivation declines productivity and negatively impacts our health. Employees with fatigue are costing employers $136.4 billion a year in health-related lost productive time. <br /><br /><b>Many of us have a habit of pushing through. But working through our lunches and not taking small breaks can actually be very counterproductive. Pushing past our limits causes our productivity to take a nosedive, coupled with additional stress and eventually burnout.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b></b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Have you ever thought of rest as being productive? For many, rest seems like an aspirational word. It sounds good and easy in theory but difficult to apply. However, rest is part of the process and is integral to our journey to success.</b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />We have to be intentional with implementing rest into our daily lives, otherwise, it just won’t happen. Using a productivity hack such as the Pomodoro Technique can help you regain some level of control over how you manage your time. It helps you prioritize your breaks, minimize distractions (which use up additional mental energy), and optimize your brain so you can be more efficient and productive. <br /><br />The technique can be broken down into five easy steps:<br /><b>Pick a task<br />Set a 25-minute timer<br />Work on your task until time is up<br />Take a 5-minute break<br />Every 4 Pomodoros, take a 15-to-30-minute break<br /></b><br />This technique allows you to break down complex tasks and cluster small tasks together. The key is that you have to stay focused on that one Pomodoro. [the word means “tomato” in Italian]. <b>Even the smallest distraction can interrupt your workflow, so turn off your phone and email notifications. </b>If there is a disruption, try to see how you can avoid it in your next session.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Taking a break allows you to come back to a task with a different perspective. It gives your brain a chance to tap into clarity, creativity, and insight. Here are some other ways you can detach from work so that you can better connect later.<br /><br /><b>Set and maintain boundaries<br /></b><br />Working from home became the norm for many during COVID-19 and it has become challenging for some to create healthy boundaries around work. With the lines now blurred, the 9-to-5 parameters have changed. Especially if you have young children at home.<br /><br />Technology has allowed us to become easily accessible. The problem is, more often than not, people feel entitled to our time and expect an immediate response. The key thing to remember is to maintain boundaries around your time. Just because you are accessible does not make you available. Don’t feel rushed to reply to the email or text, even if you have the read receipt option on. Minimize stress and anxiety by practicing mindfulness and enjoy whatever you were doing before that call, text, or email came through; especially if it is after work hours and the weekend. Do this often enough and others will learn to adjust accordingly.<br /><br /><b>Take a nap</b><br /><br />Want to decrease fatigue, enhance performance, and reduce mistakes? Try adding naps into your daily or weekly routine. Naps have restorative power. Even a 20-to-30-minute nap can effectively recharge your battery. Set an alarm and minimize distractions (similar to the Pomodoro Technique).<br /><br />However, be mindful of when you take your nap. Notice when your brain naturally begins to tucker out and you are most sleepy. More than likely it’s around the same time every day. Knowing this, you can actually begin scheduling your naps into your workday.<br /><br /><b>Move away from your desk</b><br /><br />Getting up to stretch, going outside, and giving your eyes a break can be energizing. This is essential, especially for many who are working from home full time. It helps to get the blood circulating, which is good for your physical and brain health. If you choose to go outside, it provides a nice change in scenery. Doing this activity can help to decrease eye strain and bouts of fatigue. If you really want to be more productive and be creative, take these necessary breaks. You might be surprised at the clarity and insight that comes from stepping away from work.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Operating on fumes can leave you feeling stuck, take you longer to accomplish tasks, increase your mistakes, and minimize innovation.</b> Our brains are like a machine, but we are not robots. Implementing rest periods, whether it’s via the Pomodoro Technique or some other methods, will help reduce fatigue and stress. This goes for parents with newborns, business executives, and seasoned truck drivers. When you make rest a priority, you will be pleasantly surprised by how much more you can accomplish by doing less.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90630426/how-doing-less-can-help-you-accomplish-more">https://www.fastcompany.com/90630426/how-doing-less-can-help-you-accomplish-more<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>THE DARK SIDE OF DINKS<br /></b><br />If you've heard the acronym DINK lately, you might have this publication to blame.<br />In recent months, we've written about DINKs — Dual Income, No Kids — using their inflated net worths to retire early, travel the world, and buy boats.<br /><br />For some, being a DINK is almost like a cheat code for achieving the American dream: It allows adults to sidestep the economic walls closing in on many millennials and Gen Zers struggling to afford housing, childcare, and healthcare.<b> DINKs are in a better position to buy houses, go on vacations, and plan to retire early.</b><br /><br />But it's not all romantic getaways and immaculate houses.<br /><br /><b>Even people who are happy to be childfree sometimes feel left behind or isolated in a culture that still deems parenthood the correct life path. But there's an even darker side to DINKs: The slice that forgoes kids not by choice but out of necessity.</b> These are the Americans who would love to be parents but find that they can't swing it financially. They're more accurately described as childless rather than childfree.<br /><br />It's difficult to parse out the exact number of Americans who might want kids but can't have them. We know that <b>the childfree group — people who don't want kids — might be about 20% of the US adult population. But it's harder to track down the people who might otherwise have kids were the circumstances different.</b><br /><br />A survey from NerdWallet and Harris Poll polling over 2,000 US adults in December found that 56% of non-parents don't plan to have kids. Of this group,<b> 31% said that the "overall cost of raising a child is too high.”</b><br /><br />"The big takeaway — and what really stood out to me — is just how big the cost of having kids looms for both current parents who are considering having more kids, and also people who don't have children yet," Kimberly Palmer, personal finance expert at NerdWallet, told BI.<br /><br />In an economy as large as the US's, any story about the economy is probably true somewhere. It's why some industries can't fill open jobs while people in other professions struggle to find a new role, or why a country where jobs are abundant and wages on the rise also has a housing and childcare affordability crisis — and a dreary general economic outlook. And <b>when it comes to DINKs, that duality is true as well — for some, it's a boon; for others, it's less of a choice than a need.</b><br /><br />"We have over 150 million people working in the US economy," Kathryn Edwards, an economist at the RAND Corporation, previously told BI. "Whatever can be true is true for at least one person. Having that many workers means that you can have two true stories that are in absolute conflict, and it totally makes sense that they're both in our labor market.”<br /><br /><b>While there are signs that our society is coming to greater acceptance of childfree people, evidence points to our economy moving in the opposite direction.</b> A Business Insider calculation earlier this year found that parents could spend $26,000 raising a kid in 2024. As birth rates are dropping, costs for housing, childcare, and medical care are rising. It's contributing to a whole population of DINKs who can't afford to shed the moniker.<br /><br />Larry Bienz, 38, is a social worker and DINK in Chicago. He said he might be a parent in a different country, one with different priorities and infrastructure. But he's chosen not to be in this one.<br /><br /><b>In our society, Bienz said, "the first and foremost priority is that people are working in a job. Everything else comes after making sure that we are working on a job.”<br /></b><br />He could imagine a life where he has kids, but the lifestyle it would require — both parents juggling jobs, housework, and childcare on little sleep — just doesn't seem sustainable.<br /><br /><b>Bienz already feels like he doesn't have enough time to invest in not just pleasure activities but also being civically engaged and part of his community. Layer onto that, as Bienz notes, a country with a stagnant minimum wage and without guaranteed paid leave or affordable healthcare, where parents rely on underpaid educators and day care workers. Meanwhile, in other countries, parents can have up to a year of paid parental leave guaranteed.<br /></b><br />"Our system says, 'Oh, it's okay. You can get up to 12 weeks unpaid and you won't get fired from your job," Bienz said. "It's like, what a joke. 'Oh, I won't get fired for my job if I want to stay home with my baby for a while!’"<br /><br />Bienz pointed to the example of the "welfare queen" — a concept "packed full of racism" — as an example of what it feels like the system won't allow: Someone using public resources to feed and house their family without working a job.<br /><br />"The one thing we can't live with is a welfare queen," he said. "We're perfectly fine with, let's just say, a single mom working 60 hours a week paying for daycare.”<br /><br /><b>That'll be $30,000, please</b><br /><br />Amelia and Kevin desperately want to be parents.<br /><br />The couple — who are 37 and 43 respectively — have been trying to get pregnant for 18 months. They've bought a bigger house in a good school district in anticipation of the kids who would come. But there's no baby for them yet. And in a country where reproductive care is more scant by the moment, and health insurance only offers a piecemeal approach to affording treatment, they're having to think about how much, exactly, they can afford to spend on the act of having a child.<br /><br /><b>"We're the ideal situation. We're a happily married couple. We have good jobs, we're well educated,"</b> Amelia, whose last name is known to BI but withheld for privacy reasons, said. <b>"What infertility feels like — it feels like every month you're attending a class and at the end of the month you go to take the final and the teacher comes up to you and goes, what are you doing? You're not in this class.”<br /></b><br />The couple hasn't yet invested in medical interventions like intrauterine insemination (IUI) or in vitro fertilization (IVF) yet, but have already spent over $1,000 on treatments, therapy, and doctor's visits — and that's with insurance. More in-depth treatment, like IVF, likely wouldn't be covered, they said. And that's before considering any other potential risks, as reproductive rights and access to IVF become more imperiled in the US.<br /><br />The American Society for Reproductive Medicine estimates that <b>the average cost of an IVF cycle is $12,400, and other estimates have it coming in closer to $25,000. Meanwhile, adoption in the US can end up costing anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000</b>, per the US Children's Bureau. Comparatively, the median household income in the US is $74,580, meaning a household trying to embark upon parenthood through nontraditional means might be putting over a third of their earnings toward it.<br /><br />As countries around the world bemoan falling population rates and some politicians in the US try to limit access to abortion, Amelia thinks the government could step in.<br /><br />"Everyone's saying you shouldn't abort, you should put your kid up for adoption, you should adopt. I'm like, great, let us adopt," Amelia said. "Oh no, that'd be $30,000, please.”<br /><br />Amelia's not alone: In the NerdWallet survey of people who were not parents,<b> 11% of respondents said it was because the cost of infertility treatments was too high, and 10% similarly said that the cost of adoption is too high. Those high costs are also colliding with a perfect reproductive storm as treatments like IVF become potentially even riskier.</b><br /><br /><b>"In Michigan, we saw a big jump in the number of child-free people following the overturning of Roe v. Wade,"</b> Zachary Neal, a professor in Michigan State University's psychology department's social-personality program, told me. In anecdotal responses in a landmark study of childfree adults Neal conducted with fellow Michigan State psychology professor — and his wife — Jennifer Neal, men were even thinking about the decision's repercussions, saying that they would not want to expose their partner to potential medical risks. "Both men and women are thinking in this climate, it just became too risky to be a pregnant person.”<br /><br /><b>The baby elephant in the room</b><br /><br />Priscilla Davies is a 41-year-old actor, writer, and content creator. As an elder millennial, she's seen the ups and downs of multiple "economic crises." <b>Davies is single and childfree by choice — in part because of the ways that marriage places uneven gendered burdens upon women</b>.<br /><br />"The establishment calls out the issues — they call it out from the wrong angle — and they're like, 'Oh, millennials are killing families. They don't want to have children. They're so selfish. They're always coming at it from the wrong angle as opposed to calling out what the issue is. And it's basically an elephant in the room," Davies said. "<b>We all know that this economic system does not work</b>.”<br /><br />Younger parents have told Business Insider that the idea of the caretaking village has been washed away by ever-higher costs, skyrocketing rents, <b>grandparents still working</b>, and the loss of safe third spaces for kids and parents alike to congregate. Without a village, parenthood feels even more untenable.<br /><br />"We should be providing financial assistance to parents. Just point blank, period. You have a child, we as a social society are invested in our children, so let's help people raise their children and that community, unfortunately — because we live in this hyper-capitalistic environment — that community is going to have to come at this stage from money," Davies said.<br /><br /><b>The tale of two DINKs — those who have happily opted into the lifestyle and others who have been pushed in — might sound like a story of diverging paths. But, ultimately, they're sides of the same coin: They want to have a choice.</b><br /><br />For the DINKs who are happily living it up, that means the choice to exist peacefully and respectfully as a childfree adult. It means a world that respects their choices and can envision something beyond a traditional family structure that provides meaning, love, and satisfaction.<br />And for the DINKs-by-default, it means a path to parenthood, no matter their financial standing.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Right now, though, neither is reality. And that's leading childfree and childless people alike to experience isolation and difficult calculations. As for Amelia and Kevin, they said they're taking it one step at a time.<br /><br />"It really comes down to <b>do you have the money to have a child?</b> And that's a very depressing situation to be in," Amelia said. "How much is a child worth it to you? Isn't a child worth $30,000? Isn't it worth it to you? I'm like, of course it's worth it, but I don't have $30,000.”<br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/dinks-childfree-parents-choice-kids-childless-2024-3?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://www.businessinsider.com/dinks-childfree-parents-choice-kids-childless-2024-3?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br /><br /><br />*<br /><b>MARILYNNE ROBINSON RE-READS GENESIS<br /></b><br />~ Marilynne Robinson’s novels always leave me with a visceral impression of celestial light. Heavenly bulbs seem to switch on at climactic moments, showing a world as undimmed as it was at Creation. “I love the prairie! So often I have seen the dawn come and the light flood over the land and everything turn radiant at once,” writes John Ames, the narrator of Gilead, an elderly preacher approaching death as if returning to the birth of being. “And God saw the light, that it was good,” the Bible says, and Ames sees that it’s good, too: “<b>that word ‘good’ so profoundly affirmed in my soul that I am amazed I should be allowed to witness such a thing.</b>”<br /><br />Robinson is one of the greatest living Christian novelists, by which I don’t just mean that she’s a Christian—though she is an active one—but that her great novels (five so far) and her versatile, morally stringent essays (four collections and a book of lectures, on subjects including Darwinism and the Puritans as well as her own childhood) reflect a deep knowledge and love of Christianity. <b>Robinson, who has taught Bible classes and preached at her church in Iowa City, Iowa, is a learned lay theologian of the Calvinist variety.</b> In many of her essays and particularly in Gilead, she makes us aware of a John Calvin who does not at all conform to his reputation as a dour ascetic.<br /><br />This is the stuff of sermons—the kind I’d willingly sit through. But Robinson is also up to something that should interest her secular readers. She’s working out a poetics. In her deft hands, Genesis becomes a precursor to the novel—the domestic novel, as it happens, which is the kind she writes. Perhaps I’m making her sound self-glorifying. She’s not. She makes her case.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Robinson’s main claim is that Genesis invented a kind of realism—this-worldly, nonmythological—remarkably akin to our understanding of the term. This is outrageous, impossible to defend—if you’re a literary historian. But she’s not doing history. <b>She’s writing an essay about biblical style and its implications. She wants us to see how radical scripture is compared with its sources.</b><br /><br />For one thing, it’s human-centered. The Babylonian epics that the Bible recasts—the Enuma Elish, the Epic of Gilgamesh—tell the origin myths of a passel of quarrelsome gods. The Enuma Elish’s gods created people so that they would serve their Creators—build their temples, grow their food. “There is nothing exalted in this, no thought of enchanting these nameless drudges with the beauty of the world,” Robinson writes. In Genesis, by contrast, humankind is made in God’s image; all the sublimity of biblical Creation seems to be meant for its benefit. <b>We move from gods indifferent to our well-being to a God obsessively focused on us.</b><br /><br />Why that happens is not immediately clear. The protagonists of Genesis are unlikely candidates for God’s solicitude. <b>One innovation of the Western novel is to shift the emphasis from great men and women to ordinary people in ordinary circumstances.</b> But the biblical author is also interested in unexceptional folk. The founding fathers and mothers of Israel aren’t kings or warriors or, like Moses, a former prince who rescues an enslaved nation. The patriarchs raise sheep. Indeed, God seems to pick his covenantal partner, Abraham, at random. Why bind himself to a son of idolaters “drifting through the countryside, looking for grazing for his herds,” in Robinson’s words? Why not the next guy?<br /><br />Apologists wave away that theological conundrum—the apparent contingency of election—by claiming that Abraham is unusually righteous, Kierkegaard’s exemplary “knight of faith.” But if Abraham is indeed thoroughly good, he’s the exception. Every other major character in Genesis has an unsavory side. God made a covenant with Noah, too, for instance, and although he is chosen to survive the flood because he is a righteous man, he isn’t afterward. He gets dead drunk, and his son Ham sees him naked in his tent. Ham tells his brothers; they enter the tent backwards, averting their eyes, and cover him with a blanket. Noah wakes up, feels humiliated, blames Ham, and lays a curse—not on Ham but on Ham’s son Canaan, who is condemned to be a slave to Ham’s brothers. <br /><br /><b>The Bible offers no excuse for Noah’s cruelty, or for many other misdeeds committed by its chosen people.</b>“There is nothing for which the Hebrew writers are more remarkable than their willingness to record and to ponder the most painful passages in their history,” Robinson writes.<br /><br />That history, with its providential arc, works itself out through family dramas of this kind, more than it does through cosmic events like the flood. At first, both share the stage: The glorious tale of Creation segues to Adam and Eve nervously fobbing off responsibility for eating the apple. Their son Cain commits fratricide, and his descendants bequeath lyres, pipes, and metallurgy to humankind. <b>The genealogies culminate in Abraham, the first patriarch, whose household is made turbulent by rivalry among wives and among siblings.<br /></b><br />Then the tone grows hushed. Everything in the background fades, leaving only God, Abraham, Sarah, their household, and their occasional journeys. “As soon as the terms are set for our existence on earth,” Robinson writes, “the gaze of the text falls on one small family, people who move through the world of need and sufficiency, birth and death, more or less as we all do.” Of course, unlike us, they speak with God, but that, Robinson adds, in a sneaky homiletic twist, is “a difference less absolute than we might expect.”<i><b> Robinson thus redefines realism to encompass the encounter with the divine. Furthermore, if she can bring us to acknowledge that biblical characters are realistic, that they portray us, then we should probably admit that we may, like them, be God’s interlocutors, whether we know it or not.</b><br /></i><br /><b>The genius of Reading Genesis lies in its collapse of the space between the holy and the mundane, the metaphysical and the physical. God resides in commonplace things; his sublime purposes course through the small-bore tragedies of unremarkable people, to be revealed in the fullness of time.</b> God is himself and the world is itself—we are not speaking of pantheism here—but they are also one. This is a very Christian mystery that Robinson’s ushering us into, and the proper response is awe at the hallowed world she shows us, at the loveliness—and shrewdness—of the idea of divine indwelling. She does a lot with it. For one thing,<b> it allows her to dismiss scientific skepticism of religion as not only reductive but unimaginative. How can “sacredness in existence” be disproved? Sanctity is immanent, not quantifiable.<br /></b><br />Above all, Robinson’s God-infused theory of reality is also a theology of realistic fiction — of her brand of realistic fiction, in which the physical may suddenly be revealed as numinous and the spirit inheres in the flesh. I want to be clear: at no point in this book does Robinson talk about herself, her books, or the novel as a form. That’s not the sort of thing she’d do. This is me reading her reading. I see Robinson in her depiction of the biblical author, who in turn sometimes seems to merge with God. <b>What she has in common with both the writer or writers of the Bible and God, as she depicts them, is a deep tenderness toward the subjects of their concern. </b>“The remarkable realism of the Bible,” she writes, “the voices it captures, the characterization it achieves, are products of an interest in the human that has no parallel in ancient literature.” Nor, I would add, in a great deal of modern literature. This boundless and merciful interest in the human is what distinguishes her. <br /><br />Two characters seem to inspire the most pity and love in Robinson: the patriarch Jacob and her own creation, Jack Boughton. Both sin greatly and suffer greatly. As a young man, Jacob tricks his older brother, Esau, into selling him his birthright (the right to lead the family, and a double portion of the estate), and then straight-up cheats Esau out of their father’s blessing. <b>A lifetime of exile and intermittent misfortune follows. Jacob matures into a more thoughtful, mostly penitent man, but his punishment does not end there. Ten of his 12 sons turn out to be worse than he ever was. At one point, they collude in slaughtering the men of a village and carrying off its women. </b>Jacob commits the offense of favoring one son, Joseph, over the others, and in retribution, they throw the boy into a pit, from which he is kidnapped and sold into slavery in Egypt. The brothers present their father with Joseph’s bloodied coat, the implication being that he’d been killed by a wild beast. Jacob never recovers from the blow.<br /><br />Jack, like Jacob, is born into a family rich in blessings. His father is a minister who truly tries to do right by him, and Jack’s seven siblings—good, kind people—love and worry about him. Nonetheless, as a child and young man, he commits senseless crimes—mostly petty thefts—seemingly “for the sheer meanness of it,” the Reverend John Ames says in Gilead. Then Jack impregnates a very young girl, which tests his all-forgiving father to his limits, and he leaves town, staying away for 20 years. In Jack, we learn of his bitter life as a vagrant, and in Home, he tries to go home, with mixed success. His presence makes his father anxious, and Jack can’t bear the feeling that everyone mistrusts him. <b>Insofar as forgiveness is on offer, he seems unable to accept it. At one point in Gilead, he asks his father and Ames, “Are there people who are simply born evil, live evil lives, and then go to hell?”</b><br /><br /><b>The Bible, Robinson declares in the first line of Reading Genesis, is a theodicy, a meditation on the problem of evil.</b> So are the stories of Jacob and Jack. Why do they do what they do? Were they predestined to hurt others? We know how Jacob’s story ends: Joseph becomes the most powerful man in Egypt after Pharaoh and is in a position to rescue his family from starvation. This is why you did what you did, Joseph tells his brothers: God sent me ahead of you to ensure your survival.<br /><br />Robinson, however, is more interested in what happens afterward, when Joseph brings Jacob to meet Pharaoh. <b>His father is curiously querulous. “The great man asks him,” she writes, “How old art thou? Jacob answers that he will not live as long as his fathers did.” Robinson comments:</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>He has grown very old in fewer years, enduring a life of poverty and sorrow. He is the third patriarch, the eponymous ancestor of the nation Israel, which at that time will not exist for centuries. He has received the great promises of the covenant, including possession of the land he will only return to as an embalmed corpse.</b><br /><br />This is the patriarch at his most self-pitying. God’s pact is with Jacob’s children’s children more than it is with him; it doesn’t compensate for his sorrows. Jacob cannot reconcile the double perspective that may be the Bible’s greatest literary achievement: the view from heaven, “with an eye toward unrealized history,” as Robinson puts it, and the view from “a nearer proximity” of the human agent of that history. He has been told the future, but that hasn’t blunted his grief, hasn’t reached “the level of ‘innermost’ feeling.”<br /><br />Jack, too, struggles with the meaning of his affliction, less certain of vindication than Jacob. In Home, he waits for a letter from his estranged wife, whom we sense he sees as his salvation. Robinson torques the suspense: Jack has earned our sympathy—more, to be honest, than Jacob has—and on Jack’s behalf we want answers to his questions. Will the evils he has inflicted, and his terrible loneliness, be shown to have a larger purpose? Will the ways of God be known to men—to this poor man?<br /><br />We get answers, up to a point. It’s not clear that he does. Maybe he has missed his chance; maybe he’ll get another one. Not knowing breaks the heart, but knowing would be cheating. Besides, as Jacob comes to show, <b>knowing doesn’t necessarily help. “The Lord stands back,” Robinson writes in Reading Genesis ; his “divine tact” lets his characters achieve their “full pathos and dignity.” Robinson does the same. The Bible was not given to man to simplify complexity, she says, but to speak of it with “a respect and restraint that resists conclusion.” </b>Therein lies its beauty, and that of the literature it has inspired. The realism of Genesis, as she says, is “by itself a sort of miracle.” ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/03/marilynne-robinson-reading-genesis-book/677179/">https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/03/marilynne-robinson-reading-genesis-book/677179/<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>BART EHRMAN ON HEAVEN AND HELL<br /></b><br />Terry Gross: <br />When we originally scheduled the interview, we didn't realize how weirdly timely it would be. Let's face it — the pandemic has made death a presence on a scale most of us aren't used to. Your beliefs about what happens after death or if anything happens might shape how you're dealing with your fears and anxieties. In the new book, "Heaven And Hell: A History Of The Afterlife," my guest Bart Ehrman writes about where the ideas of heaven and hell came from. He examines the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, as well as writings from the Greek and Roman era.<br /><br />Ehrman is a distinguished professor of religious studies at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and is one of America's most widely read scholars of early Christianity and the New Testament. His books such as "Misquoting Jesus" and "How Jesus Became God" challenge a lot of beliefs and common wisdom. <b>As for Ehrman's beliefs, as a child, he was an altar boy in the Episcopal Church. At age 15, he became a born-again fundamentalist evangelical Christian. After attending the Moody Bible Institute, he studied at Princeton Theological Seminary, which introduced him to texts and interpretations that led him to a more liberal form of Christianity. Eventually, he left the faith altogether.</b><br /><br />GROSS: <b>Is it fair to say you're an atheist now?<br /></b><br />EHRMAN: That is fair to say (laughter). <b>I actually consider myself both an atheist and an agnostic because I — you know, I don't really know if there's a superior being in the universe, but I don't believe there is. And so</b> <b>in terms of what I know, I'm an agnostic. But in terms of what I believe, I'm an atheist.<br /></b><br />GROSS: In a time like this, do you wish you could still believe in a heaven that offers eternal life, in a place where you would be united with loved ones?<br /><br />EHRMAN: Yeah, that would absolutely be good. <b>It's not that I wish I believed it; I wish that it were true. </b>And as I say in my book, as we'll probably get to, it may be true that we will live after we die. But if we do, it'll be something pleasant like that. It's not going to be something awful. So I — you know, <b>it's not that I wish I believed it so much as I wish that it were true.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">GROSS: So what do you believe about death now, about what happens after you die?<br /><br />EHRMAN: Well, I — you know, I've read about death and thought about death and the afterlife for many, many years now and what — you know, what philosophers say and theologians say and biblical scholars say and, you know, what people generally say. And I still think that Socrates is the one who probably put it best. When he was on trial, on capital charges so it was a death sentence awaiting him — he was talking with his companions about what death would be, and his view is that it's one of two things.<br /><br />Either we live on and we see those we knew before and those we didn't know before, and we spend all of our time being with them, which for him was absolute paradise because Socrates liked nothing better than conversing with people, and so now he could converse with Homer and with all the greats of the Greek past. So that would be great. And if it's not that, he said it would be like a deep sleep. Everybody loves a deep, dreamless sleep. Nobody frets about it or gets upset by having it. And so that's the alternative. And so<b> it's either a deep sleep, or it's a good outcome, and either way it's going to be fine. </b>And that's exactly what I think.<br /><br />GROSS: One of the theses of your book about the history of heaven and how is that <b>views of heaven and hell don't go back to the earliest stages of Christianity, and they're not in the Old Testament or in Jesus' teachings.</b> They're not?<br /><br />EHRMAN: (Laughter) I know, exactly. This is the big surprise of the book, and it's the one thing people probably wouldn't expect because, you know, when I was growing up, I just assumed. This is the view of Christianity. So this must be what Jesus taught. This is what the Old Testament taught. And in fact, it's not right.<b> </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Our view that you die and your soul goes to heaven or hell is not found anywhere in the Old Testament, and it's not what Jesus preached</b>.</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> I have to show that in my book, and I lay it out and explain why it's absolutely not the case that Jesus believed you died and your soul went to heaven or hell. Jesus had a completely different understanding that people today don't have.<br /><br />GROSS: Are there things in the Hebrew Bible that still support the idea of heaven and hell as people came to understand it, things that you can extract from the Old Testament that might not literally mention heaven and hell but still support the vision that emerged of it?<br /><br />EHRMAN: I think one of the hardest things for people to get their minds around is that <b>ancient Israelites and then Jews and then Jesus himself and his followers have a very different understanding of what the relationship between what we call body and soul.</b> Our view is that we — you've got two things going on in the human parts. So you have your body, your physical being, and you have your soul, this invisible part of you that lives on after death, that you can separate the two and they can exist — the soul can exist outside of the body. That is not a view that was held by ancient Israelites and then Jews, and it's not even taught in the Old Testament.<br /><br /><b>In the Old Testament, what we would call the soul is really more like what we would call the breath.</b> When God creates Adam, he creates him out of earth, and then he breathes life into him. <b>The life is in the breath. When the breath leaves the body, the body no longer lives, but the breath doesn't exist.</b> We agree with this. I mean, when you die, you stop breathing. Your breath doesn't go anywhere. And that was the ancient understanding, <b>the ancient Hebrew understanding of the soul, is that it didn't go anywhere because it was simply the thing that made the body alive.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And so <b>in the Old Testament, there's no idea that your soul goes one place or another because the soul doesn't exist apart from the body. Existence is entirely bodily. And that was the view that Jesus then picked up.</b><br /><br />GROSS: Are there specific passages in the Hebrew Bible that support the notion of an afterlife?</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">EHRMAN: Yeah, no, it's a good question. And <b>people generally point to these passages in the Book of Psalms that talk about Sheol, or Sheol. It's a word that gets mistranslated into English. Sometimes Sheol is translated by the word hell, and it absolutely is not what people think of as hell. Sometimes Sheol is talked about by people today as a place that's kind of like the Greek Hades, a place where everybody goes after they die, and they aren't really physical beings down there; they're just kind of like souls, and they exist forever there, and there's nothing to do, and they do — they're all the same. And so Sheol is sometimes portrayed like that. The Bible does talk about this place Sheol, especially in poetry, especially in Psalms. And it's probably not a place that people go to, per se.</b><br /><br />If you actually look at what the Psalms say about Sheol, they always equate it to the grave or to the pit. And so it appears that the ancient Israelites simply thought that when you died, your body got buried someplace. It got put in a grave, or it got put in a pit, and that's what they called Sheol, is the place that your remains are. But it's not a place where you continue to exist afterwards.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Just about the only place in the Hebrew Bible where you get an instance of somebody who has died who seems still to be alive afterwards is in this very strange and interesting passage in the book of 1 Samuel, where the king, Saul, is desperate for some advice from somebody who knows, and so he calls </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> he has a necromancer, a woman, this woman of Endor, who calls up his former adviser Samuel from the grave. And she holds a kind of seance. <b>And Samuel comes up and is really upset that she's called him up from the grave, and he gets upset with Saul for doing this, and he predicts that Saul is going to die the next day in battle, which he does.</b><br /><br />And so people often point to that as an instance that's </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> well, so people are alive after they're dead. And right, it kind of seems like that when you read it </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> when you just kind of simply read it. But if you actually read it carefully, it doesn't say that. What it says is that Samuel came up, but it doesn't say where he was, and it doesn't say if he was living at the time. It looks like what </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> <b>before he was raised up</b>, <b>it looks like he was simply dead, and he was brought back to life temporarily, and he didn't appreciate that (laughter), and so he was upset.</b><br /><br />So you write that starting in the sixth century, Hebrew prophets began to proclaim, you know, that the nation had been destroyed and would be restored back to life by God. It would be the resurrection of the nation. But then <b>toward the end of the Hebrew Bible era, some Jewish thinkers came to believe that the future resurrection would apply not just to the nation but to individuals. So how does that shift happen?</b><br /><br />EHRMAN: Right. So this is a really important shift for understanding both the history of later Judaism and the history of later Christianity and the historical Jesus. <b>About 200 before Jesus was born, there was a shift in thinking in ancient Israel that became </b></span><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span></b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b> it became a form of ideology, a kind of religious thought that scholars today call apocalypticism</b>. It has to do with the apocalypse, the revelation of God. These people began to think that the reason there is suffering in the world is not what the prophets had said, that it </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> because people sin and God is punishing them; it's because there are forces of evil in the world that are aligned against God and his people who are creating suffering. And so you get these demonic forces in the world that are creating misery for everyone.<br /><br />But they — <b>these apocalyptic thinkers came to think that God was soon going to destroy these forces of evil and get rid of them altogether, and the world would again return to a utopia. It'd be like paradise. It'd be like the Garden of Eden once more.</b> The people who thought that maintained that this Garden of Eden would come not only to people who happened to be alive when it arrived; it was going to come to everybody. <b>People who had been on the side of God throughout history would be personally raised from the dead and individually would be brought into this new era, this new kingdom that God would rule here on Earth.</b><br /><br />GROSS: So this was all dependent on, like, the Messiah coming on the end of days, which some Jewish prophets predicted would be soon. <b>When Jesus was alive, he thought the end of days would be soon. And of course, it kept not happening.<br /></b><br />EHRMAN: Yeah.<br /><br />GROSS: And you say that <b>for the ancient Jews, the fact that the Messiah didn't come, that was a turning point in beliefs about what happens after death, too. There started to be a belief that reward and punishment would be right after death, as opposed to after the Messiah comes.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">EHRMAN: Yeah. That became a view somewhat in Judaism, and it became a very pronounced view in Christianity. The </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> after Jesus. <b>Jesus himself held to the apocalyptic view </b>that I laid out. He taught </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b> his main teaching is that the kingdom of God is coming.</b> People today, when they read the phrase kingdom of God, they think he's talking about heaven, the place that your soul goes to when you die. But Jesus isn't talking about heaven because he doesn't believe — he's a Jew — he doesn't believe in the separation of soul and body.<br /><br />He doesn't think the soul is going to live on in heaven. <b>He thinks that there's going to be a resurrection of the dead at the end of time. God will destroy the forces of evil. He will raise the dead. And those who have been on God's side, especially those who follow Jesus' teachings, will enter the new kingdom here on Earth. They'll be physical. They'll be in bodies. And they will live here on Earth, and this is where the paradise will be</b>. And so Jesus taught that the kingdom of God, this new physical place, was coming soon, and those who did not get into the kingdom were going to be annihilated.<br /><br />What ends up happening is that, over time, this expectation that the kingdom was coming soon began to be questioned because it was supposed to come soon and it didn't come soon, and it's still not coming, and when is it going to come? And people started thinking, well, you know, surely I'm going to get rewarded, you know, not in some kingdom that's going to come in a few thousand years, but I'm going to get rewarded by God right away. And <b>so they ended up shifting the thinking away from the idea that there'd be a kingdom here on Earth that was soon to come to thinking that the kingdom, in fact, is up with God above in heaven. </b>And so they started thinking that it comes at death, and people started assuming then that, in fact, your soul would live on.<br /><br />It's not an accident that that came into Christianity after the majority of people coming into the Christian church were raised in Greek circles rather than in Jewish circles because in Jewish circles, there is no separation of the soul and the body. <b>The soul didn't exist separately. But in Greek circles, going way back to Plato and before him, that was absolutely the belief. </b><i><b>The soul was immortal and would live forever in Greek thinking. And so these people who converted to Christianity were principally Greek thinkers, they thought there was a soul that live forever. They developed the idea, then, that the soul lived forever with God when it's rewarded.</b></i><br /><br />GROSS: So you were saying there really isn't an explicit description of heaven and hell in the Hebrew Bible or even in the New Testament, but that Paul is important in understanding the history of heaven and hell. Tell us about what Paul wrote.<br /><br />EHRMAN: Paul is very important for understanding the history of heaven and hell, as he's important for understanding most things about early Christian thinking. Paul was not a follower of Jesus during his lifetime, during Jesus' lifetime. He wasn't one of the disciples. He converted several years after Jesus' death. He </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> <b>Paul was Jewish. He was raised Jewish. He wasn't raised in Israel; he was from outside of Israel. He was a Greek-speaking Jew. But he was also, like Jesus, an apocalypticist who thought that at the end of the age, there would be a resurrection of the dead.<br /></b><br />When he became convinced that Jesus was raised from the dead, he thought that the resurrection had started. And so he talked about living in the last days because he assumed that everybody else now was going to be raised to follow suit. And so Paul thought he would be alive when the end came. For Paul, Jesus was going to come back from heaven and bring in God's kingdom here on Earth, and people would be raised from the dead for glorious eternity. Paul, in his earliest letters, affirms that view of <b>the imminent resurrection. It's going to come very soon. And he fully expected to be alive when it happened.<br /></b><br />But then time dragged on, and a couple of decades passed, and it didn't arrive, and Paul started realizing that, in fact, he might die before it happens. And so in some of his later letters, he ponders the possibility of death, and he wonders, well, what happens to me, then? If I'm brought into the presence of Christ at the resurrection, and, you know, there's a gap between the time I die and </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> what happens to me during that gap? And he started thinking that, surely, he's going to be in Christ's presence during that time.<br /><br />And <b>so he came up with the idea that he would have a temporary residence up with Christ in God's realm, in heaven, until the end came.</b> And so this is what the later Paul has to say, and this is the beginning of the Christian idea of heaven and hell, that you can exist </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> even though your physical remains are dead, you can exist in the presence of God in heaven. And once Paul started saying that, <b>his followers really latched onto it because most of Paul's converts were from Greek circles. They were gentiles. They weren't Jews.</b> <b>And they had been raised with the idea that your soul lives on after death</b>, and now they had a Christian model to put it on. They could say that, yes, <b>your soul lives on, and so when you die, your soul will go up to God with heaven. And as time went on, that became the emphasis rather than the idea of the resurrection with the dead.</b><br /><br />GROSS: How does hell come into it?<br /><br />EHRMAN: Well, so since these people believed that the soul was immortal, that you can kill the body but you can't kill the soul, they thought, well, OK, so our soul will go to heaven to be with God, but then they realized, well, what about the people who are not on the side of God? Well, if we're being rewarded, they're going to be punished. And that's how you start getting the development of the idea of hell, that it's a place where souls go to be punished in — as the opposite of the people who go to heaven to be rewarded. <br /><br />And in thinking this, as it turns out, the Christians are simply picking up on views that had been around among the Greeks since way back in the time of Plato. Plato also has ideas about souls living on, either to be rewarded or punished forever. <b>And Christians now, who were mainly coming from Greek contexts, latched onto that idea with a Christian way of putting it.<br /></b><br />GROSS: You’ve also studied the Gnostic Gospels, which were the recently discovered gospels that never became part of the canon. And these are more mystical texts. And <b>the most famous of the Gnostic Gospels is Thomas. What was his vision of what happens after death?<br /></b><br />EHRMAN: The various groups of Christians that people sometimes label gnostic would cover a wide range of views. <b>There are lots of different religions that people have called gnostic. But one thing that most of them have in common is the idea that the body is not what matters. The body is not your friend, and God did not create the body. The body is a cosmic disaster.</b> It's why we experience so much pain and suffering because we live in these material shells. And in most gnostic religions, the idea is to get out of the shell, to escape the shell. So they have very much a differentiation between soul and body. It comes — <b>Gnosticism, in some ways, comes out of Greek thinking.</b> <b>So for them, there's no resurrection of the dead.</b><br /><br /><b>Gnostics disagreed with the Jewish idea that at the end of time, God would raise the dead physically. For Gnostics, the idea of being raised in your body was repulsive</b>. You mean I've got to live in this thing forever? No. <b>Real life is in the soul.</b> And so they denied the idea of the resurrection of the body. And what is interesting is Gnostics then claimed that Jesus also denied it. And so <b>when you read the Gnostic Gospels, you find Jesus denouncing the idea that there's a resurrection of the body or that life will be lived eternally in the body; it's strictly a matter of the soul.</b><br /><br />And the other interesting thing is that what the Gnostics did, by reading their ideas into Jesus, is also what the Orthodox Christians did, by putting words in Jesus' lips that supported their ideas of heaven and hell. And so <b>in our various Gospels, you have Jesus saying all sorts of things that are contradictory because different people are putting their own ideas onto his lips.<br /></b><br />GROSS: So your new book is about the history of heaven and hell. Your forthcoming book that you're working on now is going to be called "Expecting Armageddon." So how does the Book of Revelation contribute to the vision of hell?<br /><br />EHRMAN: Well, yeah. You know, a lot of people read Revelation as indicating that people who are opposed to God </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> sinners will be cast into the lake of fire forever, and they will be — yeah, they'll be floating in fire for eternity. And they get that from several passages in the Book of Revelation. I have to deal with this in my book, where <b>I try to show that, in fact, the Book of Revelation does not describe eternal torment for sinners in the lake of fire. </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>There are several beings that go into the lake of fire, but they are not human beings; they are the antichrist, the beast and the devil, and they are supernatural forces that are tormented forever.<br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />The people, in the Book of Revelation, human beings who aren't on the side of God, are actually destroyed. They are wiped out. This is the view that is fairly consistent throughout the New Testament, starting with Jesus. Jesus believed that people would be destroyed when </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> at the end of time, they'd be annihilated. So their punishment is they would not get the kingdom of God. That also is the view of Paul, that people would be destroyed if — when Jesus returns. <b>It's not that they're going to live on forever. And it's the view of Revelation. People do not live forever. If they aren't brought into the new Jerusalem, the city of God that descends from heaven, they will be destroyed.<br /></b><br />GROSS: So <b>a lot of the imagery of hell comes from the Book of Revelation.</b> It's a very explicit, kind of gruesome book, and I wonder if you've thought about why it's so graphic.<br /><br />EHRMAN: Yeah, I've thought a lot about it. As you said, this is going to be what my next book is on, is about how people have misinterpreted Revelation as a prediction of about what's going to happen in our future. And the graphic imagery in the book has really contributed to all of these interpretations of Revelation. When earlier I was saying that <b>Jesus was an apocalypticist who thought that the world was going to come to an end, that God was going to destroy the forces of evil to bring in a good kingdom, that is precisely what the author of the Book of Revelation thinks, that — and the book is a description of how it's going to happen.</b><br /><br />The book is all about the terrible destruction that is going to take place on Earth when God destroys everything that is opposed to him, before bringing in a good kingdom. And so all of the imagery of death and destruction and disease and war in the Book of Revelation is used to show what terrible measures God has to take in order to destroy the forces of evil that are completely — have completely infiltrated the human world, before he brings in a new world. This, though, <b>is not a book that describes what's going to happen to individuals when they die and go to heaven or hell; it's a description of the final judgment of God that somehow is going to be coming to Earth.</b><br /><br />GROSS: You've talked about how belief in the end times led in a circuitous way to belief in heaven and hell. I've heard a lot of joking lately about how it's the end times. You know, California was on fire. We have climate change and extreme weather and earthquakes and volcanoes. And people are afraid that the planet itself is dying. We have, you know, plastics in the ocean, ice caps that are melting. And now we have the pandemic. I'm wondering if you're hearing that kind of thing, too.<br /><br />EHRMAN: Yes. Yeah, of course. I mean, you know, a lot of people aren't joking. They take it very seriously. And it's </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> I want to say a couple of things about that. First is <b>every generation from the time of Jesus till today has had Christians who insisted that the prophecies were coming true in their own day. There have always been people who actually picked a time when it's going to happen. And there are two things that you can say about every one of these people over history who've picked a time. One is they based their predictions on the Book of Revelation. And secondly, every one of them has been incontrovertibly wrong </b>(laughter). So that should give one pause. The things that are happening now are absolutely dreadful as, of course, they were in 1916 to </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> 1914 to 1918 and as they have been at other times in history.<br /><br />The book that I'm writing that I'm now calling "Expecting Armageddon" is all about that. It's about<b> how people have misused the Book of Revelation to talk about how the end is coming and how it always seems like it's going to be coming in our own time. And everybody thinks this is as bad as it can be.</b> And, you know, this time we may have it right. This kind of thinking, though, really came to prominence at the end of the 19th and into the 20th century and hit big prominence in 1945, when we actually had the means of destroying ourselves off the planet, which we still have, by the way. <b>People aren't talking about nuclear weapons anymore, but they probably should be because that's another way this whole thing might end.</b><br /><br /><b>But now the talk is more about climate change</b>, as it should be. We absolutely may do it to ourselves this time, but it won't be a prediction — a fulfillment of predictions of a prophecy; it'll be because of human stupidity and refusal to act in the face of crisis.<br /><br />GROSS: So now we're faced with a pandemic. You could, I suppose, use the word plague, and the word, you know, plague is in the Hebrew Bible. What were the explanations in the Hebrew Bible for plagues?<br /><br />EHRMAN: Yeah. The old testament has a fairly uniform and rather stark explanation for why there are plagues or epidemics or pandemics. In virtually every case, we're told that it's because God is punishing people. People have gone against his will, and so he is — so he's bringing this disaster of epidemic upon them. You get that in the story of Moses in the Book of Exodus. You get it everywhere in the writings of the prophets in Amos and Isaiah, etc. <b>This was the old view that the reason God's people suffer is because they've done something wrong and he wants them to repent.</b><br /><br />Eventually, Jewish thinkers began to reason that it didn't make much sense because there were times when they would be doing what God told them to do, or at least they'd be doing their level best to do what God told them to do, and they'd still be suffering these plagues. And that's when they developed the idea that, in fact, it's the forces of evil causing these disasters. These continue to be two of the common explanations today.<br /><br /><b>There are people today who are saying that the reason of the pandemic is because, you know, one sin or another. It's because of, you know, those LGBTQ folk, you know, who are allowing promiscuous activity. God is punishing us. Or it's because of, you know, one social ill or another that God is punishing</b>. And you have that group. And then you have group who saying that it's the devil doing it, that in fact, it's the forces of evil. Satan is working his way, and that it's because we're at the end of time, and he has to be released here at the end of time before God will intervene. You get both of those explanations. Most people probably don't subscribe to either one. Most people just say, well, look — you know, it's a pandemic, and we better pay attention to our scientists, which is, obviously, the more socially satisfying answer to the question.<br /><br />GROSS: When you were 15 and became a fundamentalist evangelical Christian, what would you have believed about the pandemic?<br /><br />EHRMAN: That's a really good question. I probably would have subscribed </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> I would have subscribed to either the view that God was upset and we needed to repent so that he would relent, or that the devil — it was the devil doing it, and we needed to pray to God for mercy and for him to intervene on our behalf.<br /><br />GROSS: And compare that to now.<br /><br />EHRMAN: Well, I think those views </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> I mean, I<b> respect believers. I do not try to convert anybody. I don't try to trash anybody's views. I try to respect everybody's views. </b>I think that sometimes those very highly religious views can be socially extremely dangerous because if you think that the cause is supernatural, then you don't have much motivation to find a natural solution. It is quite dangerous to refuse the findings of science because of your personal beliefs. And we all just hope that it doesn't lead to even further disaster.<br /><br />GROSS: I'm wondering </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> since you've changed from being a fundamentalist when you were in your teens and early 20s to now being an agnostic atheist, how have you dealt with the deaths or impending deaths over the years of loved ones who do believe and who — you know, who are Christians, who are Christian believers and do believe in heaven and hell? Like, I'm sure you don't want to talk them out of their beliefs. But it's not what you believe.<br /><br />EHRMAN: Yeah.<br /><br />GROSS: So <i><b>how do you mediate between your beliefs and their beliefs in how you talk to them about what will happen and how you talk to yourself?</b><br /></i><br />EHRMAN:<b> When I talk with somebody, especially somebody who's close to me who is a firm believer in heaven and hell, I have no reason to disabuse them of that, unless they're using that belief to hurt somebody or to advocate social policies that are harmful to people.</b> My dear elderly mother is a very good Christian, and she believes that she will die and she will go to heaven and she will see her husband. And so I would be crazy to say, no, Mom, actually, yeah, you're not going to see him (laughter). Of course, I'm not going to — I mean, there's no reason to shatter somebody's beliefs, especially if they simply are providing them with hope.<br /><br />My view is that <b>we all believe very strange things, and most of the time we don't realize how strange they are.</b> And so I don't — it's not that I think that I believe only rational things and everybody else is irrational. I have a different set of beliefs. But my firmest belief is that whatever we believe, it should not do harm in the world; it should do good in the world. And of course, <b>belief in heaven and hell has done a lot of good; it's also done a lot of harm. It has terrified people.</b> There are people who are terrified of dying because they're afraid — they are literally afraid that they will be tormented for trillions of years, just as the beginning. And I think that's a harmful belief.<br /><br />And so I will never try to talk somebody out of a belief in heaven, but I certainly will try to talk people out of a belief in hell because it's simply wrong, and it's harmful. It does psychological damage. And <b>when people raise their children on this stuff, it can scar them for life. And so I think that hell is something we need to fight against; heaven, I'm all for.</b><br /><br />GROSS: <b>Do you feel that believing in hell scarred you?<br /></b><br />EHRMAN: I do in some ways. I don't think I'm scarred much longer, but I worked really, really hard at it. I was terrified of going to hell. And I think that, you know, psychologically, that was very bad. <b>It made me a rather obnoxious fundamentalist Christian because I thought that everybody else was going to go to hell, and so I had to go out of my way to convert them all (laughter). So I wasn't always a pleasant person to be around because I was right and they were wrong, and since they were wrong, they were going to hell.<br /></b><br />But the main thing is that I think that, in fact, <b>it imposes emotional damage</b>. When people need to find life pleasant and hopeful and they need to be helpful to other people, they need to enjoy life, <b>if all you're looking forward to is what's going to happen after you die, you can't really fully enjoy life now because this is just a dress rehearsal</b>. And so I don't try to talk people out of their view of heaven, but I think, actually, it's better off, you know, not living for what's going to happen after you die; it's better off living for what you can do now.<br /><br />GROSS: You know, you write in your book that i<b>t's hard for you to conceive of God as being a sadist who would torture people for eternity in hell.</b><br /><br />EHRMAN: Right. So the bottom line of the book is that the way you kind of trace the history of heaven and hell is that when people thought that everybody dies and it's the same for everybody forever, they thought, well, that's not fair. Surely, if there are gods in the world or God in the world, there has to be justice. <b>So suffering now must be rewarded later, and wicked behavior now must be punished later. And so they came up with the idea of an afterlife with rewards and punishments.</b><br /><br />But eventually, in Christianity, the idea was that since the soul is eternal, it's either rewarded eternally or it's punished eternally. But then people started thinking, well, wait — is that fair? So, OK, suppose I'm just a regular old sinner, and I die when I'm 40, and so maybe I had about 25, maybe even 30 years of not being the most perfect person on Earth. I'm going to be tortured for 30 trillion years for those 30 years? And those 30 trillion years is just the beginning? Is there really a God who's going to allow that, let alone cause it? I mean, I just —<br />no (laughter).</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And so I think — I cannot believe that you can actually say that God is just and merciful and loving </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> <b>even if he believes in judgment, he is not going to torture you for 30 trillion years and then keep going. It just isn't going to happen.<br /></b><br />GROSS: I'm wondering what you think about when you think about how the number of people who are contracting COVID 19 and how the number of people who are dying keeps growing as we get closer to Passover and Easter, which are very holy times in Judaism and Christianity.<br /><br />EHRMAN: I think that — I'll speak from the Christian tradition, which I still cherish, and even though I am no longer a Christian, there are aspects of Christianity that I resonate with because they're so deeply ingrained in me. The Easter story is a story of hope that — in the Easter story, death is not the final word, that there's something that comes after death. There is hope in moments of complete despair. There can be life after death.<br /><br />I don't take that literally anymore because I don't believe there is. I'm open to it, and I hope there is something after death, and if it is, it'll be good. But <b>I personally think, probably, this life is all there is. But I take the Easter story as a metaphor that, even in the darkest hours when there looks to be no hope and it looks like it's simply the end of all things, there actually is a glimmer of hope and that something good can come out of something very bad. And so I really believe that, and I'll probably always believe it.</b><br /><br />GROSS: Thank you. Bart Ehrman's new book is called "Heaven And Hell: The History Of The Afterlife." And if you're thinking, but what about this passage in the Old Testament or what about that passage in the New Testament, let me just say we only had time to touch on a few of the points in Bart Ehrman's book, so if you want to know more about what he has to say about the history of the afterlife, I refer you to his book.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/824479587/heaven-and-hell-are-not-what-jesus-preached-religion-scholar-says">https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/824479587/heaven-and-hell-are-not-what-jesus-preached-religion-scholar-says<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>BENEFITS OF GOAT MILK</b><br /><br /><b>Goat milk is A2 milk</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Most milk is A1, some milk is A2. What is the difference? It’s all about the proteins. The casein protein in milk consists largely of β-casein. There are two versions of this: A1 β-casein and A2 β-casein. This is also where 'A1 milk' and 'A2 milk' come from. Research shows that A2 β-casein is a lot easier to digest than A1 β-casein. Cow's milk is almost always a combination of A1 and A2 milk. Goat milk, on the other hand, is always A2 milk. Minimally processed<br />Goat milk is real diary. It takes little to make healthy, long-lasting products. Take, for example, milk powder. The milk is spray-dried so you can store it longer and take it with you wherever you go. There is simply nothing more to it. No artificial additives.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">No need to improve on what's already good. Goat milk products are based on natural goat's milk. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Naturally rich in proteins</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Goat milk contains carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals and especially a lot of proteins. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Your body breaks down proteins to make your own proteins and as a source of energy.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Full of slow proteins (casein)</b><br /><br />Casein is by far the most important milk protein. Casein proteins are slowly absorbed by your body. Especially while you sleep and your body is recovering. Casein helps your muscles to regain their strength for a new day.<br /><br />Small-scale family farms<br /><br />Farms are not factories. Our goats live on small farms that are still real family businesses. The goats have as much space as possible to do… goat things.<br /><br />Goats are fun<br /><br />Goats always make you laugh. They are curious, mischievous and naughty. And they laugh a lot themselves. Just spend some time with them and try not to smile. Bet you can't do that?<br /><br /><a href="https://goatfully.com/blogs/blogs/eight-reasons-to-go-for-goat">https://goatfully.com/blogs/blogs/eight-reasons-to-go-for-goat</a><br /><br />from another source:<br /><br /><b>The composition of goat milk protein is similar to that of breast milk</b> and its casein fraction is mostly comprised of β-casein, followed by αs-casein (αs1- and αs2-casein) and κ-casein). Milk protein primarily contains two types of β-casein: A1 and A2). Interestingly, β-casein in goat milk exists mainly as the A2 type and it does not produce β-casomorphin-7 (BCM-7), generated during the process of milk digestion, which may be related with various disorders, such as gastrointestinal disturbances. It is known that <b>αs1-casein forms hard curds in the stomach, which might cause digestion problems in infants, but its concentration in goat milk is markedly lower than that in other milks.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Along with the nutritional benefits of goat milk protein, <b>goat milk has more medium-chain triglycerides and smaller fat globules than cow milk, resulting in better digestibility. These properties of goat milk can be exploited in functional foods for people with metabolic disorders as well as infants and the elderly.</b><br /><br /><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5932946/">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5932946/<br /></a><br /><b>HEALTH BENEFITS OF GOAT MILK: WEB MD<br /></b><br />The vitamins, minerals, and heart-healthy fats in goat cheese improve health in a number of ways. Copper, for example, helps produce red blood cells, which carry oxygen from the lungs to the other tissues of the body. Copper also aids in the absorption of iron and other nutrients. <br />Goat cheese also contains riboflavin, also known as vitamin B2. Riboflavin plays an important role in many bodily processes, especially the production and functioning of new cells. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Moreover, goat cheese has many other health benefits, including: <br /><br /><b>Weight Loss</b><br />The fatty acids in goat cheese are metabolized faster than cow’s cheese, which means that the body feels full faster. Researchers have found evidence that choosing goat cheese over cow helps people feel less hungry and eat less overall, which is an important factor in weight loss. <br /><br /><b>Improved Digestion</b><br />While cow’s milk has both A2 and A1 beta casein proteins, goat cheese has only A2 beta casein. The difference means that goat cheese and goat milk are easier on the digestion.<br /><br />Goat milk stands out due to its remarkable digestibility. The smaller fat globules in goat milk, in contrast to those in cow milk, form softer, smaller curds in the stomach. These smaller curds are swiftly broken down by stomach enzymes and more rapidly digested.<br /><br /><b>Gut Health</b><br />Goat cheese is full of beneficial probiotics, a healthy kind of bacteria. Probiotics colonize the intestines and compete with any unhealthy bacteria or pathogens that they find there. This can improve the effectiveness of your immune system and reduce your vulnerability to illness. <br /><br /><b>Bone Health</b><br />Goat cheese is high in calcium, an essential nutrient for your bones, teeth, and organs. A diet high in calcium can prevent the onset of osteoporosis and other bone disorders later in life.<br /><br />PROVIDES <b>SELENIUM</b><br />Goat cheese is a good source of selenium, an essential trace mineral more often found in seafood. Selenium helps your body break down DNA-damaging peroxides, which can lower your risk of developing conditions like cancer, thyroid disease, and cardiovascular disease. <br /><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaUdJMyhdWsJelVoPivgE7WpUiYgc8TjAApplqdf_vsDwVmCGLm6WdpVrpfOx1vdqgVVyAccp_gHvbhv5vv6H9kCqu-lBY99GNkpc5LDA8po_FfZPyaUGgNovjsvTCaO4ivHi2de4vqNi4svQOWov5c25RTRQ6enRZIlXH1g8679ckSpYWr1fUugDlixO2/s650/goat%20face.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="325" data-original-width="650" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaUdJMyhdWsJelVoPivgE7WpUiYgc8TjAApplqdf_vsDwVmCGLm6WdpVrpfOx1vdqgVVyAccp_gHvbhv5vv6H9kCqu-lBY99GNkpc5LDA8po_FfZPyaUGgNovjsvTCaO4ivHi2de4vqNi4svQOWov5c25RTRQ6enRZIlXH1g8679ckSpYWr1fUugDlixO2/w400-h200/goat%20face.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>SHORT AND MEDIUM CHAIN FATTY ACID AND HYDRATION BENEFITS</b></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Goat milk boasts significantly<b> higher levels of short and medium-chain fatty acids than cow milk. </b>Studies indicate these fatty acids are swiftly digested, offering rapid energy to the body. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Additionally, goat milk is packed with hydration-boosting nutrients like carbohydrates, fat, protein, vitamins, and minerals, which the body takes longer to process. This extended absorption time allows the body to retain fluids, enhancing overall hydration. <b>Goat milk also contains vital electrolytes such as sodium and potassium, crucial for efficient water absorption. </b><br /><br />GOATS ARE BETTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT<br />Beyond their delicious milk, dairy goats play a vital role in sustainable farming. They require significantly less water per gallon of milk produced than most other livestock. Moreover, they emit nearly 20 times less methane per kilogram of body weight compared to dairy cows, contributing to a greener environment. <br /><br />Raising dairy goats embodies a labor of love, far removed from industrial-sized farming. With their adaptability and eco-friendly qualities, such as resilience to heat, dairy goats could play an important role in the battle against climate change. They exemplify a sustainable and compassionate approach to farming, ensuring both the well-being of the animals and the planet. <br /><br /><br />*<br /><b>THE FIVE STAGES OF ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE<br /></b><br />This first stage is called <b>(1) preclinical Alzheimer’s disease</b>, according to the Mayo Clinic. People in this stage don’t exhibit any outward symptoms of the condition, but they are undergoing brain changes that will induce signs of Alzheimer’s down the line. Although symptoms aren’t apparent at this point, experts are working on developing innovative brain imaging technology that might be able to pick up on signs of the condition at this stage.<br /><br />After preclinical Alzheimer’s, which can last for years, a person develops what’s called (2) <b>mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer’s disease. </b>This involves confusion, trouble making decisions, and issues remembering things such as recent conversations or upcoming appointments, but not at a severe enough level for it to really affect a person’s job or relationships, the Mayo Clinic explains. (Of course, these symptoms aren’t always a sign of Alzheimer’s—we’ll discuss that a bit more down below.)<br /><br />The following phase is (3) <b>mild dementia</b> due to Alzheimer’s disease. This is when symptoms become apparent enough that they often lead to an Alzheimer’s diagnosis, the Mayo Clinic notes. At this point, Alzheimer’s is affecting a person’s day-to-day life with symptoms such as <b>noticeable short-term memory loss, trouble with problem-solving, poor decision-making, mood changes, losing items, getting lost themselves (even in familiar locations), and having a hard time expressing themselves. </b>This can translate into the person asking the same question repeatedly because they forget the answer, a difficult time handling what used to be manageable responsibilities (like tracking their budget), and irritability or anger as their world begins to shift in confounding ways.<br /><br />This eventually progresses into (4) <b>moderate dementia</b> due to Alzheimer’s disease, which is essentially an intensifying of symptoms. A person with this stage of Alzheimer’s tends to need more care making it through the day and avoiding dangerous situations, such as becoming lost (<b>wandering around to find a familiar setting is common in this stage</b>). This is also when long-term memory becomes more compromised, so <b>a person with this level of Alzheimer’s may begin to forget who their loved ones are or get them confused with each other.<br /></b><br />Lastly, during (5) <b>severe dementia</b> due to Alzheimer’s disease, a person may be unable to communicate coherently, even if they are physically able to speak. As they <b>lose control over physical functions such as walking, holding their head up, and bladder and bowel activity, they may depend on others to care for them. People with this final stage of Alzheimer’s may also have difficulty swallowing. Sadly, this is often how death from Alzheimer’s can come about. Food or drinks can wind up in the lungs due to impaired swallowing, leading to pneumonia, or a person may become dehydrated or malnourished.</b><br /><br />There’s no set amount of time it takes for every person with Alzheimer’s to advance through each of these stages, but the Mayo Clinic notes that people with the condition live eight to 10 years after diagnosis on average.<br /><br />NORMAL FORGETFULNESS IS DIFFERENT FROM ALZHEIMER’S-RELATED MEMORY LOSS<br /><br />It’s completely fine to occasionally forget where you put things, the names of people you don’t see that often, why you entered a room, and other minor details. Memory lapses can happen for all sorts of reasons, from a lack of sleep to normal cognitive changes as you grow older.<br /><br />“Mild forgetfulness is a common complaint in people as they age,” Verna R. Porter, M.D., a neurologist and director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Program at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California, tells SELF. “<b>The main difference between age-related memory loss and dementia (such as Alzheimer’s disease) is that in normal aging, the forgetfulness does not interfere with your ability to carry on with daily activities</b>,” Dr. Porter says. “The memory lapses have little impact on your daily life.”<br /><br />If you or a loved one is dealing with persistent memory loss and accompanying symptoms such as difficulty staying organized, confusion, and mood changes, that’s more of a cause for concern.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Estimates range, but the National Institute on Aging (NIA) says that more than 5.5 million people in the United States have the disease. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it was the sixth leading cause of death in the United States in 2017, killing 116,103 people.<br /><br />Alzheimer’s disease damages and kills brain cells. This destruction is what affects a person’s cognitive, social, and physical abilities.<br /><br />Researchers have also discovered two specific abnormalities in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease, the Mayo Clinic says. One is that they have plaques, or buildup of a protein called beta-amyloid, that may harm brain cells, including by impeding cell-to-cell communication. Another is <b>tangles in the transportation system that brain cells rely on to move nutrients and other substances</b> that are necessary for your brain to function properly.<br /><br /></span><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Early-onset
Alzheimer’s disease happens when a person develops the condition
anywhere from their 30s to mid-60s, according to the NIA. People with
this early-onset form comprise less t</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">han 10 pe</span></b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>rcent of the Alzheimer’s population</b>. These cases are sometimes due to three specific gene mutations or other genetic factors. However, this kind of genetic influence is only involved in less than 5 percent of Alzheimer’s disease cases overall, according to the Mayo Clinic.<br /><br />Late-onset Alzheimer’s (which is much more common and typically shows up in someone’s mid-60s) mainly arises due to age and brain changes. Genetics are sometimes involved, but much more rarely than in a person who starts exhibiting symptoms when they’re younger.<br /><br />RISK FACTORS<br /><br /><b>Getting older is the biggest one.</b> To be clear, Alzheimer’s isn’t just a regular part of aging that everyone should expect, but it’s much more common in people over 65. This is part of why women seem to be at a greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease—they simply tend to live longer.<br /><br /><b>Having a first-degree relative</b> (like a dad or sister) with the disease also seems to raise your risk. This is due to that genetic component, which doctors are still investigating.<br /><br />Another potential factor: <b>past head trauma, like a concussion.</b> “In general, head injuries can result in less brain [matter] because an accompanying brain injury can occur,” Amit Sachdev, M.D., an assistant professor and director of the Division of Neuromuscular Medicine at Michigan State University, tells SELF. “Less brain means less ability for the brain to age gracefully.”<br /><br />There’s also a surprising potential link between heart disease risk factors and those that contribute to your chances of getting Alzheimer’s. For example, <b>high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, obesity, and poorly controlled type 2 diabetes can increase your risk of developing both conditions</b>. This may be because of a health issue called <b>vascular dementia, which is when impaired blood vessels in the brain cause memory and cognitive difficulties.</b><br /><br />In addition, <b>Down syndrome is one of the strongest risk factors for one day developing Alzheimer’s, and symptoms tend to present 10 to 20 years earlier than they do in the general population. </b>Down/Alzheimer’s link may center around having <b>an extra copy of chromosome 21</b>, which is what brings about characteristics of Down syndrome. <b>This extra chromosome material contains the gene that produces those beta-amyloid plaques that can harm brain cells</b>, the NIA explains.<br /><br />The only current test to absolutely confirm Alzheimer’s involves a microscopic exam of a deceased person’s brain to look for those plaques and tangles, according to the Mayo Clinic. Although tests to confirm whether or not a living person has Alzheimer’s seem to be forthcoming, they’re not yet ready for widespread use.<br /><br />Instead, doctors basically make an extremely educated guess. They do this with strategies like ordering blood tests to rule out other causes of memory loss, administering mental status tests to evaluate a person’s thinking and memory, ordering brain imaging such as an MRI or CT scan, and testing a person’s cerebrospinal fluid for biological markers that can point toward the possibility of Alzheimer’s.<br /><br />HOW TO REDUCE YOUR RISK<br /><br />Research has found a link between <b>engaging in socially and mentally stimulating activities and a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease. It seems as though these types of activities strengthen your “cognitive reserve,” making it easier for your brain to compensate for age-related changes</b>, according to the NIA.<br /><br /><b>Reducing your risk of heart disease may also help lower your risk of Alzheimer’s. “Things that promote a healthy body will promote a healthy brain,” Dr. Sachdev says. “In this case, healthier blood vessels are less likely to become damaged and more likely to support the brain.”</b><br /><br />Lowering your risk of heart disease and Alzheimer’s means staying active and eating well, among other things. <br /><br />“Exercise may slow existing cognitive deterioration by stabilizing older brain connections and [helping to] make new connections,” Dr. Porter says. Experts are also investigating if exercise can bolster the size of brain structures that are key for memory and learning. In any case, the American Heart Association recommends getting 150 minutes of moderate exercise every week or 75 minutes of vigorous movement (or a mix of moderate and vigorous workouts) each week.<br /><br />The Mediterranean diet, which focuses on eating produce, healthy oils, and foods low in saturated fat, has also been linked with a lowered risk of developing heart disease and Alzheimer’s.<br /><br />*<br />The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved two types of medications to help manage the memory loss, confusion, and problems with thinking and reasoning of Alzheimer's disease, according to the NIA.<br /><br /><b>Cholinesterase inhibitors are reserved for mild to moderate Alzheimer’s. It seems as though they impede the breakdown of acetylcholine, a brain chemical implicated in memory and thinking, but these drugs may start to work less effectively as Alzheimer’s progresses and a person produces less acetylcholine.<br /></b><br />When it comes to moderate to severe Alzheimer’s, doctors may use a drug called <b>memantine, which appears to regulate glutamate, a neurotransmitter that can cause brain cell death in large amounts. Sometimes doctors prescribe both cholinesterase inhibitors and memantine drugs, since they work in different ways.</b><br /><br />Unfortunately, these drugs won’t fully stop the progression of the disease. But they may help slow the symptoms so that a person with Alzheimer’s can have a better quality of life for a longer period of time.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.self.com/story/alzheimers-disease-facts">https://www.self.com/story/alzheimers-disease-facts</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>A NEW TEST FOR DIAGNOSING ALZHEIMER’S<br /></b><br />A simple blood test to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease soon may replace more invasive and expensive screening methods such as spinal taps and brain scans.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">A study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Lund University in Sweden shows that a blood test can be as good at detecting molecular signs of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain as cerebrospinal fluid tests approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Alzheimer’s diagnosis. <b>The blood test, which was created by Washington University researchers, uses a highly sensitive technique to measure levels of Alzheimer’s proteins in the blood.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The research was published Feb. 21 in Nature Medicine.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The findings demonstrate that<b> a blood test can diagnose Alzheimer’s disease pathology as accurately as cerebrospinal fluid tests and brain scans, even in patients with mild symptoms, and can be used to detect molecular signs of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain when symptoms haven’t yet emerged.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Identifying people with the disease has become vitally important, as <b>the first Alzheimer’s treatments capable of slowing the disease’s progression recently became available to patients, and other promising drugs are in the pipeline.</b> Such drugs might be more effective when started sooner rather than later, making it critically important to identify people with the disease early.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“The accuracy of this blood test now enables us to diagnose the presence of Alzheimer’s disease pathology with a single blood sample,” said co-senior author Randall J. Bateman, MD, the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Distinguished Professor of Neurology at Washington University. “This advance will increase accurate diagnoses for many patients.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">For many years, Alzheimer’s was diagnosed symptomatically, after people began showing signs of memory and thinking problems. But studies have shown that up to a third of people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s based on cognitive symptoms alone are misdiagnosed and that their symptoms are due to other causes.<b> Consequently, before a patient is eligible to receive Alzheimer’s therapies, a diagnosis of cognitive impairment must be coupled with a positive test for amyloid plaques, which are unique to Alzheimer’s disease.</b> Amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) brain scans, cerebrospinal fluid analyses and blood tests can all be used to confirm the presence of brain amyloid plaques, but only for people who already have cognitive symptoms. They are not used by doctors for people without symptoms.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>“In the near future, this type of blood test will replace the need for costly and less accessible cerebrospinal fluid and PET imaging tests in specialist memory clinics,” said co-senior author Oskar Hansson, MD, PhD, a professor of neurology at Lund University. “Next, we need to determine if the Alzheimer’s blood test also works in primary care. This is currently being investigated in Sweden.”</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Bateman and colleagues previously created the first approved blood test for amyloid in the brain. The test uses mass spectrometry to measure the ratio of two forms of amyloid in the blood, and it received a “Breakthrough Device” designation from the FDA in 2019. Bateman, co-first author Nicolas Barthélemy, PhD, an assistant professor of neurology at Washington University, and colleagues have since created <b>a second blood test based on the effects of amyloid accumulation on a second brain protein: tau.</b> The presence of amyloid in the brain changes the levels of various forms of tau protein in the brain and in the blood. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Measuring the ratio of phosphorylated tau-217 (ptau-217) and unphosphorylated tau in the blood reliably reflects brain amyloid levels. </b>A test combining the amyloid and tau blood measures is marketed by the Washington University startup C2N Diagnostics, as PrecivityAD2.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In this study, a research team led by Bateman, Hansson, Barthélemy, co-first author Gemma Salvadó, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at Lund University, and co-author Suzanne Schindler, MD, PhD, an associate professor of neurology at Washington University, compared the abilities of four tests to identify people with amyloid in their brains:<b> the ptau-217 blood test and three FDA-approved cerebrospinal fluid tests. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">They evaluated the tests using blood and cerebrospinal fluid samples from volunteers in the Swedish BioFINDER-2 (Biomarkers For Identifying Neurodegenerative Disorders Early and Reliably) cohort (1,422 people), and Washington University’s Charles F. and Joanne Knight Alzheimer Disease Research Center (Knight ADRC) cohort (337 people). Both groups included people with very mild and mild cognitive symptoms, as well as healthy people for comparison. <b>The tests’ accuracy rates were calculated by comparing their results to the gold standard: PET brain scans for amyloid and tau tangles.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The ptau-217 blood test was just as good as the FDA-approved cerebrospinal fluid tests at identifying people with amyloid buildup, with accuracy scores for all tests at 95% to 97%.</b> In a secondary analysis, the researchers measured how well the tests determined the levels of tau tangles in the brain. In this, <b>the ptau-217 blood test was superior to cerebrospinal fluid tests, with accuracy scores in the range of 95% to 98%.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">As of now, Alzheimer’s therapies and diagnostic tests are only used clinically for people who already show signs of memory and thinking problems. But<b> Alzheimer’s disease has a long presymptomatic phase of two decades or more during which amyloid builds up in the brain before neurodegeneration sets in and symptoms arise.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“We now have therapies that have clinical benefits, which is great, but they don’t reverse the loss of neurons in the brain,” Barthélemy said. “What we really want is to treat the disease before people start losing brain cells and showing symptoms.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">A subgroup analysis of healthy participants showed that the ptau-217 blood test accurately identified those who harbored amyloid plaques in their brains. The test was just as accurate at detecting the presence of amyloid plaques in people without symptoms as those with symptoms. <b>Studies have shown that people with no cognitive problems but who are positive for amyloid are at high risk of developing cognitive impairments in the next few years.</b> A major phase 3 clinical trial known as the AHEAD 3-45 Study was launched in 2020 to evaluate whether treating amyloid-positive people before symptoms arise can prevent cognitive decline. Washington University is a site for the trial. The blood test is being used in the AHEAD study to screen potential participants.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“Imagine a person who is 55 or 60 and has a family history of Alzheimer’s or some high-risk genetic variants,” Barthélemy said. “It would be really valuable to have an easy way to know whether they have amyloid pathology in their brains. If they do, they could come in, maybe once every two or three years, and get a therapy to clear the amyloid out and then never develop dementia at all. We’re still a few years away from such an approach, but I think that’s the future of Alzheimer’s care, and it depends on <b>presymptomatic diagnosis and treatment</b>.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/alzheimers-blood-test-performs-as-well-as-fda-approved-spinal-fluid-tests/">https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/alzheimers-blood-test-performs-as-well-as-fda-approved-spinal-fluid-tests/</a></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhefYOZUF01dkPP95VZRDfmPkRObFn2_L-x2RJ8HHmCzG0QEhTb1FXU7VUokKPFlnxjGb06p4wV8n10pTD6t3wcX6xsfcVDW2gbtkHnB2upPIG68XzKgIK7Dgb-CiESu_AODKwVFxfmsKTa-IB9MSGa6UILS1CNsh8w9b_4Q7nZicM5hZpZDBfBjt5IvK9D/s1000/PET%20scan%20neuroimaging-alzheimers-brain-public-_-Source-NIH.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="472" data-original-width="1000" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhefYOZUF01dkPP95VZRDfmPkRObFn2_L-x2RJ8HHmCzG0QEhTb1FXU7VUokKPFlnxjGb06p4wV8n10pTD6t3wcX6xsfcVDW2gbtkHnB2upPIG68XzKgIK7Dgb-CiESu_AODKwVFxfmsKTa-IB9MSGa6UILS1CNsh8w9b_4Q7nZicM5hZpZDBfBjt5IvK9D/w400-h189/PET%20scan%20neuroimaging-alzheimers-brain-public-_-Source-NIH.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>BUT IS ALZHEIMER’S CAUSED BY THE BUILD-UP OF PLAQUE?<br /></b><br />New research from the University of Cincinnati bolsters a hypothesis that Alzheimer’s disease is caused by a decline in levels of a specific protein, contrary to a prevailing theory that has been recently called into question.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">UC researchers led by Alberto Espay, MD, and Andrea Sturchio, MD, in collaboration with the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, published the research on Oct. 4 in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Questioning the dominant hypothesis</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The research is focused on a protein called </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>amyloid-beta. The protein normally carries out its functions in the brain in a form that is soluble, meaning dissolvable in water, but it sometimes hardens into clumps, known as amyloid plaques.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The conventional wisdom in the field of Alzheimer’s research for more than 100 years stated that Alzheimer’s was caused by the buildup of amyloid plaques in the brain. But Espay and his colleagues hypothesized that </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>plaques are simply</b> <b>a consequence of the levels of soluble amyloid-beta in the brain decreasing.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b> These levels decrease because the normal protein, under situations of biological, metabolic or infectious stress, transform into the abnormal amyloid plaques. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“The paradox is that <b>so many of us accrue plaques in our brains as we age, and yet so few of us with plaques go on to develop dementia</b>,” said Espay, professor of neurology in the UC College of Medicine, director and endowed chair of the James J. and Joan A. Gardner Family Center for Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders at the UC Gardner Neuroscience Institute and a UC Health physician. “Yet the plaques remain the center of our attention as it relates to biomarker development and therapeutic strategies.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Sturchio noted that many research studies and clinical trials over the years have aimed at reducing amyloid plaques in the brain, and some have lessened plaques. But until the Sept. 27 announcement of a positive trial by Biogen and Eisai (with drug <b>lecanemab</b>), none slowed the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">More importantly, in support of their hypothesis, </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>in some clinical trials that reduced the levels of soluble amyloid-beta, patients showed worsening in clinical outcomes.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>“I think this is probably the best proof that reducing the level of the soluble form of the protein can be toxic,” said Sturchio, first author of the report and adjunct research instructor at UC’s College of Medicine. “When done, patients have gotten worse.”</b></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Previous research from the team found that regardless of the buildup of plaques in the brain, people with high levels of soluble amyloid-beta were cognitively normal, while those with low levels of the protein were more likely to have cognitive impairment.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In the current study, the team analyzed the levels of amyloid-beta in a subset of patients with mutations that predict an overexpression of amyloid plaques in the brain, which is thought to make them more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“One of the strongest supports to the hypothesis of amyloid toxicity was based on these mutations,” Sturchio said. “We studied that population because it offers the most important data.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Even in this group of patients thought to have the highest risk of Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers found similar results as the study of the general population.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“What we found was that <b>individuals already accumulating plaques in their brains who are able to generate </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>high levels of </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>soluble</b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b> amyloid-beta have a lower risk of evolving into dementia over a three-year span</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>,</b>” Espay said.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The research found that </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>with a baseline level of soluble amyloid-beta in the brain above 270 picograms per milliliter, people can remain cognitively normal regardless of the amount of amyloid plaques in their brains</b>.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“It’s only too logical, if you are detached from the biases that we’ve created for too long, that a neurodegenerative process is caused by something we lose, amyloid-beta, rather than something we gain, amyloid plaques,” Espay said. “Degeneration is a process of loss, and what we lose turns out to be much more important.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Next steps</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPFe1s7gEi7FV_HzJw4o4I0ApDoe_XMVMDMyvNwoJ7rCu9sTQ334_fuFuhjl_3MeC34Hzh6FQ4YrbNJY3s-LQyLfIZT5mk2WrFejfPmms6WrXyAwfEoPLHoIaCvN6zI0LJEX1ReYDtIV1EP2S9zp4nHNTc4nrhsc9dcTguvdjrihu_svQdRkZhDhxSYNh5/s300/brain%20alzheimers%20versus%20healhty.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="296" data-original-width="300" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPFe1s7gEi7FV_HzJw4o4I0ApDoe_XMVMDMyvNwoJ7rCu9sTQ334_fuFuhjl_3MeC34Hzh6FQ4YrbNJY3s-LQyLfIZT5mk2WrFejfPmms6WrXyAwfEoPLHoIaCvN6zI0LJEX1ReYDtIV1EP2S9zp4nHNTc4nrhsc9dcTguvdjrihu_svQdRkZhDhxSYNh5/w400-h395/brain%20alzheimers%20versus%20healhty.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Sturchio said the research is moving forward to study </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>if increasing the levels of soluble amyloid-beta in the brain is a beneficial therapy for patients with Alzheimer’s. </b></span><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Espay said it will be important to ensure that the elevated levels of the protein introduced into the brain do not then turn into amyloid plaques, since the soluble version of the protein is needed for normal function to make an impact in the brain. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">On a larger scale, the researchers said they believe a similar hypothesis of what causes neurodegeneration can be applied to other diseases including Parkinson’s and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, with research ongoing in these areas as well.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">For example,</span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b> in Parkinson’s disease, a normal soluble protein in the brain called alpha-synuclein can harden into a deposit called a Lewy body. The researchers hypothesize that Parkinson’s is not caused by Lewy bodies aggregating in the brain, but rather by a decrease in levels of normal, soluble alpha-synuclein.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“We’re advocating that what may be more meaningful across all degenerative diseases is the loss of normal proteins rather than the measurable fraction of abnormal proteins,” Espay said. “The net effect is a loss not a gain of proteins as the brain continues to shrink as these diseases progress.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Espay said he envisions a future with two approaches to treating neurodegenerative diseases: rescue medicine and precision medicine.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Rescue medicine looks like the current work, studying if boosting levels of key proteins like soluble amyloid-beta leads to better outcomes. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“Interestingly, <b>lecanemab, the anti-amyloid drug recently reported as beneficial, does something that most other anti-amyloid treatments don’t do in addition to reducing amyloid: </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>it increases the levels of the soluble amyloid-beta</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">,” Espay said.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Alternatively, <b>precision medicine entails going deeper to understand what is causing levels of soluble amyloid-beta to decrease in the first place, whether it is a virus, a toxin, a nanoparticle or a biological or genetic process.</b> If the root cause is addressed, the levels of the protein wouldn’t need to be boosted because there would be no transformation from soluble, normal proteins to amyloid plaques.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Espay said precision medicine would take into account the fact that no two patients are alike, providing more personalized treatments. The researchers are making progress in precision medicine through the Cincinnati Cohort Biomarker Program, a project aiming to divide neurodegenerative diseases by biological subtypes in order to match therapies based on biomarkers to those most likely to benefit from them.</b></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“The Cincinnati Cohort Biomarker Program is dedicated to working toward deploying the first success in precision medicine in this decade,” Espay said. “By recognizing biological, infectious and toxic subtypes of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer's, we will have specific treatments that can slow the progression of those affected.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.uc.edu/news/articles/2022/09/decreased-proteins-not-amyloid-plaques-tied-to-alzheimers.html">https://www.uc.edu/news/articles/2022/09/decreased-proteins-not-amyloid-plaques-tied-to-alzheimers.html</a></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCP_GXs0ROIefbJsIPrLZ2NrGHQcwmkQ4rvG_F8f7Y0hSlvaxbp6Ad6Ez2KBXX0Bh9vcNtOWKYvhMerfirIcE_Rc-9CD9RGzQVIy-o-WtoECuGJBXbhDCDpzd1QRbHsNWRjCeRaCIRa5NeubVt9mwOWdaC0iWJwKv0I8hfg8ggdNDCwu2pgH7HYA6DWqbk/s1800/brain%20Alzh%20versus%20normal.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1768" data-original-width="1800" height="393" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCP_GXs0ROIefbJsIPrLZ2NrGHQcwmkQ4rvG_F8f7Y0hSlvaxbp6Ad6Ez2KBXX0Bh9vcNtOWKYvhMerfirIcE_Rc-9CD9RGzQVIy-o-WtoECuGJBXbhDCDpzd1QRbHsNWRjCeRaCIRa5NeubVt9mwOWdaC0iWJwKv0I8hfg8ggdNDCwu2pgH7HYA6DWqbk/w400-h393/brain%20Alzh%20versus%20normal.webp" width="400" /></a></div><i><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">brain with Alzheimer's (left ) compared to healthy brain</span></i><br /><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I have become more interested in the non-memory and non-verbal symptoms of dementia such as the gradual loss of motor control. The gait becomes slow and unsteady. There is profound stooping, beyond ordinary "bad posture." And you may remember that Trump had to hold a glass of water in both hands.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Speaking of hands, there is a tendency to hold them clenched into fists. Bladder and bowel incontinence are also part of the symptoms. The demented brain is less and less able to control the body.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Of course Alzheimer's is only one type of dementia that happens to be the common. But there is also frontotemporal dementia; one of its symptoms may be the development of insensitive, rude behavior in someone previously polite and soft-mannered. <br /></span></p><p>* <br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><i>ending on beauty:</i><br /></b><br />FOR A FRIEND BORN UNDER GEMINI<br /><br />We are all Gemini our twin<br />man-woman selves<br />kissing and fighting making up<br /><br />Gemini means summer is near<br />its luxurious amber<br />of sinking into work we love<br /><br />did I say <i>sink</i><br />or <i>sing</i><br /><br />~ Oriana<br /></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-58962552964912246972024-03-16T19:08:00.000-07:002024-03-23T11:52:54.748-07:00DUNE 2: SPACE MUSLIM; WHY COMMUNISM HASN’T WORKED; RUSSIAN REFINERY FIRES; THE FREEDOM LEGION: RUSSIANS AGAINST PUTIN; LOVE IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ENEMY OF COMMUNISM; MEMORY IS MORE ABOUT THE FUTURE THAN THE PAST; A VACCINE AGAINST DEPRESSION? SEA CUCUMBERS PROTECT CORAL REEFS<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTQMrNl1_aG1KjqpreE_C0ChalP8ZSTSd-EhxfcEsvLk7_9NHryLZuAbhD0mCkvc5ev9cpXLilpqFybzkxMotCfb5y0ZwSb1zuZOige02IrY0YAQSPPhzYVeLT3B5Jq2M1ps5BTYCyyclXPiqVqfcgk7H53Qw7IU01TvSa_UD_rb58axiC9PcRaaOJ-HLj/s1536/beech%20trees%20in%20East%20Lothian.webp" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1021" data-original-width="1536" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTQMrNl1_aG1KjqpreE_C0ChalP8ZSTSd-EhxfcEsvLk7_9NHryLZuAbhD0mCkvc5ev9cpXLilpqFybzkxMotCfb5y0ZwSb1zuZOige02IrY0YAQSPPhzYVeLT3B5Jq2M1ps5BTYCyyclXPiqVqfcgk7H53Qw7IU01TvSa_UD_rb58axiC9PcRaaOJ-HLj/w400-h266/beech%20trees%20in%20East%20Lothian.webp" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Beech trees in East Lothian (Scotland)</i></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />REVENGE</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">At times … I wish</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> I could meet in a duel </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">the man who killed my father </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">and razed our home,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">expelling me into</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> a narrow country.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> And if he killed me,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> I’d rest at last,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> and if I were ready— </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I would take my revenge!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />But if it came to light, </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">when my rival appeared, </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">that he had a mother </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">waiting for him,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> or a father who’d put</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> his right hand over</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> the heart’s place in his chest </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">whenever his son was late</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> even by just a quarter-hour </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">for a meeting they’d set—</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> then I would not kill him, </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">even if I could.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br />Likewise … I </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">would not murder him </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">if it were soon made clear</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">that he had a brother or sisters </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">who loved him </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">and constantly longed to see him.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> Or if he had a wife to greet him</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> and children who </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">couldn’t bear his absence </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">and whom his gifts would thrill. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Or if he had friends or companions,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">neighbors he knew</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> or allies from prison </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">or a hospital room, </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">or classmates from his school </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">… asking about him </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">and sending him regards.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />But if he turned </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">out to be on his own— </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">cut off like a branch from a tree— </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">without a mother or father, </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">with neither a brother nor sister, </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">wifeless, without a child, </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">and without kin or neighbors or friends,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> colleagues or companions, </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">then I’d add not a thing to his pain </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">within that aloneness— </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">not the torment of death, </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">and not the sorrow of passing away. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Instead I’d be content</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> to ignore him when I passed him by </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">on the street—</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">as I</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> convinced myself </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">that paying him no attention</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> in itself was a kind of revenge.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i> Nazareth , April 15, 2006</i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">~ Taha Muhammad Ali, translated by Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi, and Gabriel Levin<br /><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin0XugKijxW1Fug5PdpJyCd2-sKkd94f2W4n79pu4BWRfWrRJYzW5HF9fyAwWCGYdaRLpAtPYHZ5mi3cjkAqQJcQ-2f1XxI_BV1NBeadTZc5j3jT3wYVlciaOfGzZ7RCOSoKucTewDcZA17_K3dU3xJrWUPxf2QCYqNt-6dvJ_DVa_xywvMAHyiWtz9UEh/s1000/Hymns%20and%20Qualms%20Taha%20revenge.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="663" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin0XugKijxW1Fug5PdpJyCd2-sKkd94f2W4n79pu4BWRfWrRJYzW5HF9fyAwWCGYdaRLpAtPYHZ5mi3cjkAqQJcQ-2f1XxI_BV1NBeadTZc5j3jT3wYVlciaOfGzZ7RCOSoKucTewDcZA17_K3dU3xJrWUPxf2QCYqNt-6dvJ_DVa_xywvMAHyiWtz9UEh/s320/Hymns%20and%20Qualms%20Taha%20revenge.jpg" width="212" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br /><b>WHY COMMUNISM HASN’T WORKED <br /></b><br />~ <b>Probably the biggest flaw in communism can be linked to the famous Marxist slogan, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” This describes a world in which everyone contributes 100% of their ability allegedly in exchange for having 100% of their needs met. <br /></b><br />The problems with such an arrangement are myriad: humans are not equal in ability or need, and <b>if only your needs — never wants — are met regardless of what you do, there's little incentive to do more than the bare minimum</b>, let alone give it 110%. Thus, you wind up with <b>productivity problems and a lack of innovation. <br /></b><br />But beyond this, <b>communism ignores human nature: the vast majority of people care more about themselves and their loved ones than others. </b>That doesn't mean that people don't care anything for others — people pay taxes and donate to charities because they recognize that there are needs beyond their own — but <b>human nature is such that if people are working hard, they want to be able to reap the rewards. A joyless system of perpetual sacrifice for the state gets old quickly for non-zealots.</b><br /><br />Second, <b>controlled economies are always teetering on the edge of disaster</b> because the wisdom of a small in-group, no matter how intelligent, is less skilled at identifying people's highest use and anticipating need compared to the free market, and is less adaptive when there are misses. Thus, <b>communism often struggles to meet even basic needs.<br /></b></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Finally, because of the issues above, <b>end-stage communist nirvana has never been achieved, because it devolves into authoritarianism, an attempt to stop the complaining and do away with human nature at gunpoint.</b> ~ Ty Doyle, Quora<br /><br />Andrew Olson:<br />You, like almost everyone else, left off <b>the prerequisite to ‘from each according …’<br />Which is a post scarcity economy.</b><br /><br />Pete Smoot:<br />There’s also the practical problem that in order to transition to communism, 20th century experiments went through autocracies or tyrannies. The autocrats and tyrants never seemed to want to give up power and have a universally horrible track record of murder and human rights abuses.<br /><br />Peter LaFond:<br /><b>There is no concept of economic growth.</b> American progressives have the same blind spot.<br /><br />Richard Morris:<br />Great post. I want to emphasize your point about innovation. <b>Communism cannot “reward” innovation. Rewards are needed to provide feedback for successful business practices. Without rewards a system becomes stale and complacent.</b><br /><br />Murali Tumahai:<br />People espousing the benefits of these experiments <b>never allow for the presence of narcissists and psychopaths in society.</b><br /><br />Bill Lovell:<br />Plus the line that didn’t come from Marx, but should have: <b>“We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”</b><br /><br />Lee Jacobson:<br /><b>Even in small scale communism, such as the Kibbutz in Israel, eventually collapse due to this disagreement on distribution of the resources (i.e. to each according to his need) by a small cadre of officials.</b> For example, “the Kibbutz has decided that your son is too stupid for us to support his university education”, and there is no appeal but leaving the Kibbutz. And so Kibbutzim have, for the most part, shut down.</span><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc-eJuc_kb_Bf4xgReMM7XIu5KJodkeuOUEnpwbsgBL61BVCpVRYz8s2SDQbaE7_1ZFWOMh_mHjO2adjG-nhendAq38l0304Jt-QpQ3DLatkjpqHaIhR5Q2sobLzgAxMW7MAoHQh5XPZ7LHsJCjatE_S-rE9ox3XVgQj55ZqqgA1Ewr8iqBYypXW4KyktX/s602/Kibbutz%20Palmachim.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="452" data-original-width="602" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc-eJuc_kb_Bf4xgReMM7XIu5KJodkeuOUEnpwbsgBL61BVCpVRYz8s2SDQbaE7_1ZFWOMh_mHjO2adjG-nhendAq38l0304Jt-QpQ3DLatkjpqHaIhR5Q2sobLzgAxMW7MAoHQh5XPZ7LHsJCjatE_S-rE9ox3XVgQj55ZqqgA1Ewr8iqBYypXW4KyktX/w400-h300/Kibbutz%20Palmachim.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Kibbutz Palmanin</i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">SUSANNA VILJANNEN: THINK OF LIVING IN THE MILITARY 24/7<br /><br />Communism fails because it does not take into account the innate, biological nature of human being and the human psychology. It assumes humans are collective animals (like ants or bees or termites) whose psyche is a blank slate, which is completely programmable, who have no individuality nor innate traits whatsoever and who are completely fungible.<br /><br /><b>The biggest failure is assumption that humans can selflessly work for the common good without self-interest. </b>And alas, it doesn’t work that way.<br /><br />In reality, humans are ba5tards. Ba5tard-filled ba5tards with ba5tard coating. We are selfish to the boot, and our traits are mostly innate — either inherited by the genes or triggered by the epigenetics. We are programmable only to an extent. And we act only on selfish interests.<br /><br /><b>The only way humans can act on unselfish interests for the common good is religion.</b> It is the only way how humans can overcome their selfish interests and work altruistically for the common good. And Communism is utterly hostile to religion!<br /><br /><b>All secular utopian societies have collapsed in less than a century, usually latest at the third generation, due to internal disputes and chaos. Conversely, religious ideal societies can last for millennia. Monte Cassino monastery has been founded 529. Still functional. Likewise, Heian monastery has been founded 711. Still functional.</b> We know the Hutterite farms in North America. Likewise, all the remaining kolkhozes in Russia and kibbutzim in Israel are religious.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_sq5AOULj9WsdLljzHLmGCYA8K1Sx9Cg0HfHOcP0KjxGFp_-bycFLuKj91Xq6IGDokycb61pTWSEo-VPVcBBUvYnkp4h0iRAs10k41VpRX3FRnt7kdHZzRaahcqf5VOeTYmD_yY4U8v16wAgVh7OdX1QBMM8e0fZsrDM18-baLUCltIzfrqjmNjuFm3JM/s900/kibbutz%20alonim.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="900" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_sq5AOULj9WsdLljzHLmGCYA8K1Sx9Cg0HfHOcP0KjxGFp_-bycFLuKj91Xq6IGDokycb61pTWSEo-VPVcBBUvYnkp4h0iRAs10k41VpRX3FRnt7kdHZzRaahcqf5VOeTYmD_yY4U8v16wAgVh7OdX1QBMM8e0fZsrDM18-baLUCltIzfrqjmNjuFm3JM/w400-h400/kibbutz%20alonim.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Kibbutz Alonim</i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Communism is basically a self-defeating memeplex. It is <b>based on wrong assumptions and wrong interpretation on input, so it will quickly turn chaotic.<br /></b><br />Garbage in, garbage out.<br /><br /><b>The only way to impose Communism without religion is brutal discipline and coercion</b>. This is the reason why all Communist regimes have eventually become little Soviet Unions. The horrible monolithic regime, coercion, ineffective and corrupt means of production, utter disdain on human decency and continuous lack of resources and means. This is what happens when the feedback loop between the control tier and the productive tier is too long; the system becomes unstable due to the impulse lag.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiVAns_WfZwRW5RQxJ9RjwdJDzV4CbbNZodFMDRIRP5s4EwHASfqA8GMOWb268djj4LnHVK2-JWu7VtL2CRGTBLLpzElfj5PRGUHqnWnc9cPNnEqwjdbq2M16XKS8MDW4-qi6h2wN_pVX1raMkW-G8_tJvWWY69pEbyrRLdRVjenkg8TG-0oDC5Y8WQaYs/s3393/Pope%20Francis%20hammer%20and%20sickle.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2281" data-original-width="3393" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiVAns_WfZwRW5RQxJ9RjwdJDzV4CbbNZodFMDRIRP5s4EwHASfqA8GMOWb268djj4LnHVK2-JWu7VtL2CRGTBLLpzElfj5PRGUHqnWnc9cPNnEqwjdbq2M16XKS8MDW4-qi6h2wN_pVX1raMkW-G8_tJvWWY69pEbyrRLdRVjenkg8TG-0oDC5Y8WQaYs/w400-h269/Pope%20Francis%20hammer%20and%20sickle.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Capitalism is NOT self-stabilizing nor self-correcting (no system where there is at least one positive feedback ever is), but the feedback loop between the control tier and productive tier is much shorter and quicker. </b>Therefore capitalism can react on any disturbances on the system much quicker and prompter and produce far more desirable results. ~ Quora</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">KARL VANBRABANT: NATURAL HIERARCHY OF LOYALTIES<br /><br />Normally, to every person <b>there is a system of loyalties that is partly based on self-interest. </b>First comes the individual itself. Or as the German saying goes: first belly full, after that morality (“Erst das fressen und dann die moral”).<b> After that comes family. </b>After that the local community. After that the wider community or the area, and after that the ethnicity to which the individual belongs. only after that comes the state or a political party.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Communism wants to reverse all that: First the state, and all the rest will be placed at the same level. Since it can’t work if there are many parties with different ideas, this state will have to be a single-party state.</b> This means people who don’t believe in this reversal of the loyalty system, either have to be persuaded , or they have to be suppressed and persecuted. This means a lot of people will think about themselves and their family first and play along. It will end with a grandiose charade that’s bound to one day collapse.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Add to that the fact that Marx was against religion. If you’d take the above loyalty system, the religion will always fit at almost every level. Marx simply wanted to do away with religion, but when you look at history, that’s a stupid idea: people have always worshipped something, even if it was the sun and the moon, or a mountain or whatever. It’s just human nature. However, religion can make it difficult to abandon the loyalty system, as it can be closely interwoven with it. That’s why religion prevailed in communist countries: people refused to place communism above their beliefs.<br /><br />Mac Dara Mac Donnacha: TOO MUCH GOVERNMENT VERSUS NOT ENOUGH<br /><br />~ Capitalism (by which I assume you mean a market economy) doesn’t really need much administration to work. If there’s a demand, odds are someone will meet it with supply. If demands change, supply changes with it. Now, absent administration, <b>capitalist systems will inevitably lead to economic crashes (and even with administration, you can mostly just delay the crashes, or cushion the blow), but also inevitably the capitalist system will pick itself up, step over the bodies of the casualties of the crash, and move on.</b><br /><br />So I’m assuming by communist you mean something like Soviet Style communism, or in other words a centrally planned economy. This is an economy in which the government makes decisions on production. <b>Instead of being driven by the desire for profit, the economy is driven by the desire to do what is best for the country as a whole. </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>On the surface this seems like a good idea, but the problem is in the implementation.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />Consider for example that the government has deduced that there is a need for increased agricultural production, due to an increasing population. So they order the farmers to grow more food. But to grow more food, the farmers need more material — fertilizer, farming equipment etc. They ask the government to provide these things, and eventually the government agrees. But then when the food is produced, you need transportation vehicles, storage facilities, distribution facilities, and the staff for all of the above. And consider the requirements hidden behind each of those: if you want more trucks to move the food, you need to build more trucks, which means more materials for the trucks, possibly new factories, factory workers…<br /><br />If the government fails to anticipate and provide for any of the steps in the above, the system breaks down a bit. Maybe there’s not enough trucks, or too many. Maybe food ends up rotting in a warehouse somewhere because there’s not enough workers to distribute it. Inefficiencies begin to creep in. And as the decades go by, they get worse. These can eventually be identified and fixed, but by then the necessities of the economy will probably have changed again, and you’re already behind.<br /><br /><b>In a capitalist system, such problems are almost inevitably spotted by someone and identified as an opportunity for profit. </b>If there’s a need for more trucks, the price for trucks goes up as they get snapped up, and producers quickly build more. If there’s food waiting in a warehouse, someone will quickly hire staff to sell it. And <b>if anyone spots a method to make any part of the process more efficient, they’ll implement it — for a price.</b><br /><br />Now, to be clear: capitalism, if left to its own devices, is terrible. <b>While centrally planned economies have their problems, it’s arguable as to whether they’re worse than a totally free market economy.</b> For a market economy to not be a total shitshow, it requires careful regulation and plenty of government intervention. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">There are certain services that the free market is terrible at providing — e.g. law enforcement, defense, healthcare, education — and you need government regulation to stop the formation of monopolies and other economic dead end phenomena that free markets otherwise eventually spit out. Most of these issues are what economists call ‘market inefficiencies’ (you can google a few examples), and they will lead to a Great Depression/Great Recession/Armageddon if you let them. ~ <br /><br />Don Callaghan:<br /><b>Capitalism, in theory, allowed the greatest freedom and most diverse solutions. The problem is it leaves too many by the wayside.</b><br /><br />Ke’Aun<br /><b>Workers across the planet tend to associate far more strongly with their nation or state than they do their class. </b><i><b>Few are as fervently patriotic, nationalistic, or ethnocentric than the world’s “workers and peasants” — the exact class the Communists want on their side.</b></i><br /><br />*<br /><b>DIMA VOROBIEV: THE IDEA OF COMMUNISM SPRANG FROM CHRISTIAN MONASTERIES<br /></b><br />The cardinal flaw in Communism lies in the amazing fact that this collectivist ideology only seems to work for people who believe in individual salvation.<br /><br />Communism is basically two things: <br /><br />No private property. You share with other people the tools, land, trees, ideas, cars, works of art that make your living. <br /><br />You contribute to the common pot what you can, you get out of the pot what you need.<br /><br /><b>The idea sprang from the Christian monasteries</b>. People there who had enough spare time to pray and used little of it to enjoy themselves, sooner or later came to ask themselves and everyone around: why can’t the whole humanity live the same pious, quiet and spiritual lifestyle as us? There will be no wars, no angry people, no famines, no suffering.<br /><br />Then Marxists came with a very practical answer: we can make it work if we mandate that everyone give up their private property. <b>Everyone will work for everyone’s salvation.</b> To top it, <b>no one will need to die to get the Communist salvation: it all will happen in this world, not the next one!</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In the XX century, Communists managed to organize themselves to grab power across much of the world. They met much resistance, but ultimately overcame it. The largest and the most populous countries in the world even became a clear and present danger to the most prosperous and strong Capitalist countries. Eat that, you bourgeois scum!<br /><br />There turned up to be just one problem: humans are shaped by evolution to be a bunch of lazy, selfish, sneaky, predatory bitches. Only fear of pain, starvation and death gets us off our idle behinds to make ourselves useful. There are also a tiny minority of people who are driven of curiosity, vanity and the desire to make a difference. But they are a maddeningly selfish bunch. They prefer to do their own stuff and object strongly when other people tell them what to do.<br /><br />There’s also a powerful unselfish thing called love. It can do wonders and prevail over everything. But<b> </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>the unselfishness of love makes it the most dangerous enemy of Communism</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>: people eagerly sacrifice the common good for their kids, their lovers, their family and their friends.</b><br /><br />There is only one thing that seems to be able to trump our (1) selfishness, greed, laziness and (2) our loyalty to the loved ones. It’s the love of God and faith in individual salvation. This is what <b>the tale of Abraham and sacrifice of Isaac is about. For us common people, this means: God is willing to give us individual salvation if we are ready to betray for him our loved ones</b>. (We have a Communist rendition to the Abraham’s test, <b>“Who do you love more, the Soviet rule or your Dad?”</b>)<br /><br /><b><i>The history of Communism shows that the idea of Marx about the ideal society requires the degree of individual discipline and self-policing that no totalitarian society can assure.</i></b> You need a community of people who are obsessed with individual responsibility in the face of God. If you start mixing these pious creatures with lazybones, creeps and men/women in love with each other, the latter ones get a ginormous unfair advantage. They will be piggybacking, leeching and stealing for themselves wherever possible, while the self-sacrificing dimwits will be busting their backs to make everyone’s life better.<br /><br />You may of course put the police, workers’ watchers, KGB operatives and neighbor informants on the task of enforcing Communist morals. What happens next is <b>the lazybones, leeches and thieves find every possible hole to become the enforcers. This is exactly what happened in every single place from Soviet Russia, to the Red Khmer’s Kampuchea, to the Chavisto Venezuela.</b><br /><br />Upshot to the story: you may make Communism work, in some places, for some time. For achieving that, you need (1) people who believe in individual responsibility before God, (2) a wall between them and people who don’t believe in God, (3) a preferential arrangement from the government in terms of property protection and economic incentives, because <b>on even terms greedy people always outcompete selfless people.</b><br /><br />The poster below “Protect your honor from young age!” sends a subliminal signal to new recruits in the Soviet workforce: if you don’t perform at the top of your capacity, pretty girls won’t date you. The girl disparagingly points to a poster that shames a “deviator from workplace requirements” where the lazybag looks confusingly like the young male worker to the right.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiObV-EsFBlbFWk4a-Bofb2nAaEwyRa919UcDFJPz6r8ud-8Tq2Gq2LJLvBq2umY6q5MoVj4aMPJpcc3lfVVdmGO8UxGHeN2to4eeVfa2wefz5sTF7UeNqGf9QSDFqnGkLhBy3jeNzT-HORJO8ewrAQjCOJn3jau7m8XqHdkMJL10OUJ00fpeW801dL0Hr_/s602/soviet%20poster%20protect%20your%20honor.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="391" data-original-width="602" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiObV-EsFBlbFWk4a-Bofb2nAaEwyRa919UcDFJPz6r8ud-8Tq2Gq2LJLvBq2umY6q5MoVj4aMPJpcc3lfVVdmGO8UxGHeN2to4eeVfa2wefz5sTF7UeNqGf9QSDFqnGkLhBy3jeNzT-HORJO8ewrAQjCOJn3jau7m8XqHdkMJL10OUJ00fpeW801dL0Hr_/w400-h260/soviet%20poster%20protect%20your%20honor.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Charles Tips: FREEDOM TO BE CREATIVE<br />I moved to Berkeley in 1977 and met a few newly arrived Russian refugees. I was asked at one point, because I had a car, if I wouldn't show a just-arrived-the-day-before refugee around. He was late-20s like me and I found out that he was a welder, so I took him to the work studios down near the waterfront where artisans crafted unique items.<br /><br />He was stunned. After a couple of welding shops, he confided that his true love was cabinet work; the state had mandated he be a welder. We found a studio where a couple of craftsmen were working on a table top, circular, maybe twelve feet in diameter with intricate inlays of several exotic woods. He talked in his broken English with them for almost an hour, and they invited him back to help for pay.<br /><br />When we left, he thought he was in Heaven. <b>The idea that you could choose your own profession, own your own tools--even your own shop, work your own hours, hire your own help (and do it so informally), create your own designs... this was unbelievable to him.</b></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTMSTksrx_3-FOTYMsZDmGH6IjSfqn3lpCIdNecI0x6LsdKXqImEidOqvW_shkXydM6KggarnvPWJ9YcEPF-sj3ciS5MThZugDHZU4zyx1bzAysQFI46VxT6dy04KBg35m6thHBXv2Gg1mealxaIBKjEv50Vd1ljyqfMmKZWvowki4L-neK-tFntvgWsIr/s602/communist%20PARTY%20congress.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="376" data-original-width="602" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTMSTksrx_3-FOTYMsZDmGH6IjSfqn3lpCIdNecI0x6LsdKXqImEidOqvW_shkXydM6KggarnvPWJ9YcEPF-sj3ciS5MThZugDHZU4zyx1bzAysQFI46VxT6dy04KBg35m6thHBXv2Gg1mealxaIBKjEv50Vd1ljyqfMmKZWvowki4L-neK-tFntvgWsIr/w400-h250/communist%20PARTY%20congress.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Djin Dueh Nuphen: INCENTIVES MATTER<br /><br />Simple. <b>Capitalism has a built in appeal to human nature: Reward.<br /></b><br />In a capitalist system, if you are smart, work hard, maybe invent something you can succeed. By your success you can have things like food, shelter, etc. Those things, and the other fruits of your labors are YOURS. they belong to YOU. And those things tend to be distributed by the amount and the quality of your efforts to be a productive and contributing member of society.<br /><br />Under a communist system the exact opposite is true.<b> Success is disincentivized. Nothing you produce belongs to YOU; everything you produce belongs to the COLLECTIVE.</b> People who work hard get just as much as those who shirk. Or perhaps it is better to say those who contribute the least get as much as those who contribute the most. Worse than that, “the nail standing up gets the hammer”. If one is smarter, stronger, better, etc., that person is either a threat to the others in the collective, or is expected to be worked harder than one’s peers for the same pay. The more you produce, the more is taken from you.<br /><br />When you set up a society based upon “From each according to ability, to each according to need”, you wind up with a lot of needy people incapable of doing much of anything.<br /><br />Casey Jones: THE FREELOADER EFFECT</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">It has something to do with the freeloader effect. <b>Capitalism provides incentive to work hard and guarantees that you will be able to collect the fruits of your labor if you do.</b> <b>It rewards exceptionalism and innovation and allows the best and brightest to rise to the top</b> and bring everyone else with them. This is the reason why capitalism is so successful and has even been allowed in small doses in places like China.<br /><br /><b>Communism stifles creativity and forces the best and brightest to work in jobs that are below their capabilities.</b> It also provides lazy and uninspired people additional opportunities to slack off and freeload knowing that the government will still provide for them. This is why communism has ALWAYS ended badly. Talented hard working people get frustrated, lazy people take advantage, and the whole thing falls apart, usually with disastrous consequences.<br /><br />Harpo Veld: PEOPLE CARE MORE ABOUT THEIR OWN FAMILIES</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Communism works fine in families.<br /> In rare cases, it works in communities larger than a family, but still very small.<br /> It has never been observed to work for any large group of people.</b><br /></i><br />Capitalism works everywhere for large groups.</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> Even in horrendously corrupt third world shitholes, it works orders of magnitude better than any collectivist scheme. The reason is simple —<b> nobody cares about others as much as they care about their own family. Collectivism is unnatural, and can only be established and maintained through violence.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjglW_Y_YCmFqNXGSS735ONesNMxgK40dyxnraBLzklShgrlysePu3RJJVcLsyAoJ9m69xP3wOMOd4Ca2tngo_v7KeTYH-ED2DLAev9gsYOx0Sn6kahsN55HCrBIlVmO-Hj8xNldTFEyPjAjyUFyI_H8GcjZF2LCKq9kGlBrIzs7UsHALcZ_qCw5pr608xw/s602/industrial%20orgy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjglW_Y_YCmFqNXGSS735ONesNMxgK40dyxnraBLzklShgrlysePu3RJJVcLsyAoJ9m69xP3wOMOd4Ca2tngo_v7KeTYH-ED2DLAev9gsYOx0Sn6kahsN55HCrBIlVmO-Hj8xNldTFEyPjAjyUFyI_H8GcjZF2LCKq9kGlBrIzs7UsHALcZ_qCw5pr608xw/w400-h400/industrial%20orgy.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Blake Davis:<br /><b>Capitalism thrives because it depends on human greed. Socialism often doesn’t work because it depends on altruism</b>. Communism almost never works because the “leaders” are self-appointed and have no responsibility to the rest of the population.<br /><br />Peter McKenna:<br /><b>There had never been an example of a country using pure capitalism or pure communism. The only systems that have thrived are a mix of capitalism and socialism.<br /></b><br />Franz Kawabata:<br /><i><b>There are no economic systems that work for everyone. Every economic system has had those for who it didn’t work for.</b><br /></i><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Most economic systems end up having a Pareto type distribution where 80 percent of the wealth is controlled by 20% of the population. </b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>It doesn’t matter if the system is a market-based system or a socialized system or a communist system. 80% of the wealth will end up in the hands of 20% of the population.</b><br /><br /><b>A market-based system with some social safety nets seems to work fairly well for most people. But no system is going to work for everyone.</b></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Joe: BOTH ECONOMIC SYSTEMS OPERATE IN A MACROECONOMY BASED ON CAPITALISM<br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Most people know about communism’s failures but ignore the malfunctions of capitalism. In the United States, people deny the failure of the free market to provide for the least skilled people. The homeless problem demonstrates <b>the inability of capitalism to provide work for the least skilled labor</b>. Labeled as lazy, alcoholics, addicts, or mentally unstable, the homeless remain invisible to those counting the unemployed. Another example is the lack of affordable housing.<br /><br />Many examples of capitalism’s failure exist, beginning in the 13th and 14th centuries. American schools fail to teach the deficiencies of capitalism. We learn only about the one percent representing the most successful individuals in a free market system.<br /> <br />Maybe there is a difference in their production systems that has a significant impact. Comparing communism and capitalism as they work in the real world, we find that a factory in the USSR and a factory in the United States use very similar divisions of labor. <br /><br />Below is an organizational chart depicting the organizational breakdown of the factory structure. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">It displays the relationship between wage and rank. The higher-paid workers are at the top, and the lower-paid workers are at the bottom.<br /><br />· Management<br />· Engineering<br />· Quality Assurance<br />· Machinist/mechanics<br />· Assembly (line-workers)<br />· Materiel handlers<br /><br />Whether production is under a communistic or a capitalistic system, manufacturers sell their goods for a profit, and it depends on a growing market. Thus, <b>both economic systems operate in a macroeconomy based on capitalism</b>. Therefore, both economic systems must differ in dispersing their profits.<br /><br />Neither says how they distribute profits equally. In both systems, wages are considered part of the production cost. Profit is the difference between the price and the cost of a product. <br /><br /><b>Communism argues that the state will distribute profit more equitably than a business, and capitalism believes the opposite is true.</b> Neither communism nor capitalism provides for equitable profit sharing, and<b> we need to discuss fairly distributing the monetary returns. </b><br /><br />Maybe the most significant difference between the two systems is whether they operate under a dictatorship or a democracy.<br /><br />Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In response to Joe's main point: Perhaps the most frequent statement about communism is that no country has ever been able to implement this utopian system. What we get instead is "state capitalism." The government tries to manage factories and stores; except for special cases like the postal service, law enforcement, first responders, and the military, we basically end up with inefficient capitalism. And for political reasons, under "communism," it's more difficult to find competent mangers, and even more difficult to fire one. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">"The business of America is business" </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">— that certainly seems true. But what exactly was the business of the Soviet Union? To create an earthly paradise for assembly-line workers? It's hard not to burst in laughter at any such answer. And those who live in officially capitalist countries have all been taugh that capitalism is the only system that produces wealth. It rewards business skills rather than loyalty to the boss.<br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I keep returning to this topic because I grew up behind the Iron Curtain in a very Catholic country, and saw that the church was more powerful than the state. <b>The church had much better propaganda and made more attractive promises</b> (one can’t really compete with the invention of heaven and hell). Even so, the similarities were inescapable. I speak about the past. At present the power of religion is declining, and yet many people, and not just the young people, long for something they could believe in, some ideals they could work toward — without having to believe a bunch of garbage, i.e. the supernaturalism of religion. <br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCRfoNbjRnRL4Oo7IBj08xYEUrpK-0pSA72diI0vEsInpDVXfarbRBLRc_ElrVPPXAJc206ftwDvWLzXog_f52q_z6TUnyuCTe7d8HnZrJhD2fZQl8TlvbI5AY_qJZYBeWKvbJnQdRLsiklvCiqe1VunqSPmnqjxvoTV_Bsj2nH7BmiyR-tRbaxLAgqwN6/s602/Jesus%20throwing%20out%20capitalists.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="594" data-original-width="602" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCRfoNbjRnRL4Oo7IBj08xYEUrpK-0pSA72diI0vEsInpDVXfarbRBLRc_ElrVPPXAJc206ftwDvWLzXog_f52q_z6TUnyuCTe7d8HnZrJhD2fZQl8TlvbI5AY_qJZYBeWKvbJnQdRLsiklvCiqe1VunqSPmnqjxvoTV_Bsj2nH7BmiyR-tRbaxLAgqwN6/w400-h395/Jesus%20throwing%20out%20capitalists.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">So it’s back to working out one’s own limited happiness and meaning in life, and learning the hard lessons: not everything is possible. What works well for one person may be a disaster for someone else. Don’t attempt too much at one time. The Golden Rule — which I’d call the law of empathy — how would I want to be treated in a particular situation? — is the only principle that appears to work practically all the time (I say “practically” because another hard lesson is that there are exceptions to every rule, and you need a case-by-case approach).<br /><br />I lean to the position that <b>it’s a good thing that communism has been attempted — otherwise we’d always be wondering if such a system could work, and if so, what kind of paradise we're missing for lack of trying</b>. And I also feel grief that untold millions of lives have been lost and/or made miserable because of that experiment. And, above all, remember that nothing is perfect. <br /><br />“We manage best when we manage small.” Who said that? Linda Gregg, a poet who arguably never achieved greatness, but to whom I’m immensely grateful for that particular line. And to write even one line who helped one particular reader is already something rather than nothing. </span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Or to plant even one tree. Or to raise and love even one child. To help even one neighbor in his or her hour of need. To teach someone even one useful thing. I think best when I think small. But other people operate differently, and that’s fine. Tolerance. Respect. Empathy — or call it the Golden Rule — or just ordinary decency.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In summary: it’s very easy to point out that “communism” has really been "state capitalism.” And the state has never been regarded as efficient in managing factories, mines, etc. </span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">But Joe is so right on about the silence on the deficiencies of capitalism. It’s not an ideal system either, but one we’ve settled on as the lesser evil — and a definite boon to those who own “the means of production.” </span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Even commercials and billboards annoy me, and the constant nagging to go shopping so that the economy can keep growing. </span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Well, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, no one seems to have any big ideas — perhaps a blessing. </span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And it has been observed for many decades now that a well regulated capitalism with an adequate social safety net is what works best to offset the costs of capitalism, its boom and bust cycles.</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">What about China? It started flourishing when it gave up the communist project. But the Chinese Communist Party still has a considerable power, and still seems to prevent the country from realizing its fuller potential. It’s like climbing uphill with a heavy backpack filled with useless things. Will China finally dismantle its communist party? That would be huge . . . <br /></span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Meanwhile, nobody seems to care about what works best for the majority of the population. The “dictatorship of the proletariat” has been a bad joke from the start. Just trying to shorten the work week has always been a struggle. But I predict it will happen . . . </span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">* <br /></span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT8ZMsdTVE11xoyzQRIl8IC3ZyaevXjejwuUbjDrVJJnd8A5RuApi1gf1hqL_cMUGT38eIXZjSp0yrpboZJqsjXsG9RQ9fyYrtDRqFluMv6sTbqUl1y0ztxScNe5BYBYxT3KpN5jskSsZ5djV1ElI8Lx2mLbY4oJ_rZSIIXk_kCs2xK9heMZyuHfGWPC9J/s602/john%20quincy%20adams%20I%20have%20to%20study%20politics.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="321" data-original-width="602" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT8ZMsdTVE11xoyzQRIl8IC3ZyaevXjejwuUbjDrVJJnd8A5RuApi1gf1hqL_cMUGT38eIXZjSp0yrpboZJqsjXsG9RQ9fyYrtDRqFluMv6sTbqUl1y0ztxScNe5BYBYxT3KpN5jskSsZ5djV1ElI8Lx2mLbY4oJ_rZSIIXk_kCs2xK9heMZyuHfGWPC9J/w400-h214/john%20quincy%20adams%20I%20have%20to%20study%20politics.jpg" width="400" /></a></div></span></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><i><b>Ideology is the curse of public affairs because it converts politics into a branch of theology and sacrifices human beings on the thoughts of abstractions. ~ Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.</b><br /></i><br />*<br /><b>THE FREEDOM LEGION: RUSSIANS WHO FIGHT AGAINST PUTIN ON THE SIDE OF UKRAINE</b><br /><br /><i><b>On the morning of March 12, 2024, several armed groups crossed the border with Russia in Kursk and Belgorod regions on pickup trucks and tanks, supported by mortar and artillery fire.</b></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The shocked residents posted videos of tanks with blue flags passing through their villages.<br />The groups that crossed the border are the Siberian battalion, the Legion Freedom of Russia and the Russian Voluntary Corps. These regiments consist of citizens of Russia who fight on the side of Ukraine against the armed forces of the Russian Federation.<br /><br />Russian citizens join these regiments to fight against Putin’s regime, for the freedom of Russia.<br />Lozovaya Rudka, a village near the border in the Belgorod region, is completely under the control of the RVC.</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">After a shooting battle, Tyotkino in Kursk region is also under control of the rebel forces.<br />On March 11, drones attacked Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tula, Nizhny Novgorod regions, Belgorod, Kursk, Oryol, and Voronezh in Russia.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG2gp_59ormWhJWL-LeHAGCxOY8BIbOofSd24F3VN6nc3fEA2OvAav7z1trf9eaSNaW99RWp7f6xbhPFXMBZi0WsuC_32B5z0BK_h32yNENurLVDuWSDBhrXo8EQw5f5fm0bdpPTKRSXtO7A4B404HW6GeFQEwh2ydi9v_hCSUC6yZtZCUidR1rmwE6XFg/s694/russian%20oil%20depot%20burning.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="694" data-original-width="602" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG2gp_59ormWhJWL-LeHAGCxOY8BIbOofSd24F3VN6nc3fEA2OvAav7z1trf9eaSNaW99RWp7f6xbhPFXMBZi0WsuC_32B5z0BK_h32yNENurLVDuWSDBhrXo8EQw5f5fm0bdpPTKRSXtO7A4B404HW6GeFQEwh2ydi9v_hCSUC6yZtZCUidR1rmwE6XFg/w278-h320/russian%20oil%20depot%20burning.jpg" width="278" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Russian oil depot burning</i></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i></i></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oil depots, refineries and other infrastructure facilities are burning after the hits.<br /><br />In the Nizhny Novgorod region, a drone attacked a Lukoil oil depot. The main crude distillation unit was damaged in the attack.<br /><br />At the oil depot in Orel, one of the fuel tanks was set on fire, which has been expanding for hours, destroying everything in its path.<br /><br />In St. Petersburg, the Southern Thermal Power Plant is on fire.<br /><br />As a result of explosions following a Ukrainian drone attack in the Belgorod region, power lines were damaged, leaving 7 settlements without power. <b>Videos of drones freely flying over Belgorod are all over Russian social networks.</b><br /><br />Su-27 plane was shot down over Belgorod region.<br /><br />Another plane, transport aircraft Il-76 with 15 military personnel on board, crashed in Ivanovo region.<br /><br />Meanwhile, Russian RIA News reported that “Kyiv is building up its forces near the Russian border.”<br /><br />The Legion "Freedom of Russia" recorded an appeal on the Russian-Ukrainian border.<br /><br /><b>“Putin is planning to rule till his death. We won’t allow it! </b>We are Russian citizens, just like you. We too have the right to express our will. And our will is to not recognize the bloody dictator as the president of Russia,” said the commander of The Legion.<br /><br />“We will take our land back from the regime, centimeter by centimeter. Russians will sleep peacefully, they won’t be afraid of the doorbell, and will be able to say what they think without fear. Russians will vote for whom they want, and not for whom they should. Russians will live freely!” ~ Elena Gold, Quora<br /><br />*<br /><b>MORE RUSSIAN REFINERIES ON FIRE</b><br /><br />2 more oil refineries went on fire in Russia today. (March 16, 2024)</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Drones attacked oil refineries in Syzran and Novokuybyshevsky, Samara region.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Notably, Syzran is 1,300 km from the border with Ukraine.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The governor of the region, Azarov, officially confirmed to RIA Novosti that fire broke at oil processing plants.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv6GyixZons1G13ZBx_lq6H-udEgSNLUjI-jncHBf_gZOzIOXaCWZkV1qz4Fpt9gkKTBOLaqos44u4lC9yfkPi6Ua5h5krobNcaLBTO9NlHi87We-avc2Cg-Kj91cjEQvNet9j_3C0XqptjxIi7VAf0KvUtwNKe6WaLf5C4iH2RvJeI5ShhlPsBEYoFY60/s812/russian%20refinery%20on%20fire%202024.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="812" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv6GyixZons1G13ZBx_lq6H-udEgSNLUjI-jncHBf_gZOzIOXaCWZkV1qz4Fpt9gkKTBOLaqos44u4lC9yfkPi6Ua5h5krobNcaLBTO9NlHi87We-avc2Cg-Kj91cjEQvNet9j_3C0XqptjxIi7VAf0KvUtwNKe6WaLf5C4iH2RvJeI5ShhlPsBEYoFY60/w296-h400/russian%20refinery%20on%20fire%202024.jpg" width="296" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">It’s already refineries #13 and #14 that suffered hits in Russia.</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In response, Russia hit a residential building in Odesa, Ukraine, with a ballistic missile.<b> And then Russia hit it with a ballistic missile again, targeting first responders – emergency services and medics, in an effort to obtain maximum civilian casualties.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">20 people died as the result of the “double-tap” attack, more than 70 people wounded, several of them are in critical condition.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And to all these asking, “What did you expect?”, the answer is “Ukrainians expected to live their lives in their country without Russia or its useful idiots asking stupid questions”.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Ukrainian families experience pain and suffering every day. Only the complete destruction of the "beast from the east" will put an end to suffering.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Dmitry Medvedev (who always expresses what Putin wants to say but can’t) proposed the Russian version of “peace formula”: Ukraine must capitulate, the whole territory of Ukraine must become Russia, all Ukrainian officials must be removed, and Ukraine must pay a compensation to Russia for the Russian soldiers killed and wounded in the war.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">So, we now have Russia’s “peace plan” — anyone who would like to suggest to Ukraine to negotiate with Russia, should be simply directed to Medvedev’s Telegram to read this remarkable plan in full.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Now any country should know: if Russia attacks you, this means they are going to keep killing your people and destroying your cities unless you surrender. And then they are going to annex your land and demand compensation for the inconvenience. And, of course, they are going to torture and kill the people who don’t love Russia, deport half of population to Siberia, and relocate Russians from Russia to live in the homes of deported locals.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This all had already happened before. The Soviet Union was attacking smaller countries and demanding capitulation, and <b>when the governments signed capitulation, Soviets immediately began executions and deportations, and brought hundreds of thousands of their own settlers to change the ethnic composition of the annexed territories</b>.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">There is nothings that Putin is doing now that the leaders of Russia and the Soviet Union haven’t done before. That’s what they always do</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This inhumane regime must be destroyed once and for all.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">French president Macron stated that this war is existential for Europe. <b>Putin can’t be appeased. Any appeasement only leads to increased appetites of Kremlin elders</b>. The free world must unite efforts to help Ukraine put an end to the Kremlin’s genocidal war. ~ Elena Gold, Quora<br /><br />*<br /><b>MISHA FIRER: INSIDE RUSSIA<br /></b><br />~ Capitalism divides people into winners and losers. Possession of capital is viewed as the ultimate virtue by almost everyone in the society and lack of thereof as a cardinal sin.<br /><br /><b>The educated middle class abandoned Vladimir Putin after he staged his third, illegal term in office. His support base ever since have been the people whom the Russian capitalist system would characterize as losers if it were honest with itself, plus business and political elites who have benefited financially from this social contract.<br /></b><br />Losers turned May 9, Victory Day street celebration, into a validation of their secret cravings for self-identification with the strong and all-powerful state.<br /><br />All of them dressed up in Red Army uniforms, transformed their sets of wheels into flashy battle tanks and hoisted Soviet flags proclaiming that they are headed to Berlin to win BIG.<br />They didn’t want to fight. They cosplayed meat assaults of their grandfathers to boost their fragile egos with victories they couldn’t bring themselves to achieve within the framework of the new capitalist society.<br /><br />Losers pretended to be winners for a day and limped home with a tail between their legs to the dreary lives of underpaid clerks, small business owners, mechanics , security guards.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And then, oh miracle! Putin had offered them an opportunity of a lifetime to join the actual WW2 style fighting against the new Nazis in Ukraine!<br /><br />He called out for “partial mobilization” that was meant to recruit ONLY combat veterans and reservists of certain specialties, the very contingent who bought them by means of five year car loans big shiny Toyotas the size of their flats in prefab panel blocs, built in post-WW2 to house survivors cheaply, efficiently, and quickly.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFhDnNZ26j8r8YOAGwRit77z8ldunQcHF0ouizo4izxCq3CtEPzlusmFMyV57z7Z0_gqzOR81TDymFx9NiZ-zEe81JImMY2Cy2mrefM2KMTvAIAhRee0QZFWiVv7hVOq1aX4O5FJw3n-mkQ1UD9hylqLrDLteYViiYuNEq07fWwe-XdTp8GsViBeYuD33k/s602/car%20pretend%20tank%20slogans.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="421" data-original-width="602" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFhDnNZ26j8r8YOAGwRit77z8ldunQcHF0ouizo4izxCq3CtEPzlusmFMyV57z7Z0_gqzOR81TDymFx9NiZ-zEe81JImMY2Cy2mrefM2KMTvAIAhRee0QZFWiVv7hVOq1aX4O5FJw3n-mkQ1UD9hylqLrDLteYViiYuNEq07fWwe-XdTp8GsViBeYuD33k/w400-h280/car%20pretend%20tank%20slogans.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">You would expect the brave cosplayers (Hitler kaput! Russians are coming!) who pumped fists in the air and swore “we can repeat the march to Berlin!” and “Not a step back!” to form long lines outside the recruitment offices. To walk the talk. To put words into action.<br /><br />In September 2022, I watched on a TV screen in my Moscow apartment men on bicycles crossing into Georgia and Kazakstan and couldn’t help laughing as I recalled vividly how those same morons dressed in fake military uniforms blocked roads and sidewalks with their stupid cars and bumper stickers that harped on how they all gonna defeat Nazis.<br /><br />“There are Nazis at the gates! Your hero-dictator had told you! Where are you all running??”<br />In fact their grandfathers did exactly the same — when Hitler’s army crossed the border into Belarus, Red Army soldiers and officers skedaddled all the way to the outskirts of Moscow occasionally chucking hundreds of thousands of peasants under the well-oiled tracks of the German tanks hoping against all hopes that this would make Hitler change his mind and then burying the corpses in the common grave and <b>later sticking a monument to the Unknown Soldier on top because nobody bothered to learn any names of the soldiers sent on a suicide mission…</b>while leadership in the West from the Pope to Anglo leaders preached appeasement and invited everyone to lay down their guns and conform to the new realities on the ground.<br /><br />However, to their credit not everyone had tried to skirt responsibilities of self-proclaimed Nazi fighters (although majority had to be baited with generous wages), and there were volunteers who joined the Russian forces to thwart momentum of the Ukrainian army that began to de-occupy swathes of land in the east.<br /><br />Some of military cosplayers who believed that they fought like their grandfathers got captured. A few of them were deprogrammed and formed the Russian Freedom Legion and the Siberian Battalion with the set goal to change the direction of the march, from Berlin to Moscow!<br /><br />“To Moscow!” was their new credo. Putin is the new Hitler and he must be defeated. But what flag to hoist on top of a real battle tank? A Soviet one can’t do, naturally.<br /><br />What about a European Union flag?<br /><br />A Russian woman woke up this morning and heard the already familiar sounds of thunderous rumblings.<br /><br />She peered out of the window of her house in Shebekino, Belgorod region that borders Ukraine in the east and to her greatest horror saw a tank with a European Union flag on top.<br /><br /><b>In the gray hues of sky and bare early spring ground, bright blue fabric stood out like an invitation to a beheading.</b><br /><br />“Baby Jesus, Virgin Mary, and Patriarch Killkill!” She exclaimed and crossed herself .<br /><br />The cross border raid of the Russian freedom fighters fighting on the side of Ukraine followed a pronouncement from Ilya Ponomarev, leader of the Freedom Legion who claimed that if they cross into Russia with 100 troops, they gonna reach Moscow with 100,000 troops next day. So many volunteers would wish to join them!<br /><br />He referenced the mutiny of Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the mercenary army. He marched to Moscow from Rostov-on-Don in the south and managed to reach Kaluga, mere hundred miles from Moscow, at which point he stopped and decided not to engage in a battle with the National Guards.<br /><br />The Russian army didn’t try to stop Prigozhin’s mercenaries at any time, apart from the botched attempt to blow up the convoy by the Air Force warplanes.<br /><br />Deprogrammed Russian Freedom Legion believed that if the Russians see an EU flag they would think that they are being liberated from Putin’s regime by the good guys, too.<br /><br />They mixed up narratives. It’s Ukraine that wants to join the EU. Not Russia!<br /><br />Had Prigozhin hoisted an EU flag on his SUV, his own mercs would have shot him 236 times on the spot. And so the collective madness continues where conflicting narratives jive for attention, credibility and victory.<br /><br />The winner takes it all. Loser has to fall. ~ Quora<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnodc9o949TThvUg2Ts3j8iJhSVb35YEsz5BzNGhvNpC_7LDoezlMqL42NGxDSZ4bJKMms4AGm5kEOZSkH3Av6yupNRB2MHvaWwc-lLZfhOFT67i2WtUdVlAaAWHTle0AEaZ0hvo69XRuYkSJF7sgsEk3rRV__qs0kwRopfRiACvzkgG5b-d36I4LsUr5R/s612/belgorod.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="408" data-original-width="612" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnodc9o949TThvUg2Ts3j8iJhSVb35YEsz5BzNGhvNpC_7LDoezlMqL42NGxDSZ4bJKMms4AGm5kEOZSkH3Av6yupNRB2MHvaWwc-lLZfhOFT67i2WtUdVlAaAWHTle0AEaZ0hvo69XRuYkSJF7sgsEk3rRV__qs0kwRopfRiACvzkgG5b-d36I4LsUr5R/w400-h266/belgorod.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Belgorod</i><br /><br />*<br /><b>PUTIN’S PARANOIA</b><br /><br /><b>Putin is very paranoid when it comes to staying in power. But that is an uninteresting fact, despite being decorated by a host of prominent corpses.<br /></b><br />It is far more interesting to speculate about national paranoia, which the phrasing of this question invites.<br /><br />I’m probably going to depart from the expected script here and suggest that there’s very little actual fear of NATO or the Anglo-Saxon Kabal driving Russian foreign policy or resonating deeply with common people. It’s just a story that they’ve all agreed to parrot. <b>Defending against an existential threat hearkens back to the Great Patriotic War and just sounds a whole lot better than ‘reconquering what we used to control.”</b><br /><br />More than paranoia, <b>I believe the national character of today’s Russians is constructed on an inferiority complex and fear of becoming an irrelevant (worse, economically subservient) apparition on the world stage. Like China, and like the anti-globalist movements in the West, Russia regards world trade as a zero-sum game, one that it is losing badly.<br /></b><br />The solution—go back to what worked before: expansionism at the expense of weaker neighbors. It’s just too bad that this time there’s no power vacuum left after the collapse of an empire like the Mongols or Ottomans. Too bad that the rest of the world has moved on, and has figured out a way to protect sovereign countries, even if smaller. <b>Too bad the former USSR satellites in Europe rushed to join NATO in their correct assessment that history will be repeated.</b><br /><br />The reason Russia invaded all of Ukraine is that it viewed its eventual westward pivot as a condemnation of a way of life (which it was), a spurning of a sacred “origin” that can only be explained as a sinister manipulation by the West (it cannot be that our culture, our common roots, our shared destiny, are what is actually being rejected).<br /><br />I think you probably have to be a Russian with some Ukrainian roots or a Ukrainian with Russian roots to truly appreciate what this bloody conflict is about.<br /><br />Maybe we can come close if we picture an aging but vicious patriarch in a deeply religious family who wouldn’t mind seeing a young nephew beaten by his enforcers within an inch of his life and dragged back to the village in order to save him from a gay lifestyle in the corrupt, godless city.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7A1nzqBukXoLminSxZW4rHSQ53HTLg6tDjSsRZq3cVuIZKhXI0QHK7qnZUaLpzY5BFH3mRR-P6N57Oag6s61luN29rxbYifB6-iOQTDcpWMGhrnY77vfAKE2suWrWlDWg3JBccZn0i-w_Xnd2HaFzIk2RhIokQ6tCsWFBZ-MXswog7aWcy9WJxVDx4UT7/s602/Putin%20finger%20up.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="338" data-original-width="602" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7A1nzqBukXoLminSxZW4rHSQ53HTLg6tDjSsRZq3cVuIZKhXI0QHK7qnZUaLpzY5BFH3mRR-P6N57Oag6s61luN29rxbYifB6-iOQTDcpWMGhrnY77vfAKE2suWrWlDWg3JBccZn0i-w_Xnd2HaFzIk2RhIokQ6tCsWFBZ-MXswog7aWcy9WJxVDx4UT7/w400-h225/Putin%20finger%20up.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In a certain very twisted way, the conflict is more about family than about paranoia.<br /><br />~ Plamen Arnaudov, Quora<br /><br />Victor Bennett:<br />I think you are overlooking the effect of Putin's ego in all of this. <b>Putin appears to be obsessed with his popularity levels in Russia. After he stole Crimea his popularity went sky high but then began to drift downward over time.</b> I think he may have convinced himself that a quick, three week conquest of Ukraine would send his popularity through the roof and he could then bask in the adulation of his adoring peasants.<br /><br />Christopher Aspen:<br />Isn't it a bit rich to invade a sovereign nation, all because this nation is inching closer to the “decadent” West and Russian culture in Ukraine is becoming less influential and then expect the world to agree to your reasoning for invading it?<br /><br />*<br /><b>“NO PERSON, NO PROBLEM”: SERIAL DEATHS IN THE RUSSIAN OIL INDUSTRY<br /></b></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNKmFaH6qoSwtwORfTYH_VhobzBQ3GnQ__GSG3yD50f-I6O50U_7g3ajaWEnAf37YSie6MssudfJM5cC5ZDQtDFbNMo5MWJkvagFoEd0DGQxS2MrxaB8BLOvxhoHs9NbIzntX9DZtDZGBH4ckFqfLGXFM3VudbgGqSZ4c0fqEy85kfvCooFmh4DLXGofbl/s602/Vitaly%20Robertus%20VP%20of%20LUKoil%20dead%20at%2053.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="569" data-original-width="602" height="378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNKmFaH6qoSwtwORfTYH_VhobzBQ3GnQ__GSG3yD50f-I6O50U_7g3ajaWEnAf37YSie6MssudfJM5cC5ZDQtDFbNMo5MWJkvagFoEd0DGQxS2MrxaB8BLOvxhoHs9NbIzntX9DZtDZGBH4ckFqfLGXFM3VudbgGqSZ4c0fqEy85kfvCooFmh4DLXGofbl/w400-h378/Vitaly%20Robertus%20VP%20of%20LUKoil%20dead%20at%2053.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Vitaly Robertus, vice president of the Russian company LUKoil, suddenly dead “of asphyxia” at the age of 53.<br /></i><br />Robertus worked for LUKoil for all his life, joining the company after graduating from the university 30 years ago.<br /><br />This is the 13th death of a Russian top manager since the beginning of 2022 — almost all of them worked in oil companies.<br /><br />In LUKoil, it’s already death #5:<br /><br />1.) May 2022: 44-year-old ex-top manager of LUKoil, billionaire Subbotin, died.<br />2.) September 2022: 67-year-old head of the board of directors of LUKoil Maganov died (fell from a hospital window).<br />3.) December 2022: 48-year-old head of one of the major LUKoil subsidiaries, Zatsepin, died.<br />4.) October 2023: 66-year-old Nekrasov (who replaced Maganov as head of the board of directors of LUKoil), died.<br />5.) March 2024: 53-year-old vice president of LUKoil Robertus died.<br /><br />Obviously, it’s purely coincidental that<b> in less than 2 years, 5 top executives of one of the largest oil companies in Russia died.</b><br /><br />And it has nothing to do with turf wars among Putin’s “elites”, who are fighting for the shrinking pie of the Russian economy, using the simplest method they know since Stalin’s times: “no person, no problem”. ~ Elena Gold, Quora<br /><br />Tim Weston: <br />Except <b>the “person” who is the actual problem is still there, but with absolute, unchecked power. At that time it was Stalin, now it is Putin.<br /></b><br />Franz Peter:<br />Stalinist methods have left their bloody imprint, for sure, and came out of hiding when Poo-tin took over.<br /><br />Albina Graniute:<br />I can assure you that <b>none of them is a good person and they all knew exactly what they were getting into when they took the job. Most of them probably have arranged assassinations of their competitors before, or at the very least, have threatened or harmed them in other ways. Nobody gets to be an executive in an oil company in Russia by simply being a competent specialist in the field.</b><br /><br />Elena Gold:<br /><i><b>They can’t escape Russia and can’t quit their jobs — Putin forbade execs to resign.</b><br /></i><br />Kumar Narain:<br />Indians bought oil in Indian rupees, ha ha ! So they say. That is all theater to fool the world. Indians paid in dirty dollars too, sitting somewhere.<br /><br />*<br /><b>DUNE, PART 2: THE SPACE MUSLIM</b></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGBFnoW72Qq5QpO3O2mouStfPLkV_O6J1d9RqxXaCiOCf10VQtptWQ0-zBr2AKe1R5hYk50kZzR17QBddKVDbDmWfCf-PyK9HV_49Mz3HqtTJQgpy-B_G9J4wLBl2ZvqfuQJnC9aF3j0WIYQDA8RFF1MggxsuQZgrjnVstKuCWmnK01bSnJn24hJ1McfFo/s1440/dune%202%20character%20pile-up.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="1440" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGBFnoW72Qq5QpO3O2mouStfPLkV_O6J1d9RqxXaCiOCf10VQtptWQ0-zBr2AKe1R5hYk50kZzR17QBddKVDbDmWfCf-PyK9HV_49Mz3HqtTJQgpy-B_G9J4wLBl2ZvqfuQJnC9aF3j0WIYQDA8RFF1MggxsuQZgrjnVstKuCWmnK01bSnJn24hJ1McfFo/w400-h225/dune%202%20character%20pile-up.jpg" width="400" /></a></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Let’s start with a positive review:<br /><br />~ The word that will likely be used most often to describe Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two” is “massive.” Expect a whole lot of variations on the words “epic” and “spectacle” too. Whatever big words you apply to the result, Villeneuve undeniably did not approach Frank Herbert’s beloved sci-fi novel with modest aspirations, and it’s his ambition, along with the top tier of behind-the-scenes craftspeople with whom he collaborated, that have paid off in this superior follow-up to the Oscar-winning 2021 film. While that beloved blockbuster often felt like half a film, “Dune: Part Two” locates significantly higher stakes on Arrakis, while injecting <b>just enough humor and nuanced themes about power and fanaticism to flavor the old-fashioned storytelling.</b> More than a simple savior or chosen one story, “Dune: Part Two” is a robust piece of filmmaking, a reminder that this kind of broad-scale blockbuster can be done with artistry and flair.<br /><br />“Dune: Part Two” picks up so closely on the heels of the first film that the Fremen are still transporting the body of Jamis (Babs Olusanmokun) home again after he was bested in the fight with Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet). After the massacre of House Atreides, Paul chose to go with the Fremen, much to the consternation of his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson). Thinking both Paul and Jessica were taken by the desert and all hopped up on violence after destroying the Atreides interlopers, House Harkonnen amplifies its attack on the Fremen, leading to a few remarkably staged battles between the warriors and soldiers. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Villeneuve and his team deftly fill the first hour with battle sequences that counter the firepower of the Harkonnen military and the Fremen tribal combatants, who often literally emerge from the earth to destroy them. Bodies fall from the sky as enormous ships burst into flames in a way that feels nearly operatic. Amidst the chaos, Dave Bautista cannily sketches Rabban Harkonnen as a wartime leader who is in way over his bald head while Stellan Skargard leans even harder into a sort of blend between Nosferatu and Jabba the Hutt.<br /><br />As the battle between the Fremen and the Harkonnens for control of Arrakis serves as the backdrop for “Dune: Part Two,” Paul’s arc from nervous young man at the beginning of the first film to potential leader plays out in the foreground.<b> A Fremen tribal leader named Stilgar (Javier Bardem) is convinced that Paul Atreides is the chosen one that has been foretold among his people for generations</b>. Even as so much of the mythology points to Paul’s savior role, the Emo King tries to blend into the Fremen, forming a relationship with a young warrior named Chani (Zendaya). Paul passes the tests put in front of him by the Fremen, takes on the tribal name of Muad’Dib, and vows vengeance against the Harkonnens who were behind his father’s death.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">On another planet, an Emperor named Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken) counsels with his daughter Irulan (Florence Pugh) and a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother (Charlotte Rampling) on the state of Arrakis. It’s revealed early on that Shaddam basically sent House Atreides to its destruction, meaning he’s on that vengeance list that Paul’s been keeping, while Irulan serves as a sort-of narrator for “Dune: Part Two,” dictating some of the political developments into a device that’s really designed to keep audiences with the plot.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">If the interstellar politics aren’t enough, writers Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts inject <b>+</b>Lady Jessica becomes a powerful religious figure of her own among the Fremen, guiding her son’s ascendance in a manner that feels nefarious and unsettling. “Dune: Part Two” is not a traditional hero’s journey in that it’s constantly questioning if being led by an outsider from another culture is the right move—Chani sure doesn’t think so, and Zendaya subtly finds notes to make viewers wonder what a happy ending would be for these characters. As Jessica and Paul learn more about Fremen history and culture, they threaten not to lead it as much as dismantle and own it. There’s a big difference.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">While the plotting in “Part Two” is undeniably richer than the first film, its greatest assets are once again on a craft level. Greig Fraser, who won the Oscar for cinematography the first time, tops his work there with <b>stunning use of color and light. It’s in the manner the sun hits Chalamet’s face at a certain angle or the wildly different palettes that differentiate the Harkonnens and the Fremen. </b><br /><br />The browns and blues of the desert culture don’t feel arid as much as grounded and tactile, while the Harkonnen world is so devoid of color that it’s often literally black and white—even what look like fireworks pop like someone throwing colorless paint at a wall. Hans Zimmer’s Oscar-winning score felt a bit overdone to me in the first film, but he smartly differentiates the cultures here, finding more metallic sounds for the cold Harkonnens to balance against the heated score for the Fremen. Finally, the effects and sound design feel denser this time, and the fight choreography reminds one how poorly this has been done in other blockbuster films.<br /><br />As for performers, Chalamet is likely to be the most divisive element, <b>often feeling a bit flat for someone believed to be the Neo of this world.</b> However, those choices add up in a way that makes thematic sense, enhancing the uncertainty of Paul’s rise. Zendaya is solid—although she lacks chemistry with Chalamet that would have helped—but <b>it’s Ferguson’s slippery performance and Bardem’s playful one that really add flavors here that weren’t in the first outing.</b> Finally, <b>Austin Butler leans hard into the exaggerated role of Feyd-Rautha, playing the sociopathic nephew of the Baron with all the scenery-chewing intensity that a character like this needs to work, finding the emotional void to balance out against Chalamet’s tempestuous inner monologue.</b><br /><br />“Dune: Part Two” has been compared to “The Empire Strikes Back” in the run-up to its release, and that’s not quite right. The better comparison is “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,” another film that built on what we knew about the characters from the first film, added a few new ones, and really amplified <b>a sense of continuous battle and danger</b>. Like both films, a third chapter feels inevitable. Critics will have to come up with a new synonym for massive.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dune-part-two-movie-review-2024">https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dune-part-two-movie-review-2024<br /><br /></a>and then I found this gem:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>SPACE MUSLIM VERSUS CRUSADERS</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">"It has been (accepted) by all Muslims in every epoch, that at the end of time, <b>a man from the family (of the Prophet) will without fail make his appearance, one who will strengthen Islam and make justice triumph," wrote Ibn Khaldun in The Muqqadamiah. "Muslims will follow him, and he will gain domination over the Muslim realm. He will be called the Mahdî."</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In the Tunisian-born sociologist, philosopher, and historian's exhaustive 14th-century introduction to the Islamic world of theology, philosophy, ecology, economics, power and politics, there is no escaping just how influential it was on Frank Herbert's original Dune novel series.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The sci-fi series borrows and repurposes many of his observations about civilizations to build an Imperial universe set 20,000 years in the future.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">From desert life versus sedentary culture, the rise and fall of dynasties and the diversity of religious practice, Herbert weaved these weighty historical concepts and themes into a <b>sweeping narrative that delivers an epic critique of the Messiah Complex.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In the realm of Dune's Old Imperium, Paul Atreidis is his "Mahdi," albeit a reluctant one.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>What's Dune Part Two about?</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Having survived the devastating attack on House Atreides by rivals the Harkonnens in Dune — Part One, and the betrayal of Emperor Shaddam IV who supported the overthrow, Paul (Timothee Chalamet) and his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) are forced into the desert and taken in by Fremen leader Stilgar (Javier Bardem).</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This is after Paul won a fatal duel against the Fremen Jamis and much of the 2hr 48 minute runtime is dedicated to his and Lady Jessica's assimilation into and ultimate leadership over this nomadic warrior people.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">As well as lead a revolt against the usurping Harkonnens and the Emperor to claim control over the planet's spice production – the most valuable substance in the universe.<br /><i></i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgiH-Yz4VosZsHUDkwVjCUUAw6ZFizHpABotZG3Hz3d8QSvxzZcMvpwJ7G1DZYEvdAKZFZMi4bn7TwkbIV5slWt8cMpzv1Ij3pb-7uhQDfrvuK1X40UFEGGRIK7KTMaH8wz5nyUB6DbREyKtjNRgKJU53Vs3zyg1cy3ItTWseLFHIH5PzGeroBxhPtcqgN/s760/dune%202%20Baron%20Vladimir%20Harkonnen%20(Stellan%20Skargard).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="507" data-original-width="760" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgiH-Yz4VosZsHUDkwVjCUUAw6ZFizHpABotZG3Hz3d8QSvxzZcMvpwJ7G1DZYEvdAKZFZMi4bn7TwkbIV5slWt8cMpzv1Ij3pb-7uhQDfrvuK1X40UFEGGRIK7KTMaH8wz5nyUB6DbREyKtjNRgKJU53Vs3zyg1cy3ItTWseLFHIH5PzGeroBxhPtcqgN/w400-h266/dune%202%20Baron%20Vladimir%20Harkonnen%20(Stellan%20Skargard).jpg" width="400" /></a></i></div><i><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Baron Vladimir Harkonnen</span></i><br /><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">One of Dune Part Two's successes is how acutely it wrestles with the scheming efforts of the Bene Gesserit and the false idolatry they've for centuries laid the groundwork for.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Jessica's superpowered matriarchal order has spent many generations manipulating the Fremen tribes into believing their invented prophecy of the Kwisatz Haderach (AKA the Mahdi/Lisan Al-Gaib) – an off-worlder who will lead them to their salvation.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Aware of dynastic changes of rule, the Bene Gesserit secure bloodlines of Houses to maintain power in the universe but Jessica's self-serving plans for her first child by the fallen Duke Leto I have positioned Paul into that messianic role; a move that creates friction between mother and son as their paths diverge then realign in the third act.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Ferguson injects some of that Doctor Sleep/Rose the Hat eeriness into her performance; <b>there's an increasingly disturbing glint in Jessica's eye as she becomes Reverend Mother and goes on a holy conversion mission to the South of Arrakis.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The ominous conversations she has with her pre-born daughter (growing in her womb) intensify the weirdness that Ferguson revels in. Searing visions, conversations about faith and divination with the Fremen and arguments with Jessica, lay the groundwork for the tumultuous voyage of the mind, body and soul Paul goes through under the influence of spice that shimmers across the vast desert dunes.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">There's a rich interiority of these particular characters and Chalamet compellingly charts <b>Paul's emotional evolution from unwilling savior to pragmatic leader.</b> However, the biggest motivating factor for accepting this destiny is oddly underexpressed.<br /><br />His relationship with Chani (Zendaya) also comes into clearer focus and the sweet-looking pair suits the somewhat basic YA romance filter applied to it; Paul's attempt to mansplain sand-walking to the Arrakis native raises a smile.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But changes from the book mean there isn't an equal exchange of knowledge between the two that truly cements their affections or the genuine depth of their bond to each other – save for an ambiguous headband that might hint at a key plot point that has been erased from this part of the story.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">There's a dearth of character development as to who Chani is beyond a member of the Fedeykin (the Fremen's fearsome guerrilla fighter group), devout to her nation but sceptical of their faith.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In the novel, Liet Kynes is her father with Sharon Duncan-Brewster playing a gender-swapped version of that character; here, there's zero acknowledgement of that relationship. Chani is no damsel-in-distress but Zendaya's ability to connect us to her journey is restrained to a typical strong female characterization throwing a romantic spanner in the works for the male lead.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">That superficiality is more widespread in the Fremen cast. Little time is spent in establishing these people and their culture beyond fighting, survival and religious fanaticism.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuXB-sUlP3dwdeyMjQmovAvAXrdMLlPx7msFG-ocKvexRekRoLt_ToOUKM4MV6ml1pFPzgqc5b0VDNYFscU_VQSjOsmS6zaVILReVgmBtpaYW-vynB9O_3si2rTkX1t6f363zhQEyHfj_NoHpP7nLH0BQtaXh-AllwxZwYIE-a77lPSQiKGR2ZM_xV-01A/s760/Dune%202%20Jessica.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="507" data-original-width="760" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuXB-sUlP3dwdeyMjQmovAvAXrdMLlPx7msFG-ocKvexRekRoLt_ToOUKM4MV6ml1pFPzgqc5b0VDNYFscU_VQSjOsmS6zaVILReVgmBtpaYW-vynB9O_3si2rTkX1t6f363zhQEyHfj_NoHpP7nLH0BQtaXh-AllwxZwYIE-a77lPSQiKGR2ZM_xV-01A/w400-h266/Dune%202%20Jessica.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Little do the group feelings and traditions that make them such a formidable, connected community permeate beyond their Islam-inspired prayer rituals.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The casting of Swiss-Tunisian actress Souhelia Yacoub is a win for Arab representation in a film that restricts actors of MENA heritage to background players.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Playing a gender-swapped version of Fedaykin warrior Shishakli, she's shrewd, funny and delivers the Fremen language (Arabic that has been tweaked for the film) with a fluid ease her castmates don't share. Most of the Fremen accents are all over the place; Chani's American accent is jarring. I guffawed when one Fremen with a Scottish lilt said Mahdi like "mardy". </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">A nonsensical joke about Stilgar's accent coming from "the South" is a reminder that Bardem is cosplaying as a Bedouin Arab. Bardem offers a warm, frequently humorous performance but mostly at the expense of Stilgar's faith. <b>A faith that makes mentions of Jinn and is depicted through costumes including abayas, hijabs and keffiyehs.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Cultural appropriation aside, there are too many characters to do them justice in a film more focused on the grandiose than the granular motivations of its side players or a more fervent exploration of imperialism and colonialism beyond "good vs bad."<br /><br />Ferguson's Imazighen facial tattoos and headdresses hit home not just the cultural appropriation of Jessica once she becomes Reverend Mother but the film too. That we are not privy to the secret histories and traditions she has inherited (robbed!) through this ritual is another way the film denies the Fremen a more vigorous depiction.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">On the other side of the conflict is the pseudo-European Houses Harkonnen and House Corrino which intensifies the well-trodden Christian vs Muslim themes.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">A visit to the brutalist, monochrome world of Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) introduces his sadistic nephew Feyd-Rautha, who wouldn't look out of place at Berlin's infamous Berghain [gay] nightclub.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPBdMbqFFhV-7eRcclC-20q6APgkfrQO06HavxiqQ7Ia-yahyphenhyphen5RN42G3lqbN2oqC69igapJ2XeDQTJKoHlop8gQHeZXfAJkwot7xguRENEWedg9ZJg4kX7CJjEGySUsfJ1FGC2RXABl1rI1RgvIk5dHaZvSFAY4YbEw9fqLnYnyHCjeUZYH1ZwRGOQviiV/s1000/dune%202%20sadistic%20nephew.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="1000" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPBdMbqFFhV-7eRcclC-20q6APgkfrQO06HavxiqQ7Ia-yahyphenhyphen5RN42G3lqbN2oqC69igapJ2XeDQTJKoHlop8gQHeZXfAJkwot7xguRENEWedg9ZJg4kX7CJjEGySUsfJ1FGC2RXABl1rI1RgvIk5dHaZvSFAY4YbEw9fqLnYnyHCjeUZYH1ZwRGOQviiV/w400-h225/dune%202%20sadistic%20nephew.webp" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Austin Butler does a decent enough Stellan Skarsgard impression and throws himself into the vicious role. In the Medieval England-inspired pastures of Kaitain, Florence Pugh offers a restrained turn as Princess Irulan while Christopher Walken's Emperor offers none of the playfulness we've long been accustomed to.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Han Zimmer's earthy score of heavy drums and ululating is once again oppressive. Some action sequences are thrilling and stylish; an early Fremen ambush on Harkonnen soldiers is gripping.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">A later Fremen attack on a spice harvester in wide shots and intense close-ups is riveting. But the final battle between the Fremen and Outworlders, not to mention between Feyd-Rautha and Paul, feels rushed and anticlimactic.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Sure the main conflict of this book is somewhat resolved but<b> a true resolution is not sufficiently achieved.</b> After spending nearly six hours on Dune Part One and Part Two, I can say I had a better time with the latter. But as a whole, audiences deserve a far more satisfying return on their investment.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.newarab.com/features/dune-2-review-flawed-space-muslims-v-crusades-masterpiece">https://www.newarab.com/features/dune-2-review-flawed-space-muslims-v-crusades-masterpiece</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><i><b>“If you want to control people, you tell them a messiah will come…they’ll wait for centuries . This prophecy is how they enslave us!” ~ Chani </b><br /></i><br />Oriana: DUNE AND THE POWER OF RELIGION<br /><br />This has finally clarified for me what Dune is about. It’s about the use of religion to manipulate people. Tell them that the Messiah will come and they’ll wait for thousands of years. <br /><br />Not just centuries, no. Millennia. Generally you need to start indoctrinating at an early age, before the brain has the capacity for critical thinking. But once in a while, adult conversion also happens. Or a cynical opportunism, pretending to believe or even becoming a religious leader, all for the sake of holding on to power.<br /><br />We talk about the power of love. True. But religious faith colonizes not just the earth and one lifetime, but eternity. Lack of evidence is not a problem. In fact not even the evidence for the opposite position is a problem. <b>When Paul at first denies that he is the Messiah, it is taken as as proof of his great humility. He is so humble that he must be the Messiah — “as written.” <br /></b><br />The unholy marriage of religion and political power goes back not centuries, but millennia. Think of ancient Egypt.<br /><br />Karl Marx wrote about religion as a drug that keeps people subservient, but provided no solution. Historians saw it, great writers saw it — but there seems to be no solution. Humans have deep emotional needs, needs that will be satisfied in one way or another, no matter how destructive to self and others. <br /><br />Yes, religion is in decline, but it will never disappear completely. There are those who simply must have it. And, as has been pointed out many times, an ideology such as fascism or communism has many characteristics of religion. Above all, you need to induce a climate of threat while all the time making attractive promises.<br /><br />“A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of communism.” But the ground has been prepared by religion.<br /><br />*<br />The first "Dune" was fun; the follow-up no longer has the element of surprise and falls flat as a desert mouse getting steamrollered by a giant sand worm. ~ Mark Jackson, Epoch Times</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_NCKZbV5db4jStbx3b9vrfbb2_V4KV1MK7ZT5fUPdPheglYb38BgqaZNDRu4xoiVs6nIXa1V_8-TQ4Sc2nFTBffutXQx9e9JqNOo_g3K0Ur_0oXSAn1zNr6cE7G1DfSEN-CGyGz5a_rwxApui4z7-cAfyGhr_7OkbEEytSUk3DtB90RdAb-_HVfNk2VbU/s760/dune%202%203%20sandworms.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="760" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_NCKZbV5db4jStbx3b9vrfbb2_V4KV1MK7ZT5fUPdPheglYb38BgqaZNDRu4xoiVs6nIXa1V_8-TQ4Sc2nFTBffutXQx9e9JqNOo_g3K0Ur_0oXSAn1zNr6cE7G1DfSEN-CGyGz5a_rwxApui4z7-cAfyGhr_7OkbEEytSUk3DtB90RdAb-_HVfNk2VbU/s320/dune%202%203%20sandworms.jpg" width="320" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>GIANT SOLAR FARMS COULD CREATE THEIR OWN WEATHER</b><br /><br />In the United Arab Emirates, water is more valuable than oil. To support the needs of its desert-dwelling residents, the UAE relies on expensive desalination plants and campaigns of cloud seeding from aircraft, which spray particles into passing clouds to trigger rainfall.<br />But according to a new modeling study, there may be another way to stir up a rainmaker: with city-size solar farms that create their own weather. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The heat from large expanses of dark solar panels can cause updrafts that, in the right conditions, lead to rainstorms, providing water for tens of thousands of people. </b>“Some solar farms are getting up to the right size right now,” says Oliver Branch, a climate scientist at the University of Hohenheim who led the work, published last week in the journal Earth System Dynamics. “Maybe it’s not science fiction that we can produce this effect.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Branch works in an emerging field that studies how renewable energy, a key response to climate change, can in turn alter regional weather patterns. In a 2020 study, researchers found that implausibly large solar farms, taking up more than 1 million square kilometers in the Sahara desert, could boost local rainfall and cause vegetation to flourish. But the bounty would come with a cost, the researchers found: By altering wind patterns, the solar farms would push tropical rain bands north. “If you push those northward, that’s not good news for the Amazon,” says Zhengyao Lu, a climate scientist at Lund University and lead author of the 2020 study.<br /><br /><b>Branch and his co-authors wanted to see whether solar farms of more realistic sizes could alter the weather.</b> To do so, they turned to a leading weather model, produced by the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, that can account for land surface changes. They modeled the solar farms as nearly black fields that absorbed 95% of the incoming sunlight. <b>When the solar farms exceeded 15 square kilometers, they found, the increased heat absorbed at the surface, contrasted with the relatively reflective sand surrounding them, appreciably increased the updrafts, or convection, that drive cloud formation.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Just hacking convection wasn’t enough, however: A source of atmospheric moisture is also needed. The model showed that moist, high-altitude winds from the Persian Gulf would suffice. When conditions were ripe, the model found, <b>a 20-square-kilometer solar field would increase rainfall by nearly 600,000 cubic meters—equivalent to 1 centimeter of rain falling across an area the size of Manhattan. If such rainstorms occurred 10 times in one summer, they would provide enough water to support more than 30,000 people for a year.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The new work makes sense, and it’s “very stimulating,” Lu says. “They are targeting a real solution.” One concern, however, is that <b>the simulated solar panels were darker than most manufacturers make them. Some current solar panels are even reflective, designed to cool their surroundings, Lu says.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Still, Branch is hopeful that the idea could at some point be tested in the real world. <b>Solar farms coming online in China and elsewhere are nearly big enough</b>, he says. If they were built in the right spots, it wouldn’t take much to darken the panels as much as possible, and to plant drought-tolerant darkening crops, such as jojoba shrubs, between panel rows.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The UAE funded Branch’s modeling, but whether it will try the scheme in the real world remains to be seen. The country “is committed to study the potential implementation of all robust strategies, such as optimizing convection,” says Alya Al Mazrouei, director of the UAE’s Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But she adds that for now, the country is deeply committed to its cloud seeding program, carrying out some 300 missions each year.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Branch and his colleagues have identified other areas of the world where the scheme might work, such as Namibia and Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. They’re also trying to improve the realism of their model’s solar panel simulations by cross-checking them with field measurements at existing solar farms. Ultimately, he’s hopeful that the rainmaking potential of solar farms will encourage more construction. “If you can provide evidence that a huge solar farm produces rainfall,” he says, “that might give impetus to increase the size of them.” ~</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0oNcmSfclJ8eup9EEYrcK8bIkDKB_rp_llDJhpSPZ0-b9N-D_0-8hulPe7hoxlKacZDwrJYVXk3iPqAg1qOmb22dt69lsG9F1H4equVLk1sMf6X_uTInI4tzZ-51G7Qz2MNIxeUMsf59s8VsWsZJI997w-6hh51Ih3U7vOWZcm1VW_A5eeWERI0WySIM2/s1216/SOLAR%20farms%20in%20UAE.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="804" data-original-width="1216" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0oNcmSfclJ8eup9EEYrcK8bIkDKB_rp_llDJhpSPZ0-b9N-D_0-8hulPe7hoxlKacZDwrJYVXk3iPqAg1qOmb22dt69lsG9F1H4equVLk1sMf6X_uTInI4tzZ-51G7Qz2MNIxeUMsf59s8VsWsZJI997w-6hh51Ih3U7vOWZcm1VW_A5eeWERI0WySIM2/w400-h265/SOLAR%20farms%20in%20UAE.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><i><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Solar Farm in UAE</span></i><br /><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/massive-solar-farms-could-provoke-rainclouds-desert?utm_medium=ownedSocial&utm_campaign=NewsfromScience&utm_source=Facebook">https://www.science.org/content/article/massive-solar-farms-could-provoke-rainclouds-desert?utm_medium=ownedSocial&utm_campaign=NewsfromScience&utm_source=Facebook</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>WHY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS SAW MOTHER TERESA AS A FRAUD<br /></b><br />From one associate of an Indian Buddhist center:<br /><br />An anecdote I tell whenever this comes up. When Teresa was still alive I was studying at a Vipassana meditation center in India when I met a young and idealistic Catholic nurse from Ireland.<br /><br />She had volunteered to work at the hospice in Calcutta. but had left a few weeks later, shaken and appalled. <b>She had been taken aback by the squalid conditions, the unhygienic needles, the lack of pain control, and the willful withholding of the most basic medical treatments. And when she met Teresa, she found her cold and uncompassionate. But the breaking point had been when they refused to give potentially life-saving treatment to a child.<br /></b><br />By her account, <i><b>they were buying conversions in return for giving the destitute and desperate a few mouthfuls of food. Once their eternal souls had been “saved” they had little interest in helping their human bodies… Indeed, they seemed to believe that the greater the suffering, the greater the spiritual benefit for their patients. She called it a death cult.</b></i><br /><br />Naturally this is all in the context of the $100+ million that the order was hiding in secretive bank accounts around the world. In contrast to the patients, the nuns were very well looked after.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">She was so disillusioned with the Church that she had come to the meditation center in search of a more wholesome path to follow in life. ~ Wolfgang Waas, Quora<br /><br />Boo:<br />Apparently <b>Mother Teresa thought it was beneficial to the human “soul” to SUFFER. So even though people would be dying of cancer, (and medications HAD been donated to her), she wouldn’t give the medications because…it’s good for your soul to suffer…<br /></b><br />Peter Foulds:<br />When she got sick she was treated by the best money could buy. (Oriana: I was told that one of the medical facilities where she got treatment was UCLA Hospital.)<br /><br />Tony Barry:<br />I also met doctors and nurses in Calcutta while Mother Teresa was alive (back in 1986). Many of these medicos were also Catholic.<br /><br />Their experience was often harrowing (as your Irish nurse recounted). They found Kalighat (the home for the dying) to be an enormous hurdle to get over, as with Shishu Bhavan (the children’s home). <b>The disparity between standard patient care in the West vs Calcutta, caused great distress to many people who had trained in medicine in the West.<br /></b><br />But most of the doctors and nurses, while painfully aware of the desperate mess around them, did not lose the plot. These were the medicos who managed the situation, who worked with what was available, and made it work for good. I learned so much from these guys.<br />I was lucky </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> I had no medical exposure (just an electrical engineering background), was / am somewhat autistic, and being one of the Born Again made me quite unaware of the visceral nature of the desperation of Kalighat.<br /><br />I was not excessively stupid, but it took a fair while for me to see what might have been going on — why some of the medicos did lose the plot; who railed against the Catholic church, Mother Teresa, the MC sisters and brothers … and why others did not.<br /><br />From an engineering viewpoint, it can be seen as a gain — stability amplifier problem.<br />And although people are not amplifiers, for everyone Kalighat was a perturbation of enormous proportions. Some folk had better methods to deal with the affront, and some folk were overwhelmed.<br /><br />They often externalized the chaos as a survival method, to deal with it before it wiped them out. The nearest handy items to externalize the focus on were the MC sisters and brothers. Then MT. Then the Catholic church. It was the their problem. And their behavior. And their heartlessness. And the fact that they continued to do what they could despite the fact that — for so many of the destitute — there was no hope.<br /><br />I get it. It was more than forty years ago, and I can still see these decent, honest, kind medicos having a head crash at some awful example of man’s inhumanity to man. Not an active evil … just a sad reflection that there were too many poor people to help.<br /><br />But what of the others? who were rocked but continued to function? Well, here is where I can offer some insight. You see, I was one of those guys who cracked during my time in Calcutta. It wasn’t a medical thing that broke my amp, because I was medically clueless. Ignorance is bliss, and a very handy thing at times.<br /><br />For me it was a roadside distribution board near Sudder St in Calcutta’s tourist district, meant to offer a place where electrical supply can be routed to a submains. I walked past it and the doors were ajar … and inside, the busbars were glowing. Not dull red, but that nice cherry red which you get just before liquefaction. And explosion.<br /><br />I shit myself. My companions at the time (two excellent guys from Britain) kind of laughed at my reaction, but did not understand why I was bouncing around. I tried to explain, and they just said, OK, let’s just move on.<br /><br />And I moved on. It was too hard to get anyone to fix the problem. I did not speak the language (Bengali). I did not know who to speak to; and as my mates said, <b>this happens every day in Calcutta, the power is only one half the time and it’s way overloaded.</b><br /><br /><b>I felt the same hopelessness as the nice Irish nurse. And it’s really not good.</b> The place is absolutely fucked. I can’t do anything to unfuck it.<b> It’s a disaster. The medicos see their humanitarian disaster. I see this engineering disaster.</b> Everyone who turns up at this shithole sees their own version of whatever their disaster specialty is.<br /><br />And the crazy thing is that <b>MT started giving cups of cold water to dying people in this dump, and we who were there saw it as a futile gesture of compassion that wasn’t futile at all. It was the stuff of legends. Because in that hopelessness, love still works.</b> Even when it doesn’t.<br /><br />That’s why MT got the Nobel Prize. And that’s why the nice Irish nurse hates Catholicism.<br />It all comes down to amplifier instability near the supply rails. Some of us survive, and some don’t.<br /><br />Joseph George:<br />A majority of Indian nuns in Mother Theresa's order were from well to do families who joined her out of idealism and missionary zeal. That the mother was a religious fundamentalist and a zealot and that her ultimate aim was conversion of Indians to her church and making money for her church, is a fact. In this way she was evil.<br /><br />Ian Babineau:<br /><b>She was raising millions for the Chatholic church (the richest organization in the world), and giving a tiny percentage to those she used as publicity for her fundraising.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">If you look at that and say “at least she was giving them something”, I think you are getting the wrong message.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I feel<b> if she told people “2% of your donations will go to help starving children and 98% will go to the richest organization in the world” many of them would have donated to another charity.<br /></b><br />Jo M:<br />This is all well documented and appalling. In India in the 80s I met people who'd volunteered and left quickly for similar reasons. Squalor, lack of any kind of medical treatment etc.<br /><br />Lee H. Christof:<br /><b>This is true of almost all popular culture saints like Mandela, MLK and Gandhi. The truth is way different than the way they are portrayed by historians and the media.<br /></b></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU1HHZOx25sAMc4pP-V3oWNW-8L5m4mB3zSI2TPYZjudQGtalYca51n7KBiET2kcGJiAhP5652dhzJzdvOAgdhTaP34XOkBlIJAS0J-s2RlhMFpvYR6U35HQMVSVn5JtnC9Sd7ZUCyFGT17iMoEBstKrSiWrHJhBngZ_fpWoKjMv2YL8rlGd-uLJGNxdUu/s900/mother%20teresa%201991.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="900" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU1HHZOx25sAMc4pP-V3oWNW-8L5m4mB3zSI2TPYZjudQGtalYca51n7KBiET2kcGJiAhP5652dhzJzdvOAgdhTaP34XOkBlIJAS0J-s2RlhMFpvYR6U35HQMVSVn5JtnC9Sd7ZUCyFGT17iMoEBstKrSiWrHJhBngZ_fpWoKjMv2YL8rlGd-uLJGNxdUu/w400-h266/mother%20teresa%201991.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>THE PREDICTED DECLINE OF ISLAM</b><br /><br />~ In a hundred years, Islam’s empire of conformity will have crumbled. It is already starting.<br />Mecca will still be a holy place, and the hajj will still be a thing — but atheism will continue its rise in Muslim countries; women will demand equality; and <b>imams will find it harder and harder to raise crowds of mindless rioters and murderers for Allah.</b></span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">We are a couple generations from the tipping point, but it is coming.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Poor backward Muslim places like Afghanistan and Somalia will remain poor and backward and Muslim — but Cairo and Jeddah and Jakarta will be converting their mosques to condos.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>A race is on: will Islam conquer the west or will the west conquer Islam?</b> My belief is: Islam makes noise and commits hate crimes and has a coercive community structure, so it gains some influence in the west that way </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> <b>but all the screaming imams have less potency than the western ideas being exported into Muslim nations</b>. ~ Angeli Adeen, Quora<br /><br />Baruch Cohen:<br />Maybe Islam Reformation is on the horizon? It s time to change from the 7th century ideals to something more in conformity with reality.<br /><br />Steve Dutch:<br />I’d love to believe this, but Islam is not the problem. The culture is. The male misogyny and obsession with female sexualty is really fear of emasculation.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Young Muslims don’t need to be killing Israelis and Westerners. They need to kill their imams and family elders. Those are the people who are really oppressing them.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Angeli Adeen:<br />Agreed.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Islam is just seventh-century Arab tribal beliefs dipped in Jewish and Christian myths. With “Allah” to unite them and Mohammed/Quran to anchor them firmly to the seventh century, they have not budged in centuries.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But now there are new forces at work in Muslim countries: </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Modern Western ideas, including atheism and female equality. These are spread by the internet and Hollywood and migration.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Reaction against modern Western ideas: the Old Guard cracking down. <br /><br />The modern Arab construct of “We are divinely-appointed conquerors and we are superior to all — but Oh! Woe! we are victims!! Victims of the Zionists and Crusader West and White racists who deny us our place at the top of the food chain.. Conquer the West, for Muslim pride!” This has been embraced by some of the youth.<br /><br />The desire of dictators to wield Islam as a uniting force for their people, while also suppressing Islamist movements that threaten their power.<br /><br />How it will all shake out is unclear. BUT: if you google atheism in Arab countries (as measured by confidential surveys, since atheists are not safe to speak up), the number is slowly rising and is now about 5 percent. I consider this the tip of a wedge that is slowly getting thrust into Muslim countries, like a wedge into a log. Eventually the wedge will shatter Islam’s violent coercive hold in some of these countries — and out will pour the long-suppressed voices of loud proud irreligious people who have too strong a voice to continue being silenced with threats and murders.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">To mix my metaphors: some Muslim nations are pressure-cookers, with a slow-building pressure to abandon the seventh century — and only the locked lid above (societal and government control) and the danger below (death threats and murders by local Muslim terrorists) are keeping the pot from blowing up. That is not a situation that can last forever.<br /><br />Obelix:<br /><b>Social media is killing this outdated stupid religion.<br /></b><br />George Dunn:<br />But that's the major thing the imams are screaming about: the insidious advance of Western values weakening their medieval authority.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>At bottom, every jihadi atrocity is an attempt to hold back the tide of reform.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil740TQ4YY-91oHuEDbssN7aN3MZlUsE6PMAJt-ZxwBU4CXKyiIUdh8P-BUAH9Wd2oXUK2T8sjJaN0O8B18Mn12JQrt5QBKnfOXMSy6JJH1HUrdvC0-CcM-9GVoumTlXNnPf8NZFZN-bFdifiYOXZwUDV5WMe7BMPZf2G2AF-8Z3thaVyt2ZVAg3Nj3JhZ/s602/they%20burned%20her%20alive.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="602" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil740TQ4YY-91oHuEDbssN7aN3MZlUsE6PMAJt-ZxwBU4CXKyiIUdh8P-BUAH9Wd2oXUK2T8sjJaN0O8B18Mn12JQrt5QBKnfOXMSy6JJH1HUrdvC0-CcM-9GVoumTlXNnPf8NZFZN-bFdifiYOXZwUDV5WMe7BMPZf2G2AF-8Z3thaVyt2ZVAg3Nj3JhZ/w320-h320/they%20burned%20her%20alive.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Curtis Morgan:<br />Christianity looked solid 100 years ago.</span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">What guarantee does Islam have which Christianity did not have?<br /><br />*<br /><b>WHY MEMORY IS MORE ABOUT YOUR THE FUTURE THAN YOUR PAST<br /></b><br />~ <b>Whenever we remember something, we alter that memory with our needs, beliefs, and perspectives.</b><br /><br />According to neuroscientist Charan Ranganath, this and other aspects of how memory works keeps our thinking nimble and flexible.<br /><br /><b>If we want to keep our memories more vivid, we should pay attention to what makes them distinctive.</b><br /><br />Certainly it would be better if our memories were a perfect record of everything we encountered, right? Not necessarily. According to Charan Ranganath, neuroscientist and the author of Why We Remember, <b>humans evolved the memory system we did because it helps us stay attentive to what is important. <br /></b><br />Big Think recently spoke with Ranganath to discuss how memories form, how they help keep our thinking quick, and what we can do to connect more with the memories that matter most to us.<br /><br />Big Think: What’s wrong with the common assumption that memory is a recording stored in the brain?<br /><br />Ranganath: Although it’s understandable that so many have that assumption, there are a few things off with it.<b> The first thing is that we’re supposed to remember everything. The second is that when we remember, it’s an exact replay of what happened. Neither of those is true scientifically.</b><br /><br /><b>People retain only a fraction of the experiences they have</b>. That’s true of everyone I know of who has been quantitatively studied. People also embellish their memories. They can distort them; they can make inferences.<br /><br />I always say my phone has a photographic memory. I store lots of photos on it, I rarely go back to them, and if I want a particular one, I spend a long time searching for it. [Conversely], <b>the brain is about quality over quantity. It’s designed to carry what you need so that you can be nimble and agile and find what you need when you need it.</b><br /><br />Big Think: How do we alter memories when we remember?<br /><br />Ranganath: There are two schools of thought.<b> One school is that you form a new memory when you are remembering. The other school is that you actually alter the original memory. It doesn’t really matter which explanation is correct, subjectively speaking. The act of remembering changes the way you’ll remember an event later on.<br /></b><br />In neurobiology, people talk about a phenomenon called <b>reconsolidation. After a memory is activated, there are all of these chemical changes that effectively make the memory more vulnerable — that is, the connections between the neurons that help bring that memory to life become a bit unstable</b>. Things can happen that can alter that memory at that point.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">We can see this when remembering past events. When we tell the same memory over and over, it becomes less detailed and more rote. It reflects a kind of story rather than a re-imagining of what happened.<br /><br />Big Think: <b>How does imagination play a part in memory embellishment?<br /></b><br />Ranganath: </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="color: #800180;">A memory is not only the things we saw and heard; it’s also our thoughts and our feelings. That means that when you remember something, it’s not just what happened. It reflects your interpretation of what happened. </span><br /></b><br />For instance, if you’re tired of work, you might remember a beach vacation and think, “That was so great!” On the other hand, if money is tight and your family is bugging you to take another trip, you might look back on the same vacation and think, “We stood in line forever at the airport, and we all got sick after we came back.” <br /><br />Both are true, but the way we imagine it can be very different depending on your goals, perspectives, and beliefs.<br /><br /><b>Through no fault of one’s own memory<br /></b><br />Big Think: So, can our memories be described as “faulty”?<br /><br />Ranganath: <b>If the goal was to store everything in some mental vault, then from that perspective, memory is faulty. But if the goal is to use the past in meaningful ways, combine different experiences creatively, or consider new possibilities, then our memory is doing exactly what it should be.</b><br /><br />For instance, the brain is optimized to process information quickly and then generate a prediction about what’s going to happen next. The value of that predictive processing is not only that it’s fast; it also optimizes the information you get. Even when our predictions are wrong, that orients us to where the new, important information is.<br /><br /><b>Keeping memory in the picture</b><br /><br />Big Think: What should we expect from our memories, and how can we get the most out of them?<br /><br />Ranganath: We can expect that our memories can be fragmentary, and they’re definitely going to be incomplete. <br /><br />While there are many tips for memorizing particular kinds of information, <b>a basic principle of memory is that memories compete with each other</b>. That’s not necessarily intuitive. We tend to think that people have a memory, it goes into this mental slot, and then you pull it up. In fact, <b>that thing you’re storing in your memory is competing with all these surrounding memories. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The analogy I like is that of a cluttered desk covered in standard yellow Post-It notes. If I want to find the note with my bank account password on it, it’s going to take forever. On the other hand, if I wrote the password on a hot pink or fluorescent green Post-It, it’s easy to locate because it’s different from everything else.<br /><br />So, <b>the principle for having something be memorable is to attend to what’s distinctive about it. The more you can attend to what is distinctive and be mindful of it, the more vivid the memory.</b><br /><br />[For instance], we’re constantly taking pictures and then throwing them on social media. But this is the ultimate form of electronic amnesia. <b>You’re cheating your experiencing self because you don’t connect with what’s happening, and you’re cheating your remembering self because you’ve deprived yourself of a great memory.</b><br /><br />So instead of taking pictures of every moment of your vacation, pay attention to what makes a particular moment distinctive. Ask yourself: What is going to be most memorable in each picture I take? How can I compose the picture to focus on the vivid details that will bring me back to this time and place?<br /><br />That’s when pictures become valuable — when they force you to pay attention to the things that are important to you in that moment.<br /><br />Big Think: Anything you’d like to add?<br /><br />Ranganath: I would like people to change their expectations about what their memory is and should be for. That may help us be more forgiving of ourselves and others.<br /><br /><b>It can also be important for the expectations of how we learn. A lot of kids struggle in school, and we tend to view struggle as bad, but one of the messages in my book is that struggling is a sign of learning under the right conditions. The process of working through something is a learning process.</b><br /><br />The last thing is that memory should give you more options, not fewer. Memory can sometimes leave you with a narrow worldview if you become stuck in the same beliefs, looking for the same information that confirms what you remember to be true. That’s when memory leads you to get stuck in a corner. <br /><br />Instead, you should use memory to strategically think of things that can help you in the present or [generate] future possibilities — giving you the options that will help you be more flexible, creative, and imaginative. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://bigthink.com/the-learning-curve/why-memory-is-more-about-your-future/">https://bigthink.com/the-learning-curve/why-memory-is-more-about-your-future/</a><br /><br /><br /><b>HOW SEA CUCUMBERS PROTECT STAGHORN CORAL</b><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg67lExj90ppQmaoK5Zpi9KvUnZTUZi5xHrOIZPFQGi_FHVgaM-muqZc4VzdeoXMMpClcsKZTnL7dOeziHzcuvnXJfb-mA4TvRfUr_qw7rhulyR8Af_Z9iBfVhGZ4mGuoysrpLqbnEolsdTTicu7tvxvqn62GNnHVBuGcjSIs1QLLuGhdvKeNFK-7ti6Uhb/s723/staghorn%20coral%20sea%20cucumbers.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="482" data-original-width="723" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg67lExj90ppQmaoK5Zpi9KvUnZTUZi5xHrOIZPFQGi_FHVgaM-muqZc4VzdeoXMMpClcsKZTnL7dOeziHzcuvnXJfb-mA4TvRfUr_qw7rhulyR8Af_Z9iBfVhGZ4mGuoysrpLqbnEolsdTTicu7tvxvqn62GNnHVBuGcjSIs1QLLuGhdvKeNFK-7ti6Uhb/w400-h266/staghorn%20coral%20sea%20cucumbers.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Over the years, Cody Clements, a marine ecologist at Georgia Tech, has planted over 10,000 coral fragments across the South Pacific.<br /><br />"You can just break off a branch from a coral, plant it into the sandy bottom, and it will grow into a whole new coral," explains Clements. “I have corals out there that I've planted and they were the size of my pinky — and now they're the size of a basketball.”<br /><br />As he was gearing up for an experiment in 2018 in French Polynesia off the island of Mo'orea, something caught his attention. It had to do with <b>sea cucumbers — marine invertebrates that are distantly related to starfish but resemble soft pickles.</b><br /><br />"They come in various shapes, colors and sizes," says Clements. "Some of them are very large." <b>They're slow-moving scavengers, and collectively they hoover up truckloads of sand to feed on algae, microbes, and organic matter. (On a single seven-square-mile reef in Queensland, Australia, researchers previously found that the sea cucumbers there are processing the equivalent of more than five Eiffel Towers of sand each year.)</b><br /><br />At the reef in Mo'orea that Clements was studying, there were quite a few sea cucumbers. Clements decided to clear them all from his study site to make things uniform for the experiment.<br /><br />But a few days later, "I started seeing that the corals were starting to die from the base up," Clements says. "And I was just like, 'OK, this is pretty abnormal.’"<br /><br />Clements wondered whether relocating the sea cucumbers had had something to do with it. And in new research published in Nature Communications, he and his colleagues demonstrate that <b>when they removed sea cucumbers from a study patch, tissue death of Acropora pulchra, a species of staghorn coral, more than tripled. And mortality of the whole colony surged 15 times.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The reasoning, says Clements, is that <b>sea cucumbers are like "these little vacuum cleaners on the reef that are cleaning things up," digesting and eliminating microbes that can lead to coral disease and demise — threats that are exacerbated by a warming and increasingly polluted ocean.</b><br /><br />Back in 2018, when Clements first suspected that clearing out the sea cucumbers may have triggered the mortality of the corals, he rang up his supervisor at the time — Georgia Tech marine ecologist Mark Hay.<br /><br />Hay recalled an etching he'd seen years earlier in the Fiji Museum depicting an old sailing vessel transporting perhaps hundreds of tons of dried sea cucumbers. It's an amount nowhere near what he's observed in the modern ocean where <b>these squishy animals have been harvested as a delicacy to near oblivion.</b><br /><br />"And so they must have been super abundant at one time," says Hay. "And so we had wanted to [ask], 'OK, if there were that many of them, what were they doing? And what's their real role in the world?’"<br /><br />With so few sea cucumbers in most places, however, there'd been no way to answer these questions. But off the island of Mo'orea where Clements was working, there were a few bays with enough of the critters to run a simple experiment.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This was the approach: The team would identify natural patches where sea cucumbers hung out. In some, they'd remove the resident sea cukes. In others, they'd leave them alone. In both, they'd plant corals and then watch what happened.<br />coral sea cucumber<br /><br />The question they were hoping to answer about coral health was this, says Clements: "Are they more likely to get sick when we've taken the cucumbers out?”<br /><br />And so the study plan was hatched.<br /><br /><b>A rough and bloody start<br /></b><br />In early 2022, Cody Clements was three hours into his field season. He was examining a large coral colony when a searing pain tore through his right hand. Clements looked down to find a giant moray eel had bit down and wasn't letting go. Instead, it was thrashing.<br /><br />It all happened so fast, Clements recalls. And before he knew it, the eel — uncharacteristically — let him go. Clements thought he might bleed out, but fortunately he made it back to his boat and then to shore. The local hospital patched him up the best they could, but ultimately he went to Tahiti where a top-notch hand surgeon managed to reattach his thumb.<br /><br />"He did a really great job! I mean, compared to what it looked like the day of," says Clements.<br />Ten weeks later, he was back in the water to begin his experiments anew. The rest of the field work went off without a hitch, and the results left no doubt. Wherever sea cucumbers were removed, there was "15-fold more death" of the whole corals, says Hay.<br /><br />They ran a similar experiment in Palmyra Atoll — a small island about a thousand miles south of Hawaii with what Hay calls “no permanent human population.”<br /><br />"You have to get special permission to go within 50 miles of it," he said.<br /><br />The reefs of Palmyra differed from Mo'orea in important ways — they're more isolated and therefore more intact.<br /><br />"I remember getting in the water at this site that's called Crazy Corals," says Clements. "I literally gasped. I was like, 'Oh my god. I've never seen corals like this.'" Some were as large as buildings. Clements was immersed in a pageant of underwater life. "There aren't many places like that left in the world.”<br /><br />Clements and Hay found a similar result, though less pronounced, among the corals in Palmyra Atoll. "Part of the difference is that our time on Palmyra was limited," says Hay, "and the experiment did not run for as long." And of course, <b>the Palmyra corals as a whole seemed to be in much better health.</b><br /><br /><b>Still, tissue mortality more than doubled without the sea cucumbers.<br /></b><br /><b>A slow-burning fuse</b><br /><br />Hay thinks the reason for the increased mortality at both the Mo'orea and Palmyra reefs may be related to the vast volume of sand that sea cucumbers process.<br /><br /><b>"We think of these sea cucumbers as little Roombas that run around and take sand in," says Hay. "They digest microbes out of it. And so the waste that would otherwise accumulate on the bottom — it's not being left there to heat up and grow microbes, many of which could be pathogenic."<br /></b><br />The idea is that fewer microbes mean less disease, which translates into healthier coral. But ocean warming and pollution encourage more microbes and more disease, especially as sea cucumbers have been overexploited.<br /><br />Hay likens it to a slow-burning fuse that we lit 100 to 200 years ago when the massive harvests of sea cucumbers were well underway. What we may have been doing for decades, he argues, is removing these pudgy custodians of the reef at the same time we've introduced a barrage of other threats. "And all of a sudden," he says, "it's blowing up on us. We've lost huge amounts of corals in the last several decades.”<br /><br />"I have children that are in their mid to late 30's," Hay says. "I can't show them [a reef] anywhere in the Caribbean like when they were born.”<br /><br />Hay says a considerable amount of the global loss of corals is due to disease. The role that sea cucumbers play in suppressing coral mortality has been "just a missed part of the ecosystem that we didn't understand was important," he argues.<br /><br />Kaylie Pascoe, a coral reef biologist currently in a PhD program at the University of Arizona, said the design of the study was elegant.<br /><br /><b>"We know sea cucumbers are the filters of the sea," says Pascoe, who wasn't involved in the study. "But putting the two together — looking at coal disease and sea cucumber abundance — I thought was really unique."</b></span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Pascoe appreciated that corals were planted for these experiments, but she'd like to know the impact that sea cucumbers have on corals growing naturally. Still, she says the research brings to mind a possible solution — the Hawaiian custom of "Kapu," which basically means a no-harvest time.<br /><br />"Maybe that sort of practice could be applied to sea cucumbers," she says, to allow them to grow back and do their job — "filtering sand and microbes and bacteria for the coral's health, creating the habitat for all the marine organisms."<br /><br />It's an idea that resonates for Cody Clements, especially for Holothuria atra, the particular species of sea cucumber that he examined in this study, which he and his colleagues argue has little economic value on its own.<br /><br /><b>"Sea cucumbers provide an extra level of insurance against the things that are causing coral decline," says Clements. "Doesn't mean it's gonna fix everything, but we want to give them as much of a fighting chance as we can.”</b> ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/03/13/1237026196/the-lowly-sea-cucumber-may-be-helping-to-protect-coral-reefs-against-disease?ft=nprml&f=1002">https://www.npr.org/2024/03/13/1237026196/the-lowly-sea-cucumber-may-be-helping-to-protect-coral-reefs-against-disease?ft=nprml&f=1002<br /></a><br /></span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;">Mary:<br />The relationship between the sea cucumbers and coral is not only fascinating, and could help with coral restoration and preservation, it is a reminder to approach natural ecosystems as just that — systems. Seeing a system only as a collection of individuals is inadequate and misleading. Think of what happened when the apex predators were removed from the ecosystem in places like Yellowstone. Major changes in not only wildlife but vegetation and watercourses, that only became visible when the wolves were allowed return, and the ecosystem was restored.<br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br /><b>METHANE AND GLOBAL WARMING<br /></b><br />A new satellite will measure global methane emissions, but why does agriculture's contribution remain so elusive?<br /><br />The team behind the world's most advanced methane-monitoring satellite, MethaneSat, are keen on metaphors about cleaning. "About the size of a washing machine," was how environmental scientist Steven Wofsy, described the orbiting object at a press conference ahead of its launch. "Like a push-broom," was his phrase for its capacity to scan the surface of the Earth.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The metaphors are apt. <b>Methane is a particularly dirty greenhouse gas, driving about 30% of the heating the planet has experienced so far. It breaks down in the atmosphere in just 12 years, which is much sooner than the centuries taken by CO2 – but it is also around 80 times more powerful over a 20-year time span.</b><br /><br /><b>With 60% of global methane emissions coming from human activities, reductions are essential to reaching the world's climate change targets.</b> Equally, <b>if not addressed in a timely way, it could contribute to the passing of dangerous tipping points that lead to rapid and irreversible change around the globe. </b><br /><br />MethaneSat aims to help by providing an independent source of methane monitoring, with a primary focus on methane leaked from oil and gas fields – such as the recent, months-long mega leak in Kazakhstan, which resulted in the release of 127,000 tonnes of the potent gas. By supplementing existing satellite data with even more precise measurements, MethaneSat hopes to provide a near-comprehensive view of global leaks.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM1N2oDf9b6YMF5PD25uVTy842Ykj58n00d4MPZABm-VZ5gNYSOW3k3RvUH78s2OTvtcLSrxiTnS14etMiHIfYzSV1hBqnhyvVDHR0G-Fe0avoCiDZK2DOfGkQsD7FTG5COupxDbTRElPDkn9PZdBXKlFimbujP-6JaP19a7J_BUpsH6rTaads_Y7FFPiw/s1920/MethaneSat%20detects%20methane%20leaks.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM1N2oDf9b6YMF5PD25uVTy842Ykj58n00d4MPZABm-VZ5gNYSOW3k3RvUH78s2OTvtcLSrxiTnS14etMiHIfYzSV1hBqnhyvVDHR0G-Fe0avoCiDZK2DOfGkQsD7FTG5COupxDbTRElPDkn9PZdBXKlFimbujP-6JaP19a7J_BUpsH6rTaads_Y7FFPiw/w400-h225/MethaneSat%20detects%20methane%20leaks.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The new MethaneSat aims to detect methane leaked from oil and gas fields around the world<br /><br />Yet the oil and gas industry is also far from the only source of human-caused methane emissions. <b>Agriculture is in fact the largest human source of methane emissions, according to the International Energy Agency, at almost 40%. Energy is in second at around 37%, and waste in third</b>.<br /><br />Within agriculture, <b><i>flooded rice fields account for 8% of total human-linked emissions, but belches and manure from livestock are the biggest contributors, with cattle the biggest single offenders. In California, the non-profit coalition Climate Trace found that </i></b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b><i>one single cattle feedlot produced more methane than the state's biggest oil and gas fields.</i><br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />"If we don't reduce emissions from the food system we won't meet the 1.5C target," sums up Mario Herrero, a professor of sustainable food systems at Cornell University in New York, who oversaw the methane calculations used in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">"Animal numbers are increasing like crazy, thus methane is increasing. We have to reduce emissions from livestock.”<br /><br />So why is farming's methane taking the back-seat in terms of global attention? And what can be done to address this climate-action blindspot?<br /><br /><b>Monitoring Methane</b><br /><br />The rationale for focussing on oil and gas activities is that easy wins should be tackled first. "If you're looking to have the biggest impact and make the biggest difference, it's reasonable to focus on oil and gas first," according to Mark Brownstein, a senior vice-president at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the environmental non-profit funding MethaneSat and working in partnership with Google on the project. "There's fewer actors involved than in agriculture," he told reporters. And "there's also the resources there to solve it”.<br /><br />Conversely, <b>agriculture's methane output is more elusive. Aerial remote sensing measurements, such as those taken from aircraft or drones, can capture methane leaks, says Aaron Davitt, principal analyst on remote sensing for the non-profit WattTime, but these technologies can only be deployed in limited regions for limited amounts of time.<br /></b><br />Plus, even knowing where to direct remote sensors or satellites to look in the first place can be fraught, adds Sam Schiller, chief executive of Carbon Yield, a firm that helps farmers adapt to climate change. "In most parts of the world, public datasets of livestock facilities are hard to come by.”<br /><br />So can more precise satellites help? "In the last five years, satellites have revolutionised our knowledge and understanding of methane emissions for the better," says Antoine Halff, chief analyst and co-founder at Kayrros, an environmental intelligence company. <b>"Thanks to satellites, we can not only track the large emissions events known as 'super-emitters' with great accuracy, but also measure overall emissions at the basin or country level. Importantly, we can do so in a way that is completely independent and verifiable."</b><br /><br />According to Sara Mikaloff-Fletcher, a biogeochemical scientist at National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, who is leading MethaneSat's agricultural research, that capacity will only increase in relation to agriculture too. The new satellite's ability to map methane at a precision of 2 ppb (parts per billion) means it will be the first satellite well suited to measuring agricultural emissions, she says. "That number might not mean a lot to your readers, but to me it is the same precision I could get from an instrument on the ground – which is extraordinary.”<br /><br />There are still technical limitations, however. In terms of methane from livestock, small groups of animals pose problems for satellite monitoring, as do farms in places where agriculture is not the primary emissions source. "I'm also not sure how well we will be able to do sheep, which have smaller emissions than cows," Mikaloff-Fletcher adds. On rice production, meanwhile, satellites cannot see through cloud and nearby wetlands can complicate the data: "It is going to be more challenging," she says.<br /><br />There are also limitations as a result of policy. A Global Methane Pledge to reduce emissions by at least 30% by 2030, agreed at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, does not include an agriculture target. The agreement only talks about providing farmers with "incentives and partnerships", rather focusing on "all feasible reductions" that the energy industry is tasked with, says Nusa Urbanic, chief executive at Changing Markets Foundation, a campaign organization.<br /><br /><b>This reluctance to confront agriculture's emissions problem can be seen at a national level too. The US has a provision that exempts farmers from giving detailed emissions accounts. The EU recently removed a target for agricultural methane from its new 2040 climate goal.</b><br /><br />Why the reluctance? According to Halff, while fossil fuel companies are "treated as certified carbon villains", there is a "different aura around farming" where small family farms can sit alongside larger, corporate operations.<br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx2F7RCDZGa_XJIqG5nn7WCpJMcMce7Z8lL6-ys9LIaOBGJXhAPJfMRoRZ4IAgQkhbwEXG_ET6nsTHFk3eh8vjKxKL_6jmro9hd3vl7LdGEVjW2UuaHXD8ev6a9c1aIiWc12tKBUF0mrWVplAD-ShodhpHCkK_btF6POew9uzkCL_0EL-KASAAemlVkEpP/s1920/cattle%20feedlot%20in%20California.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx2F7RCDZGa_XJIqG5nn7WCpJMcMce7Z8lL6-ys9LIaOBGJXhAPJfMRoRZ4IAgQkhbwEXG_ET6nsTHFk3eh8vjKxKL_6jmro9hd3vl7LdGEVjW2UuaHXD8ev6a9c1aIiWc12tKBUF0mrWVplAD-ShodhpHCkK_btF6POew9uzkCL_0EL-KASAAemlVkEpP/w400-h225/cattle%20feedlot%20in%20California.webp" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>One single cattle feedlot in California produces more methane than the state's biggest oil and gas fields</i></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">There are some positive moves from industry to tackle the problem. A Dairy Methane Action Alliance has seen six of the world's largest dairy companies sign up to reducing their output, says Marcelo Mena, the former environment minister of Chile and now chief executive of the philanthropic Global Methane Hub. The meat sector, however, "has not shown the same level of commitment, and needs to do a lot more”.<br /><br />The key to further progress, Herrero emphasizes, is "less but better" production of livestock. Methane from enteric fermentation – especially cow burps – is tricky to solve, but new breeding and feeding techniques could help.<br /><br /><b>Experiments with red algae in dairy-cow's feed suggest it may achieve reductions in methane, Herrero says. Meanwhile, in Japan, over 35% of food waste is recycled as pig feed, helping create a more circular food economy.<br /></b><br />But human diets may still be the ultimate blind spot holding up methane reduction. Of various measures that the EU could adopt to reach the UN Environment Program's recommendation of a 40-45% reduction of global methane by 2030, a Changing Markets report found that<b> 50% of consumers would need to eat less meat and dairy.</b><br /><br />More information on the extent of agriculture's methane problem could help shift this reluctance, for politicians and consumers alike. And here, once again, more independent monitoring and reporting will be key, says Herrero.<br /><br /><i><b>Not just satellites are needed, he says, but methane sensors in individual barns</b></i>. Plus a global methane observatory to coordinate the data. If contributing to the latter was part of the Paris Agreement and nations' individual pledges on climate action, it could help "ensure continuous monitoring”.<br /><br />Ultimately though, Herrero reflects, "we can't wait to have the perfect monitoring system to act on methane.<br /><br />"We need to keep trying things, even though our knowledge is imperfect.”<br /><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifTAnENDRc3MhxI1nSLgewkxNdrKIUSeUZzTu2D-C48txCXVRAsW__yXMdppGwp_66oIfF_y3zhp6BCqBiV8BQ_jRdiXYEvOsMD3g6x-Pv7zNA4Lt32vWo3wZQ4dcS0CFPWjQCRP0YgkfZ1-zp9Ia2wdmkvyHExvwTzDiJu1W-A3Q2PdaFtEuPiMCUwdSZ/s1920/cow%20grazing.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifTAnENDRc3MhxI1nSLgewkxNdrKIUSeUZzTu2D-C48txCXVRAsW__yXMdppGwp_66oIfF_y3zhp6BCqBiV8BQ_jRdiXYEvOsMD3g6x-Pv7zNA4Lt32vWo3wZQ4dcS0CFPWjQCRP0YgkfZ1-zp9Ia2wdmkvyHExvwTzDiJu1W-A3Q2PdaFtEuPiMCUwdSZ/w400-h225/cow%20grazing.webp" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240306-agricultural-methane-is-a-climate-action-blind-spot?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240306-agricultural-methane-is-a-climate-action-blind-spot?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us</a><br /><br />*<br /><b>A VACCINE FOR DEPRESSION?</b><br /><br />One sunny day this fall, I caught a glimpse of the new psychiatry. At a mental hospital near Yale University, a depressed patient was being injected with ketamine. For 40 minutes, the drug flowed into her arm, bound for cells in her brain.<b> If it acts as expected, ketamine will become the first drug to quickly stop suicidal drive, with the potential to save many lives. </b>Other studies of ketamine are evaluating its effect as a vaccination against depression and post-traumatic stress. Between them, the goal is nothing less than to redefine our understanding of mental illness itself.</span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Depression is the most common mental illness in the United States, affecting 30 percent of Americans at some point in their lives.</b> But despite half a century of research, ubiquitous advertising, and blockbuster sales, antidepressant drugs just don’t work very well. They treat depression as if it were caused by a chemical imbalance: Pump in more of one key ingredient, or sop up another, and you will have fixed the problem.<br /><br />But the correspondence between these chemicals (like serotonin) and depression is relatively weak. <i><b>An emerging competitive theory, inspired in part by ketamine’s effectiveness, has it that psychiatric disease is less about chemical imbalance than structural changes in the brain—and that a main cause of these changes is psychological stress.</b></i> “I really do think stress is to mental illness as cigarettes are to heart disease,” says Gerard Sanacora, the psychiatry professor running the ketamine trial at Yale.<br /><br /><b>The theory describes </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>stress grinding down individual neurons gradually, as storms do roof shingles</b>.<b> This, in turn, changes the nature of their connections to one another and the structure of the brain. Ketamine, along with some similar molecules, acts to strengthen the neuron against that damage, affecting not just the chemistry of the brain but also its structure.</b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Mental hospitals don’t usually see patients until they break: a brain shaped by vulnerable genes, wrecked by the stress of loss or trauma. This isn’t how it works with other sicknesses: heart disease, cancer, AIDS. Detected early, these conditions can often be managed. Crises averted.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">If Sanacora and like-minded researchers are right, we may be on the cusp of a sea change that allows for a similar approach to mental health.<b> The new approaches may prevent mental illness before it hits, by delivering a vaccination for the mind.<br /></b><br />The need for progress could hardly be more urgent:<b> Of all illnesses, neuropsychiatric diseases are estimated to put the heaviest burden on society. Nearly half of Americans are affected by some sort of mental disorder at some point in life. Suicides, 90 percent of them among the mentally ill, take 40,000 Americans every year—more than murder or car crashes. Since 2005, the suicide rate among U.S. war veterans has nearly doubled; in the first half of 2012, more service members died by suicide than in combat. </b>Few medical failures are more flagrant than psychiatry’s impotence to save these people.<br /><br />At the same time, treatment can be woefully ineffective. Less than a third of depression patients respond to a drug within 14 weeks, according to the 2006 STAR*D trial, the largest clinical test of antidepressants. After six months and multiple drugs, only half of patients recovered. Thirty-three percent don’t respond to any drug at all. When the pills do work, they are slow—a deadly risk, given that people with mood disorders kill themselves more often than anyone else.<br /><br />Our treatments work so poorly in part because we don’t really understand what they do. Serotonin, the most common target for current antidepressants, is a neurotransmitter, a chemical that carries messages in the brain. But it was first found, in 1935, in the gut. Serotonin’s name comes from blood serum, where Cleveland Clinic scientists discovered it in 1948, noting that the chemical helps with clotting.<br /><br />One sunny day this fall, I caught a glimpse of the new psychiatry. At a mental hospital near Yale University, a depressed patient was being injected with ketamine. For 40 minutes, the drug flowed into her arm, bound for cells in her brain. <b>If it acts as expected, ketamine will become the first drug to quickly stop suicidal drive, with the potential to save many lives. Other studies of ketamine are evaluating its effect as a vaccination against depression and post-traumatic stress. Between them, the goal is nothing less than to redefine our understanding of mental illness itself.</b><br /><br />Depression is the most common mental illness in the United States, affecting 30 percent of Americans at some point in their lives. But despite half a century of research, ubiquitous advertising, and blockbuster sales, antidepressant drugs just don’t work very well. They treat depression as if it were caused by a chemical imbalance: Pump in more of one key ingredient, or sop up another, and you will have fixed the problem.<br /><br />But the correspondence between these chemicals (like serotonin) and depression is relatively weak.<b> An emerging competitive theory, inspired in part by ketamine’s effectiveness, has it that psychiatric disease is less about chemical imbalance than structural changes in the brain—and that a main cause of these changes is psychological stress. “I really do think stress is to mental illness as cigarettes are to heart disease,” says Gerard Sanacora, the psychiatry professor running the ketamine trial at Yale.<br /></b><br /><b>The theory describes stress grinding down individual neurons gradually, as storms do roof shingles. This, in turn, changes the nature of their connections to one another and the structure of the brain. Ketamine, along with some similar molecules, acts to strengthen the neuron against that damage, affecting not just the chemistry of the brain but also its structure.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b> </b><br />Mental hospitals don’t usually see patients until they break: a brain shaped by vulnerable genes, wrecked by the stress of loss or trauma. This isn’t how it works with other sicknesses: heart disease, cancer, AIDS. Detected early, these conditions can often be managed. Crises averted.<br /><br />If Sanacora and like-minded researchers are right, we may be on the cusp of a sea change that allows for a similar approach to mental health. The new approaches may prevent mental illness before it hits, by delivering a vaccination for the mind.<br /><br />The need for progress could hardly be more urgent: Of all illnesses, neuropsychiatric diseases are estimated to put the heaviest burden on society. Nearly half of Americans are affected by some sort of mental disorder at some point in life. Suicides, 90 percent of them among the mentally ill, take 40,000 Americans every year—more than murder or car crashes. Since 2005, the suicide rate among U.S. war veterans has nearly doubled; in the first half of 2012, more service members died by suicide than in combat. Few medical failures are more flagrant than psychiatry’s impotence to save these people.<br /><br />At the same time, treatment can be woefully ineffective. Less than a third of depression patients respond to a drug within 14 weeks, according to the 2006 STAR*D trial, the largest clinical test of antidepressants. After six months and multiple drugs, only half of patients recovered. Thirty-three percent don’t respond to any drug at all. When the pills do work, they are slow—a deadly risk, given that people with mood disorders kill themselves more often than anyone else.<br /><br />Our treatments work so poorly in part because we don’t really understand what they do. Serotonin, the most common target for current antidepressants, is a neurotransmitter, a chemical that carries messages in the brain. But it was first found, in 1935, in the gut. <b>Serotonin’s name comes from blood serum, where Cleveland Clinic scientists discovered it in 1948, noting that the chemical helps with clotting.<br /><br />When Betty Twarog, a 25-year-old Ph.D. student at Harvard, later found serotonin in neurons, she wasn’t taken seriously. At that time, brain signals were thought to be purely electrical impulses that leapt between cells. </b>Twarog called this old idea “sheer intellectual idiocy,” as Gary Greenberg reports in his book Manufacturing Depression. Working at the Cleveland Clinic in 1953, she found serotonin in the brains of rats, dogs, and monkeys.<br /><br />Twarog didn’t know yet what serotonin was doing there, but a clue came soon from D.W. Woolley, a biochemist at Rockefeller University, in New York. In 1954 Woolley pointed out in a paper that lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, is chemically similar to serotonin and is processed similarly in the brain. Since LSD “calls forth in man mental disturbances resembling those of schizophrenia,” he wrote, another drug affecting serotonin might be used to treat schizophrenia. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Twarog’s original paper would take years to percolate through the male-dominated field, but her work and Woolley’s would become accepted as evidence of how important chemicals like serotonin could be to brain signaling. The discovery was a breakthrough for neuroscience—but it also birthed a misleading, long-lived belief about mental illness. “The thesis of this paper,” Woolley wrote, “is that … serotonin has an important role to play in mental processes and that the suppression of its action results in a mental disorder. In other words, it is the lack of serotonin which is the cause of the disorder.”<br /><br />Around the same time, other researchers stumbled on <b>the first antidepressants, iproniazid and imipramine. Intended to treat tuberculosis and schizophrenia, respectively, these drugs also happened to make some patients “inappropriately happy.” Researchers found that the drugs elevated levels of serotonin, along with related neurotransmitters. This began a huge search to find chemically similar drugs that worked better as antidepressants.</b><br /><br /><b>Iproniazid was the first of a class of medicines that block an enzyme from breaking down serotonin, as well as dopamine and norepinephrine, two other neurotransmitters</b>. The chief downside of these drugs, called monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), is that they require a strict diet: no aged cheeses, wine, beer, or cured meats. Combined with these foods, the drugs can cause deadly spikes in blood pressure, a hassle that often inclines patients to ditch them. (The novelist David Foster Wallace took an MAOI for decades; in part to escape the food restrictions, he got off the drug months before his suicide.) On the other hand, <b>tricyclic antidepressants, like imipramine, work by blocking the re-absorption of serotonin and norepinephrine. The cost is a host of side effects, from dry mouth to weight gain to erectile dysfunction and loss of libido.</b><br /><br />The next generation of drugs focused on fine-tuning the same mechanisms, and had somewhat improved side effects. A new class of drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, arrived in the ’80s, bringing huge commercial successes like Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil. Since SSRIs are more specifically focused on serotonin, they were heralded as cleaner options; but they are not much more effective at lifting mood than the older drugs. <br /><br />We often take for granted the diabetes analogy for depression: If you are depressed, it is because you need serotonin, just as a diabetic person needs insulin. Drug companies often say that mood disorder is caused by a “chemical imbalance” in serotonin or a signal like it. One ad for Zoloft, the blockbuster antidepressant, featured a sad white circle crawling cutely beneath a gray cloud; the voice-over boasted that depression may be “related to an imbalance of natural chemicals in the brain. Zoloft works to correct this imbalance.”<br /><br />But the evidence for this story is slim. <b>Prozac raises serotonin levels within hours, yet doesn’t change mood for weeks. When scientists deplete serotonin in healthy people, it does not make them sad. And when doctors measure serotonin levels in the cerebrospinal fluid of depressed people, they do not find a consistent deficiency; one 2008 study even found increased levels of serotonin in depressed people’s brains. </b> </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>The drug tianeptine, discovered in the late ‘80s, decreases serotonin levels yet relieves depression. And studies have shown that people falling in love show lower, not higher, levels of serotonin.</b></i><br /><br />Serotonin is clearly not just a feel-good chemical. If a serotonin-based drug like Zoloft makes you happier, it works in some other, indirect way. As psychiatrist Ronald Pies, editor of Psychiatric Times, put it in 2011, “The ‘chemical imbalance’ notion was always a kind of urban legend—never a theory seriously propounded by well-informed psychiatrists.”<br />Meanwhile, as serotonin falls far short of explaining depression, a more likely candidate is emerging.<br /><br />Stress in moderation is not harmful, but motivating. Cortisol, a stress hormone, cycles daily; synchronizing with sunlight, it helps arouse us for the day. In health, the hormone spikes when we need to pay attention: a test, a job interview, a date. Studies on rodents and humans confirm that <b>brief, mild increases in stress are good for the brain, particularly for memory. During these spikes, neurons are born and expand in the hippocampus, the seahorse-shaped finger of tissue responsible for forming new memories and understanding three-dimensional space, and rodents learn better. The student who gets stressed while studying is more alert and remembers more than the one who feels no urgency—up to a point.</b> The problem comes when stress is either too intense at one moment, as in a rape or violent attack, or too sustained, as in long-term poverty, neglect, or abuse.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Stress changes brain architecture differently, depending on how long it lasts. After chronic stress, like childhood trauma, the effect of hormones on brain cells inverts: Neurons in the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for mood and impulse control, start to shrink, while those in the amygdala, the almond-shaped seat of fear and anxiety, expand like overgrown shrubbery</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">. But people are differently vulnerable, depending on genes and on prior life experience. “If you take two people and subject them to the same stressful event, for one of them it will be harmful and for the other, no,” says Maurizio Popoli, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Milan. “It is because they perceive the stress differently.”<br /><br />Stress hormones’ most important effect is to flood parts of the brain with glutamate, the brain’s “go” signal. Used by 80 percent of neurons in the cortex, this key neurotransmitter drives mental processes from memory to mood. Glutamate triggers neurons to generate sudden bursts of electricity that release more glutamate, which can in turn trigger electrical bursts in nearby neurons.<br /><br />This cellular signaling is called excitation and is fundamental to how information is processed in the brain. Like sexual excitability, it ebbs and flows; a “refractory period” follows each neural firing, or spike, during which the neuron cannot be excited. Other neurotransmitters, like serotonin, are called “modulatory,” because they change the sensitivity of neurons that secrete glutamate (among others). Less than 1 percent of neurons in the cortex signal with these modulators. As Popoli puts it, these modulators are “very important for fine-tuning the machine. But the machine itself is an excitatory machine,” driven by glutamate.<br /><br />Glutamate moves like a ship between neurons. The sea it sails is called the synapse, the shore it departs from is the presynaptic neuron, and the destination, on the synapse’s far side, is the postsynaptic neuron. <b>Another component, called a glial cell, works to remove glutamate ships from the synapse and recycle them.</b> </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The glutamate system is affected at each of these points by stress hormones: They push the first neuron to send more ships, interfere with the glial cell’s recycling, and block the docks on the distant shore. All of these changes increase the number of glutamate ships left in the synapse, flooding the cell with aberrant signals. Indeed, depressed people’s brains, or at least animal models of depression, show all three of these problems, leading to <b>long-lasting excesses of glutamate in key portions of the brain.<br /></b><br />This superabundance of glutamate makes a neuron fire sooner than it should and triggers a cascade of signals inside the cell, damaging its structure. <b>Glutamate binds to the neuron and allows in a flood of positively charged particles, including calcium, which are vital to making a neuron fire. But in excess, calcium activates enzymes that break down the neuron.</b> Each neuron has tree-like branches, called dendrites, which are used to communicate with other neurons. <b>When overdosed in glutamate, this canopy of branches shrinks, like a plant doused with herbicide. First the “twigs,” called spines, disappear. After prolonged stress, whole branches recede.</b><br /><br />This harmful process, called excitotoxicity, is thought to be involved in bipolar disorder, depression, epilepsy, and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s. In depressed brains, many areas are shrunken and underactive, including part of the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus. <b>The brain changes that cause mood disorders, Sanacora and his colleagues believe, come in part from chronic stress overexciting neurons with glutamate.</b><br /><br />*</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Ketamine works faster than any other drug, and for up to 65 percent of patients who don’t respond to existing treatments.<br /></b><br />We usually think of our brains’ adaptability as a good thing. Just as neurons grow during development, the wiring in the adult brain can change. After strokes or other brain injuries, neural signals re-route themselves around damage, allowing even very old people to re-learn lost skills. <b>Psychotherapy and meditation can change patterns of brain activity in ways that persist after treatment.</b><br /><br />But the neuroplasticity hypothesis of mental disorder highlights the drawback of such neural liberalism: <b>The human brain’s flexibility allows regeneration, but also renders it vulnerable to being altered by stress. Subjected to the trauma of war, a bad breakup, or a bout of homelessness, a person with a genetic predisposition may find his mind stuck in a loop of chronic fear or depression.</b><br /><br />The mood drugs in wide use now focus on modulatory neurotransmitters like serotonin. <b>Ketamine, however, works directly on glutamate signaling.</b> If ketamine is tapping into the root of the problem, this might explain why it works faster, better, and more often than more popular antidepressants.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Not everybody accepts the idea that glutamate and stress are central to depression. Some experts see the effects of stress as downstream effects, not the root cause of mood disorder. “The mechanism of action of a good treatment does not have to be the inverse of a disease mechanism,” says Eric Nestler, an expert on addiction and depression at Mt. Sinai Hospital. <b>Serotonin drugs and ketamine may affect depression indirectly, without a serotonin or glutamate abnormality at the root of depression. Nestler also points out that depression probably includes a diversity of subtypes, without any single cause. He treats depression not as a unified disease, but a constellation of symptoms, each with discrete neural roots.<br /></b><br />Even so, we do know that ketamine works faster than any other drug, and for up to 65 percent of patients who don’t respond to existing treatments.<br /><br /><b>If ketamine turns out to be a psychiatric savior, it will be one with a surprising history. Since 1962 it has been a go-to anesthetic for children in emergency rooms, because it kills pain, muffles consciousness, and rarely causes breathing or heart problems. </b> </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Children given ketamine enter “a trance like state of sensory isolation” free of pain, memory, and awareness</b>, as one review put it. Emergency room doctors rely on ketamine to make sure kids have no awareness or memory of, say, the trauma of having a shattered arm set back into place.<br /><br />On the other hand, ketamine is a well-known recreational drug with potential for abuse. The dissociative trip caused by a moderate dose of ketamine has made it popular in clubs and raves since the 1970s, especially in Asian cities like Hong Kong. Its sedative effect made “special K” a date-rape drug. Doctors, patients, and the government agencies that fund research are often <b>suspicious of a drug known to cause hallucinations, as they have been of psychedelics like psilocybin and ecstasy, despite their potential for treating depression or anxiety. Each tends to show fast results after a single dose, like ketamine.<br /></b><br />In 1999, the same year ketamine was declared a controlled substance in the United States, Yale researchers happened upon its antidepressant power. A team co-led by Dennis Charney, now dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, in Manhattan, and John Krystal, now chair of the department of psychiatry at Yale, used ketamine to study glutamate: <b>Since ketamine was known to block glutamate receptors, it might show what role the excitatory neurotransmitter plays in the depressed brain. To their surprise, they found that the drug made patients feel better, often within hours. A single dose, much smaller than what’s used for anesthesia, tended to last for weeks.</b><br /><br />Since 1999, a dozen studies have replicated the results, often on patients who failed to respond to other drugs. <b>Ketamine also works for bipolar people in depressive phases, without triggering mania, as classic antidepressants sometimes do</b>. The majority of depressed people studied have responded to ketamine. For patients who are often suicidal, this fast response can be lifesaving. <b>Some 50 doctors in the U.S. now offer ketamine infusions for depression.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The first evidence in humans that ketamine might work to prevent mood disorder came from the battlefield.<br /></b><br />Many leaders in the field see the emergence of ketamine, and future fast antidepressants based on glutamate, as a great leap forward for the field. “In my mind,” Sanacora told NPR recently, “it is the most exciting development in mood-disorder treatment in the last 50 years.”<br /><br /><b>Ketamine and the old antidepressants both result in fuller neural “trees,” but by different routes, at different speeds. Prozac and other serotonin-based drugs take four to six weeks to kick in. A landmark 2003 Science study by Columbia University’s René Hen and Ronald Duman, now at Yale, found that serotonin-based antidepressants only work if they spur birth of new neurons in the hippocampus</b>. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">These new neurons take four to six weeks to mature, roughly the same amount of time that conventional antidepressants take to lift a depressed person’s spirits. A 2010 paper argued that SSRIs like Prozac may work by dampening glutamate release in response to stress. <b>So even old-school antidepressants, when they work, may act on the glutamate system.</b><br /><br /><b>Ketamine, on the other hand, seems to act directly on mature neurons, fertilizing them to grow branches more robustly, or protecting them against damage.</b> Ketamine’s key effect is to block glutamate receptors of one type. This causes <b>less calcium to flow into the neuron, reducing the risk of the neuron shrinking or self-destructing.<br /></b><br />Today ketamine is offered by psychiatrists and anesthesiologists, at prices ranging from $300 to $1,000 per dose, for people who are morbidly depressed or have chronic pain. Insurance doesn’t usually cover the cost of an infusion, because even though it is FDA approved as an anesthetic, it has not been approved as an antidepressant. <br /><br />Each new use of a drug requires multiphase clinical trials for FDA approval, usually funded by pharmaceutical companies, which have little incentive to invest in a drug they can’t monetize. Ketamine got its original patent in 1966, and that expired long ago. So even if drug companies steered ketamine through the expensive approval process as an antidepressant, doctors could still prescribe the cheap, generic versions already available for anesthesia instead of pricier, patented versions intended for depression. This is an old story. Lithium carbonate, which also acts on glutamate receptors, is still one of the most reliable drugs for treating bipolar disorder. But lithium, which is an element, can’t be patented. So, despite their effectiveness, these generic pills do not attract many corporate dollars.<br /><br />One tough truth about mood disorder is that not all forms may ever be curable. Brain-imaging studies have shown structural differences between the white matter in healthy versus bipolar brains. Differences in personality and sleep patterns also persist in bipolar people, even between manic or depressed episodes. The structural changes likely have genetic roots, and once they arise, are difficult or impossible to reverse.<br /><br />Nevertheless, if a drug prevents a mood disorder from manifesting, it might prevent harmful anatomical changes from ever taking place. Just as a vaccine triggers the body to arm itself against a particular virus, <b>a drug like ketamine, given before the crisis that triggers a breakdown, might protect the brain against the effects of stress. Like a vaccine, the drug might only need to be given once for lasting resilience.<br /></b><br />*</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The first evidence in humans that ketamine might work to prevent mood disorder, not just treat it, came from the battlefield. U.S. soldiers injured in Iraq were treated with various anesthetics, including ketamine. Since ketamine can cause hallucinations, surgeons worried that it might make trauma worse: Scary combat-related hallucinations could put soldiers at higher risk of mental illness.<br /><br />But they found the opposite. <b>Out of 25,000 service members wounded in Iraq between 2002 and 2007, the data showed, veterans treated with ketamine for burns had lower rates of post-traumatic stress disorder. Among civilians and soldiers hospitalized for burns, as many as 45 percent end up with PTSD. But soldiers treated with ketamine on the battlefield got PTSD about half as often—even though they had more severe burns requiring more surgeries and longer hospital stays.</b><br /><br />Rebecca Brachman, a neuroscientist and recent doctoral graduate from Columbia University, and her supervisor, Christine Denny, tried giving ketamine to mice and then exposing them to stressors. The researchers tested several types of stress, including one in which subject mice are “bullied” by more aggressive mice for two weeks. After this daily hazing, mice ordinarily develop the rodent equivalent of PTSD and depression: freezing in a new space, refusing to interact with other mice, and not moving in a forced swim test. <br /><br /><b>But the mice “vaccinated” before the bullying fared far better: They didn’t act depressed afterward. Brachman and Denny found that the protection from a single dose lasted for weeks, even though ketamine only stays in the body for a few hours</b>. Though they haven’t tested it yet, it is possible that, like a vaccine, this protection could last for much longer. <b>Their rodent research suggests ketamine may work even better as a prophylactic than as an antidepressant.<br /></b><br />Denny says that we may eventually routinely use ketamine to prevent PTSD in combat veterans, rape victims, or survivors of car crashes or mass shootings. Ketamine seems to be most strongly protective in mice when given before stressful events, Brachman says. Since we can’t predict most traumatic life events, this would limit the drug’s utility. But <b>if injected after a trauma yet before the psychological damage sets in—as with the burned soldiers—ketamine may still be protective.</b> Denny is investigating this possibility now. <br /><br />And in some situations, violent shock is predictable. “You don’t know when an earthquake will happen,” Brachman says, “but we do know when we’re about to send U.N. workers into an area devastated by a disaster.” When people know they are going into an acutely traumatic situation, she imagines, a preventive drug given ahead of time might protect their brains from the long-lasting effects of stress. Think of earthquake aid workers, fire fighters, or rescue workers in Syria, dragging mangled people from rubble.<br /><br /><b>The idea that a single injection could prevent mood disorders is a radical departure from current psychiatric thinking.</b> But there are some precedents: Talk therapy and mindfulness meditation have long focused on building resilience to stress. Bipolar patients take “neuroprotective” drugs like lithium not to treat current symptoms, but as a protection against future breakdowns, for instance.<br /><br />Not everyone is confident that ketamine is a safe bet, to be sure. Ketamine’s long-term safety is not known, says Nestler. No lasting ill effects are seen in anesthesia patients, who take much larger doses, but they haven’t received routine treatments, the way it is administered as an antidepressant.<br /><br />Plus, ketamine’s reputation as a street drug is tough to shake. Many doctors consider the hallucinogenic an unacceptable risk for patients, who they fear may develop a taste for the high. Yale’s Sanacora points out that patients in his trial, who are screened for drug or alcohol abuse, often find the trip feeling unpleasant or disturbing. The psychedelic experience is surreal, he points out, not the mellowing pleasure of a drug like alcohol, Xanax, or heroin. <b>Extreme ketamine trips, referred to as falling in a “K-hole,” are often compared to near-death or unsettling out-of-body experiences; they hardly sound like fun to most people.<br /></b><br /><b>But since the antidepressant dose is far lower than the one taken to get high, many patients don’t even notice</b>. Drug companies are also competing to develop a less trippy alternative. Johnson & Johnson is testing a nasal spray form of esketamine, a version of ketamine with less psychoactive impact. A company called Naurex has finished phase II trials of Rapastinel, an injected drug that partially blocks the same glutamate receptors as ketamine, but is not psychedelic.<br /><br />The ketamine pioneers emphasize that their prevention research is the beginning of a new road, raising hopes, rather than offering an immediate cure. Brachman and Denny stress that ketamine may not be the drug that ultimately makes it into widespread use; like the anti-tubercular drugs in the 1950s that spawned the antidepressant era, it is the first to trail-blaze this <b>new class of psychiatric prophylactics</b>. “What this work shows us is that we can intervene beforehand and create some sort of self-reinforcing stress resilience,” Brachman says. “We didn’t know that before; that’s what’s important. Everything else—should we use it, how should we use it—that all comes later.” ~<br /><br /><a href="https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/ketamine-depression-research/">https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/ketamine-depression-research/</a></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0SXORwCcfpufGzi00TrwHb6mZphPiB6C_kL11liOV8uWPiK4UWozENI35goTiDfuUBN4V28ib_3jFb5t1BmOmoyQSEIcVToC7hKGc5a8c-MSm8qcn8yrFSUQUe9NCmVJDkVdu75eA9JhfaMNuyf_VlgCJ6m7d1QdLrOMrGxpp2sfKkuP-U8cI2Wj-gGfK/s1200/ketamine2.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0SXORwCcfpufGzi00TrwHb6mZphPiB6C_kL11liOV8uWPiK4UWozENI35goTiDfuUBN4V28ib_3jFb5t1BmOmoyQSEIcVToC7hKGc5a8c-MSm8qcn8yrFSUQUe9NCmVJDkVdu75eA9JhfaMNuyf_VlgCJ6m7d1QdLrOMrGxpp2sfKkuP-U8cI2Wj-gGfK/w400-h225/ketamine2.webp" width="400" /></a></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>THE CASE FOR VIEWING DEPRESSION AS A CONSCIOUSNESS DISORDER<br /></b><br />Depression involves changes in subjective experience that are hard to explain in psychiatric or scientific terms. A new hypothesis explains depression as an altered state of consciousness.<br /><br />According to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, the core symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder include <b>depressed mood and a markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities. </b>These can be accompanied by changes in appetite and weight, sleep disturbances, fatigue,<b> feelings of guilt or worthlessness, a reduced ability to think or concentrate, and sometimes suicidal ideation.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Beyond these clinical symptoms, depressed patients seem to experience the world differently from others. This is reflected in terms used to describe a depressed state, such as feeling “blue” — and there is indeed some evidence that depression alters sensory perception. <br /><br />Depressed patients also report that their conscious experience has changed or been disturbed such that <b>they feel detached from the world and other people. This aspect of depression is impossible to quantify.</b> Psychiatrists have struggled to understand it.<br /><br />A new hypothesis seeks to explain the experiential aspect of depression. <br /><br />In a paper published in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science,<b> Cecily Whiteley of the London School of Economics describes depression as an altered state of consciousness.</b> Whiteley suggests that thinking about depression in this way has important implications for a neuroscientific understanding of the condition and the emerging field of psychedelic psychiatry.<br /><br />According to Whiteley, depression involves entrance into a distinct “global state” of consciousness, which involves a major change in the range and quality of a subject’s conscious experiences.<b> It can be regarded as a state of mind similar to dreaming and the psychedelic state, as well as disorders of consciousness such as minimal consciousness and vegetative states. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Thus, depression involves shifting from one global state of consciousness to another. <b>When an individual becomes depressed, they shift from the normal state of wakefulness into the depressive state.</b><br /><br />This shift entails a change in conscious experience and mental life, according to Whiteley. It alters the individual’s experience of their body, causing them to feel numb and lethargic and diminishing their sense of agency or control.<b> It distorts their cognitive functions and their self-narrative, reducing their ability to concentrate or think hopefully. It also changes their perception of time, making the future feel closed off. Finally, it alters how they relate to others, making them feel estranged and disconnected. </b><br /><br />According to Whiteley, thinking of depression as a global state of consciousness could help understand why no satisfying explanation of the disorder’s mechanics exists. Since we still know so little about how the brain gives rise to any global state of consciousness, the neural mechanisms underlying depression lie well beyond our reach. <br /><br /><b>Can psychedelics beat depression?<br /></b><br />Whiteley further argues that her proposed depressive state of consciousness helps to explain the apparent successes of psychedelic psychiatry. <br /><br />Although still in its infancy, research into the therapeutic benefits of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy has already yielded some positive results. In particular, <b>psilocybin and ketamine show potential benefits for patients with depression and other mental disorders.<br /></b><br /><i><b>Psychedelics are well known to produce profound changes in consciousness, and they may do so by triggering a transition from one global state of consciousness to another. In the case of depression, they might be able to shift patients from the depressed to the psychedelic state, eventually reinstating the normal state of wakefulness. </b><br /></i><br />Although largely hypothetical right now, Whiteley’s thesis could have clinical applications. For example, perhaps neuroimaging techniques could distinguish between different global states of consciousness by measuring the complexity of long-range connections in the brain. If, as Whiteley claims, depression is one such global state, this method could provide an objective diagnostic test.<br /><br /><a href="https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/depression-consciousness-disorder/">https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/depression-consciousness-disorder/</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Mary:</span></p><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">To the idea that depression is an altered state of consciousness...my response was ..Of Course it is!! Although I never thought of it in exactly that way, that is how I experienced it. The sensorium definitely changes. When I was depressed the world was simply not the same. It didn't look, taste, feel or sound the same. It was as if everything went flat, like a cardboard imitation of itself, lifeless, dull...alienated. There was a sense everything was dead, distant, detached, untouchable. Even my own body felt dead, alien, uninhabited...a puppet moving through the motions..at least the ones it remembered well enough to imitate.</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The only feelings left were pain, grief and fear. It is painful to be so detached from the world and from your own body. You are mourning your own death...and the death of all your connections, you are convinced nothing can be done. You are afraid it will get worse, that you will lose whatever ability you still have to "pass," to move through the days as though you were alive, real, imitating the real people even as they retreat into strangers, actors, aliens under masks, faces you don't recognize. You are sure something terrible is just ahead.</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">No one can talk you out of this because this is what your senses are telling you. The strangeness is not just in your thoughts, it is in your perceptions...solid and direct and unshakeable as any sensation you have ever had...of cold or heat, sour or salt, wet or dry, light or dark. There are physical changes in sleep, appetite, posture, voice, movement, and attention. You may cry endlessly or sleep too much. It is difficult to concentrate. Speech may slow or even stop.</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Medications never did much for me, for my symptoms, and I had the whole gamut, from tricyclics like imipramine, through the MOAI's, and the SNRI's like effexor. I also had several courses of ECT, which does work for some. I think the biggest factors in ending my depression were stress reduction, time passing, talk therapy, and support from friends and family. Both ketamine and the guided use of psychedelics sounds promising..though I personally would rather not have hallucinations. Prevention sounds almost miraculous...especially for people like myself who have had several bouts with major depression symptoms that lasted not for months but for years.</span></span></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">I've experienced both chroniic and agitated depression; some experts say that agitated depression is the equivalent of the manic state in bipolar disorder, just without the happy, elated feeling. I'd call agitated depression a negative manic state: the brain spewing increasingly more delusional negative thoughts, as if on some horrific version of "speed" (the street drug). In my younger years I tended more to stuporous depression; after monopause, to the agitated kind.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">My miracle was finally choosing not to be depressed. In order for that to have happened, I had to understand that for me depression was a behavior: sitting motionless for hours (in my younger years) or indulging in extremely negative thoughts, and having crying fits. And then one day, standing not far from my computer, I realized (with the help of some reading) that I was training myself to fall apart faster and faster (the key was the phrase "I am a total failure") -- and that I could choose not to say that, to suppress the crying fit, and to do some work instead. And I could spend the dwindling rest of my life being miserable, or I could at least do some work. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Feeling happy at will wasn't yet possible. I couldn't remember happy things either, except for "I wanted to live in California, and I do live in California." There may have been a couple more positive things that I could summon with great effort. So it wasn't really happy thoughts that saved me -- I was a good two months or so from being able to <b>feel</b> happy over anything. What I still had, and what saved me more than anything, was my ability to write -- as long as it wasn't about myself. I could analyze poems, for instance -- that worked beautifully. I could write book reviews. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">I was terrifically lucky to have something to jump into, keeping my brain busy at a high level, leaving no space for depression. The entrance door simply disappeared -- I felt a kind of jolt of electricity go through me when the brain started rewiring itself. So the recovery was both sudden (the moment of decision) and gradual (keeping busy, even compulsively busy, until I felt a return of positive memories and ability to enjoy music, food, the beauty all around me, good books, the many blessings in my life). </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">There have been a few times when I came close to getting depressed again -- and again, I decided not to. I said to myself, "I will <b>not</b> cry" -- and I didn't cry, just to keep my promise to myself. I gloried in my new strength (for some odd reason, I never lost the self-image of being a strong person -- never mind that I was simultaneously also a total failure in life). Different techniques work for different people; for me it was choosing not to be depressed and choosing to do productive work instead. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Later it turned out that my best friend, years ahead of me, also ended her depression by making a choice not to be depressed, mainly for the sake of not huring her family. Then I met a man who pretty much did the same thing, but for him it was also enormously important to decide that he did marry the right woman after all, and was very lucky to be married to her. And I know that for some choosing to engage in intense physical exercise can lead to healing. <br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">In all these cases, it could be said that we did our own cognitive therapy on ourselves, and chose not to indulge in garbage thoughts and suicidal imagery. And we were also lucky, having somehow found enough strength to pull ourselves away from the edge. Even now, I sometimes remind myself that if I commit suicide I won't know what happened next -- and I'm always curious about happens next. So add curiosity to the things that saved me. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Would it be better with ketamine? I'm not sure I would have gained the wisdom. But if ketamine works for some, that's great. I still feel the main thing is to want not to be depressed, not to hide in that dark lair of self-pity and catastrophizing rather than engage with life -- both its struggles and its joys. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">One last thing: I agree with a woman who casually said, "All mental illness is paying attention to the wrong things." And blessedly I knew that it is possible to be selective about things we pay attention to. We can count, over and over, the mistakes we made in life, or we can count our blessings. The choice is ours, and it's always getting late -- too late to be wasting what life remains. <br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><i><b>ending on beauty:</b></i><br /><br />WHEATCHILD <br /><br />When I was so new I was let<br />run naked, I’d step <br />into wheat. The stalks closed<br />above my head. <br /><br />Laughing I would enter<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">such a golden drowning. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> Cornflowers. The sun split </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">into a thousand sheaves. </span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">It sways above me still: <br />the soul has no past tense.<br />Laughing I step out, <br />a child clothed with the sun,</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> into the arms of the world.<br /><br />~ Oriana</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-A0hLsrmkZrEbl4Aa-K8jxlhonWu6UXzEX-bf0p7QZO30GmqFIXObworIPBApE1Ai9uWyvIyaV9ET7eZlXpbe6sMQELFnJXGoa5RkO2mhNR9P34n9MWrmGitelxRdO_-InCcObjAiiqor48WoKuakaa7dRBdBJHvigFtvkZh1BNsnS-_offsQ8IRVj-zx/s2048/wheatchild%20Tetmajer.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-A0hLsrmkZrEbl4Aa-K8jxlhonWu6UXzEX-bf0p7QZO30GmqFIXObworIPBApE1Ai9uWyvIyaV9ET7eZlXpbe6sMQELFnJXGoa5RkO2mhNR9P34n9MWrmGitelxRdO_-InCcObjAiiqor48WoKuakaa7dRBdBJHvigFtvkZh1BNsnS-_offsQ8IRVj-zx/w640-h480/wheatchild%20Tetmajer.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-4085172573292517432024-03-09T19:36:00.000-08:002024-03-16T08:41:40.249-07:00WHY ISLAM FELL BEHIND THE WEST; INSANE THINGS ABOUT GAZA; GIVE UP RELIGIOUS DREAMS TO RESTORE SANITY; ANOTHER LOOK AT THE FRENCH REVOLUTION; DOGGERLAND; FOR BETTER COGNITIVE FUNCTION, EAT MORE FIBER; SMALL PLEASURES; EVEN LIGHT ACTIVITY HELPS PREVENT DEMENTIA<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVrzNgFXIIxjhw92Rwna6QyOFQC8cC53FcmFaG2mFc9S4BY26hL151_9KCKja2ACqy1XcLMRThyMNgOxOEUITgjLVYj4eaqLco5mObRm90UF__8w6AnbPDlbeE1AIaXzAW4BxtJx1kEoeTXL89D5iSk5gNY3_FdyzIuu7B143AAa7QMjbVKVPjGJj_x4cI/s500/Islamic%20palace%20water.jpg" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="333" data-original-width="500" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVrzNgFXIIxjhw92Rwna6QyOFQC8cC53FcmFaG2mFc9S4BY26hL151_9KCKja2ACqy1XcLMRThyMNgOxOEUITgjLVYj4eaqLco5mObRm90UF__8w6AnbPDlbeE1AIaXzAW4BxtJx1kEoeTXL89D5iSk5gNY3_FdyzIuu7B143AAa7QMjbVKVPjGJj_x4cI/w400-h266/Islamic%20palace%20water.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br />GREETING THE FIRST SECRETARY<br /><br />Again workers and schoolchildren <br />three-deep along the boulevards.<br />This time it was not <br />a cosmonaut,<br />not the Abyssinian emperor,<br />it was Brezhnev<br /><br />who stood,<br />Caesar-in-chariot,<br />monolithic three-quarters profile,<br />in a long open<br />black car,<br />next to the nervous host —<br />himself a first secretary,<br />but how slight!<br />And Brezhnev an impassive mound.<br />His eyebrows<br />underlined his hat.<br /><br />He stood heavy,<br />rotund,<br />flesh caped by a black coat.<br />Now and then, his pale<br />pudgy hand<br />flopped slowly up and down<br />like a disturbed mollusk;<br />he did not bother to smile.<br /><br />We stomped our feet <br />in the chill;<br />at his passage, when signaled,<br />feebly clapping.<br /><br />For news and documentaries,<br />they used a soundtrack<br />with its own hurrah<br />applause and shouts<br />of long live.<br />His huge dark back<br />took over the screen.<br /><br /><br />~ Oriana<br /><br />*<br /><b>WAS BREZHNEV CORRUPT, INCOMPETENT, OR BOTH?<br /></b><br />He was absolutely not corrupt in traditional sense. The only somewhat corrupt thing about him was about <b>surrounding himself with loyal people and people expressing loyalty to both party and himself.</b> However, this approach <b>instead of real meritocracy</b> was a real epidemic in post-Stalin USSR. <b>It was all about loyalties</b>.<br /><br />He was not incompetent. In fact, he turned out to be more competent than his predecessor. However, <b><i>he wasn’t young and did not trust even his loyal supporters enough to delegate many decisions. This resulted in immense piles of documents, projects and initiatives waiting for his personal approval.</i><br /></b><br />It was physically impossible to cope with all that responsibility without delegating authority, especially for an old man in bad health. This resulted in many unnecessary mistakes, delays and overall excessive bureaucracy. <b>Imagine CEO approving some 3-year old requests which were no longer relevant…</b><br /><br />So, although the government system was totally centralized, in fact it had too many loopholes and inefficiencies. The only realistic way to combat inefficiencies was to “hack the system”.<br />So <b>while Brezhnev was not corrupt personally (being fond of medals is not really a sign of corruption), his rule gave rise to corruption in USSR on too many levels — simply because it was very hard to implement any positive initiatives or do anything meaningful using “standard” means</b>. ~ Ivan Novoselov, Quora<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsoHloHS1ampiiyLZDCK8Wz_Ypu31CCg-A8AEKq5-CMIjr6xv3ZBVinR4jS50A0Hfh_mj_xUO33s40b2Ux6BSvZbprmDQ5CSxE3mrsJhydMJkazFuNSbyeAnA0tlxOniIPSnvzPWmaFnKx1b60-_Wl8BFwLf4Zh35oX4Q87Y4hpanne7uRWX0onuXtHXum/s602/brezhnev%20another%20medal.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="452" data-original-width="602" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsoHloHS1ampiiyLZDCK8Wz_Ypu31CCg-A8AEKq5-CMIjr6xv3ZBVinR4jS50A0Hfh_mj_xUO33s40b2Ux6BSvZbprmDQ5CSxE3mrsJhydMJkazFuNSbyeAnA0tlxOniIPSnvzPWmaFnKx1b60-_Wl8BFwLf4Zh35oX4Q87Y4hpanne7uRWX0onuXtHXum/w400-h300/brezhnev%20another%20medal.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Faravid:<br />When he was kicked out by Brezhnev, Khrushchev said “I'm old and tired. Let them cope by themselves. I've done the main thing. Could anyone have dreamed of telling Stalin that he didn't suit us anymore and suggesting he retire? Not even a wet spot would have remained where we had been standing. Now everything is different. The fear is gone, and we can talk as equals. That's my contribution.”<br /><br />Marko Trzun:<br />There is a joke about Khruschev instructing Brezhnev upon his retirement, it goes like this:<br />“Comrade Brezhnev, I’ve left you two sealed envelopes in my locked drawer, numbered 1 and 2. Here’s the key. Open only the first one when you get in critical problems with the Party, and lead the people well!”<br /><br />Brezhnev, after a few years, gets into problems, opens the first letter, the letter says: “Comrade Brezhnev, lay ALL blame on the previous government and me specifically, and proceed with your work as usual. Also, open the second envelope only when you get into the next critical problem with them, not earlier! Lead the people well!”<br /><br />After several years, Brezhnev again gets uncomfortable in the party, opens the second envelope, which says:<br /><br />“Comrade Brezhnev, sit down, write two letters and place them in sealed envelopes. Have a good rest of your life.”<br /><br />It really goes with what Khruschev contributed the most :)<br /><br />Orlin Stoyanov:<br />Imagine a CEO approving some 3-year old requests which were no longer relevant…<br />If only! Instead things get ignored for more than 10 far too often.<br /><br />Dimitra Strata:<br />The one thing I remember him is kissing other country male leaders very passionately on the mouth.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPW9I-S2Do8cRyeEQKP6SnvAIWw49E1EF4kkDD_oJl0mSl6LZZHoJ0Eja4BtsXgVrvLr4sThFtdoUk2XjDcIx2x7S4Rs4Edg_3bqWqNu6NTTppSCOUc-1qVGRuJyZs8YpZ_9bFllY8zd7tOS2jrmLUzG7JlF_2hqYlm2yJJgzGG9OC7bg8WR0WuiDLMaf6/s602/Brezhnev%20kissing%20head%20of%20state.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="472" data-original-width="602" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPW9I-S2Do8cRyeEQKP6SnvAIWw49E1EF4kkDD_oJl0mSl6LZZHoJ0Eja4BtsXgVrvLr4sThFtdoUk2XjDcIx2x7S4Rs4Edg_3bqWqNu6NTTppSCOUc-1qVGRuJyZs8YpZ_9bFllY8zd7tOS2jrmLUzG7JlF_2hqYlm2yJJgzGG9OC7bg8WR0WuiDLMaf6/w400-h314/Brezhnev%20kissing%20head%20of%20state.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>I'm pretty sure the object of passion here was the German chancellor.</i><br /><br />Michal Soucoup:<br />He was decidedly LESS capable that Kchruschev. His problem was NOT replacing people almost at all.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><span style="color: #800180;">The problem with command economy is you have to actively look for incompetence and weed it yourself whereas in market economy marked will more or less do it for you.</span><br /></b><br />If Brezhnev did not intended to do the weeding personally he should either empower others to do it for him or implement some sort of “up or out” policy for the plant managers.<br /><br />James Varela:<br />In the 70s there was a popular joke about Brezhnev. He brings his mother from her small town to Moscow to visit him, and he sends the TU 144 a.k.a. the Concordski to pick her up and bring her to Moscow. Then he whisks her by ZIL limousine to his luxury apartment in Moscow, then he takes her to a very posh restaurant, where food that the average Soviet citizen could never even dream of being served. Then he takes her on a trip aboard his massive yacht, all the while the old woman just sits and looks and says nothing until Brezhnev finally says to her, Mama aren’t you going to say anything,? And the old woman replies, All this is beautiful, Leonid, but what are you going to do if the Reds come back?<br /><br />Madi Connors:<br /><b>He was a dimwit who was probably the single most responsible person for the downfall of the Soviet Union, because the Afghanistan misadventure ended detente</b> and helped give Thatcher and Reagan leverage to enact policies that still leave both the US and UK damaged to this day. If Brezhnev had been competent, Putin would be a nobody now.<br /><br />Daniel Lovasy:<br />Look at his medal ribbons — he must have been the most decorated person I have ever seen. <b>There was a joke that he was awarded all the Soviet military medals there ever existed, except for two: the Heroic Soviet Mother and Heroic Soviet City</b>. (To be fair, a lot of those medals were given for nothing, but they looked impressive.)<br /><br />Umbrellaworker Wang:<br /><b>Brezhnev was indeed responsible for the collapse of USSR. He was lucky enough to get the best opportunity, but he put his resources in the wrong place.<br /></b><br />When Brezhnev came to power, the losses caused by WW2 were gradually recovered. The oil crisis led to an increase in oil prices, which brought a large amount of foreign exchange to USSR. USA also suffered huge losses in the Vietnam war and was willing to reach reconciliation with USSR.<br /><br />However, <b>Brezhnev did not take this opportunity to further develop the domestic economy, but instead invested massive resources in the arms race and geopolitical hegemony</b>. Ethiopia, India, Egypt Cuba… <b>any country that claimed to believe in socialism could receive Soviet aid. Tens of billions of economic and military aid were wasted in irrelevant countries and regions, hindering the further development of the Soviet economy. </b><br /><br />Brezhnev also openly accepted bribes, making corruption a systemic problem. <b>The black market economy, smuggling, and selling positions became common, which laid hidden dangers for the rise of oligarchs in the post-Soviet era.</b><br /><br />USSR's actions around the world aroused fear in various countries, forcing USA, Western Europe, China and other countries to form an alliance to fight against USSR, worsening the Soviet Union's diplomatic environment. </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>The US and the Gulf countries jointly suppressed oil prices, severely damaging the Soviet economy.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"> <i><b>The invasion of Afghanistan put huge pressure on USSR's finances, and the disorderly arms race also made the military-industrial complex an unstoppable interest group, hindering any reform that would be unfavorable to them.</b><br /></i><br />Oriana:<br />Our applause was more a pantomime of an applause. But I did get a sinister impression: he was a massive weight in that huge black coat. He was Russia itself, crushing everything that moved. He was stasis: "Nothing is going to change for a thousand years." For a moment, it was hard to breathe. <br /><br />But only after living in the US for a while I realized how different he was from Western politicians. Western politicians depend on getting votes, so they are always smiling, shaking hands, picking up babies — courting the potential voters. Brezhnev couldn’t care less. His immobile face was the face of absolute power.<br /><br />And given what we know from history, that’s also the face of absolute evil.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">No, I am not saying that Brezhnev was like Hitler. Rather, Brezhnev stood for a system in which no lives matter, and individuality is to be crushed in favor of collective obedience and mouthing of slogans. <br /><br />*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Time for a detox:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>”Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring." ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky</b></i> <br /><br />*<br />“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.<br />Organizations for writers palliate<br />the writer’s loneliness<br />but I doubt if they improve his writing.<br /><b>He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness<br />and often his work deteriorates.<br />For he does his work alone<br />and if he is a good enough writer<br />he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day</b>.”<br /><br />~ Ernest Hemingway’s 1954 Nobel Acceptance Speech<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXEmgeZKMpF6g5G0T9N_luq_q0GUhgSYI2IXOHm8gFieEDTLZWKEKrtYBmBqUrtW91GZ-XHXpc58iXf3TmbP7v1o1fwRb2Q-rT9pYc-ZzGOIug81TKgnN4bP21ZLbPN6LUa3kOe-hb9W9B0WQVMNol2TXMma3LfPHPEPjeI2zRt_55bJvzWcFA3HUf_c3n/s960/papa%20eye%20closed.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXEmgeZKMpF6g5G0T9N_luq_q0GUhgSYI2IXOHm8gFieEDTLZWKEKrtYBmBqUrtW91GZ-XHXpc58iXf3TmbP7v1o1fwRb2Q-rT9pYc-ZzGOIug81TKgnN4bP21ZLbPN6LUa3kOe-hb9W9B0WQVMNol2TXMma3LfPHPEPjeI2zRt_55bJvzWcFA3HUf_c3n/w400-h400/papa%20eye%20closed.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />*<br /><b>INSANE THINGS ABOUT GAZA<br /></b><br />I was told that a friend had been to three Hamas bases. I asked him what he means by a base? Like a building they call a base?<br /><br />Nope. He said Hamas has full army bases equipped with everything a normal base has including obstacle courses, shooting ranges, and more. They’re all over Gaza.<br /><br />I was also told that they could not walk three feet without seeing a tunnel opening. Gaza is absolutely covered with tunnel holes. I was told that Gaza is literally duplicated under ground.<br />I was told that <b>every single house, EVERY one, had weapons hidden somewhere. They didn’t enter a single house without some weapons somewhere.<br /></b><br />I was told that n<b>one of the Hamas terrorists wear uniforms. They are all dressed in civilian clothes so when they’re killed, Hamas can claim they were innocent.<br /></b><br />I was told that <b>we have no idea to what extent they use human shields</b>. Hamas terrorists open fire on IDF soldiers with one hand, while holding an elderly lady with the other. This is their most popular tactic.<br /><br />I was told that they have not met a single innocent civilian there and every single person, even those who pretend they’re innocent in the beginning, are somehow connected to Hamas. <b>Everyone there supports Hamas. </b>[Oriana: Or else they are afraid to say anything against it. It's a rule of terror.]<br /><br />I was told that there are days in which the IDF eliminates hundreds of terrorists.<br /><br />I was told that it is widely known that <b>if (when) Israel enters Rafah, it’s all over for Hamas. </b>Everyone knows that hundreds, maybe thousands of them are hiding in Rafah hoping the world manages to stop the IDF from going in there. They’re banking on that.<br /><br />I was told t<b>hey keep finding books, from children books to text books, describing the history of the Jews, and general information about Jews explaining why they should be killed.<br /></b><br />I was told that when an IDF soldier is killed, everyone there celebrates. Somehow they all know about it within minutes and firecrackers are their main method of celebration. Firecrackers and firing guns into the air. And of course, candies. They love giving out candies when a Jew is murdered.<br /><br />I was told that <b>Hamas terrorists in Gaza are like athletes or movie stars in other places. They are absolute heroes to the Palestinian people who have pictures of them on their walls and describe them as total rock stars.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">And finally, the doozy. I was told that on every single computer they find in people’s homes in Gaza, there is porn everywhere. Every single computer has porn on it. But get this, in addition to porn, every single house has sex artifacts all over the place. Sex toys, sexy outfits, and more. All over the place.<br /><br />All in all, seems like a solid society they’ve built over there in Gaza…<br /><br />Israel is dealing with some seriously twisted and morally depraved human beings who are told from age zero that Jews are nothing more than animals that deserve to be killed wherever they are.<br /><br />This society is rotten to the core and needs to be denazified from the ground up. Anything else will just be a bandaid on a society that needs open heart surgery.<br /><br />Oriana:<br /><br />I’m pretty sure I copied this from Quora. Is every assertion here true? My intuitive impression is that most of this is true. <br /><br />Religion is a form of insanity, especially when it is extreme. So is extreme nationalism. Combine the two, and you get nothing but insanity. <br /><br />As for porn on every computer, that’s typical of those who live with sexually repressive religion. <br /><br />Also, the high unemployment levels mean that young men have no outlet for their energies. Military and para-military organizations provide a sense of purpose and meaningful activity.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Mary: THE PROBLEM IS ISLAM<br /><br />If everything reported about the insanity in Gaza is true and accurate, there are no innocents. And the West cannot understand this because it doesn't understand Islam. Islam is not a harmless peaceful religion, as some defenders try to assert. Basic to Islam is the intent to aggressively conquer the world and all its peoples, erase all infidels and forcibly convert whoever is left to Islam. Jews in particular cannot be converted but must be eradicated entirely. Their genocide is called for as a sacred tenet. [“Kill them wherever you find them.”]<br /><br />The West doesn't understand this — doesn't see, or want to see, that a religion can be evil in its basic prescriptions, leading to evil acts being construed as good, holy, and necessary. The horrors of October 7th were CELEBRATED with demonic glee by the Gazans, who were PROUD of Hamas' barbarism, delighted to witness the horrors so carefully and gleefully recorded by the perpetrators. If you will remember, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were celebrated in the same way, with wild abandon, praise to Allah, fireworks and candies and dancing in the streets.<br /><br />We see civilians dying, children starving, and want to stop these immediately. Slaughter of the innocents is unacceptable to us. But this is all another tactic of Hamas, allowing them to continue in their genocidal purpose, by winning cease fires, for instance, that allow them to re-group and re-arm. What "the insanity in Gaza" shows is that there are no civilians — the whole populace, without uniforms, is part of the fighting force, supporting the extremists acts and ambitions.<br /><br />This is something we in the West find almost impossible to credit, and impossible to contend against. We see the children, the infants, as innocents we are not willing to sacrifice as necessary collateral damage. However, Hamas does not concur. For them, the cost of genocide is willingly, even eagerly paid. Not only do they not shrink from the suffering and death of so many, they see it as fodder for their own propaganda.<br /><br />Islam is the problem here, and we don't want to admit it. We don't want to be "Islamophobic," to appear to be prejudiced against any cultural or religious group. But I would argue that just as there can be evil dehumanizing ideologies so there can be evil dehumanizing religions. Think of the bloodthirsty gods of the Aztecs and the gross barbarity of their rituals...rivers of blood, mountains of sculls. <br /><br />Islam not only dehumanizes Jews, it dehumanizes women, shuns scientific inquiry, and is perversely obsessive about sex. Its laws themselves are barbaric tribalism, like honor killings...anathema in the civilized world. All religions and all cultures are not equally valuable and worthy of honor, or even tolerance. The division between primitive tribalism and modern secular civilizations can only grow wider and more challenging the longer tribal culture is given legitimacy without change.<br /><br />What can bring change at this depth and scale I don't know..but I'm sure it will neither be quick nor easy.<br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />Oriana:<br /><br />Italy, Germany, France, and the UK have a serious problem with their Muslim populations. Islam doesn’t tolerate other cultures; it wants to coerce everyone to convert to Islam. <br /><br />If we are lucky, time will bring about a significant drop in oil prices, and thus less financial support to the imams and their indoctrination programs. This will certainly not happen tomorrow, but, if we are lucky, within our lifetime. Secularism and modernity go hand in hand. <br /><br />As with the Christianity of our childhood, we may get nostalgic now and then about the beautiful music and art. We may admire the Gothic cathedrals. But deep down we know that religion does more harm than good, and this is especially true of Islam. Let’s be vocal about it every chance we get. I know this will be difficult since America in particular still can’t wrap its collective mind about the idea that religion — any religion, not only Islam — does more harm than good.<br /><br /><b>Apologists quickly point out to religious charities. No, these do not offset the harm, and besides, their positive works could be done by secular organizations.</b> Ethics can be taught to the young in the secular context, using the golden rule for instance, rather than the carrot-and-stick inducements of religion. It’s the development of empathy that matters, and that appears to have close connection with non-abusive child rearing — not the harsh punishments advocated by the Islamic clerics. </span></span></p><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And there is also drug abuse in Islamic countries, sometimes linked to terrorism. </span></span><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8110685/"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">https://</span></span>www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8110685/</a> <span style="color: #351c75;">Not surprising for a repressive, insufferable religion.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Note also the sex abuse of young boys. The West is particularly willfully blind to that.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> </span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;">My whole hope is that Islam will go the way of other religions, i.e. decline and keep on declining. That would be a great victory for human civilization. <br /></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />*<br /><b>LONGING FOR AUSCHWITZ</b> [WARNING: disturbing descriptions]<br /><br /><b>Hamas’ assault on Israelis on Oct. 7 was not an act of war as we normally think of it but something far worse. </b>We don’t have an adequate term for what occurred on that day, so people use words like “terrorism,” “barbarism,” “atrocity,” “depravity,” “massacre,” and so on. All are correct, and yet all fall short of capturing the annihilationist fury set loose at the Nova music festival and in the kibbutzim and small towns of southern Israel. <b>The people attacked in those places were not only to die, but to die in torment. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In addition to the merciless torture, killings, slashings, burnings, beheadings, mutilations, dismemberments, and kidnappings, there were gang-rapes and other forms of <b>sadistic sexual assault</b>, including, according to some reports, the cutting off of women’s breasts, nails driven into women’s thighs and groins, bullets fired into their vaginas, and even intercourse with female corpses. Unimaginable? For most normal people, yes. But <b>before going into Israel, the Hamas assassins were instructed to “dirty them” and “whore them.” And that’s precisely what many of them faithfully did.</b><br /><br />If it were possible to encapsulate all the evil of that day in a single image, it would be that of the violent seizure of a young Israeli woman, Naama Levy, 19, barefoot, beaten, and bloodied, her hands tied behind her back, the crotch of her sweatpants heavily soiled, possibly from being raped, dragged by her hair at gunpoint into a Hamas car, and driven off to Gaza to suffer an unspeakable fate among her captors there. Her assailants filmed every second of her ordeal; and as one watches the clips of her being taken away, one sees crowds nearby loudly shouting “Allahu Akbar”—“Allah is the greatest”—a victory cry that offers religious sanction to the malign treatment of Naama Levy and countless others seized, slaughtered, and abducted on that horrific day.<br /><br />Oct. 7, 2023 was the most destructive day of mass violence against Jews since the end of the Holocaust. <b>The carnage carried out on that day,</b> <b>far from being a by-product of war, was a religiously sanctioned, orgiastic display of unrestrained Jew-hatred. One cannot begin to understand it if one ignores the Hamas Charter and other Islamist teachings that make Hamas the organization it is and inspires it to do what it does.</b><br /><br />Hamas originates as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is and always has been a jihadist organization, which sees the existence of the State of Israel as an intolerable intrusion into the Domain of Islam (Dar al-Islam) and <b>is committed to removing Israel by whatever means necessary. </b><br /><br />The preamble to the Hamas Charter declares that “Israel exists and will continue to exist until Islam obliterates it, just as it obliterated others before it.” The “Palestinian problem,” it affirms, “is a religious problem” and is not amenable to a negotiated political settlement. The only way to “raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine” is through “jihad,” a holy war that is a “duty for every Muslim wherever he may be.”<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><span style="color: #800180;">Hamas and its allies are not looking for a two-state solution but a repeat of the Final Solution. Their brutally successful killing spree on Oct. 7 was an extravagant rehearsal for that larger goal, a genocidal one.</span><br /></b></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirEi8Hmkt3S-h6jQMNU8ybOB8fKQLO983zNgTPk2xOeu2J38lVnG2Z-BZXCJKCacx7BBvheJkaX_U4GiDZ_pxuseztiOh1NlNMbo2fIVbvvNXsXIPMextZLAhY7eqlobeFQtTiWyZPayRzDbgjXxas9ORkuXytvMpnO5yrzm9OMnnCQ-vdbkOLUXde3I73/s1024/children's%20bedroom%20October%207.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="682" data-original-width="1024" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirEi8Hmkt3S-h6jQMNU8ybOB8fKQLO983zNgTPk2xOeu2J38lVnG2Z-BZXCJKCacx7BBvheJkaX_U4GiDZ_pxuseztiOh1NlNMbo2fIVbvvNXsXIPMextZLAhY7eqlobeFQtTiWyZPayRzDbgjXxas9ORkuXytvMpnO5yrzm9OMnnCQ-vdbkOLUXde3I73/w400-h266/children's%20bedroom%20October%207.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br />There will be no Jewish future worthy the name without the State of Israel. At present, something like 47% of world Jewry lives in Israel. That’s almost one out of every two Jews alive. <b>Were Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and their allies ever to succeed in liquidating Israel, the loss would be immeasurable and irrecoverable. Most Jews still alive elsewhere would be physically imperiled, psychologically traumatized, and spiritually enervated to the point of collapse. </b><br /><br />That might have been the Jewish condition after the Holocaust, were it not for Israel’s founding only three years after the liberation of the death camps—an act of collective revival that demonstrated a level of national resilience and spiritual rebirth almost without parallel in history. But <b>far from recognizing the Jewish people’s reestablishment of national independence and political sovereignty in its ancient homeland in positive terms, some of Israel’s neighbors have seen the existence of the Jewish state as an intolerable affront that needs to be reversed.</b><br /><br />Hamas set out to reverse it as forcefully as possible on Oct. 7. Its <b>murderous deeds on that day were meant to debase and kill Jews and rally others to collectively put an end to the Jewish state, a strategic objective that recalls some memorable words of the Hungarian Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Imre Kertész: “The antisemite of our age no longer loathes Jews; he wants Auschwitz.” </b><br /><br />Today’s most passionate antisemites continue to loathe Jews and, for that very reason, want Auschwitz. If Israelis were not fully aware of those hateful passions before Oct. 7, they surely know them now. They also know that one Holocaust is one too many and are committed to doing whatever they must to make sure there will not be a repeat. They need and deserve all the support we can give them.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/longing-for-auschwitz">https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/longing-for-auschwitz</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The West still has to fully understand that militant Islamists don't care about Gazans. What they want is to destroy Israel. The price for this murderous intent is very high. The resources that could be used to better the lives of Palestinians are used to purchase weapons. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #073763;">Joe:<br />The main threat to Israel is indeed the terrorists in the Middle East. However, that is not the entire picture. <b>Journalists need to consider how Netanyahu’s management of the Gaza War endangers Israelis as well as Jews around the world, especially in the long term. It is not only the Muslim Nationalists that threaten Israel, but the Christian Nationalists with whom Netanyahu has allied himself.</b><br /> <br />To ignore the dark, Jewish-Christian history is to imperil the tolerance that most Jews live today. Yet, journalists ignore this history, which has had peaks and troughs since <b>Christians began persecuting the Jews soon after Constantinople made Christianity the religion of Rome.</b> One of the peaks came in 1050 CE during the Inquisition. The church did not consider Jews and Muslims heretics and forbade the Inquisitors from prosecuting them. <br />However, the byproduct was that Jews and Muslims who refused to convert to Christianity were tortured and murdered. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #073763;">The next peak came during the Crusades. Christian armies invaded the Holy Land. Their purpose was to return it to Christian control by driving the Muslims out. <b>The Jews in the Holy Land received the option of converting or facing torture and death.</b><br /> <br />Netanyahu’s allies include Holocaust deniers, the ex-president of the US, Donald Trump, the current prime minister of Hungary, Orban, the President of Argentina, Javier Milei, and Putin. These leaders may not be church-goers, but their supporters are Eastern Orthodox and <b>Christian Nationalists. They want to bring about the Second Coming of Christ, and they believe that for this to occur, Israel must establish its Old Testament borders.<br /> </b><br />These groups believe the entire country will voluntarily recognize Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and the Second Coming of Christ will begin once Israel reclaims the territory. 40% of American Christians believe these two events will happen by 2050. History tells us that when Jews do not voluntarily convert to Christianity, they endure torture and murder. Thus, the security of Israel is in jeopardy because its allies are friends with a dark agenda.</span></span></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span>Oriana: </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Alas, the most insane branch is Christianity will probably be the last to go — and I don’t mean disappear completely, but just dwindle enough to cease to be a threat. And radical Islam might last even longer than the most extreme Christianity. We know that persecuting a religion usually fails to eliminate it; it might even strengthen it. <br /><br />I put my hope in education. The more children learn about other religions and mythologies, the more the most intelligent among them will come to see all religions as a human creation, and the less susceptible they will become to the blindly obeying religious leaders. I also fully favor deportation and other punishments for clergymen who preach hatred and especially murder. The message that this is not acceptable must be loud and widespread. <br /><br />Greater equality for women should also be encouraged. Educated women will educate their children. <br /> </span><span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS: GIVE UP RELIGIOUS DREAMS TO RESTORE SANITY<br /></b><br />Rabbi Ibtisam:<br /><br />Several things need to happen that currently seem very unlikely:<br /><br />1) <b>A certain part of the Jewish population (not a majority, but sizable enough) needs to give up its stupid dream of wanting to settle the entire West Bank because of some messianic fantasy.</b> We don’t need every square inch of ancient Judea to survive and it wasn’t part of the original plan, although some Zionists, usually the radicals among them, have always harbored this dream. Mainstream Zionism, however, has always been pragmatic and amenable to compromise, a word to which Arabs are allergic.<br /><br />2) <b>The vast majority of Palestinians need to give up their dreams of committing genocide against the Jews, abandon radical Islam and terrorism, disarm Gaza, and give up their delusions about a right of return.</b> There is no right of return. A right of return will destroy Israel and they know it, and that is why it cannot be accepted, and if anyone ever tried to impose it, it’s just going to lead to another ethnic cleansing of Arabs, which no one wants. We. Do. Not. Mix. Well. See Lebanon, see Yugoslavia. People don’t magically get along when they hate each other’s guts.<br /><br />3) I<b>ran and some Arab states need to stop fueling the conflict and start helping actual “Palestinian refugees” live normal lives wherever they are. Keeping them as prisoners in camps until Israel is eradicated has so far done far worse to them than us just existing for 75 years.</b><br /><br />Julea Baccam: THE PROBLEM IS ISLAM<br /><b>There can be no peace with Islam….it's either submit or fight.</b> Who would submit to such a warlord dictatorship?<br /><br /><b>I do not think peace is possible unless Islam changes its Supremacy teachings.</b> What are the odds of that? Sad that all old “Palestine” is now invaded and ruled by Islam. But that is was their goal & their goal for the world. Peace with Islam/Israel is the least of the world problem. Islam is the problem. <b>If they take Israel, all the rest of the world seems very possible for them.</b> Meanwhile, they work on Nigeria, Uganda, India, France, Sweden etc.<br /><br />Mike Siroky:<br /><b>Israel's goal remained to survive as a Jewish state. The Arabs goal remained to eliminate Israel as a Jewish state.</b> But Israel moved to the right and after Menachem Begin, adopted a Zionism more akin to Jabotinsky [of the “Iron Wall” fame]. <b>Israel became more proudly Jewish and less willing to compromise its security. Meanwhile the Palestinian Arabs became more proudly Muslim and adopted the Jihadist model of governance and war (see Hamas). Both sides moved to the right.</b></span><br /><b><br /></b></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Since both sides, Israel and the Arabs, have become more true to their identities, one can look upon the situation as either less hopeful or more hopeful for a resolution. The cup is either half full or half empty. Only time will tell.<br /><br />Giora Bendor: THE CULTURE OF DEATH VERSUS THE CULTURE OF LIFE<br />A culture of death does not mix well with a culture of life. Fanaticism on both sides is bad for coexistence. However, <b>if the educational system of hate teaching is changed, then in forty or so years, there may be a chance for real peace.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>IF. </b>Yes, if only hate stopped being taught, starting at an early age. <br /><br />*<br /><b>DO RUSSIANS BELIEVE THEIR STATE TV?<br /></b></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzmyki0PgdSehk9JL2H5EP0Ik4cyQr4rKxH0YbA-xvDIRYfaJud8-IiSNxBe8VHyJL9xO0-araAXQg5JvAhd7WcRsYIvFcEsWoEHiIcHEvdHo5L5NNzoZuoRauW6PpSlW1IMOLjHnMh7sbFqEnZ53K2448okPy7Bj7dU4e9yV5mOjOicAosW2_Gs2B3ani/s602/Putin%20and%20TV.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="339" data-original-width="602" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzmyki0PgdSehk9JL2H5EP0Ik4cyQr4rKxH0YbA-xvDIRYfaJud8-IiSNxBe8VHyJL9xO0-araAXQg5JvAhd7WcRsYIvFcEsWoEHiIcHEvdHo5L5NNzoZuoRauW6PpSlW1IMOLjHnMh7sbFqEnZ53K2448okPy7Bj7dU4e9yV5mOjOicAosW2_Gs2B3ani/w400-h225/Putin%20and%20TV.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Russians are obliged to believe the state TV by law — expressing any opinions contradicting the state TV in public can get you prosecuted for “discrediting Russian army”, “military fakes”, “rehabilitation of Nazism”, or “disrespect to authorities”.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">And it doesn’t matter that the things that Russian leaders say are contradictory. Russians are masters of cognitive dissonance.<br /><br />— We are not at war with the Ukrainian people, but only with the fascists. — And who are the fascists? — All of you. All Ukrainians.<br />— We do not have plans to occupy Ukraine. — And what do you plan to occupy? — All the land to the border with Poland.<br />— We respect the independence of Ukraine. But Ukraine must cease to exist.<br /><br />During his visit to the Stavropol region, Putin shared valuable intel with the Russians: people who live abroad soon would be eating worms.<br /><br />And then <b>he blamed the USA for the collapse of food production in Russia in the 1990s.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Putin said that humanitarian aid supplies sent by the USA after the crash of the USSR, when stores were empty and Russians had nothing to eat, killed the domestic producers. “The other side of seemingly good intentions,” accused Putin.</b><br /></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiahSn-lyBUEVkhDn-EdciAd5rkdkzou26_uril3eZDeyI7ud6g_s5Ih53aBGpQ_pmhZNUxSAdegBze8b1kRTK2MRx2bfn_K3HyPk7XSTnloZy-JVaL4m3lim3SD4yGd9F1b5eGlUEVR66yBaBVF_3J-7viOkcKjxathdOW0aX-tbSKzdka2vI3vygr3xP/s602/empty%20food%20market%20Russia.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="339" data-original-width="602" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiahSn-lyBUEVkhDn-EdciAd5rkdkzou26_uril3eZDeyI7ud6g_s5Ih53aBGpQ_pmhZNUxSAdegBze8b1kRTK2MRx2bfn_K3HyPk7XSTnloZy-JVaL4m3lim3SD4yGd9F1b5eGlUEVR66yBaBVF_3J-7viOkcKjxathdOW0aX-tbSKzdka2vI3vygr3xP/w400-h225/empty%20food%20market%20Russia.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Well, at least now you know: after the collapse of Putin’s regime, there is no need to help Russia — they don’t appreciate any help. ~ Elena Gold<br /><br />*<br /><b>PUTIN OR DOUBLE?</b><br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0uIE3nHBQWB83rVVI0EAVT46byY1rZMvDeNXi4E4zn2mQxxCckXWkjBbqELKC0MqAZ0uLAH6b9CZvrg8gA1AD9h6GU2UfNTtss8kRHfDNU1PWpNOQG91oaA3S20tyJnoPJjHOkIjdLXdp00oJ60lxTKFiraoQtRQ9vESrfgXvhgQWdT8vcvaJRj4d_lhw/s679/Putin%20or%20body%20double.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="679" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0uIE3nHBQWB83rVVI0EAVT46byY1rZMvDeNXi4E4zn2mQxxCckXWkjBbqELKC0MqAZ0uLAH6b9CZvrg8gA1AD9h6GU2UfNTtss8kRHfDNU1PWpNOQG91oaA3S20tyJnoPJjHOkIjdLXdp00oJ60lxTKFiraoQtRQ9vESrfgXvhgQWdT8vcvaJRj4d_lhw/w355-h400/Putin%20or%20body%20double.jpg" width="355" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">There seems to be something off about this version of Putin. He looks too soft, too kind. He looks like someone who hasn’t killed anyone. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Also, we know that Putin is paranoid, and fears being among ordinary people (other than vetted actors and/or FSB agents dressed as soldiers, workers, or whatever the situation calls for)<br /><br />*<br /><b>WHY THE ISLAMIC WORLD FELL BEHIND THE WEST<br /></b><br />1. During the Crusades, Western crusaders took Arabic writings back to Europe to translate and learn from them. <b>The Muslims were not interested in Western writings, in part because of their firm reliance upon the Koran and its strictures on the exclusion of other writings and because of their cultural superiority at the time</b>. The transfer of knowledge tended to be one way.<br /><br />2. Some Islamic rulers antagonized the Mongols by killing their ambassadors or trade representatives as spies. <b>The Mongols retaliated in force, destroying the Khwarezmian Empire and later most of Baghdad, slaughtering many hundreds of thousands, destroying libraries, and devastating Islamic lands and infrastructure.</b><br /><br />3. <b>Europe was continually fighting wars in Europe, honing their military skills and prompting improvements in metallurgy, naval technology, and weapons. The early Caliphates and Ottoman Empire dominated the core Islamic regions and did not devolve into discreet nations with defensible borders or permit the evolution of governments within the Ottoman Empire.</b><br /><br />4. <b>Western kingdoms and empires colonized throughout the world, gaining valuable trade opportunities and building navies. Western commerce gave birth to industrialization.<br /></b><br />5. <b>Portugal found a sea route to bypass most of the Islamic world and establish direct ties to India, Southern Asia, and the Pacific islands. Other European powers followed Portugal</b> in this direction. Muslim and Ottoman reduction of the Eastern Roman Empire was the conquest of a decaying power.<br /><br />6. <b>Islamic countries rarely established colonies or had much presence in the New World. The Islamic world looked inward after the initial vigorous Muslim conquests, while the Western world often looked outward.</b><br /><br />7. <b>The West was more advanced in the creation of universities.</b> Although Islamic countries led in science before 1300 A.D., many Islamic scholars studied the Koran, in Arabic, not scientific literature written in many different languages. <b>Western cultures eventually encouraged printing presses and widespread literacy. Islam was often limited to Arabic, more difficult to print, whereas Europe had many languages.</b> Books other than the Koran and in non-Arabic languages were relatively rare in the Islamic world.<b> The Ottoman Empire banned the printing press except for printing the Koran.</b><br /><br />8. <b>The Ottoman Empire and previous Caliphates stifled the development of nationalism and legal and banking systems</b>, which European nations promoted, producing greater commercial, political, and military competition among Western nation-states.<br /><br />9. <b>European nations developed more mature political and governmental institutions and systems, including constitutional monarchies and the election of representatives</b>. They were balanced by the Church, a separate institution, unlike most of Islam, which did not have a hierarchical structure or defined priesthood.<br /><br />10. <b>The more temperate climates of the West were usually more conducive to economic development than the more sub-tropical and desert climates of the Islamic world.</b> Europe possesses many harbors and long coastlines. Europe fronted the Atlantic Ocean, Baltic, and Mediterranean, while Islam was centered on the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. <b>The Fertile Crescent conquered by Islam suffered from salinization of the soil after millennia of irrigation.</b><br /><br />11. Islamic countries always did a much better job of reducing or eliminating alcoholism, alcohol use, and theft offenses than did the West. This enforced moral superiority allowed Muslims to continue thinking of themselves as generally superior to the West.<br /><br />12. Advancing Western powers developed the inclusive rule of law, which the Islamic world never did. <b>Islamic women were tightly constrained and not free to fully participate in public, commercial, educational, and civic activities.<br /></b><br />13. By the time most Muslims figured out that the Islamic world was behind the West in many aspects of science, technology, naval architecture, weaponry, government, and nationalism, it was too late to catch up quickly. Then, the pace of technological change increased exponentially, and it was virtually impossible to make up the difference. <b>To this day, the Islamic world has very few research scientists compared to the West, Japan, and China</b>. ~ John Dewar Gleissner, Quora<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmH2zC5wU6rBE46hArmFEDWGfmUHLqRGXB81m_f9RW21uop7LxVHt6dH7mzlB05JLK6GL8gwL57IxBKpxbvjIJ5h1k0WQ1BBCAMIp8cUAX0uR_raXctNiSrLSIKC-yRtVRroXJvCxPKSuCovSQx3N_PrPUwsSa39tLQiv6U_5lmZS0I0SQwDOGiEn26CJZ/s500/mosque%20Edirne_Selimiye_Mosque_dome.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="331" data-original-width="500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmH2zC5wU6rBE46hArmFEDWGfmUHLqRGXB81m_f9RW21uop7LxVHt6dH7mzlB05JLK6GL8gwL57IxBKpxbvjIJ5h1k0WQ1BBCAMIp8cUAX0uR_raXctNiSrLSIKC-yRtVRroXJvCxPKSuCovSQx3N_PrPUwsSa39tLQiv6U_5lmZS0I0SQwDOGiEn26CJZ/w400-h265/mosque%20Edirne_Selimiye_Mosque_dome.png" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Marc Clamage:<br /><b>The Mongols not only destroyed Baghdad, including the ancient library known as the House of Wisdom (they say the Tigris first ran red with the blood of 800,000 slaughtered civilians, then black with ink from the House of Wisdom), they also sabotaged key elements in the irrigation system which kept the Fertile Crescent fertile; that, along with the lack of people to maintain the canals due to depopulation, permanently ended the agricultural basis for any expansive Arab civilization. What was once among the most productive farmland on the planet was reduced to today's wasteland of scrub and desert.</b><br /><br /><b>The Mongol invasion of 1258 was an existential disaster from which the Arabs have never recovered.</b><br /><br />Soumyadipta:<br />Many historical accounts detailed the cruelties of the Mongol conquerors. Baghdad was a depopulated, ruined city for several decades and only gradually recovered some of its former glory.<br /><br /><b>Contemporary accounts state Mongol soldiers looted and then destroyed mosques, palaces, libraries, and hospitals. Priceless books from Baghdad's thirty-six public libraries were torn apart, the looters using their leather covers as sandals</b>. Grand buildings that had been the work of generations were burned to the ground. The House of Wisdom (the Grand Library of Baghdad), containing countless precious historical documents and books on subjects ranging from medicine to astronomy, was destroyed. Claims have been made that the Tigris ran red from the blood of the scientists and philosophers killed. Images of violence toward books appear in the 14th century; the tale of the destruction of books – tossed into the Tigris such that the water turned black from the ink – seems to originate from the 16th century. Michal Biran argues that this story was likely a literary trope to demonstrate Mongol barbarity.<br /><br /><b>Citizens attempted to flee, but were intercepted by Mongol soldiers who killed in abundance, sparing no one, not even children. </b>Martin Sicker writes that close to 90,000 people may have died. The Mongols in 1262 boasted to king Louis IX of France that they had killed two million in Baghdad, certainly an exaggeration.<br /><br />The caliph Al-Musta'sim was captured and forced to watch as his citizens were murdered and his treasury plundered. According to most accounts, the caliph was killed by trampling. The Mongols rolled the caliph up in a rug, and rode their horses over him, as they believed that the earth would be offended if it were touched by royal blood.<br /><br /><b>Hulagu had to move his camp upwind of the city, due to the stench of decay from the ruined city.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The historian David Morgan has quoted Wassaf (who himself was born in 1265, seven years after the razing of the city) describing the destruction: "They swept through the city like hungry falcons attacking a flight of doves, or like raging wolves attacking sheep, with loose reins and shameless faces, murdering and spreading terror...beds and cushions made of gold and encrusted with jewels were cut to pieces with knives and torn to shreds. Those hiding behind the veils of the great Harem were dragged...through the streets and alleys, each of them becoming a plaything...as the population died at the hands of the invaders.”<br /><br />Some modern historians have cast doubt on the vehemently anti-Mongol medieval sources. George Lane (SOAS), for example, doubts the Grand Library was destroyed, as the learned members of the Mongol command such as Nasir al-Din Tusi would not have allowed it, and that disease was the major cause of death. Primary sources state that Tusi saved thousands of volumes and installed them into a building in Marāgheh.<br /><br /><b>Initially, the fall of Baghdad came as a shock to the whole Muslim world. But after many years of utter devastation, the city gradually became an economic center where international trade</b>, the minting of coins and religious affairs flourished under the succeeding Ilkhanate. The Mongol chief Darughachi was thereafter stationed in the city.<br /><br />Andy McNish:<br />The Ottomans didn't permit the printing press to be used for much else than printing copies of the Koran. This severely limited the spread of new ideas and knowledge throughout the Empire.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">There is also the larger matter of </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Islam’s rejection of secularity.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"> All aspects of society are subordinate and subject to religious doctrine. And, certainly post golden age, this fed into the idea that all knowledge someone needed was to be found in the Koran. Not likely to be the most fertile ground for intellectual curiosity and embracing of the Scientific Revolution.<br /><br />Janos:<br />There’s an answer on Quora arguing for the importance of glasses. Europeans mastered lenses while Arabs did not; therefore an Arab scientist with worsening eyesight (=most middle-aged) more or less became irrelevant, while an European just had glasses made and continued reading and writing (=working). Some scientists, of course, manage to go on even completely blind, but for the bulk of learned men and therefore general progress, it’s a serious obstacle.<br /><br />Cyrus di Leon:<br />Which is fascinating considering that a Muslim named Ibn Al Haythem invented the Science of Optics.<br /><br />Derek Egan:<br /><b>To put the emphasis on Holy Scripture or the Quaran leads to stagnation. Science has rewarded us with a standard of living that nudges religion to a less than meaningful role in life.<br /></b><br />Tom Sigado:<br />It's a generalization, and an unsupported hunch, but tribalism seems to be a limiting factor to growth and advancement. It seems that when Nations are formed, civilization moves forward, while tribal culture stagnates. North and South America come to mind before Europeans arrived. Feudal Europe before the Renaissance, Africa, Afghanistan. Competing nations had to pull resources from different groups and backgrounds, where tribal culture was more inward. The religious aspect, Islam and Mayan culture for example, more or less formed a massive tribe instead of a diverse population.<br /><br />Paul Wellingslongmore:<br />I agree that <b>an obsession with the Koran has cost the Muslim world dearly.</b> Their overriding priority has clearly been to learn their bible and abide by its teachings, as best they can. Perhaps they have sacrificed their scientific and industrial potential, because in their view submission to Allah is always the highest priority.<br /><br />Over the past 400 years some have seen the military, economic and industrial downside to this approach and sought to correct the balance. The Ottomans spent their last 100 years frantically trying, without success, to make amends — socially, culturally, scientifically. But it was too little too late.<br /><br /><i><b>Many Muslims today console themselves (perhaps delude themselves), that modern science is not antithetical to the teachings of The Prophet, and that the Koran contains all the science one needs, including much contemporary empirical knowledge about cosmology and embryology, only recently discovered in the West.</b><br /></i><br /><b>Islam was spared the horrors that accompanied the Reformation, but in a sense has ever since suffered as a result.<br /></b><br />Alpel Karaka:<br />After reaching prosperity European populations grew very fast while Ottomans suffering from population decline. This ultimately reflected on their military power as they had to fight much bigger armies they used to encountering. This reflected their war revenues as well. As a result they couldn’t fund the technologies requiring big sums of money. That was the turning point. Yet they were still in the status of a super power up until to the mid 18th century until to the death of Sultan Mahmud I.<br /><br />Saul Martino:<br />Islam’s absolutist and tyrannical religious authority overrides everything in favor of a religion that refuses to change as Muhammad himself had identified that updates and changes had been made to Christianity and to Judaism in the New Testament and in the transcribing of the Torah and other parts of the Jewish religion.<br /><br />This unwillingness to bend compromise or rationalize anything was important in maintaining and stopping loss through apostasy or changing from the fundamentalist view of Islam which has its benefits but one of those negative parts of the trade-off is that they are unable to change as a society. This continues to this day where they cannot compromise they cannot change because the religion is too dominant over there entire lifestyle and it suffers no discussion or commentary or criticism whatsoever and will quash any dissenting voices violently. This also usually attracts huge levels of mob violence pretty quickly. It's very hard to innovate under these conditions.<br /><br />Susanna Viljanen:<br />14. Women. Westerners treated women like human beings. Muslims treated (and still treat them) like something in-between domestic animals and furniture. <b>Such society can never produce healthy families, which are the basis of the civil society, but will remain as a tribal culture.</b><br /><br />Abdihakim Jama:<br />States in the Middle East generally do not have a lot of legitimacy. They were drawn up by imperial powers and the states generally use a lot of their money and manpower trying to control their <b>populations who feel no loyalty to the state</b>.<br /><br />The Gulf states have largely circumvented this problem by bribing their populations with oil. If they did not have oil, they would have been thrown into civil war long ago.<br /><br /><b>Another reason for the lack of development is oil itself. That resource makes it feasible for states to exist without harnessing their populations. 2 out of 3 Saudi Arabians are employed by the government. According to civil service minister Khaled Alaraj, many Saudi government employees are really only working for an hour each day.</b><br /><br />Saudi Arabians have really wasted their potential and are not employed in any meaningful capacity. Almost half (45%) of the government budget of Saudi Arabia is spent on paying salaries for all the people they employ on cushy but ultimately worthless jobs.<br /><br />I assume that this is the same for basically all oil states in the Middle East.<br /><br />There are good reasons for the lack of development of Arab/Islamic states but I think your argument is very low on the list. After all, nothing is actually stopping religious societies from becoming successful. Much of Europe was religious and they they became so successful that they dominated the world pretty much.<br /><br />Arab societies have always been religious and they were the dominant power on the globe for many centuries.<br /><br />Gregory N:<br />Western scientific and technological progress frequently was in spite of opposition from the Church authorities. <b>The entire concept of scientific PROOF is anathema to religions that are founded on belief and faith where there is no proof. </b>If the Koran states that there are 300 joints in the human body and medical science says that is wrong, what will be taught in Islamic madrassas?</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:<br />Another geographical factor was that, not having to sail across the Atlantic Ocean, rougher by far than the Indian Ocean. The Muslim world did not develop heavy-duty ships. European ship designers faced the challenged of building ships strong enough to survive a storm in the Atlantic. This also taught them to design big armored military ships that proved useful for colonial conquest. <br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />Indicus:<br /><b>I believe the Muslim world was on its own path to a Renaissance/rational awakening similar to Europe which was cut short by the Mongol invasion.</b> The outcome is clear for all the world to see.<br /><br />Some of the most brutal Islamic invasions and cultural devastations of non-Muslims occurred after the Mongols retreated. <b>Political Islam in the modern era probably is a byproduct of the cultural shift in the post-Mongol era that occurred centuries ago.</b><br /><br />Abdihakim Yama:<br />Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science — The New Atlantis — The most significant factor was physical and geopolitical. <b>As early as the tenth or eleventh century, the Abbasid empire began to factionalize and fragment due to increased provincial autonomy and frequent uprisings. By 1258, the little that was left of the Abbasid state was swept away by the Mongol invasion. </b>And in Spain, Christians reconquered Córdoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248. <b>But the Islamic turn away from scholarship actually preceded the civilization’s geopolitical decline — it can be traced back to the rise of the anti-philosophical Ash’arism school among Sunni Muslims, who comprise the vast majority of the Muslim world.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBLI1I5w166MCVjF8NRzoKQTwbSVUk7Rn7KPnpqv4FUa-Q8J23aNVpREUm5MpVJ5RogNEpDzNzWIRK49C2rjKnda6KyZKPHLlnbhMn8blIDYJGjS3MyA8U2X1Ugx5-Q2dYTsdbMrBeySXzw9okLtomnLi0DP3YYFLf_OLUj7dBQbeL017bUKEzFxVD0zK8/s1200/cordoba%20mosque%20upward%20shot.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="626" data-original-width="1200" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBLI1I5w166MCVjF8NRzoKQTwbSVUk7Rn7KPnpqv4FUa-Q8J23aNVpREUm5MpVJ5RogNEpDzNzWIRK49C2rjKnda6KyZKPHLlnbhMn8blIDYJGjS3MyA8U2X1Ugx5-Q2dYTsdbMrBeySXzw9okLtomnLi0DP3YYFLf_OLUj7dBQbeL017bUKEzFxVD0zK8/w400-h209/cordoba%20mosque%20upward%20shot.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Mosque in Cordoba<br /></i><br />*<br /><b>IS RUSSIA ON ITS WAY TO BECOME AN ISLAMIC REPUBLIC?<br /></b><br />~ According to official demographic results for 2023, only 1.264 million babies were born in Russia.<br /><br /><b>Fewer babies were born only in 1999 after the severe economic crises of the previous year — 1.214 million children.</b> This was the absolute minimum since the Great Patriotic War (WW2) that caused deaths of thirty million Soviets.</span><br /><br />However, <span style="color: #800180;"><b>this number hides the unrecognized truth — Russian women give birth to one child per lifetime while wives of migrant workers from Central Asian have three children on average.</b></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />There are now more Muslims in Yekaterinburg, a large regional center in the Urals, than in Marseilles.<br /></span><br />This is the result of <b>the record low number of babies in 1999 who grew up and twenty four years later still haven’t had that many children because the average age of marriage is 28 trending towards 30.</b> You just can’t win in this game of musical chairs.<br /><br />Therefore, without <b>migrants from Central Asian “stan” republics, whose menial labor keeps Russian economy afloat </b>the dire situation for the native population is comparable to mass famines and political purges of the 1930s.<br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Putin is actively making matters worse in the best Stalinist tradition and has already killed approximately 75,000 Russian men in Ukraine and forced a million people to leave the country.</b></i></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Putin keeps asking Russians to have more babies but they as usual so exactly the opposite. He should have asked Russians to STOP having babies and then they would have more babies than migrant women to punish kleptocrats for wishing to genocide them because in Russia, birthrates rate YOU.<br /><br />The silver lining is six hundred thousand conscripts born last year ready to fight Nazis in 2041, on the 100th anniversary of Great Patriotic War.<br /><br />However, by the that time weaponry will be considerably more lethal and the next Putin will quickly run through the available biofuel and <b>belatedly realize that there are no Russians left. They had all been expended by generations of Russians commanders with their meat attack tactics.</b><br /><br />When Russian population is reduced to about 20 million, the authorities will recognize that the true value is not natural resources under the ground but infinitely resourceful human beings who live on the surface. ~ Misha Firer, Quora</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYeL37B_JxD6lm7JEglT3ujwsZniUbVUXgAWLCXXWIq7Nps94BvDa2luQ8QZc5ULn1gzh_5m4mp90WxfelIBOX8iuddicxl5Ro5XFeuAz4xNa2PgvOLJ9Ly0YTPMlOml-ZYkNOewlj4RR4Obec3UQFS87z2kmMxVVrNrOXvSS4sQnRNOuWhwWerke0gShi/s240/muslim%20praying%20in%20street%20Moscow.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="160" data-original-width="240" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYeL37B_JxD6lm7JEglT3ujwsZniUbVUXgAWLCXXWIq7Nps94BvDa2luQ8QZc5ULn1gzh_5m4mp90WxfelIBOX8iuddicxl5Ro5XFeuAz4xNa2PgvOLJ9Ly0YTPMlOml-ZYkNOewlj4RR4Obec3UQFS87z2kmMxVVrNrOXvSS4sQnRNOuWhwWerke0gShi/w400-h267/muslim%20praying%20in%20street%20Moscow.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Muslim praying in the streets of Moscow</i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Joshua Moran:<br />There are nearly 400,000 casualties, though. Maybe only 75k dead, but many of those that survived, are permanently maimed (mentally and physically)… and plenty are criminals that are out early, damaged from war, and adding more ills. I can’t imagine the brain drain is doing anything good, long term, either. Slava Ukraini.<br /><br />Jan Veselý:<br /><b>75 000 according to Russian officials, 400 000 dead according to independent sources.<br /></b><br />Philippe S:<br />Don’t forget the 1 000 000+ young and usually bright Russians that fled the country since 2022 probably to never come back.<br /><br />James G:<br />Again, the parallels with modern day America, each time I read one of these is, is nothing short of amazing.<br /><br />1.2m births in a population of 144m in Russia (.8%)<br /><br />In America, it’s 3.66m births in a population of 350m (1%)<br /><br />So while technically America gives birth to more children than Russia, only by a very very small margin per capita — and 2023 was a banner year for childbirth in America — the first year in almost a decade with such high birth rates. Conversely, <b>thanks to the Ukraine war, Russia’s population has declined.</b><br /><br /><b>Additionally, like Russia, at least 800,000 births in America come from legal/illegal immigrants. Our native population is being replaced.<br /></b><br />One last point I would like to make. The West will never die. However, all of the western leftists would love nothing more than to convert us from our current constitutional republic into something very much resembling Soviet Russia.<br /><br />Rich Ens:<br />Slightly more boys than girls are born each year. However, in the age 65 and up cohort, there are 225 women for every 100 men.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggQF-3DBQAdlMxSo0Gtn_PE1j7fo5sD7HmGplbagWPqneunh1B9EzmHKMAaZCc3gHCiU93t_-aRn3UwUjN9s3OkmFUVe1xdBbs2wfgFg9_86ve_S8Bi6Fb-qRTOhUKA-bo0fDSCXJuwcs6CO7EdNgVVVE0b4p2ZISDU51ivcZsEVm2tE-WL3T_Z_NU7vlR/s1920/mosque%20in%20Moscow.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="1440" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggQF-3DBQAdlMxSo0Gtn_PE1j7fo5sD7HmGplbagWPqneunh1B9EzmHKMAaZCc3gHCiU93t_-aRn3UwUjN9s3OkmFUVe1xdBbs2wfgFg9_86ve_S8Bi6Fb-qRTOhUKA-bo0fDSCXJuwcs6CO7EdNgVVVE0b4p2ZISDU51ivcZsEVm2tE-WL3T_Z_NU7vlR/w300-h400/mosque%20in%20Moscow.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>The Main Mosque in Moscow</i><br />*<br /><br /><b>GENERATIONS: THE HISTORY OF AMERICA’S FUTURE<br /></b><br />~ Every generation is influenced by unique cultural events.<br /><br /><b>The resulting ideological differences lead to recurring crises, conflicts, and reconstructions.</b></span><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><br />It’s a compelling and marketable idea, but not without its flaws.<br /></b><br />Ever heard of the phrase, <b>“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times”</b>? Chances are you have. This catchy warning about the cyclical nature of history can be found in the most unlikely of places: internet memes, inspirational posters, and even embroidered onto sets of Etsy cushions.<br /><br /><b>Although generally attributed to author G. Michael Hopf’s post-apocalyptic novel Those Who Remain, the underlying idea probably originated with a 1991 book called Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069</b>. Written by William Strauss, a playwright, and Neil Howe, a historian and senior associate for the Global Aging Initiative’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, <b>Generations argues the development of human civilization is heavily affected by and even mirrors the transition between different generations of human beings. </b><br /><br />According to the so-called Strauss-Howe hypothesis, as their train of thought is now known, <b>history can be roughly divided into periods of 80 to 100 years. In each period, four generations compete for power, resulting in a crisis moment followed by radical social and political reconstruction. </b>In the case of the U.S., such crisis points include the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the Second World War.<br /><br />Aside from having at least some precedent in the field of sociology, the Strauss-Howe hypothesis or simply generational theory also appeals to common sense. Each generation is shaped by unique events and challenges, so it follows that their values would influence the events of their day. At the same time, the theory has drawn its fair share of criticism, with many claiming it’s more science fiction than science.<br /><br />WEIGHT OF ANCESTORS<br /><br />Although the topic has only attracted attention from scholars in recent decades, people have been talking about the importance of generations since the days of ancient Greece. When, in Homer’s Iliad, the Greek warrior Diomedes asks his Trojan foe Glaucus who he is, the latter doesn’t mention his age, sex, profession, or place of origin — instead, he gives a comprehensive overview of his entire family tree.<br /><br />“Greathearted son of Tydeus,” he tells the Greek:<br /><br />“Why do you question my lineage <br />As is the generation of leaves, so too of men: <br />At one time the wind shakes the leaves to the ground, <br />But then the flourishing woods <br />Give birth, and the season of spring comes into existence; <br />So it is of the generations of men, which come forth and pass away.”<br /><br />Compared to the Christian Europe of medieval times, which emphasized the individual’s responsibility to live a morally upright life and enter heaven, t<b>he Homeric Greeks saw themselves first and foremost as the product of their forefathers, the fruits of their ancestry evident in their very person.</b><br /><br />Even if they don’t accept every tenet of the Strauss-Howe hypothesis, <b>many sociologists accept generation as one of the key factors explaining sociocultural change</b>. In doing so, they follow the example of Karl Mannheim, a Hungarian scholar who argued <b>generations are defined not by birthdays, but shared experiences that influence one’s values. </b>Mannheim also argued that, for a generation to manifest, its members needed to actively acknowledge the experiences that influenced them — through books, news reporting, and other means of cultural production. <b>It’s the same with self-fulfilling prophecies, really; only when a group recognizes itself as a group does it begin to act as one.<br /></b><br />Of course, <b>it’s one thing to say generations are shaped by history, and another to say they shape history in turn. And while academics are happy to admit that first bit, they continue to have strong doubts about the second.</b><br /><br />PROBLEMS WITH THE STRAUSS-HOWE HYPOTHESIS<br /><br />To some, generational theory is no more than pseudo-historicism blown out of proportion by the media, no more reliable than, say, the Phantom Time hypothesis, which makes the outrageous claim that Holy Roman Emperor Otto III added three centuries to the Gregorian calendar to make his own reign coincide with the year 1000 AD. (That’s another story, though.)<br /><br />One of the biggest problems with the Strauss-Howe hypothesis is that generations are a subjective measurement, one that requires researchers to make gross generalizations about the individuals they study. It also operates on the questionable assumption, as the Forbes journalist Jessica Kriegel puts it, “that cultural events determine personality more than life experience and circumstance,” a claim many sociologists readily debate.<br /><br />Strauss and Howe’s notably unacademic backgrounds should also ring some alarm bells. Bestselling writers first and scholars second, the duo has arguably masked their lack of expertise behind language compelling and marketable enough to turn Generations into a kind of media empire: the ninth book in the series, The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End, was released last year.<br /><br />There are other problems. <b>Generational theory holds that people’s worldview and behavior — decided by the era in which they were born — remain static throughout their lives. This is, of course, not the case, with numerous studies showing that things like religion, political beliefs, sexual preference, and even personality can change over a person’s lifetime. </b><br /><br />Furthermore, Strauss and Howe’s aspiration to apply their hypothesis on a global scale ignores the undeniable fact that generations — if there even is such a thing as a generation — form at different times in different countries and cultures, making it impossible to summarize world history by lining up randomly selected grandsons, sons, fathers, and grandfathers.<br /><br /><b>The fourth turning<br /></b><br />The terms of the Strauss-Howe hypothesis are vague enough to the point that anyone can cherrypick evidence and create a persuasive narrative around them. That said, Strauss and Howe’s is pretty persuasive. Their assessment of the four generations that make up American society (Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and the Baby Boomers), for instance, goes as follows:<i><b><br />The Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, grew up in a time of nearly uninterrupted economic growth, making them both optimistic and idealistic. </b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>Gen X (1965-1980), raised during the hardships of the oil crisis, turned against the capitalist-consumerist culture their parents embraced, forming countercultures. </b></i><br /><br /><b>Gen Y (that is, Millennials, 1982-1994) was born during another period of financial security, one that coincided with the advent of the digital world. The comfortable, sheltered environment in which they grew up, Howe says in The Fourth Turning — an environment of Apple computers, Power Rangers cartoons, and a collapsing Soviet hegemony — made them self-assured, attention-seeking, and perfectionistic </b></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>—</b></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b> qualities that, in the far less secure world we call home today, manifest as stress, burnout, and generalized anxiety disorder. </b><br /><br />According to Howe, Millennials will soon upend the conservative order put in place by the Baby Boomers, transforming the country in much the same way as the Revolutionary War or Civil War have done before.<br /><br />Time will tell if Strauss and Howe are right.<br /><br /><a href="https://bigthink.com/the-past/strauss-howe-generational-theory-revolution-america/">https://bigthink.com/the-past/strauss-howe-generational-theory-revolution-america/<br /></a><br />Oriana:<br /><br />The way that young people seem glued to their iPhones, I can hardly seem them engaging in political action. And then there is the enormous cloud of ignorance and misinformation suffocating the country. Still, technology marches on. I suspect it's technology that is the critical factor. There is the need for new competencies, and the young are more adept at acquiring those competencies. <br /><br />*<br /><b>ANOTHER LOOK AT THE FRENCH REVOLUTION<br /></b><br />The French aristocracy pre-Revolution weren't the careless, luxurious bastards cruelly lording over everyone as they are made out to be. This is demonstrated most perfectly by the fact that <b>many of the most prominent revolutionaries were, themselves, noblemen.</b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6vyWPktkvIneFJvxY6wzyYz-3L3w8oH5zNOWwDUKPj1AL17H4pF_IEOtzAJ0AD3dQvL7YJ3q4DBlmdxT8i8m5Svu3cepQfvrwx3G6aDQK3D3ir6r6A1Etb8vqt3IJn7z96ruYGfSq_v8zEgtzVAjDkJXKGT3N77pEBxgxE_c13SquBxI3jnju0W3iCrdb/s602/french%20revolution%20execution.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="451" data-original-width="602" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6vyWPktkvIneFJvxY6wzyYz-3L3w8oH5zNOWwDUKPj1AL17H4pF_IEOtzAJ0AD3dQvL7YJ3q4DBlmdxT8i8m5Svu3cepQfvrwx3G6aDQK3D3ir6r6A1Etb8vqt3IJn7z96ruYGfSq_v8zEgtzVAjDkJXKGT3N77pEBxgxE_c13SquBxI3jnju0W3iCrdb/w400-h300/french%20revolution%20execution.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In the same vein, <b>Louis XVI wasn't overthrown because he was a tyrant. He was overthrown because he was NOT a tyrant. If anything he was friendly, indecisive and soft-willed, more so than his war-minded predecessors Louis XV and Louis XIV</b>. <i><b>The Kings before him stayed reasonably popular.</b></i> By going to war a lot and spending obscene amounts of money that would ultimately lead to the Kingdom's downfall, these rulers were generally rather respected by much of the population. Much like with the last Tsar of Russia, the King who ended up losing his head to the guillotine was a pretty chill, open-minded fellow open to reforms.<br /><br />There’s this stereotype of these lavishly spoiled big spenders in powdered wigs, Marie-Antoinette telling the hungry should just “go eat cake”, completely removed from reality… and truthfully, this is bullshit. A ton of noblemen were social reformers, generous to the poor, conscientious and cared deeply for the common man.<b> The revolutionaries who took over, quite a few of them were blue-blooded themselves.</b> And were far worse than the elites they ended up killing. ~ Jean-Marie Valheur, Quora<br /><br />Monica Mendez:<br />Wow, Jean! I never knew that since my school history text book and all the history books that I have read so far gave me the impression that all the revolutionaries who spearheaded the French Revolution either belonged to the middle class or the lower classes. Thanks for making me learn something new today. If what you said is true, my conviction that <b>history is always the story of the victors</b> has been strengthened. While I was reading this answer, I am reminded of the quote of a prominent African writer Chinua Achebe: <b>“Until the lion learns to write, every story will always glorify the hunter.”</b><br /><br />Atanas Arnaudov:<br />Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette make rather poor villains — a kind-hearted and deeply religious couple who clearly were devoted to each other and helped the poor and the victims of natural disasters.<br /><br />Really shows you how good Republican propaganda was too, but <b>no one outside of Paris despised them.</b><br /><br />Michael Terrell:<br />Most of the leaders of the revolution weren’t noblemen. Instead, they were <b>merchants, bankers, and wealthy artisans who were upset with their lack of social standing among the aristocracy</b>. Basically, <b>the only people who benefited were the rich who weren’t nobles.</b><br /><br />Romain Clère:<br /><b>Louis XVI was a passive guy. He was not interested in governing. Actually he was a pretty good craftsman — he was very interested in locksmithing. He was not really a social reformer either.<br /></b><br />Dimitar Reeves Koparov:<br />Interestingly, similar logic can be applied to the end of the Soviet Union. The leader that oversaw the end of it was the one most open to reform and softening of the oppression.<br /><br />Duke Ganote:<br />In “A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court,” Mark Twain wrote:<br /><br /><b>~ There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? </b>A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves. ~<br /><br />Rob Ford:<br />Louis XVI spent excessively, almost bankrupting the country. And the revolution was based on a historical context in which <b>the gap between the rich and the poor in France had widened to a ridiculous degree.</b><br /><br />The revolution wasn't just a changing of the guard. <b>It ended the feudal system that had dominated European societies for centuries, overthrew the monarchy, and established civil laws and fairer representation of a wide variety of people in the political system.<br /></b><br />It was messy and brutal, but necessary. The societies in which we all live in the West would not exist without it and similar events.<br /><br /><b>For real-world alternatives, witness Russia, China, Saudi Arabia or Iran today. At least three of these four societies have had their revolutions too, but they ultimately replaced one kind of dictatorship with another, because the people of these nations had not progressed sufficiently through education to understand and implement a fair and democratic society.</b> Saudi Arabia is undergoing its own soft revolution of a kind now, but it's debatable how far it will go, with a dictator who dismembers his critics still in power.<br /><br />Luke Hathertone:<br /><i><b>The Sun King lived in a different time, when the aristocracy and the divine right of kings was utterly unchallenged. Louis XVI lived at a time when the Age of Enlightenment had transformed the European intellectual class, which included many aristocrats, and the middle class was much larger and more educated as well.</b></i><br /><br />And yes, Louis XIV was a strong king, despite his destructive warmongering. Louis XVI was the wrong combination of incompetent and weak, much like Nicholas II.<br /><br />Alan Parsi:<br /><b>Kingdom had become the thing of the past. This revolution would have happened regardless of who the king was. Louis XVI just made it easier by being kinder than his predecessors.<br /></b><br />Arthur Short III:<br />The one thing a theoretically absolute monarchy cannot survive is a decent, indecisive, kindly monarch in a time of trouble and crisis. Louis XVI would have been happier being a locksmith than being king, and would probably have lived far longer as said locksmith.<br /><br />Nick Daniels:<br /><b>Volcano eruptions in Iceland around about that time caused a “nuclear winter” scenario with crop failures all over Western Europe. The food riots that erupted in France, particularly in Paris, were very hard to put down and contributed significantly to the French Revolution.<br /></b><br />Shaun Hanlon:<br /><i><b>It was never about cake, it was about revenge.</b><br /></i><br />Guy Nutting:<br /><b>The French revolution was not about the poor. It was reasonably well heeled people grabbing power from the most wealthy. It was underpinned by the Enlightenment, which probably meant little to a subsistence farmer in the Dordogne.</b><br /><br /><br />*<br /><b>SMALL PLEASURES CAN PROVIDE MOMENTS OF RAPTURE</b><br /><br />~ Rapture is a delight that turns us both towards the object of attention and towards oneself, resulting in a sense of freedom.<br /><br />One day last week, I woke having slept well. The whole day ahead was free, giving me the sense that its time stretched infinitely before me. It was cold outside, but an intense winter sun streamed through the bedroom windows when I opened the curtains. I had, for obscure reasons, or perhaps for no reason at all, an urgent need to listen to some music and so, having made myself some coffee, I put on Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Op 44. And then, wanting something less exuberant, I listened to Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, which then led me back to the poem by Mallarmé, ‘L’après-midi d’un faune’ (1876), that had inspired Debussy’s piece. The poem, like much of Mallarmé’s work, depends heavily on the sounds, the touch, the taste in the mouth, of the French language, and evokes a deep sense of sensuality – a sensuality that is also the poem’s main theme. I spent many hours that day lingering over Mallarmé’s poem, allowing, as best I could, the words to seep into me – and that really was the sensation I had, as if the words were entering into my flesh.<br /><br />The hours I spent that morning I would describe as moments of rapture. They revolved around an engagement with some wonderful works of art, but I certainly would not wish to claim that it is only in such engagement that we can experience moments of rapture. There are many ways in which we can, and a great deal of these concern an attention to the small things of life – such as, for example, the wonderful winter light pouring through my windows on the morning in question, which was certainly part of my feeling then. And there are no doubt many ways of understanding the notion of rapture, as there are of any complex human experience. But, as I would like to understand it, at least as a point of departure for reflection, rapture is a particular kind of pleasure or delight that turns us in two directions at the same time: towards the object of attention, in which we are wholly absorbed, and towards oneself in a heightened state of consciousness. And with this comes a sense of freedom or liberation.<br /><br />The key example of this is the kind of abandonment we can experience in sexual love, the deepest of our pleasures: in the act of sex, one is wholly absorbed in the other person, lost in the delight and excitement of being with them; yet, at the same time, one is acutely conscious of oneself as delighting in this, of oneself as experiencing all this. In his wonderful novel G. (1972), John Berger brings this out beautifully when he writes of G making love with Beatrice:<br />Her difference from him acts like a mirror. Whatever he notices or dwells upon in her, increases his consciousness of himself, without his attention shifting from her.<br /><br />It is perhaps this extraordinary combination of attention to the other that is also attention to oneself that helps us understand the peculiar absorption we feel in sex. This is why, as Berger also writes, ‘the only poem to be written about sex [is] – here, here, here, here – now.’<br />The sense of rapture I experienced that morning with the music and the words of Mallarmé, though it may seem very far from sexual experience – and it is, of course, in many ways – is nonetheless characterized by the same sense of turning entirely towards the object, as I was lost in the music and poetry, my attention wholly absorbed by them, together with a heightened sense of myself as experiencing this, as delighting in the sounds. </span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">And, as I suggested, crucial in these experiences of rapture is a sense of freedom or liberation: in such moments, we are freed from the travails of the self, its anxieties and worries, its woundedness and vulnerability, its foolishness – which is just our own particular version of the distressing and illimitable foolishness of human beings. We feel freed too from what Virginia Woolf called the ‘cotton wool’ of life – the banal activities with which most of life is filled. Moments of rapture are what Woolf thought of as ‘moments of being’, moments that light up our otherwise largely flat quotidian existence and release us into a kind of plenitude.<br /><br />Woolf is right, of course. Most of life for those of us who are fortunate enough to live in parts of the world where we enjoy basic political and social stability – a precious rarity in human affairs – is taken up with such things, in Woolf’s words, as this:<br /><br />“One walks, eats, sees things, deals with what has to be done; the broken vacuum cleaner; ordering dinner; writing orders to Mabel; washing; cooking dinner; bookbinding.”<br /><br />At best, we simply forget these tedious practicalities; at worst, they leave us enervated, grinding us down. It is one of the dispiriting ironies of our contemporary bourgeois condition, of our ‘administered society’ as Theodor Adorno put it, that our lives are in so many ways drained of significance, lacking any kind of axiological destination or summation. This is the problem of the disenchanted, modern self that has been largely stripped of all transcendence and construed in naturalistic terms – at least for those of us who can no longer believe in the promises of the old religions.<br /><br />Hence, in my view, the problems Western societies have with the endless forms of addiction that we have at our disposal – from drugs and pornography to the internet, smartphones and the reality TV that reflects back to us our own banality – as we go in search of release in moments of rapture from the flatness of our lives. But we know that these forms of escape are degraded forms of what we really long for, and leave us only more distressed than before. Even the appalling sight of catastrophic species depletion and the realities of global warming hardly touch us. As the philosopher Michael McGhee put it in Spirituality for the Godless (2021):<br /><br />“It is no accident that the image of the house on fire is a climate emergency trope. And we are all inside: most of us in the Western world pacified, controlled, and absorbed in our games and diversions.”<br /><br />As McGhee says, change, if there is to be any, must come largely from the inside because, as he puts it: ‘There is no one outside with more attractive options.’ In this, he aligns himself with many of the noblest spirits of modernity, those in rebellion against our modern condition and who offer us hope for moments of rapture that are not degraded. One of these is most certainly Woolf, who herself possessed a kind of rapturously mystical vision of the oneness of all things behind local appearances, expressed in many of her novels – perhaps particularly The Waves (1931) – and from which we might learn to look again at the world with fresh eyes.<br /><br />I think here too of the highwire walker, juggler, pickpocket, magician, unicyclist, woodworker, horserider and writer Philippe Petit, most famous for his highwire walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center on 7 August 1974. Interviewed for the documentary Man on Wire (2008), Petit said:<br /><br />To me it’s really so simple that life should be lived on the edge of life. You have to exercise rebellion. To refuse to tape yourself to rules. To refuse your own success. To refuse to repeat yourself. To see every day, every year, every idea as a true challenge. And then you are going to live your life on a tightrope.<br /><br />Petit shows us how rapture can be connected with danger, in his case, extreme danger: he makes of that danger his rapturous delight and joy. But the point is not, of course, that this is what we should do – though we might. Rapture can be calm and meditative, as in my experience that morning, as well as found in experiences such as Petit’s. It is not a matter of seeking to imitate Petit. It is a question, rather, of trying to catch something in our own lives of the spirit of rapture in which Petit lives, making space for moments of rapture and, perhaps, turning ourselves around a little from the inside and living more in that spirit.<br /><br />So perhaps there is some help from the outside after all. This is how I like to think of Petit, in any case: he awakens us to something better in ourselves, an openness to the rapture of life. In this, he is at one with some others – Woolf, but also Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus, D H Lawrence and George Orwell among others. ‘We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos,’ wrote Lawrence in Apocalypse (1931). In a similar spirit, Orwell, speaking of Shakespeare, in 1947 wrote:<br /><br />“Shakespeare was not a philosopher or a scientist, but he did have curiosity, he loved the surface of the earth and the process of life – which … is not the same thing as wanting to have a good time and stay alive as long as possible.”<br /><br />Orwell was a very different man from Lawrence, but they shared a love of ‘the surface of the earth and the process of life’. Inflected in different ways, they offer us a sense of the rapture we can find simply in being alive, if only we can open ourselves to it.<br /><br />There is in these individuals, and no doubt many others, an openness to the force and energy of life that is exemplary – and rapturous. This is not because they were always in a state of rapture; it would obviously be silly to suppose that, as we see from their lives. In any case, to be in such a state permanently, even supposing that this were possible, would surely be utterly exhausting and enervating: here, as elsewhere, we need variety in life. It is rather that they lead their life in a spirit of rapture; their life is colored through and through by such an idea. Be that as it may, it would be a mistake if we were to look at these thinkers and then go in pursuit of rapturous moments. Just as pursuing happiness is most likely to make it flee from our grasp, so the same is true with rapture. The point is that of being open to the relevant possibilities. This is no doubt largely a matter of cultivating a certain kind of sensibility.<br /><br />Nietzsche, who spoke of himself as being like dynamite, and whose name is generally associated with the spirit of ‘philosophizing with a hammer’, in fact gave a great deal of attention to what he called ‘small things’: the moments of everyday life that can make life for us a source of joy – or a vale of tears. He recommends that we start each day by asking ourselves what we can do to make the day agreeable, and suggests that this depends greatly on how we approach and organize the small things of life – what and when to eat and drink, when to rest, what to read, when to take a walk and so on. <br /><br />He is counseling us to slow down, notice things, pay attention. He is certainly right that most of us rush through life and miss the gentle rapture that can come from such attention to the world and ourselves. Human beings are, in general, very bad at seeing clearly what is good for them and acting in accord with that. I am probably no better than anyone else at doing it, but I hear Nietzsche’s voice and that of those others I have mentioned and many more – Michel de Montaigne, for example – gently pulling me back to my better thoughts and feelings. They recall us to the sources of delight in life – to its rapturous possibilities. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/the-small-pleasures-in-life-can-produce-moments-of-rapture?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=7337d87865-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_03_08&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-a9a3bdf830-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D">https://psyche.co/ideas/the-small-pleasures-in-life-can-produce-moments-of-rapture?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=7337d87865-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_03_08&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-a9a3bdf830-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D<br /></a><br />*<br />“The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche,<br />occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live<br />in the changing light of room,<br />not try to be or do anything whatever.”<br />~ May Sarton<br /><br />*<br />*<br /><i><b>The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. ~ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar</b><br /></i></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0mpUOMkYFm_vdt1RxCuhrZxLQC8TfT4FbAegtwb67PInGlEKw899gdpW74vPz8UDSl0SbiiCx22q-TQV-5YZIj5MH4wCrfr0E6sYJAfeGzLZlNx7pWdZHoOLUJqz37S6J3xZ4teQiEoCv8ym-vycQ_3qJ8HOF0r2NqWkR2IyU_UycU6RpRr7zRI8TPb3f/s411/Julius%20Caesar.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="345" data-original-width="411" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0mpUOMkYFm_vdt1RxCuhrZxLQC8TfT4FbAegtwb67PInGlEKw899gdpW74vPz8UDSl0SbiiCx22q-TQV-5YZIj5MH4wCrfr0E6sYJAfeGzLZlNx7pWdZHoOLUJqz37S6J3xZ4teQiEoCv8ym-vycQ_3qJ8HOF0r2NqWkR2IyU_UycU6RpRr7zRI8TPb3f/w400-h336/Julius%20Caesar.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Julius Gaius Caesar<br /></i><br />*<br /><b>DOGGERLAND</b><br /><br />~ About 9,000 years ago Britain was connected to continental Europe by an area of land called Doggerland, which is <b>now submerged beneath the southern North Sea.</b><br /><br /><b>Doggerland was a mix of marshes, swamps, wooded valleys and hills, and most likely inhabited by humans during the Mesolithic period (10,000 to 8,000 BCE). It was teeming with migrating wildlife and served as a seasonal hunting ground for humans.</b><br /><br />However, as ice melted at the end of the last glacial period, sea levels rose and Doggerland eventually became submerged, <b>cutting off the British peninsula from the European continent by around 7,000 BC.</b><br /><br />Dogger Bank (shown on the map) briefly remained an island before submerging underwater. <b>The area today is known among fishermen to be a productive fishing bank and is very shallow at only about 50 to 120 ft (15 - 36 m) deep.</b></span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyWdQo54CxpPKtSbR8Zsas83HrQdcI00XeRqfsmaeVR-UraAlJ-HgH_fvQEGzCP28iDHvkWJ8ZeqMIF13CGO5vSVjTr0f3ZR3GHMOhp2A1cp9aWA-mV_EgWzxI3JrG-bgTr7DD6H9rBL_4FbBTKhWh3ITlCac5v2LjkgQNyhu-nN3G9530l1v3xNo4NwR3/s609/doggerland%20map.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="609" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyWdQo54CxpPKtSbR8Zsas83HrQdcI00XeRqfsmaeVR-UraAlJ-HgH_fvQEGzCP28iDHvkWJ8ZeqMIF13CGO5vSVjTr0f3ZR3GHMOhp2A1cp9aWA-mV_EgWzxI3JrG-bgTr7DD6H9rBL_4FbBTKhWh3ITlCac5v2LjkgQNyhu-nN3G9530l1v3xNo4NwR3/w395-h400/doggerland%20map.jpg" width="395" /></a></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Over the years fishermen from the North Sea have dredged up hand-made bone artifacts, textile fragments, paddles, dug-out canoes, fish traps, a 13,000-year-old human remain, a woolly mammoth skull and a skull fragment of a 40,000-year-old Neanderthal.</b> ~ Shiv Tandon, Quora<br /><br />EUROPE’S LOST FRONTIERS<br /><br />The only lands on Earth that have not been explored in any depth by science are those that have been lost to the oceans. <b>Global warming at the end of the last Ice Age led to the inundation of vast landscapes that had once been home to thousands of people. These lost lands hold a unique and largely unexplored record of settlement and colonization linked to climate change over millennia. </b>Amongst the most significant is Doggerland. Occupying much of the North Sea basin between continental Europe and Britain it would have been a heartland of human occupation and central to the process of re-settlement and colonization of north Western Europe during the Mesolithic and the Neolithic.<br /><br />Within this submerged landscape lies fragmentary yet valuable evidence for the lifestyles of its inhabitants including the changes resulting from both the encroaching sea and the introduction of Neolithic technologies. This inundated landscape cannot be explored conventionally; however, pioneering work by members of this project has led to the rediscovery of Doggerland through the creation of the first detailed topographic maps relating to human occupation in the Early Holocene. </span><span style="color: #800180;">(<span><span>The Holocene is the current geological epoch, beginning
approximately 11,700 years ago. It follows the Last Glacial Period,
which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the
preceding Pleistocene together form the Quaternary period.</span></span><span><span> </span><a class="ruhjFe NJLBac fl" data-jsarwt="1" data-usg="AOvVaw0DBRHMHmTI3baiSeqULC6A" data-ved="2ahUKEwif25P9uOiEAxVGBzQIHbSZA_kQmhN6BAgpEAI" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene"><span>Wikipedia</span></a>)</span></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />Within the Europe’s Lost Frontiers project, world-leading innovators in the fields of archaeo-geophysics, molecular biology and computer simulation are developing a ground-breaking new paradigm for the study of past environments, ecological change and the transition between hunter gathering societies and farming in north west Europe.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.bradford.ac.uk/archaeological-forensic-sciences/research/europes-lost-frontiers/">https://www.bradford.ac.uk/archaeological-forensic-sciences/research/europes-lost-frontiers/</a><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggnASWD4wqsPTulPux51fuGZCAech5ktd38hPUZaj2hdXuyUYJLdR0nI6Cv3_2fvHuAWG810cmrW85VPSPI0Vp6DMoRsAMrGsudv1-dNZIhg3vvAegfk8dmAdDzwFLkNC6jFs8XkA_4ktDIYBQBPSd7Au78WaOfoARxFyUUJKB6LhjjFsO9KnBrKAR6i00/s2455/Doggerland%20green.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1686" data-original-width="2455" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggnASWD4wqsPTulPux51fuGZCAech5ktd38hPUZaj2hdXuyUYJLdR0nI6Cv3_2fvHuAWG810cmrW85VPSPI0Vp6DMoRsAMrGsudv1-dNZIhg3vvAegfk8dmAdDzwFLkNC6jFs8XkA_4ktDIYBQBPSd7Au78WaOfoARxFyUUJKB6LhjjFsO9KnBrKAR6i00/w400-h275/Doggerland%20green.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>CONSUME MORE FIBER FOR BETTER COGNITIVE FUNCTION<br /></b><br /><i><b>1) Fiber feeds beneficial microbes in the gut, improving the integrity of the gut lining.<br />2) A healthy gut prevents systemic inflammation.<br />3) Tamping down inflammation helps to optimize the brain, both for mood and cognition.</b><br /></i><br />“It’s paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone.” ~ Andy Rooney<br /><br />A new study has found that a simple prebiotic could boost beneficial bacteria in the gut and improve scores on a cognitive test in people over 65. This could be fantastic news to those worried about the seemingly inevitable descent into dementia as we age. The study, conducted by Clare Steves, Mary Ní Lochlainn, Kevin Whelan, and colleagues at King’s College, London, found that the people taking a prebiotic fiber had significantly better scores on a test called the paired associates learning test. This visual-memory test is often used to detect early signs of Alzheimer’s.<br /><br />One of the authors, Mary Ní Lochlainn, said, <b>“Those who received the prebiotic had half the number of errors on this test compared with the group that received a placebo.” She noted that the changes brought about by the prebiotic happened quickly. “We are excited to see these changes in just 12 weeks. This holds huge promise for enhancing brain health and memory in our aging population,” she said.<br /></b><br />The researchers found that the<b> prebiotic fiber boosted specific healthy bacteria, including Bifidobacteria. This is among the first bacteria we acquire as babies when we get milk. </b>Mother’s milk contains Bifidobacteria, and gives us a jump start. Bifidobacteria produces short-chain fatty acids that both nourish and heal the cells lining the gut. Keeping your gut in the pink of health prevents bacteria and toxins from seeping into the bloodstream, where they get pumped to every organ in the body, potentially causing widespread inflammation.<br /><br />Some of these fatty acids also make it to the brain, where they encourage the growth and repair of brain cells. As we age and consume less milk, our levels of Bifidobacteria slowly decline. But <b>the standard American diet (SAD) also contains precious little fiber, which also reduces the amount of Bifidobacteria even more.</b> <b>By the time we’re 65, we have very little Bifidobacteria left, and its absence is felt in a thousand little ways from stiff knees to diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, and cognitive difficulties.</b><br /><br />Studies like this often have a lot of noise, particularly because people are so variable, both genetically and microbially. But <b>King’s College has a large group of twins they can tap for research, this cleans up the signal considerably, eliminating the genetic difference between subjects. Twins also have gut microbiomes that are more similar to each other, as compared with unrelated people. By giving one twin the prebiotic and the other a placebo, researchers were able to get clean results.</b><br /><br />This wasn’t a large study, but the study of twins gives it some extra power. The study also comports with several other studies showing that consuming fiber—dietary and supplemental—is associated with better cognitive performance.<br /><br />If a simple supplement such as fiber can help prevent cognitive loss, it points to a hopeful future for dementia and Alzheimer's. It also implies that we could benefit from foods with higher fiber. This includes veggies like <b>asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, lentils, onions, and garlic. To satisfy the sweet tooth, raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries are good sources of fiber as well.</b><br /><br />Food manufacturers are still trying to learn this lesson, but for now, most processed foods are extremely low in fiber. And sadly, most Americans get over half of their calories from fast or processed food.<br /><br />Knowledge is power, and now that you know how your gut microbes can keep your cognition at an optimal level, what are you waiting for? Eat a veggie. Maybe even try a fiber supplement. Today is a good day to start.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHNZ1LIeocvfRpPsHD4gCMEUpTTPU3ucwWGbym9Go3FzuEbOszAGr-vJbqH5uqBkJhfxA2krvTY2thh12IXEvDtqt-n1z1N_PEIvqabUFhYpEzQCf4eTrck1RWn0iEjTZtJBxS0dQzg91f829gx11plkBp199mSY7xtrq4emUPXA-XBWZFzRtf13_Wr3Hm/s2048/Bifidobacterium%20longum.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHNZ1LIeocvfRpPsHD4gCMEUpTTPU3ucwWGbym9Go3FzuEbOszAGr-vJbqH5uqBkJhfxA2krvTY2thh12IXEvDtqt-n1z1N_PEIvqabUFhYpEzQCf4eTrck1RWn0iEjTZtJBxS0dQzg91f829gx11plkBp199mSY7xtrq4emUPXA-XBWZFzRtf13_Wr3Hm/w400-h300/Bifidobacterium%20longum.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Bifidobacterium longum</i><br /><br /><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mood-by-microbe/202403/can-fiber-improve-cognition-in-the-elderly">https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mood-by-microbe/202403/can-fiber-improve-cognition-in-the-elderly<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>WEIGHT LOSS DRUGS MAY HELP TREAT ADDICTION</b><br /><br />As drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic have become popular weight loss tools, some doctors and patients are also seeing a surprising side effect: diminished cravings for alcohol. <br /><br />Megan Johnston started taking semaglutide, the active ingredient in several brands of weight loss drugs, last year to try to lose weight. The 38-year-old Arlington, Virginia, real estate agent said she gained 30 pounds during the pandemic, and was drinking more too.<br /><br /><b>"At my check-up last year I remember telling my doctor I was drinking upwards of 15 drinks a week," Johnston told CBS News.<br /><br />She's severely cut back since then.<br /><br />"Some weeks, none," she said of her drinking habits these days. "Last week was one. Maybe average three.”</b><br /><br /><b>Johnston is among many patients who've reported fewer cravings for alcohol while taking semaglutide for weight loss.</b><br /><br />"If it turns out that this medication is safe and effective for treating addiction, just by dint of how many people are already taking these medications for other purposes, this would become really the largest and most widely used pharmacotherapy for addiction medicine that's ever been developed," said Kyle Simmons, the director of Oklahoma State University's Biomedical Imaging Center and a professor of pharmacology and physiology.<br /><br />Simmons is running one of several clinical trials currently underway to examine whether semaglutide reduces cravings for alcohol.<br /><br />He says <b>the drug affects the brain and appears to remove the pleasure received from drinking alcohol. </b>But he also made it clear, "We just don't know yet whether or not the medication is safe and effective for the treatment of alcohol use disorder.”<br /><br />As with most medications, <b>Wegovy and Ozempic also come with the risk of side effects. The most common, according to Ozempic's website, are nausea, stomach pain, constipation, diarrhea and vomiting.</b><br /><br />"Chronic abdominal pain and unpredictable digestive symptoms such as nausea, diarrhea, fullness or constipation can take a significant toll on your mood and energy levels," Laurie A. Keefer, an academic health psychologist and the Director for Psychobehavioral Research at Mount Sinai's Division of Gastroenterology, previously told CBS News.<br /><br />Rarer but more serious side effects of Ozempic may include thyroid tumors, pancreatitis, changes in vision, hypoglycemia, gallbladder issues, kidney failure and cancer.<br /><br />It's also unclear how these drugs might affect people after long-term use.<br /><br /><b>The drugs are also not cheap. In 2023, Wegovy was in short supply and cost around $1,300 a month.<br /></b><br />Johnston, however, has been happy with the results.<br /><br />"I went into it optimistic. Low expectations, and it certainly panned out for me," she said.<br />Johnston said she lost 45 pounds over seven months and cut her drinking by 75%.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ozempic-wegovy-alcohol-addiction-treatment/">https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ozempic-wegovy-alcohol-addiction-treatment/<br /></a><br />Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">These findings are not surprising. The new weight loss drugs are appetite suppressants; perhaps craving for cupcakes isn't so different from craving for alcohol.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Tea and coffee are natural appetite suppressants. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><br /><b>EATING YOGURT MAY LOWER DIABETES RISK<br /><br /></b>The FDA said that it will not object to the use of a qualified health claim that eating yogurt is associated with a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, the the agency announced last Friday.<br /><br />One study, published in BMC Medicine in 2014, which supported this claim, showed that <b>every one serving of yogurt per day was incrementally linked with a 17% lower risk for development of type 2 diabetes</b> (HR 0.83, 95% CI 0.75-0.92). The same study failed to find a significant association between total dairy consumption and type 2 diabetes risk.<br /><br />Of note, the association between yogurt intake and reduced risk of type 2 diabetes is based on yogurt itself as a food and not a particular nutrient or compound in yogurt, regardless of fat or sugar content.<br /><br />"We know that a growing body of research suggests regular yogurt consumption could reduce your risk of developing one of the most significant and rapidly rising health ailments in the United States," said Miguel Freitas, PhD, Danone North America's vice president of Health and Scientific Affairs, in a company press release. "That's why we decided to submit a petition for this first-of-its-kind qualified health claim. Our hope is that this announcement will empower consumers with simple, actionable information they can use to help lower their risk of developing type 2 diabetes through a realistic, easy-to-make dietary modification.”<br /><br /><b>The FDA considers 2 cups, or 3 servings, per week of yogurt to be the minimum amount to make this qualified health claim</b>, so yogurt companies can word claims like the following: "Eating yogurt regularly, at least 2 cups (3 servings) per week, may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. FDA has concluded that there is limited information supporting this claim.”<br /><br /><a href="https://www.medpagetoday.com/endocrinology/diabetes/109004?xid=nl_mpt_Cardiology_update_2024-03-05&mh=788a5203e5c46eefe40bc9dd2371f76b?xid%3Dnl_mpt_Cardiology_update_2024-03-05&mh=788a5203e5c46eefe40bc9dd2371f76b&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Automated%20Specialty%20Update%20Cardiology%20BiWeekly%20TUESDAY%202024-03-05&utm_term=NL_Spec_Cardiology_Update_Active">https://www.medpagetoday.com/endocrinology/diabetes/109004?xid=nl_mpt_Cardiology_update_2024-03-05&mh=788a5203e5c46eefe40bc9dd2371f76b?xid%3Dnl_mpt_Cardiology_update_2024-03-05&mh=788a5203e5c46eefe40bc9dd2371f76b&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Automated%20Specialty%20Update%20Cardiology%20BiWeekly%20TUESDAY%202024-03-05&utm_term=NL_Spec_Cardiology_Update_Active<br /></a><br />Oriana:<br />The frequent objection here is that those who eat yogurt also tend to consume a good diet overall. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">When it comes to blood sugar in particular, I am fascinated by the ability of berberine to lower fasting blood glucose. Add to this the ability to produce an amazing blood lipid profile, and you have a super-supplement that arguably outperforms metformin. <br /><br />WHAT KIND OF YOGURT IS BEST?<br /><br />Naturally present milk sugars (lactose) contribute to yogurt's carbohydrate (carb) count, which means <b>it's impossible to have a zero-carb yogurt.</b> If you have diabetes, look for Greek yogurt or Icelandic yogurt (also called skyr).</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">During the preparation of these types of yogurt, some of the whey is removed, leaving behind a thick, protein-rich product with fewer carbs than other types of yogurt. They also have lower levels of lactose than other yogurts. This makes them easier to digest, especially for people with lactose intolerance.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ-g4oCIkm0NiW5qSTENGbb7uS00KPD9JIpPCbyS6loQzlc9QdIDszBk7JBMcoRg3qQMkjXhWM2sqtACaaiSaiY2GkYh2wv_u8ipX1wfyyfNP-NJdONQRqmSfx49WI-rPJ1sdBSq5K9DxISP3p7fM1Te4YM3uM_aVbRxO9F-M_Ly38HCKHSmBLzbJPissZ/s221/goat%20yogurt.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="221" data-original-width="221" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ-g4oCIkm0NiW5qSTENGbb7uS00KPD9JIpPCbyS6loQzlc9QdIDszBk7JBMcoRg3qQMkjXhWM2sqtACaaiSaiY2GkYh2wv_u8ipX1wfyyfNP-NJdONQRqmSfx49WI-rPJ1sdBSq5K9DxISP3p7fM1Te4YM3uM_aVbRxO9F-M_Ly38HCKHSmBLzbJPissZ/w400-h400/goat%20yogurt.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Greek yogurt has about 25% fewer carbs than plain yogurt</b>. That difference doesn't take into consideration added fruit, flavoring, or sugars. Sticking to the lower-carb yogurt and keeping toppings to a minimum will allow you to build a snack that has between 10 and 15 grams of carbohydrates, which is ideal if you have diabetes.<br /><br />Non-dairy yogurts such as those made with almond, coconut, or soy milk are available in low-carb varieties. Check labels carefully, though, since thickeners and sugar are often added to these plant-based yogurts to make them rich and thick.<br /><br /><b>Greek yogurt is generally the highest in protein. In fact, Greek yogurt has about 16 grams of protein per 6-ounce container.</b> Most conventional yogurts, including those made from plant milk, have between 0 and 9 grams of protein per 6-ounce serving.<br /><br /><b>Protein and fat help slow the rate at which glucose enters the bloodstream.<br /></b><br />Yogurt contains a mix of live bacteria and yeasts. They provide a range of health benefits, but they're considered especially helpful with digestive health.<br /><br /><b>A 2017 study reported that people with type 2 diabetes who consumed three 100-gram portions (3.5 ounces) of probiotic yogurt per day had lower blood glucose, cholesterol, and diastolic blood pressure than a matched set of individuals who didn't consume yogurt.<br /></b><br />A 2021 review concluded that probiotics may have a glucose-lowering effect in people with type 2 diabetes. The effect appeared to be stronger in participants with poorly controlled diabetes and those not taking insulin.<br /><br />For people with diabetes, plain Greek or Icelandic yogurt made from cow milk is ideal, but those crafted from the milk of goats and sheep are also great options. They tend to be lower in lactose and some research shows <b>goat and sheep milk are less inflammatory than cow milk thanks to their different fatty acid profile. Goat milk is also higher in calcium than cow milk.<br /></b><br /><b>Yogurt (whether Greek or regular) has been found to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes by 14% if consumed daily, according to a 2017 review of studies published in the Journal of Nutrition.<br /></b><br /><a href="https://www.verywellhealth.com/greek-yogurt-nutrition-1087149">https://www.verywellhealth.com/greek-yogurt-nutrition-1087149<br /></a><br />Oriana:<br /><br />If unsweetened plain yogurt doesn’t appeal to you, consider using a sweetener called ALLULOSE. research suggests that allulose has anti-inflammatory properties and may help prevent obesity and reduce the risk of chronic disease.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/allulose">https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/allulose<br /></a><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>*</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #800180;"><b>ALLULOSE MAY TURN OUT TO BE A POWERFUL TOOL FOR MANAGING DIABETES</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />Several animal studies have found that it may lower blood sugar, increase insulin sensitivity, and decrease the risk of type 2 diabetes by protecting the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas.<br />In a study comparing the effects of consuming allulose, cellulose, and a commercial diet in rats with insulin resistance, the allulose group had improved insulin sensitivity after 7 weeks.<br /><br />Some research suggests that allulose may help increase the loss of fat, including unhealthy belly fat, which is also known as visceral fat. This type of fat is strongly linked to heart disease and some other health conditions.<br /><br />In a study of 121 Korean adults, participants took 4 g or 7 g of allulose or a placebo twice per day for 12 weeks. The group taking the larger amount of allulose showed a significant decrease in body fat percentage and mass, including abdominal fat.<br /><br />Another small study of 13 healthy adults found that taking 5 g of allulose before a meal appeared to lead to improved energy metabolism after they ate, which could help manage body weight.<br /><br />Studies in rats and mice have found that, in addition to preventing weight gain, allulose seems to reduce fat storage in the liver.<br /><br />Hepatic steatosis, more commonly known as fatty liver, is strongly linked to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.<br /><br />At the same time as allulose may promote fat loss in the liver and body, it may protect against muscle loss.<br /><br />Allulose naturally occurs in small amounts in foods such as figs, molasses, and raisins. ~<br /><br /><a href="ttps://www.healthline.com/nutrition/allulose#manage-blood-sugar">ttps://www.healthline.com/nutrition/allulose#manage-blood-sugar<br /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><b>EVEN A LITTLE DAILY MOVEMENT HELPS REDUCE YOUR RISK OF DEMENTIA<br /></b><br />~ You’ve probably heard it over and over: It’s recommended that you do about 150 minutes of physical activity each week to lower your risk of health conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. <br /><br />And if you, like me, read one-hundred-and-fifty minutes and immediately check out, never fear. <b>Moving just a little every day can have a big impact over time, especially when it comes to your brain</b>. <b>Even short bursts of exercise</b>—like scheduling a walking meeting or gardening during your lunch break—can go a long way when it comes to protecting your cognitive health as you age.<br /><br /><b>Movement, in any amount and at any intensity level, sends blood and oxygen to your brain, fights widespread inflammation (a precursor to many chronic conditions), and keeps your brain activity sharp and snappy</b>. In the short term, that means better focus and memory, and in the seemingly far-off future, regularly moving your body can result in stronger cognitive function, and, ultimately, a lower risk of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.<br /><br />Laura Baker, PhD, a professor of gerontology and geriatric medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina, tells SELF that when it comes to your health, staying active is just as important as eating and sleeping well—and it’s one of the best things you can do to protect your brain. “It really doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you’re moving your body. Just move,” Dr. Baker says.<br /><br /><b>Why your brain loves physical activity</b><br /><br />Studies consistently find that regular physical activity is closely linked to a lower risk of dementia. While there’s not yet a proven reason why movement reduces the chance of cognitive decline—a term that refers to memory loss and confusion that can be some of the first signs of dementia—scientists have narrowed down a few potential explanations for the association, Heather Snyder, PhD, the vice president of medical and scientific relations at the Alzheimer’s Association, tells SELF.<br /><br />The first is that exercise promotes blood flow throughout the body, including the brain. Research has found that reduced blood flow to the brain and stiffer blood vessels that carry blood to the brain are closely linked to a greater risk of dementia. On the flip side, when blood (and the oxygen it carries) readily and freely travels to the brain, it functions better. “Simply stated, the brain is fueled by oxygen and so increasing oxygen (think: aerobic exercise in moderation) has been shown to help maximize mental acuity,” says Tamar Gefen, PhD, a clinical neuropsychologist and an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine.<br /><br />Another leading theory is that physical activity promotes brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which is a molecule that helps you learn and retain information. Higher levels of BDNF appear to help improve and protect cognition and cut your risk of dementia, says Dr. Snyder.<br /><br />Finally, exercise can help reduce inflammation in the body, and experts believe this immune response is a major risk factor for dementia. Numerous studies have found that people with cognitive decline or neurodegenerative disorders, like Parkinson’s disease, have higher-than-normal levels of sustained inflammation in their brains. So, the less inflammation there is in your body, especially your brain, the more protected you may be against dementia.<br /><br /><b>How to move a bit more each day (and make the most of it)<br /></b><br />There’s no precise formula for how long and frequently you need to exercise each day to lower your risk of cognitive decline and dementia. Some evidence suggests that doing just 10 minutes of physical activity daily can majorly improve your health. Ongoing research is exploring the question of the exact amount of movement that might benefit your brain most, Dr. Snyder says, but, for now, the key is to “do more than you are doing today.”<br /><br />There are so many ways to go about this (ideas dropping in a few!), and if high-intensity workouts aren’t your thing, don’t sweat it. “It doesn’t have to be killing yourself at the gym,” says Dr. Baker. Her research team has done studies to back that up: In clinical trials, they found that all types of movement—including (but not at all limited to) stretching and balancing exercises, cycling, and working out on an elliptical—combat cognitive decline, says Dr. Baker.<br /><br />If you prefer cardio, have a quick dance session in your office or do a speedy HIIT workout in your bedroom. If you like to take things slowly, squeeze in some yoga, gardening, or a short stroll (as few as 3,826 steps a day can make a big difference, research suggests). Even bowling made the list in one study connecting regular physical activity to a lower risk of dementia, as did household chores in another report.<br /><br />If you’re tight on time, get creative. Park your car further away so you can walk a little longer to the grocery store, Dr. Snyder suggests, or take the stairs instead of the elevator, if you can. Dr. Baker recommends moving 20 to 30 minutes three to four times a week, but don’t put too much pressure on yourself if that feels daunting. Start slow and short, she says, and build up if and when you’re ready.<br /><br />One way to level up your activity is to do it with someone else. “In addition to increased aerobic exercise, socializing has been shown to be correlated with lowered dementia risk,” says Dr. Gefen. Research shows that connecting with others (and even connecting with nature) is a powerful risk reducer when it comes to cognitive decline. Plus, if you make plans with another person, you’re more likely to follow through and stick with it (science says so!).<br /><br />Find a strategy that works for you, Dr. Snyder says. Ideally, you want to enjoy it. If you pick up jogging and find it painful, or give stretching a shot and dread it the next time around, experiment with other activities until you find something that clicks. If you find a practice you dig but eventually get bored, mix it up. <br /><br />“It’s gotta be something you like doing,” says Dr. Baker.<br /><br />Just move a little here and there—not only will you feel sharper, calmer, and energized, but your brain, however many years from now, may thank you for it then too.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.self.com/story/dementia-and-exercise">https://www.self.com/story/dementia-and-exercise<br /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*<br /><i><b>ending on beauty:</b><br /></i><br /><br />All hushed and still within the house;<br />Without – all wind and driving rain;<br />But something whispers to my mind,<br />Through rain and through the wailing wind,<br />Never again.<br />Never again? Why not again?<br />Memory has power as real as thine.<br /><br />~ Emily Brontë<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><br /><br /></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-53081874999267732682024-03-02T17:04:00.000-08:002024-03-06T16:21:44.738-08:00FACING DEATH WITHOUT GOD; THOMAS BROWNE, POET OF OBLIVION; TO BE HAPPY, LIVE LIKE A WOMAN OVER 50; HOW THE HUMAN SKELETON EVOLVED; MORE THAN ONE BILLION PEOPLE WORLDWIDE NOW OBESE<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJS5jRFduFGB7ktQ6XitxJkhfiO02mU2t5O72ZdbB8A0vDEGLwTbjV_BwH08azBP6nQEt-NZmrenIt3jCnUOqFZY-ZfY_6aqf0rMA2EmUzzCHt6Qfn2T89d6D4hZmM50LIlfBGwiUYkcoml5ZmceRgTMF5IsXJz9q3wctmkj5sJ2VGdixLNMB94A9BW8O_/s540/2%20butterflies%20on%20thistle.jpg" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="540" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJS5jRFduFGB7ktQ6XitxJkhfiO02mU2t5O72ZdbB8A0vDEGLwTbjV_BwH08azBP6nQEt-NZmrenIt3jCnUOqFZY-ZfY_6aqf0rMA2EmUzzCHt6Qfn2T89d6D4hZmM50LIlfBGwiUYkcoml5ZmceRgTMF5IsXJz9q3wctmkj5sJ2VGdixLNMB94A9BW8O_/w400-h266/2%20butterflies%20on%20thistle.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />NADIA<br /><br />I first saw you against monumental<br />statues of workers and peasants<br />flags and posters hammers and sickles<br />Marx’s beard in a blizzard<br />and you a miracle<br /><br />in winter I’d cross <br />into your language<br />snowdrifts of Nadia Nadia Nadia<br />snow marbled our shoulders <br />jeweled eyelashes<br /><br />Nadia here there are no blizzards<br />the world doesn’t turn<br />blank as paper <br />we live in a postcard Nadia<br />in a botanical garden<br /><br />here the roads end <br />in eroding cliffs <br />the sky sails long ships of clouds <br />the wind doesn’t carry dry leaves<br />illegible letters from home<br /> <br />in permafrost of forgotten dreams<br />after the black ice of years <br />I remember your name means Hope<br /><br />refugee of memory<br /><br />guest and ghost of my mirrors</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">~ Oriana<br /><br />*<br /><br /><b>THOMAS BROWNE, POET OF OBLIVION</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI2R8BHvG4_coXvcfwGX_WEIgQWZwFU-e_jxy63i9lmv_crrK7owDXwp4ZmNRjTRH44-qk_kdmAlv7Ic1iOEpD7R5qT50UDtPxcim5dDCO23ZpzZBiAk0cf-PG2S8liMcWDuG8fmTEuoSCWk41YKbw0mX7MEKzHCRHgFo2A1qkB-3rDncuJKsNXt1Q2dNE/s465/thomas%20browne%20and%20wife.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="368" data-original-width="465" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI2R8BHvG4_coXvcfwGX_WEIgQWZwFU-e_jxy63i9lmv_crrK7owDXwp4ZmNRjTRH44-qk_kdmAlv7Ic1iOEpD7R5qT50UDtPxcim5dDCO23ZpzZBiAk0cf-PG2S8liMcWDuG8fmTEuoSCWk41YKbw0mX7MEKzHCRHgFo2A1qkB-3rDncuJKsNXt1Q2dNE/w400-h316/thomas%20browne%20and%20wife.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Thomas Browne (1605-1682) and his wife, Lady Dorothy Browne<br /></i></span></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Back when the English language was still young and impressionable, <b>a London-born physician who took up the pen as a gentleman’s hobby made quite a dent, fathering a dictionary page’s worth of words we still use and tend to think of as ageless — “medical,” “suicide,” “exhaustion,” “hallucination” and “coma” among them.</b><br /><br />The handful of books and tracts in which these words first appeared was even more remarkable than the coinages, a body of work as strange and unclassifiable as any in English literature.<br /><br />That this doctor’s name — Thomas Browne — no longer keeps company, at least in America, with those of Shakespeare, Chaucer and other architects of the language would have come as a great disappointment to a multitude of other authors who revered Browne and passed his writings along, generation to generation, like a kind of formula for the philosopher’s stone.<br /><br /><b>Coleridge numbered him among his “first favourites.” Emily Dickinson kept an edition of Browne at her bedside. Melville, whose style was deeply indebted to him, called him a “crack’d Archangel.” Virginia Woolf said he paved the way for all psychological novelists, and Borges, who translated him, once described himself as just another word for Browne (and for Kafka and Chesterton).</b><br /><br /><b>Browne was a reverent Christian who professed to care more about his place in the next life than his reputation in this one. “Urne-Buriall,” his most memorable work, is a field guide to earthly oblivion, a poetic compendium of his obsessively collected knowledge about death, decay, burial, burning and the cruel brevity of human memory. Even “grave-stones,” he wrote, “tell truth scarce fourty years.”</b><br /><br />But <i><b>the soaring ambition and style of Browne’s writing have always belied its pious humility, and it seems that he is now once again in the process of being exhumed and immortalized, as he almost certainly expected he would be</b></i>. New York Review Books Classics is issuing a new edition of “Urne-Buriall,” paired with Browne’s other landmark, “Religio Medici,” both works edited and annotated by Stephen Greenblatt of Harvard and Ramie Targoff of Brandeis, husband-and-wife Renaissance scholars.<br /><br />New Directions published an elegantly slim edition of “Urne-Buriall” in the fall of 2010, with a preface in the form of a passage from W. G. Sebald’s 1995 novel, “Rings of Saturn,” in which <b>Sebald presents the factual Browne as a kind of fictional creature</b>. (The New Directions book, with a cover by the designer Rodrigo Corral, looks like a Minimalist painting and has shown up in unlikely places; the store at the New Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan carries it, alongside books about contemporary artists.)<br /><br />The most ambitious Browne enterprise in the works is a new edition of his complete writings, commissioned by Oxford University Press was published in 2017, the first such edition in more than 80 years.<br /><br />Taken together the efforts represent the most sustained attention devoted to Browne since the 1960s. And though <i><b>it’s probably too much to hope that he will become a household name, the revival might at least give him a shot at rejoining the list of literary monuments people complain about not having read, like Joyce’s “Ulysses” or Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy.”</b><br /></i><br />“The prose is decidedly not Hemingway — it can be a workout,” said Mr. Greenblatt in a joint telephone interview with Ms. Targoff, who grew more interested in Browne while working on a forthcoming book about the concept of posthumous love in Renaissance England. “But <b>Browne is like this kind of wonderful half-open secret that runs through modernism</b>,” Mr. Greenblatt said.<br /><br />He worked on the introduction to the Browne book as he was finishing “The Swerve,” his best-selling 2011 history of the rediscovery of the Roman poet Lucretius, which won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. <i><b>As subjects, Lucretius and Browne could hardly be less alike: One was an Epicurean and a stone-cold materialist whose influence steered philosophy and science away from religion; the other, an Anglican stalwart who believed in witches and who, in a letter to his son, once warned of the spiritual dangers of reading Lucretius, “there being divers impieties in it.”</b></i><br /><br />But Browne’s cosmology led him at times by strange gyrations into Lucretian territory. He considered all things in the world — beautiful or ugly, ordinary or outlandish — to be equivalent expressions of divine will because </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>he conceived of God essentially as an artist.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> “There are no Grotesques in nature,” he wrote.<br /><br /><b>Lucretius and Browne both took deep pleasure in the peculiarities of the natural world. Both were fascinated by what happens when we dream; both, for different reasons, took a dim view of romantic love and of human pride. (Lucretius: “Some wear themselves to death because they wish a statue or a title.” Browne: “In vain do individuals hope for Immortality, or any patent from oblivion.”)<br /></b><br /><b>To the Romantics, who rediscovered Browne, and to many modern and postmodern writers, his eccentric antirationalism struck a chord</b>, one mostly out of keeping with his time and his piety.<br /><br /><b>He was the kind of Christian thinker</b>, after all, <b>who could wonder whether Lazarus would have a legal right to reclaim his possessions from his heirs after he re-emerged from the grave</b>. He could write with great verve about why most cultures buried their dead lying down, but some had the bodies standing erect; about the macabre practice of inhaling a dying person’s last breath; and about the even more disturbing one of drinking a loved one’s ashes (a custom revived and adapted by Keith Richards, who claimed to have snorted some of his father’s remains.)<br /><br />As an amateur scientist and product of the early Enlightenment, <b>Browne kept a menagerie of exotic animals in his home, and he traced the ubiquity of the geometric pattern known as the quincunx through plants, insects and crystals.</b> But his research might be described more accurately as nature poetry than as science, and his greatest delight seemed to be in things that defied categorization — or, as Borges once wrote, referring to the distant past, “things that can enrich ignorance.”</span><p></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFusPkcZNYRx6Qk13SG37plk3orEi6TVeFGWsrV_o4dl2CsZIlp89r-kx1_8jGndb7ZhM96M2INbEK4903r4SaJS_eOo8chYB3W7SktrfNgN86YBvW9Un_a8aRkHlY5xOrn9dkUDVfVv6Yzo62P35vyJthYmPtQLum-6MSh3XFb1mfggCgAsLuWlvQ_7T6/s220/Quincunx%20mosaic.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="201" data-original-width="220" height="365" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFusPkcZNYRx6Qk13SG37plk3orEi6TVeFGWsrV_o4dl2CsZIlp89r-kx1_8jGndb7ZhM96M2INbEK4903r4SaJS_eOo8chYB3W7SktrfNgN86YBvW9Un_a8aRkHlY5xOrn9dkUDVfVv6Yzo62P35vyJthYmPtQLum-6MSh3XFb1mfggCgAsLuWlvQ_7T6/w400-h365/Quincunx%20mosaic.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Most unusual for a Christian who believed in resurrection, Browne seemed to suggest that individuality itself was a slippery concept, sounding like a meta-fictionist centuries before postmodernism.</b></i><br /><br />“There have been many Diogenes, and as many Tymons, though but few of that name; men are lived over again,” he wrote in “Religio Medici.” He even seemed to have powers of prognostication, foreshadowing the strange fate of his own remains after his death: His skull, stolen after his coffin was accidentally broken open in 1840, was displayed under a bell jar in a hospital museum until its reinterment in 1921. (“To be gnaw’d out of our graves, to have our sculs made drinking-bowls and our bones turned into pipes,” Browne wrote, “are Tragicall abominations.”)<br /><br />In the book’s introduction, Ms. Targoff and Mr. Greenblatt write, “<b>Browne’s voice is the voice of a vanished world, a world utterly routed by our own conceptions of rational inquiry, scientific proof and common sense.</b>”<br /><br /><b>Working on the book, Mr. Greenblatt said, was like going down a “magical rabbit hole.”<br /></b><br /><b>“My great hope — and it has everything to do with pleasure rather than virtue,” he said, “is that people who are not compelled to do it will stumble across him again.”<br /></b><br /><i><b>Browne probably hoped they would too, but he knew far too much about fate to count on it: “Oblivion is not to be hired; The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been.”</b><br /></i><br />Ultimate reliance on the imagination is what has earned Browne admirers like Herman Melville, Jorge Luis Borges, and W. G. Sebald, all writers who shared <b>his sense of endless wonder. Virginia Woolf wrote of him: “We are in the presence of sublime imagination; now rambling through one of the finest lumber rooms in the world—a chamber stuffed from floor to ceiling with ivory, old iron, broken pots, urns, unicorns’ horns, and magic glasses full of emerald lights and blue mystery.”</b> That blue mystery began in Browne himself—“There is all Africa, and her prodigies in us,” he wrote in “Religio Medici”—and extended out to the natural world, a “universall and publik Manuscript” that he never tired of reading.<br /><br />. . . Browne, who counselled with intimations of Ecclesiastes that “it is a vanity to waste our dayes in the blinde pursuit of knowledge” is an antidote to . . . <b>doomsayers and optimists and all those who prey on the human need to understand. He knew very little. We should all be so wise.</b></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPKEW2Z9hgtQ54o7QDMjxwNJIXRTXi4xDJhg1sDDzRRgCD0ZmzSwPgc9ODF54Dd7BGuy2YykaSHbq7X_qMc2axcuMDEFm01wOH0mc9moJF4JbmeykQGwhegupzmXQIETaQnzJiqsSlaWLIsoj6JhuUhhNvGFLKn4cvsrBTVIDqIp5gfPC5phoiacdV9wTy/s1600/Thomas%20Browne.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1370" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPKEW2Z9hgtQ54o7QDMjxwNJIXRTXi4xDJhg1sDDzRRgCD0ZmzSwPgc9ODF54Dd7BGuy2YykaSHbq7X_qMc2axcuMDEFm01wOH0mc9moJF4JbmeykQGwhegupzmXQIETaQnzJiqsSlaWLIsoj6JhuUhhNvGFLKn4cvsrBTVIDqIp5gfPC5phoiacdV9wTy/w343-h400/Thomas%20Browne.webp" width="343" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/08/nyrb-classics-thomas-browne.html#ixzz2JPsbpgGy">http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/08/nyrb-classics-thomas-browne.html#ixzz2JPsbpgGy</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I'm fascinated by Browne's introduction of many words to the English vocabulary. Here is a more comprehensive list: </span></p><p> <span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">'ambidextrous', 'antediluvian', 'analogous', 'approximate', 'ascetic',
'anomalous', 'carnivorous', 'coexistence', 'coma', 'compensate',
'computer', 'cryptography', 'cylindrical', 'disruption', 'ergotisms',
'electricity', 'exhaustion', 'ferocious', 'follicle', 'generator',
'gymnastic', 'hallucination', 'herbaceous', 'holocaust', 'insecurity',
'indigenous', 'jocularity', 'literary', 'locomotion', 'medical',
'migrant', 'mucous', 'prairie', 'prostate', 'polarity', 'precocious',
'pubescent', 'therapeutic', 'suicide', 'ulterior', 'ultimate' and
'veterinarian' (~ Wiki)<br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />* </span></p><p></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>THE “GREATER EUROPE” (Misha Firer) </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">~ Vladimir Putin, a formerly atheistic member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, an organized crime groups fixer who’s currently trying out the bloodstained mantle of Adolf Hitler, arrived at the Chkalovsky Airfield and presented a copy of the “Savior Not Made by Hand” icon to Russian military aviation. Putin gives away real icons only to his KGB buddy Patriarch Killkill. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Fake icon with a saint will provide spiritual air defense</b>, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have shot down six Russian fighters over the past three days including Su-34 and Su-35 that Z-channels claim suffered from “friendly fire” of the Russian air defense. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Russian Defense Ministry vehemently denied those claims but the presentation of the icon proves once again that there’s no smoke from a falling warplane without fire.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> <b>A fake icon from the fake president to bless terrorist military to kill more fellow Orthodox Christians is the state of spirituality in Russia in 2024 (Satan bless!) ushered in by the oligarchic regime of Boris Yeltsin who hand-picked Vladimir Putin as an obedient and pliable attaboy.</b><br /><br />“Mr. Clinton, this KGB officer set up the persecutor-general with hookers who was supposed to indict me on corruption charges and he withdrew his lawsuit.” <b>“Wow. This is a perfect president for Russia. A scoundrel just like me! You have my blessings, Mr. Yeltsin.”</b> A new bright dot shall appear on the night map of North Korea: Wonsan-Kalma Tourist Zone for Ruzzian Tourists (<b>Nazis love alpine skiing</b>). Construction is in full swing. Soon, it will receive first vacationers from Russia. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The area is 2.8 square kilometer with 37 hotels, 29 shops and a four kilometer beach. It’s completely isolated from 25 million hungry people who live without electricity, central heating, plumbing and hospitals. Tour programs include “Feed a Hungry Korean,” “Shoot Your Security Agent,” “Survive a Day in Gulag” and most popular entertainment program “Squid Game.” The largest group of foreign tourists ever visited Masikroyan ski resort. Ruzzian tourists — for it was zem — complained that the slope wasn’t safe enough and that they saw people crashing into guardrails.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">** </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Real Pirates of the Caribbeans! </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Two Russian tourists hijacked a million dollar speed boat in the Caribbean Sea and have spent the past five years taking tourists for a ride in Crimea</b>. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Entrepreneurs were detained by Sevastopol customs officers because they hadn’t paid any transport taxes and were put on the international wanted list. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">They were promised to be taken off the list if they bring another yacht from the Caribbean. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The FSB state security agency delivered instructions to teachers in schools across Russia on how to talk with kids about the interview of Tucker Carlson with Putin. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Russian children will study interviews of Tucker Carlson as part of their school curriculum. A true American and a Russian ̶s̶h̶i̶l̶l̶ patriot. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCIGfas3U-6Xq6cSHwModkHE8Ni1oVxReH9Tg7x-r27pituuJ3QYFvhwZVpMONi7NfeOb4yxIvrolMOow0njdD0e5HCPv6dehcY-ZCcGliesEzMjErHqLwLgb8y5Qv6kevfOyvdnubXrRq_lO4xlGDneDKo0ZJQiu2YN0ZI7w-Fx8mhpKIcbFXYqWpJkNu/s602/Russian%20soldiers%20gray%20caps.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="339" data-original-width="602" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCIGfas3U-6Xq6cSHwModkHE8Ni1oVxReH9Tg7x-r27pituuJ3QYFvhwZVpMONi7NfeOb4yxIvrolMOow0njdD0e5HCPv6dehcY-ZCcGliesEzMjErHqLwLgb8y5Qv6kevfOyvdnubXrRq_lO4xlGDneDKo0ZJQiu2YN0ZI7w-Fx8mhpKIcbFXYqWpJkNu/w400-h225/Russian%20soldiers%20gray%20caps.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>IS RUSSIA REALLY RUN BY GANGSTER OLIGARCHS?<br /></b><br />~ Yekaterina Duntsova, a disqualified anti-war presidential candidate came to say goodbye to Putin’s archenemy Alexey Navalny, along with many thousands of people.</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhICV3Nb9YzUjRDkgjM8ei4z6QsjG-OAfjFWCyPxOUpndDz0aJY-wbM5_jANSRihz8vfIcYW_fMiLO9wmLsGcGUWGqt2rYo_mxk3eMrkA8GTmYJRxBXvc-WBdPIXuLsw7uE1pp96wUM-nngsEFKcVMRih5g78mjkPv2noQBv9JR2FkHA99afe76Rc9b50o-/s804/yekaterina%20Duntsova%20Navalny's%20funeral.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="804" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhICV3Nb9YzUjRDkgjM8ei4z6QsjG-OAfjFWCyPxOUpndDz0aJY-wbM5_jANSRihz8vfIcYW_fMiLO9wmLsGcGUWGqt2rYo_mxk3eMrkA8GTmYJRxBXvc-WBdPIXuLsw7uE1pp96wUM-nngsEFKcVMRih5g78mjkPv2noQBv9JR2FkHA99afe76Rc9b50o-/w300-h400/yekaterina%20Duntsova%20Navalny's%20funeral.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Traditionally, Russians formed a long line to suffer collectively.</b> The line of folks, many of whom are young and were born when Putin was already in power leads to the <b>Cathedral of Quench my Sorrow where the funeral service is being held.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In Russia, as you might have heard, you quench your sorrow with vodka.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The longer the line the more respectful, honorable, and spiritual the endeavor is and worthy of hardships.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Many flew from other towns to catch a glimpse of the dead body of the fighter against corruption who dreamed of <b>the Beautiful Russia of the future.<br /></b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Thousands of Russians marched the 1.5 mile distance from the cathedral to the cemetery after the hearse with the body of Alexey Navalny chanting: “No to war!” and “Putin is a killer!”</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpJdi8GtDYZ9d1wBADdFbrKHVWnfEyvk7ihtiBe2UahyphenhyphenfVsTz36KcBXyR4xmSizdW2WfugMnpETp5UdRw3_n_P5mfkWhPNZL2TQkTma4kXPkxAPkqPukaxewX6A6G4gJ4K040B-_dRaCHSb2hEnSJVwXZC5OmcZgbNsUMwSWVUlvfuY19hon6yNm0b4fQN/s602/crowd%20at%20Navalny's%20funeral.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="323" data-original-width="602" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpJdi8GtDYZ9d1wBADdFbrKHVWnfEyvk7ihtiBe2UahyphenhyphenfVsTz36KcBXyR4xmSizdW2WfugMnpETp5UdRw3_n_P5mfkWhPNZL2TQkTma4kXPkxAPkqPukaxewX6A6G4gJ4K040B-_dRaCHSb2hEnSJVwXZC5OmcZgbNsUMwSWVUlvfuY19hon6yNm0b4fQN/w400-h215/crowd%20at%20Navalny's%20funeral.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>crowd at Navalny’s funeral</i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This is Mar’ino, a southeastern district of Moscow where Alexey Navalny lived with his family for many years in an apartment in one of these prefabricated bloc high-rise buildings.<br /><br />Where there are crowds, there are riot police officers and police vans to detain the arrestees.<br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsjShqLHMe5TMLZmjzXUGKBuzQohOS8OvNTS_it0dQPuUojNv-8wkm8BiYF00H30A-cipJ_AlRkc_bH3cOjexJu1GnejX5rF5Zp7YRqGOSrxGJ5-eJagMJe5KS4uT1h5uSW8mcOtnw5iE7YQ-of6VLgBQzqW20l5vPDLG9Ltua0yarBytANrSn6twmLqXx/s845/police%20near%20Navalny's%20funeral.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="845" data-original-width="602" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsjShqLHMe5TMLZmjzXUGKBuzQohOS8OvNTS_it0dQPuUojNv-8wkm8BiYF00H30A-cipJ_AlRkc_bH3cOjexJu1GnejX5rF5Zp7YRqGOSrxGJ5-eJagMJe5KS4uT1h5uSW8mcOtnw5iE7YQ-of6VLgBQzqW20l5vPDLG9Ltua0yarBytANrSn6twmLqXx/w456-h640/police%20near%20Navalny's%20funeral.jpg" width="456" /></a></b></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Women spontaneously hugged Lyudmila Ivanovna, Navalny’s mother outside, and said, “Thank you for your son.” ~ <br /><br />Elena Gold:<br /><b>The country is burying its hero, because it couldn’t bury its tyrant.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2hG28IMX-avAZsOO5Q_YMP4-e5gAzx8F_ADaPffx_iTgaLx83HiNwo7nu6LBhzJW3_t95eCqVYRBSpNjggm4xkoX41v-meL8f-EHPig63q0o-W3UEKQcAfE-6YsjpmlsVYoriPr0DqOtgL47OOd5ek-PsAPugwHsKgD0UacZDfoLPQwluyLZVYG-mLSuX/s1536/roses%20candles%20for%20Navalny.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="864" data-original-width="1536" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2hG28IMX-avAZsOO5Q_YMP4-e5gAzx8F_ADaPffx_iTgaLx83HiNwo7nu6LBhzJW3_t95eCqVYRBSpNjggm4xkoX41v-meL8f-EHPig63q0o-W3UEKQcAfE-6YsjpmlsVYoriPr0DqOtgL47OOd5ek-PsAPugwHsKgD0UacZDfoLPQwluyLZVYG-mLSuX/w400-h225/roses%20candles%20for%20Navalny.webp" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>The sign on the right says: I AM WITH YOU.</i><br /><br />Michael Woodman:<br />One thing tho’ — why would Puketin allow this funeral to proceed at all? <b>Why didn’t he stick with his plan to have Navalny buried in some forgotten shithole north of the arctic circle? </b></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Allowing the funeral go forward amidst massive amounts of publicity seems to indicate that Puketin felt forced to do so and that this was the ‘lesser evil’. But I can’t understand why allowing a public funeral (and burial) of your arch enemy right in the heart of Moscow, thereby giving the public a martyr to worship and a place to visit and remember him forevermore, is in Puketin’s interest? It would have been trivial for Puketin to block it.<br /><br />Jay Stepen:<br />I don’t see it as Pootin gave in and let the family bury Navalny under pressure of public opinion. I think he just knows that people are too weak and two scared to do anything else but shout "Navalny!” a few times and that’s it.<br /><br />Pootin just knows he’s untouchable, he can do anything to anyone and this funeral is the proof of it.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1AT8Nby0fLJi_2oKKKGqLhbH6fjMv7cvBMKfjNYTZDlaFbatCPjrclMshrSXFWM6e6FOJHK0kr0r1MYMfy5Db5dQ_Ye9YbL6LoHa_5ZkbjxLT3JEGKL0a8Lv5OwjffBtdV-FZoq-DF1NAponOzQXQjGJyn2sTu025Zi8opPlAVBnFP7FeMJZgzzprVzGg/s1047/navalny%20grave%20March%202%202024.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="1047" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1AT8Nby0fLJi_2oKKKGqLhbH6fjMv7cvBMKfjNYTZDlaFbatCPjrclMshrSXFWM6e6FOJHK0kr0r1MYMfy5Db5dQ_Ye9YbL6LoHa_5ZkbjxLT3JEGKL0a8Lv5OwjffBtdV-FZoq-DF1NAponOzQXQjGJyn2sTu025Zi8opPlAVBnFP7FeMJZgzzprVzGg/w400-h268/navalny%20grave%20March%202%202024.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">John Newey:<br />Very brave people DO exist in Russia after all. They came to say goodbye to another very brave Russian murdered by cowards, led by a piece of shit called Putin, who fear him and what he stands for.</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Russia's Consulate in NYC:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5k3hZvCJNFGBFlhqz2nKI_uqHW1ISrR3L52ETJkE57QSbim-MgDsy6vF57VlvIVzuHEIYrpaMISnef415RcIWsIZidjgpJVatTWA6Pi9R-Co5alHRpsgoK3URlYJ2rXE1m4Vc5luIT3mjjnViFsDM2uSCQ8vaZt8vyciMPtx_hEd5wjnssBW-xF88HKR0/s1505/Russian%20consulate%20at%20NYC.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1505" data-original-width="1290" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5k3hZvCJNFGBFlhqz2nKI_uqHW1ISrR3L52ETJkE57QSbim-MgDsy6vF57VlvIVzuHEIYrpaMISnef415RcIWsIZidjgpJVatTWA6Pi9R-Co5alHRpsgoK3URlYJ2rXE1m4Vc5luIT3mjjnViFsDM2uSCQ8vaZt8vyciMPtx_hEd5wjnssBW-xF88HKR0/w343-h400/Russian%20consulate%20at%20NYC.jpg" width="343" /></a></span></div><p></p><p></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Misha Iossel:<br />As the hearse with Navalny's body was slowly proceeding towards the cemetery this afternoon, <b>Muscovites lining the streets all along its route were throwing flowers at it, in a bravely and desperately defiant gesture of political disobedience and dissent.</b><br /> <br />One million people left Putin's Russia in the last two years, many if not most of them Navalny supporters, yet still the fascist regime in the Kremlin has not been able to stamp out completely the scattered embers of seemingly impossible hope for freedom simmering beneath the barren surface of societal silence in the land. <b>For everyone among the thousands who came out to bid farewell to the murdered hero today, there are ten or twenty more of those who feel the same way but chose to stay inside for fear of being arrested</b>. ~ Facebook, March 2, 2024</span><br /></span><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">John Bligh:<br />"Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam" (his soul is at the right hand of God).<br /><br />Aidan Stenson:<br />This makes me quite hopeful for Russia’s future.<br /><br />Toneee:<br />Putin is doing his best to make sure that Russia doesn’t have a future!<br /><br />Malcolm Berger:<br />Surprised no mention of an autopsy being carried out before burial. Was one asked for? So far have not heard the cause of his death.<br /><br />Peter Roberts:<br />Alexey Navalny laid down his life for others. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Putin lays down others’ lives for himself.<br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-PSzR4X8qB2mFQO_hYb_LoTErKf5uD3VxBKY0Cf4fxtEepv_wdhMIIcm46vuGT1Mkmf8paWbgVuILdR9BAQph6TUTXcYsQdSLRqHBSbqjxokQsqS9ax7CzmeCcFbYdXiQnOtN1nZLX4CPR8mwy2D7iKCLenZTT47mgLRjFC4CLjpSU9iy2DXIxeob78VI/s602/Putin%20it's%20not%20us.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-PSzR4X8qB2mFQO_hYb_LoTErKf5uD3VxBKY0Cf4fxtEepv_wdhMIIcm46vuGT1Mkmf8paWbgVuILdR9BAQph6TUTXcYsQdSLRqHBSbqjxokQsqS9ax7CzmeCcFbYdXiQnOtN1nZLX4CPR8mwy2D7iKCLenZTT47mgLRjFC4CLjpSU9iy2DXIxeob78VI/w400-h400/Putin%20it's%20not%20us.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">* </span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>THE BRITS HAVE DONE IT AGAIN</b> </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">he Brits have managed to do it again and piss off Vladimir Putin. <b> </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Shortly after the death of Alexei Navalny on 16 February, the UK announced it had frozen assets of the six Russian prison bosses in charge of the Arctic penal colony where Mr. Navalny died. The six are also banned from entering the UK. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“It's clear that the Russian authorities saw Navalny as a threat and they tried repeatedly to silence him,'' said UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron. “That's why we're today sanctioning the most senior prison officials responsible for his custody in the penal colony where he spent his final months.’' </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Putin responded by instructing the Russian embassy in London to accuse the British government of "trademark UK hypocrisy" and “paying lip service to the principle of sovereignty" while “intervening in Russia's internal affairs.” Someone grab a Ukrainian. They can explain “principle of sovereignty” and “intervening in internal affairs” to the Kremlin. Oh, and “hypocrisy”. ~ Izzy Luggs, Quora </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLeMipFYGvmiVnUPQ3y9OovqX9z6bk28BFn2TY2npUEQYqo8RrSBdG6UCgAXHJquJudjCieRVA_QCgbo-838xOLWzd1hlXjlMVuq4ZNC1b53VSKku0Hh5SlVblrF0TdSJzngTuYJAk9IKtFmXPEho02PyQLMsiMcUzhavFQOb83z0fxlXN392seFIGFq3h/s602/navalny%20prison.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="339" data-original-width="602" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLeMipFYGvmiVnUPQ3y9OovqX9z6bk28BFn2TY2npUEQYqo8RrSBdG6UCgAXHJquJudjCieRVA_QCgbo-838xOLWzd1hlXjlMVuq4ZNC1b53VSKku0Hh5SlVblrF0TdSJzngTuYJAk9IKtFmXPEho02PyQLMsiMcUzhavFQOb83z0fxlXN392seFIGFq3h/w400-h225/navalny%20prison.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">* </span></p><p><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">HOW GERMANY STOPPED BEING NAZI </span></b></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Well, for one, by 1945, almost all the important Nazis were dead. Defeat in the Second World War was utterly total and completely destroyed the regime. Secondly, it left the entire country in ruins, hated internationally for crimes against humanity the extent of which was beginning to emerge. To look at this and think “I think the government responsible was actually smart and right” would require utter insanity. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Just in case this wasn’t enough, after the war “Germany” did not exist as an independent state, instead, it looked like this:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> For years Germany was entirely occupied by four foreign powers. These powers may not have always agreed, but they did agree on one thing: They all absolutely hated Nazis. And absolutely not willing to see the dead movement resurge. ~ Alex Parker, Quora </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">* </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju5JX4eVDfinVcu8EzCk7glbU8yZ9yYQVimv1QTo1hL1C6h4S1BZojL1Szr6s85Aj5rha1duW0PVNbwxn7Mes7y9S9mDhpOtRA_0Rvrw95W-lU8FUraiu0hTXSyZcD2mFZ6WcBl4KZLlECOV12zhadKRzdX2-Zu7SK7AA-U_ESGEsCmIftExsogHzHRFng/s602/Yakutsk%20Lenin%20statue.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="451" data-original-width="602" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju5JX4eVDfinVcu8EzCk7glbU8yZ9yYQVimv1QTo1hL1C6h4S1BZojL1Szr6s85Aj5rha1duW0PVNbwxn7Mes7y9S9mDhpOtRA_0Rvrw95W-lU8FUraiu0hTXSyZcD2mFZ6WcBl4KZLlECOV12zhadKRzdX2-Zu7SK7AA-U_ESGEsCmIftExsogHzHRFng/w400-h300/Yakutsk%20Lenin%20statue.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Lenin's statue in Yakutsk</i></span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> Someone: In midwinter there people generally avoid going outdoors insofar as this is possible. If they have to walk outside for any length of time they tend to walk sideways or kind of backwards because otherwise your breath condenses on your face and freezes into a sort of mask. But they don’t leave their cars on all the time. They’ve got heaters for the engine blocks like they do in Canada. <br /><br /><i><b>The real reasons for this war are the political and economic problems within Russia, Putin’s desire to hold on to power at any cost, and his obsession with his own historical legacy. He wants to go down in history as “the conqueror tzar” and “the collector of lands.” ~ Alexei Navalny</b></i></span></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>You've been lied to. The real reason for the war is not NATO expansion. It's greed and ambition." ~ Yevgeny Prigozhin</b></i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i></i></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr524Vh-kedZcvKyIVo9P02X17JDTFWvm1AecqXAlBg-CR97C7GblBLJjj738lp1onTq67p14kplVfTmrGF7hJ-KKvWnWqtnrqPmk1ebEJ-Ldn6GzcizKGdNb_7YcwfWkmtIp2pl19DR3RJCnkyBS6pXYWabmeSqV1LGYtKlx_kXetXtyy06IbksFNuRVC/s602/Kremlin's%20greatest%20hits.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="339" data-original-width="602" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr524Vh-kedZcvKyIVo9P02X17JDTFWvm1AecqXAlBg-CR97C7GblBLJjj738lp1onTq67p14kplVfTmrGF7hJ-KKvWnWqtnrqPmk1ebEJ-Ldn6GzcizKGdNb_7YcwfWkmtIp2pl19DR3RJCnkyBS6pXYWabmeSqV1LGYtKlx_kXetXtyy06IbksFNuRVC/w400-h225/Kremlin's%20greatest%20hits.webp" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>*</b></span><br /><p></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>TO BE HAPPY, LIVE LIKE A WOMAN OVER FIFTY</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Happiness depends on how we deal with what we are given<br /></b></i><br /><b>Our culture presents us with a misogynistic version of who we older women are. We confront both ageism and gender-specific challenges. As we age, our bodies, our sexuality, and our minds are devalued. </b>There are many negative stereotypes about older women, but my least favorites manifest as mother-in-law jokes. These jokes suggest we are nosy, bossy, judgmental, and in the way. My new book Women Rowing North begins a new conversation about our complexity, challenges, and gifts.<br /><br /><b>Contrary to cultural stereotypes, many older women are deeply happy.</b> A 2014 Brookings Institute study on happiness and age found that people are least happy in their twenties, thirties, and early forties, and steadily gain an appreciation for life as they age. Indeed, <b>most women become increasingly happy after age 55, with their peak of happiness toward the very end of life.<br /></b><br />Dilip Jeste at the University of California, San Diego, found in 2016 that <b>as people age they report higher levels of overall satisfaction, happiness, and well-being, and lower levels of anxiety, depression, and stress. The older the person, the better her mental health tended to be. </b><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="color: #800180;">Women’s happiness ratings were consistently higher than those of men. Recent census data from the United Kingdom finds that the happiest people are women aged 65 to 79.</span><br /></b><br />There are many theories about why women fare better than men. One is simply that we tend to be healthier and more active. <b>We also are more likely to have close relationships with family and friends. We understand how to hold intimate conversations, talk about our own deepest emotions, and help others discuss theirs. We may have a long-term partner and often have decades-old friendships to support us.</b><br /><br />This year I experienced a vivid illustration of the happiness of older women. I switched recreational centers from the university where I have taught for many years to a gym geared toward older people. I noticed a great change in the locker room atmosphere. <b>At the university, the young women were mostly stressed and unhappy. They talked on their phones or to their exercise partners about their weight, finances, studies, and relationship issues. Almost all of them hid their bodies by crouching as they undressed. Except for occasional happy talk about weekends or school holidays, conversation was generally gloomy.</b><br /><br />On the other hand, in my new locker room, we older women walk around unselfconsciously naked or in utilitarian underclothes or swimsuits. Our bodies are saggy with plenty of stretch marks, wrinkles, and cellulite, but do we care? Not much.<br /><br /><b>We are more interested in each other’s faces, which reveal decades of joy and suffering and are often open and awake to the moment.<br /></b><br />Older women do talk about their troubles, especially what we call the “organ recitals,” that is, conversations about health issues. Mostly, though, <b>we discuss family, travel, books, movies, and fun. We joke around.</b> For example, one day I heard a woman say, “The kinder you are to them the longer they last.” Another woman asked, “What are you referring to?” Then, one by one, the rest of us chimed in, “Your knees,” “Your bank account,” “Your swimsuit,” and “Your husband.”<br /><br />How do we manage our many difficulties? <b>I argue that neither our genetics nor our external circumstances determine our happiness. Rather, happiness depends on how we deal with what we are given. </b>Even though we all suffer, we don’t all grow. Not all older women become elders. <br /><br />Successful resolutions of our developmental challenges don’t just happen. We don’t become our wisest selves without effort. <b>Our growth requires us to become skilled in perspective taking, in managing our emotions, in crafting positive narratives, and in forming intimate relationships. We develop the skills of building joy, gratitude, and meaning into every day. By learning these lessons, we cultivate emotional resilience.</b><br /><br />We have the capacity to build happiness into our lives with humor, concern for others, and gratitude. Of course, we can’t do it all of the time. That self-expectation would drive us crazy. However, we can develop habits that make it more likely that we will respond in an upbeat manner. <b>It’s critical to distinguish between choosing to live lovingly and cheerfully and living a life of denial. </b>One leads to joy, the other to emotional death. I have learned from my work as a therapist that secrets, denial, and avoidance invariably cause trouble.<b> To move forward requires seeing clearly.</b><br /><br />When we lose a beloved or learn that our health is deteriorating, our natural response is full-body despair. We are likely to panic, go numb, and wonder if we can survive. As we emerge from shock, we feel all the other painful emotions as well. <b>We don’t heal without hurting. For a while, the cure for the pain is the pain.</b><br /><br />I don’t recommend controlling our emotions, but rather listening to them. They are delivering information that is vital to our recovery. We want to fully experience our emotions in both our hearts and our bodies. If we do this, we will gradually move toward healing and hope.</span></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://lithub.com/want-to-be-happy-live-like-an-woman-over-50/">https://lithub.com/want-to-be-happy-live-like-an-woman-over-50/</a></span></p><div><div dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r15g:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“Happiness was never important. </span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> The problem is that we don't know </span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> what we really want. </span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> <b>What makes us happy is not to get what we want. </b></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> But to dream about it.</span></b></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> <span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span></span>Happiness is for opportunists. </span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> So I think that the only life of deep satisfaction </span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> is a life of eternal struggle, </span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> especially struggle with oneself. </span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> If you want to remain happy, just remain stupid.”</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> ~ Slavoj Žižek</span></div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><i><b>The
trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and
sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only
pain is intellectual, only evil is interesting. This is the treason of
the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible
boredom of pain. ~ Ursula Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters</b><br /></i></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVUJdfp3YFmKl2g-fc2UN6WTkzpdn25ZbW8ReXeqzyeYMbjJPwadELSpkVaPoUgvuaIE_f-wwj4q7fJfdTh7I2KHh0CwwatN78eE56Mf5thkmPYkcPpT3Uwo4Ebzsj74B2fV7sr9N2SUtWYJ7Q3doyKp63Huak-U0dsCTaxxmp91fU7WyZFsril3se5Kbh/s732/Ursula%20Le%20Guin%20blanket.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="732" data-original-width="727" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVUJdfp3YFmKl2g-fc2UN6WTkzpdn25ZbW8ReXeqzyeYMbjJPwadELSpkVaPoUgvuaIE_f-wwj4q7fJfdTh7I2KHh0CwwatN78eE56Mf5thkmPYkcPpT3Uwo4Ebzsj74B2fV7sr9N2SUtWYJ7Q3doyKp63Huak-U0dsCTaxxmp91fU7WyZFsril3se5Kbh/w398-h400/Ursula%20Le%20Guin%20blanket.jpg" width="398" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>COSMISM</b><br /><br /><i><b>In the 2009 documentary Transcendent Man, the American inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil shares his thoughts on death. Although many philosophers and theologians accept mortality as an inevitable and indeed defining feature of human existence, Kurzweil refuses to accept this line of thinking. </b></i></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>“Death is a great tragedy, a profound loss,” he declares in the film, haunted by the memory of losing his father at age 22. “I don’t accept it.”</b><br /></i></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Kurzweil would have found an ally in the little-known 19th-century Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorov, whose posthumously published text Philosophy of the Common Task made the at-the-time daring argument that death was little more than a design flaw — one which advancements in science and technology could help to rectify. <b>Fedorov also believed that this goal of rectification — of achieving immortality — would unite social groups whose mutual fear of death had historically pitted them in opposition to each other.</b><br /><br /><b>“Our task,” Fedorov wrote, “is to make nature, the blind force of nature, into an instrument of universal resuscitation and to become a union of immortal beings.”<br /></b><br />Fedorov’s writing never turned mainstream, but it did spawn <i><b>a short-lived, visionary philosophical movement known as Cosmism. Materialized during the Industrial Revolution — a time of unprecedented societal change — the movement generally sought to redefine mankind’s relationship with technology and progress, with the ultimate goal of regulating the forces of nature so that humanity could achieve unity and immortality. The movement offered a more spiritual alternative to both futurism and communism.</b><br /></i><br />Although the latter annihilated Cosmism before it had a chance to mature, its maxims have acquired new relevancy in the age of Big Tech. The following interview with Boris Groys, a distinguished professor of Russian and Slavic studies at New York University and editor of the new book Russian Cosmism, reveals why.<br /><br /><b>Into the crematorium </b><br /><br />To understand Russian Cosmism, we must first look at other movements and ideas that arose during the same period. More influential than Fedorov’s Philosophy of the Common Task was interdisciplinary scientist<b> Alexander Chizhevsky’s 1931 article “The Earth in the Sun’s Embrace,” which interpreted human history as revolving around the Sun. <br /></b><br /><i><b>Starting from the questionable proposition that revolutionary movements require energy and that energy in its most basic form is derived from solar rays, Chizhevsky listed some historical developments that lined up with astronomical developments. He noted, for example, that progressive governments in the United Kingdom coincided with periods of high solar activity, while conservative ones tended to appear when solar activity decreased due to sunspots. </b><br /></i><br />Chizhevsky’s article profoundly impacted Russian avant-garde artists like the painter Kazimir Malevich. <b>Malevich helped stage a futuristic opera titled “Victory Over the Sun,” which heralded the Sun’s eventual extinction and the world’s descent into chaos.</b> Rather than dreading this disorder, the avant-garde welcomed it. “<b>By the beginning of the twentieth century the embrace of chaos seemed imminent, as no one could be expected to believe any longer in the stability of divine or natural order</b>,” Groys explains in the new book.<br /><br />“The very idea of a stable order, be it religious or rationalist, appeared to lose its ontological guarantee to permanently replace, make obsolete, and ultimately destroy old things, old traditions, and familiar ways of life, thus undermining lingering faith in the ‘traditional world order.’ <b>Technological development, subjected to the logic of progress, presented itself as a force of chaos that would not tolerate any stable order.</b> The future came to be seen as the enemy of both past and present. Precisely because of that view, <b>the futurists celebrated the future, as it held the promise that everything that had been – and still was – would disappear.”<br /></b><br />This same sentiment can be found in the writing of the anarchist-futurist poet Alexander Svyatogor, who c<b>ompared progress to the sudden eruption of a volcano: a violent outburst that destroys everything in its wake while fertilizing the soil to sustain new life. </b>In his essay “The Doctrine of the Fathers’ and Anarcho-Biocosmism,” he rejects Fedorov’s idea that science and technology are agents of restoration – of recovering and preserving what has been lost. <br /><br />CREATORIUM = CREMATORIUM</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">He argued instead that future generations “would knead with their own hands, like sculptors knead clay, the spirit and matter of the world, so as to create an absolutely new cosmos.” Crucially, he also relished in the fact that detractors referred to his intellectual group — the “Kreatory” or <b>“Creatorium” –—as a “crematorium.”</b><br /><br />“They are probably right to come to this conclusion,” he wrote. “Indeed, <b>we need to burn quite a lot, if not everything.”</b><br /><br />COSMISM FROM STALIN TO MUSK<br /><br />Fedorov and Svyatogor represent two sides of Cosmism, which Groys writes never had a unified doctrine. Where adherents of the former viewed technology as a “force that would destroy the ‘old world’ and open the way for building the new from point zero,” the latter <b>hoped technology would become a “strong messianic force”</b> that could transmit knowledge from one generation to another.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3yc83UfaN3DnxaOTN-jqHaG2TCdV0U953ooUMJpbz_Ltr5NiqNyz8C6_VMvqBUTJyQgFE4eMjYTLgh-Mov22G1KRe_bJNOPhuE_ox8asoHtN6yVbG6tfD0LbbQphz5MFD8w6IFQHRy6-uMOwT6TOpfFqkYjOW0_kEx0UMmx_xxqvzxKyP5Ia7HEmsa4jR/s1000/volcanic%20eruption%20iceland.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="561" data-original-width="1000" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3yc83UfaN3DnxaOTN-jqHaG2TCdV0U953ooUMJpbz_Ltr5NiqNyz8C6_VMvqBUTJyQgFE4eMjYTLgh-Mov22G1KRe_bJNOPhuE_ox8asoHtN6yVbG6tfD0LbbQphz5MFD8w6IFQHRy6-uMOwT6TOpfFqkYjOW0_kEx0UMmx_xxqvzxKyP5Ia7HEmsa4jR/w400-h225/volcanic%20eruption%20iceland.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Svyatogor likened progress to the eruption of a volcano. </i><br /><br />Cosmists who believed in technology as a messianic force clashed not just with the Svyatogor camp, but also with the communists, whose guiding ideology of Marxism-Leninism was predicated on the dismantling of age-old social systems to establish a novel world order. Fedorov’s philosophy was especially irreconcilable with the concept of the “New Soviet Man,” the Soviet government’s campaign to physically and mentally rebuild its citizens into more obedient, self-sacrificing people. <b> </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>While some Cosmists embraced communism, they opposed the notion that a socialist utopia should be built on the backs of generations who would never get to experience its benefits — commentary that put them at odds with Joseph Stalin and his purges.</b><br /><br />Although interest in Russian Cosmism was quickly eradicated, the movement has acquired new life in the 21st century. In fact, <b>it might be more relevant today than it was in the early 20th century. Fedorov and Svyatogor’s shared call for the colonization of outer space to protect humanity from earthly disaster, for example, is a direct parallel to Elon Musk’s promise to move people to Mars.</b><br /><br />Thanks to climate change, Cosmism’s ambivalent and generally hostile attitude towards the natural world should also sound familiar. “Today it is fashionable to like nature,” Groys told Big Think, “but nature does not like us. It is a one-sided love. </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Cosmism’s central idea is that we can survive only under artificial conditions, if we create an artificial world to protect us</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">.”</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjszTS_6gqC3bTaKRRe5vjw_50kP92BAqLuBhfKgz5C_QVT__1aJycLI2iV5pJ0cvOlUQJUkYZDsOaE-MfsnN0CnU9BO7nPkXuzQmmE-vzDtHh4Wc5XbOqswaGNnmUHby8g0wSLtDYQj8PV8q4Wfg3GO7oaE-sNbQ7qU-u-cEb99pkcpWHgE2g-z39bKxul/s489/Fyodorov%20Nikolai%20by%20Leonic%20Pasternak.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="489" data-original-width="440" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjszTS_6gqC3bTaKRRe5vjw_50kP92BAqLuBhfKgz5C_QVT__1aJycLI2iV5pJ0cvOlUQJUkYZDsOaE-MfsnN0CnU9BO7nPkXuzQmmE-vzDtHh4Wc5XbOqswaGNnmUHby8g0wSLtDYQj8PV8q4Wfg3GO7oaE-sNbQ7qU-u-cEb99pkcpWHgE2g-z39bKxul/w360-h400/Fyodorov%20Nikolai%20by%20Leonic%20Pasternak.jpg" width="360" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Fedorov’s writing, meanwhile, serves as a reminder that we should not let scientific or technological progress come at anyone’s expense, but rather strive to uplift the world in its totality: past, present, and future. <b>“To be interested in the past is to be interested in ourselves,” Groys said, “because everything, including us, eventually becomes part of the past.”<br /></b><br /><a href="https://bigthink.com/high-culture/cosmism-russia-future/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://bigthink.com/high-culture/cosmism-russia-future/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us</a><br /><br />*<br /><b>“LENIN WALKED ON THE MOON” — RUSSIAN COSMISM<br /></b></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxwsqNulIexYqAWAWHXe56SAMTk0b_ctMqw8KqezkuEb7qmlBFblvaulPeDM7FQGUhoRaKaEz8MKbnDKYA_rx_3dSwwuJBjDD-zas6ptxP5dKT8FY0YBYFriFlHOs8XU7FfyFze7JplPsgytcGpAE-4jb_aSb5rdiHeUhcEbfC6ifeiP43fxdAr3zTtp0w/s720/Lenin%20walked%20on%20the%20Moon%20cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="480" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxwsqNulIexYqAWAWHXe56SAMTk0b_ctMqw8KqezkuEb7qmlBFblvaulPeDM7FQGUhoRaKaEz8MKbnDKYA_rx_3dSwwuJBjDD-zas6ptxP5dKT8FY0YBYFriFlHOs8XU7FfyFze7JplPsgytcGpAE-4jb_aSb5rdiHeUhcEbfC6ifeiP43fxdAr3zTtp0w/w266-h400/Lenin%20walked%20on%20the%20Moon%20cover.jpg" width="266" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">~ Count on Russian thinkers to formulate imaginative theories that no sensible person could believe. Proud of their distinctive style of doing philosophy, social theory, mathematics, and even hard science, Russians repeatedly breach the bounds of common sense. Sometimes they make important discoveries, but they more often produce sheer nonsense, closer to science fiction than to science.<br /><br /><b>Russia has given the world its greatest novels, but no one admires its economy</b>. And as Michel Eltchaninoff observes in his recent book, Lenin Walked on the Moon: The Mad History of Russian Cosmism, <b>it offers visionary schemes, not practical improvements.</b> There is no Russian Thomas Edison or Steve Jobs. When was the last time you bought something made in Russia? When it comes to technology, Russia is weak, except for weapons and, at one time, space travel.<br /><br />When I was growing up, people laughed at Russian claims to have invented almost everything. Only recently did I discover from the authoritative historian Loren Graham that there is something to these claims: believe it or not, <i><b>Russians “did transmit radio waves before Guglielmo Marconi . . . they did pioneer in the development of transistors and diodes; they did publish the principles of lasers a generation before any others did,” and much more. What they did not do was bring these inventions to market or make them generally usable.</b><br /></i><br />As Walter Isaacson observed in his biography of Steve Jobs, “In the annals of innovation new ideas are only part of the equation. Execution is just as important.” <b>Russians are bad at execution not only because great thinkers regard it as beneath them but also because the Russian social environment ensures that ideas are left on paper. </b>For ideas to have a practical effect, society needs to value innovation, foster investment, secure property rights, and reward inventors. Politics and bureaucracy must not suffocate the new. <b>Perhaps one reason Israel has been so amazingly successful technologically is that its many Russians work with people adept at turning ideas into practice in favorable circumstances.<br /></b><br />It is not as if Russians are unaware of all this. <b>Russian literary classics frequently describe dreamers or revolutionaries who disdain practical work. Very rarely do they offer sympathetic portraits of businessmen.</b> The eponymous hero of Ivan Goncharov’s brilliant comic novel Oblomov (1859) spends all his time daydreaming—it takes him over a hundred delightful pages to get out of bed—and could not be more unlike his practical boyhood friend Stolz, who succeeds in almost everything except changing Oblomov’s ways. <br /><br />As his name indicates, <b>Stolz is not ethnically Russian. Doing things, it seems, is German. In Eugene Vodolazkin’s recent novel The Aviator (2015), the hero, suffering from a disease his doctors cannot cure, travels to a German clinic. </b>“Expect no miracles from our clinic,” the doctor immediately tells him.<br /><br />“That’s so there are no misapprehensions. We will do all we can.”<br /><br />I felt that I was smiling broadly, showing my teeth:<br /><br /><b>“But it’s miracles I came for . . .”<br /></b><br /><b>“Miracles, that’s in Russia,” said [Dr.] Meier, his gaze growing sad. “There you live by the laws of the miracle, but we attempt to live in conformity with reality. It’s unclear, however, which is better.”</b><br /><br />“When God wishes, nature’s order is overcome,” I said, expressing my main hope, but the interpreter could not translate that.<br /><br /><b>As the economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron pointed out, Russians pride themselves on relying not on methodical planning, as Germans do, but on avos’, a term with no English equivalent. It means, roughly, sheer luck, a happy chance, a windfall, something desirable one has no right to expect, utter perhapsness.</b></span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Early in the nineteenth century, Pushkin referred to “our Russian avos’,” and from his time on Russians have regarded the kind of thinking it suggests as a distinctive national characteristic, responsible for both their greatest successes and most significant failures. <br /><br />Chekhov saw it as a fundamental flaw, a form of laziness bound to lead to unnecessary suffering. <b>Solzhenitsyn’s novels about the events leading to the Bolshevik takeover depict Russia’s real heroes not as revolutionists who disdain everything bourgeois and practical but as engineers who actually build things. </b>In August 1914, General Martos knows that Russians must overcome their characteristic way of thinking if they are to defeat the Germans. He “could not tolerate Russian sloppiness, the Russian inclination to ‘wait and see,’ to ‘sleep on it,’ and leave God to make the decisions.” <br /><br /><b>Is it any wonder, then, that Russians have been inclined to utopianism, mysticism, and pseudoscience? In tzarist times, intellectuals commonly imagined revolution in millenarian terms, as a transformation not just of society but also of the universe. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b> </b>When the anticipated revolution happened, many presumed that this political upheaval would instantaneously change everything else. Wealth would be abundant within days. Suffering would instantly become a thing of the past. And, before long, mortality itself would be overcome, just as the Book of Revelation promised, only without divine intervention. <b>These atheists anticipated that strictly scientific laws, as outlined in Marxist–Leninist philosophy, would accomplish everything that mystics had foretold.</b><br /><br /><b>Science is traditionally understood as skeptical inquiry, in which ideas are tested experimentally against reality, which may not confirm them</b>; when they prove mistaken, they are changed and tested anew. It isn’t enough for them to seem persuasive, let alone highly desirable. Since Francis Bacon, scientists have presumed that nature operates by efficient causes rather than providential goals. <br /><br /><b>But in Russia, science is often viewed—even by scientists themselves—as a kind of mystical insight or magic</b>. According to Soviet philosophy, matter itself contains a dynamic guaranteed to lead eventually to Communism. <b>Leon Trotsky was, by the standards of the day, one of the more down-to-earth thinkers, but even he presumed that the coming revolution would transform both the natural world and human nature.</b><br /><br /><b>These transformations would happen, Trotsky argued, because human effort would no longer be exerted “spontaneously” and at the whims of the market. No longer would people be subject to economic forces; they would be the masters thereof.</b> In a planned economy, everything happens according to human will, so progress would be immeasurably faster. That reasoning applied not just to the economy, since in the society Bolsheviks were creating literally everything would be planned.<br /><br /><b>“Communist life will not be formed blindly, like coral islands, but will be built consciously,” Trotsky memorably explained.</b> “The shell of life will hardly have time to form before it will burst open again under the pressure of new technical and cultural inventions and achievements.” Nature will be shaped according to human desires:<br /><br />Through the machine, man in Socialist society will command nature in its entirety, with its grouse and sturgeons. He will point out places for mountains and for passes. <b>He will change the course of rivers, and he will lay down rules for the oceans.</b><br /><br /><b>Is it any wonder that the USSR became an environmental disaster?<br /></b><br /><i><b>People will also redesign themselves, Trotsky continued. They will bring the unconscious and semiconscious processes of the body, like breathing, circulation of the blood, digestion, and reproduction, under conscious control:</b></i><br /><br />The human race will not have ceased to crawl on all fours before God, kings, and capital, in order later to submit humbly before the dark laws of heredity and natural selection!<br />Socialist man will master his own feelings and learn “to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby create <b>a higher social biological type or, if you will a superman</b>.” </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In short, man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler. . . . The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise.<br /><br /><b>According to Bolshevik philosophy, these predictions are not mere hopes but are entailed by science itself, especially the science of sciences, Marxism–Leninism.</b> </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In Western Europe, socialism settled down into social-democratic parties of the center Left. In Russia, it became a mystical communion with the materialist divine, a pseudoscientific realization of Biblical promises.<br /><br /><i><b>The philosophy now called cosmism, which was born a century and a half ago, infused its spirit into Marxism–Leninism and now competes with Eurasianism and other ideologies to replace it. Unlike most Russian visionary schemes, it has actually influenced prominent Americans, particularly the “transhumanists” of Silicon Valley. </b><br /></i><br /><b>Eltchaninoff points to the role that Russians like Sergey Brin (the cofounder of Google) and Robert Ettinger (the inventor of cryogenics) played in developing New Age thinking and its technological successors. </b>He cites an impressive list of people, including Elon Musk, Michael Murphy (the founder of Esalen), Max More (the author of such essays as “The Philosophy of Transhumanism”), and many more who have been inspired by one or another of the key cosmist thinkers: Nikolai Fyodorov, Vladimir Vernadsky, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Alexander Chizhevsky, Vasily Kuprevich, and Danila Medvedev.<br /><br /><b>It all began with Fyodorov (1829–1903), the supremely weird librarian of the Rumyantsev Museum (now the Russian State Library). </b>As did so many inspiring Russian thinkers, Fyodorov attracted hagiographers who all but canonized him. He was said to know the location and contents of every volume in the library, so that if a reader requested a book on some topic, he would receive a few more he had not known about. <br /><br /><b>Fyodorov, we are told, lived a totally ascetic life; owning and eating almost nothing, he slept on a packing crate. Contemptuous of bodily discomfort, he refused to wear an overcoat even during the coldest days of the Russian winter and yet was never ill.</b> When he was at last persuaded to don one on a particularly frigid day, he caught cold and died!—in a hospital for the indigent, of course.<br /><br />Deeply disturbed by the “unbrotherly state of the world” characterized by human “disrelatedness,” Fyodorov traced these maladies to the separation of the “learned” from the “unlearned,” among whom he strangely counted himself. The learned pursue knowledge for its own sake while forgetting about human welfare. Instead of working together to eliminate evil, they dissipate effort into ever more fields and subfields. In short, “there is division [among people] only because there is no common task.”<br /><br />The learned must unite to perform that common task, which is important both in itself and for joining people to accomplish it. The task Fyodorov proposed was not just one desirable project among many, but, in his view, the only proper goal for humanity: “There can be no other obligation, no other task for a conscious being.”<br /><br /><b>That “common task” was raising the dead: humanity must set aside all other concerns and discover the technology to bring our forefathers back to life.</b> Otherwise, Fyodorov opined, we resemble children dancing on the graves of our “fathers.” Fyodorov was an illegitimate child who bore the name not of his father but of his godfather, and so it is more than curious that he writes as if the world consisted entirely of men. <b>He was not exactly a misogynist, because misogynists are supremely conscious that women exist. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>We never hear from Fyodorov about resurrecting our mothers,</b> and when he faulted the learned for inventions that foster “the manufacturing industry” (which is “the root of disrelatedness”), he accused them of “effeminate caprice.” By the same token, <b>he regarded childbearing as a sign of our enslavement to the laws of nature.</b><br /><br /><b>Like the most enthusiastic Bolsheviks, Fyodorov imagined that humanity could overcome natural laws if only they were guided by a single, conscious will.</b> Raising the dead entails our liberation from the dictatorship of nature. Only when it takes place will people truly regard each other as “brothers” (not brothers and sisters) and eliminate war along with all other strife. In this way alone can the world overcome “stateness” (gosudarstvennost’) and achieve “fatherlandness” (otechestvennost’). Altruism, the paltry goal of today, involves helping and favoring a few people, but the common task of raising our forefathers unites all.<br /><br /><b>A religious man, Fyodorov imagined that his common task would fulfill the Gospel promise to raise the dead—only people must not wait passively for divine intervention but act themselves. </b>“We must understand and define Orthodoxy as the universal prayer of all the living for all the dead, a prayer that then becomes action,” Fyodorov instructs.<br /><br />By the same token, <b>the millennium will be achieved only by human effort. Here Fyodorov’s views align with Lenin’s. Today’s learned patriots, Fyodorov explains, take pride in their forefathers’ achievements instead of feeling “contrition for their death”—as they should, because they have still not bothered to resurrect them. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Only the unlearned already know that as soon as the earth is seen as a cemetery and nature as a death-dealing force, just so soon will the political question be replaced by the physical question; and in this context the physical will not be separated from the astronomical, i.e. the earth will be recognized as a heavenly body and the stars will be recognized as other earths. <b>The unification of all sciences under astronomy is the simplest, most natural, unlearned thing.<br /></b><br />What does astronomy have to do with raising the dead? The answer, believe it or not, is that <b>atoms of our ancestors have escaped into outer space. Before we can resurrect the dead, we must retrieve their atoms.</b> Only then can we achieve the “patrification” (not “matrification”) of matter. Hence the “common task” is inextricably linked to space travel.<br /><br />I remember the late George Kline, an expert on Russian philosophy, pointing out that it is not particular atoms that make us who we are but their organization. Atoms, after all, are replaceable and constantly change within us. A less obvious objection is that even if we could produce an exact copy of a person, how do we know that a duplicate of me would subjectively be me? If someone copied me while I was alive, would I be located somehow in two places, or would, as with twins, there be two distinct versions of me? Such questions did not trouble Fyodorov and his followers.<br /><br /><b>The need for women will disappear because men will “replace the bringing into the world of children </b>. . . with the restoration to our fathers of the life we received from them”—from them only, because women apparently play no role in giving life.<br /><br />One may also wonder at Fyodorov’s disparagement of “manufacturing” and “pure science,” as if they could never contribute knowledge useful for a project unlikely to be attained by just ordering scientists to raise the dead. <i><b>He did not suspect that, just as “conscious,” “orderly” central planning is actually much less efficient than the “spontaneous,” “anarchic” market, so it is by encouraging people to exploit unforeseeable opportunities that the greatest advances are made.</b></i><br /><br />*<br /><b>Russians usually credit the mathematician and rocket designer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) with founding (or at least inspiring) the Russian space program. </b>“Fyodorov . . . believed that the stars didn’t exist merely to be contemplated and admired,” Tsiolkovsky wrote in praise of his predecessor, “but so that mankind could conquer them and settle among them.” What’s more, Tsiolkovsky enthused, Fyodorov “believed that the whole universe could be controlled by human will and consciousness.”<br /><br />Once a cult figure for the few, Tsiolkovsky has become a national icon. <b>When the USSR disintegrated, the Russian Cape Canaveral turned out to be in Kazakhstan, and so a replacement was built in the Russian Federation. It was named for Tsiolkovsky</b> because, as President Putin explained,<br /><br />“One of the first people in our country, and indeed the world, to have pondered these questions [about humanity’s relation to the cosmos] was Tsiolkovsky—and yet we have no towns that bear his name. We are not going to build just a cosmodrome and a launch pad here, but a research center, and a whole city. I think that if . . . we call this future city Tsiolkovsky it will be only fitting.”<br /><br />“Cosmism,” Eltchaninoff instructs, “has come to be considered a philosophical discipline in its own right.”<br /><br />Compared to Tsiolkovsky, Fyodorov almost seems, well, down to earth. <b>Tsiolkovsky’s prose displays what Eltchaninoff aptly calls “metaphysical vertigo.”</b> Tsiolkovsky began his article “Panpsychism, or Everything Feels” in the tone of an evangelist:<br /><br />I am afraid you will leave this life with bitterness in your heart if you do not learn from me, a pure source of knowledge, that continuous joy awaits you. . . . I would want this life of yours to be a bright dream of the future, a future where happiness never ends.<br /><br />The way I see it, my sermon is not even a daydream, but a strictly mathematical conclusion based on precise knowledge.<br /><br />We sense ourselves thinking, Tsiolkovsky explains, but it is really each atom in the brain that thinks and feels. And not just in the brain: “in a mathematical sense,” every particle of matter feels and thinks. It’s only a question of degree. Thought does not stop with humans; to a lesser extent, dogs and rats think, and to a still lesser extent, plants. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Why stop there, since the line between living and non-living matter is entirely arbitrary? “Can anyone deny that in nature we have a continuous chain of links which differ only quantitatively?” In fact, everything senses and feels. “The inorganic world cannot express itself,” Tsiolkovsky asserts, “but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t possess a primitive form of sensitivity.”<br /><br /><b>Atoms have rudimentary feeling, like that of a sleeping person. They awake into full consciousness when they become part of something complex, like a brain. </b>Although everyone dies and their brains disintegrate, the part of them that really feels, their atoms, lives on and eventually becomes part of other brains. In the interim they sleep and do not sense time passing, and so, when they awake, even if after millions of years, life will seem to have been continuous. <br /><br />In that sense, we are truly immortal. Since the universe extends infinitely in time and space, we will have an infinite number of lives. Indeed, we have already had an infinite number! “What exists is a single, supreme, conscious, happy life that never ceases.” <b>We can be sure of happiness because, Tsiolkovsky preposterously asserts, “the ethical code of the cosmos dictates that there be no suffering anywhere.”</b><br /><br />As life extends indefinitely in time, so humanity will conquer ever more space. <b>First, people will harness the sun’s energy, only a tiny portion of which is actually used, and so multiply human powers billions of times. People will use that energy to eliminate deserts and increase population exponentially. When they at last need more room, they will establish colonies on the asteroids and planets, then on worlds throughout the Milky Way, and then move on to other galaxies.</b><br /><br />People will also perfect themselves. Like so many progressives of his time, Tsiolkovsky believed in eugenics. He envisaged central planners controlling mating to produce a superior species. Humanity will at first be divided into two parts, the chosen ones living together by conscious planning while the others endure spontaneously. Gradually, everyone will belong to the chosen, and then “all will be happiness; all will be contentment. And those who cannot be helped will be subsumed into nirvana, or non-being (temporarily, of course).” <br /><br />Perfect happiness demands that atoms not be subjected to imperfect experiences in inferior beings, “such as our monkeys, cows, wolves, deer, hares, rats, and the like,” whose existence “is of no benefit to the atom.” <b>We must therefore eliminate the animal world . . . . Likewise, the atom’s rare potential existence in the body of modern man encourages us to improve and eliminate all backward [human] breeds.</b><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>But what if humans are themselves an inferior breed?</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> If the universe has quintillions of worlds, and has lasted forever, then there must be civilizations billions of years ahead of us who regard us the way we regard rats. So why do they allow us to live? Isn’t the fact that we exist proof that something is wrong with Tsiolkovsky’s logic?</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> As we might guess, he comes up with an entirely ad hoc answer. Every now and then, it seems, advanced beings “degenerate” and so “are eliminated as a result of occasionally occurring regressions. <b>A fresh influx is necessary,” and so Earth and a few similar planets are allowed to develop “to replenish the losses incurred by regressive breeds in the cosmos.”<br /></b><br />In short, we can begin to appreciate the significance of our existence only if we think cosmically. Then we will recognize that life is eternal. “Can we really doubt that the cosmos generally contains only joy, satisfaction, perfection and truth”?<br /><br />The pantheon of cosmists includes numerous thinkers who propounded the preposterous as indubitable. Alexander Chizhevsky (1897–1964) claimed to have established, by strict mathematical deduction of course, that solar cycles regulate history:<b>”that the greatest revolutions, wars, and mass movements . . . constituting the turning points of history . . . have tended to coincide with epochs of heightened solar activity and reach their peak in the moment of the most intense solar activity.’<br /></b><br />Since the Bolsheviks utterly rejected anarchism, the anarchist Alexander Svyatagor (1889–1937) invented “anarcho-biocosmism,” which aimed to overturn not social but natural laws. Since this project demanded strict control of all human effort, anarchism morphed into its opposite.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>According to Eltchaninoff, the embalmers of Lenin were inspired by the sort of thinking that eventually led to cryogenics (freezing of the dead until science can cure whatever killed them). </b>The Bolshevik Alexander Bogdanov maintained that “mutual transfusion,” in which the blood of an old and young person is exchanged, would rejuvenate the former without aging the latter. This technique had the added benefit of transcending bourgeois individualism. When Bogdanov tried the process on himself, he (but not his young partner) died.<br /><br />More recently, <b>the futurologist Danila Medvedev, a founder of the Russian transhumanist movement and of the first cryogenic company outside the United States</b>, argued that the universal immortality he promised would “create new possibilities for collaboration with the Russian Orthodox church,” which “has always had the custom of preserving the bodies and body parts of saints as relics. We’ll be able to offer them a service for preserving their saints, who will then be technically ready for resurrection.” <br /><br />What’s more, Medvedev continued, <b>we will be able to unite spiritual and secular power in one person by “transplanting the head of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow onto the body of President Putin. Then we’d have a single, unified leader. And I don’t see any blasphemy</b>.”<br /><br />Where but in Russia (or in Jonathan Swift’s Academy of Lagado) could such ideas flourish? </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Some Russian thinkers agree with the former deputy prime minister Dmitri Rogozin, who became head of the Russian space agency Roscomos, that cosmist thinking is an “intrinsic part of the Russian soul” and that it was “predetermined by the national character of the Russian people.” Others stress how closely cosmist ideas resemble those circulating at the Esalen Institute and in Silicon Valley. Can there be more convincing proof, they ask, that Russian discoveries will conquer the world?<br /><br />Russian cosmists proposed a “nooscope” that could intervene in human thoughts, and today Elon Musk’s Neuralink project aims to train the brain—or, as the Neuralink website explains, the company will “create a generalized brain interface to restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs today and unlock human potential tomorrow.” Paralysis will be a thing of the past, and, we may suppose, psychiatry as we know it will be superseded. <b>It is also easy to see how intrusive government might create an unprecedented kind of tyranny.</b><br /><br />“The link between cosmism and [American] transhumanism is pretty clear,” the British philosopher and sociologist Steven Fuller observed. <b>Eltchaninoff offers numerous examples of American techno-wizards and transhumanists who were directly inspired by Russian cosmism, but even if the two movements developed independently, the similarities should make us reflect. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">It is never good when Americans begin to think like Russians. <b>Who can tell what young people educated to despise Western liberal values will do when they join a technological movement reflecting the cosmist “Russian soul”? The fact that, spiritually speaking, Silicon Valley borders on Moscow does not comfort me.</b> ~<br /><br /><a href="https://newcriterion.com/issues/2024/2/galaxy-brains">https://newcriterion.com/issues/2024/2/galaxy-brains<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>NIXON MADE SOME ACCURATE PREDICTIONS<br /></b></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGCejjQ8cE6rnR9pyr76W1g_7NYWVFiA4jj931G-OSm_59z7qlz8AOzCH7guVaexPwcbwnWVcpXupxhF4H6dH0MZnriJLbtP2VjgUHPz4K3Rorq5DAM_D1DsGEv8zhi7_h2nAs7TKKvgCo5it1Uw1XTBVex4xW7wJTuJr8VB33PDiJKx8_qg0uN_rni696/s565/NIXON%20ols.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="565" data-original-width="443" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGCejjQ8cE6rnR9pyr76W1g_7NYWVFiA4jj931G-OSm_59z7qlz8AOzCH7guVaexPwcbwnWVcpXupxhF4H6dH0MZnriJLbtP2VjgUHPz4K3Rorq5DAM_D1DsGEv8zhi7_h2nAs7TKKvgCo5it1Uw1XTBVex4xW7wJTuJr8VB33PDiJKx8_qg0uN_rni696/w314-h400/NIXON%20ols.jpg" width="314" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>An aging president Richard Nixon made some incredibly astute predictions on Russia, China and their respective geopolitical futures.</b> A clip in which he talked about these things recently went viral, and it was enormously interesting to watch.<br /><br />See, Nixon is an interesting cookie… people hear his name and the knee-jerk response is to go: “Watergate! Corruption!” and call it a day. That’s far too simple a view.<br /><br />In Bill Clinton’s memoirs, he goes into some detail regarding his relationship with an elderly Richard Nixon, in the first years of his presidency. The Cold War had successfully come to an end, and the Soviet Union had collapsed. <b>Nixon urged Clinton to not drop the Russians like a hot potato and gloat of America’s supposed “victory”. </b></span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">He said, rather, that <b>this was a moment where the two systems stood at a historical crossroads</b> — <b>either a democratic Russia would prevail and become prosperous, inspiring other nations such as China to follow their lead</b>…<b> or democracy would fail and a more imperialist Russia would take over, the way Russia had been for centuries.</b> Which would, likewise, embolden other countries to go down the same path.<br /><br /><b>Democracy in Russia did not prevail.</b> The recent disposal of Navalny once again drove home this point for all those who may still be in doubt. <b>Richard Nixon’s words are eerily prophetic in retrospect — he described a crossroads East and West were on.</b> We now know the choices that were made, and the trajectory we were on. He neatly laid it out. And everything played out exactly as he said it would.</span></p><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Below: Richard Nixon dining with Zhou Enlai in Shanghai 52 years ago </span></p><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZvB7o1Y36F0sqsKCZk-PJBVv2yaKzv7VGSCwhAqhSpbFKcMyvBYEHhy2gnce5gOVF7s5yq3FCEpbGkfQtpaYTZE7DUFtAkdWhnTJXWxbdadyQBW6FP7HH0t7be2uGMJhGCIBjl1nb7B9c9OD4lS9uiqlspfqH7V8iWI9ivZ2Jl38of_-9lBekAWHADRyA/s1199/Richard%20Nixon%20dining%20with%20Zhou%20Enlai%20in%20Shanghai%2052%20years%20ago.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="793" data-original-width="1199" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZvB7o1Y36F0sqsKCZk-PJBVv2yaKzv7VGSCwhAqhSpbFKcMyvBYEHhy2gnce5gOVF7s5yq3FCEpbGkfQtpaYTZE7DUFtAkdWhnTJXWxbdadyQBW6FP7HH0t7be2uGMJhGCIBjl1nb7B9c9OD4lS9uiqlspfqH7V8iWI9ivZ2Jl38of_-9lBekAWHADRyA/w400-h265/Richard%20Nixon%20dining%20with%20Zhou%20Enlai%20in%20Shanghai%2052%20years%20ago.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7Ors4xO2Ef8">https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7Ors4xO2Ef8</a> ~ Jean-Marie Valheur, Quora<br /><br />Nicholas C. Rossis:<br />I am reminded of a quote by the Palestinian envoy to the UK, back in the late 90s.</span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“To solve the Middle-East problems, we need <b>a US president who is as astute as Nixon</b>, as honest as Carter, and as popular as Reagan. Unfortunately, what we seem to always get is presidents who are as astute as Reagan, as honest as Nixon, and as popular as Carter.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Over 25 years later, it’s still relevant!<br /><br />Jurre Kieboom:<br />This wasn’t Nixon’s brilliance. A lot of US foreign policy guys: <b>Zbigniew Brzezinski, Wolfowitz and frankly Henry Kissinger where right </b>on the ball on this, warning<b> about the risks of a revanchist, nationalist and irredentist Russia after the collapse of the USSR.</b> Given the prevalence of <b>collapsing empires displaying exactly such tendencies toward nationalism/irridentism in history</b>, it was not that much of a brilliant insight either.<br /><br /><b>All of Russia’s neighbors seem to have been well aware of it since gaining their independence.<br /></b><br />* irredentism = “a policy of advocating the restoration to a country of any territory formerly belonging to it.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> *<br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>THE US HOMICIDE RATE IS THE HIGHEST OF ANY OF THE DEVELOPED NATIONS OF THE WORLD</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b> (England, France, Germany, etc.) and it’s more like the homicide rate in Russia and undeveloped and impoverished countries like Yemen, Venezuela, and Mongolia.<br /></b><br /><b>The highest homicide rate in the US is in the southern states.</b> In 2023 Washington, D.C., had 40 homicides per 100,000 people. That ranks it fifth nationally for per-capita murder rates. <br /><br />(~ the page of John Guzlowski, Facebook)<br /><br /><br />*<br /><b>HOW THE HUMAN SKELETON EVOLVED OVER THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVOLUTION<br /></b><br />~ Some 300,000 years ago, Homo sapiens split off from a long line of human-ish primates to become the first fully human species, with abilities and ingenuity unrivaled in Earth’s history. <b>But back then, in terms of behavior and intelligence, those early humans wouldn’t have seemed so different from the other hominins they shared the landscape with — Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo erectus and so on.<br /></b><br />Now picture one of these ancient people beside a 21st-century counterpart, and consider how wide the gap has grown. The average person today zips from place to place in a personal metal shell that would put any cheetah to shame. They seek beauty in paintings, novels and other depictions of worlds that don’t even exist. They are embedded in socio-political networks vastly larger than the entire population of our prehistoric ancestors.<br /><br />And yet! Genetically (more or less), we are them. <b>We, with our spaceships and particle colliders, our operas and crème brûlées, our megacities and globe-spanning systems of cooperation, are made of the same essential stuff as those club-wielding nomads cooking mastodon steaks on a spit.</b><br /><br />So, how did we get from there to here?<br /><br /><b>What Is an Ancient Human?<br /></b><br />An ancient human is identified not by a single moment in evolution, as this process is too gradual to pinpoint when exactly we became "human." We all share a single genetic ancestor, certainly, but that doesn’t mean there was any significant difference between them and their contemporaries; they just won the reproductive lottery.<br /><br /><b>When Did Modern Humans First Appear?<br /></b><br />Based on fossil and DNA evidence, <b>people that looked like us (anatomically modern) appeared in Africa about 300,000 years ago. But the archaeological record of tools and artifacts suggests they only started to act like us (behaviorally modern) 50,000 to 60,000 years ago,</b> after thousands of generations of stasis.<br /><br />This abrupt shift is sometimes called the “great leap forward” (not to be confused with Mao Zedong’s disastrous economic campaign of the same name). <b>Experts disagree on how to explain the lag between anatomic and behavioral modernity, but </b>for whatever<b> </b>reason<b>, it seems that humans only reached an intellectual apex long after they’d come to resemble us in most other ways.</b><br /><b></b></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfH8xFFBKe8RhiXsptzcsmKwKRBxxWT2gJ-maW9hUmS68aHIde0JVUSo106TT6J_CnCrAjAiWhhSuOl7E2PO-YJSGdmEA4kvkuFtulHMRyoRoe62hPVvN-MwH2BtfF-KwOG-1WqPhhNY5BFYSjbdjN0wt6uQpt8GXKIRXf5CmALGn8y1OD9MCIxWSlFdz9/s660/cave%20art%20hunting.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="433" data-original-width="660" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfH8xFFBKe8RhiXsptzcsmKwKRBxxWT2gJ-maW9hUmS68aHIde0JVUSo106TT6J_CnCrAjAiWhhSuOl7E2PO-YJSGdmEA4kvkuFtulHMRyoRoe62hPVvN-MwH2BtfF-KwOG-1WqPhhNY5BFYSjbdjN0wt6uQpt8GXKIRXf5CmALGn8y1OD9MCIxWSlFdz9/w400-h263/cave%20art%20hunting.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Problem Solving and Long-Range Planning<br /></b><br />Another staple of modern behavior is a knack for problem-solving and long-range planning. In the archaeological record this shows up as <b>a sudden surge, beginning roughly 60,000 years ago, in the production of advanced artifacts like fish hooks, bows, and sewing needles. Around the same time, our species was rapidly colonizing the planet, including voyages to Australia and other Pacific islands that demanded maritime expertise.</b><br /><br />What drove this unprecedented, world-girdling success? “It was not their technology alone,” as cognitive archaeologists Frederick L. Coolidge and Thomas Wynn write in The Rise of Homo Sapiens. “It was something about their minds, an ability they possessed that their cousins did not.”<br /><br /><b>The Evolution of Human Societies: From Stone Age to Modernity<br /></b><br />But this isn’t the full story — in case you didn’t notice, there have been some major developments since behavioral modernity emerged near the end of the Stone Age. The mental landscape of our upper-paleolithic progenitors may have been similar to our own, but in many ways, they were still closer to the earliest humans than to those in the present day.<br /><br />One possible explanation of what’s happened since then is that, in fact, we haven’t changed a whole lot as individuals. Evolutionary psychologist Nicholas R. Longrich notes that <b>the great thinkers of antiquity, like Aristotle and Buddha, were clearly just as well-endowed with intellect as anyone alive now.</b><br /><br /><b>The Role of Global Networks in Human Evolution</b><br /><br /><i><b>What has changed are the increasingly larger and more global networks in which we live. “Much of the difference between our ancient, simple hunter-gatherer societies and modern societies,” he writes, “just reflects the fact that there are lots more of us and more connections between us.”</b></i><br /><br />That’s important because innovation grows in step with population: The more people, the more likely one of them will be the genius who invents a better spearhead (or wheel, or combustion engine, or supercomputer), setting off an intricate feedback loop in which culture evolves to ever greater levels of sophistication. And a handful of special innovations, like agriculture and writing, truly turbocharged human progress, launching us far beyond the horizons of prior generations.<br /><br />In other words, it’s not that our cognitive hardware has improved since the first behaviorally modern humans, just that we enjoy the benefits of thousands of years of accumulated knowledge.<br /><br /><b>Genetic Mutation and Evolution Across Continents<br /></b><br />So much for our brains. When it comes to physical appearance, a glance at any diverse crowd shows that evolution was hard at work as humans fanned out across the continents.<br /><br />When they embarked on their long journey out of Africa, our ancestors encountered all sorts of new environments and were forced to continuously adapt. Some of the results are visible: Genetic mutations for dark skin allowed them to withstand the harmful UV radiation of sunny locales, while<b> small noses could better warm the cold air they inhaled in northern climates.<br /></b><br />Other adaptations were subtler, but just as influential. Lactase persistence, for example, evolved in populations with domesticated livestock, allowing them to digest milk throughout their lives rather than only during infancy. And in mountainous Tibet, people living at high altitude acquired larger lungs to make efficient use of the region’s thin air.<br /><br /><b>Are There Ever Evolutionary Mismatches?</b><br /><br />Amid all the changes of the past few millennia, the monumental shifts in our world and way of life, it’s also surprising how much we’ve stayed the same. Much of our behavior is calibrated for a long-gone ancestral environment, and we’re now often confronted by evolutionary mismatches — many traits that helped our forebears have negative consequences for us today.<br /><br />Take our nearly insatiable cravings for tasty food. Ancient people often dealt with food scarcity, so it made sense for them to gorge whenever the opportunity arose. In the modern context of perpetual abundance, however, this instinct has fueled an epidemic of overeating and obesity.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT60yhZKWDmR-VNqrbnVCLsOQewVGvw78OKl0EDFrxFTHH0DPwMnhBH6v8htjkWA5QFp4gFE2W7S2H1R5dY7pc5X8_c-tyXRWlmVpdWm0Gs05Oq08azGw8QIR86WZIszbhWCQY2YbkM9M438OLlkAej-edl1OoGA1igYFKsUpleX1NRHI0SZXhArjefN0V/s660/pork%20chops.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="433" data-original-width="660" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT60yhZKWDmR-VNqrbnVCLsOQewVGvw78OKl0EDFrxFTHH0DPwMnhBH6v8htjkWA5QFp4gFE2W7S2H1R5dY7pc5X8_c-tyXRWlmVpdWm0Gs05Oq08azGw8QIR86WZIszbhWCQY2YbkM9M438OLlkAej-edl1OoGA1igYFKsUpleX1NRHI0SZXhArjefN0V/w400-h263/pork%20chops.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">All of this, the good and the bad, makes up our species’ legacy — at once fluid and enduring, it shapes our lives, our civilizations and, increasingly, the world around us. Maybe, once we brought them up to speed on spaceships and crème brûlées and what not, those early humans would even see in our world something of themselves. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/what-is-the-difference-between-early-modern-humans-and-ancient-humans?utm_source=acs&utm_medium=email&utm_email=ivy333%40cox.net&utm_campaign=News0_DSC_240229_DSTH00_0000000000&eid=ivy333%40cox.net">https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/what-is-the-difference-between-early-modern-humans-and-ancient-humans?utm_source=acs&utm_medium=email&utm_email=ivy333%40cox.net&utm_campaign=News0_DSC_240229_DSTH00_0000000000&eid=ivy333%40cox.net<br /></a><br />*<br /><br /><br />*<br /><b>RECYCLING OF PLASTIC IS NON-VIABLE</b><br /><br />~ Plastic producers have known for more than 30 years that recycling is not an economically or technically feasible plastic waste management solution. That has not stopped them from promoting it, according to a new report.<br /><br />“The companies lied,” said Richard Wiles, president of fossil-fuel accountability advocacy group the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), which published the report. “It’s time to hold them accountable for the damage they’ve caused.”<br /><br /><b>Plastic, which is made from oil and gas, is notoriously difficult to recycle</b>. Doing so requires meticulous sorting, since most of the thousands of chemically distinct varieties of plastic cannot be recycled together. That renders an already pricey process even more expensive. Another challenge:<b> the material degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can generally only be reused once or twice.</b><br /><br />The industry has known for decades about these existential challenges, but obscured that information in its marketing campaigns, the report shows.<br /><br /><b>The research draws on previous investigations as well as newly revealed internal documents illustrating the extent of this decades-long campaign.</b><br /><br />Industry insiders over the past several decades have variously referred to plastic recycling as “uneconomical”, said it “cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution”, and said it “cannot go on indefinitely”, the revelations show.<br /><br />The authors say the evidence demonstrates that oil and petrochemical companies, as well as their trade associations, may have broken laws designed to protect the public from misleading marketing and pollution.<br /><br /><b>Single-use plastics</b><br /><br /><i><b>In the 1950s, plastic producers came up with an idea to ensure a continually growing market for their products: disposability.</b><br /></i><br />“They knew if they focused on single-use [plastics] people would buy and buy and buy,” said Davis Allen, investigative researcher at the CCI and the report’s lead author.<br /><br />At a 1956 industry conference, the Society of the Plastics Industry, a trade group, told producers to focus on “low cost, big volume” and “expendability” and to aim for materials to end up “in the garbage wagon”.<br /><br />The Society of Plastics is now known as the Plastics Industry Association. “As is typical, instead of working together towards actual solutions to address plastic waste, groups like CCI choose to level political attacks instead of constructive solutions,” Matt Seaholm, president and CEO of the trade group, said in an emailed response to the report.<br /><br />Over the following decades, the industry told the public that plastics can easily be tossed into landfills or burned in garbage incinerators. But in the 1980s, as municipalities began considering bans on grocery bags and other plastic products, the industry began promoting a new solution: recycling.<br /><br /><b>Recycling campaigns<br /></b><br /><i><b>The industry has long known that plastics recycling is not economically or practically viable, the report shows</b></i>. An internal 1986 report from the trade association the Vinyl Institute noted that “recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution [to plastics], as it merely prolongs the time until an item is disposed of”.<br /><br />In 1989, the founding director of the Vinyl Institute told attendees of a trade conference: <b>“Recycling cannot go on indefinitely, and does not solve the solid waste problem.”</b></span><b><br /></b><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Despite this knowledge, the Society of the Plastics Industry established the Plastics Recycling Foundation in 1984, bringing together petrochemical companies and bottlers, and launched a campaign focused on the sector’s commitment to recycling.<br /></b><br />In 1988, the trade group rolled out the “chasing arrows” – the widely recognized symbol for recyclable plastic – and began using it on packaging. Experts have long said the symbol is highly misleading, and recently federal regulators have echoed their concerns.<br /><br />The Society of the Plastics Industry also established a plastics recycling research center at Rutgers University in New Jersey in 1985, one year after state lawmakers passed a mandatory recycling law. In 1988, industry group the Council for Solid Waste Solutions set up a recycling pilot project in St Paul, Minnesota, where the city council had just voted to ban the plastic polystyrene, or styrofoam.<br /><br />And <b>in the early 1990s, another industry group ran ads in Ladies’ Home Journal proclaiming: “A bottle can come back as a bottle, over and over again.”<br /></b><br /><b>All the while, behind closed doors, industry leaders maintained that recycling was not a real solution.</b><br /><br />In 1994, a representative of Eastman Chemical spoke at an industry conference about the need for proper plastic recycling infrastructure. “While some day this may be a reality,” he said, “it is more likely that <b>we will wake up and realize that we are not going to recycle our way out of the solid waste issue.” </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b> </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">That same year, an Exxon employee told staffers at the American Plastics Council: “We are committed to the activities [of plastics recycling], but not committed to the results.”<br /><br /><b>“It’s clearly fraud they’re engaged in,” said Wiles.<br /></b><br />The report does not allege that the companies broke specific laws. But Alyssa Johl, report co-author and attorney, said she suspects they violated public-nuisance, racketeering and consumer-fraud protections.<br /><br />The industry’s misconduct continues today, the report alleges. Over the past several years, <b>industry lobbying groups have promoted so-called chemical recycling, which breaks plastic polymers down into tiny molecules in order to make new plastics, synthetic fuels and other products. But the process creates pollution and is even more energy intensive than traditional plastic recycling.</b><br /><br />The plastics sector has long known chemical recycling is also not a true solution to plastic waste, the report says. In a 1994 trade meeting, Exxon Chemical vice-president Irwin Levowitz called one common form of chemical recycling a “fundamentally uneconomical process”. And in 2003, a longtime trade consultant criticized the industry for promoting chemical recycling, calling it “another example of how non-science got into the minds of industry and environmental activists alike”.<br /><br />“This is just another example, a new version, of the deception we saw before,” said Allen.<br />Seaholm, of the Plastics Industry Association, said the report “was created by an activist, anti-recycling organization and disregards the incredible investments in recycling technologies made by our industry.<br /><br />“Unfortunately, they use outdated information and false claims to continue to mislead the public about recycling,” he added. He did not expand on which claims were outdated or false.<br /><br /><b>Legal ramifications<br /></b><br />The report comes as the plastic industry and recycling are facing growing public scrutiny. Two years ago, California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, publicly launched an investigation into fossil fuel and petrochemical producers “for their role in causing and exacerbating the global plastics pollution crisis”.<br /><br /><b>A toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, last February also catalyzed a movement demanding a ban on vinyl chloride, a carcinogen used to make plastic. Last month, the EPA announced a health review of the chemical – the first step toward a potential ban.<br /></b><br /><b>In 2023, New York state also filed a lawsuit against PepsiCo, saying its single-use plastics violate public nuisance laws, and that the company misled consumers about the effectiveness of recycling.</b><br /><br />The public is also increasingly concerned about the climate impact of plastic production and disposal, which account for 3.4% of all global greenhouse-gas emissions. In recent years, two dozen cities and states have sued the oil industry for covering up the dangers of the climate crisis. Similarly taking the oil and petrochemical industries to court for “knowingly deceiving” the public, said Wiles, could force them to change their business models.<br /><br />“I think the first step in solving the problem is holding the companies accountable,” he said.<br /><br />Judith Enck, a former regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency and founder of the advocacy group Beyond Plastics, called the analysis “very solid”.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“The report should be read by every attorney general in the nation and the Federal Trade Commission,” she said.<br /><br />Brian Frosh, the former attorney general for the state of Maryland, said the report includes the kind of evidence he would not normally expect to see until a lawsuit has already gone through a process of discovery.<br /><br />“If I were attorney general, based on what I read in CCI’s report, I’d feel comfortable pressing for an investigation and a lawsuit,” he said. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/15/recycling-plastics-producers-report?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/15/recycling-plastics-producers-report?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>RELIGIOUS ‘NONES’ ARE NOW THE SINGLE LARGEST GROUP IN THE U.S.<br /></b><br /><i><b>When Americans are asked to check a box indicating their religious affiliation, 28% now check ‘none.'</b><br /></i><br />A new study from Pew Research finds that the religiously unaffiliated – a group comprised of atheists, agnostic and those who say their religion is "nothing in particular" – is now the largest cohort in the U.S. <b>They're more prevalent among American adults than Catholics (23%) or evangelical Protestants (24%)</b>.<br /><br />Back in 2007, Nones made up just 16% of Americans, but Pew's new survey of more than 3,300 U.S. adults shows that number has now risen dramatically.<br /><br />Researchers refer to this group as the "Nones."<br /><br />Pew asked respondents what – if anything – they believe. The research organization found that Nones are not a uniform group.<br /><br /><b>Most Nones believe in God or another higher power, but very few attend any kind of religious service.<br /></b><br /><b><i>They aren't all anti-religious. Most Nones say religion does some harm, but many also think it does some good. Most have more positive views of science than those who are religiously affiliated; however, they reject the idea that science can explain everything.</i><br /></b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="color: #800180;">Nones could prove to be an important political group</span><br /></b><br />Gregory Smith at Pew was the lead researcher on the study, titled "Religious 'Nones' in America: Who They Are and What They Believe.”<br /><br />He says the growth of Nones could affect American public life.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">"We know politically for example," Smith says, "that religious Nones are very distinctive. They are among <b>the most strongly and consistently liberal and Democratic constituencies in the United States.”</b><br /><br />And that could change electoral politics in the coming decades.<br /><br /><i><b>The political power of white Evangelicals has been well-reported in recent decades, but their numbers are shrinking while the number of the more liberal Nones is on the rise.</b><br /></i><br /><b>However, Smith points out that Nones are also less civically engaged than those who identify with a religion – they're less likely to vote</b>. So, while they identify as Democrats, getting them to the polls on election day may prove to be a challenge.<br /><br />Within the Nones, however, atheists and agnostics are more likely to be politically and civically engaged, whereas those who responded that their religion is 'nothing in particular' are far less likely to vote.<br /><br /><b><i>Pew also found that, overall, Nones are less likely to volunteer in their local communities than religiously affiliated adults.</i></b><br /><br /><b>Logic and avoiding harm help moral decision making<br /></b><br />Beyond their numbers and their behaviors, Pew also asked respondents what they actually believe.<br /><br /><b>The survey found Nones are less satisfied with their local communities and less satisfied with their social lives than religious people.</b><br /><br />While many people of faith say they rely on scripture, tradition and the guidance of religious leaders to make moral decisions, Pew found that Nones say they're guided by logic or reason when making moral decisions.<br /><br />"And huge numbers say the desire to avoid hurting other people factors prominently in how they think about right and wrong," says Smith.<br /><br />People of faith also say they use logic and the avoidance of harm to make decisions, but those factors are in concert with religious tradition and scripture.<br /><br /><b>Nones tend to be young, white and male</b><br /><br />Demographically, Nones also stand out from the religiously affiliated.<br /><br /><b>Nones are young. 69% are under the age of fifty.<br /></b><br /><b>They're also less racially diverse. 63% of Nones are white.<br /></b><br />Similar studies by Pew and other groups such as the Public Religion Research Institute have found that people of color are far more likely to say religion is important in their lives.<br /><br />But Smith says to keep in mind that the Nones are comprised of three distinct groups – atheists, agnostics and those who describe themselves as 'nothing in particular.’<br /><br /><b>Nones who describe themselves are atheist or agnostic are far more likely to be white.<br /></b><br />"People who describe their religion as 'nothing in particular' are more likely," says Smith, "to be Black or Hispanic or Asian.”<br /><br /><i><b>At first glance, Nones appear to be evenly divided be gender. But digging deeper into the data shows that men are significantly more likely to say they're atheist or agnostic whereas women are more likely to describe their religion as 'nothing in particular.'</b><br /></i><br />Smith says that's consistent with other research as well, which shows, "women tend to be more religious on average than men.”<br /><br /><a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/01/24/1226371734/religious-nones-are-now-the-largest-single-group-in-the-u-s">https://www.npr.org/2024/01/24/1226371734/religious-nones-are-now-the-largest-single-group-in-the-u-s</a><br /><br /><br />*<br /><b>FACING DEATH WITHOUT GOD<br /></b><br />~ There are no atheists in foxholes, they say. My favorite uncle was, to all who knew him, a decidedly nonreligious man, never setting foot in a church except to bury his mother and refusing the visit of a minister in his last days. Yet the Haitian woman who tended to him as he struggled with his final breaths claims he spoke to God the night he died.<br /><br />Research <b>psychologists argue that religion was born from the fear of death</b>, and it seems like every year there’s a new bestselling book about scientists finding religion in the face of their own mortality. So <b>when I tell people that far fewer elderly people than young people are nonreligious, they are usually not surprised.</b> </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The proportion of religious Nones in the U.S. population has grown dramatically, but much of that growth is driven by the young: <b>only 9 percent of those over 65 are unaffiliated, compared to 35 percent of those under age 30</b>, and we see similar proportions for atheists and agnostics. Not only are older cohorts more religious, but some people actually get more religious as they age.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">It would be easy to attribute these patterns to religion’s unique ability to give meaning to our mortality. Many people assume that facing death without religion renders life pointless and unbearable, that only exceptionally strong and stoic individuals can face the void that is death without a religious framework. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But that assumption is just that, an assumption, because we don’t have much data to back up such notions. <b>The study of Nones has focused mostly on the young, and studies of the aged have tended to ignore atheists. Secularity is growing even among the old, and yet few have bothered to ask elderly secularists how they face death without religion.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>How do atheists, agnostics, and other seculars find meaning at the end of life? How do they make sense of mortality without religion? I have spent the last two years exploring these questions, sifting through hundreds of studies and interviewing individuals in nursing homes, senior centers, and in their homes.</b> This article reports on some of what I have learned.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">When I reviewed the literature, it seemed at first that the foxhole theory was right. A substantial body of research suggests that religion helps people cope with dying. While some of that positive impact is tied to community (the social support offered by religion), the provision of meaning is a significant causal factor: <b>religion can offer coherence, a feeling of confidence that our life events are ordered or purposeful, rather than random and chaotic, which in turn can confer a sense of control over one’s life.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The end of life is frightening because it’s a new experience; we don’t know where we are going. If a person is ill, dying may entail physical pain and disability. Even in the best of circumstances, we may find ourselves unable to engage in basic physical activities we used to take for granted, or facing the loss of mental acuity. And f<b>or most older people, the final years bring the loss of partners, family members, and friends who would otherwise support them at this time. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Religion can provide a framing for why we are in pain or why we had to lose somebody we love—for example, <b>if suffering is viewed as redemptive or part of a divine plan. Religion also answers questions about what happens after death, whether through complex and varied conceptions of reincarnation in Buddhism and Hinduism, or through comforting beliefs that we will see loved ones again in heaven, as in some Christian traditions.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>There are increased rates of depression and suicidal behavior among elderly people. Religious traditions can provide supportive social networks, and offer people in the final years of life steps to work through devastating losses and to continue living a purposeful life.</b> Reading scripture or meditating is something an individual can do, even with physical disability. And when a loved one dies, rituals like sitting Shiva or preparing for a funeral mass offer structured, familiar activities for loved ones to do.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>But saying that religion helps people find meaning in the face of death does not prove that meaning is absent without religion. Recent reviews of such studies show that they focus almost entirely on religious people, usually comparing more devout people to those who are less devout. Only rarely do they study individuals who are committed seculars, i.e., those who have replaced religion with some other source of meaning. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The few studies that engage in more rigorous comparisons suggest that <b>nonreligious people do just fine. Peter Wilkinson and Peter Coleman found that </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>both atheism and religion can be a source of meaning for older people, and it is the strength of conviction, rather than being religious or nonreligious, that enables effective coping.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> Coleman and Marie Mills suggest that while uncertainty is sometimes linked to depression, questioning also links to growth. Bethany Heywood and Jesse Bering have shown that the nonreligious do, in fact, frame life events using purposive narratives. But we know very little about the content, patterns, and sources of these narratives.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">What we do know is that <b>finding meaning is an interpretative act. Human beings make meaning by telling stories about our lives. Language does not just capture and reflect experience but creates it. </b>Even when people are telling stories that are similar in content, they use linguistic, rhetorical, structural devices to create different sets of meaning. There are broader social narratives that shape individual storytelling, what Ann Swidler has called the cultural toolkit. These social narratives can come from religion or science, from a particular family background, or from popular culture.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I like to conceptualize meaning making as a kind of mapmaking enterprise. The stories we tell are the way we connect the dots and orient ourselves. It’s like when <b>the ancient Greeks imagined lines between the stars and gave names to the various constellations. Without a constellation map to life, events can feel random, and we can feel lost, frightened, and confused, especially when we are entering new territory. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But when we have a map, we have a path to follow; we have agency and power. Religion has long been acknowledged as a powerful mapmaking tool because it creates meaning on two levels: it provides generic narratives that function as a cultural tool for constructing meaning; and these narratives inform, infuse, and frame each believer’s personal narrative. In my current research I am seeking to understand how this works for nonreligious people. <b>Are there generic stories that secular adults use to make meaning, especially at the end of life? If so, how do they rework these stories to create meaning from their personal experience?</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">If meaning making is about storytelling, then I knew I needed to listen to respondents’ stories. So the study, begun in late 2017 and currently in its final phases, is based on personal interviews with elderly seculars. <b>The two main criteria for inclusion are age (70 and over, though I include younger individuals with terminal illness) and nonreligious identification. Participants were recruited in nursing homes and senior centers, with the assistance of the AARP and various secularist organizations.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>To date, a total of 97 interviews have been conducted in various locations across the United States. Although participants were not randomly selected and may or may not be representative of the nonreligious elderly population as a whole, this is a large sample for a qualitative study and reflects important demographic patterns.</b> It is gender balanced and includes 12 black respondents (surveys show that only 4 to 7 percent of African Americans identify as nonreligious). <b>It includes respondents from regions where nonreligiosity is more socially accepted (New England) and where that is less the case (so-called Bible Belt states such as Texas and Georgia).</b> <br /><br />Nonreligion comes in many varieties (e.g., atheist, agnostic, humanist, freethinker), and the sample reflects that diversity. Interviews are semi-structured, beginning with questions about the past and then proceeding to more reflective questions about the present and the future, including the respondent’s impending death. These conversations are conducted in private homes and in institutional settings, depending on the preferences of the subjects, and they range in length from 45 minutes to 2.5 hours. All interviews are transcribed for coding and analysis.<br /><br />The study of so-called Nones poses unique challenges that are readily apparent as I begin to review the data I collected. The first and most obvious is theoretical: we are looking at a population that is defined in terms of what they lack—religion—and yet <b>there is no consensus on what religion is. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The models of religion employed in the social sciences are largely based on Christian constructs. It has long troubled me that Pew, Gallup, and other big survey organizations use measures such as belief in God, prayer, attendance at services, and denominational membership or identification with particular traditions, and then apply these cross-culturally to places like China or Japan, despite evidence that this is a poor fit. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Even within the United States, where Christianity is the dominant religion, <b>about half of Nones are people who identify their religion as “nothing in particular,” a phrase that leaves considerable room for further definition.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I have proposed that we distinguish American Nones into at least four categories: Unaffiliated Believers have conventional, usually Christian or Jewish worldviews, but reject organized religion; Philosophical Secularists have replaced religion with a distinct nonreligious worldview such as atheism, Humanism, Free Thought; <b>Spiritual Seekers claim no religion because they create their own worldviews from more than one spiritual tradition</b>; and last, those who are indifferent to any kind of religious, spiritual, or secular worldview. This model has apparently been helpful to subsequent researchers, and yet my current work on elderly Nones is raising new questions.<br /><br />It would be easy to attribute these patterns to religion’s unique ability to give meaning to our mortality. <b>Many people assume that facing death without religion renders life pointless and unbearable, that only exceptionally strong and stoic individuals can face the void that is death without a religious framework</b>. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But that assumption is just that, an assumption, because we don’t have much data to back up such notions. The study of Nones has focused mostly on the young, and studies of the aged have tended to ignore atheists. <b>Secularity is growing even among the old, and yet few have bothered to ask elderly secularists how they face death without religion.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">How do atheists, agnostics, and other seculars find meaning at the end of life? How do they make sense of mortality without religion? I have spent the last two years exploring these questions, sifting through hundreds of studies and interviewing individuals in nursing homes, senior centers, and in their homes. This article reports on some of what I have learned.<br />When I reviewed the literature, it seemed at first that the foxhole theory was right. A substantial body of research suggests that religion helps people cope with dying. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>While some of that positive impact is tied to community (the social support offered by religion), the provision of meaning is a significant causal factor: religion can offer coherence, a feeling of confidence that our life events are ordered or purposeful, rather than random and chaotic, which in turn can confer a sense of control over one’s life.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The end of life is frightening because it’s a new experience; we don’t know where we are going. If a person is ill, dying may entail physical pain and disability. Even in the best of circumstances, we may find ourselves unable to engage in basic physical activities we used to take for granted, or facing the loss of mental acuity. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And for most older people, the final years bring the loss of partners, family members, and friends who would otherwise support them at this time. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Religion can provide a framing for why we are in pain or why we had to lose somebody we love—for example, if suffering is viewed as redemptive or part of a divine plan. <b>Religion also answers questions about what happens after death, whether through complex and varied conceptions of reincarnation in Buddhism and Hinduism, or through comforting beliefs that we will see loved ones again in heaven, as in some Christian traditions.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">There are increased rates of depression and suicidal behavior among elderly people. Religious traditions can provide supportive social networks, and offer people in the final years of life steps to work through devastating losses and to continue living a purposeful life. Reading scripture or meditating is something an individual can do, even with physical disability. And when a loved one dies, rituals like sitting Shiva or preparing for a funeral mass offer structured, familiar activities for loved ones to do.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>But saying that religion helps people find meaning in the face of death does not prove that meaning is absent without religion.</b> Recent reviews of such studies show that they focus almost entirely on religious people, usually comparing more devout people to those who are less devout. Only rarely do they study individuals who are committed seculars, i.e., those who have replaced religion with some other source of meaning. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The few studies that engage in more rigorous comparisons suggest that nonreligious people do just fine. Peter Wilkinson and Peter Coleman found that both atheism and religion can be a source of meaning for older people, and it is the strength of conviction, rather than being religious or nonreligious, that enables effective coping. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Coleman and Marie Mills suggest that while uncertainty is sometimes linked to depression, questioning also links to growth. <b>Bethany Heywood and Jesse Bering have shown that the nonreligious do, in fact, frame life events using purposive narratives. But we know very little about the content, patterns, and sources of these narratives.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">What we do know is that finding meaning is an interpretative act. <b>Human beings make meaning by telling stories about our lives. Language does not just capture and reflect experience but creates it. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Even when people are telling stories that are similar in content, they use linguistic, rhetorical, structural devices to create different sets of meaning. There are broader social narratives that shape individual storytelling, what Ann Swidler has called the cultural toolkit. <b>These social narratives can come from religion or science, from a particular family background, or from popular culture.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I like to conceptualize meaning making as a kind of mapmaking enterprise. The stories we tell are the way we connect the dots and orient ourselves. It’s like when the ancient Greeks imagined lines between the stars and gave names to the various constellations. Without a constellation map to life, events can feel random, and we can feel lost, frightened, and confused, especially when we are entering new territory. But <b>when we have a map, we have a path to follow; we have agency and power. </b></span></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>If meaning making is about storytelling, then I knew I needed to listen to respondents’ stories.</b> So the study, begun in late 2017 and currently in its final phases, is based on personal interviews with elderly seculars. The two main criteria for inclusion are age (70 and over, though I include younger individuals with terminal illness) and nonreligious identification. Participants were recruited in nursing homes and senior centers, with the assistance of the AARP and various secularist organizations.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">To date, a total of 97 interviews have been conducted in various locations across the United States. Although participants were not randomly selected and may or may not be representative of the nonreligious elderly population as a whole, this is a large sample for a qualitative study and reflects important demographic patterns. It is gender balanced and includes 12 black respondents (<b>surveys show that only 4 to 7 percent of African Americans identify as nonreligious)</b>. It includes respondents from regions where nonreligiosity is more socially accepted (New England) and where that is less the case (so-called Bible Belt states such as Texas and Georgia). </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Nonreligion comes in many varieties (e.g., atheist, agnostic, humanist, freethinker), and the sample reflects that diversity. Interviews are semi-structured, beginning with questions about the past and then proceeding to more reflective questions about the present and the future, including the respondent’s impending death. These conversations are conducted in private homes and in institutional settings, depending on the preferences of the subjects, and they range in length from 45 minutes to 2.5 hours. All interviews are transcribed for coding and analysis.</span></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Consider Jack, an 86-year-old retired engineer I interviewed at his home in the Northeast. He was raised Jewish in a family that fled Nazi Germany, and he continues to attend a conservative synagogue with his wife. But he identifies as atheist, proudly informing me, “I think <b>Judaism is the only religion that does not require belief in God</b>.” Trained in physics and chemistry, he rejects any kind of supernaturalist framework and sees all ritual as theater—and yet he finds value in tradition and creates his own personal meaning from it. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Thus, he and his wife regularly host a secular Passover at their house to pass on the family tradition, but <b>Jack interprets the Exodus story as a metaphor for his hope that freedom will eventually triumph over oppression. Perhaps we need another category for people like Jack, such as culturally religious, or existentially secular, or both.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">A second challenge in researching the nonreligious is methodological: how do you access them? Religious folk are easily located through the organizations they affiliate with. Not so with the Nones. Even among self-identified atheists, the vast majority do not affiliate with atheist organizations. The negative stigma still associated with atheism in the United States compounds the problem, especially for African Americans and the elderly for whom religious identification continues to be a strong social norm.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>In the interviews I conducted with black respondents, the theme of being a “double minority” was prominent.</b> They were old enough to have personal memories of the civil rights movement, which had close ties to the black church. Turning their back on the church can feel like betrayal, and they are unsure of their place in organized secularism. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Take Andre, a 70-year-old physician from Atlanta. Raised Baptist, he left church in his 20s to join the Nation of Islam and then a decade later came to reject religion altogether. He reports that his parents and his sister “got upset when I became a Muslim, but since I came out as atheist they won’t talk to me at all.” Andre has attended the occasional event at a local humanist association but finds he’s consistently “the only black person there.”</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">White atheists can feel isolated as well. I interviewed Fred, a 79-year-old military veteran, at a nursing home in Massachusetts. A high school dropout, he joined the army and after his release held a series of low-paying jobs in construction and long-distance driving. He fell into drinking and was homeless for more than a year before <b>a social worker found him a place in a Catholic nursing home. Fred told me, “I can’t talk about my beliefs here.”</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>He feels like an outsider because he does not believe in God and thinks religion is a “giant hoax” invented to “make people feel better about death.” But he likes having a roof over his head</b></i>.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I learned that recruiting respondents for this kind of study means finding ways to make them feel safe. When I posted flyers at that nursing home seeking volunteers for study of nonreligious people, I got zero responses (even though their records show more than a third of residents stated no religious preference). So I collaborated with the staff there to personally invite those individuals they thought might fit my criteria. I also spent weeks walking about and knocking on doors, introducing myself and telling people about my project (which was how I found Fred). This was a rather time-intensive recruitment effort, but it yielded many more interviews. <b>I mentioned earlier that surveys show significantly lower rates of non-religiousness among blacks and older people. Now I wonder about those numbers.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">As I listened to individuals tell their stories, I was struck by their eagerness to tell them. I remember sitting by the bed of a 91-year-old woman who was nearly blind and had both her legs amputated due to diabetes. We had talked for about 45 minutes and had gotten to the part where I planned to inquire about her thoughts on death. She was one of my first interviews, so I hesitated, reminding her that she did not have to answer if she did not want to. She cut me off, saying: <b>“It’s OK to talk about this, honey. I am 91 and not in good shape, so I spend a lot of time thinking about death.”</b><br /></span></p><p><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The study of Nones has focused mostly on the young, and studies of the aged have tended to ignore atheists. Secularity is growing even among the old, and yet few have bothered to ask elderly secularists how they face death without religion.</span></b></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The few studies that engage in more rigorous comparisons suggest that nonreligious people do just fine</b>. Peter Wilkinson and Peter Coleman found that both atheism and religion can be a source of meaning for older people, and it is the strength of conviction, rather than being religious or nonreligious, that enables effective coping. </span></p><p></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">There is surely some selection bias at work here: respondents to an end-of-life study probably feel comfortable discussing their thoughts on the matter. But it is also true that meaning making is particularly salient as we approach the end of life. Not only is death humanity’s most profound crisis of meaning, but <b>facing our own mortality also triggers an assessment of the life that is behind us: the good experiences and the regret, what our legacy is and whether there is still time to improve it. In other words, meaning making at this stage of life is both backward and forward looking, mapping past and future.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>The 97 stories I collected confirm some of the conventional assumptions about nonreligious people. Most do not believe in an afterlife, at least not in the sense that a soul or spirit or some conscious aspect of the self survives the death of our brain. And most do not think the universe, or human life, has an inherent purpose. But, contrary to conventional assumptions, that does not lead to despair or anomie. Instead, I found that secular elders construct their own meaning-making narratives from secular rather than religious sources, and there are distinct patterns of secular meaning making that can be compared to religious ones.</b></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">There are certain story types that I encountered again and again, suggesting that these meaning maps are not idiosyncratic but represent a kind of ideal type of narrative nonreligious individuals use. These narratives function similarly to religious narratives by providing coherence (ordering the past) and control (action steps for the future). Like religious narratives, they articulate the meaning of human existence to something bigger than ourselves, and they suggest a moral dimension.<br /><br /><b>By far the most common narrative framework was rooted in the scientific understanding that we are all part of nature (more than half of the respondents used some variation of it). Previous research suggests that scientists are more likely than the general population to be nonreligious, so it was not unexpected that many of my respondents were trained in the sciences, as engineers, chemists, and physicians. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">More surprising was how science functioned as a meaning-making narrative. We often think of science as cold and hard and value neutral. <b>Max Weber famously wrote of how the ascendancy of science over religion in the modern world has led to “disenchantment.” Yet I found that science-based narratives can evoke a sense of awe and wonder, a perception that we are part of a meaningful universe that gives order to our past and offers insight for the future.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Although there were many variations, the basic arc of this narrative is that humans are part of nature; we have a place in evolution and a role in the ecosystem, and our role continues to develop and change. What happens to us has material causes that can be explained by science. And though there is no inherent purpose in the universe, we can create meaning for ourselves. </b></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Life is reciprocal and interdependent; our actions ripple out into all aspects of nature. Death is part of life and should remind us of our kinship to other animals. Yet our intelligence also imposes a moral obligation to seek understanding (through science) and to preserve the planet for future generations.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Consider the story of Agnes. She’s 72, a retired science teacher who recently lost her husband after an agonizing battle with cancer. <b>Agnes grew up a strict Catholic in what she calls “the Polish ghetto of New York.” Her family ran a bar, and there was violence and sexual abuse that was always kept a secret. “One of the mortal sins at that time was eating meat on Friday or not going to church. Then one of the venial sins was lying. As a six-year-old, I was saying to myself that there are people in my family that lied, and it caused horrible things to happen. If I eat meat on Friday, I haven’t done anything to anybody. If I don’t go to church, I haven’t done anything to anybody. That seems stupid.” Yet it took over a decade for doubt to turn into rejection of her faith and family.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Agnes left New York to attend graduate school in chemistry in California, then married and had two children. After discovering that her husband had cheated on her for years, she divorced him and raised the kids by herself. She was in her mid-60s when she met her second husband, Tom. They had seven happy years together. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“He was an amazing man. It was an amazing relationship.” Then he was diagnosed with advanced-stage cancer. When surgery and radiation failed, they spent much of their savings on alternative treatments. When Tom died, Agnes said, “It was stunningly shocking to my system.” <b>Agnes is still grieving, but she does not despair, nor does she feel any inclination to return to the Catholic faith. Instead, she draws meaning from her scientific training to articulate an explanation of her place in the universe that is both rational and moral.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The way Agnes tells her story reflects several characteristics common to science narratives:<br />Mapping the past: Science narratives tended to explain life in terms of material causes. Looking back at their lives, respondents often spoke of good or bad luck, of random events of nature, of winning (or not) a genetic or social lottery that shapes one’s ability to make good or bad choices. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>As Agnes put it: “Hurricanes, tornadoes, the family you are born into. All kinds of things are random and can wreak havoc with us, and we have absolutely no control over it. The only thing we control is our reaction. </b>Every decision we make determines the consequences that happen to us. I don’t think that there’s anybody micromanaging anything.” <b>She doesn’t blame anyone for the hardships in her life, explaining “it’s what I had to go through to become who I am now.” </b><br /><br />There is a harshness in this outlook because nature isn’t fair. But <b>there’s also beauty in randomness that can evoke awe at the unexpected. Agnes feels that Tom’s sudden death helps her pay attention and find joy in little things she previously might have missed. “Now I hear a bird sing in the garden and I just sit there and listen.” </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Like several of my respondents, she spoke of the butterfly effect (how a butterfly flapping its wings in Chicago can set in motion a chain of atmospheric events that cause a tornado in Tokyo). For her, this is at once a metaphor for the power of small changes and for the limits of our control over the world.</b></i><br /><br />Mapping the future: From a natural science frame, death is the end of individual existence and consciousness, and my respondents often imagined it as analogous to experiencing anesthesia before surgery. And yet life goes on. <b>Our bodies are recycled and nourish future plant life. In Agnes’s words, we “are composed of our physicality and our energy . . . like with anything on this planet that dies, our atoms and energy are recycled back into the universe.” </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">If we have children, our genes live on through them. Agnes loves watching her two grandsons. “I am just amazed how much energy he has, he is so much like Sean [her son].” <b>And our legacy is the impact we have on others, through caring for friends or family or by political organizing.</b> For Agnes, that means volunteering for local election campaigns and committing to planting “only natives” in her garden.<br /><br />A moral universe? Atheists are often portrayed as arrogant because they don’t acknowledge a higher power, but I generally found the opposite to be true. <b>Perceiving themselves as part of nature, rather than created by God in his image, led respondents to a place of humility. The prevailing view about science (by nonscientists) is that it is neutral to morality, but I found that most individuals who relied on this narrative tended to see it as imposing a moral obligation. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">To quote Agnes one last time: “We have the power to influence the direction of evolution by the choices we make. Humans may be at the top of the food chain but now we have overpopulated the world . . . and we’ve done so many things that are so destructive. <b>I think our purpose now should be to try to make this world livable for future generations . . . at this point in history, that’s what our whole goal should be.” </b><br /><br />The science narrative gives a sense of moral urgency to what respondents felt they should do with the time they have remaining: to show love for their friends and children, to appreciate nature or art, to be engaged politically, even as they may become increasingly physically disabled.<br /><br />There were other types of narrative themes besides science, but they generally appeared in combination with it, and space does not permit description of them here (you’ll have to wait for the book!). But <b>the data I’ve gathered thus far suggests that the foxhole theory (fear of death pushes us toward religion) is wrong. Instead, awareness of death pushes us to find meaning, and secular sources like science can be as rich a source of meaning making as religion is.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Religion is often touted as the only way to address the fear of death, but perhaps it’s just the oldest and most popular. What I’ve found significant about these generic secular narratives is how well they work to give meaning in the face of death. <b>Secular meaning-making maps are actually quite similar to religious ones, at least in structure and function: they build coherence and control, they place human experience in relation to something bigger than ourselves, and they lend moral significance to our lives as we face its inevitable end.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">They are different from religious narratives in key ways, too, in their materialist conception of life and their social constructionist view of meaning. By materialist conception, I mean the way that people rejected supernatural notions of a spirit or soul that survives death in favor of a scientific view that consciousness is located in the brain. <b>While parts of us may live on (in the sense of genes passed on to our children or an energy that goes back into the universe), respondents did not think they, as individuals, had continued existence once the brain was dead. </b>By social constructionist, I mean that to deny that there is any inherent meaning in the universe leaves it up to human beings to create meaning and purpose in our lives.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And yet, it is not just the secular who create their own meaning. <b>The way that people mix and match from various sources should make us rethink the boundaries between “religious” and “secular.” When an atheist finds meaning in Buddhism, is that religious? What about someone raised Catholic who finds that Mass calms her, even as she rejects belief in God or the afterlife?</b> There is a small but growing number of scholars exploring how people build their own meaning systems from a variety of cultural resources, both religious and secular. I hope there will soon be more.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">A few months before my uncle died, I called to tell him about the study I was conducting. He had always been a private man, so I was surprised and pleased when he offered to participate. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">We did not get around to it. By the time I visited, the cancer had entered his brain, causing swelling that made him hallucinate, and he was clear only for short periods of time when the nurse injected him with steroids. So I remain skeptical that he was talking to God on his deathbed. <i><b>His caregiver was a Pentecostal Christian who was inclined to interpret whatever he said in religious terms. I am grateful to her for being there so he did not have to die alone. But I will always wonder how he would have told his own story.</b><br /></i><br /><a href="https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/facing-death-without-religion/">https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/facing-death-without-religion/</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Mary:<br /><br />The articles in the blog dealing with death, religion and the secular "nones" were interesting. I never thought much of the idea that there are no atheists in the trenches. If you are profoundly aware that the tenets of religion are myths, the difficulty would be in "returning" to belief simply as a much desired or needed comfort. Perhaps some are capable of that in some fashion...as the man who followed observances as a cultural, family tradition...but true belief, that is more difficult. <br /><br />In my case, belief ended in early adolescence. I found the God of religion inadequate, with his rules and punishments, his exclusions from grace, his provincialism. There were people better than that, more generous, loving and humble. The idea of a god who could be bullied by prayers was equally unsatisfactory — like a being who could be manipulated into granting wishes. Kindergarden stuff. Magic. Fairy tales.<br /><br />When I was in real distress, when my brother was suffering and dying of cancer at 40, I tried to return to the "comfort" of belief, to pray and to see this suffering within the framework of redemption and eternal life. But I couldn't do it. The great temptation was to give up my unbelief for the comforts of belief, that all was held and cared for by a greater creator--No, that was fantasy. Once you have seen the man behind the curtain you can't fool yourself or force yourself into belief again.<br /><br />I find the idea of immortality as uncomfortable as that of god and religion. Death is universal. Even stars die. The universe itself may end. And these deaths, these ends all seem to be a step in the return to new life, not your own particular life, another life. What happens without death?? No new life. No space for it, no stuff to raise it from, all becomes static, no moving, no growing, no renewal. The desire for immortality is a great selfishness, like the toddler's — a fear of the dark, of being lost. <br /><br />In my work as a nurse I was familiar with death. With the obtuse materiality of the body. When death comes that is what's left: the solid opacity of flesh, already beginning the process of dissolution. The energy of that mind, the personality, is gone. The neural net that was its support, its architecture</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> —</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> broken, gone.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Working with the newly dead the overwhelming experience is of absence. </b>It is mere fancy to think that individual persists without its foundation in living tissue.<br /><br />Raised a good catholic and educated by nuns, and here I am. And like the older women mentioned, I am happy — even as I know the world is at a crossroads where it may take a very bad turn.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In the early years after leaving the church, I had a glimmer of hope that perhaps when I grow old I would be able to return to religion for its supposed comfort. Even now I experience moments when I feel that it would be easier to cope if I happened to be religious. But just a thought away lay the realization: "But then I'd have to believe all this garbage." </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And that was impossible </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">— unless I slipped into dementia. Then it would be a parallel with starting to believe </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">— my brain wasn't yet mature, incapable of critical thinking. Nor did I have the mental toughness to defy the adults </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">— until mid-adolescence, just like Mary. Once the truth makes you free, there is no going back. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I saw my mother's dead body within an hour of her passing. My first thought was: "It's no longer her." Now she existed only in my memory, and the memories of people who'd known her. This may be an important kind of existence in its own right, but on a totally different plane than physical existence. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">One of the things I vividly remember about my mother was her bursting into wild laughter when she heard the phrase "mind not tied to the brain." </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">As for heaven, I imagine that for a while we'd be busy exploring the new environment. But then what? Without meaningful work, we might as well no longer exist. </span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />*<br /><b>MORE THAN A BILLION PEOPLE WORLDWIDE NOW OBESE <br /></b><br />More than a billion people are living with obesity around the world, global estimates published in The Lancet show.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This includes about 880 million adults and 159 million children, according to 2022 data.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The highest rates are in Tonga and American Samoa for women and American Samoa and Nauru for men, with some 70-80% of adults living with obesity.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Out of some 190 countries, the UK ranks 55th highest for men and 87th for women.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The international team of scientists say there is an urgent need for major changes in how obesity is tackled.<br /></b><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Obesity can increase the risk of developing many serious health conditions, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Ranking global obesity rates (the percentage of population classed as obese, after age differences are accounted for), researchers found:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The US comes 10th highest for men and 36th highest for women<br />India ranks 19th lowest for women and 21st lowest for men<br />China is 11th lowest for women and 52nd lowest for men<br /><br />Senior researcher Prof Majid Ezzati, of Imperial College London, told the BBC: <b>"In many of these island nations it comes down to the availability of healthy food versus unhealthy food.<br /></b><br />"In some cases there have been aggressive marketing campaigns promoting unhealthy foods, while the cost and availability of healthier food can be more problematic."</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Prof Ezzati, who has been looking at global data for years, says he is </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>surprised at the speed the picture has changed, with many more countries now facing an obesity crisis, while the number of places where people being underweight is regarded as the biggest concern, has decreased.</b></span></p><p><b><i><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The report, spanning 1990 and 2022, found the rate of obesity quadrupled among children and adolescents. Meanwhile for adults, the rate more than doubled in women and nearly tripled in men.</span></i></b></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">At the same time, the proportion of adults classed as underweight has fallen by 50%, but researchers emphasize it still remains a pressing problem, particularly among the poorest communities.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">World Health Organization (WHO) director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: "This new study highlights the importance of preventing and managing obesity from early life to adulthood, through diet, physical activity, and adequate care."</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">He added that it would take the work of governments and communities and "importantly requires the co-operation of the private sector, which must be accountable for the health impacts of their products".</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Study co-author Dr Guha Pradeepa, from the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation, says <b>major global issues risk worsening malnutrition caused by both obesity and being underweight</b>.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">She said: "The impact of issues such as climate change, disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine risk worsening both rates of obesity and underweight, by increasing poverty and the cost of nutrient-rich foods.<br /><br />"The knock-on effects of this are insufficient food in some countries and households, and shifts to less healthy food in others."</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The network of more than 1,500 researchers, collaborating with the WHO, analyzed height and weight measurements from some 220 million people aged five and over.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">They used a measure called body mass index.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">While they acknowledge this is an imperfect measure of the extent of body fat, and say some countries had better data than others, they argue it is the most widely used, making this global analysis possible.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/health-68436642">https://www.bbc.com/news/health-68436642</a><br /><br /><br />*<br /><b>MEDITERRANEAN DIET WITH EXTRA OLIVE OIL BENEFITS HEART HEALTH<br /></b><br />~ <b>A traditional Mediterranean diet with added olive oil may be tied to a lower risk of heart disease at least in part because it helps maintain healthy blood flow and clear debris from arteries</b>, a Spanish study suggests.<br /><br />“A Mediterranean diet rich in virgin olive oil improves the function of high-density lipoproteins, HDL, popularly known as `good’ cholesterol,” said lead study author Dr. Alvaro Hernáez of the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute in Barcelona.<br /><br />This type of diet typically includes lots of fruits and legumes that are rich in antioxidants as well as plenty of vegetables, whole grains and olive oil. It also tends to favor lean sources of protein like chicken or fish over red meat, which contains more saturated fat.<br /><br />“Our hypothesis is that <b>these dietary antioxidants may bind to HDL particles and protect them against different kinds of attacks</b>,” Hernáez said by email. “As HDLs are more protected, they can perform their biological functions more efficiently and, therefore, they are able to remove cholesterol from arteries or contribute to the relaxation of blood vessels for longer.”<br /><br />High levels of low density lipoproteins (LDL) or “bad” cholesterol and fats known as triglycerides are associated with an increased risk of heart and blood vessel diseases. HDL, or “good,” cholesterol is associated with a lower risk because it helps remove excess LDL from the bloodstream.<br /><br />For the current study, Hernáez and colleagues examined data on 296 older adults at risk for cardiovascular disease who were randomly assigned to one of three diets: <b>a Mediterranean diet supplemented with one liter per week (about 34 fluid ounces) of extra virgin olive oil, a Mediterranean diet supplemented with 30 grams (1 oz) of nuts a day, or a low-fat diet.<br /></b><br />Participants were 66 years old on average, and they were asked to follow their assigned diet for one year.<br /><br />Only the low-fat diet was associated with reduced LDL and total cholesterol levels, researchers report in a paper scheduled for publication in the journal Circulation.<br /><br />None of the diets increased HDL levels significantly.<br /><br />But <b>blood tests and lab work showed better HDL functioning in the group assigned to the Mediterranean diet with extra olive oil.<br /></b><br />While some previous research has linked a Mediterranean diet to weight loss and a reduced risk of heart disease and some cancers, scientists haven't conclusively proven that the diet itself is responsible, instead of other lifestyle choices made by people who eat this way.<br />Limitations of the current study include the fact that all three diets were relatively healthy, making it difficult to detect meaningful differences in outcomes, the authors note.<br /><br />Still, the findings add to a growing body of research suggesting that HDL function may influence cardiovascular disease risk, Dr. Daniel Rader of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia writes in an accompanying editorial.<br /><br />“We know the Mediterranean diet reduces risk of heart disease but still don't know exactly why,” Rader said by email. “There is probably more than one reason, and this study suggests that one mechanism might be that the Mediterranean diet improves the function of HDL.”<br /><br />Even without clear evidence explaining why the Mediterranean diet may help the heart, eating this way can still make sense, Rader added.<br /><br />“For people who are interested in reducing their risk of heart disease, the Mediterranean diet is probably the best proven diet to reduce risk,” Rader said. “I think the majority of people who don't have other major dietary concerns should look toward the Mediterranean diet as a heart healthy diet.”<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Nwe5u1JTRG6eEIKomvfisBuvrkBF7hejIZ7EtcNPEcIjrUe-5NvZ-V-c45dbMyQc3da5S67mQC62LpxSs4iGgl6rO1eVSKFs_KAFx51YFCBO13_SlaFPqLILdaHLAnqhIaATPDTGMqdmT6snItFkjqV3J-tWV5hyuJAF4W5pz3I80o2CMIGgh8SSWYZb/s722/mediterranean%20diet%20food-list-meal-plan-722x406.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="406" data-original-width="722" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Nwe5u1JTRG6eEIKomvfisBuvrkBF7hejIZ7EtcNPEcIjrUe-5NvZ-V-c45dbMyQc3da5S67mQC62LpxSs4iGgl6rO1eVSKFs_KAFx51YFCBO13_SlaFPqLILdaHLAnqhIaATPDTGMqdmT6snItFkjqV3J-tWV5hyuJAF4W5pz3I80o2CMIGgh8SSWYZb/w400-h225/mediterranean%20diet%20food-list-meal-plan-722x406.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN15S2IT/">https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN15S2IT/<br /></a><br />* </span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>FASTING-LIKE DIET MAY HELP REVERSE BIOLOGICAL AGING BY 2.5 YEARS </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">A study showed a fasting-mimicking diet (FMD) lowered insulin resistance, liver fat, inflammation, and other markers associated with aging. <b>The diet is based on the consumption of formulated food with controlled levels of dietary macros on days 1–5 and then eating normally for 25 days out of a month. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This fasting-like diet style is not suitable for everyone, including pregnant people and older adults. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Three cycles of a so-called fasting-mimicking diet (FMD) was shown to reduce biomarkers associated with insulin resistance, liver fat in humans, and other markers associated with aging. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">USC Leonard Davis School Professor Valter Longo the senior author of the new study, designed the FMD. This five-day diet is high in unsaturated fats and low in protein, carbohydrates, and calories. The study examined the diet’s impact in two clinical studies, which included men and women between the ages of 18 and 70. Participants who followed the fasting-mimicking diet went through 3-4 monthly cycles, following the FMD for 5 days and adhering to a normal diet for the other 25 days. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Results showed that <b>patients in the FMD group had less insulin resistance, lower HbA1c results, and better fasting glucose results</b>. They also had less abdominal fat and liver fat, along with improved immune system markers suggesting lower inflammation. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In addition, both clinical studies showed that those who followed the FMD had lowered markers associated with biological aging by 2.5 years on average. The study was published in Nature. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">FASTING FIVE DAYS A MONTH </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This clinical study, involving 100 participants, indicated that <b>a plant-based fasting-mimicking diet done for 5 days a month could reduce the biological age of people after only three monthly cycles and without changing their lifestyle.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> The researchers provided participants with food that had been formulated to contain certain proportions of macro- and micro-nutrients, such as soups, energy bars, snacks, and teas, for days 1-5. These were provided by the company L-Nutra Inc., a company that sells ready-packaged meals for people who are fasting. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">(Two of the authors ‘have equity interest in L-Nutra’, the study disclosed.) </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The first study carried out by these researchers was published in Metabolic Health and Disease in 2023, and showed similar results. “The results are particularly convincing because both studies, one done in Los Angeles and one in Tennessee, showed similar effects on the <b>reduction of biological age by 2.5 years as measured by the biome method</b> developed by Morgan Levine at Yale but <b>also showed parallel evidence of rejuvenation or improved function/health of multiple system including the immune system, the liver and the endocrine system as measured by standard methods</b>,” Prof. Longo told Medical News Today. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“The next step is to continue to allow many universities to perform clinical trials to test how cycles of this standardized plant-based FMD, which comes in a box like medicine, can help people stay younger but also prevent or treat diseases like diabetes, CVD, cancer, and Alzheimer’s considering that biological age and multi-system dysfunction are the major risk factors for these diseases,” said Professor Longo. “We also hope that these studies will convince doctors to add the FMD to their toolkit for disease prevention and possibly treatment,” he added. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">THE BENEFITS OF A FAST-MIMICKING DIET </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">There are numerous ways this diet can improve overall health. Reducing inflammation “The FMD does exactly what it is named after- mimics fasting,” said Dr. Nicole Avena, nutrition consultant, assistant professor of neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, visiting professor of health psychology at Princeton University, and author of Sugarless. “This diet is beneficial to balancing blood sugar, improving insulin resistance, and reducing overall inflammation throughout the body. <b>By giving your body time to rest, rather than digest, it allows us to heal inflammation and put energy towards more pressing internal ‘issues</b>,’” she explained. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Lowering biological age and risk factors for disease </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Many lifestyle diseases, such as diabetes or cardiovascular disease are associated with shortened lifespan. “These diseases raise inflammation within the body and allow for reactive oxygen species (ROS) to multiply,” Avena explained. “ROS in excess cause disease, therefore aiming for a low-inflammatory lifestyle like FMD is beneficial for aging.” “Biological age, in particular, is interesting because it is genuinely what age we feel versus what age we really are. The more inflammation and disease we have determines our abilities to perform acts of daily living,” she added. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Risks of a fasting diet </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">While the clinical consensus is that the FMD is generally safe, there are some people who should not follow this diet. “If you are pregnant or trying to conceive, and if you are considered an older adult, the FMD is not for you,” Avena said. “During pregnancy, we have higher metabolic demand, and <b>in old age, we do not have as fast of a metabolism as we do when we are younger</b>,” she added. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">During pregnancy, getting enough nutrients is essential for the health of the baby and parent. For seniors, fasting is usually not recommended, especially if they already have chronic health issues. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>How to incorporate fasting into your daily life </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Usually, the FMD consists of higher-fat foods while staying relatively lower in protein</b>. “This is a great time to try a Mediterranean-style diet, which includes beans, olive oils, fatty fish, and whole grains,” said Avena. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“Remember, you are trying to eat under your estimated calorie needs for 5 days while drinking plenty of water. Doing this once a month is the way it is planned, but you should continue to incorporate healthy foods like those included [in] a Mediterranean diet throughout the month,” she explained. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/fasting-like-diet-may-help-reverse-biological-aging-2-5-years">https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/fasting-like-diet-may-help-reverse-biological-aging-2-5-years</a> </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana: OF MICE AND MEN</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> I don’t know how Victor Longo arrived at the idea of fasting for five days every month. It reminded me of the experiments on calorie restriction. One way is to provide fewer calories every day. Another customary method is feeding the experimental animals (mice or rats) only every other day. Mice fed every other day tend to eat more on the feeding days, so that their calorie intake isn’t much different from that of controls. But the mice that get food only every other day consume 90% of the calories eaten by the ad-lib control group, still live as long as the mice on daily calorie restriction. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Critics keep reminding us that the <b>results in humans are never as dramatic as those obtained using mice, since humans are already a long-lived species</b>. Small Japanese women climbing steep temple steps astonish us when we learn that these matriarchs are one hundred years old or beyond. According to my Japanese neighbor, the secret is to drink lots of tea. We know that tea is beneficial, but the greatest part of that longevity comes from being a small Japanese woman. You don’t see them become obese. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Basically, there are no obese centenarians. <br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> * </span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">SWITCHING TO ELECTRIC CARS COULD ELIMINATE MILLIONS OF CASES OF ILLNESS </span></span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">~ <b>Hundreds of infants’ lives would be saved and millions of children would breathe easier across the US if the nation’s power grid depended on clean energy and more drivers made the switch to zero-emission vehicles, according to a new report from the American Lung Association. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“Air pollution and climate change are putting children at risk today,” said report author Will Barrett, the association’s senior director of advocacy for clean air. “The impacts of climate change continue to intensify, and that will just add to the risks that children in the United States face as they’re growing up.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> The report, published Wednesday, determined that children’s lives could be made a lot healthier if all new car shoppers picked zero-emission options by 2035 and people bought only zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty vehicles like buses, ambulances and tractor-trailers by 2040, along with a switch of the nation’s electric grid to clean and renewable energy by 2035. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Electric cars and trucks are better than gas-fueled vehicles because over the course of their lifetime they emit fewer carbon emissions. <b>EVs create 3,932 pounds of carbon equivalent per year, compared to 11,435 for gas powered vehicles, according to calculations from the US Department of Energy. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">While battery-powered cars don’t emit greenhouse gases from tailpipes, they aren’t completely “zero-emission” even if that’s their official label. There are still emissions created when the cars are built, when manufacturers create the cars’ large batteries, and when they charge. Decarbonization of the electric grid is a key component to cleaning up the air. <b>Without a clean source of power like hydroelectric or solar, the benefit of having an electric car is much more limited. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">This </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>latest report estimates that by 2050, a switch to zero-emission vehicles and a decarbonized electric grid would mean 2.79 million fewer pediatric asthma attacks, 147,000 fewer pediatric acute bronchitis cases, 2.67 million fewer cases of pediatric upper respiratory symptoms and 1.87 million fewer cases of pediatric lower respiratory symptoms, and 508 infants’ lives would be saved. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The research comes from a larger American Lung Association report that said <b>a big push for zero-emission vehicles would create more than $1.2 trillion in health benefits for the US by 2050. Traffic is one of the biggest sources of carbon pollution in the country and accounts for 28% of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to US government data, followed by electricity production at 25%. </b>~</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href=" https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/21/health/electric-vehicles-air-pollution-kids/index.html"> https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/21/health/electric-vehicles-air-pollution-kids/index.html<br /></a><br /><br />*<br /><b>WEIGHT LOSS DRUGS MAY HELP LOWER COMPLICATIONS IN HIP REPLACEMENT<br /></b><br /><b>Hip replacements are common in conditions such as osteoarthritis, and obesity is a well-known risk factor.<br /></b><br />People who have obesity and receive a hip replacement are more likely to experience complications after the procedure than those at a healthy weight.<br /><br />New research reports people taking semaglutide — the active ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic — had similar or improved postoperative outcomes after a total hip replacement than those who did not take the drug.<br /><br /><b>About one million people around the world have a total hip arthroplasty — also known as a total hip replacement — each year.</b><br /><br /><b>People who have osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis may need a total hip replacement, as well as anyone experiencing damage to their hip joint.<br /></b><br />As with any surgery, there are some risks of complications. <b>Past studies show that people who have obesity and receive a total hip arthroplasty are more likely to experience complications compared to those who are at a healthy weight.</b><br /><br />For this reason, doctors may suggest a person who has obesity lose some weight before having hip replacement surgery.<br /><br />Now, two studies recently presented at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons’ 2024 Annual Meeting examine the use of semiglutide — the active ingredient in Wegovy FDA approved medication for weight loss, and type 2 diabetes medication Ozempic — in people who undergo a total hip arthroplasty.<br /><br /><b>Researchers reported that people taking semaglutide had similar or improved postoperative outcomes after a total hip replacement compared to those who did not take the drug.<br /></b><br />WHY FOCUS ON SEMIGLUTIDE?<br /><br />According to Dr. Matthew L. Magruder, a third-year resident at Maimonides Health in Brooklyn, NY and lead author of one of the presented studies, with the approval of semaglutide for the treatment of obesity by the FDA in 2021, and the surrounding media attention, it was clear that this medication was going to explode in popularity.<br /><br />“Given that many of our patients undergoing total hip arthroplasty [have obesity], it is inevitable that a growing percentage will be taking it in the perioperative period,” Dr. Magruder explained to Medical News Today.<br /><br />“Therefore, we figured it would be important to review the data we already had on its effect (on) total hip arthroplasty. It will be increasingly important to understand the effect of this medication on our patients as orthopedic surgeons,” he said.<br /><br />“In particular, for patients who [have obesity] and in chronic pain due to hip osteoarthritis, it can be very hard to lose weight in order to be indicated for total hip arthroplasty,” added Dr. Daniel Pereira, an orthopedic surgery resident at Washington University Barnes-Jewish Hospital and co-lead author of the second presented study.<br /><br />“[Having obesity] and [being] in pain makes it much harder to burn calories through traditional means such as exercise or calorie cutting. However, the high risk for complications for [patients with obesity] receiving total hip replacements makes it so that many of these patients do not receive this procedure — for good reason,” according to Dr. Daniel Pereira.<br /><br />“Thus, we need to understand if there were any effects on the outcomes following total hip arthroplasty in patients who took semaglutide when compared to controls,” Dr. Pereira said.<br /><br />Dr. Pereira’s study examined hip replacement postoperative complications among patients with obesity who used semaglutide compared to those who did not use the medication.<br /><br /><b>Scientists recruited 616 people in each cohort with an average BMI of 35.5. Upon analysis, the researchers found postoperative complications after a hip replacement — including hip arthroplasty revision, prosthesis infection, and surgical site infections — were similar between people have obesity taking semaglutide compared to those not using the drug.<br /></b><br />Dr. Pereira said they were not surprised by these findings.<br /><br />“We hypothesized that patients who were on semaglutide and received total hip replacements would have the same outcomes, for better or worse, than those who maintained or lost weight by traditional means — we found this to be the case,” he explained.<br /><br /><b>“The implications are obvious — patients who otherwise would be at a higher risk profile for this surgery can take semaglutide to lose weight and be at a better chance at an equivalent outcome as anyone else.</b> They do not need to receive bariatric surgery or go through other more rigorous means of weight loss in order to be indicated for the procedure,” he added.<br /><br />LOWER RATES OF PROSTHETIC JOINT INFECTIONS WITH SEMIGLUTIDE<br /><br />Dr. Magruder’s research evaluated whether diabetic patients taking semaglutide at the time of their hip replacement surgery had fewer medical complications, fewer implant-related complications, fewer readmissions, and lower costs than those who were not taking the medication.<br /><br /><b>Researchers reported people with diabetes taking semaglutide had lower rates of readmission within 90 days of their total hip arthroplasty and lower rates of prosthetic joint infection compared to the control group.</b><br /><br />“These findings were not expected but make sense given the medication’s mechanism of action,” Dr. Magruder explained. “Two of its known actions are increasing insulin secretion, thereby decreasing blood glucose levels and slowing gastric emptying, thereby decreasing caloric intake and decreasing weight.”<br /><br />“<b>Given that poorly controlled diabetes and obesity are independent risk factors for prosthetic joint infection, it makes sense that this medication’s use might decrease its risk after total hip arthroplasty</b>,” he added. “Furthermore, with less prosthetic joint infections, it would follow that there would be fewer readmissions.”<br /><br />Scientists also found those taking semaglutide did not show statistically significant higher rates of complications compared to those not taking the drug. There was also no difference between the two groups for any other implant-related complication, lengths of stay, same-day surgical costs, or 90-day episode of care costs.<br /><br /><b>Semaglutide may reduce hip surgery complications<br /></b><br />After reviewing these studies, Dr. Timothy Gibson, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon and medical director of the MemorialCare Joint Replacement Center at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA, told MNT these findings gave him both feelings of excitement and relief.<br /><br />“<b>It is reassuring to know that patients with obesity and diabetes who took semaglutide prior to hip replacement surgery do not have higher risks, and in some circumstances have lower risks of complication</b>,” Dr. Gibson continued. “Obesity is a known issue for those undergoing hip replacement surgery. <b>We encourage patients with a very high BMI to lose weight before proceeding with surgery to improve their safety profile</b>.”<br /><br /><b>“Most, however, are unsuccessful, and often the surgery is never performed,” he added. “This new class of medications may open the door for many more [patients with obesity] to have the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of this typically very successful surgery and to resume a more pain-free and active lifestyle.”</b><br /><br />MNT also spoke with Dr. Gregg R. Klein, vice-chair of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, about these two studies.<br />Dr. Klein also expressed excitement over these research results.<br /><br />“Historically, it is well-known that obesity and poor diabetic control have been significant risk factors for patients undergoing total hip replacement,” he detailed. “It has been a challenge for surgeons to optimize a patient with these conditions.”<br /><br />“The use of semaglutide has become another way that physicians and surgeons can help patients treat obesity and lose weight before surgery. Clinically we have seen patients lose a significant amount of weight using these medications. Hopefully, the weight loss will translate to less complications and better outcomes,” Dr. Klein added.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/weight-loss-drugs-may-help-lower-complication-risk-after-hip-replacement#Semaglutide-may-reduce-hip-surgery-complications">https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/weight-loss-drugs-may-help-lower-complication-risk-after-hip-replacement#Semaglutide-may-reduce-hip-surgery-complications<br /></a><br />*<br /><i><b>ending on beauty:</b></i><br /><br />Come away, O human child!<br />To the waters and the wild<br />With a faery, hand in hand,<br />For the world's more full of weeping <br /> than you can understand.”<br /><br />~ W. B. Yeats<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfoxdM4nuKxndn4WagEHJDE3Eb4tbaavWVm5Uiq3DnqK3yXYEqeZid22QoVN3fo2van3AVtD7V9LLNDhkK-mo7eAWVjiGYLy_Z04dzzk95SGKPVdx4Ac_mqf90liTzzKQVHuraT-2EQz-jcaJ7-NcphGaWXx86KMslKJQQqvrxmwx68l1rcO-HmAt9hWA9/s960/woods%20autumn%20early.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfoxdM4nuKxndn4WagEHJDE3Eb4tbaavWVm5Uiq3DnqK3yXYEqeZid22QoVN3fo2van3AVtD7V9LLNDhkK-mo7eAWVjiGYLy_Z04dzzk95SGKPVdx4Ac_mqf90liTzzKQVHuraT-2EQz-jcaJ7-NcphGaWXx86KMslKJQQqvrxmwx68l1rcO-HmAt9hWA9/w640-h640/woods%20autumn%20early.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><br /></span><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-14693260533133586722024-02-24T19:06:00.000-08:002024-02-27T19:16:49.599-08:00DO ORGAN TRANSPLANTS CAUSE PERSONALITY CHANGES? A HORSE-DRAWN AMBULANCE IN TULA; WHAT MARX GOT RIGHT; HOW CONTACT WITH NATIVE AMERICANS CHANGED THE WORLD; YOUR LIFE IS BETTER THAN YOU THINK; WHO BUYS ELECTRIC VEHICLES; NETANYAHU’S VISION FOR POST-WAR GAZA<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfFLV14ZieZwy2jhv_ni8fty4pwFhoITByeYiPCuR7TM0xhTJM21YK_taMjPJZNjTPI_pgopbFp1FXrAvvQk9JYyZ67Hd_Z-R-NyoYBU0SusV3gxszbuY_f2hJh7w5DBIxdT2NxIkJCTjAJfIl4oexzveuWslRc53ERgPxffWxyneg5jx6cvHzkWxMIDJz/s602/failed%20missile%20launch%20test%20UK.jpg" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="482" data-original-width="602" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfFLV14ZieZwy2jhv_ni8fty4pwFhoITByeYiPCuR7TM0xhTJM21YK_taMjPJZNjTPI_pgopbFp1FXrAvvQk9JYyZ67Hd_Z-R-NyoYBU0SusV3gxszbuY_f2hJh7w5DBIxdT2NxIkJCTjAJfIl4oexzveuWslRc53ERgPxffWxyneg5jx6cvHzkWxMIDJz/w400-h320/failed%20missile%20launch%20test%20UK.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Failed missile launch test, UK</i></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i></i>*<br />CIVILIZATION<br /><br />the director of a natural history museum<br />told me how, at the end of the war,<br />Russian soldiers entered, saw<br />snakes, salamanders, lizards<br /><br />shelved in tall jars, <br />preserved in alcohol.<br />The Russians were interested<br />in the alcohol.<br /><br />The director warned, <br />“These snakes are poisonous!” <br />He was left with barbarian laughter<br />and little corpses on the floor.<br /><br />*<br />Germans didn’t behave like that.<br />In Pomerania, where I was born, <br />they had cut down the forests, <br />replanted them in straight rows.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Record keeping in the concentration camps<br />was exemplary: numbers and names<br />in ordered files; eyeglasses, hair, </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">shoes, </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />suitcases in separate piles.<br /><br />*<br />This was my heritage: <br />the burned ground,<br />a century divided between <br />such extremes of civilization.<br /><br />~ Oriana<br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5bJJEnx7i5MPsymeOXAGQ1-QuSrcXGlrdr2neAExJkaBJn9B4OjcOKF-9F_2kPWH6GsKlB8E8NB6CISBX7bglTqzsVMw7JunKLTawY5UWFrZ4n7-2htoAzSh8w7_rVeN5gV46kMr-5tcNdiv1-64P96AyHTvVXWPfz7Y5L_Vw9odmo37lPCC6Ekmr0Cr4/s1300/lizard%20preserved.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="821" data-original-width="1300" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5bJJEnx7i5MPsymeOXAGQ1-QuSrcXGlrdr2neAExJkaBJn9B4OjcOKF-9F_2kPWH6GsKlB8E8NB6CISBX7bglTqzsVMw7JunKLTawY5UWFrZ4n7-2htoAzSh8w7_rVeN5gV46kMr-5tcNdiv1-64P96AyHTvVXWPfz7Y5L_Vw9odmo37lPCC6Ekmr0Cr4/w400-h253/lizard%20preserved.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>*<br /><b>FICTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE</b><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXll61fb70OEoyBOKU-UDOKUJE9AGXFU2EBJxOEc8dgtMl0VgOLctntCrMlahfObK5T-L0huTuKhtB0oVkv0z7ftdpVbtqocqb2HmTFgkvUVBSTk5GesNjCDiLRuvchAPlU-bU9ocU4XXUEqI2Oq3Wwou2F7MouW3WbcBd-jci02jWGru706AccIqxT0s4/s970/iceberg%20greenland%20ice-melt.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="545" data-original-width="970" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXll61fb70OEoyBOKU-UDOKUJE9AGXFU2EBJxOEc8dgtMl0VgOLctntCrMlahfObK5T-L0huTuKhtB0oVkv0z7ftdpVbtqocqb2HmTFgkvUVBSTk5GesNjCDiLRuvchAPlU-bU9ocU4XXUEqI2Oq3Wwou2F7MouW3WbcBd-jci02jWGru706AccIqxT0s4/w400-h225/iceberg%20greenland%20ice-melt.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The metaverse is hot right now. Not only for Marvel (or Everything, Everywhere, All at Once), but in books, video games, even Facebook’s parent company, the metaverse is unironically omnipresent. <b>I myself wrote a novel about the disappearance of a parallel-universe self, a premise I have felt as true to life since I was two and was adopted from Korea.</b> The feeling that our reality has diverged from actual reality has become common.<br /><br />It is a kind of melancholy, wherein the loss that we cannot move on from is our sense of what is normal. It is often prompted by an event like Donald Trump’s election as president, or, more recently, the coronavirus pandemic. At the height of the pandemic, that feeling was exacerbated by film and television, which depicted a world in which COVID never happened, so that we constantly encountered a version of our world that made it impossible to grieve it.<br /><br /><b>As pandemic restrictions faded, the loudest call, in America, was for a return to normal. </b>As if the old normal was not already gone, a ghost haunting our present—just as </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>climate change reflects carbon emissions from fifty years earlier</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">, so that our current mess is the mess we made of the world in 1973. These things are not dissimilar, in that it is fundamentally too late to ever go back to normal. </span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Lately, I have been thinking about our choices regarding global warming.<br /><br /><i><b>Cli-fi is defined as “novels setting out to warn readers of possible environmental nightmares to come,” which reminds me of a sentence from Donna Orange’s Climate Crisis, Psychoanalysis, and Radical Ethics: “When we cannot panic appropriately, we cannot take fittingly radical action.” But if warning readers to panic appropriately was a legitimate strategy in 2013, it didn’t work.</b></i><br /><br /><b>Part of our failure to panic may have to do with what scholar Timothy Morton calls “hyperobjects,” or objects so huge and massively distributed across time and space that they are impossible to point at directly.</b> Elisa Gabbert explains further: “[The massiveness of climate change] paradoxically makes it harder to see, compared to something with defined edges. This is part of the reason we have failed to stop it or even slow it down. <b>How do you fight something you can’t comprehend?</b>”<b><br /></b><br /><b>Cli-fi’s orientation toward the future would make sense if we thought that climate change, unlike racism, were still avoidable. The trouble is that it is not. </b>The too-lateness, in fact, is why I started this essay. <b>If cli-fi acts as warning, and it is too late for warnings, what is the point? There must be another way.<br /></b><br />Some would argue this is a bad premise. Maybe the point of future-oriented climate fiction is not to warn us of the dangers of global warming, but to make us ask, as Min Hyoung Song does in Climate Lyricism: “What is possible now?”<br /><br />There is no future point of no return, beyond which unchecked climate change will become catastrophic. That point has already passed. <b><i>Conditions are already catastrophic. And the present is more and more dominated by the contours of this worsening catastrophe. What is possible now?</i></b><br /><br /><b>Sci-fi author Samuel R. Delany (who famously said sci-fi is not about the future) argued that what sci-fi does is present us with just such a range of possibilities</b>. Delany claims that by showing us as many alternatives (“good and bad”) of what the world could be, sci-fi gives us control over our present choices—by which, I take it, he means the choice of what kind of future world we want to make.<br /><br />Here is the whole Samuel Delany quote:<br /><br /><b>Science fiction is not “about the future.” Science fiction is in dialogue with the present.</b> We SF [sic] writers often say that science fiction prepares people to think about the real future—but that’s because it relates to the real present in the particular way it does; and that relation is neither one of prediction nor one of prophecy. It is one of dialogic, contestatory, agonistic creativity. <b>In science fiction the future is only a writerly convention that allows the SF writer to indulge in a significant distortion of the present that sets up a rich and complex dialogue with the reader’s here and now</b>.<br /><br /><a href="https://lithub.com/matthew-salesses-on-the-possibilities-of-climate-fiction/">https://lithub.com/matthew-salesses-on-the-possibilities-of-climate-fiction/<br /></a></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg02VF-EdW1bw1kgsJu8ezjchfDA1PT7QkjHG1CPxbrQpXCDuD61lLvyv_ZVwkQdahjTRNJ6WkT1WaLxlYMKngmsOxeonHEaJ1A6DcafkT9wG9mD1kAupToGgUjjSSe_3Oz1wioXkuQGHmDkDgOPzJFCr68rhtz4kz7fwtLbxUJBW6EllxGo6RyH2tFKc7n/s960/pk%20dick%203%20novels.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="748" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg02VF-EdW1bw1kgsJu8ezjchfDA1PT7QkjHG1CPxbrQpXCDuD61lLvyv_ZVwkQdahjTRNJ6WkT1WaLxlYMKngmsOxeonHEaJ1A6DcafkT9wG9mD1kAupToGgUjjSSe_3Oz1wioXkuQGHmDkDgOPzJFCr68rhtz4kz7fwtLbxUJBW6EllxGo6RyH2tFKc7n/w311-h400/pk%20dick%203%20novels.jpg" width="311" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This reminds me of a pre-amble to Werner Herzog's movie Kaspar Hauser: "Every man for himself and God against all." There is also Kurt Vonnegut's version: "God the utterly indifferent." That, of course, has always been the deist position .</span><span style="color: #351c75;"> </span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">ORSON WELLES ON A HAPPY ENDING<br /><br /><i><b>“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” ~ Orson Welles</b><br /></i><br />*<br /><b>YOUR LIFE IS BETTER THAN YOU THINK</b><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJqNP8enM9dpbOVoxTufWEjhU6cHyoAY4JX8NfW0jHS8wNiuQY9WtA_TJwhyfCgPf_3-CJQlXWw_sWLe03eHKmpmMzolV4UbhH-ThmxRAeWObGSfIs_-gHuYCY_Kw-DmfBf4aWPFmkXQH-nSLtnPDl9Uu8RfGEcD9qCg2wtEK0lK-fB8r4FWrrRWSRTXFD/s1870/flowers%20from%20head.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1603" data-original-width="1870" height="343" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJqNP8enM9dpbOVoxTufWEjhU6cHyoAY4JX8NfW0jHS8wNiuQY9WtA_TJwhyfCgPf_3-CJQlXWw_sWLe03eHKmpmMzolV4UbhH-ThmxRAeWObGSfIs_-gHuYCY_Kw-DmfBf4aWPFmkXQH-nSLtnPDl9Uu8RfGEcD9qCg2wtEK0lK-fB8r4FWrrRWSRTXFD/w400-h343/flowers%20from%20head.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The undeniable popularity of self-help books, wellness podcasts, and happiness workshops reflects the constant human desire to make life better. But <b>could it be that many of our lives are already better than we recognize?</b><br /><br />While we may have a loving family, a good place to live, and a decent job, we often fail to notice those things. It’s not because we are ungrateful or stupid. It’s because of a basic feature of our brain, known as <b>HABITUATION.</b><br /><br /><b>Habituation is the tendency of neurons to fire less and less in response to things that are constant. </b>You enter a room filled with roses and after a short while, you cannot detect their scent any longer. And just as you get used to the smell of fresh flowers, you also get used to a loving relationship, to a promotion, to a nice home, to a dazzling work of art.<br /><br />Like the front page of a daily newspaper, your brain cares about what recently changed, not about what remained the same. And so,<b> what once took your breath away becomes part of life’s furniture. You habituate to it</b>—you fail to notice and respond to elements of your life which you previously found enchanting.<br /><br />The good news is that <b>you can dishabituate. That is, you can suddenly start perceiving and responding to things to which you have become desensitized.</b><br /><br /><b>The key is taking small breaks from your daily life</b>. For example, when people return home from a long business trip, they often find their ordinary life has “resparkled.” <b>Mundane things suddenly seem amazing.</b> The actress Jodie Foster recently described this feeling when sharing her experience of returning home after filming on location for six months. “I came back from somewhere that is amazing and beautiful,” she explained. “But you know, you long for really dumb things that you're just used to… Right now, I'm like ‘my God avocados are amazing!’ or ‘I'm so glad I get to go to the gym again!’ Things that six months ago were sort of what I was trying to escape from.”<br /><br />Of course, Foster’s life is far from ordinary, but we think that in this case her experience reflects a fundamental point. <b>If something is constant, we often assume (perhaps unconsciously) that it is there to stay. As a result, we focus our attention and effort on the next thing on our list.</b> But if we can make the constant less so, our attention will naturally drift back to it. If it is good at its core, it may just resparkle. This is </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>why time away, however short, will enable you to perceive your life with fresh eyes</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—and to break up reality.<br /><br />The renowned couple’s therapist Esther Perel draws similar conclusions. When Perel asked people to <b>describe an incident when they were most drawn to their partner, they mentioned two general situations. First, they were especially drawn to their spouse when they felt unfamiliar and unknown—for example, when they saw their partner from a distance or when they observed them deep in conversation with strangers. Second, they were especially drawn to their spouse when they were away and then when they reunited.</b> Perel’s conclusion is supported by science. A 2007 study of 237 individuals showed that <i><b>when people spend more time apart from their partner, they report greater sexual interest in them.</b><br /></i><br />But what if you are unable to get away from your daily routine, even for a short while? Well, <b>perhaps you can change your environment using your imagination. Close your eyes and imagine your life, but without your home, without your job, without your family</b>; create vivid images with color and detail. <b>This small act might make you feel lucky about what you have.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">It’s a bit like having a nightmare in which you lose a loved one—when you wake up and realize it was all a dream and the person is right there beside you, you feel especially thankful. Before the nightmare you may well have known that you had a good thing, but after you awake from it, you feel it too.<br /><br />Why, though, does the emotional response habituate so fast? <b>Why have we evolved a brain that derives less and less pleasure from good things that are constant or frequent? And perhaps most importantly, wouldn’t it be great if you marveled at your job, house, or spouse just as you did at the very beginning?</b><br /><br />Maybe, or maybe not. <b>Habituation to the good drives you to move forward and progress.</b> If you did not experience habituation, you would be satisfied with less. For example, you might end up being happy with a low-paying, entry-level position many years after getting the job. Now, being satisfied with less may seem desirable, but it also means that you would have reduced motivation to learn, to develop, and to change. <b>Without emotional habituation, our species may not have ended up with the technological innovation and great works of art we do, because people might not have had the motivation to create them.</b><br /><br />A delicate balance must be struck here. On the one hand, <b>without habituation (and dare we say some boredom, restlessness, and greed), we might have remained mere cave dwellers.</b> But on the other hand, habituation can lead us to be unsatisfied, bored, restless, and greedy. Perhaps then, rather than focusing completely on how to better our life we need to also learn how to see our life better — to notice the great things we have habituated to a little bit more. ~</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg34LBJ4T8-E7c23d2-kr32GTKaMbWYyQh0m24Fi9mW7pjf6WD7PiU43fK2TuRHNPAB06IawsqOZsbaFqiPmbJ2RK2j4bkIGswDf-7tRNCNezVGaaQuV_UsuiLDe3jDRykQTJsMs70KR3I9k7gV70z7ucLLeBo_YRjY1PVLZ0dRZvnmFNdKixD52DATdqA3/s780/Edvard%20Munch%20%20Cupid%20and%20Psyche,%201907.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="780" data-original-width="640" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg34LBJ4T8-E7c23d2-kr32GTKaMbWYyQh0m24Fi9mW7pjf6WD7PiU43fK2TuRHNPAB06IawsqOZsbaFqiPmbJ2RK2j4bkIGswDf-7tRNCNezVGaaQuV_UsuiLDe3jDRykQTJsMs70KR3I9k7gV70z7ucLLeBo_YRjY1PVLZ0dRZvnmFNdKixD52DATdqA3/w329-h400/Edvard%20Munch%20%20Cupid%20and%20Psyche,%201907.jpg" width="329" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Edvard Munch: Cupid and Psyche, 1907<br /></i><br /><a href="https://time.com/6722038/life-destabilizing-habits-essay/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://time.com/6722038/life-destabilizing-habits-essay/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br />Oriana:<br /><br />Call me hopelessly domestic — to me, ever since I can remember, the best part of travel was returning home. I’d just walk around the house, dazzled by all the space, the amazing bathrooms, the stairway, the house plants, the art on the walls. The house seemed palatial. And the luxury of sleeping in one’s bed! Is there a place that anyone loves more than one's own bed? <br /><br />Predictably, that delight does wear off, replaced by habituation. But, in a minor way, returning home after even a few hours of running errands still works to make me happy as soon as I step inside and see it again: the spaciousness, the patio, the lush philodendron facing the window — my own little Eden with my own Trees of Life.<br /><br />*<br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>As we get older, part of what allows us to deeply appreciate our lives and savor our time is our past despair.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> In fact, it has great value as a springboard for growth. There is an ancient and almost universal cycle that involves <b>trauma, despair, struggle, adaptation, and resolution</b>. This is a deepening cycle that prepares us for whatever comes next. It opens our hearts to others and helps us feel grateful for every small pleasure.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://lithub.com/want-to-be-happy-live-like-an-woman-over-50/">https://lithub.com/want-to-be-happy-live-like-an-woman-over-50/<br /></a></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8pDBdMiNfLvVChio2UMGyeQ4GY3oryJBGyhBGNvCJX4ZUzpw1IIJvZSg5JtbMHsWE87pMHQJesZgxBsEOLAAngkP6ZscgHRkPXyqHXNF83zWPNS5rvrQy2QVXunMlWPepezkFQF1WYWEd95fB5RmukKfzO-JYfDsjRybpKSZJGcAYWhm-4NU1PaZROLc4/s1600/garden%20gate%20flowers.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8pDBdMiNfLvVChio2UMGyeQ4GY3oryJBGyhBGNvCJX4ZUzpw1IIJvZSg5JtbMHsWE87pMHQJesZgxBsEOLAAngkP6ZscgHRkPXyqHXNF83zWPNS5rvrQy2QVXunMlWPepezkFQF1WYWEd95fB5RmukKfzO-JYfDsjRybpKSZJGcAYWhm-4NU1PaZROLc4/w400-h225/garden%20gate%20flowers.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>NETANYAHU’S VISION FOR A POST-WAR GAZA<br /></b><br />~ Under his plan <b>Israel would control security indefinitely, and Palestinians with no links to groups hostile to Israel would run the territory.<br /></b><br />The US, Israel's major ally, wants the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) to govern Gaza after the war.<br /><br />But the short document — which Mr Netanyahu presented to ministers last night — makes no mention of the PA.<br /><br />He has previously ruled out a post-war role for the internationally backed body.<br /><br /><b>He envisages a "demilitarized" Gaza; Israel would be responsible for removing all military capability beyond that necessary for public order.</b><br /><br />There would be <b>a "Southern Closure" on the territory's border with Egypt to prevent smuggling both under- and overground.<br /></b><br />And "de-radicalization" programs would be promoted in all religious, educational and welfare institutions. The document suggests that Arab countries with experience of such programs would be involved, though Mr Netanyahu has not specified which.<br /><br />Under the plan <b>Israel would also maintain security control over the entire area west of Jordan from land, sea and air.<br /></b><br />Mr Netanyahu has been under pressure — at home and internationally — to publish proposals for Gaza since he began his military operation. He is keen to restore a crumbling reputation as a leader who can keep Israel safe and will want to appeal to right wing hardliners in his coalition government.<br /><br />A spokesman for Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the PA, said Mr Netanyahu's plan was doomed to fail.<br /><br />Nabil Abu Rudeineh said: "If the world is genuinely interested in having security and stability in the region, it must <b>end Israel's occupation of Palestinian land and recognize an independent Palestinian state.”</b><br /><br />Mr Netanyahu repeated <b>his rejection of any unilateral recognition by Western countries of a Palestinian state.</b><br /><br />On Friday US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US was opposed to any reoccupation of Gaza by Israel as well as any reduction in the size of the territory.<br /><br />"Gaza... cannot be a platform for terrorism. <b>There should be no Israeli reoccupation of Gaza. The size of Gaza territory should not be reduced</b>," he said at a G20 ministers meeting in Argentina.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Meanwhile negotiators trying to broker a temporary ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages are expected to meet in Paris.<br /><br /><b>The US wants a deal in place before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins in just over a fortnight.</b><br /><br />And, as the humanitarian situation worsens in Gaza, there is international pressure too for the war to end. The Hamas-run Ministry of Health reports that more than 29,500 people, mostly women and children, have been killed since the war began in October.<br /><br />Israel's military offensive was triggered by Hamas's unprecedented attack on 7 October in which gunmen killed about 1,200 people — mainly civilians — and took 253 back to Gaza as hostages.<br /><br />Overnight the head of the UN body responsible for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) warned that Gaza faces a "monumental disaster with grave implications for regional peace, security and human rights”.<br /><br />In a letter to the president of the UN general assembly, Philippe Lazzarini said the agency "has reached breaking point, with Israel's repeated calls to dismantle Unrwa and the freezing of funding by donors at a time of unprecedented humanitarian needs in Gaza”.<br /><br /><i><b>Some of Unrwa's biggest donors suspended funding for the agency last month after Unrwa sacked several of its staff amid allegations by Israel that they had participated in the October attacks.</b></i><br /><br /><b>Mr Netanyahu aims to close the agency as part of his post-war plan and replace it with — as yet unspecified — international aid organizations.<br /></b><br />And he has insisted that he will continue his war until Israel has dismantled Hamas and Islamic Jihad </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> the second largest armed group in Gaza </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> and all Israeli hostages are returned.<br /><br /><b>At the end of 2023, Mr Netanyahu warned the war could go on for "many more months".</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Meanwhile <b>the US has described Israel's expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank as inconsistent with international law.<br /></b><br />"Our administration maintains a firm opposition to settlement expansion, and in our judgment this only weakens, doesn't strengthen Israel's security," Mr Blinken said.<br /><br />It overturns a move made in 2019 by the Trump administration, which was welcomed by Israel, when then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that Washington no longer viewed settlements as breaching international law.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdq6hHvGy9pOF9KXecozw6BiOcD2oe-8vVGzsOa92l7R6_iEuDmWtD_FiUR9htfbn0chb0L5tlyhXf7j1gVU7sezxNa_YK1zENOcvGeDmLPp7w0NPg4ElkgvxQcByYb4-iOU79QOtqHbdebbTsr-sNWI1WgSqcR0SC-ZRAkhSg2ROlhNd5PxIkdeoucHVw/s2048/west%20bank%20settlements.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="2048" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdq6hHvGy9pOF9KXecozw6BiOcD2oe-8vVGzsOa92l7R6_iEuDmWtD_FiUR9htfbn0chb0L5tlyhXf7j1gVU7sezxNa_YK1zENOcvGeDmLPp7w0NPg4ElkgvxQcByYb4-iOU79QOtqHbdebbTsr-sNWI1WgSqcR0SC-ZRAkhSg2ROlhNd5PxIkdeoucHVw/w400-h250/west%20bank%20settlements.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>West Bank settlements</i></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68379646">https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68379646<br /></a><br />*<br />RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES ARE TERRORIZING AND BLACKMAILING NAVALNY'S MOTHER, REFUSING TO RELEASE HIS BODY UNLESS SHE AGREES TO A SECRET BURIAL. Even in death, he is a threat to them, and even in death he reveals them for who and what they are: the wretched lowlifes, endlessly amoral subhuman miscreants. ~ Misha Iossel</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Updat</b>e: the body has finally been released, without (to my knowledge) concessions from Navalny's mother. <br /><br />*</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>A HORSE-DRAWN AMBULANCE IN TULA (Misha Firer)<br /></b><br />I have been radicalized against American leaders by the experience of seeing a horse-drawn ambulance in Tula and I couldn’t wait to tell my subscribers in Russia.<br /><br />Tula region known for its weapons manufacturing factories lies only 120 miles south of Moscow, a shiny city on seven hills. but what they have got is what undeveloped, barbaric America doesn’t?<br /><br />A horse and a cart ambulance! Eat it, you Tucker-loving Americans.<br /><br />The story goes like this. A retiree babushka in the village became ill. Her son called an ambulance. Paramedics’ car got stuck in the snow bank.<br /><br />The old woman’s son arrived on a horse and cart. He loaded the paramedics and brought them to his mother.<br /><br />I know what you gonna say, “But we have Amish people. They ride in horse carriages.”<br /><br />They choose to live that way as part of their religious faith.<br /><br />These Russian folks didn’t choose this way of life. Tula region governor is Putin’s former bodyguard, he didn’t build roads and didn’t provide jobs for the villagers to afford cars. They don’t even have horse carriages like the Amish!<br /><br /><b>They literally ride like peasants in Europe in the Middle Ages. 120 miles from the capital city and the seat of Putin’s power, from which he’s brainwashing the developing world that he’s fighting their war against the Hegemon as if they had asked him to do it!</b><br /><br />*<br />71-year old Vladimir Putin, a tireless advocate of conservative family values swapped his gymnast mistress with whom he had three illegitimate children and whom he had never married, for a 39-year old head of The League for Safe Internet.<br /><br /><b>Yekaterina “Miss Censorship” Mezulina advocates for abortion ban and encourages women to have more children and yet she doesn’t have any kids of her own!<br /></b><br />Perhaps Mezulina has hooked up with Putin for that particular reason — to have children out of wedlock?<br /><br />Nobody wants to marry this Cruella. She hates everyone </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> university students, rappers, women who haven’t had kids, women who have had kids, liberals, and principally she hates 87% of the populace for being internet users, whose activities she has to monitor and censor.<br /><br />I think Russians should see concrete example of conservative family values in action demonstrated by their supreme leader and Miss Censorship!</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2Q4w8Eqg9At4yh2kBvlKm6XUwB68hKZfpFuq__VH4SAZmQWef_EfMwe-hLul-923_T-WNP73KBT3yw2boBnc7nvpR5cFlY5KUqQKXGNPZf8n5Lw4Ci5s9mJLBKXcqe7PxbEraufZAMKzCkNeq2G3jJk9LgVxlYuD9Vg0sQaEpD4rqu6G_ni1JHUVA7Tq9/s602/Yekaterina%20Mizulina.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="539" data-original-width="602" height="359" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2Q4w8Eqg9At4yh2kBvlKm6XUwB68hKZfpFuq__VH4SAZmQWef_EfMwe-hLul-923_T-WNP73KBT3yw2boBnc7nvpR5cFlY5KUqQKXGNPZf8n5Lw4Ci5s9mJLBKXcqe7PxbEraufZAMKzCkNeq2G3jJk9LgVxlYuD9Vg0sQaEpD4rqu6G_ni1JHUVA7Tq9/w400-h359/Yekaterina%20Mizulina.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Mezulina’s boyfriend spoke at the forum “Strong Ideas for New Times.”<br /><br />“Today we are going through a special time, we are reaching a completely different level of the tasks facing us.”<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>By the special time, Putin means pariah status for Russia, fratricidal war with Ukraine, and state terror.</b></span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“Russian is qualitatively changing from within, becoming more self-sufficient, sovereign, more self-confident.”<br /><br />It’s like putin-g lipstick on a dead pig. What a beautiful face. Don’t pay attention to flies buzzing around.<br /><br />Putin said that his message to the Federal Assembly will set goals for the next six years. Yay, Soviet era five-year centralized economic plan. With an extra year to make more plans plus de-industrialization of the whole country.<br /><br />“Russia has more and more supporters all over the world, especially in the field of traditional values.”<br /><br />Putin leads by example. A divorced grandpa, three mistresses and six or seven illegitimate children, Putin doesn’t even have a family. He doesn’t speak the names of his daughters aloud and has never been seen in their company. <b>He’s always by himself. Never with a family. With one of the highest divorce rates in the world and record breaking low fertility rate, Russia too sets a wonderful example of conservative values to the world.</b><br /><br />Putin also said that he has supporters in “unfriendly” countries and many countries are interested in Russia’s ideas, including in the economic sphere.<br /><br />In the absence of anything to sell apart from natural resources, Putin is now peddling “ideas.”<br />Ideas are cheap. It’s the execution that matters. And Putin’s regime is very short on the latter. Blah-blah-blah. Or as we say in Russia, blyat-blyat-blyat. Yawn. ~ Misha Firer, Quora</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiY_6Jdx2IGp6j41oD2LjkuRkGm7y6WaZPCkhS8ygF6yPchN6oDYYwNX3SQ5lLYetDO_zWcpj_qZtIro6NKG11lBJ3JsYfryi1rbMqrIdIYIPK6xD2vAeI19TdvCH9grZRYygTBVYf1QIxJf4OpPk6-PyIhXtgu9m9MjPZj7v3e6Tw1uijmy0evuI_vg0D/s1864/ambulance%20horse%20drawn.%20png%20.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1298" data-original-width="1864" height="279" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiY_6Jdx2IGp6j41oD2LjkuRkGm7y6WaZPCkhS8ygF6yPchN6oDYYwNX3SQ5lLYetDO_zWcpj_qZtIro6NKG11lBJ3JsYfryi1rbMqrIdIYIPK6xD2vAeI19TdvCH9grZRYygTBVYf1QIxJf4OpPk6-PyIhXtgu9m9MjPZj7v3e6Tw1uijmy0evuI_vg0D/w400-h279/ambulance%20horse%20drawn.%20png%20.png" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Peter Pang:<br /><b>Whoever accepts someone like Putin as the leader of the country, has de facto chosen the horse-drawn cart</b>.<br /><br />Paul Vincent:<br /><b>And the outhouse.<br /></b><br />Paul Browley:<br />Pooptin should work on bringing back the traditional toothbrush style mustache as worn by Charlie Chaplin.<br /><br />Chuck Weisenberg:<br />“Russia has more and more supporters all over the world, especially in the field of traditional values.” Says Putin. Ah yes, so many ex-KGB operatives waiting for a new era of funding.<br /><br /><br />*<br /><b>THE BRUTALIZATION OF RUSSIAN SOCIETY<br /></b><br />~ What is important for foreigners to realize is that <b>the Russians who are living in 2024 Russia are not the people they were 2 years ago — or even 1 year ago.</b><br /><br />The brutalization of the society brings about <b>a complete transgression of moral norms and civil laws. People are becoming more cynical and hardened, they lose compassion and empathy. It’s “dog eats dog” world.</b><br /><br /><b>Andrey Morozov</b><br />44-year-old sergeant of the Russian army Andrey Morozov, nicknamed "Murz", abruptly decided to leave this world after being branded “traitor” by propagandist Vladimir Solovyov on the state TV.<br /><br /><i><b>Morozov was a military correspondent. It was him who reported 2 days ago in his Telegram channel that </b></i></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>the Russian army is suffering enormous losses — in just 4 months of fights for Avdiivka, Russia lost more people than the USSR lost in the entire 10 years of the war in Afghanistan.</b></i></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />Murz was a friend of Igor Girkin, a convicted war criminal, sentenced to life imprisonment by Hague Court — and then arrested by Vladimir Putin and thrown into a Russian prison on a 4-year sentence for extremism, for making fun of Putin’s girlfriend.<br /><br />Once again, <b>an “Uber-patriot” from the Z-community decided to tell the truth, and they immediately put him in a coffin.</b> (Murz could have been helped to depart — or was too devastated by the consequences awaiting him for “treason”, who knows. No pity here — he was a dangerous enemy of Ukraine.)<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Truth-tellers don't live long in Russia.</b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Can you imagine what will happen when someone publishes data on all losses of the Russian army over 2 years of war?<br /><br />This number, apparently, is in hundreds of thousands of dead Russian citizens. And everyone around, except their family members, does not care about these losses.<br /><br />Meanwhile, <b>people in Russia are massively submitting applications to the registry office for a wedding on February 24, 2024.<br /></b><br />In the Rostov region, about 300 couples will get married on the “mirror date” of February 24, 2024 (24.02.2024).</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In Voronezh, 190 couples chose this date for their wedding.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In St. Petersburg, 258 applications were submitted to have a wedding on the day.<br /><br />February 24 is a tragic date for Ukrainians — and many conscious Russians. It is the date when Russia began its full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022.<br /><br /><b>And here we have thousands of young Russian people choosing this date as the date to begin their life together as husband and wife.</b><br /><br />Are they all such supporters of the war in Ukraine? Not at all.<br /><br />It's much worse. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> Yes, exactly — worse.<br /><br /><b>Russians are going to get married en masse on the anniversary of the start of the shameful war, not because they support this war.<br /><br />But because they don't care.</b><br /><br />There are many people in Russia who are avid supporters of the war and (still) enough of those who are against it. And <b>arguing whether there are more avid supporters or quiet dissenters is pretty pointless.</b><br /><br /><b>Because there are many more of those who simply don’t care.<br /></b><br /><b>Those who genuinely don’t notice the war</b>.<br /><br />Well, yes, there is some kind of war going on somewhere. But this is “out there somewhere” and does not concern them.<br /><br />“We are about to get married, and what a beautiful date it is!”<br /><br />They are actually getting married on 24/02/2024, simply because it’s a “special” mirror date.<br />The <b>mirror dates are rare and many believe that such dates are “magic.” <br /></b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>However, if they are that superstitious, how come it doesn’t occur to them that the terrible tragic date can bring them a completely disastrous kind of “magic”?</b><br /><br />And that’s what Russian people have become. Find your own epithets to describe it — I’m lost for words. ~ Elena Gold, Quora<br /><br />JJM:<br />Agree. <b>This is Europe in the late 1930s all over again.</b> The only difference is that in this case, <b>Crimea is the Sudentenland</b> … and when it came to invading Czechoslovakia, Ukraine decided to fight back.<br /><br /><b>Let´s see how many EU and US politicians actually wake up and see history repeating itself…hopefully not with the same outcome.<br /></b><br />Joe Moorman:<br /><b>Czechoslovakia versus Nazi Germany is very comparable to Ukraine versus Russia</b>. The Czechs had some heavy industry and good natural defenses and could have survived if they were supplied well with weapons and logistics, although of course it would have been tremendously costly for them.<br /><br />Most observers from the outset of this war thought Ukraine did not stand a chance, but they are stronger than we thought. At least there wasn't a Munich agreement in advance this time.<br />We cannot blow it this time. It seems costly now, but it's absolutely tiny compared to what it could become.<br /><br />Matias D:<br /><b>I have read several times about this apathy or indifference of many Russian citizens towards the war in which their country is involved. <br /></b><br />My question is whether this indifference can actually be a way of hiding resignation for an unpleasant reality that they cannot change. Or perhaps, this indifference is a way of hiding the rejection of the war, so as not to be persecuted if they give an open opinion.<br /><br />Steven:<br />It's terrible but common everywhere. <b>Life goes on despite the horrors in Ukraine, Yemen, Israel , Gaza. The human brain protects itself from dwelling on such pain constantly.<br /></b><br />*<br /><i><b>“</b></i></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>When you hate, you generate a reciprocal hate</b></i></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>. When individuals hate each other, the harm is finite; but when great groups of nations hate each other, the harm may be infinite and absolute. Do not fall back upon the thought that those whom you hate deserve to be hated. I do not know whether anybody deserves to be hated, but I do know that hatred of those whom we believe to be evil is not what will redeem mankind.”~ Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954)</b></i><br /><br />*<br /><b>NAVALNY’S DEATH IS A LOSS TO THE WORLD</b><br /><br /><b><i>"That's the difference between you and me: you are afraid, and I am not afraid. I realize there is danger, but why should I be afraid?”</i></b><br /><br />These words from Alexei Navalny, spoken to a reporter in 2011, show the extent of the Russian opposition leader's fortitude.<br /><br />Russia—and the world—are worse off without him.<br /><br /><b>There have been few people who have demonstrated such fortitude against Vladimir Putin. For more than 10 years, Navalny openly opposed the Russian dictator, calling out the "crooks and thieves" in the Kremlin who enabled his corrupt reign</b>. Navalny knew exactly what the consequences for his dissent might be, especially after Boris Nemtsov, his friend and fellow opposition leader, was assassinated in 2015. Still, he continued to press for change in Russia, because he loved his country more than his own life.<br /><br />Navalny rose to global prominence in 2017, when he ran for president against Putin––and Kremlin agents responded by throwing chemicals into his eyes.<br /><br />In 2020, Putin tried to poison Navalny again, which international news agencies recorded in painstaking detail. What followed, however, was even more remarkable: Navalny decided to reenter Russia the following year.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="color: #800180;">When asked why he was traveling to what seemed like certain death, Navalny said he didn't want to “give Putin the gift of not returning.”</span><br /></b><br />This courage didn't go to waste.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgsUtsAWnhqw4b6-YPr-BfAVXX3ID3d-qcACZlXPEsJV7lN3bTr1AgozXllOxAfa7eF-KKKBjIdNeqfRscfebXJ01nBc3LbggdO_Hk7Sp5_bUfhup_-xtBFNTcE_FcOLnAPPXjBCMF9mkN7SfBMZ5TzrdcfkDOBuDfviOXMococF6zhNIWLw94V-D2fVRU/s790/navalny%20MIKE.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="515" data-original-width="790" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgsUtsAWnhqw4b6-YPr-BfAVXX3ID3d-qcACZlXPEsJV7lN3bTr1AgozXllOxAfa7eF-KKKBjIdNeqfRscfebXJ01nBc3LbggdO_Hk7Sp5_bUfhup_-xtBFNTcE_FcOLnAPPXjBCMF9mkN7SfBMZ5TzrdcfkDOBuDfviOXMococF6zhNIWLw94V-D2fVRU/w400-h261/navalny%20MIKE.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I met with Russian opposition figures in 2022, and <b>even though the Kremlin had just arrested both Navalny and anti-authoritarian activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, I could tell that the Russian people's aspirations for freedom were alive and well.</b><br /><br />Would that have been the case if Navalny had fled? Maybe, but I bet Navalny's self-sacrificial example was a powerful motivator.<br /><br /><b>Navalny never gave up hope or lost his spirit. For the last years of his life, he was imprisoned in the "Polar Wolf," a Siberian gulag whose conditions recall all the inhumanity of Soviet tyranny. But he still managed to crack jokes with his judge and send love letters to his wife—up until virtually the day of his death</b> at the hands of Putin's bloodthirsty regime.<br /><br /><i><b>I'm sure the Kremlin feels more secure with their chief domestic opponents gone and Kara-Murza behind bars. But that just shows the weakness of authoritarian governments.</b><br /></i><br />Navalny, for one, saw politics more clearly than Putin. <b>His prediction that the dictator's closed, fear-based system would reap degradation for Russia proved devastatingly accurate, as the war in Ukraine continues to take thousands of lives and waste trillions of rubles.</b><br /><br />What would the world look like if Putin had listened to his opponents rather than his yes-men? What would it look like if other authoritarians did the same: if Nicolás Maduro allowed María Corina Machado to run against him in an open election, or if Xi Jinping promoted his officials based on merit instead of personal loyalty?<br /><br />Such a world would be safer for West-aligned democracies. There would be no war in Ukraine, no troops massed on the border of Guyana, and probably no COVID-19. But it would also be a better world for the people of Russia, Venezuela, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, Iran, and so many other countries.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>That dictators like Putin prefer this world to that one reveals their great tragedy—that their ultimate goal is not their nations' well-being but their own self-preservation and self-aggrandizement.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />Alexei Navalny, like Nemtsov and Kara-Murza, was different. He put his nation first, up until the bitter end. I hope Navalny's example inspires many others, because we could use more people like him. ~ Marco Rubio, <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/alexei-navalnys-death-loss-russia-world-opinion-1872089">https://www.newsweek.com/alexei-navalnys-death-loss-russia-world-opinion-1872089</a><br /><br />*<br /><b>THE LEFT SHOULD NOT SUPPORT AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES<br /></b><br /><b>In late 1936 George Orwell, like so many young idealists from Europe and the USA, went off to fight fascism in Spain. By the spring of 1937 he realized he was in a war with not two but three sides. The USSR was holding back a full Spanish revolution while attacking the socialists and anarchists outside its control.</b><br /><br /><b>Facing prison and possible execution himself, not from the fascists, but the Soviet-allied forces, Orwell fled Spain. His immediate commander, Georges Kopp, was imprisoned, and the leader of his militia unit, Andres Nin, was tortured and assassinated by an agent of Stalin’s secret police. </b>Orwell would spend the rest of his life trying to clarify that in his time the left meant both idealists committed to human rights, equality, and justice and supporters of a Stalinism that was the antithesis of all those things.<br /><br />He wrote after he got back to England:<br /><br /><b>"When I left Barcelona in June the jails were bulging… But the point to notice is that the people who are in prison now are not Fascists but revolutionaries; they are there not because their opinions are too much to the Right, but because they are too much to the Left. And the people responsible for putting them there are… the communists."</b><br /><br /><b><i>Some of the pro-Stalin left believed the sunny propaganda about the USSR and some of them knew better but went with the Stalinist notion that you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, that the gulags and lies and mass executions were the price of the ticket to some form of utopia that would soon arrive after everything else had been quashed.</i></b> </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">There are similar rifts in the left of our time, which are both obvious and seldom addressed outright.<br /><br />What is the left? I wish I knew. <b>When the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the fact that some sector of what is supposed to be the left excused, justified, or even rooted for the Putin regime was, among other things, a reminder that “left” has long meant a grab bag full of contradictions. Later came the “peace marches” that argued the US should withdraw support and Ukraine should surrender.</b><br /><br />Recent stories about these sectors of the left stumping for the Chinese government and downplaying its human rights abuses are reminders that this is an ongoing problem that takes many forms. <b>I’ve seen genocide denial among this left: excusing the Chinese in the case of the Uyghur people, justifying the invasion and subjugation of Tibet, denying the Holodomor—the Soviet genocide through induced famine in 1930s Ukraine—even whitewashing the Pol Pot era in Cambodia, and siding with Assad as he wages a brutal war against the Syrian people.</b><br /><br /><b>It should be a modest request to ask that “left” not mean supporters of authoritarian regimes soaked in their own people’s blood.</b> But the people and groups and agendas grouped together as the left contain not just contradictions but sworn enemies. Some of the loudest pro-Putin people are now clearly part of the right; some continue to claim the mantle of the left, begging the question of what the left is.<br /><br /><b>Perhaps the left/right terminology that originated with the French Revolution has, more than two centuries later, outlived its appositeness. (In the French National Assembly of 1789, the royalists members sat to the right, the radicals to the left, and thus the terms were born.)</b> The left I love is passionately committed to universal human rights and absolute equality and often is grounded in rights movements, including the Black civil rights movement. I sometimes think of the current US version as a latter-day version of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition.<br /><br />This rainbow left pitches a big tent and as such is often more welcoming to, say, things like religion—after all, the Black church played a huge role in that movement, Cesar Chavez and Dorothy Day were among the devout Catholic radicals in American history, and Indigenous spirituality is central to many land rights and climate campaigns—while many traditional leftists often scorn organized religion.<br /><br />I’d argue that because of its intersectional understanding of both problems and solutions, this left is more radical—radically inclusive, radically egalitarian—than those who treat race and gender as irrelevancies or distractions (including the men, from Ralph Nader in 2000 on, who’ve been dismissive of reproductive rights as an essential economic justice as well as rights issue). <b>Perhaps it’s seen as less radical because bellicosity is often viewed as the measure of one’s radicalness.<br /></b><br />Likewise, <b>this rainbow left often has radical aims but is pragmatic about how to realize them. </b>This might be because it includes a lot of people for whom social services and basic rights are crucial to survival, people who are used to compromise, as in not getting what they want or getting it in increments over time. <b>All or nothing purity often means choosing the nothing that is hell for the vulnerable and I-told-you-so for the comfortable.</b><br /><br />That’s the Rainbow Coalition-ish left; the other left has some overlap in its opposition to corporate capitalism and US militarism, but very different operating principles. It often feels retrograde in its goals and its views, including what I think of as economic fundamentalism, the idea that class trumps all else (and <b>often the nostalgic vision of the working class as manly industrial labor rather than immigrants everywhere from nail salons to app-driven delivery jobs to agricultural fields</b>).<br /><br /><b>This other left is often so focused on the considerable sins of the United States it overlooks or denies those of other nations, particularly those in conflict with the USA, decrying imperialism at home but excusing it abroad</b> (<i><b>and apparently seeing US aid to Ukraine through the lens of American invasions of Iraq and Vietnam rather than the more relevant US role in the European alliance against Germany and Italy in the Second World War</b></i>). </span></p><p><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>It often embraces whatever regime or leader opposes the US, even when that means siding with serious human rights abuses and inequalities, as if the sins of the one erased or undid the sins of the other.</b> <b>It tends to rage against Democrats more than Republicans.</b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><b>The Putin regime’s invasion of Ukraine brought to the surface some of the old conflicts in what the left is and should be.</b> Not a few people claiming the mantle of the left have been cheerleaders of Putin and Russia for some time. <b>Putin is, of course, an authoritarian, a petroleum-fueled oligarch who might be the world’s richest man, an obstacle to climate action, the leader of an international white Christian nationalist revival, a vicious human rights abuser whose domestic enemies have a habit of dying suddenly, a homophobe, misogynist, and antisemite, and he’s involved in an imperialist war to annex the sovereign nation of Ukraine. You can’t get much further to the right.</b><br /><br />But many in this version of the left insist that somehow the US forced Russia’s hand, or it was all NATO’s fault and NATO was just a US puppet, and <b>Russia was somehow a victim acting in self-defense.</b> Jan Smoleński and Jan Dutkiewicz were among the many Eastern European critics who called this “westsplaining,” writing that though these arguments are supposed to be anti-imperialist, they in fact perpetuate imperial wrongs when they continue to deny non-Western countries and their citizens agency in geopolitics. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Paradoxically, the problem with American exceptionalism is that even those who challenge its foundational tenets and heap scorn on American militarism often end up recreating American exceptionalism by centering the United States in their analyses of international relations.<br /><br />Of course all this muddle about Russia is not new. <b>Western leftists fell in love with Russia during the revolution from which the Soviet Union arose. Some—the anarchist Emma Goldman among them—became disillusioned early on, but for others, nothing could shake the devotion.</b> </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>All through the history of the USSR, it had its defenders in the west, when that meant denying the gulags, the show trials and executions, the attempt to control everything everyone did and said, the ethnic cleansing and cultural and sometimes literal genocide of many non-Russian populations from Crimean Tatars to Siberian reindeer herders to Muslim Kazakhs.</b><br /></i><br />When it was an ally during the Second World War, the mainstream West supported Stalin and the USSR (which of course then included Ukraine). This is cited to their credit, often while overlooking the fact that Stalin had earlier signed a non-aggression pact with the Nazi government, dividing up Eastern Europe between the two.<br /><br /><b>While some of his peers who became disillusioned with communism and the Stalinists shifted right, Orwell was loyal to the left and pushed back at conservatives who tried to claim him and his books Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. But he was disturbed all his life by the conflicts and contradictions of what left means. </b><br /><br />I wonder now if the vicious persecution of leftists, communists, socialists, and progressives by the postwar American right, made people avoid analysis and statements that could weaken or divide their own side. That is, had there been no McCarthyism, might the left itself have cleaned house and clarified its positions? <b>Might it have taken on the widespread mistake of supporting Stalin and other authoritarians?</b><br /><br />There’s no answer to that, because there was McCarthyism and it was brutal. It left us with direct legacies, including what McCarthy’s right-hand man, Roy Cohn, taught his protégé Donald Trump about ruthlessness, manipulation, lying, and winning at all costs. (One of the ironies of what I call the left-wing men of the right was their constant claim that talk about Russian intervention on behalf of Trump was McCarthyism, as if somehow anticommunism had anything to do with the facts in the case or assessments of the current government of Russia.)<br /><br />But this lack of clarity about what the left is and what principles are essential to it continue to create confusion and spread credit and blame between two different camps. It’s an old conundrum but maybe the solution is as simple as truth in labeling and clarity in categories. ~<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWNXH6sIwSSZuB81mOfk35-FdfaHQ19GtQ7xS2qgB70DmFzFc9ZQZZcQRwdDNRuw6ciJ-ue5B2DK5wV7xjHlxIF13-WkLeI5YM6CbJvxZVx-G9gG2UU91gY7oaBKHzfx3Pk9v7bnJVbAPemPnftm3b3Y-3Ji0XS6R1mTdSQveCrqK9th9STY5V07_NyJ1o/s958/STALIN%20%20hand%20on%20thigh.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="958" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWNXH6sIwSSZuB81mOfk35-FdfaHQ19GtQ7xS2qgB70DmFzFc9ZQZZcQRwdDNRuw6ciJ-ue5B2DK5wV7xjHlxIF13-WkLeI5YM6CbJvxZVx-G9gG2UU91gY7oaBKHzfx3Pk9v7bnJVbAPemPnftm3b3Y-3Ji0XS6R1mTdSQveCrqK9th9STY5V07_NyJ1o/w251-h400/STALIN%20%20hand%20on%20thigh.jpg" width="251" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://lithub.com/what-is-left-rebecca-solnit-on-the-perennial-divisions-of-the-american-left/">https://lithub.com/what-is-left-rebecca-solnit-on-the-perennial-divisions-of-the-american-left/</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;">Mary:<br /><br />I have been confused by the "left's" response to the war in Gaza, but the analysis in this article helped clarify it for me. There is no one "left" in the US, but many opposing and contradictory sects (if I may call them that) each trying to maintain their own position as the "true," "pure," correct one. When I was involved in the 70's there was the old US Communist party with adherents like Angela Davis, (a fiery speaker) but also different amalgams leaning toward Maoism, or civil rights groups that took from both the USSR and China positions that were aligned with their own goals but talking about revolution using those as models...even when it didn't make a lot of sense. I remember Stalin referred to as "Uncle Joe," and Mao quoted like a kind of gnomic revolutionary evangelist.<br /><br />We were all very young and foolish, buying into a narrative far too simple for real world complexities. Anti imperialist, anti West, critical of writers like Solzhenitsyn, and talking endlessly about "struggle" and "revolution" without knowledge or experience of either. I think these young "leftists" protesting against Israel are framing their objections in terms of anti colonialism and anti imperialism, which don't quite fit the picture, and protesting a genocide of Palestinians without acknowledging the Palestinian intention to commit genocide against all Israelis and all Jews. I can't escape the thought that behind all these protests is a real and undeniable antisemitism.<br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Oriana:<br /><br />I had an odd experience once when I was a student at UCLA. One male student seemed to dislike me, and I couldn’t figure out why. Then someone explained to me that in his eyes I was a traitor, having left a “revolutionary” country for America. “But it’s America that’s a revolutionary country!” I exclaimed. My interlocutor, an older woman, replied, “Yes, but he doesn’t know that.” It would take years to go into all the ramifications of terms like “revolutionary” and so on. <br /><br />For my part, I was confused by white students who grew their hair long and then had a special tight permanent (I imagine that was what did the trick) to create an “Afro” — so profoundly did they yearn to be black, even if only as some pathetic semblance. I was more thrilled to see the straightforward hippies, with hair down almost to the waist, and the “head shops” in very expensive locations near the campus — there must have been some very shrewd capitalists involved, the kind who knew a few quotes from Marx. <br /><br />I also remember a little party during which all the students complained about America. Finally even I joined and said something critical about the country (I forget what — nothing explosive) — and got instantly attacked from all sides. That was a lesson I never forgot. <br /><br />It was a good preparation for the statement that when the subject is large — continental, so to speak — anything you say is true, but the opposite is also true. Solzhenitsyn hated America and the West in general, and left for Russia as soon as he could after the collapse of the Soviet Union. As so often, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Meanwhile some of my classmates used phrases like “up against the wall.” I took French as my spiritual escape, the teachers correctly diagnosing my “accent slavique” (interesting how it travels from language to language). <br /><br />You are probably right about the hidden anti-Semitism — it just never ends. Of course the Palestinians want Israel without Jews, just as the Jewish Israelis dream of Israel without Arabs. Not that I can offer any solution — “population transfer”? to where? Suffering flows through any attempted answer like an unstoppable mountain river. <br /><br />I experienced a bit of Angela Davis in person (well, not really up close) and all I can say is that she was struck me as not especially charismatic (it took me a while to choose the most fitting term) — definitely not fiery, at least not when lecturing on existentialism (I can imagine her being fiery when attacking America). Soon she became a fugitive from justice. She is now 80 years old. It all seems a surreal past lifetime. <br /><br />I’m not sure if clarity is possible in such a tangled situation. In any case, we have enough current problems and new threats (e.g. climate) to be spending much time trying to figure out the past. <br /><br />You are so right about “young and foolish.” No one can escape that. Being old and foolish also happens. Maybe that’s one reason why so many people lavish outrageous love on pets rather than fellow humans. <br /><br /><br />*<br /><b>WHAT AMERICAN DIVORCES TELL US ABOUT AMERICAN MARRIAGES<br /></b><br />~ <b>The history of marriage is also the history of divorce.</b> Divorce found its legal pathways because King Henry VIII couldn’t sire a male heir. In 1522, the king fought with the Vatican to obtain a divorce to marry Anne Boleyn. Famously, this didn’t work out for her. Spoiler: She was beheaded.<br /><br />And Henry VIII would divorce one more wife after that. But his divorces didn’t open the floodgates to divorce in England. In fact, his bad example made England far more restrictive, and getting a divorce required an act of Parliament until 1857. In that year there were 324 divorces granted, and only three of them were instigated by women.<br /><br /><b>Americans may not have invented divorce, but we did make it great.</b> Glenda Riley’s book Divorce: An American Tradition posits that <b>Americans have always led the world in divorce rates. In 1620, the Pilgrims made marriage a civil, rather than a religious, agreement. </b>Records show that the Pilgrims granted at least nine divorces, and the first was granted in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1639, the wife of James Luxford was granted a divorce because her husband already had a wife. In the 1830s, <b>the Frenchman Michel Chevalier toured America and noted that divorce was easier to attain in the new country than it was in Europe.</b><br /><br /><b>Divorce fit well with American mythos of freedom, democracy, and individualism.</b> If men escaping the law could come to America and find a new life, why not women? In 1771 or 1772, Thomas Jefferson, never one for being good at dating his notes, began writing a brief in defense of divorce on behalf of John Blair, who wanted to end his tumultuous nineteen-month marriage. The brief was never filed because John Blair died. But <b>Jefferson’s writing connects the freedom of divorce to the ideals of the Revolution.<br /></b><br />Under the title “Arguments pro,” Jefferson wrote the following: “Cruel to continue by violence an union made at first by mutual love, but now dissolved by hatred. Liberty of divorce prevents and cures domestic quarrels.” It sounds liberating, but Jefferson was advocating for freedom for men and men only. The other notes in his documents show he believed that a wife was obligated to have sex with her husband and produce children. <b>Freedom, for Jefferson, when it came to marriage and the founding of America, was freedom for white men.</b><br /><br /><b>Jamestown, founded as a puritanical theocracy, allowed a kind of marital separation, where the couple could live apart, the husband would support the wife, and neither could remarry.</b> After the colonies declared independence, <b>the southern states (except South Carolina) began to allow legislative divorces, where the couple could apply for the absolute dissolution of their marriage from the state’s lawmakers.</b><br /><br />Overwhelmed by the number of divorce petitions, lawmakers eventually turned the process over to the courts. It’s important to note that this freedom was for white people only. Black people were still largely enslaved. But they were often mentioned in divorce petitions, where husbands blamed their wives for bearing “mulatto” children, or wives accused their husbands of cruelty for bringing enslaved women into the marriage bed.<br /><br />The reasons for many of these early divorces are no different from the reasons people today have for splitting up—abuse, intoxication, and adultery. Riley’s analysis of the data concludes something that also parallels modern marriage: <b>Most of the divorce petitions in the state of Virginia were sought by women. A lot of these women so desperately wanted to be free that they shared their private humiliations with an entire legislative body.</b> I wonder about all the women without the means or stamina or support to seek divorces. What were their lives like? How much greater their humiliations?<br /><br />*<br />On November 9, 1805, Robert Cartwright placed an ad in The Tennessee Gazette and Mero-District Advertiser for his runaway wife. “I do hereby forewarn all persons from crediting my wife Polly Cartwright, on my account, or harboring her, as she has left my bed and board without any just cause. I am therefore determined to pay no debts of her contracting, and will prosecute any person harboring her, with the utmost rigor of the Law.” <b>Ads for runaway wives that mostly absolved the husbands of their debts rather than calling for the wives’ return filled the pages of early newspapers.</b><br /><br />In the 1800s, the Midwestern states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa gained reputations for quickie divorces. Ohio and Indiana eventually put restrictions on residency requirements, pushing people into Iowa and Illinois, and eventually the Dakota Territory. <b>In 1889, the U.S. Bureau of Labor tallied 328,716 divorces between 1867 and 1886. And most of the divorce seekers, two out of three, were women.</b><br /><br />In her book The Divorce Colony, historian<b> April White tells the story of women who escaped to the Dakota Territory to get a divorce.</b> One woman, Blanche Molineux, took the four-day train ride to Sioux Falls to establish residency in order to divorce her husband Roland, who had been tried for the murder of one of Blanche’s friends. Although Roland was ultimately acquitted, the trial rocked the nation, with Blanche named as the center of a love triangle and blamed for the murder. <b>Sioux Falls at the time had become a divorce colony, where women with the means could go to establish their residencies and seek their divorces. They formed a motley band of outlaws, an Ex-Wives Club on the frontier.</b><br /><br />Blanche got her divorce. But her notoriety brought scrutiny to the divorce colony, and lawmakers extended the time required to establish residency. Then, Nevada took up the mantle as the quickie divorce capital of America. It’s important to note that <b>none of these quickie divorces were actually that quick; they took months, and they were reserved for those who had the means to make them happen.<br /></b><br />Freedom was what so many American women wanted, and they would do anything to get it. After all, America had been founded on the promise of freedom. In April 1848, forty-four married women in western New York wrote to the New York state legislature citing America’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, noting, “Your Declaration of Independence declares, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. And as women have never consented to, been represented in, or recognized by this government, it is evident that in justice no allegiance can be claimed from them. Our numerous and yearly petitions for this most desirable object having been disregarded, we now ask your august body, to abolish all laws which hold married women more accountable for their acts than infants, idiots, and lunatics.”<br /><br />That same year, <b>American suffragists held the Seneca Falls Convention, where women argued not just that they should have the right to vote and hold property, but that marriage itself should be changed. Women, created equally, should be treated equally. And change began to happen. In 1848, New York passed a married women’s property act.</b> It wasn’t the first—that had been passed in Mississippi, nearly a decade before. But after New York, other states followed—passing laws that allowed women to own property, keep income, and have a right to property acquired through marriage.<br /><br /><b>As women became more financially free, marriage became more about love and sex rather than commerce (or so we told ourselves).</b> But it was a slow change. Women couldn’t get a mortgage or own credit cards without the approval of a father or husband until 1974. For centuries, rape was defined as between a man and a woman “not his wife,” establishing the fact that no matter the reality, legally, a husband could do what he wanted with his wife, and he did. Those laws began to change in the ’70s but even now, some states like South Carolina treat marital and nonmarital rape differently.<br /><br />*<br />The story of marriage is just as much about who is included in the narrative as it is about who is excluded. <b>The book Far More Terrible for Women is a collection of the stories of women who were enslaved in America before the Civil War</b>. These women recount love unions ripped apart because it was more advantageous for their owners to have them married to someone else, and partnerships made for breeding purposes, only to be ended when husbands were sold away or killed.<br /><br />One woman, Louisa Everett, who was ninety when she was interviewed, recalled that on the plantation where she lived, enslaved people were forced to have sex with one another. <b>If the owner thought a certain couple would have good children, he’d force them to have sex even if they were married to other people.</b> Everett was married to her first husband when the plantation owner, a man she called Mister Jim, called her and an enslaved man named Sam over to him and ordered Sam to take off his shirt. Then Mister Jim asked Everett if she could stand such a strong man. Mister Jim was carrying a bullwhip, so Everett said yes.<br /><br />“Well,” she recalled, “he told us we must get busy and do it in his presence, and we had to do it. After that, we were considered man and wife.” Another woman, Julia Brown, recalled her aunt and uncle being married but living on two separate plantations; they were allowed to visit only on Wednesdays and Sundays. <b>One Sunday her uncle went to visit his wife and she’d been sold. He never found her again.</b> Slavery in America was used to prop up white families with free labor, while tearing Black families apart.<br /><br />Later, government support for families, such as <b>free childcare for working women during World War II and veterans housing, would be denied to Black families</b>. Every cultural force in America was working to tear Black families apart, while shaming them for not being married. In Veil and Vow, her cultural history of Black marriages, sociologist Aneeka Ayanna Henderson writes, “Black women’s unfreedom is made plain through the fictional depiction of domestic or intimate partner violence, rape, and sexual assault, and the state’s violent interventions in their private lives.<br /><br />These interventions, from both political and cultural institutions, often rehearse neoliberal discourse, bolstering familiar order and privatized solutions as they reduce female subjectivity to marital status. They surreptitiously encourage African American women, imagined as the least desirable, to suffer through abuse and assault in order to sustain the facade of bourgeois nuclear family, made politically important for African American people.”<br /><br />It’s hard to get married when the culture views you as less desirable. Henderson calls this “marriageocracy,” a portmanteau of “marriage” and “meritocracy.” The word suggests “that a free, unregulated, and equitable romance market animates marriage and the idea that it can be obtained with the cogent but misleading trinity of individual hard work, resilience, and moxie,” Henderson explains. But this idea isn’t borne out by reality.<br /><br />According to a recent Pew Research Center study, <b>Black women are more likely to be single than any other demographic. A 2014 OkCupid survey of dating behavior from 2009 to 2014 found that Black women were viewed as the least desirable dating cohort. </b>And if you should get married, it’s hard to stay married when the state is more likely to incarcerate Black women and Black men, and social services are more likely to get involved in their children’s lives.<br /><br />Additionally, interracial marriage was illegal in many states until the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision of 1967. Author Michael Warner sums it up perfectly in his book The Trouble with Normal, when he calls marriage “nothing if not a program for the privileged.”<br /><br /><b>Today, nearly half of all Black women have never been married. That’s compared with 32 percent of all American women.</b> Marriage, simply put, can’t be a solution to societal ills, because it isn’t accessible to all people in our society. For centuries, traditional marriage was illegal for gay people. It wasn’t until 2015 that the Supreme Court recognized same-sex marriage as a constitutional right.<br /><br />In the Queer Manifesto, a defining document of the social and political movement ACT UP written in 1990, the author points out that for centuries, because of stigma, many queer people were consigned to expressing their feelings of love through art, therefore defining cultural conceptions of love while being denied the ability to access the legal institutions of love. The documentary Invisible: Gay Women in Southern Music highlights this point perfectly, telling the stories of lesbian country songwriters who cloaked their sexuality to remain in the industry, writing songs that defined and expressed and reinforced notions of heterosexual love.<br /><br />Excluded from the institutions of heteronormative marriage, Black and queer people have found fuller ways of living. In the essay “Single Black Women and the Lies About Our Love Lives,” the author Minda Honey notes,<br /><br />The pandemic has only deepened my ambivalence about the supposed connection between matrimony and happiness. The surge in divorces these past few years made me question what these married women I’d often envied learned during the months they were shut-in with a spouse? Yes, the pandemic has been lonely for singles. But unlike many partnered women, I had not needed to drop out of the workforce to be the primary caregiver for children, nor had I found myself grumbling over being laden with an unfair portion of the household management. <b>Often, when discussing singleness, there is a focus on what is lacking from a life unpartnered. Rarely do we consider what must be exchanged for a life lived with someone else.<br /></b><br />Honey then goes on to describe the different ways Black women are redefining their relationships and their lives. Being forced out of the heterosexual marriage market has become a place of freedom rather than exclusion.<br /><br />Whenever we tell the history of marriage, it’s important to know who is excluded: the poor with no property to transfer, queer people, people who are too fat or too thin, the women used for sex then discarded because they weren’t considered high class enough to be wives, the enslaved, the sluts, the single moms, women of color. These are the Liliths in the myth of marriage.<br /><br />The story of Lilith is derived from the biblical story of Adam and Eve and the creation. Genesis recounts two versions of the creation, one where God makes man and women in his own image. The other is where he creates women from the rib of man. Mandaean and Jewish mythology tells the story with two women.<br /><br />Lilith, the first woman, who is Adam’s equal and who rejects the Eden created by the Lord, is banished and becomes a demon. And Eve, made from man, the good woman—who still isn’t good enough—who gets both Adam and herself tossed out of paradise. Other interpretations of the Bible reject the existence of Lilith altogether. But if Western ideas of heterosexual marriage are rooted in the Christian and Jewish tradition of the union of Adam and Eve, then the woman lingering on the shadows of that story, even if she is a ghost of mythology, becomes relevant.<br /><br />I imagine her hovering just outside of Eden, smoking, waiting for the others to be cast out, too. And they always are. Because it doesn’t matter how pretty you are or how good you are at roasting chicken or cleaning the house, you will fail. Your body will not produce an heir. You will commit that unforgivable female sin of getting old. You will become boring. You will nag about socks. You will eat of the forbidden fruit. Even now, the Liliths know that marriage remains a vehicle for the strict regulation of money, property, inheritance, sexuality, and female desirability. And anyone who falls afoul is tossed out of Eden.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBoHw7BaBC-AV5WGlnW2ctry-tboWN5JAomIqQwNVFNhkpvm_SSJCziR_kmFDN_X91IAG870b7Uln-x16goUZmaO8Lx35CzWpdZyUPQ35hEfGTHNYU-Jf-FKPErlXKVGZsXiyEhkv5w9FqYXUu9nnjXhGXt86M0S0vfakF-KirY1Zh7numZSDWnJDeBh6N/s600/lilith%20rossetti.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="496" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBoHw7BaBC-AV5WGlnW2ctry-tboWN5JAomIqQwNVFNhkpvm_SSJCziR_kmFDN_X91IAG870b7Uln-x16goUZmaO8Lx35CzWpdZyUPQ35hEfGTHNYU-Jf-FKPErlXKVGZsXiyEhkv5w9FqYXUu9nnjXhGXt86M0S0vfakF-KirY1Zh7numZSDWnJDeBh6N/w331-h400/lilith%20rossetti.jpeg" width="331" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Lilith, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti<br /></i><br /><b>Historian Randal Olson created a chart tracking American divorce rates over the course of 144 years. Beginning in 1867, the chart shows the number slowly rising with a dip in the 1930s due to the Great Depression and a leap in the number after WWII.</b> The chart seems to show that when economic hardship hits America, the divorce rate drops or holds steady; after all, it’s hard to spend money on lawyers when there isn’t much money to go around and the economy is uncertain.<br /><br />Historians attribute the leap in divorces at the end of WWII to the ending of the hastily cobbled together war marriages. Both divorce and marriage rates would drop in the 1950s, as women who were free to work while the men fought the war were forced back into the home. This restriction of women, and their unhappiness over it, brought about the second wave of feminism of the 1960s and ’70s, in which<b> women fought for equal pay, the right to work, financial freedom, and no-fault divorce</b>. These freedoms caused a wave of divorces, with divorce rates in America hitting 50 percent.<br /><br />Since then, the rate of divorces has leveled out, and as I write this book the divorce rate sits at 2.3 per 1,000 people for the year 2022. Divorce is not immune to the cultural and political forces of history, because marriage and divorce are an essential pillar of society. ~<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwvNno5uMTl_ZjkzVP_K_kJRukRhgYboVwVqoilb8JOl9EWgb0bVQDl8t2CA0f2ZiH21wJvjfHv5mesTQhNSfVuKOe9X9fe6srZSxlpdNKctnIYGxDqwl1H__6bnRyz7GrCmCnd-DvClUK1DZEGFCGeNLfG2IKtAJ301O1hMg9Aec1HU-N7viyqbacVegF/s450/this%20american%20ex-wife.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="298" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwvNno5uMTl_ZjkzVP_K_kJRukRhgYboVwVqoilb8JOl9EWgb0bVQDl8t2CA0f2ZiH21wJvjfHv5mesTQhNSfVuKOe9X9fe6srZSxlpdNKctnIYGxDqwl1H__6bnRyz7GrCmCnd-DvClUK1DZEGFCGeNLfG2IKtAJ301O1hMg9Aec1HU-N7viyqbacVegF/w265-h400/this%20american%20ex-wife.jpeg" width="265" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://lithub.com/what-american-divorces-tell-us-about-american-marriages/">https://lithub.com/what-american-divorces-tell-us-about-american-marriages/<br /></a></span><br /></p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>WHO BUYS ELECTRIC VEHICLES<br /></b><br />Electric vehicle sales hit a new milestone last year, with more than a million sold across the US — and buyers might not be following partisan patterns, new data suggests.<br /><br />The research by the Environmental Defense Fund Action, which acquired the voter and vehicle data from L2, a political firm that analyzes and sells voter registration and consumer records, suggests that <b>despite common perceptions, not all electric vehicle owners are Democrats.<br /></b><br /><b>In nine of the 31 states and DC that register voters by party, for example, more Republicans voters are linked to records of electric vehicles – including insurance and repair records – than Democrats. Republicans, independents and third-party voters associated with electric vehicles also exceed Democrats in 24 of those states.<br /></b><br />This data contradicts the idea that electric vehicles are “only popular with coastal elites and liberals,” said David Kieve, president of the Environmental Defense Fund Action. Recent polling has supported that idea as well.<br /><br />The group’s findings, which still paint an incomplete picture of the market, show that former President <b>Donald Trump won six states where registered Republicans were associated with more than half of the electric vehicles on the roads.<br /></b><br />L2 linked voter registration to commercial records of electric vehicles, including insurance, credit and repair records, which vary in each state and could include multiple voters in the same household — or exclude some voters with electric vehicles due to privacy laws or missing data.<br /><br />The data doesn’t include each voter with an electric vehicle, but it does offer some insight into political attitudes among consumers.<br /><br /><b>Many of the drivers of electric vehicles adoption are unrelated to politics, according to market experts. Before the vehicles become more mainstream, for example, their availability and the proximity to charging infrastructure affects whether consumers buy them.<br /></b><br />Currently, <b>the most widely available electric vehicles options are luxury brands, while mainstream consumers have more limited options.</b> As long as batteries remain costly, automakers are unlikely to sell cheaper models. Additionally, challenges remain with charging infrastructure, and </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="color: #800180;">being able to charge the car at home is a big selling point that tends to limit the market more to consumers in single-family homes.</span><br /></b><br /><b>A 2023 Gallup poll found that while 43% of respondents might consider buying an EV, 41% of respondents would not.</b><br /><br />Among new vehicle shoppers who are not considering an electric vehicle, JD Power’s research has found, “Consistently, the number one reason that [these shoppers] cite is lack of charging station availability,” said Stewart Stropp, executive director of the agency’s EV intelligence. <b>In states like California, the average road miles between public chargers is only nine, while in North Dakota, there can be more than 800 miles between chargers, he said.</b><br /><br />In addition to infrastructure, consumer awareness of electric vehicles also plays a role in adoption, according to Brett Williams, a senior principal advisor for EV programs at the Center for Sustainable Energy.<br /><br />“We’re not finding universally that charging centers sell cars unless EVs are already on the mind of the consumer,” Williams said.<br /><br /><b>Essentially, there is a mix of market factors, such as consumer awareness, infrastructure, incentives and availability, that drive sales. States that have more of those things, such as California, have more consumer interest.</b><br /><br />But evidence suggests other states are catching up.<br /><br /><b>“Some of the markets that had the richest soup of those ingredients got an early start,” </b>Williams said. “We’re also seeing that things are really changing over time… That speaks to the fact that<b> the economic and pollution benefits of electric vehicles don’t obey political boundaries.”<br /></b><br /><i><b>Still, public opinion research suggests interest in electric vehicles has some partisan roots, even if the landscape may be changing.</b></i><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>A 2023 Gallup poll found that 71% of Republicans would not consider buying an electric vehicle, compared with 17% of Democrats. Similarly, a 2023 Pew Research survey found that 70% of Republican or Republican-leaning Americans were unlikely to consider one.</b></i></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />The Environmental Defense Fund Action’s findings also show that, in states where more than 50% of voters linked to electric vehicles were Democrats, just one — Kentucky — went for Trump in 2020. The remainder supported President Joe Biden.<br /><br /><b>Voters associated with electric vehicles aren't all Democrats.<br /></b><br /><b>In some red states, more than half of registered voters linked to electric vehicles are Republicans.</b></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And while the new state-level evidence in the adoption of electric vehicles might show less of a partisan divide, one left-leaning state still has the most in the country. <b>More than one-third of electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles were registered in California</b>, according to data from the US Department of Energy in 2022.<br /><br /><b>Electric vehicles are still concentrated in very few states<br /></b><br />More than one-third of electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle registrations were in California in 2022. Florida had the next highest number, with just over 6% of all EV and PHEVs.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Still, buyers are driven not just by politics but by things like charging station availability, awareness of EVs and incentives like rebates, experts such as Williams and Stropp say.<br /><br />“The more people get behind the wheel of an electric vehicle the happier they are,” Kieve, the EDF Action president said, adding that, while 2023 was the first year that a million units were sold, “It won’t be the last.”<br /><br />Understanding the political leanings of electric vehicle consumers may affect how those policies develop on the national level, especially in an election year when Trump and Biden discuss their plans on the issue.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIkkp63N90EOgpMfcB04R0MSGSHWY4jdJyZBc2hra52R3RXEVGtC8mMgKfGyp7kyhHYGaVO0ypiF-F7DVEbutSKmYe5yZyltLPKFLIqqoJGdPg9ioj3EnScSKR-KDRoes-0J1rp1V0-A2z2PFOjvXqi1w1MSTgZlbZo0xDsKXfMHAK8eMdQm2nSU9gxAGj/s1024/electric%20Nissan-Leaf.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="1024" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIkkp63N90EOgpMfcB04R0MSGSHWY4jdJyZBc2hra52R3RXEVGtC8mMgKfGyp7kyhHYGaVO0ypiF-F7DVEbutSKmYe5yZyltLPKFLIqqoJGdPg9ioj3EnScSKR-KDRoes-0J1rp1V0-A2z2PFOjvXqi1w1MSTgZlbZo0xDsKXfMHAK8eMdQm2nSU9gxAGj/w400-h173/electric%20Nissan-Leaf.jpeg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/21/us/electric-vehicles-republican-voters-dg/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/21/us/electric-vehicles-republican-voters-dg/index.html<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>WHAT MARX GOT RIGHT <br /></b><br />~ “<b>Marx was like a brilliant doctor in the early days of medicine. He could recognize the nature of the disease, although he had no idea how to go about curing it.</b> At this point in history, we should all be Marxists in the sense of agreeing with his diagnosis of our troubles. But we need to go out and find the cures that will really work.<br /><br />ONE: <b>I want to see myself in what I have made<br /></b><br />Our work should — if things go right — be a little better than we manage to be day to day, because it allows us to concentrate and distill the best parts of us. <br /><br />TWO: <b>Money isn't enough<br /></b><br />Marx was aware of a lot of jobs where a person generates money, but can't see their energies 'collected' anywhere. Their intelligence and skills are dissipated. <b>They can't point to something and say: 'I did that, that is me'.</b> It can afflict people doing apparently glamorous jobs — a news reader or a catwalk model. Day to day, it is exciting. But over the years it does not add up to anything. <b>Their efforts do not accumulate. There isn't a long-term objective their work is directed towards. After a number of years they simply stop.<br /></b><br />I<b>t's the reverse of an architect who might labor for five years on a large project — but all the millions of details, which might be annoying or frustrating in themselves, eventually add up to an overall, complete achievement.</b> And everyone who is part of this, participates in the sense of direction and purpose. Their labors are necessary to bring something wonderful into existence. And they know it.<br /><br />THREE: <b>Work should be meaningful<br /></b><br />How does work get to feel 'meaningful'? A lot of what we look for in employment seems to hang on this word. <b>Work becomes meaningful, Marx says, in one of two ways. Either it helps the worker directly to reduce suffering in someone else or else it helps them in a tangible way to increase delight in others.</b> <b>A very few kinds of work, like being a doctor or an opera star seem to fit this bill perfectly.<br /></b><br />But often people leave their jobs and say: I couldn't see the point in working in sales or designing an ad campaign for garden furniture or teaching French to kids who don't want to learn. <b>When work feels meaningless, we suffer — even if the salary is a decent one. Marx thought this painful experience was so important he gave it a special name: alienation.<br /></b><br />Marx is making a first sketch of an answer to how we should reform the economy;<b> we need an economic system that allows more of us to reduce suffering or increase pleasure.</b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"> <b>Deep down we want to feel that we are helping people.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b> We have to feel we are addressing genuine needs — not merely servicing random desires.<br /></b><br />FOUR: Specialization deadens the soul<br /><br /><b>In Marx's eyes, all of us are generalists inside. We were not born to do one thing only. It's merely the economy that — for its own greedy ends — pushes us to sacrifice ourselves to one discipline alone.</b><br /><br />But in our hearts, we are far more multiple, and promiscuous than that: beneath the calm outward façade of the accountant might lie someone pining to have a go at landscape gardening. Many a poet would want to have a go at working in industry for a few years.<br /><br />So in the Communist Utopia, <b>Marx proposed that it would be 'possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner...but without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.' It's a vision of a rounded development, which work frustrates.</b><br /><br />Marx recognizes our multiple potentials. And so do we; sometimes on a Saturday morning, we'll sketch a building or put up something in Lego and wonder, 'I could be an architect'. It can feel pathetic, but Marx dignifies this feeling. There are all kinds of other selves slumbering within us. Specialization might be an economic imperative but it can be a human betrayal.<br /><br />FIVE: Progress should make life easier<br /><br />Why are we all so anxious all the time? Marx had a diagnosis. Because capitalism makes the human being utterly expendable; just one factor among others in the forces of production and one that can ruthlessly be let go the minute that costs rise or savings can be made through technology. There simply is no job security in capitalism. <br /><br />And yet, as Marx knew, deep inside of us, <b>we long for security with an intensity similar to that which we feel in relationships. </b>We don't want to be arbitrarily let go, we are terrified of being abandoned. Marx knows we are expendable; it all depends on cost and need. But he has sympathy for the emotional longings of the worker. <b>Communism — emotionally understood — is a promise that we always have a place in the world's heart, that we will not be cast out. </b>This is deeply poignant.<br /><br />If this were not bad enough, Marx insists that our sufferings are in fact unnecessary. He draws our attention to something very important: we actually now have the resources to make our lives far easier than they are. <b>We have crises in capitalism not because of shortages, but because of abundance; we have too much stuff. </b>And yet rather than this being a cause of celebration, it becomes grounds for agony. Our factories and systems are so efficient, we could give everyone on this planet a car, a house, access to a decent school and hospital. Few of us would need to work. <br /><br />But we don't liberate ourselves. Marx thinks this is absurd, the outcome of some form of pathological masochism. <b>In 1700, it took the labor of almost all adults to feed a nation. Today a developed nation needs hardly anyone to be employed in farming.</b> Making cars needs practically no employees. <b><i>Unemployment is currently dreadful and seen as a terrible ill. But, in Marx's eyes, it is a sign of success: it is the result of our unbelievable productive powers. The job of a hundred people can now be done by one machine. </i></b>And yet rather than draw the positive conclusion from this, we continue to see unemployment as a curse and a failure. Yet, logically, the goal of economics should be to make more and more of us unemployed and to celebrate this fact as progress rather than as failure.<br /><br /><a href="http://thephilosophersmail.com/110314-capitalism-marxism.php">http://thephilosophersmail.com/110314-capitalism-marxism.php<br /></a><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhQux6KgzMoKvt8vIZBfO55jSBanF0uBSuHL1Y-y1OYf2Wu-c9RhcLn2AuzrLfNkKjEmHQ9a8NwZm4al6w_5MoesmszQMSKshVKi7ygOp6b5kDbut8O3jBJqkcAnuvEzKAoNJWsRBG_pcgRMiNBMWaxHndzsJOri-aNaOH9oAsA5gwV5iVvAzz8lf9TH3e/s600/Marx%20green%20London.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="450" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhQux6KgzMoKvt8vIZBfO55jSBanF0uBSuHL1Y-y1OYf2Wu-c9RhcLn2AuzrLfNkKjEmHQ9a8NwZm4al6w_5MoesmszQMSKshVKi7ygOp6b5kDbut8O3jBJqkcAnuvEzKAoNJWsRBG_pcgRMiNBMWaxHndzsJOri-aNaOH9oAsA5gwV5iVvAzz8lf9TH3e/w300-h400/Marx%20green%20London.jpg" width="300" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:<br /><br />It’s interesting how all of this was withheld from us in school. The Marx we were taught in Warsaw was strictly about capitalism as a ruthless exploitation of the workers. I had to discover Marx’s more interesting observations on my own, both through reading and personal experience. <br /><br />Specialization kills the soul? It turned out to hold also for poetry . . . if you read and write a lot of poetry, your skill increases, but your mentality shrinks. The hunger for intelligent prose finally drove me precisely to intelligent prose. The hunger to try out a variety of other activities eventually drove me to try out other activities. Now, the muse of poetry is a very devouring goddess, and it took a lot of internal pressure (including growing boredom with poetry as such) for me to be able to live more fully after the very restricted life of specializing in poetry. <br /><br />And then, not surprisingly, once I had variety rather than specialization, I felt a renewed delight in poetry. <br /><br />What Marx is saying about fulfilling work is especially relevant now, when guaranteed basic income is again being discussed as a viable solution that would permit people to pursue more creative and satisfying activities. <b>I am struck by the statement: “I want to see myself in what I have made.” To see the best of myself, in fact. <br /></b><br />Or perhaps the emphasis should be on socially useful activities — instead of lamenting the “crumbling infrastructure,” imagine finally modernizing, getting the job done! <br /><br />But what a different world that would be — for one thing, a world in which we don’t continue to bomb the Middle East for decades without end . . . </span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWBXcEIiL_KySFa3QTr2xptVR5sXBXMwR2R9V4kd92PgmoT_8fUmLvuwGOHZg7kbPJGP3-ou0-ZcrNnfn8oQQh0vN9_RuWfEkmeFkEA37Wz-7_frO_cQC8LA9o_amcJ7-9gSIUu2GhT8EHIk6nnvNCPzxnf46H2-NG-g0wkgVf6ApaFiMbdpyvGQwh1t3x/s1000/Marx%20face.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWBXcEIiL_KySFa3QTr2xptVR5sXBXMwR2R9V4kd92PgmoT_8fUmLvuwGOHZg7kbPJGP3-ou0-ZcrNnfn8oQQh0vN9_RuWfEkmeFkEA37Wz-7_frO_cQC8LA9o_amcJ7-9gSIUu2GhT8EHIk6nnvNCPzxnf46H2-NG-g0wkgVf6ApaFiMbdpyvGQwh1t3x/w400-h400/Marx%20face.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br />“Be careful what you name your kids, if you don't want them delusional. Donald is a masculine given name derived from the Gaelic name Dòmhnall. This comes from the Proto-Celtic Dumno-ualos ("world-ruler" or "world-wielder"). [Sometimes it is construed to mean “PSYCHOPATH”.]" ~ Edward Margerum </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">"Vladimir" also means World Ruler. Maybe it's better to be less aware of what names mean.<br /><br />Perhaps we are too careless with words in general. Take “psychopath.” After all, we wouldn’t call someone a schizophrenic unless the symptoms (e.g. hearing voices) warranted it. <br /></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br /><b>HOW CONTACT WITH THE NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURES CHANGED THE WORLD<br /></b><br />~ “In their pursuit of silver and gold, newcomers discovered many other riches, including new foods like corn, beans of all kinds, and squash. <b>Aboriginal people introduced Europeans and the rest of the world to whole new families of foods: potatoes, tomatoes, green, yellow, and red peppers, zucchini, peanuts, pecans, pumpkins, artichokes, chocolate, avocados, vanilla, mint, curry, chilies, paprika, cranberries, maple syrup, wild rice, chewing gum, sunflower seeds, papaya, and more.</b> This bounty of food crops were taken to Europe from the Americas and they changed world cuisine forever.<br /><br /><b>With the introduction of the potato and other American crops, the European population exploded</b>. Before Contact all empires in Europe, from Greece and Rome to Persia and Egypt, had based success on their control of grain production. Situated in the warmer southern countries where it was easier to grow grain crops, these empires provided colder northern countries with food. <b>Following the introduction of Aboriginal food crops such as the potato, northern countries such as Germany and Russia rose as world powers because they had gained a food supply independent from these warmer southern countries.<br /></b><br /><b>Other plant-based contributions from the Americas had equally significant economic consequence. Two– cotton and rubber – were essential to the Industrial Revolution. </b>I would even go so far as to say that <b>without the meeting of the two worlds there would have been no Industrial Revolution.</b><br /><br />Thousands of years before Charles Goodyear patented the vulcanization process that made commercial rubber viable, Meso-American peoples used a similar process to transform latex from the native Castilla elastica tree into rubber goods for a variety of uses. Written records of the Spanish conquistadors indicate that these Aboriginal people wore rubber footwear. Archaeologists have found rubber balls, rubber bindings to tie a stone axe head to its wooden handle, molded rubber figurines, and evidence of rubber adhesives.<br /><br />When rubber was first encountered by the newcomers, the Europeans viewed the material as a curiosity but quickly forgot it in their search for gold, silver, tobacco, and other profitable products. With the Industrial Revolution two centuries later, rubber became important for everything from hoses, belts, matting, flooring, footwear, all the way to pencil erasers. Think of all that would not exist if we did not have rubber. </span><br /><br />*<br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Eventually newcomers started rubber plantations in other parts of the world and its use spread, especially with the twentieth-century invention of the automobile and bicycle and their use of rubber tires</b>. Even though the rubber tree is native to South America and experimentation with latex from its sap was developed by Aboriginals before Contact, the reason Charles Goodyear gets credit for the invention of rubber is that in 1844 he registered with the U.S. Patent Office the vulcanization process that makes rubber more durable.<br /><br /><b>Cotton from the Americas also brought important economic change during the Industrial Revolution.</b> The large supply of raw cotton available from the Americas transformed European society. <b>Manufacture of machines for spinning threads and weaving cotton into fabric began an industrialization process in Europe that over time developed factories for other goods that attracted rural workers into urban centers, increased mobility, liberated them from class structures, and improved health and well being. Cotton for clothing improved health around the world because they now had a regular change of clothing.</b><br /><br />In addition, the “dirty Indians” of the Americas showed Europeans the benefits of sweats or bathhouses. The Spanish were horrified when they first arrived to see the Aboriginal people bathing on a regular basis. The Spanish believed that disturbing body oils by washing would allow sickness in, and so they bathed on a very limited basis and wore perfume to cover up the smell of their unwashed bodies.<br /><br />Plants with medicinal effects are other important Aboriginal contributions. When Jacques Cartier and his men reached the shores of the Americas in 1535, they were very sick with scurvy, a sickness developed because of lack of vitamin C. It is well documented that the Aboriginal people knew of this disease and showed Cartier how to cure himself and his men with ascorbic acid (vitamin C) decocted by boiling winter leaves and the bark from the white spruce tree.<br /><br /><b>Without the initial help and the sharing nature of the Aboriginal people, the newcomers would never have survived. </b>Most Europeans had never hunted. English citizens in particular could not go out and kill the King or Queen’s venison. Everything in the kingdom belonged to the Royals, who hunted for sport and not survival. A commoner in Europe caught hunting faced severe punishment. When the newcomers got to the Americas, the Aboriginal skill and accuracy in hunting must have astounded them. <b>Newcomers relied heavily on Aboriginal hunting skills.</b><br /><br />The men at Fort Simpson, a fur trading post established in 1831 by the Hudson’s Bay Company in Tsimshian territory near the mouth of the Nass River in British Columbia, totally depended on food provisions from Aboriginal people in that area. A notation in one of the Fort Simpson journals read: “If the Indians don’t stop celebrating soon we will starve to death.” I am assuming it was potlatch season and the Aboriginal people were otherwise occupied taking care of their own affairs in the business and government matters dealt with through the potlatch ceremony.<br /><br />History books refer or name only a few Aboriginal guides, even though we know we played a major role in helping newcomers safely find their way. One Aboriginal guide is well-known, however: sixteen-year-old Sacagawea, who accompanied Lewis and Clark east to west from May 1804 to September 1806. Sacagawea helped Lewis and Clark find their way, I assume, by communicating with Aboriginals along the way using hand gestures and sign language; she could not have known all the diverse languages she met along the way.<b> Aboriginal peoples speak many different languages and so used a universal sign language to ease trade and communication between nations</b>. In my territory, sign language was a necessary part of our culture and was used extensively during trade with other nations.<br /><br /><b>The newcomers had no names for the new sights they saw in the Americas so used traditional names of the Aboriginal people. Some of these names are moose, caribou, raccoon, opossum, chipmunk, barracuda, cougar, puma, jaguar, skunk, shark, wigwam, parka, poncho, toboggan, canoe, and tomahawk. Even weather descriptions such as hurricane, chinook, and blizzard come from Aboriginal languages.</b><br /><br />It is estimated that the English language now contains about 2,200 words taken directly from the Aboriginal languages of America. The word caucus is an Aboriginal word and, again, did not come into the English language until the newcomers came to the Americas. The word may derive from the Algonquian cawaassough, meaning an advisor, talker, or orator, and was first used in Boston, Massachusetts, in the early part of the eighteenth century. Words such as utopia (1551), anarchism (1640s), socialism (1837), communism (1843), and other social forms entered the English language only after Europeans came to the Americas. <b>The talking stick and the notion that only one person be allowed to talk at once with everyone respectfully listening knowing they too will get a chance to talk comes from the Aboriginal peoples.</b><br /><br />When the Europeans came to the Americas and witnessed the talking stick and the individual freedom it represents, the newcomers began to envision new forms of political life and a more egalitarian way of living. Equal democracy and liberty as we know it today did not originate in European societies. Individual freedom in Europe was unknown because ordinary people were considered subjects of kings, queens, and tsars.<br /><br /><b>In contrast to the European rulers, American Aboriginal people did not “belong” to their leaders.</b> The leaders, in most nations, were many and did not have special privileges despite their responsibilities. <b>Aboriginal chiefs and leaders had to earn their positions by proving their merit and accomplishments to their people. </b>Hereditary chiefs were trained almost from birth to assume their role as leaders of their people. Chiefs were selected for a certain skill such as hunting, warring, dancing, or other skills. The Aboriginal laws made sure everyone had equal opportunity and also had consequences for the ones who did not work as hard or were quarrelsome. <br /><br />Aboriginal governments in the Americas were well established long before the newcomers arrived. The United States of America developed its Constitution based on the Iroquois Confederacy traditions. When the newcomer thirteen colonies were trying to put together a government they did not know how. These people were not royalty from their countries and forming a new government was a challenge.<b> It was Benjamin Franklin and others who studied the Aboriginal governments of the Americas suggested a government like the Iroquois Confederacy. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The end result was that the newcomers took from the Iroquois and came up with their own constitution. Obviously it has been changed over the years but if you look at the U.S. Constitution and the Iroquois Confederacy, it is very similar in many ways. Bill Clinton and George Bush, when they were presidents, thanked the Iroquois for contributing to the formation of the United States Constitution. One has to wonder how many other countries took forms of government from the United States and were indirectly influenced by the Iroquois or other Aboriginal governments. Other political traditions adopted from Aboriginal people are used worldwide today.” ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://lithub.com/there-would-be-no-fourth-of-july-without-the-iroquois-nation/?fbclid=IwAR02kgwXymbpokexp96x1-DGsopj03sVL_pWohjTIWm6bSxNgIMYUbNQjm8">https://lithub.com/there-would-be-no-fourth-of-july-without-the-iroquois-nation/?fbclid=IwAR02kgwXymbpokexp96x1-DGsopj03sVL_pWohjTIWm6bSxNgIMYUbNQjm8<br /></a></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimHnrOY9XPNqSMmt38outDTVHBfGPTP2-9x2UOEGTYcIJP7PMKzWi3B7G1_9sN-67d1t44UXrFQhAfkVkw3F55DqF1wojkA4X1bdOUlm9AgyHFaWfFXI1NJBp832S2Dwh-typsX44yDUvgwizks4TBtYocZi8cWWnfBCi4XhOpNsp9ndi9Z-vvm8FfExJY/s900/iroquois%20chief.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="603" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimHnrOY9XPNqSMmt38outDTVHBfGPTP2-9x2UOEGTYcIJP7PMKzWi3B7G1_9sN-67d1t44UXrFQhAfkVkw3F55DqF1wojkA4X1bdOUlm9AgyHFaWfFXI1NJBp832S2Dwh-typsX44yDUvgwizks4TBtYocZi8cWWnfBCi4XhOpNsp9ndi9Z-vvm8FfExJY/w268-h400/iroquois%20chief.jpg" width="268" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>CONSUMING TOO MUCH PROTEIN BAD FOR CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH<br /></b><br />University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers discovered a molecular mechanism by which excessive dietary protein could increase atherosclerosis risk. The findings were published in Nature Metabolism. <br /><br />The study, which combined small human trials with experiments in mice and cells in a Petri dish, showed that<b> consuming over 22% of dietary calories from protein can lead to increased activation of immune cells that play a role in atherosclerotic plaque formation, driving the disease risk. </b>Furthermore, the scientists showed that <b>one amino</b> <b>acid</b> – <b>leucine</b> – <b>seems to have</b> <b>a disproportionate role in driving the pathological pathways linked to atherosclerosis, or stiff, hardened arteries</b>. <br /><br />“Our study shows that dialing up your protein intake in pursuit of better metabolic health is not a panacea. You could be doing real damage to your arteries,” said senior and co-corresponding author Babak Razani, M.D., Ph.D., professor of cardiology at Pitt. “Our hope is that this research starts a conversation about ways of modifying diets in a precise manner that can influence body function at a molecular level and dampen disease risks.”<br /><br />According to a survey of an average American diet over the last decade, Americans generally consume a lot of protein, mostly from animal sources. Further, </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>nearly a quarter of the population receives over 22% of all daily calories from protein alone.</b></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />That trend is likely driven by the popular idea that dietary protein is essential to healthy living, says Razani. But his and other groups have shown that overreliance on protein may not be such a good thing for long-term health. <br /><br />Following their 2020 research, in which Razani’s laboratory first showed that <b>excess dietary protein increases atherosclerosis risk in mice</b>, his next study in collaboration with Bettina Mittendorfer, Ph.D., a metabolism expert at the University of Missouri, Columbia, delved deeper into the potential mechanism and its relevance to the human body. <br /><br />To arrive at the answer, Razani’s laboratory, led by first-authors Xiangyu Zhang, Ph.D., and Divya Kapoor, M.D., teamed up with Mittendorfer’s group to combine their expertise in cellular biology and metabolism and perform a series of experiments across various models – from cells to mice to humans.<br /><br />“We have shown in our mechanistic studies that amino acids, which are really the building blocks of the protein, can trigger disease through specific signaling mechanisms and then also alter the metabolism of these cells,” Mittendorfer said. “For instance, small immune cells in the vasculature called macrophages can trigger the development of atherosclerosis.”<br /><br />Based on initial experiments in healthy human subjects to determine the timeline of immune cell activation following ingestion of protein-enriched meals, the researchers simulated similar conditions in mice and in human macrophages, immune cells that are shown to be particularly sensitive to amino acids derived from protein.<br /><br />Their work showed that <b>consuming more than 22% of daily dietary calories through protein can negatively affect macrophages that are responsible for clearing out cellular debris, leading to the accumulation of a “graveyard” of those cells inside the vessel walls and worsening of atherosclerotic plaques overtime. </b>Interestingly, the analysis of circulating amino acids showed that <b>leucine – an amino acid enriched in animal-derived foods like beef, eggs and milk – is primarily responsible for abnormal macrophage activation and atherosclerosis risk, suggesting a potential avenue for further research on personalized diet modification, or “precision nutrition.”</b><br /><br />Razani is careful to note that many questions remain to be answered, mainly: What happens when a person consumes between 15% of daily calories from protein as recommended by the USDA and 22% of daily calories from protein, and <b>if there is a ‘sweet spot’ for maximizing the benefits of protein – such as muscle gain – while avoiding kick-starting a molecular cascade of damaging events leading to cardiovascular disease.</b><br /></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT_Z5QdWHcHYL4xHn7hu4Q8v3xi_LP1IBlMgCQDiJCkmnLbhm-wNaY3MajM2wyKZr9USiw8BaujfFhwnn4CgDJIxU2-8GpgQ8x2UebOjGOdT7hOsh2rJrMN_mGGrcEbqFcCECHk_coR0CrZZXuymbnnCy46gQ_0tFTYA0BbIpusDHtDNIYQii7WIpzjWlU/s204/foods%20rich%20in%20leucine.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="204" data-original-width="162" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT_Z5QdWHcHYL4xHn7hu4Q8v3xi_LP1IBlMgCQDiJCkmnLbhm-wNaY3MajM2wyKZr9USiw8BaujfFhwnn4CgDJIxU2-8GpgQ8x2UebOjGOdT7hOsh2rJrMN_mGGrcEbqFcCECHk_coR0CrZZXuymbnnCy46gQ_0tFTYA0BbIpusDHtDNIYQii7WIpzjWlU/w318-h400/foods%20rich%20in%20leucine.jpg" width="318" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The findings are particularly relevant in hospital settings, where nutritionists often recommend protein-rich foods for the sickest patients to preserve muscle mass and strength. <br /><br />“Perhaps blindly increasing protein load is wrong,” Razani said. “Instead, it’s important to look at the diet as a whole and suggest balanced meals that won’t inadvertently exacerbate cardiovascular conditions, especially in people at risk of heart disease and vessel disorders.”<br /><br />Razani also notes that these findings suggest differences in leucine levels between diets enriched in plant and animal protein might explain the differences in their effect on cardiovascular and metabolic health. “The potential for this type of mechanistic research to inform future dietary guidelines is quite exciting,” he said. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.upmc.com/media/news/021924-too-much-protein">https://www.upmc.com/media/news/021924-too-much-protein</a></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;">"</span><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en" style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><span class="hgKElc">High leucine foods include chicken, beef, pork, fish (tuna), tofu, canned beans, lentils, milk, cheese, squash seeds, and eggs."</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <span style="color: #351c75;">Please note: leucine is not harmful except in excess. It's best not to take leucine supplements.</span><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br /><b>WHITE HOUSE POST-MORTEM: WHAT REALLY KILLED 5 PRESIDENTS?<br /></b><br /><i><b>George Washington: Was He Bled to Death?</b><br /></i><br />The father of the nation was supposed to live forever, or at least die a noble death in his sleep at a ripe old age. Instead, George Washington died at his Mount Vernon home within 24 hours of falling ill, apparently of suffocation. <b>He was just 67 years old, only 3 years out of office, and his demise deeply shocked the nation.<br /></b><br /><b>Washington's symptoms included shortness of breath, a sore throat, and fever.</b> The treatments, typical for the time, were excruciating. Aiming to restore the balance of "humors" in his body, physicians repeatedly drained his blood, applied a blistering substance to his throat and other body parts, and gave him an enema. But Washington wasn't optimistic.<br /><br />"Doctor, I die hard; but I am not afraid to go," he said. "I believed from my first attack that I should not survive it; my breath cannot last long." It didn’t.<br /><br />According to a 2014 PBS article by Howard Markel, MD, PhD, of the University of Michigan, retrospective diagnoses include croup (swelling in the airways), quinsy (an abscess between a tonsil and the throat), Ludwig's angina and Vincent's angina (infections in the throat not chest pain), diphtheria, and pneumonia. Washington's doctors have also been blamed for reportedly bleeding him of some 40% of his blood volume.<br /><br />That certainly didn't help, Markel writes. But he believes Washington's cause of death on Dec. 14, 1799 was something else -- acute bacterial epiglottitis, the swelling of a flap of tissue that keeps food from going into the windpipe.<br /><br />That certainly didn't help, Markel writes. But he believes Washington's cause of death on Dec. 14, 1799 was something else -- <b>acute bacterial epiglottitis, the swelling of a flap of tissue that keeps food from going into the windpipe</b>.<br /><br />Medical historian Philip A. Mackowiak, MD, MBA, of the University of Maryland, told MedPage Today that this diagnosis makes sense, although <b>a staphylococcal retropharyngeal abscess – an infection deep in the neck — is another possibility. Today, as then, the proper treatment would be to lance the swollen tissue, Mackowiak said. However, "his physicians apparently never examined his throat to see if there was swelling there.”</b><br /><br />Mackowiak, who wrote a 2021 report about Washington's death, doubts that blood loss killed him. It's unlikely that 40% of Washington's blood was drained since he didn't show lightheadedness when he was helped to a chair, he said.<br /><br />According to Mackowiak, Washington's death reveals the age-old importance of the clinical examination. "Even 2,500 years ago, an astute physician with a patient with an illness similar to George Washington's would have had the wisdom to look in the back of his throat to make sure that there wasn't something back there obstructing his upper airway.”</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipCbMhIqTv9X-_cozkFij2Co3VSvjbWvpe6D2TB7hvQ8_CGzZU9zvnvoA4rD0SUSKlU376S9_7KN1nTM2sdDmHsgGS48s5cFLFEn9DnvrrrTtpKr9Sirba9q7rh9YkpRDGW4Shyphenhyphenp5qa6pNDoYs1fuh63ZdyYwy7d1v9Li9qMIyBcqI5AHHmkYIlSwcGiSr/s1280/George%20Washington%20deathbed.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipCbMhIqTv9X-_cozkFij2Co3VSvjbWvpe6D2TB7hvQ8_CGzZU9zvnvoA4rD0SUSKlU376S9_7KN1nTM2sdDmHsgGS48s5cFLFEn9DnvrrrTtpKr9Sirba9q7rh9YkpRDGW4Shyphenhyphenp5qa6pNDoYs1fuh63ZdyYwy7d1v9Li9qMIyBcqI5AHHmkYIlSwcGiSr/w400-h225/George%20Washington%20deathbed.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>George Washington on his deathbed<br /></i></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>William Henry Harrison: Out in the Cold</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Inauguration Day in Washington D.C. on March 4, 1841, was windy and a bit chilly with temperatures in the 40s, but t<b>he new president didn't bother to wear an overcoat or even a hat or gloves. Within a month, war hero William Henry Harrison was dead at the age of 68, and generations of history buffs have known exactly whom to blame: Harrison himself.</b> If only he'd bundled up and not gotten pneumonia!<br /><br /><b>Mackowiak suspects that Harrison actually died of typhoid fever</b> – an intestinal infection caused by contaminated food or water — making him a victim of pestilence instead of carelessness.</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">As Mackowiak wrote in a 2014 report about Harrison's death, the president became ill 3 weeks after his inauguration with fatigue, anxiety, a severe chill, constipation, and cough. The initial treatment included multiple laxatives and the emetic antimony potassium tartrate, which is still used today to cause vomiting.<br /><br />Then came enemas, more laxatives, mustard plasters, even more laxatives, a blistering agent, calomel, and laudanum (opium) ... and even more laxatives. Some of Harrison's treatments, such as camphor and senna, are still used today.<br /><br /><b>At last, the president died on April 3, 1841, after days of agony.<br /></b><br />Mackowiak believes that Harrison's symptoms, including his respiratory illness, fit enteric fever and death from septic shock. The president, he thinks, was likely at risk because the White House's water supply was 7 blocks below a repository for "night soil" – sewage hauled from local homes and businesses.<br /><br />Harrison's doctors followed the standards of the time, Mackowiak said, although the mixture of drugs – including opium, which can be constipating — didn't make sense.<br /><br />Today, Mackowiak said, it's possible that Harrison could have been cured, although it's not clear how robust his health was. As for lessons, the case points to the dangers of prescribing too many drugs. "We don't use many of these drugs anymore, but we use equally toxic drugs. They should always be used with discretion.”<br /><br />Mackowiak quoted 19th-century American physician Oliver Wendell Holmes, MD: "I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica [medications] as now used could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind -- and all the worse for the fishes.”<br /><br /><b>Zachary Taylor: No Jubilee From These Cherries<br /></b><br />It was Independence Day in 1850, and Washington D.C. was its usual miserable summer self. <b>President Zachary Taylor ate fresh cherries and iced milk, and then he felt sick with cramps and diarrhea.</b> Physicians turned to the usual suspects —</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> laxatives, bloodletting, blistering – but Taylor died 5 days later at the age of 65. He saw it coming: "I should not be surprised if this were to terminate in my death."</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Almost exactly 141 years later, in 1991, Taylor's body was exhumed from a Louisville cemetery to test a theory that he'd been poisoned by arsenic. Testing revealed no sign of unusual levels of arsenic in Taylor's body, which was recognizable by his protruding eyebrows. <br /><br />The generally accepted theory is that Taylor died of gastroenteritis instead of a plot by Southerners to knock him off to preserve slavery.<br /><br />San Francisco cardiologist John G. Sotos, MD, who manages a presidential medical history website, told MedPage Today that Taylor's cause of death is especially difficult to retrospectively diagnose because there's little information about his illness. Still, it's likely that he would have been successfully treated today with antibiotics, and any intestinal perforation could be repaired, Sotos said.<br /><br /><b>James Garfield: A Doctor Named Doctor Gets the Blame</b><br /><br />President James Garfield endured the most agonizing, drawn-out, horrific death of any president: <b>He lived for more than 2 months in the summer of 1881 after being shot in Washington D.C. in the arm and abdomen by a deranged office-seeker</b> on July 2. His assassin is the ultimate culprit – never mind that the killer blamed Garfield's doctors — but historians have long blamed medical misadventure for his demise.<br /><br /><b>Garfield's physicians dug around his wound with unwashed fingers.</b> A stubborn surgeon named Doctor Willard Bliss missed the true location of the bullet in the abdomen. An attempt to use a new-fangled x-ray machine only turned up static, possibly because metal bed springs were causing interference. Garfield, fed rectally, fell from 210 to 130 pounds and died on Sept. 18, 1881, at the age of just 49.<br /><br />In an interview, Jeffrey S. Reznick, PhD, senior historian with the National Library of Medicine, said "at the time, American doctors did not believe in germs because they did not accept the theory of germs embraced by the British surgeon Joseph Lister beginning in the early 1860s. <b>American doctors of the period subscribed to the miasma theory, the belief that bad air caused disease and illness.</b>” <br /><br />Even so, Reznick said, the "the arrogance and ambition of Dr. Bliss did not allow any second opinions. The autopsy confirmed what Bliss publicly and adamantly denied, that the bullet was on the left side of the president's body.”<br /><br />So did the doctors screw up? In a 2013 report, surgeons Theodore N. Pappas, MD, of Duke University, and Shahrzad Joharifard, MD, MPH, of BC Children's Hospital in Canada, mainly let the physicians off the hook. While the apparent cause of death was "a late rupture of a traumatic splenic artery pseudoaneurysm" (an injured blood vessel), they think <b>a gallbladder abscess "was the most logical source of the President's sepsis, which was, in turn, the cause of Garfield's unrelenting downhill course.”</b><br /><br /><b>Warren Harding: The Heart of the Matter<br /></b><br />The New York Times blared the news in a front-page headline on August 3, 1923: "President Harding Dies Suddenly/Stroke of Apoplexy at 7:30 P.M./Calvin Coolidge Is President."<br /><b>Harding succumbed to something – a stroke, perhaps, or heart failure, or poisoning – the night before at a hotel in San Francisco while touring the West Coast.<br /></b><br />The president certainly had enough energy to enjoy during his term in the White House. (You don't want to know what he called his penis in erotic love letters.) But, as medical historian Markel noted in a 2015 PBS report, the president "was never a well man.”<br /><br />He suffered from "neurasthenia," a vague term for general nervousness, and symptoms of congestive heart disease, Markel wrote.<br /><br />In an interview, Duke University surgeon Pappas, who wrote a 2020 report about Harding's death, said <b>uncontrolled hypertension and atherosclerosis likely contributed to his heart disease.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">His symptoms worsened in 1923, Pappas said, as Harding developed angina and suffered from the stress of a gallbladder attack. <b>"He clearly had some heart damage because he could not sleep flat in bed without getting short of breath. He slept on several pillows.”<br /></b><br />As to the cause of death, "the only question was whether he had a stroke as he died," Pappas said. "A stroke was not likely. It is much more likely that his terminal event was a heart arrhythmia, which is very common when individuals have damage to their heart due to blocked arteries to the heart.”<br /><br />Pappas added that there was no sign of poisoning, although no autopsy was performed.<br />"This was a time when we did not have antibiotics to treat the gallbladder attack and no heart surgery, strong heart medications, or blood pressure control," he said. "Today he would have been on antihypertensive meds. He would have gotten a cardiac catheterization at the first sign of chest pain and would have had stents put in his coronary arteries if necessary. If stents were not possible, he might have had heart surgery to do a bypass of the blocked blood vessels. He would have received antibiotics for his gallbladder and likely have his gallbladder removed if his heart improved.”<br /><br />Instead, Harding died at the age of 57. Only 2 presidents who weren't assassinated failed to live as long -- James Polk, who died at 53, apparently of cholera, and Chester Arthur, who died at 57 of Bright's disease, a kidney ailment. In contrast, the president who's lived the longest – Jimmy Carter – turned 99 last October.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/features/108756?">https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/features/108756?</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>CAN ORGAN TRANSPLANTS CHANGE PERSONALITY?<br /></b><br />I have received some unusual phone calls in my nearly 40-year career as a psychiatrist, but Mary's* call was unique.<br /><br />"Dr. Liester," she began, "I don't need to see you as a patient. I just want you to tell me if I'm crazy. You see, I'm having memories of things that have never happened to me.”<br /><br />That piqued my interest, so we agreed to meet for an appointment.<br /><br />Mary was a pleasant, intelligent woman in her mid-40s who exhibited no signs of psychosis. In fact, she seemed quite rational and easy to engage in conversation. She began explaining why she had called: for the last year, <b>Mary had been experiencing recurrent, intrusive memories of being hit by a car. In these "memories," she was a pedestrian and she not only saw herself being struck by the car, but she felt the impact as the car struck her torso, sending her airborne. </b><br /><br />The problem was, Mary had never been hit by a car. When asked about any trauma, Mary recounted <b>she had undergone heart transplant surgery just prior to the onset of these new memories.</b> Her transplant surgery had gone well, but she was left wondering, "Could my new heart have anything to do with these new memories?”<br /><br />Mary then divulged that she had recently learned the identity of her donor's family. They lived in Seattle, and she was planning to visit them in the next week. We ended the appointment with me reassuring Mary that she was not crazy and asking her if she would meet once more after she returned from her trip. She agreed.<br /><br />When Mary returned, she described what she had learned on her trip. Her donor was a pre-adolescent boy who was playing tag with friends when he ran between two houses, then into an alley where he did not see an approaching car. <b>He was struck by the car in the torso in the same location where Mary had been experiencing the sensation of having been hit</b>. The boy was declared brain dead, but his heart was not damaged, so his parents donated his heart. Mary's reaction to learning this information was a sense of relief and closure. She now knew she was not "crazy." But I was left wondering, do organ transplants cause personality changes?<br /><br /><b>Relevant Research</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">One of the earliest patient accounts describing personality changes following organ transplantation is found in Claire Sylvia's book, A Change of Heart, published in 1997, and it wasn't until the 1990s that researchers began investigating this phenomenon.<br /><br />In one early study in this area, neuropsychologist Paul Pearsall, PhD, investigated changes in the personality of 10 heart transplant recipients to see if they paralleled the personality of their donors. In each case he interviewed the heart transplant recipient, a member of their donor's family, and a member of the recipient's family. <b>He found two to five similarities in each case between changes in the recipient's personality post-transplant and the donor's personality. These included changes in preference for food, music, art, sex, recreation, and career.</b><br /><br />He also found specific instances in which the recipients were able to identify the names of their donors or had sensory experiences related to their donors. <b>In another study, described in his 1998 book, The Heart's Code, Pearsall reported that recipients of kidney, liver, and other organs also described changes post-transplant including their sense of smell, food preferences, and emotions, but these changes were usually transitory and not as robust as the changes found in heart transplant recipients.</b><br /><br />More recently, we conducted a study on this topic at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and found <b>89% of organ recipients (of any organ) reported changes in their personality following their transplant surgery.<br /></b><br />These findings raise the question, what causes these personality changes? Numerous hypotheses have been proposed, including the effects of immunosuppressive drugs, the trauma of undergoing transplant surgery, and surreptitious acquisition of information about the donor from outside sources. Pearsall suggested another possibility: he hypothesized <b>cellular memory might be responsible.<br /></b><br /><b>Where Are Memories Stored?<br /></b><br />In 1894, Spanish neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal suggested memories are stored in the brain. He believed this storage occurs by restructuring synapses, the connections between neurons. More than half a century later neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, MD, found evidence to confirm this. The theory that memories are stored in the synapses of the brain persists to this day.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But memories stored in the brain would not likely account for the personality changes observed following organ transplants. <b>Could a different type of memory explain these changes?</b><br /><br /><b>Several types of non-neurologic cellular memory exist</b>. For example, the immune system remembers exposure to infectious pathogens and responds quicker if re-exposure occurs. This is known as i<b>mmunological memory</b>.<br /><br /><b>Another form of cellular memory involves DNA. The DNA in our cells is capable of storing enormous amounts of information. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Almost all cells of the body are known to secrete DNA-containing packages known as exosomes that circulate throughout the body and deliver their contents to other cells where they are then incorporated into the recipient cell's DNA. <b>Is it possible that donor organs secrete exosomes that deliver DNA to the organ recipient's cells, thus transferring DNA-encoded memory about the donor?</b><br /><br /><b>Epigenetic memory</b> is another type of cellular memory. Epigenetics is the study of factors that turn genes on or off without altering the DNA sequence. Numerous types of epigenetic changes occur in human cells, and these changes create an epigenetic code that is stored and retrieved over time.<br /><br /><b>The totality of an individual's epigenetic changes at any point in time is referred to as the epigenome.</b> The epigenome, which can be viewed as a record of the interactions between an individual and the environment, persists as a form of cellular memory known as <b>epigenetic memory.</b> Just as DNA memory can be transferred between cells via exosomes, epigenetic changes associated with DNA can also be exchanged between cells, suggesting a possible means of transferring information between organ donor and recipient cells.<br /><br /><b>RNA memory </b>could also be at play. <b>Researchers at UCLA used the sea slug Aplysia to demonstrate the transfer of memory between individuals. </b>These animals were exposed to repeated electrical shocks to their tails, which established a memory of the shock. RNA was then removed from the trained animals and injected into naïve animals, who responded as if they had been trained to respond to the electrical shock. This demonstrated that memory can be transferred via RNA, raising the possibility that organ donors' memories might be transferred to recipients via RNA-containing exosomes.<br /><br />Another potential method for transferring memory involves proteins. Over two decades ago, Sandra Peña de Ortiz and Yuri Arshavsky hypothesized that novel proteins could encode long-term memories. <b>Exosomes are known to transfer proteins between cells, suggesting memories stored in such proteins could be exchanged between a donated organ and a recipient.<br /></b><br /><b>Ramifications</b><br /><br />For now, the jury is out on these theories, and much more research is needed. But <b>if memories and personality traits can be exchanged via organ transplantation, this suggests multiple potential consequences of organ transplant surgery. Not only could the transfer of an organ affect the recipient's identity and personality, but relationships and surgical outcomes might be influenced as well. </b>For example, my patient Mary wanted to stop taking her immunosuppressive medications because she believed she had "integrated" her new heart and therefore would not reject it if she stopped taking her medicines. Such a decision could have dire consequences, including rejection of the donated organ and death.<br /><br />Further studies exploring personality changes following organ transplants may teach us not only about the types of personality changes that can occur, but also increase our understanding of different aspects of personality and various processes involved in the storage and retrieval of memories. <b>Although anecdotes do not prove personality changes occur as a result of organ transplantation, they do suggest the possibility of such changes</b>, and provide a starting point for further explorations into this fascinating area of medical science. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/">https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Mary:<br /><br />I have read stories about memories and personality changes in organ transplant recipients...it's been around as long as transplants themselves. I think the explanation is probably a physical one: that cells, proteins, DNA or RNA can be repositories of memory. All need not be isolated in the brain alone, in the same way we are learning about the importance of the gut biome, or what we call muscle memory, when an action is so well known and so integrated it almost becomes automatic, without thought. Memories, especially physical memories, might be held elsewhere, or everywhere in the cells of the body, not just in the activities of neurons and their synapses. This is an exciting area for research.<br /><br />Sometimes I wish we lived in less interesting times.<br /><br />Oriana:<br /><br />All I can do is nod my head. <br /><br />As for interesting times, who knows, maybe already the Paleolithic hunters-gatherers thought they were living in interesting times. As inventions go, can anything really compete with the wheel? </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Personality supposedly changes, sometimes in a dramatic and beneficial way, also when one survives being struck by lightning. But then personality changes regardless . . . <br /><br />*<br /><i><b>ending on beauty:</b></i><br /><br />DUST OF SNOW<br /><br />The way a crow<br />Shook down on me<br />The dust of snow<br />From a hemlock tree<br /><br />Has given my heart<br />A change of mood<br />And saved some part<br />Of a day I had rued.<br /><br />~ Robert Frost <br /> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGqdEBdD1umeAjpBznQrBn2169ckUJNyMYQNrUw-Hr_EUiXTNLLwe_RLtIIAyc83eApmE64JYumuJ7v3ar89dcbRJ2gnbsNa6FCzfa5IH24uvA8ltXuGcZWfQhPyN0fJhAKfmNN9uKBxrnjaqb5w6RgLHtX6c0zx_3tlr-tp7q-tmQPtvz0LrAnjrg59oA/s1800/winter%20forest%20light.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1196" data-original-width="1800" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGqdEBdD1umeAjpBznQrBn2169ckUJNyMYQNrUw-Hr_EUiXTNLLwe_RLtIIAyc83eApmE64JYumuJ7v3ar89dcbRJ2gnbsNa6FCzfa5IH24uvA8ltXuGcZWfQhPyN0fJhAKfmNN9uKBxrnjaqb5w6RgLHtX6c0zx_3tlr-tp7q-tmQPtvz0LrAnjrg59oA/w400-h266/winter%20forest%20light.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-26348284389928260512024-02-17T21:27:00.000-08:002024-03-06T21:50:05.910-08:00DID JESUS EXIST? ZONE OF INTEREST (MOVIE); NO EVIDENCE OF ALIENS; THE ARCTIC PRISON WHERE NAVALNY DIED; RUSSIA AS TERRORIST DYSTOPIA; VIRAL INFECTIONS INCREASE ALZHEIMER’S RISK; A SYNTHETIC ANTIBIOTIC AGAINST DRUG-RESISTANT BACTERIA<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfVLXwkrmMoHw-GRquNSA9fOb3a3qDXeg_yWYR5Lfmwk__MVVNJwAABt3ru_vzAysUfQW3Px6LGGlg5lpq4k4ASuKn3hqObWbguOSA0bk1Uu5iLcNz2IJFgrx6nhYOFnorX1BsjoqgUR0Rt4u7GMg-A6yWZUY-1rYnTTDiN0taekWmOUN3HO75DORro11O/s900/tulip%20many%20colors.jpg" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="658" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfVLXwkrmMoHw-GRquNSA9fOb3a3qDXeg_yWYR5Lfmwk__MVVNJwAABt3ru_vzAysUfQW3Px6LGGlg5lpq4k4ASuKn3hqObWbguOSA0bk1Uu5iLcNz2IJFgrx6nhYOFnorX1BsjoqgUR0Rt4u7GMg-A6yWZUY-1rYnTTDiN0taekWmOUN3HO75DORro11O/w293-h400/tulip%20many%20colors.jpg" width="293" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Beauty will save the world. ~ Dostoyevski, The Idiot </i></span><i><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">"Tulip with Butterfly and Cockchafer."</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Barbara Regina Dietzsch, German (1706-1783). </span></div></div></span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />A PARADISE OF FLOWERS <br />(rudolf hoess, commandant of Auschwitz, to his sister)<br /><br />My dear little sister, In answer to your question:<br />Gypsies are my favorite prisoners.<br />When I visit their family camp, they run out <br />and play their fiddles. this very afternoon<br /><br />a barefoot little girl danced the czardas for me,<br />then held out her hand to beg for bread.<br />That tiny hand: first shyly curled,<br />then opening, then curling back . . . <br /><br />You know Gypsies, they are optimists.<br />The Jews are fatalists and capitalists.<br />The camp’s black market is in Jewish hands. <br />Jehovah’s Witnesses — our “Bible Worms” —<br /><br />think it is right that the Jews should suffer <br />since they are “stiff-necked” and will not convert, <br />delaying the Second Coming. <br />Jehovah’s Witnesses are our best workers.<br /><br />The Russians sing; the Slovaks curse. Most <br />trouble are the Poles; they want to die with honor.<br />I promised Lotte I’d build a little park;<br />I’m always trying to improve the camp.<br /><br />How many times have I warned my superiors<br />about the chimney cracks from furnace overload<br />in certain special installations here —<br />Still, we’re advanced compared to Treblinka —<br /><br />we are the most advanced of all the camps.<br />Hygiene and order, under my command . . . <br />Not to mention we have a soccer field.<br />Our concert hall stands ready for its first <br /><br />Beethoven performance. Alas, my subordinates <br />are mostly inartistic; Palitzsch, with his whip <br />and greasy face, again reported late — <br />the swine must have gotten drunk again.<br /><br />The dog handlers play with their dogs<br />or chat with prisoners, against regulations.<br />The commander in charge of the dogs —<br />two hundred fifty thoroughbreds — <br /><br />threatens to resign if the leaking roofs<br />in the kennels are not repaired immediately.<br />We’ve lost another careless guard<br />who brushed against the electric wire.<br /><br />You ask if I like my work. Dear sister,<br />one does not ask that of an officer. I serve.<br />I sacrifice for the Fatherland, or else the Jews<br />will be a threat to Germany forever.<br /><br />The children are very fond of our house inmates.<br />They pester me for cigarettes to give to them — <br />even little Evi, who waves to her “uncles”<br />as she splashes in the wading pool.<br /><br />The Polish name of the charming little town,<br />centuries old, means “a holy place.” <br />We boat on the river, pick mushrooms, <br />walk in the birch woods full of deer. <br /><br />Imagine, from the camp on a clear day, <br />we can see the Carpathians hanging in the sky.<br />The inmates stare as at a vision — but then<br />each blade of grass, a dandelion even,<br /><br />is religion to them. Which brings me <br />to your question, “What about God in Auschwitz?”<br />We have clergy here; some nights I have heard <br />communal prayers, more fervent, I dare say,<br /><br />than in any church. Sundays I take the children <br />to visit the kennels and the stables. <br />Lotte says she could live here all her life. <br />Our garden is a paradise of flowers. <br /><br />Heil Hitler! Your loving brother, Rudi</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />~ Oriana</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQGYiFexYYhkxxyEsSC8OpCyhKXnbbc1lSVgAhnvGpu6yETjOSNwfCRsSQE5UbZns3pPRm3pbN9jAx8UtuVrUqNqtJYld4nAKVbLbZ9qwewgbn5-lRhUD8WfZbyyn4KRZD9FBF-3HZ2vSEisKbJoEZcr2M3gM3AWVOPZNJJ-XmLw1DUC6B3E7FRhrVhfV5/s251/yellow%20dahlia.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="251" data-original-width="201" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQGYiFexYYhkxxyEsSC8OpCyhKXnbbc1lSVgAhnvGpu6yETjOSNwfCRsSQE5UbZns3pPRm3pbN9jAx8UtuVrUqNqtJYld4nAKVbLbZ9qwewgbn5-lRhUD8WfZbyyn4KRZD9FBF-3HZ2vSEisKbJoEZcr2M3gM3AWVOPZNJJ-XmLw1DUC6B3E7FRhrVhfV5/w320-h400/yellow%20dahlia.jpg" width="320" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>THE LETTERS OF SEAMUS HEANEY<br /></b><br />. . . In “The Impact of Translation” (included in The Government of the Tongue), Heaney recalls Stephen Dedalus’s quip, in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist, that “the shortest way to Tara was via Holyhead” (implying that<b> only from abroad could Ireland really be understood</b>), and adds that perhaps “the shortest way to Whitby”—for whose abbey Caedmon worked—“is via Warsaw and Prague.” <br /><br /><b>Miłosz and Holub were crucially important to him poetically</b>, although he did not translate either. His letters to Miłosz have, as Reid says, an “almost filial” affection; writing in 2002 to Fr. John Breslin, a Jesuit English teacher, Heaney comments, <b>“I suppose I read him [Miłosz] as a kind of spiritual director, really.” </b>His Eastern European translations are from lesser-known poets: Ana Blandiana and Marin Sorescu are Romanian, Ozev Kalda from Wallachia (now the Czech Republic). <b>Heaney’s choices suggest a wish to show solidarity with artists who had suffered under political censorship and persecution.<br /></b><br />The letters provide evidence of Heaney’s feelings about his own work, complementing the interviews in Stepping Stones. His early pseudonym, “Incertus” [Latin for "uncertain"], for poems published in a student magazine, points to a diffidence that never quite left him; even after winning the Nobel Prize, he was always extravagantly grateful for any praise from fellow poets and other friends. He writes to Karl Miller that Field Work (1979) is not “as tight and obsessive” as North, but “I like to think there’s more of my personality relaxing in it.” He admits to Helen Vendler that “there was something doughy and dutiful” about the sequence “Station Island” in the book of the same name (1984). (Vendler, who became a friend, published a monograph on him in 1998.) <br /><br />In 2012, responding to inquiries from David-Antoine Williams about his linguistic and etymological interests, Heaney identified <b>Wintering Out (1972) as “the collection where language and its historical/political charge come into focus,” adding that since Field Work “the language . . . was wanting to be more like clear glass than stained glass.” </b><br /><br />He was commendably determined not to stand still artistically, even if the element of experimentation didn’t always come off. In 1989, Craig Raine admitted to reservations about the relaxed manner of the sequence of forty-eight poems called “Squarings,” in a draft version of Seeing Things (1991), but added that he had eventually been won over. In his reply, Heaney expressed relief at this, acknowledging “vague intimations of a book more generously loosened out, with <b>more draperies of meditative, discursive things—and a more spacious patchwork of the bits.” </b>Both Vendler and Foster read “Squarings” in a positive light, as a visionary meditation on the process of creativity itself. Such an undertaking risks losing touch with the concrete, <b>drifting too far into abstraction, a fault Heaney doesn’t always avoid.<br /></b><br />*<br />Heaney’s later years were clouded by anxieties. In 2006, he had a minor stroke; in 2007 his wife, Marie, was treated (successfully) for breast cancer; in 2009 he turned seventy and had to endure “the passage of the media juggernaut” in celebrations that made him feel “plundered”; in 2010 and 2011 he suffered severe depression, which he overcame with the help of medication, but in the latter year he again had a small stroke. Inevitably, his thoughts turned to mortality. Two months after the first stroke, he wrote to Jane Miller that, <b>although he had abandoned Catholicism, its “structured reading [of] the mortal condition” had never quite left him and emerged in the many poems he wrote about ghosts and the underworld (“I’ve always had a weakness for the elegiac”). </b><br /><br />This is evident not only in his original work—preeminently “Station Island” but also the late “Route 110” from his last collection, The Human Chain (2010)—but in his translations of Book VI of the Aeneid, the first three cantos of Dante’s Inferno, and the poem “Testimony: What Passed at Colonus,” from Sophocles. To Michael Alexander <b>he reflected that, at seventy-two, he must be about the age Beowulf was when he fought the dragon.</b> <br /><br />The final pages of Reid’s collection have a wistful, tender note, and in view of the anecdote with which I began this review I am glad to be able to record that in December 2012 Heaney took the trouble to write to a seventeen-year-old schoolboy fan, Dean Browne, thanking him for his letter of appreciation. Browne is now a published poet in his own right.<br /><br />On August 30, 2013, Heaney sent a text message to Marie from the hospital on his way to an operation for a ruptured artery. It read <b>Noli timere, “Don’t be afraid.” </b>He died before the surgery could be performed. Two weeks earlier he had written his last poem, “In Time,” dedicated to his granddaughter Síofra. <br /><br />Foster tells us that, at the All-Ireland Gaelic football semifinal held shortly after Heaney’s death, “eighty thousand people stood and applauded for two minutes in homage.” One cannot imagine a comparable event occurring at Wembley Stadium after the death of an English poet. Whatever Heaney believed, or did not believe, about life after death, <b>through his work he has assuredly had, and will continue to have, an unassailable afterlife.</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPyWTRDpQ_x0omYXskXV6pD5IR01i_OqDP20d7corSa_bfXSQdF_NkDqoGhC8cE64w8ZyhK6UfL0w6dl6wSxkE69qmdWRrqweGUHarsPiqRAjbfRpaKm3BLM1juNoyXpIeUrIJrl31plu2-4xWT_81Sk0x7ymT7udaU6l8KDVSyH-qPZMRTy3iWRhuIPnc/s400/Seamus%20Heaney%201995.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="400" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPyWTRDpQ_x0omYXskXV6pD5IR01i_OqDP20d7corSa_bfXSQdF_NkDqoGhC8cE64w8ZyhK6UfL0w6dl6wSxkE69qmdWRrqweGUHarsPiqRAjbfRpaKm3BLM1juNoyXpIeUrIJrl31plu2-4xWT_81Sk0x7ymT7udaU6l8KDVSyH-qPZMRTy3iWRhuIPnc/w400-h300/Seamus%20Heaney%201995.webp" width="400" /></a></div></b><a href="https://newcriterion.com/issues/2024/2/the-universal-ulsterman">https://newcriterion.com/issues/2024/2/the-universal-ulsterman<br /></a><br />*<br /><i><b>“In the beginning, there was nothing. And God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a lot better.” — Woody Allen</b><br /></i><br />*<br /><b>THE PENAL COLONY WHERE NAVALNY DIED</b><br /><br /><b>Alexei Navalny's penal colony is the strictest penal colony you can get. Only those accused of the very worst crimes are sent to IK-3.<br /></b><br />Nicknamed Polar Wolf, it is located in Yamalo-Nenets region, well above the Arctic Circle. Conditions, needless to say, are very harsh.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />It is known for <b>a culture of collective punishment and winter temperatures there can go as low as -20C.</b><br /><br /><b>Inmates have described being punished for the infringements of others by being made to stand outside in the winter without coats. Those who fail to stand still face being doused with cold water.</b><br /><br />Snow covers the ground for months at a time — only to be replaced by muddy slush when temperatures rise above freezing, around May.<br /><br /><b>In the summer, prisoners are forced to strip to their waists in swarms of mosquitoes.<br /></b><br />With summer comes long days with no nights. It all takes a heavy physical toll.<br /><br />Navalny's day-to-day life will have been a lonely one, since December in IK-3 and before that at the IK-6 facility in Melekhovo, east of Moscow.<br /><br /><b>Since 2022, he had spent nearly 300 days in in solitary confinement and lately he was allowed one daily stroll in a nearby cell where the floor was covered in snow.</b><br /><br /><b>All he could see outside his window was a tall fence, and no light. In winter in the Arctic Circle, it's only ever dusk at best.<br /></b><br />With years of jail ahead of him, Navalny had to find ways of remaining relevant.<br /><br />He filed complaints about prison conditions that would allow him to appear in court and deliver statements on camera on a regular basis. <b>He tried to create a trade union for prisoners to campaign for better seats in the jail's sewing factory.</b><br /><br />He made a noise so he wouldn't be forgotten.<br /><br /><b><i>Navalny was known for his acerbic wit. He always tried to make light of his situation, no matter how hard the conditions were.</i></b></span><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Through social media posts, written and posted by his lawyers, he talked about the conditions he was held in — often with more humor than many thought possible.<br /><br />He described New Year's Day in the punishment cell, saying: "It goes like any other day: wake-up is at 05:00, bedtime at 21:00. So <b>for the first time since I was six years old, I just slept the entire New Year's Eve. Overall I'm pleased. People pay money to celebrate the New Year in an unusual way, but I did it for free</b>.”<br /><br />But his day-to-day life must have been truly testing.<br /><br />In January 2023, he wrote about being <b>assigned a new cellmate with severe mental health problems.</b><br /><br />"There are many videos online about people who believe that they are possessed by demons and devils," he said.<br /><br />His cellmate was "very similar" — emitting "a growling, guttural scream that periodically turns on and doesn't turn off for hours. <b>He yells for 14 hours during the day and three hours at night.”</b><br /><br /><b>On another occasion, he was made to share a cell with a person who had "serious problems" with hygiene.</b><br /><br />"If you live in a cell, and some person lives at arm's length from you 24/7, and you are both one or two meters from the toilet 24/7, and the toilet is a hole in the floor, maintaining hygiene is of fundamental importance. And a prisoner who is problematic in this sense will instantly make your life unbearable.”<br /><br /><i><b>Navalny was sure that neither of his cellmates arrived by accident. He believed they were just another way for the Russian prison system to make life hell for an inmate if they wanted to.</b><br /></i><br />At 47 Navalny wasn't old, but being poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok and spending three weeks in a coma took its toll. Living a life of constant deprivation in jail only added to that.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />In December, he said <b>his request to see a dentist had been denied for 18 months.<br /></b><br />He had also developed serious back problems, and recently had difficulties walking and standing. One of his legs was going numb, possibly indicating a herniated disk.<br /><br /><b>Despite his smiles and relaxed air in court, with each appearance he became more gaunt.<br /></b><br />In 2023, more than 500 Russian doctors signed an open letter demanding to have him seen by a civilian doctor after he said <b>he had been suffering from a cough and a fever and had to share a cell with an inmate with tuberculosis.<br /></b><br />Russian prisons have a long history of torture, both physical and psychological. Inmates are often abused by prisoners friendly to the administration, and rules that are impossible to follow add to the mental anguish.<br /><br /><i><b>The federal prison system itself estimates there have been an annual 1,400-2,000 prison deaths over the last five years. The number one cause is invariably put down to cardiac problems.</b></i><br /><br />Lawyers treat this explanation with suspicion. "They can cover up anything as a cardiac arrest — even a suicide or a killing by other inmates or guards," says lawyer Irina Birykova.<br /><br />In her experience, <b>it's nearly impossible to overcome the hurdles created by the prison system if authorities don't want the cause of death to be independently verified.<br /></b><br />Navalny's death has dealt an enormous blow to Russians who saw him as an emblem of resistance.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><b>It was clear he could no longer lead Russia's opposition, but there was an underlying hope that one day the political situation would change and Navalny would be able to come back.<br /></b><br />If Vladimir Putin ever needed to negotiate his own freedom or safety, Navalny might have been part of the bargain.<br /><br />Most Russians now agree there is little hope now in protest. People will try to mark his death in their own way, laying flowers in locations where Navalny stood.<br /><br />Some brave souls will even come out on to the streets, and they will be punished.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />If shock following the Russian invasion of Ukraine failed to bring masses of people on to the streets, Navalny's death won't either.<br /><br />But privately, a lot of Russians are grieving. For them, this will just be another very dark day and a loss of hope. ~</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4dtJ0UIlOaGNlzH5WSj1rxrYq718o7tE8lth24Uz8dcKzzuF-aQ5VS-joY48GYk4Hzsz6Fw3NoZ2yOM-a3IWi2T-9YhsFbLzMSILKDDCYu6sQbR_TYZHy6XREIwvrBWgH1H8NgsLU0S0Gilm3N2SsOJx9HKJt79YbjImoC7e4_O0TdIHjJzY1hlrRc46_/s1024/navalny%20and%20guard.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="697" data-original-width="1024" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4dtJ0UIlOaGNlzH5WSj1rxrYq718o7tE8lth24Uz8dcKzzuF-aQ5VS-joY48GYk4Hzsz6Fw3NoZ2yOM-a3IWi2T-9YhsFbLzMSILKDDCYu6sQbR_TYZHy6XREIwvrBWgH1H8NgsLU0S0Gilm3N2SsOJx9HKJt79YbjImoC7e4_O0TdIHjJzY1hlrRc46_/w400-h272/navalny%20and%20guard.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68322113">https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68322113<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>THE DAY BEFORE HE DIED, Navalny appeared in court, where he mocked the poor salaries he accused corrupt Russian officials of supplementing with bribes.<br /></b><br />"Your Honor, I will send you my personal account number so that you can use your huge salary as a federal judge to 'warm up' my personal account, because I am running out of money," he told the judge presiding over the case.<br /><br />It was to be his last public appearance.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68320250">https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68320250<br /></a><br />*<br /><i><b>”Listen, I've got something very obvious to tell you. You’re not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong.” ~ Alexei Navalny</b><br /></i><br />*<br /><b>PUTIN LOOKS VERY HAPPY</b><br /><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFHf1R4PMYInOLQerU9ezim6EZdMTxSQm23ckYhz1H8xuoMBJapAD0xVo-2KPdRZrIDqxOjI0wFLK6MN9ID7fUCQDkxHcvsdixgyrEDPd06rvBoW10L5Q2M6bba5gMfP0JDpc4nTaRa6W0FkBVHdiMGT4Y7oGCYJqQtE-ueMUiVi9mtoSQD61MHJb1vqkt/s1536/Putin%20TV%20after%20Navalny's%20death.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="864" data-original-width="1536" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFHf1R4PMYInOLQerU9ezim6EZdMTxSQm23ckYhz1H8xuoMBJapAD0xVo-2KPdRZrIDqxOjI0wFLK6MN9ID7fUCQDkxHcvsdixgyrEDPd06rvBoW10L5Q2M6bba5gMfP0JDpc4nTaRa6W0FkBVHdiMGT4Y7oGCYJqQtE-ueMUiVi9mtoSQD61MHJb1vqkt/w400-h225/Putin%20TV%20after%20Navalny's%20death.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>MISHA IOSSEL ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NAVALNY <br /></b><br />Someday, the Day of Alexei Navalny will be established in Russia. Streets, settlements, steamboats will be named after him. And <b>the name of Putin, this fish-eyed killer, will forever be covered in shame.</b><br /><br />Navalny martyred himself for the nation which, in its majority, at this point in its history, did not deserve or indeed need that heroic selfless sacrifice from him — or anyone.<br /><br />*<br /><b>TUCKER CARLSON ON LEADERSHIP<br /></b><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLa27yxUw0ZiQ67hK_zdIOahG7Hn4u9PFWE9v8CELpc-Ege8WeWUKFGAkBoewhT6UwX9aV9-kYUoQhxFgg1U9rvHY5iIGVmVGtRKPerEdhXn3IXnUO5HLEqwCMjQaPR4cP-rgBrcFb-ehx_wmo_Jkm1KzMELn7Sa-Q4PWqXZPXEB7-M1BNHtdKKbN1MG_C/s498/TUCKER%20carlson%20leadership.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="498" data-original-width="444" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLa27yxUw0ZiQ67hK_zdIOahG7Hn4u9PFWE9v8CELpc-Ege8WeWUKFGAkBoewhT6UwX9aV9-kYUoQhxFgg1U9rvHY5iIGVmVGtRKPerEdhXn3IXnUO5HLEqwCMjQaPR4cP-rgBrcFb-ehx_wmo_Jkm1KzMELn7Sa-Q4PWqXZPXEB7-M1BNHtdKKbN1MG_C/w356-h400/TUCKER%20carlson%20leadership.jpg" width="356" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg86GUuGKaZliif9BIFviggQUUJL1yWXaOKf2foECapK8BUIuyMocAhBMr5OfbeBGLihmiJW9GoAb7KxhmTHAWS7MrQ2fgrq7zSmiMtxffDEJNHYmcTPwrsxJY0cJbej_839Pl0pKc74eEdWoMQdQjLF-WI_Hv8jP4oJ5FZl1Yc0XzoVLMtcsPKu3mPQVo8/s602/Tucker%20Carlson%20interview.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="464" data-original-width="602" height="309" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg86GUuGKaZliif9BIFviggQUUJL1yWXaOKf2foECapK8BUIuyMocAhBMr5OfbeBGLihmiJW9GoAb7KxhmTHAWS7MrQ2fgrq7zSmiMtxffDEJNHYmcTPwrsxJY0cJbej_839Pl0pKc74eEdWoMQdQjLF-WI_Hv8jP4oJ5FZl1Yc0XzoVLMtcsPKu3mPQVo8/w400-h309/Tucker%20Carlson%20interview.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Tucker Carlson trying to grasp Putin's wit and wisdom<br /></i><br />*<br /><b>RUSSIAN ADORATION OF LENIN AND STALIN<br /></b><br />~ Lenin and Stalin are to Russians what Washington and Lincoln are to Americans. They also served similar roles in both countries, though the gap between Washington and Lincoln was much wider and they obviously didn’t fight together in the revolution. <b>Washington upended the political order and replaced it with a new one, and Lincoln resolved the problems that Washington and his peers failed to address. </b><br /><br />But the way Lincoln resolved it was controversial, and not everyone is happy with the outcome. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Contrary to popular belief, it’s not that there are Americans who want slavery to come back. They’re unhappy that Lincoln cemented a loose, theoretically voluntary coalition of equal sovereign states into a centralized dictatorship. The dictatorship established by Lincoln only got more authoritarian since then. This needed to be done, but it is important to understand why not all Americans are happy about it, even now.<br /><br />The controversy surrounding Lenin and Stalin is roughly equivalent. <b>When a Russian complains about something Stalin did, he’s not suggesting that Nazi Germany should have won, or in any way implying that Stalin and Hitler were equivalent</b>. It is true that Stalin is controversial, and it’s not all NATO propaganda. </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>There was a huge moral shift and it wasn’t just in Russia, but global. </b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The exact reasons why this moral shift happened can be debated, but it is <b>most likely because World War II was the single biggest man-made disaster in history, both East and West.<br /></b><br /><b>In 1945 all of the world’s major cultures concluded that genocide is bad. Up until that point, war and genocide came hand in hand,</b> and were practically the same thing. Basically every wartime leader had committed something that could be construed as genocide, and no one saw anything wrong with this. When you win a war you convert the population to your way of thinking, or at least something compatible to your way of thinking. If there’s a group of people who are too obstinate, you physically remove them one way or another, and throughout human history everybody has done this.<br /><br /><b>Realizing that genocide is bad was a great moment for human cultural evolution</b>, but it didn’t happen smoothly or flawlessly. <b>This realization that genocide is bad also didn’t end genocide</b>, just like realizing murder is bad didn’t end murder. Or perhaps a better example, <b>realizing slavery is bad didn’t end slavery.<br /></b><br />Throughout most of human history, slavery was fine and nobody even thought it was bad. More importantly, people were fine with being slaves. It was just the way of things, some people were owners, and some people were slaves. <b>But after the widespread realization that slavery is bad, the genie couldn’t be put back into the bottle. No one wants to be a slave and will actively resist slavery, or at the very least passively resist by not working hard, making the system impractical. </b><br /><br />Furthermore, any country that openly practices institutional slavery instantly becomes a pariah. According to the Global Slavery Index, the number of slaves around the world as of 2023 was roughly 50 million, which is a microscopic portion of the human population. Also, the GSI is extremely political, and their criteria for who counts as a slave make little sense. Slavery, in the practical sense of what slavery actually meant historically, has been all but eliminated.<br /><br />Now for genocide. We already had the idea of “trinitarian warfare,” a conflict that recognizes a society as three somewhat distinct parts civilians, government, and military. <b>Up to and during World War II, if an army was struggling to win against the opposing government and military pillars, the solution was to just destroy the civilians, knowing resistance would</b> <b>eventually collapse if you caused enough destruction.</b> But after the collective disdain for genocide, this solution became increasingly difficult, and no longer had a near-100% success rate like in previous eras. Modern armies are obligated to make at least moderate effort to only target the enemy military and spare civilians. Even targeting government infrastructure is frowned upon.<br /><br />There are American commentators who insist that NATO interventions would go better if we just “took the gloves off” and started exterminating people indiscriminately. But these people are hopelessly divorced from reality. American occupations in the Middle East are tolerated for the exact reason that there are limits to American violence. <b>The average modern American citizen is not capable of calculated genocide. And even if he was, the US military is not nearly big enough to do it.</b> The passive local population would no longer be passive if they were being indiscriminately killed, and international forces would no longer be passive either if the US attempted a classic genocide.<br /><br />What’s happening now in Ukraine is interesting, and perhaps the logical conclusion of these threads. It is without a doubt the cleanest large-scale peer-on-peer war in history. Now I know the NATO trolls reading this are already smashing their keyboards in pure rage, but it’s true. The civilian fatalities (inflicted by both sides, mind you) are a fraction of even the most conservative estimates of Russian military losses. Can you think of even one modern military that showed such restraint?<br /><br />Denazification, as elaborated on by Putin in his Tucker Carlson interview, is the dismantling of of the Ukraine’s pro-nazi political institutions. Denazification is not killing Ukrainian civilian who sympathize with nazism. Trinitarian warfare indeed.<br /><br />With all this in mind, let’s circle back to <b>Stalin. He put people in camps, and he forcibly relocated people. Both of these acts meet the modern criteria for genocide</b>, it is true. And so what? He was a man of his time who faced a cataclysmic, civilization-ending crisis, and preserved the country the best he could. He was far from the only one with dirty hands among the allies. Churchill deliberately starved millions of Indians to death [Oriana: his policies contributed to the 1943 Bengal Famine] — which was worse than anything the Soviets did, as this was intentional starvation to break the Indians’ will to resist (that genocide thing I mentioned earlier), and FDR wholesale locked up ethnic Japanese citizens in concentration camps.<br /><br />Painting Stalin, and Stalin specifically, as the same as Hitler was useful to post-WWII NATO propaganda, and it was pretty easy to do. NATO propaganda was, ironically, just an extension of Hitler’s propaganda — Germany was simply defending itself from “unprovoked Russian aggression.” By agreeing that Hitler was telling the truth, Stalin and Russians became the big baddies of WWII. But… this propaganda came at a cost, which I’ll explain.<br /><br />American political discourse is just variations of this:<br />—Bush is literally as bad as Hitler! —No, Obama is literally as bad as Hitler! —But Trump is literally as bad as Hitler too!<br /><br />And so on. Needless to say, that’s not normal or healthy. What exactly went wrong? I think it started with the “Stalin was just as bad as Hitler” narrative. This required, in part, exaggerating the scale Stalin’s misdeeds, but just as importantly, required downplaying Hitler’s. See, <b>concentration camps were very common throughout history, but actual extermination camps like Auschwitz were rare.</b> By equating all camps as like Hitler’s, we’re diminishing the scale of Hitler’s atrocities. <br /><br />There’s yet another problem with this logic. The western allies sided with Stalin and the Soviet Union against Hitler and Nazi Germany. <b>If we declare that the Soviets were no better than Nazis, then this means that allies of the Soviets were also no better than Nazis</b>. You cannot accept one of these statements without accepting the other. Shitting on the Soviet victory over Nazism is shitting on the American and British victories too, because they were a joint effort.<br /><br />Declaring that Stalin and Hitler were one and the same took us down a pretty bad rabbit hole. If a world leader who commits an act that could be construed as a genocide on any scale is the same as Hitler, then that just means that practically all world leaders throughout history were like Hitler. Is this a useful lesson? Is it an actionable lesson? Most importantly, is it even a true statement? Was every world leader who fought a war just as evil and depraved as Hitler? No, I don’t think that’s true at all, and more than a little insulting. ~ Ian Kummer (who describes himself as “American Tourist in Russia”), Quora<br /><br />Oriana:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This is a biased account, much too easy on the two mass-murderers, especially Stalin.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Still, we have to remember that they weren't only mass-murderers, period. They were true believers in an ideology they tried to apply to a multi-million population, with the ultimate goal of encompassing the whole world </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">(no small task, to put it mildly).<br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Putin and Stalin are definitely not in the same rank, but there is some similarity, which gives rise to cartoons like the one below. We could all agree that Putin needs a beauty make-over.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgamxF7ikngIbDEc1h7-wy63gxB7UT4tBNY02hjQFt3f99P2de4qwuNFMWbBXYCkbTNiogLP-SWwE80H8t4GlfbN1dcCAUDR9-XwLU8a3E-EesEjBW28lKu6unA5KsE7Wpt8n_e85h1ENA_LFZ5pgim08oGL6V4Saw4hUuIwhm5kFfns_hNkboaj01id77w/s602/putin%20hitler%20make-over.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="402" data-original-width="602" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgamxF7ikngIbDEc1h7-wy63gxB7UT4tBNY02hjQFt3f99P2de4qwuNFMWbBXYCkbTNiogLP-SWwE80H8t4GlfbN1dcCAUDR9-XwLU8a3E-EesEjBW28lKu6unA5KsE7Wpt8n_e85h1ENA_LFZ5pgim08oGL6V4Saw4hUuIwhm5kFfns_hNkboaj01id77w/w400-h268/putin%20hitler%20make-over.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Sam Payne:<br />Actually it was the British that popularized the use of concentration camps during the Boer War in the early 20th century South Africa in which Winston Churchill played a part as a young army officer. The British put Afrikaner women and children in camps to break the will of the resistance. Tens of thousands of women and children died of starvation in these camps.<br /><br />*<br /><b>RUSSIA: GOOD OR EVIL? (Elena Gold)<br /></b><br /><b>To understand whether a country is morally “good” or “bad,” I suggest looking at photos of court hearings of people who are prosecuted for non-violent crimes.<br /></b><br /><b>You won’t see cages in Western European or US courts in similar trials.<br /></b><br />The people in these countries are treated as human beings.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />They are treated with dignity, no matter what they have done, until a just and independent court decides that the person is guilty.<br /><br />But in Russia, a person whose destiny judges decide is worth less than the dirt under their nails. <b>The accused are in advance treated like criminals.<br /></b></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIhMD9qfxbJeulM7GylPT6ncd2QSr6R7amQzLokd4OEh4H7vmSSuayTsgRWLv_A7xWWj6S2TX8UCbSY6RgTEaDD020kfpVRh-zu-ph2IeJ9o5PPKh1Z3Rwp6nMgv2FfZFLUD9yeinKExP180TNew_OPz3yxo3X8Xddqj1f_YfNCqJ50qEuzwQgNyNmo1ru/s602/RUSSIAN%20cage%20court.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="602" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIhMD9qfxbJeulM7GylPT6ncd2QSr6R7amQzLokd4OEh4H7vmSSuayTsgRWLv_A7xWWj6S2TX8UCbSY6RgTEaDD020kfpVRh-zu-ph2IeJ9o5PPKh1Z3Rwp6nMgv2FfZFLUD9yeinKExP180TNew_OPz3yxo3X8Xddqj1f_YfNCqJ50qEuzwQgNyNmo1ru/w400-h266/RUSSIAN%20cage%20court.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Once they have been arrested, they are already seen as guilty. The court only announces how many years of Gulag this person deserves.<br /><br /><b>In essence, anyone could be guilty of breaking one of the many laws that Duma makes every week.</b><br /><br /><i><b>The state can pick and choose to make anyone an example and a lesson for all others, who are still not behind the official Gulag walls, but think that they are free within the open air prison that Russia has become.</b><br /></i><br />Priest Ioann Kurmoyarov was sentenced to <b>3 years in prison</b> under the article on “fakes about the Russian army”. He was arrested for a video on his YouTube channel, titled “Who will be in hell and who will be in heaven?” <b>In the video, the priest criticized Russia's invasion of Ukraine from the point of view of Christian doctrine</b>.<br /><br />Out of 18 ”crimes” of Stalin’s Article 58 of the USSR Criminal Code on “enemies of the people”— the one used for mass repressions — 14 “crimes” have already become part of the amended Russia’s criminal code.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL2LGOeIQsnlevdFIMac2jV-6A5llP5_SIk8buDt7qqcfTkoyHVrwEQOv8D-45h93Vvdmbt25jJ3GgwJ7s5QMCvyTe9Y5KnUoNncm32fOE-Lkf9qnBY7vhs1g33CLUm74PI9mS4962hnSxEuaQHqLyNvunBFUh6Aq22KRD4zHKpu09TusYvoy_BRPm_x0u/s602/russian%20woman%20in%20cage.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="602" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL2LGOeIQsnlevdFIMac2jV-6A5llP5_SIk8buDt7qqcfTkoyHVrwEQOv8D-45h93Vvdmbt25jJ3GgwJ7s5QMCvyTe9Y5KnUoNncm32fOE-Lkf9qnBY7vhs1g33CLUm74PI9mS4962hnSxEuaQHqLyNvunBFUh6Aq22KRD4zHKpu09TusYvoy_BRPm_x0u/s320/russian%20woman%20in%20cage.jpg" width="320" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>This 23-year-old woman has never been convicted of any crimes before, she has not attacked anyone with a knife, she is no danger to the society. But she was put behind the bars in the courtroom.</i><br /><br />Russia has no civil society. <b>It’s a mafia state, ruled by criminals top to bottom. Being a law-abiding, decent citizen gives no guarantee that you won’t be thrown in jail and locked behind bars for a long time.</b><br /><br />This young woman pretended to “tickle” the “Motherland” monument in a video she posted online (which some Z-patriots considered offensive, stating that the monument was sacred). That’s her crime. She didn’t even touch the actual statue.<br /><br />She has been sent to a pre-trial detention center until March 10, but <b>she may get 5 years in prison for “rehabilitation of Nazism.”</b><br /><br />This is how you can quickly determine the degree to which the country is screwed up.<br /><br />2024 Russia is anything but a morally good country. ~ Elena Gold, Quora<br /><br />Franz Peter:<br />The repression of the Stalin years is alive and as strong under the repression of Putin, tragically. Spasiba for confirming that for the doubters. Elena. Let’s start with T. Carlson, Putin’s America backstabbing useful idiot.<br /><br />David Chris Hawke:<br />And now certain American Christians are installing portraits of Putin next to the pictures of tRump and Jesus in their so-called churches. Surreal.<br /><br />Gilbert Watts:<br /><b>It’s like Al Capone running Chicago writ large.</b> <b>But compared the criminal state of Russia, he actually did something for the people, like running soup kitchens during the Depression.</b><br /><br />Oriana:<br />“Innocent until proven guilty” actually blew my adolescent mind. “You have the right to remain silent” — this was absolutely revolutionary. Because I grew up in Poland, where the husband of one of my aunts was actually tortured in prison (where he spent 8 years, not guilty of anything except great courage during the war), “no cruel or unusual punishment” also impressed me. <br /><br />No country has an ideal judicial system, but when it comes to human rights, some countries are ahead of others.<br /><br />More from Elena Gold: <b>TERRORIST DYSTOPIA</b><br /><br />The Russian state has the absolute liberty to throw any citizen in jail and take away everything they own — and everything their families own (yes, they are allowed to confiscate the property of the associates as well).<br /><br />When I say “any citizen”, it’s not a figure of speech. <b>All the enforcers need is a complaint from a concerned citizen </b>(someone saying you were saying things in support of Ukraine), and that’s enough to search your home (destroying it — breaking furniture and pulling the wallpaper off the walls, etc.) and open a criminal case.<br /><br />Obviously, the need for such laws can only be a testament of how strongly Putin’s war in Russia is supported and how unanimously all the Russian citizens believe that Russia is doing very well.</span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />It’s this — or jail and confiscation.<br /><br />Oh, well. Most Russians have supported Putin’s war from the start — or chose not to protest — they’d have to live with the results.<br /><br /><b>The most corrupt and sycophant individuals became the leaders everywhere from public schools to regional legislature.<br /></b><br /><b>There are no journalists left, only propagandists</b>. Labor productivity fell as bosses are not held accountable. <b>They don’t care to make employees work hard as they are paid pennies and can’t be promoted because all the top spots are taken by the inner circle appointees leaving them unmotivated.</b><br /><br />Every evening I watch a stampede of Russian Railways office plankton at 6pm from the glass office building running across the road on red light risking their lives to put the distance faster between the hated job and the metro station.<br /><br />The number of the employees of this state corporation has tripled since the collapse of the Soviet Union and revenues come from ticket sales that cost as much as flight tickets and transportation of natural resources overseas using the old Soviet rail tracks. No new lines have been built.<br /><br />Putin decided to follow in the footsteps of Nazi Germany and when the society started to get torn apart and internal terror couldn’t cope with it, he relieved tensions through external expansion.</span><br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Putin ordered to create organization of the patriotic competition for mentors “To be, not to seem!”<br /><br /><b>The phrase “To be, not to seem!” (Mehr sein als scheinen) was the slogan of political schools in Nazi Germany, where they trained leadership for the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) and the SS </b>— the party's paramilitary units. When World War II began, many school graduates joined the SS and Wehrmacht.<br /><br /><b>Putin is witlessly creating Nazism in Russia under the guise of anti-Nazi fight.<br /></b><br />Russia is world’s largest country and second least densely populated and yet Putin sacrifices the remaining workforce and economy to enlarge it through a war of conquest.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu3DHL1K7reVgY5TWG0pkyM-WJA5JIwnyAojlvf9ebdXTkErBaWMpsgqu1OrEoI4FOrW7j8yg94_o4lmQZYc8WBZ_eDpU50xeeDSiKIy7T8MDMBBJM8R3ZeiyDHAaGTEVY3M55qWCcIStxPbBghY_kPcvHr7patRnX3OuAfUKGNNCdBa8uE0MnoM39i5kD/s602/repairing%20a%20broken%20pipe%20with%20a%20shovel%20in%20Lipetsk.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="327" data-original-width="602" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu3DHL1K7reVgY5TWG0pkyM-WJA5JIwnyAojlvf9ebdXTkErBaWMpsgqu1OrEoI4FOrW7j8yg94_o4lmQZYc8WBZ_eDpU50xeeDSiKIy7T8MDMBBJM8R3ZeiyDHAaGTEVY3M55qWCcIStxPbBghY_kPcvHr7patRnX3OuAfUKGNNCdBa8uE0MnoM39i5kD/w400-h217/repairing%20a%20broken%20pipe%20with%20a%20shovel%20in%20Lipetsk.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Repairing a broken pipe with a shovel in Lipetsk.<br /></i><br />As a KGB agent, Putin knows only one social mechanism available to him — terror.</span><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><b>His utopian promises about great achievements that will be done in some distant future is a relic of the Bolshevik pseudo-religious doctrine that sold future to the uneducated peasants because they lagged far behind the Western civilization in the present.<br /></b><br /><i><b>Putin does not have a plan for post-war Russia. Even if he were to occupy all of Ukraine and defeat American hegemony, his country lacks workforce, technologies and a clear vision of the future to take the global lead.</b><br /></i><br />As such, Russia’s future is to be China’s vassal for many decades if not centuries to come. This is Putin’s real legacy. Not economy or Ukraine. ~ Elena Gold, Quora<br /><br />and this too is from Elena:<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh42sm-_M_sHmHdRZlexIWzrv0fFHLqxt5CG8ZPS_wDJ1fiCqAzRl35FbS-mNkpoUqonwNYZGOcRmvqiTMVdGBhZa81MhsCwORhCD7uJXfiUm7up4FYUYDCtS_Ph72qaLQiTUfBPPfWM6L6lAyGmtuxyfVC89qtd0GZ0I-wUfHoKv1CcGN4-OLm243L4Z2Q/s602/russian%20soldiers%20from%20above.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh42sm-_M_sHmHdRZlexIWzrv0fFHLqxt5CG8ZPS_wDJ1fiCqAzRl35FbS-mNkpoUqonwNYZGOcRmvqiTMVdGBhZa81MhsCwORhCD7uJXfiUm7up4FYUYDCtS_Ph72qaLQiTUfBPPfWM6L6lAyGmtuxyfVC89qtd0GZ0I-wUfHoKv1CcGN4-OLm243L4Z2Q/w400-h400/russian%20soldiers%20from%20above.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>All these hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers whom Putin sent to their deaths… and Putin looking for excuses in 13th century history.</b><br /></i><br />*<br /><b>MEANWHILE IN THE RUSSIAN FAR EAST<br /></b><br />Is the fact that China now declared the Russian city of Vladivostok its internal port the first signs that Russia is losing control over its Eastern regions?<br /><br />The Russian provinces near China are already full of Chinese laborers doing all the work. They outnumber the resident Russian population by around 10–1. These regions are rich farmlands. As Russia fractures many of these areas are highly likely to seek protection and assistance from China and seek to join the nation peacefully. This could include Vladivostok. ~ Sunlo, Quora<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWLqDeCGsVYkr-w8H9Hr9xjl1Dpy4jQZ34WLZEtWsZsWoddrpbJ3Z4b8vPj0Kj2dB_c4WTrpct3WlPSeWElOCyceLnuejCv52HQo_aWoCiyP9SfOGBzaoX7oJOhT0vZl-aHE2FGvtGLntAKp4euYUzt4UAFA_MKeGMr9ZOb_DJj5Su6fgfVOaJbCnwhwkE/s737/russian%20Chinese%20couple%20baby.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="737" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWLqDeCGsVYkr-w8H9Hr9xjl1Dpy4jQZ34WLZEtWsZsWoddrpbJ3Z4b8vPj0Kj2dB_c4WTrpct3WlPSeWElOCyceLnuejCv52HQo_aWoCiyP9SfOGBzaoX7oJOhT0vZl-aHE2FGvtGLntAKp4euYUzt4UAFA_MKeGMr9ZOb_DJj5Su6fgfVOaJbCnwhwkE/w326-h400/russian%20Chinese%20couple%20baby.jpg" width="326" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>CHINESE NEW YEAR IN RUSSIA</b><br /><br />Putin’s new fad is China and right on cue for the first time ever Russians are celebrating Chinese New Year. Will they celebrate North Korean New Year in 2025?<br /><br />A walking street in Moscow was festooned with red lanterns. Food stalls sold Chinese dishes with names doubled in Mandarin.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicUjrYTOZ6dEftzCKSLDINFLA2PoKGdUcvo-c4io-npACA9jLPf2G1oK5lfeYE_m-TKTAATiRwldTihZH_NPXROAyE3thBrnhnRvEncWE9_PvV2zQrx-COLDZa1wR7RYaW2oRuNs4ubGN1x311oKdfXvmNELRIJr82rePcuFsGQURi1508g6FH0iCyrNJl/s1920/CHINESE%20new%20year%20in%20Moscow.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1920" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicUjrYTOZ6dEftzCKSLDINFLA2PoKGdUcvo-c4io-npACA9jLPf2G1oK5lfeYE_m-TKTAATiRwldTihZH_NPXROAyE3thBrnhnRvEncWE9_PvV2zQrx-COLDZa1wR7RYaW2oRuNs4ubGN1x311oKdfXvmNELRIJr82rePcuFsGQURi1508g6FH0iCyrNJl/w400-h300/CHINESE%20new%20year%20in%20Moscow.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>NEPALI FIGHTER’S TALES OF THE WAR IN UKRAINE<br /></b><br />Ramchandra Khadka stood in front of a temple in the middle of Kathmandu, Nepal, praying for his fellow countrymen who are fighting for Russia in Moscow’s war against Ukraine.<br />As the ceremonial bells rang and the sweet smell of incense filled the air, he lit candles and offered flowers to a deity. All he wants is for his Nepali friends to survive the brutal war.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><b>The 37-year-old recently returned to Nepal after suffering injuries on the front lines in Ukraine. He told CNN he witnessed horrific scenes and regrets his decision to join the Kremlin’s army as a foreign mercenary.</b><br /><br />Russia’s war in Ukraine is not the first battle Khadka has fought. He was among Nepal’s Maoist rebels, who fought a bloody war with the country’s forces for 10 years from the mid-1990s. He then went to Afghanistan after being hired by a private military contractor to assist NATO forces in the country. He thought he had experienced it all in his lifetime – bloodshed, death and pain. But, <b>some 17 years after the Maoist war ended, with no hope of a job in Nepal, he decided to fly to Russia to join the country’s military for money.<br /></b><br />“I didn’t join the Russian military for pleasure. I didn’t have any job opportunities in Nepal. But in hindsight, it wasn’t the right decision. <b>We didn’t realize we would be sent to the frontlines that quickly and how horrible the situation would be,” Khadka said.<br /></b><br />He arrived in Moscow in September last year. <b>After only two weeks of training, he said, he was sent to the front lines in Bakhmut – a town in eastern Ukraine that saw some of the heaviest fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces – with a gun and a basic kit.<br /></b><br />“<b>There isn’t an inch of land in Bakhmut that’s not affected by bombs. All the trees, shrubs, and greenery… they are all gone. </b>Most of the houses have been destroyed. The situation there is so gruesome that it makes you want to cry,” he recalled.<br /><br />Khadka was deployed to Bakhmut twice and spent a total of one month there. During his second deployment, he was struck by a bullet in his hip. After he was rescued and taken a few hundred meters back from the front line, he was hit by shrapnel from a cluster bomb.<br /><br /><b>“I still get a headache when I think about the terrible scenes I saw in the war zone,” he said.</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><br />He is one of as many as 15,000 Nepali men to have joined the Russian military</b>, multiple sources have told CNN, after the Russian government last year announced a lucrative package for foreign fighters to join the country’s military.<br /><br /><b>The package included at least $2,000 salary a month and a fast-tracked process to obtain a Russian passport.</b> Nepal’s passport is ranked one of the worst in the world for global mobility, below North Korea, according to an index created by global citizenship and residence advisory firm Henley & Partners, and the Himalayan nation is among the world’s poorest, with a per capita GDP of $1,336 for 2022, according to World Bank data.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwPPBj4tK2OQs_C9NHU64QP8nz-jsn2o6DiPwZzoWR4F_XzxNMLfaEApUwvhIDIR2KE1G19B17Q4mEGlVPvQNaPkhPIui2i-IniG6bAVYuh09W-oOsjipS2VkTvk2xpcwbFo6481EF4qkFEdJRDXXTTcXgWqUvoFQem1A0KLgpsx9AG7aPOTgWLwxKTHJm/s1110/ramchandra%20khadka%20in%20bakhmut.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="1110" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwPPBj4tK2OQs_C9NHU64QP8nz-jsn2o6DiPwZzoWR4F_XzxNMLfaEApUwvhIDIR2KE1G19B17Q4mEGlVPvQNaPkhPIui2i-IniG6bAVYuh09W-oOsjipS2VkTvk2xpcwbFo6481EF4qkFEdJRDXXTTcXgWqUvoFQem1A0KLgpsx9AG7aPOTgWLwxKTHJm/w400-h272/ramchandra%20khadka%20in%20bakhmut.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Ramchandra Khadka in Bakhmut</i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i> </i><br />The Nepali government says about 200 of its citizens are fighting for the Russian army and that at least 13 Nepalis have been killed in the war zone. But lawmakers and rights’ campaigners in Nepal say <b>those official estimates vastly underestimate the real numbers.</b><br /><br />A prominent opposition Nepali lawmaker and former foreign minister, Bimala Rai Paudyal, told the upper house of the county’s parliament on Thursday that <b>between 14,000 and 15,000 Nepalis are fighting on the front lines, citing testimony from men returning from the war zone, and called on the Russian authorities to provide the figures.</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />“The Russian government must have the data of how many foreign fighters have joined the Russian army and how many Nepalis are fighting for Russia,” she said.<br /><br />Four Nepali fighters are currently being held as prisoners of war (POWs) by Ukraine, according to Nepal’s foreign ministry.<br /><br />The Russian foreign ministry has not responded to CNN’s questions about the number of Nepalis recruited by the Russian army and how many of them have died so far.<br /><br />Kritu Bhandari, a Kathmandu-based politician and social campaigner, has become the leader of a group of family members of Nepali men fighting in Russia. <b>She says around 2,000 families have approached her in recent weeks asking for help either to get in touch with their missing loved ones or to bring those who are still in contact home to the small South Asian nation.</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b> </b><br />Hundreds of families say their relatives in Russia haven’t been in contact for many weeks or months, according to Bhandari.<br /><br />‘I TRY NOT TO THIINK OF THE WORST’<br /><br />Januka Sunar’s husband went to Russia three months ago to join the military. He hasn’t been in touch with his family in Nepal for two-and-a-half months.<br /><br />The last time Sunar spoke to her husband, she told CNN, he said that the Russian military was moving him to a different location and that they would not allow him to take his mobile phone with him. He didn’t tell her where he was being relocated to.<br /><br />“I’m very worried. I don’t know what happened to him. He may be injured… and I wonder if they will return his phone eventually. I’m scared. I try not to think of the worst,” she said.<br /><br /><b>Sunar said her husband, the sole breadwinner in the house, who used to work making silver jewelry and utensils, had joined the Russian army solely for money – to build a better life for the family. She has two children who live with her in a town on the outskirts of Kathmandu.</b><br /><br />CNN met her along with other family members of those in Russia, who had gathered at the headquarters of the ruling Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Center) in the Nepali capital to try to put pressure on the country’s top politicians to repatriate their loved ones.<br /><br /><b>“If the worst has happened to him, it’ll be worse than going to hell for us. We don’t have a future for the rest of our lives,” she said.<br /></b><br /><b>Sunar burst into tears as she shared how she was unable to explain to her children where their father is</b>.<br /><br />“They say: ‘Where is our dad, mummy? All of our friend’s dads who went abroad for work have returned… when is our dad coming back? We want to talk to our dad just for once.’”<br /><br />Sunar is desperate for help from the authorities. “We just want information – from our government or the Russian government. Just tell us about his condition. Please see if you can rescue him. If they want to keep him there… .at least we want to know how he is… and speak to him,” she said.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_46qer7sIJGNvN_5lsEZ7Of-hbMAaplCEWYRU-Jj3Gs0j56NmxQ-lNFByKb-uGIZvT9lp8Q4AoCjYvo6XmmRC2T9U2UnPajD6PJ38GA3jOezJ6Ckd7U9QkL1d3WLuxvzPkwAMln0umOPfCjdCDixoE3m-MEgxL0S0gPM7Yb0VRNWZJ-kMhreqmxNGv4Qj/s1110/NEPALI%20house%20outside.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="833" data-original-width="1110" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_46qer7sIJGNvN_5lsEZ7Of-hbMAaplCEWYRU-Jj3Gs0j56NmxQ-lNFByKb-uGIZvT9lp8Q4AoCjYvo6XmmRC2T9U2UnPajD6PJ38GA3jOezJ6Ckd7U9QkL1d3WLuxvzPkwAMln0umOPfCjdCDixoE3m-MEgxL0S0gPM7Yb0VRNWZJ-kMhreqmxNGv4Qj/w400-h300/NEPALI%20house%20outside.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Buddhi Maya Tamang, who was also at the gathering, received a call at the end of January from a Russian number after midnight. She thought her husband, Shukra Tamang – a retired Nepali army soldier fighting for Russia – was the person calling.<br /><br />It was someone else. <b>A Nepali commander who was leading a unit on the front lines told her that her husband had been killed during the fighting.</b><br /><br />“I was then speechless and senseless… I was hoping it was a prank call,” she said.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />She hasn’t received confirmation of his death from either the Nepali or the Russian government.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />“I just need an official proof of his condition – regardless of whether it’s good news or bad news.”<br /><br /><b>RECRUITS FROM THE GLOBAL SOUTH<br /></b><br />After analyzing the TikTok profiles of 10 Nepali men who traveled to Russia to join the army, CNN used satellite imagery to geolocate them to the Avangard training center, a military academy outside of Moscow.<br /><br /><b>The academy was designed as a youth military academy and describes itself as a “patriotic education” center.</b> It has been re-outfitted into a training academy for foreign mercenaries entering the ranks of the Russian army. This was where Khadka received his brief training.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />“Over here they teach you how to assemble and fire guns,” explained Shishir Bishwokarma, a Nepali soldier who has documented his journey to Russia and life at the training camp on YouTube.<br /><br />The geolocated social media video shows an indoor wrestling gym converted into a training area for familiarization with small arms such as AK-47s, while the gym’s old Moscow Oblast flag appears to have been switched out for the colors of the Russian defense ministry.<br /><br /><b>A Nepali soldier in Russia, who did not want to be named for security reasons, told CNN he had trained on rocket launchers, bombs, machine guns, drones, and tanks while staying at Avangard.</b></span><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><i><b>The soldier described his fellow academy cadets as coming from across the global south. He cited Afghan, Indian, Congolese and Egyptian classmates, among others. Class photos from Avangard posted on social media show dozens of what appear to be South Asian soldiers with native Russian instructors.</b><br /></i><br />Following their basic training at Avangard, CNN traced at least two soldiers to a nearby secondary base known as the Alabino Polygon.<br /><br />At this mechanized infantry training compound, which was geolocated with the help of the Bellingcat Discord community, a handful of South Asian soldiers in full combat gear appear to be familiarizing themselves with operating alongside armored vehicles and heavy weaponry, as well as packing gear bags and organizing into larger units among Russian soldiers.<br /><br /><b>One of Bishwokarma’s videos shows drones flying over the center of the Avangard academy complex, while he narrates “now guys, we have come to a drone class.”<br /></b><br />“We don’t understand Russian, but they have turned on Russian movies in our waiting room so that we can watch,” he explains.<br /><br />Multiple Nepalis enlisting in the Russian army have stated that they don’t speak Russian but explain that instructors at Avangard seek to accommodate this by training the men in English.<br /><b>That language barrier has played a large part in the deaths of many Nepalis on the front lines, said Khadka, the former fighter.<br /></b><br />“Sometimes you can’t even understand where you’re supposed to be going or how to get there,” he said.<br /><br /><b>Khadka said he used to communicate with Russian officers by using a voice-translating app – and many times, just hand signals.</b><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYy9wCngST4HTOTm_9cthH9W8J_c-Y2Wd2uUxb3R51vk7WUFpPemlD1F37s8sP45v2Y3yEQJTxy6rQhSOanHafceUw2sHKzWFa0kEckykMVuyEPDqjPrN7hdNA96pqJMhFP5v6yRMF92h8g4revLn9sVBVA2JlajlBK0-hDRcBIgNX70_Hlm3xAnWiudbi/s1718/shukra%20tamang%20training%20russia.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1718" data-original-width="1110" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYy9wCngST4HTOTm_9cthH9W8J_c-Y2Wd2uUxb3R51vk7WUFpPemlD1F37s8sP45v2Y3yEQJTxy6rQhSOanHafceUw2sHKzWFa0kEckykMVuyEPDqjPrN7hdNA96pqJMhFP5v6yRMF92h8g4revLn9sVBVA2JlajlBK0-hDRcBIgNX70_Hlm3xAnWiudbi/w259-h400/shukra%20tamang%20training%20russia.webp" width="259" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Shukra Tamang, a retired Nepali army soldier, training in Russia. His fate is unclear.<br /></i><br />Several returned Nepali fighters who spoke with CNN blamed Russia for using them as cannon fodder in the war.<br /><br /><b>“It’s the Nepalis and other foreign fighters that are actually fighting in the front of war zones. The Russians position themselves a few hundred meters back as support,” said Suman Tamang, who returned from Russia last week.</b><br /><br />“Some of my friends were mistreated by the Russian commander when they tried to voice their concerns,” Tamang recalled.<br /><br /><b>The 39-year-old also said that the Ukrainians were attacking their position with drones, something his unit didn’t have. He blamed the lack of modern fighting machinery for their losses.<br /></b><br />CNN has reached out to the Russian defense and foreign ministries about Tamang’s claims.<br /> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Some fighters claim that while they signed up for the money, they do not support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.<br /></b><br />“It’s not right to invade another country. Everyone has the right to live. All countries should respect the sovereignty of another country. It’s not right for people of any country to be killed in such a hideous way. <b>It’s not right for tens of thousands of people to die for the interest of a few,” Khadka said.</b><br /><br />Each year, around 400,000 people are estimated to enter the Nepali job market with limited skills and opportunities.<b> A staggering 19.2% youth unemployment rate among individuals aged 15 to 29 underscores the hurdle the younger demographic faces in the pursuit of employment.</b><br /><br />BONUSES PAID<br /><br />Nepali men who want to join the Russian army first travel to Russia on a tourist visa. Most of the people CNN spoke with said they went via the United Arab Emirates or India. After landing in Moscow, they go to a recruitment center, where a physical checkup is done, they said.<br /><br /><b>“The recruiters get very happy when Nepalis show up,” a former fighter said.<br /></b><br />A one-year contract is signed and the men get a Russian bank account, where at least $2,000 monthly salary is deposited. Many fighters say bonuses were also given – and the longer they stay on the front lines, the more bonuses they receive. Some say they made up to $4,000 a month.<br /><br />Several of the Nepalis who fought for Russia said they had received only brief training before being sent into combat.<br /><br /><b>Such a short training period before sending Nepali soldiers to fight “shows the desperation of the Russian government and their need for human resources on the frontline,” said Binoj Basnyat, a retired major general from the Nepali army, who now works as a strategic analyst.<br /></b><br />CNN spoke with one Nepali man who recently left Russia after spending three months there. CNN is referring to him by the pseudonym Ram Sharma for his security.<br /><br />Like many Nepalis who fled Russia without being discharged from their contracts, <b>Sharma has no idea how to withdraw the money he still has in a Russian bank account.</b><br /><br />“After I escaped from the military camp, it took me three days to get to Moscow. I was worried that by going to a bank to withdraw the money, I would risk getting caught,” he said. “I can access my bank account on my phone, but I don’t know if it’s possible to transfer that money overseas.”<br /><br /><i><b>Sharma, a retired Nepali police officer, was working as a security guard in a Dubai hotel when a Nepali agent in Kathmandu contacted him about the terms Russia was offering for foreigners to join its military. Sharma was making around $450 a month in Dubai and was immediately lured by the offer.</b></i><br /><br /><b>“After seeing gruesome images on the frontlines, seeing your friends die next to you, realizing chances of survival is very slim…. you then realize the money is not worth it. That’s why I escaped,” he said.</b><br /><br />Agents in Nepal charge between $5,000 and $7,000 to arrange a tourist visa for an individual through a third country, according to the police.<br /><br />‘I’M DONE FIGHTING WARS’<br /><br /><b>The Nepali government has now banned its citizens from traveling to Russia for work and has implemented stricter requirements for people trying to go to countries such as the UAE on a visit visa.<br /></b><br /><b>Nepal’s foreign ministry in December urged Russia to stop recruiting Nepali citizens and send home the remains of those killed in the war.<br /></b><br />“We are very much concerned that Russia has recruited our citizens and sent them to war zones in vulnerable situations,” Nepali Foreign Minister N. P. Saud told CNN in an interview in his office in Kathmandu.<br /><br />The minister said that Russia’s deputy foreign minister had last month assured him that “they will sort it out” with regard to Nepal’s concerns but acknowledged that Moscow hasn’t taken any steps so far.<br /><br /><b>“We don’t have any information that Russia is doing anything,” he said, stressing that Moscow should “respect Nepal’s point of view.”<br /></b><br />“We have a traditional treaty with a few countries for the recruitment of our citizens in the military of those countries,” he explained. “But we don’t have such treaty with Russia for such type of military or security recruitment.”<br /><br />The minister said he had asked to travel to Moscow to discuss the issue but was waiting for an invitation from the Russian government.<br /><br />Saud also said Nepal was talking to Ukrainian officials about releasing the four Nepali POWs taken by Ukraine from the front lines. He said Ukraine had some “reservations” and “legal questions” which the Nepali government was working to address.<br /><br />It’s unclear if there will be any legal consequences against individuals who either defy the Nepali government’s ban to travel to Russia for work or who take part in combat operations against Ukraine.<br /><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjspuF2_5WTT0Fda6MNU_7wBGH008rKG0HolJY6yOz948QDB5jojjpaf9-tGorLzaa10PPxDcagcXO0heRm6qVcixcMYKVfogGGQEyh8lYIYXhro4jA8dvBL96vwhikzr-C-ZPwhjF_FBOMDQOiZWizP_RQFLrcrPx9iAq7izvmWIXBQst1W6Op3TDG6GAJ/s1110/protest%20Kathmandu.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="833" data-original-width="1110" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjspuF2_5WTT0Fda6MNU_7wBGH008rKG0HolJY6yOz948QDB5jojjpaf9-tGorLzaa10PPxDcagcXO0heRm6qVcixcMYKVfogGGQEyh8lYIYXhro4jA8dvBL96vwhikzr-C-ZPwhjF_FBOMDQOiZWizP_RQFLrcrPx9iAq7izvmWIXBQst1W6Op3TDG6GAJ/w400-h300/protest%20Kathmandu.webp" width="400" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>A protest is held near the Russian embassy in Kathmandu by a human rights group.</i></span></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><b>Kathmandu police said they broke up a racket last month, leading to the arrest of 18 people allegedly involved in sending Nepali men to join the Russian army.<br /></b><br />They raided several hotels where those arrested were staying and confiscated dozens of passports and several hundred thousand Nepali rupees, the police said.<br /><br /><b>But Nepalis haven’t stopped flying to Russia.<br /></b><br />Sharma, the man who recently returned, said he had met a few Nepalis in Moscow who had just arrived and were looking to get into the army.<br /><br />Kathmandu police chief Bhupendra Bahadur Khatri said the number of Nepalis going to a third country on a visit visa to eventually fly to Russia had slowed but hadn’t completely stopped.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />“We are getting some intelligence that some of these agents are still active in recruiting Nepal men. We have gathered some undercurrent of their activities, and our investigation continues,” Khatri said.<br /><br /><b>Basnyat, the analyst, blames political instability and rising unemployment in Nepal as a major factor driving Nepalis to seek out dangerous employment in Russia.<br /></b><br />More than 15% of its people live below the poverty line. The estimated unemployment rate in 2022 was 11.1%, according to the World Bank, compared with 10.6% in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic. Tens of thousands of Nepalis travel to Gulf countries for work every year, with international remittances amounting to nearly 23% of the country’s GDP. <b>An overwhelming 70% of the country’s workforce is employed in the informal sector, exposing them to heightened job insecurity and limited protections.</b><br /><br />Khadka is also planning to go to the Middle East as a migrant worker once he recovers from his conflict injuries.<br /><br />“I want to do commercial farming in Nepal but it’s proving next to impossible for me to take a loan. I’m looking to go to one of the Gulf countries. I’m done with fighting wars,” he said. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/10/asia/nepal-fighters-russia-ukraine-families-intl-cmd/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/10/asia/nepal-fighters-russia-ukraine-families-intl-cmd/index.html</a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_LN787eXmv2aoB-5Rat-cb35nDEK3Kjeb0oBSc8g3JaD-X2Vu0nIFV_fHtSV5B47l5xVzYZSkxhvbd14iRxzFaMD0BQ2DyD8oHvyZ96VgKdN0vpnkk2Yi3uPIlP1I8Ebw5K3XRQMxxW1Sp6zx1No-ibb2OSfeX9Ki_706arpWYkRwJApzNUc11iYUD6WT/s602/mt%20Everest%20(L)%20seen%20from%20Nepal.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="452" data-original-width="602" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_LN787eXmv2aoB-5Rat-cb35nDEK3Kjeb0oBSc8g3JaD-X2Vu0nIFV_fHtSV5B47l5xVzYZSkxhvbd14iRxzFaMD0BQ2DyD8oHvyZ96VgKdN0vpnkk2Yi3uPIlP1I8Ebw5K3XRQMxxW1Sp6zx1No-ibb2OSfeX9Ki_706arpWYkRwJApzNUc11iYUD6WT/w400-h300/mt%20Everest%20(L)%20seen%20from%20Nepal.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Mt. Everest seen from Nepal</i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i> </i> <br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>WHY THE GERMAN TROOPS WERE ABLE TO ADVANCE DEEP INTO THE SOVIET TERRITORY<br /></b><br />Because of this man: Grigori Kulik<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgTdfw1xmq9TOae7c-LLeJtMlocghDg80dMp-OvUdVvg822bL9LGkfOK7scHmupzQuZqlCPJzS351x5Rgs7dS_Qn8t1aw_hz_SMII-bzWX4muXRAd0BTHizhdkBmJpu989-1CUpYwJP_-iQBcief8rpCTvXIR2uSKeE2ZfI1GR9gAN_p0LDHPjrW3DcD0Q/s773/grigori%20Kulik.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="773" data-original-width="568" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgTdfw1xmq9TOae7c-LLeJtMlocghDg80dMp-OvUdVvg822bL9LGkfOK7scHmupzQuZqlCPJzS351x5Rgs7dS_Qn8t1aw_hz_SMII-bzWX4muXRAd0BTHizhdkBmJpu989-1CUpYwJP_-iQBcief8rpCTvXIR2uSKeE2ZfI1GR9gAN_p0LDHPjrW3DcD0Q/w294-h400/grigori%20Kulik.jpg" width="294" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">He had no skills and no special military achievements, but he was appointed to a very high position after the Russian civil war because he was a close friend of Stalin, supposedly specializing in artillery, which he attributed to the two cannons he fired in the battle of Tsaritsyn.<br /><br /><b>Before the German invasion, a huge defense line was planned, it was called the Stalin Line, a massive area was to be defended with mines, artificial swamps, barbed wire and various reserve units</b>. Theoretically, attacking such a line would be no different from suicide, even if the German army attacked with all its might, <b>it would be impossible to break through the line without hundreds of thousands of casualties.</b><br /><br />So why did this line fail?<br /><br />First of all, Grigori Kulik refused to mine a huge area, saying that mines are the work of cowards, so the German panzers had the chance to move freely into Soviet territory, he refused to improve the weapons of the t-34 and kv1 tanks that the Soviets had; on top of that, <b>while the infantry repeatedly demanded armor-piercing shells, Kulik did not provide them and because he did not provide most units with the necessary degree of equipment and ammunition, most Soviet soldiers had to fight in primitive methods.</b><br /><br />Also the Germans had machine guns such as the mp40. <b>Kulik refused to equip the Red Army troops with automatic weapons, calling them inaccurate and inefficient so many soviet units forced the use outdated bolt action guns.</b><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Another factor was that <b>because there were no radios in Soviet tanks, they could not coordinate even when they were superior. So many Soviet soldiers were trapped and destroyed because of reasons such as Kulik's insistence on not using mines and not giving enough equipment.</b><br /><br />I want to tell you the following story to make you realize how stupid Kulik was.<br /><br />ppd40 was one of the best weapons of the second world war, very simple to manufacture and use, but why did the Red Army get these weapons late?</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Because Kulik is said so. <b>According to him these weapons were ideal only for policemen, whereas the German army, which used the mp40, literally annihilated Soviet infantry .<br /></b><br />Another system that incurred the wrath of Kulik was the Katyusha rocket system, which has left its mark on war doctrine. It was constantly postponed until Operation Barbarossa; his words "What the hell do we need rocket artillery for?<br /><br />Years after his appointment as Chief of Artillery (and his poor performance in two separate wars), <b>Khruschev questioned his competence, causing Stalin to rebuke him angrily: "You don't even know Kulik! I know him from the civil war when he commanded the artillery in Tsaritsyn. He knows artillery!</b><br /><br />Of course, after Operation Barbarossa, Kulik was demoted by Stalin and in the following years he was executed for treason, but his adventures caused millions of Soviet deaths and almost the collapse of the Soviet state. ~ Elena Gold, Quora<br /><br />Tip Iesan:<br />It was because <b>the Red Army was prepared for an offensive, to strike first the West. No mines by the borders, airbases and fuel depots pushed forward, BT-A tanks, paratroopers</b> etc.<br /><br />Joey the Icepick:<br />The Red Army was not prepared for anything at all, because </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Stalin never imagined that Hitler would do something as reckless as launch the biggest invasion in human history against his own petroleum supply, while also being engaged in the air war against Britain.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />Alexei Sinitsa:<br /><b>The team that designed Katyusha was executed, including the leader, Langemak. Because their former patron was ‘traitor' Tukhachevsky.<br /></b><br />Razvan Pacuraru:<br />The irony was that Kulik was mumbling during a telephone conversation that “the politicians get all the credit for victory.” <b>Arrested in 1947 and executed in 1950. For mumbling things.<br /></b><br />Nan Vile:<br />Short answer: Stalin had no choice. He was helplessly outclassed in every way. Giving ground and suffering ridiculous casualties was all the Russians could do. Fortunately for them, <b>Winter finally intervened before they ran out of ground and men. It gave them a reprieve in which Stalin could finally get organized, and begin to bring Russia’s immense resources to bear.</b><br /><br />Robert Hauldcroft:<br />A few other things contributed to the Soviets stopping the Nazi advance just outside Moscow.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><b>1. The transfer of the Siberian Regiments to reinforce the defense — these were crack troops trained and equipped to fight in extreme cold. Stalin had intel that Japan was not going to invade so he decided he could use them.<br /><br />2. The arrival of lend lease convoys which included tanks and aircraft (including an entire Squadron of Spitfires along with pilots and ground crew) from the US and Uk — you can’t underestimate how much this equipment helped — for example a third of heavy tanks used in the Battle of Moscow were British.</b><br /><br />Nikita:<br />Also, Kulik was one of the main reasons Tukhachevsky, who was arguably one of the most brilliant and innovative military commanders of Soviet Union, was executed before the war.<br />Kulik, who was of Ukranian descent, perversely was one of the reasons Ukraine had suffered so much in WW2.<br /><br />*<br /><b>THE HISTORY BEHIND “THE ZONE OF INTEREST”<br /></b><br /><b>For one German family, life in central Europe was seemingly idyllic, even as World War II raged around them</b>. “Every wish that my wife or children expressed was granted to them,” wrote family patriarch Rudolf Höss in his autobiography. “My wife’s garden was a paradise of flowers.” Rudolf’s five children played with tortoises, cats and lizards at their villa near the Polish city of Krakow; in the summer, the siblings frolicked in a pool in their yard or swam in a nearby river.<br /><br />These peaceful domestic scenes masked a dark reality: Rudolf was the Nazi officer in charge of Auschwitz, the concentration and extermination camp where the Nazis killed an estimated 1.1 million people — most of them European Jews. <b>Rudolf was directly responsible for these killings, which he oversaw as the camp’s longest-serving commandant. And the peaceful villa with its floral garden? It stood just beyond the high walls surrounding the Höss home.<br /></b><br />The Zone of Interest, a new film written and directed by Jonathan Glazer, envisions the Hösses’ everyday lives, rarely venturing beyond the villa’s borders to acknowledge the atrocities unfolding next door. <b>By emphasizing the mundane, the acclaimed British filmmaker hoped to expose Rudolf (played by Christian Friedel) and his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), as undeniably human. “I wanted to dismantle the idea of them as anomalies, as almost supernatural,”</b> Glazer tells the New York Times. “You know, the idea that they came from the skies and ran amok, but <b>thank God that’s not us and it’s never going to happen again. I wanted to show that these were crimes committed by Mr. and Mrs. Smith at No. 26.”</b><br /><br />Unlike Schindler’s List, The Pianist and other staples of Holocaust cinema, </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>The Zone of Interest never explicitly depicts the horrors of life and death inflicted by the Nazis</b>. <b>Instead, the film relies on the power of suggestion, alluding to mass murder through brief glimpses of crematoria chimneys and an ambient soundtrack punctuated by gunshots and screams.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b> </b>The story is less about the Nazis than the broader question of human nature, “the thing in us that drives it all, the capacity for violence that we all have,” Glazer tells the Guardian. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“For me, this is not a film about the past. It’s trying to be about now, and about us and our similarity to the perpetrators, not our similarity to the victims.” (As many critics have pointed out, the film underscores “the banality of evil,” a phenomenon described by philosopher Hannah Arendt during the trial of Adolf Eichmann, architect of the Holocaust.)<br /><br />The film deviates heavily from its source material, a 2014 Martin Amis novel of the same name. In the book, a Nazi officer falls in love with the wife of Auschwitz’s commandant, who is loosely based on Rudolf but doesn’t share his name. For his take on the story, Glazer excised the love triangle and made the characters’ connections to the real-life figures explicit. To immerse viewers in the family’s routines and create an environment akin to a surveillance state, the director filmed interior scenes on hidden cameras—a setup he likens to “‘Big Brother’ in a Nazi house.”<br /><br /><b>A</b> <b>central conflict in the film is Hedwig’s objection to her husband’s pending promotion, which will take him to Berlin and her away from her beloved home outside the camp. </b>(According to the Times, this argument is based on testimony recently found in the archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, which consulted on The Zone of Interest and makes an appearance in its closing moments.) At his wife’s request, Rudolf convinces his superiors to let the rest of the family stay behind while he relocates. <b>The Hösses are only reunited when Rudolf is put in charge of an enormous undertaking: the deportation and murder of more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews, all in the span of less than two months in 1944.</b><br /><br />The question of what the Höss family knows—and to what extent they can be held responsible—looms over The Zone of Interest. Hedwig and her children aren’t directly involved in Auschwitz’s administration. But the movie suggests complicity in one way or another. At one point, Hedwig tries on a luxurious fur coat stolen from a murdered woman. In another scene, the couple’s oldest son, Klaus, uses a flashlight to examine false teeth pried from the mouths of Jews killed in the gas chambers. <i><b>When Rudolf and his children go swimming in a river, the commandant stumbles onto a human jawbone—a macabre find that prompts him to hurry home for a bath.</b></i><br /><br />As Polygon notes in its review of the film: “We don’t see the camp, but the sounds of it are all-encompassing, blaring just beneath the everyday sounds in the rest of the movie. They’re like a thick fog that permeates the family’s weightless domestic concerns, making the evil they’re complicit in inescapable. <b>Death and its noises are ever-present but never acknowledged, shrouding the nearly meaningless events on the screen</b>.”<br /><br />WHO WAS RUDOLF HÖSS?<br /><br />Born to Catholic parents in Germany in 1900, Rudolf fought in World War I before joining a nationalist paramilitary group. He first heard Adolf Hitler speak in 1922, and he joined the Nazi Party shortly thereafter. The following year, Rudolf and several accomplices murdered a schoolteacher who’d betrayed a fellow paramilitary soldier to the French. Sentenced to ten years in prison, Rudolf was released in 1928 under a general amnesty. He spent the next few years farming and starting a family but eventually abandoned the agrarian lifestyle in favor of the SS, the Nazis’ elite paramilitary division.<br /><br /><b>Between 1934 and 1940, Rudolf worked at the Dachau and Sachsenhausen concentration camps, which at the time housed mainly political prisoners.</b> <b>He impressed his superiors so much that they appointed him commandant of the newly created Auschwitz. In this role, he transformed the camp into the Nazis’ chief killing center, settling on Zyklon B as the most efficient method of gassing.</b> As he later said, gassing was preferable to shooting because the latter “would have placed too heavy a burden on the SS men who had to carry it out, especially because of the women and children among the victims.”<br /><br />Rudolf approached the prospect of mass murder with systematic, detached precision. As historian Laurence Rees wrote for History Extra in 2020, “<b>Höss was no mere robot, blindly following orders, but an innovator in the way he organized the killing</b>.” <b>At the camp’s peak, Auschwitz’s gas chambers were capable of murdering 2,000 people an hour.</b><br /><br /><i><b>Rudolf’s family lived in a villa in Auschwitz’s zone of interest, an SS-administered area surrounding the camp</b>. <b>During the war, the SS expelled some 9,000 locals from this 16-square-mile zone, preventing outsiders from witnessing the atrocities and isolating the prisoners from the rest of the world. The commandant took care to hide the crematoria chimney from his children, erecting a garden wall and planting trees that obstructed their view from the house.</b></i><br /><br /><b>In his autobiography, Rudolf maintained that Hedwig had no knowledge of the killings taking place at Auschwitz. But the evidence suggests otherwise. The Hösses lived a life of luxury, employing camp inmates as forced laborers and seizing items confiscated from the dead, including expensive furs, cooking supplies like sugar and flour, jewelry, and leather goods. <br /></b><br />The commandant “made his household so magnificent and so well-equipped that his wife declared, ‘Here I want to live and die,’” recalled Stanislaw Dubiel, a Pole who worked as the family’s gardener, in testimony provided after the war. “They had everything in their household, and there was no way they would lack anything with the enormous supplies of all kinds of goods accumulated in the camp.”<br /><br />Both Hedwig and Rudolf were deeply antisemitic. According to Dubiel, <b><i>“She believed that [Jews] all must disappear from the surface of the earth, and that some day the time would come even for English Jews.” Rudolf, for his part, “had joined the SS because he believed wholeheartedly in the overall Nazi vision</i></b>,” Rees wrote.</span><br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">As in the movie, <b>Rudolf was reassigned to Berlin in late 1943, tasked with overseeing operations at all of the Nazis’ concentration and extermination camps. The SS was pleased with his progress, describing him as “a true pioneer in this area because of his new ideas and educational methods.” His family remained at Auschwitz during his stint in the German capital, but their separation was relatively brief.</b><br /><br /><i><b>In May 1944, Rudolf returned to the camp to oversee the eponymous Operation Höss, which brought 440,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in just 56 days. </b></i>The Auschwitz Album, a collection of photographs housed at Yad Vashem in Israel, records these individuals’ arrival at the camp, where<b> the majority were immediately sent to the gas chambers. </b>The images stand in stark contrast to snapshots captured by SS officer Karl Höcker around this same time. In the photos, Rudolf, Josef Mengele and other SS men stationed at Auschwitz participate in a sing-along and relax at a retreat, as well as attend official camp ceremonies. Juxtaposed with the final moments of the newly arrived Jews, the officers’ blithe enjoyment of everyday life appears both callous and eerily relatable, reminding viewers—much like The Zone of Interest does—of the Nazis’ humanity.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZGUHtTGMEzzK28KaJQ_5slXVa-DsAksUErk8S7blVV3AbCYvbdMUMhqZaXmdOltrf7uNp5WvSxuCJchTUiI3OqHZ4X2l2v36n_Ooj88lCHgqapPwsIibxGLKREOIT4FIj0I_PMjNEcIXvXhsOkcAOdtaze4eEwEkR1a8-gYxjK1MfDymcXyUZhn5pUFGa/s897/hungarian%20Jews%20arriving%20at%20Asuchwitz%20in%201944.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="639" data-original-width="897" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZGUHtTGMEzzK28KaJQ_5slXVa-DsAksUErk8S7blVV3AbCYvbdMUMhqZaXmdOltrf7uNp5WvSxuCJchTUiI3OqHZ4X2l2v36n_Ooj88lCHgqapPwsIibxGLKREOIT4FIj0I_PMjNEcIXvXhsOkcAOdtaze4eEwEkR1a8-gYxjK1MfDymcXyUZhn5pUFGa/w400-h285/hungarian%20Jews%20arriving%20at%20Asuchwitz%20in%201944.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Hungarian Jews arriving at Auschwitz, 1944</i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“Though Höcker's album does not depict any criminal or immoral actions, one is struck by [its] amorality,” notes the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on its website.<b>Eliding the brutality of Auschwitz, the photos instead show “SS officers going about their business, socializing, enjoying the beautiful weather and mourning fallen comrades, se</b></span><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>emingly oblivious to the magnitude of the crimes which they are either perpetrating or enabling.”</b><br /><br /><i><b>Toward the end of the war, the Höss family went into hiding in northern Germany, hoping to bide their time until they could escape to South America, where many Nazis sought refuge after the conflict. Hedwig and the children settled above an old sugar factory in the coastal village of St. Michaelisdonn, while Rudolf moved to Flensburg and worked at a farm under the alias Franz Lang.</b></i><br /><br />It took a year for authorities to catch up with the former commandant. In March 1946, British soldiers showed up at Hedwig’s home. <b>“My older brother Klaus was taken with my mother,” Rudolf’s daughter Brigitte later recalled. “He was beaten badly by the British. My mother heard him scream in pain from the room next door. Just like any mother, she wanted to protect her son, so she told them where my father was.”<br /></b><br />The man in charge of the search was Hans Alexander, a German Jew who’d fled Berlin in the 1930s and ended up in Britain. When Alexander turned up at Rudolf’s door one night, the Nazi denied that he was the former commandant. But <b>his wedding ring proved otherwise, bearing the inscribed names “Rudolf” and “Hedwig.”</b><br /><br />Following his capture, Rudolf testified at the Nuremberg trials, providing detailed accounts of the Nazi killing machine and his own role in the murders at Auschwitz. <b>He was the first senior Nazi to confess to such crimes, taking responsibility for his actions while many of his peers refused to admit any wrongdoing. </b>Transferred to Poland, he was tried for murder and sentenced to death by hanging. While awaiting execution, he wrote his autobiography, painting himself as “a cog in the wheel of the great extermination machine created by the Third Reich.” <b>On April 16, 1947, Rudolf was hanged at Auschwitz, the site of his crimes, in front of a crowd that included former camp inmates.<br /></b><br />After Rudolf’s execution, his family struggled to make ends meet in a country eager to forget its Nazi past. As the widow of a convicted war criminal, Hedwig didn’t receive a pension or other government funding. But she never held a job either, leading her grandson Rainer Höss to speculate that she survived on money “from the old Nazi network that flocked around her.” <b>The commandant’s oldest son, Klaus, eventually relocated to Australia, while his daughter Brigitte moved first to Spain and then to the United States. The rest of the children stayed in Germany, as did their mother. The family rarely talked about Rudolf</b>, preferring to hide their connection to the infamous Nazi and downplay his crimes.<br /><br />Alexander’s great-nephew, a journalist named Thomas Harding, interviewed Brigitte while working on a book about his uncle’s search for Rudolf. "She told me that <b>he was the nicest father in the world, that he would read stories and take them on boat rides</b>,” Harding told the Globe and Mail in 2013. “<b>His family loved him. There were two sides to him—the father and the commandant.</b>” Harding added, “What I found is that a single person can be both [a man and a monster], and that’s frightening. It could happen again, and that’s why we need to be vigilant.”</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg33LnCXrebD7Px8SXhpIcmA200hHOR3yL6oHG6rlEsIfZCx8S1ckBEsAwotvkrZgf1BN3AO4EwgG_9F_Gf5uID-mEFBjy13lFf82Zee9Y7Z8VIEJBkOBFkev5_jIpsjQ43th8FPT5cN66SbPDyn_V__b0lLX4Yjgww4wyy-TuRXTdPAklJlxOH2qOFuZvx/s1536/Mengele%20and%20Hoess.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="864" data-original-width="1536" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg33LnCXrebD7Px8SXhpIcmA200hHOR3yL6oHG6rlEsIfZCx8S1ckBEsAwotvkrZgf1BN3AO4EwgG_9F_Gf5uID-mEFBjy13lFf82Zee9Y7Z8VIEJBkOBFkev5_jIpsjQ43th8FPT5cN66SbPDyn_V__b0lLX4Yjgww4wyy-TuRXTdPAklJlxOH2qOFuZvx/w400-h225/Mengele%20and%20Hoess.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><i><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Mengele (L) and </span>Hoess</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-real-history-behind-the-zone-of-interest-and-rudolf-hoss-180983531/">https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-real-history-behind-the-zone-of-interest-and-rudolf-hoss-180983531/<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>THE ZONE OF INTEREST: A DIFFERENT KIND OF HOLOCAUST MOVIE<br /></b><br />Though it’s been seven months, I remain haunted by “The Zone of Interest.” When I first watched writer-director Jonathan Glazer’s radical take on the Holocaust back in May, I couldn’t quite pinpoint what was so startling about it. There have been many films on this horrific chapter in history—from “Night and Fog” to “Schindler's List” to “The Pianist,” and as recently as “Occupied City”—all asking the viewer to bear witness to unfathomable suffering under a genocidal regime’s brutality. <b>It would be a mistake, however, to interpret Glazer’s adaptation of Martin Amis’ same-titled novel as him asking viewers to simply witness. It’s a disturbing work, guided by a discomforting sense of immaculateness that chills the viewer.</b> It is the sanitation the film performs, which speaks to the now, in a way few Holocaust films have done before. <br /><br />You could, of course, accuse Glazer’s film of merely being a formal exercise. He challenges himself to not only work purely through atmosphere, but also takes the risk of telling this story from a German perspective. Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) is the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. When he first appears on-screen, he is with his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) and their children, relaxing at the riverside, in a verdant field surrounded by lush mountains. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtDDBwSxrSHMJ5bbK6etK11IbShaHI2DQiDh0KQvuJY_fSchFrhpSW2QcHf5eWNycD0jYYzVQSK28K7_FhJbdx6cNZATPEO6v7g8PDC_nnbdonGpgsj66JMj62z0WEJZNaUjpvMXJMT5MNw9oSp1h9Dga5hrM_g9CCwOLAwRgcA4zkUc9QUjelB43cSEmg/s1200/zone%20of%20interest%20river%20hills.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="1200" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtDDBwSxrSHMJ5bbK6etK11IbShaHI2DQiDh0KQvuJY_fSchFrhpSW2QcHf5eWNycD0jYYzVQSK28K7_FhJbdx6cNZATPEO6v7g8PDC_nnbdonGpgsj66JMj62z0WEJZNaUjpvMXJMT5MNw9oSp1h9Dga5hrM_g9CCwOLAwRgcA4zkUc9QUjelB43cSEmg/w400-h166/zone%20of%20interest%20river%20hills.jpg" width="400" /></a></div></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Soon we are introduced to their dream house, a tall concrete structure surrounded by a lavish yard and seemingly even taller walls. On the other side of these barriers is the camp itself. Outside of a single shot—a low angle of Rudolf, framed by black smoke billowing in the background—<b>we never really see inside the camp. Instead, viewers are asked to aurally visualize. </b>Much has been explained by Glazer about the two movies occurring within “The Zone of Interest” (the one perceived through sight and the other through sound). That tension is obvious, yet no less powerful. <br /><br />Much has also been made of the banality of evil. The Höss family live next door to ongoing genocide yet never comment on the horrific screams or the smell of death nearby. Thus, there is an expected coldness which seeps into the film’s lack of sentimentality. <b>They raise their children under a pretense of normalcy—Rudolf tells them late-night bedtime stories, takes them horseback riding, and participates in other pastoral pursuits</b>. Because of the emotional blankness, a burden falls on Friedel and Hüller to chart a tricky course: How human can you make someone who is clearly inhuman? Friedel gives nothing away, relying on a cold stoicism that translates to his frigid posture. Hüller is a tad slipperier, a vicious rattlesnake with a blade for a tail. If not for their performances, you could see how Glazer’s framing could easily go left. <br /><br />But that feeling isn’t anything new for Glazer: “Birth” was widely criticized for its ending and the on-screen relationship between Nicole Kidman and Cameron Bright. “Under the Skin,” though better received critically, walks a fine feminist line. Those films, along with his debut “Sexy Beast,” witnessed Glazer pushing his audio-visual storytelling toward leaner, angular compositions and a dynamic sense of sound capable of unnerving the viewer. In “The Zone of Interest,” with cinematographer Lukasz Zal, he furthers those two desires, often linking domestic spaces causally to exterior sound: When a train rumbles by, bringing more Jewish people, a package comes to the house with stockings presumably taken from the murdered occupants of the previous train.<b> On Rudolf’s side of the wall, the family celebrates life (birthdays and social gatherings) while death occurs on the other side. <br /></b><br />The close correlation speaks to the repulsively intimate relationship Rudolf and his family have with destruction. They profit off an entire people’s death in unspeakable ways: In one scene, one of Rudolf’s sons has a flashlight in bed. But he’s not rifling at a comic book in the dark;<b> he’s rummaging through his collection of gold teeth. In another scene, Hedwig receives a fur coat. She tries on the fine pelt, twisting her body to catch her every angle in the mirror. In one of the pockets, she discovers the previous owner's lipstick; in the next scene she tries the lipstick on.</b> Their easeful proximity to murder is thrown in stark relief when Hedwig’s mother arrives. At first, her mother is impressed by their “scenic” home. “You really have landed on your feet, my child,” she says to a proud Hedwig. But when the emanating sounds and smells become apparent to Hedwig’s mother, she reacts in a way that shocks Hedwig. <br /><br />In a film predicated on dissonance, the Höss’ persistent tidying up looms large. Whenever Rudolf takes off his boots, there is a Jewish prisoner there to clean them. When soot from the camp touches the river, Rudolf’s kids are scrubbed down with scalding hot water. When Rudolf has affairs, he washes his privates in a slop sink before returning to his wife’s bedroom. Weeds are pulled and human ashes are used to replenish. Every misdeed by the Höss family functions on this cycle of obfuscation. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Composer Mica Levi’s foreboding score, which can be guttural and dirty in infrared scenes, wherein a girl picks up food from the mud, participates in the dichotomy of polishing and revealing. The use of the color white—new sheets, sleek suits, and sterile office walls—depends upon this blurring. <b>Even the language, the way everyone speaks about death in mechanical terms and technicalities, works to wash over the truth. </b>If you’re always talking in circles about your crimes, isn’t it easier to continue performing them in a straight line? <br /><br />As much as Glazer’s film is about a specific moment in time, it’s equally concerned with how history records tragedy. Consider when Rudolf is transferred from Auschwitz to Oranienburg; Hedwig wants to stay in the dream house, in the reality she’s crafted for herself. Rudolf on the other hand, <b>for the first time, openly speaks on the phone to his wife about murder without softening the language. Her reaction is grim; his words barely register. “It’s in the middle of the night and I need to be in bed,” she disturbingly replies. </b>He hangs up on her, leaves the office and descends the stairs. While walking down the steps, he vomits several times until he comes to a barely lit hallway. <br /><br />Editor Paul Watts makes a narrative-breaking cut to present-day Auschwitz. It’s being cleaned—swept, mopped, and vacuumed—for visitors to witness the artifacts (shoes and luggage) now without owners. <br /><br />This juxtaposition allows for the two results of sanitization to be at play. For much of the film, viewers see how sanitization can be used to erase. Here, Glazer gives us a glimpse of how it can also be used to maintain. Because <b>how we remember history, how we make note of current events—through propaganda, photography, video, and the internet—is a constant interplay between the truth as it exists and as it has been edited.</b> The fact that "The Zone of Interest" arrives now, as world powers manipulate the narrative to sanitize their crimes, makes Glazer's images all the more chilling. <b>Glazer’s intermingling of the now and the then, appearance versus truth, life and annihilation are rendered into unignorable magnitude.</b><br /><br /><a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-zone-of-interest-film-review-2023">https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-zone-of-interest-film-review-2023<br /></a><br />Oriana:<br /><br />I’m glad I saw the movie, but I’d never want to see it again. Just the guttural roars that punctuate the score are simply hideous. This is of course deliberate: the movie is not about Hedwig’s love of flowers. Its message is not that Höss was a loving father. <br /><br />My favorite scene was Höss talking to his horse. Again, the scene showed that the mass murderer was capable of love — he wasn’t a psychopath. <br /><br />And Hedwig? She loves flowers. She creates a “paradise of flowers” next door to hell.<br /><br />But let’s not forget that <b>the movie also presents an angel: the astonishingly brave young girl who hid apples for prisoners to find. She was indeed a real person. <br /></b><br />To say that the movie is about the “banality of evil” is to dismiss it too quickly. It resists being dismissed. This movie is meant to linger in our psyche, to haunt us and disturb us. <br /><br />It’s definitely not just another Holocaust movie. In some ways, it’s more disturbing by far than, say, “Schindler’s List.” That’s not to say that it’s better — just different in a haunting way, presenting again the puzzle of why human beings are capable of such immense evil. <br /><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqVtGt_i-dkPXF-2H8Won0ucKeuwC7NwC3eY1R9qb6mr-oA1-cBolSvIr0BhSIms5WGrreIDyUgnvcZUvEYi1dtkGJo5nM3VJLi27lYHUz3Zkzlxu9uwsNtb-ziFLRndJ5fQDRz-Y31ymV5QNdzG7G-I_95he0lyZ6B-x_wiid0EMrpvhUUWG4sn2IpxI0/s1200/Zone%20of%20Interest.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="626" data-original-width="1200" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqVtGt_i-dkPXF-2H8Won0ucKeuwC7NwC3eY1R9qb6mr-oA1-cBolSvIr0BhSIms5WGrreIDyUgnvcZUvEYi1dtkGJo5nM3VJLi27lYHUz3Zkzlxu9uwsNtb-ziFLRndJ5fQDRz-Y31ymV5QNdzG7G-I_95he0lyZ6B-x_wiid0EMrpvhUUWG4sn2IpxI0/w400-h209/Zone%20of%20Interest.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>DID JESUS REALLY EXIST?<br /></b><br />Most New Testament scholars agree that some 2,000 years ago a peripatetic Jewish preacher from Galilee was executed by the Romans, after a year or more of telling his followers about this world and the world to come. <b>Most scholars – though not all.</b><br /><br />But let’s stick with the mainstream for now: the Bible historians who harbor no doubt that the sandals of Yeshua ben Yosef really did leave imprints between Nazareth and Jerusalem early in the common era. They divide loosely into three groups, the largest of which includes <b>Christian theologians who conflate the Jesus of faith with the historical figure, which usually means they accept the virgin birth, the miracles and the resurrection; although a few, such as Simon Gathercole, a professor at the University of Cambridge and a conservative evangelical, grapple seriously with the historical evidence.</b><br /><br />Next are the liberal Christians who separate faith from history, and are prepared to go wherever the evidence leads, even if it contradicts traditional belief. Their most vocal representative is <b>John Barton, an Anglican clergyman and Oxford scholar, who accepts that most Bible books were written by multiple authors, often over centuries, and that they diverge from history.</b><br /><br /><b>A third group, with views not far from Barton’s, are secular scholars who dismiss the miracle-rich parts of the New Testament while accepting that Jesus was, nonetheless, a figure rooted in history: the gospels, they contend, offer evidence of the main thrusts of his preaching life. A number of this group, including their most prolific member, Bart Ehrman, a Biblical historian at the University of North Carolina, are atheists who emerged from evangelical Christianity.</b> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In the spirit of full declaration, I should add that my own vantage point is similar to Ehrman’s: I was raised in an evangelical Christian family, the son of a ‘born-again’, tongues-talking, Jewish-born Anglican bishop; but, from the age of 17, I came to doubt all that I once believed. Though I remained fascinated by the Abrahamic religions, my interest in them was not enough to prevent my drifting, via agnosticism, into atheism.<br /><br /><b>There is also a smaller, fourth group who threaten the largely peaceable disagreements between atheists, deists and more orthodox Christians by insisting that evidence for a historical Jesus is so flimsy as to cast doubt on his earthly existence altogether. This group – which includes its share of lapsed Christians – suggests that Jesus may have been a mythological figure who, like Romulus, of Roman legend, was later historicized.</b><br /><br />But what is the evidence for Jesus’ existence? And how robust is it by the standards historians might deploy – which is to say: how much of the gospel story can be relied upon as truth? The answers have enormous implications, not just for the Catholic Church and for faith-obsessed countries like the United States, but for billions of individuals who grew up with the comforting picture of a loving Jesus in their hearts. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Even for people like me, who dispensed with the God-soul-heaven-hell bits, the idea that this figure of childhood devotion might not have existed or, if he did, that we might know very little indeed about him, takes some swallowing. It involves a traumatic loss – which perhaps explains why the debate is so fraught, even among secular scholars.<br /><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_NfAovmjDl_iHHnphccIU7gN3FScrxb1DXLzI97YNXwJ0AXwx173qSWh9yfhKq_yU5ulHgncv6tCIMHu1FBH8jd1mJMFOh9crGtq8rSUDn3C2O7MA9WedMQlPJkOKmkLxhwaoaSIZOBkG8p3C-UroicgauLtLKv3EMQuh8AL_4k0_32pphhbyQ3FyBkF6/s5126/christ%20face%20Turin%20shroud.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5126" data-original-width="3840" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_NfAovmjDl_iHHnphccIU7gN3FScrxb1DXLzI97YNXwJ0AXwx173qSWh9yfhKq_yU5ulHgncv6tCIMHu1FBH8jd1mJMFOh9crGtq8rSUDn3C2O7MA9WedMQlPJkOKmkLxhwaoaSIZOBkG8p3C-UroicgauLtLKv3EMQuh8AL_4k0_32pphhbyQ3FyBkF6/w300-h400/christ%20face%20Turin%20shroud.webp" width="300" /></a></div>Secondo Pia’s photograph of the Shroud of Turin (May 1898), digital print from the Musée de l’Élysée, Lausanne.<br /></i><br />When I’ve discussed this essay with people raised as atheists or in other faiths, the question invariably asked goes something like this: <b>why is it so important for Christians that Jesus lived on earth? What is at stake here is the unique aspect of their faith – the thing that sets it apart. For more than 1,900 years, Christianity has maintained the conviction that God sent his son to earth to suffer a hideous crucifixion to save us from our sins and give us everlasting life. </b><br /><br />Jesus’ earthbound birth, life and particularly his death, which ushered in redemption, are the very foundation of their faith. These views are so deeply entrenched that,<b> even for those who have loosened the grip of belief, the idea that he might not have been ‘real’ is hard to stomach.<br /></b><br />You’d think that a cult leader who drew crowds, inspired devoted followers and was executed on the order of a Roman governor would leave some indentation in contemporary records.<b> The emperors Vespasian and Titus and the historians Seneca the Elder and the Younger wrote a good deal about 1st-century Judea without ever mentioning Jesus. </b>That could mean simply that he was less significant an actor than the Bible would have us think. <br /><br />But, despite the volume of records that survive from that time, there is also no death reference (as there was, say, for the 6,000 slaves loyal to Spartacus who were crucified along the Appian Way in 71 BCE), and <b>no mention in any surviving official report, private letter, poetry or play.<br /></b><br />Compare this with Socrates, for example. Though none of the thoughts attributed to him survive in written form, still we know that he lived (470-399 BCE) because several of his pupils and contemporary critics wrote books and plays about him. But with Jesus there is silence from those who might have seen him in the flesh – which is awkward for historicists like <b>Ehrman; ‘odd as it may seem,’ he wrote in 1999, ‘[i]n none of this vast array of surviving writings is Jesus’ name ever so much as mentioned.’</b> In fact, there are just three sources of putative proof of life – all of them posthumous: the gospels, the letters of Paul, and historical evidence from beyond the Bible.<br /><br />Christian historians base their claims for a historical Jesus on the thinnest mentions of early Christians by the Roman politicians Pliny the Younger and Tacitus (who write of Christians they interviewed early in the 2nd century – in Pliny’s case, a tortured female deacon – all followers of ‘The Way’ who talked about Jesus) and by Flavius Josephus, a Romanized Jewish historian. <br /><br /><b>Josephus’s 20-volume Antiquities of the Jews, written around 94 CE, during the reign of Domitian, contains two references to Jesus, including one claiming that he was the Messiah crucified by Pontius Pilate. This would carry some weight if Josephus actually wrote it; but the experts, including evangelicals like Gathercole, agree this reference was likely forged by the 4th-century Christian polemicist Eusebius. </b>The other reference is to ‘the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James’. Some scholars say the ‘called Christ’ bit was a later addition, but it hardly matters when <b>Josephus was drawing from stories told by Christians more than six decades after Jesus’ assumed crucifixion.</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYVEKjzW5sslHE3y85mjXxMtvgR0S572P7UZngZAj52aJT2sLDvaWTCpm8DmIA87MuDYv6UQgbGwfbTYemBmiiRdCz-OYhFzVOXNThVhwGuXzS1UXDTGTcAWejFBttwnVjLq4r7rvqbXJH3pZUTcvkA2QuSJ3Ml_morrSvQUP6djx9K2RcqaubcdcK9lsm/s602/crucifix.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="369" data-original-width="602" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYVEKjzW5sslHE3y85mjXxMtvgR0S572P7UZngZAj52aJT2sLDvaWTCpm8DmIA87MuDYv6UQgbGwfbTYemBmiiRdCz-OYhFzVOXNThVhwGuXzS1UXDTGTcAWejFBttwnVjLq4r7rvqbXJH3pZUTcvkA2QuSJ3Ml_morrSvQUP6djx9K2RcqaubcdcK9lsm/s320/crucifix.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The earliest evidence testifying to a historical figure comes not from contemporary records, but from the letters of Paul, which date broadly from 50 to 58 CE (of the 14 letters originally attributed to Paul, only half are now thought to be mainly his writing, with the rest thought to be written sometime in the 2nd century).<i><b> </b></i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b> </b></i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>The problem with Paul for proof-seekers is how little he says about Jesus. If Jesus lived and died in Paul’s lifetime, you might expect he’d refer to Jesus’ ministry on earth – to his parables, sermons and prayers – and that his readers would want this crucial life story. But Paul offers nothing on the living Jesus, such as the stories or sayings that later appear in the gospels, and he provides no information from human sources, referring only to visionary communication with Jesus and to messianic Old Testament quotes.</b></i><br /><br />Which brings us to the gospels, written later, and not by those whose names they bear (these were added in the 2nd and 3rd centuries). The gospel of Mark, which borrows from Paul, came first and set the template for the gospels that followed (Matthew draws from 600 of Mark’s 661 verses, while 65 per cent of Luke is drawn from Mark and Matthew.) The first version of Mark is dated between 53 and 70 BCE, when the Second Temple was destroyed, an event it mentions. <b>The last gospel, John, which has a different theology and stories that contradict those of the three ‘synoptic’ gospels, is dated at around 100 CE. </b></span><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>All four gospels include sections written in the 2nd century (among them, two different virgin birth narratives in Matthew and Luke), and some scholars place the final 12 verses of Mark in the 3rd century. </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Several historians assume that Matthew and Luke had an earlier source they call Q. However, Q has never been found and there are no references to it elsewhere.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b> </b>Barton suggests that a belief in Q may serve a ‘conservative religious agenda’ because to say these gospels drew from an earlier source ‘is an implicit denial that they made any of it up themselves’.<br /><br />Taken together, what can the gospels tell us about the historical Jesus? <b>Secular scholars agree that much of their content is fictional, and note, as Ehrman puts it, that ‘these voices are often at odds with one another, contradicting one another in minute details and in major issues’. And yet Ehrman is convinced that Jesus existed; he contends that the gospel writers heard reports about Jesus and ‘decided to write their own versions’.</b> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">A few basic facts, like the dates of Jesus’ birth and death (gleaned from their mention of various rulers), are widely accepted, and several of Jesus’ sayings are said to be close to his real words. To separate the factual wheat from the fictional chaff, they employ ‘criteria of authenticity’ – <b>stories and words that ring true.</b> <b>The three main criteria are: embarrassment (are those details out of step with 1st-century Judaism and, if so, why would the gospel writers invent things that would cause problems?); multiple attestation (the more sources, the better); and coherence (are details consistent with what we know</b>?)<br /><br />However, there is good reason to interrogate this approach. With regard to the criteria of multiple attestation and coherence, <b>we know the gospel writers borrowed from each other, so we’d expect them to include the same stuff.</b> The gospel of Luke, for instance, borrowed Matthew’s ‘consider the lilies of the field’ speech, but if Matthew’s tale is fabricated, Luke’s repetition hardly adds credibility. In addition, the ‘embarrassment criterion’ relies on our knowing what went against the grain. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But the Church was diverse when the gospels were written and <b>we can’t be sure what might have embarrassed their authors</b>. It’s often argued, for example, that the gospel writers went to such great lengths to show that the crucifixion was predicted in the Hebrew scriptures in order to make it palatable to an audience convinced that no true messiah could be thus humiliated. <b>But this argument can be turned on its head if we accept that the crucifixion tale was included because the gospel writers – pace Paul – believed it was required to fulfill prophesy. If the crucifixion was prophesied, then how can it have been embarrassing?</b><br /><br />On the subject of the crucifixion, it’s worth noting that, <b>while the four accepted gospels have Jesus sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate, in the non-canonical gospel of Peter it is Herod Antipas who does the deed. The gospel of Thomas, meanwhile, makes no mention of Jesus’ death, resurrection or divinity at all.</b> According to the 4th-century theologian Epiphanius, the Torah-observant Nazorean Christians (thought to have descended from the first group of believers), held that Jesus lived and died during the reign of King Alexander Jannaeus (10-76 BCE) – a century before Pontius Pilate. <b>And the Babylonian Talmud agrees, claiming that Jesus was executed by stoning and ‘hanging’ in the town of Lydda (not Jerusalem) for ‘immorality, sorcery and worshipping idols’. So, even when the ‘criteria of authenticity’ are met, historical consensus is hard to establish.</b><br /><br /><b>The most concerted effort to separate fact from fiction started in 1985 when a group of mainly secular scholars were drawn together by the lapsed Catholic theologian Bob Funk.</b> <b>Funk’s ‘Jesus Seminar’ met twice a year for 20 years to ‘search for the historical Jesus’. </b>At its launch, Funk said the group would enquire ‘simply, rigorously after the voice of Jesus, after what he really said.’ These scholars (eventually numbering more than 200) used the ‘criteria of authenticity’ to assess the deeds and words of Jesus as reported in the gospels. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Many seminars later, following much debate, they concluded that Jesus was an iconoclastic Hellenistic Jewish preacher who told stories in parables and spoke out against injustice; that he had two earthly parents; and that he did not perform miracles, die for people’s sins or rise from the dead. </b>The veracity of his sayings and deeds was decided by a group vote. Scholars were invited to place plastic beads in a box: red (three points) if Jesus said it; pink (two points) if he probably said it; grey (one point) if he didn’t, but it reflected his ideas; black (zero) if invented. When tallied, <b>there were black or grey beads for 82 per cent of Jesus’ Biblical sayings, and 84 per cent of his deeds.</b><br /><br />Such methods are regarded as quaint, at best, by scholars researching non-Biblical historical figures. One of those I canvassed was Catharine Edwards, professor of classics and ancient history at Birkbeck, University of London, who said that some historians of the ancient world tend towards scepticism – ‘for example, we can’t really know anything about the earliest stage of Roman history beyond what is gleaned from archaeological evidence’ – while others tend towards ‘extreme credibility’. But, even among those, ‘criteria of authenticity’ are not a familiar tool. She added that the colored-beads approach ‘sounds naive and on the credulous end of the spectrum where scholars make assumptions about the character of a particular ancient individual and on that basis decide what they think he (invariably) may or may not have said.’<br /><br /><b>Hugh Bowden, professor of ancient history at King’s College London, said that there was more evidence for the existence of Socrates and Pericles than for Jesus, but ‘much less hangs on it’. </b>The focus on the historicity of Jesus has ‘no real equivalent in other fields, because it is rooted in confessional preconceptions (early Christianity matters because modern Christianity matters) even when scholars claim to be unaffected by personal religious views. Historians in other fields would not find the question very important.’<br /><br /><b>If we remove those preconceptions, it seems commonsensical to apply caution to the historicity of the gospels and let doubt lead our interrogations. The first gospel, Mark, was begun nearly half a century after Jesus’ ministry (and its final verses much later</b>). Jesus’ Aramaic-speaking followers were probably illiterate, and there were no reporters taking notes. <i><b>The likelihood of Jesus’ words being accurately reproduced by writers who’d never met him, and were elaborating on increasingly fanciful tales passed down through the decades, seems remote</b></i>.<br /><br />One scholar who was part of the Jesus Seminar and yet harbored such doubts, is Robert Price, a respected New Testament professor with a PhD in ‘Systematic Theology’, and a former Baptist pastor turned atheist. Price came to query the methodology used to establish historicity, prompting him to doubt whether Jesus ever lived. <b>‘If there ever was a historical Jesus there isn’t one anymore,’ he said, later writing: ‘There may have been a real figure there, but there is simply no longer any way of being sure.’<br /></b><br />Price became the heavyweight figure for a fringe group of ‘Christ myth’ skeptics – historians who propose that early Christians, including Paul, believed in a celestial messiah and that he was placed in history by the gospel writers in the next generation. So, while <b>most of the 200 believe Jesus was a historical figure mythologized by the gospel writers, the skeptics believe the opposite: he was a mythical figure who was subsequently historicized.</b><br /><br />Such ideas have been around for centuries. Thomas Paine was an early adopter but it was the 19th-century German philosopher Bruno Bauer who advanced the theory most assiduously. <b>Bauer, an atheist, recognized the gospel themes as literary rather than historical, arguing that Christianity had pagan roots and that Jesus was a mythical creation.<br /></b><br />In recent decades, it has become widely accepted by secular scholars that the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is more myth than history. In particular, <b>the Israeli archaeologist Israel Finkelstein and his American colleague Neil Asher Silberman have written in The Bible Unearthed (2002) that none of the patriarchs, from Moses and Joshua backwards, existed as historical figures; that there was no record of Jews having been enslaved in Egypt (instead, they descended from the Canaanites); that David and Solomon were warlords rather than kings; and that the first temple was built three centuries after Solomon.</b> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But the view that the Christian Bible is similarly lacking in veracity has, until recently, been drowned out by those arguing for a flesh-and-blood Jesus. One reason for the consensual chorus may relate to the fact that tenured positions in departments dealing with Bible history tend not to be offered to those who doubt that Jesus was real. <b>So the revival of the ‘doubters’ camp’ owes much to the internet, as well as to the missionary zeal of its key proponents.<br /></b><br />Momentum began to gather in the 1990s with a series of books by Earl Doherty, a Canadian writer who became interested in scripture while studying ancient history and classical languages. <b>Doherty claimed that Paul and other early Christian writers did not believe in Jesus as an earthly figure, but instead as a celestial being crucified by demons in the lower realms of heaven and then resurrected by God</b>. His views (ironically, on the face of it, the most ostensibly religious, in being so thoroughly spiritualized) were rejected by historical Jesus scholars who claimed that Doherty lacked the academic nous to understand ancient texts. <b>But the next wave, which included Price, was more firmly rooted in academia.</b><br /><br /><b>Price believes that early Christianity was influenced by Middle Eastern myths about dying and rising deities that survived into the Greek and Roman periods</b>. One was a Sumerian legend, ‘The Descent of Inanna’, which tells of the queen of heaven who attends an underworld funeral only to get killed by demons and hung from a hook like a piece of meat. Three days later, however, she’s rescued, rises from the dead, and returns to the land of the living.<br /><br /><b>Another is the Egyptian myth of the murdered god-king Osiris. His wife, Isis, finds his body, restores it to life and, via a flash of lightning in one version, conceives his son, Horus, who succeeds him. Osiris goes on to rule over the dead.</b> In Plutarch’s Greek version, Osiris is tricked to lie in a coffin, which floats out to sea before washing up at the city of Byblos. There, Isis removes Osiris’ body from a tree and brings it back to life.<br /><br />Several Jewish texts in circulation at the time reinforced the messianic aspects of these narratives. For instance, 1 Enoch (a book written mainly in the 2nd century BCE, and particularly revered within the Essene community, thought to be responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls) refers to <b>the ‘Son of Man’ (a phrase used for Jesus in the gospels) whose name and identity will be kept secret to prevent evildoers from knowing of him until the appointed time.</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />The favorite ‘Christ myth’ source is the Ascension of Isaiah, written in bits and pieces in the 1st and 2nd centuries. <b>It includes a section dealing with a journey through the seven heavens by a non-human Jesus who is crucified in a lower heaven by Satan and his demonic ‘archons’ who are the rulers of that realm and yet do not know who he is. Again, the story ends with Jesus rising from the dead.</b><br /><br /><b>‘Christ myth’ scholars believe that ancient tales of death and resurrection influenced the gospel writers, who also borrowed from Homer, Euripides and the Hebrew Bible.</b> For them, the Jesus story fits the outlines of the mythic hero archetype of the time – a spiritual savior killed by ‘archons’ before rising triumphant. They contend that later Christians rewrote Jesus as a historical figure who suffered at the hands of earthly rulers.<br /><br /><b>The rock star of skepticism is Richard Carrier, a Bible scholar with a very modern aptitude for using social media (some of his lengthy YouTube videos have attracted more than a million viewers).</b> He enters into fervent debates with rivals, lectures, and writes acerbic, clinical and fact-laden books. <b>With his PhD in ancient history from the University of Columbia and his record of publishing in academic journals, his credentials are less easily dismissed than Doherty’s. Ehrman, for instance, acknowledges Carrier and Price are serious New Testament scholars.</b><br /><br /><b>At one time, Carrier accepted the historicity of Jesus but he became contemptuous of the mainstream position because of what he saw as the parlous state of scholarship supporting it.</b> He and the Australian Bible historian Raphael Lataster use Bayes’ theorem, which considers historical probabilities based on reasonable expectations (weighing up the evidence and attaching mathematical odds to it), to conclude that it is ‘probable’ that Jesus never existed as a historical person, although it is ‘plausible’ that he did.<br /><br />The ‘Jesus myth’ advocates get plenty of airplay, but the fringe label has stuck, and not just because religious studies departments freeze them out. Their own methodology has been criticized, not least their use of Bayesian methods. Bizarrely, Carrier offered odds to his readers, concluding that the likelihood of a real-life Jesus was no better than 33 per cent (and perhaps as low as 0.0008 per cent) depending on the estimates used for the computation, which illustrates the wooliness of this use of Bayes’ theorem.<br /><br /><b>Carrier and his comrades do a fine job poking holes in the methods of historicists but what they offer in exchange seems flimsy. In particular, they have found no clear evidence from the decades before the gospels to show that anyone believed Jesus was not human</b>. Each reference in the epistles can be explained away as referring to a celestial savior, but it all feels like a bit of a stretch. <b>Paul frequently refers to the crucifixion and says Jesus was ‘born of a woman’ and ‘made from the sperm of David, according to the flesh’. He also refers to James, ‘the brother of Christ’.</b> Using these examples, Ehrman says there’s ‘good evidence that Paul understood Jesus to be a historical figure’. Which was certainly the view of the writer/s of Mark, a gospel begun less than two decades after Paul’s letters were written.<br /><br />If we accept this conclusion, but also accept that the gospels are unreliable biographies, then what we are left with is a dimly discernible historical husk. <b>If Jesus did live at the time generally accepted (from 7-3 BCE to 26-30 CE) rather than a century earlier as some of the earliest Christians seemed to believe, then we might assume that he started life in Galilee, attracted a following as a preacher and was executed. Everything else is invention or uncertain.</b> In other words, if Jesus did exist, we know next to nothing about him.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifJ45W_KP5N-Ri7tUa2WdWihlmD25HC6eCNg_PtWaJohyphenhyphenHg7ZDdGLDPk7k_v8BOcCNRyXJVdj3OSTmpdSBW7AMcFIMwdDr280GRyt_KndgQ9mzqVEE-pQDxMUrAYn9oYmLIiMlE9QlPBJQmWEB5c2D4za_VNvCfqUmLox2tZtXJ872b_QiXOqLVRqh4ZEr/s2157/christ%20as%20gardener%20Titian%201553.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2157" data-original-width="1920" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifJ45W_KP5N-Ri7tUa2WdWihlmD25HC6eCNg_PtWaJohyphenhyphenHg7ZDdGLDPk7k_v8BOcCNRyXJVdj3OSTmpdSBW7AMcFIMwdDr280GRyt_KndgQ9mzqVEE-pQDxMUrAYn9oYmLIiMlE9QlPBJQmWEB5c2D4za_VNvCfqUmLox2tZtXJ872b_QiXOqLVRqh4ZEr/w356-h400/christ%20as%20gardener%20Titian%201553.jpg" width="356" /></a></div></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Christ as Gardener; Titian, 1553<br /></i><br />One way of looking at it is to think of a pearl, which starts as a grain of sand around which calcium carbonate layers form as an immune response to the irritant until the pearl no longer resembles the speck that started it. Many legends have developed in this way, from the tale of the blind bard Homer onwards.<br /><br /><b>The outlaw and thief Robert Hod was fined for failing to appear in court in York in 1225 and a year later he reappeared in the court record, still at large. This could be the grain of sand that begat Robin Hood, whom many people assumed to have been a historical figure whose legend grew over the centuries</b>. Robin started as a forest yeoman but morphed into a nobleman. He was later inserted into 12th-century history with King Richard the Lionheart and Prince John (earlier versions had Edward I), along with his ever-expanding band of outlaws. <b>By the 16th century, he and his Merry Men had mutated from lovable rascals to rebels with a cause who ‘tooke from rich to give the poor’.<br /></b><br /><b>The Jesus story likewise developed fresh layers over time. At the start of the common era, there may well have been several iconoclastic Jewish preachers, and one of them got up the noses of the Romans, who killed him. </b>Soon his legend grew. New attributes and views were ascribed to him until, eventually, he became the heroic figure of the Messiah and son of God with his band of 12 not-so-merry men. The original grain of sand is less significant than most assume. The interesting bit is how it grew. ~</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ6tr8d0giTgN7a2QObwKCiEqZ42w90uVY8xHx50J3qa3Et53cvh7nomC3kfKIZl_n10rQO4Bflfz3o_r24aLB5aBbKJegjhB97OQ68z7x18uu9VagOVCxJsilb_c5WcGoRH06LtBOjlo4QPQ_MTBxr5xQ07K5zqZxkXYkh0YLE52dIEDCz6Cu05YyJV59/s1024/Christ%20blessing%20the%20little%20children%20Adam%20van%20Noort%20early%2017th%20century.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="682" data-original-width="1024" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ6tr8d0giTgN7a2QObwKCiEqZ42w90uVY8xHx50J3qa3Et53cvh7nomC3kfKIZl_n10rQO4Bflfz3o_r24aLB5aBbKJegjhB97OQ68z7x18uu9VagOVCxJsilb_c5WcGoRH06LtBOjlo4QPQ_MTBxr5xQ07K5zqZxkXYkh0YLE52dIEDCz6Cu05YyJV59/w400-h266/Christ%20blessing%20the%20little%20children%20Adam%20van%20Noort%20early%2017th%20century.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Christ blessing the little children, 17th century, Adam van Noort<br /></i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i> </i><br /><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/why-the-son-of-god-story-is-built-on-mythology-not-history?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=6143fea6a7-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_02_16_02_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-6143fea6a7-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D">https://aeon.co/essays/why-the-son-of-god-story-is-built-on-mythology-not-history?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=6143fea6a7-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_02_16_02_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-6143fea6a7-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D</a><br /><br />Michael Cabrogal:<br /><b>The accounts in the Gospels are all over the shop, contradicting each other in places and sometimes going to hilarious lengths to try to make Jesus comply with Messianic prophecies such as detailing two different lineages linking Joseph to David, despite Joseph supposedly not being his father,</b> and Jesus apparently simultaneously riding an ass and a colt into Jerusalem, which seems to be a product of the Matthew author’s unfamiliarity with earlier Hebrew rhetorical styles.<br /><br />I’d also agree that Jesus was probably little known during and immediately after those events allegedly took place. Miracle-workers and necromancers were probably a dime a dozen, as were Jewish Messiahs whose followers attributed prophecy fulfilling qualities to them and there’s nothing in the Jesus story that would have made him stand out from the crowd of Divine Brians jostling each other in the messiah markets of occupied Judea.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />But I think many of those weaknesses are arguments for rather than against a historical Jesus — albeit one who would probably be unrecognizable to modern Christians.<br /><br /><b>In completely rejecting the historicity of Jesus we’d need to postulate how it came about that within 300 years so many different communities were so committed to their own versions of his story.</b> Why would a myth made of whole cloth be so heavily contested if you could just make up another one to suit your own needs? How did the cult gain so much influence in the face of far more interesting Roman ones (at least in Julian’s opinion)? <b>Why were relatively sophisticated people with no discernible stake in the comparatively primitive and unoriginal beliefs of an occupied people in the Levant so committed to it?</b><br /><br />I think the parsimonious explanation is that <b>there really was a Jesus who, largely due to historical chance, gave a strong initial impetus to his small band of followers that enabled them to spread steadily mutating versions of their enthusiasm around the Mediterranean</b>. <i><b>But Christianity would probably have died out within a few centuries were it not for its suitability as a centralizing state religion intended to hold the fragmenting Roman Empire together.</b></i><br /><br />Gavin Evans:<br />Another point, on how Christianity spread in the way you described: This had a great deal to do with Paul and his group. Their decision to preach to the gentiles and not to require them to keep to Jewish law (particularly circumcision), helped it to spread (often via trade routes — Paul himself seemed to have spread the word while pursuing his trade as a leather worker). </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>The next generation of Christians included the gospel writers, and in time the many rival gospels fell by the wayside or were repressed, meaning that the self-declared orthodox version of Christianity won out against rival versions (the Essenes, Docetism, Arianism, Marcionism, Gnosticism, the Nazarenes) withered or were stamped out, and the version that became Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity survived.</b></i><br /><br />Jan Sand:<br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>The doubts about Jesus are as frightening as those about Santa Clause which could destroy the entire toy industry. That might benefit the Christmas tree but even raise doubts in the possible aerodynamics of reindeer.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b><br />James Ross:<br /><b>Humans are the only animals with a foreknowledge of death. Along with the cohesion and mutual trust religion provides a group in competition with others, it generates a ‘just-so’ story to help mitigate this terrible reality, ” "a necessary illusion”, as Freud said.</b> Because of certain unique political and social factors of the time, Christianity was able to spread, while remaining pliable enough to meet the evolving needs of ongoing, contemporary societies. We only have to look at the Christianity of today’s mega-churches to see the mutability for adaptation.<br /><br />Mary McDonald:<br />For myself, <b>I have for a long time (decades) believed that all religious texts are works of fiction.</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><br />“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.” Lucius Annaeus Seneca 4 BC – 65 AD<br /></b><br />W Z:<br />There has been more than enough doubt cast on everything Jesus – the world is saturated if only one cares to notice. And if one does notice, will one in fact be moved by that doubt? Lourdes encapsulates the whole drama:<b> “Lourdes, the Grotto, the cures, the miracles, are, indeed, the creation of that need of the Lie [of a higher Power],” commented Zola, “that necessity for credulity, which is characteristic of human nature.”</b><br /><br />The author of the article closes with these lines: “The original grain of sand is less significant than most assume. The interesting bit is how it grew.”<br /><br />Here, in a way, he echoes Zola:” At first, when little Bernadette came with her strange story of what she had witnessed, everybody was against her. The Prefect of the Department, the Bishop, the clergy, objected to her story. But Lourdes grew up in spite of all opposition, just as the Christian religion did, because suffering humanity in its despair must cling to something, must have some hope: and, on the other hand, because <b>humanity thirsts after illusions. In a word, it is the story of the foundation of all religions</b>.”<br /><br />Mike Baldwin:<br />I tend to agree that most of the Jesus story is fictional and was taken over and embellished by later Christians. What is not addressed by this article and others I have read is where the teachings of Jesus, which went counter to the mores and general beliefs of that era among the Jews and others, came from. The ideas of love, befriending strangers, the significance of the poor rather than the rich, etc. If a human Jesus existed and preached these ideas, they form the legitimate basis for a major philosophy unlike anything that went before. <b>The miracles weren’t necessary, they were just added to speed the process of acceptance among the credulous to create a religion. It was mainly the recycled idea of resurrection that turned it into a religion rather than just a philosophy.</b> So my question is: where did Jesus’ philosophical ideas spring from so suddenly at that time in history?<br /><br />Gavin Evans (author):<br /><b>I don’t think they emerged suddenly. The different, often contradictory ideas expressed in the gospels, were all in the ether of the communities where and when they were written. </b>We don’t know enough about those communities to assume they went counter to the mores and general beliefs there and then.<br /><br /><br />*<br /><b>NO, ALIENS HAVE NOT VISITED THE EARTH<br /></b><br />There has never been a worse time to be a UFO skeptic. Last month, Sean Kirkpatrick, the head of the Pentagon office responsible for investigating unexplained aerial events, stepped down. He said <b>he was tired of being harassed and accused of hiding evidence, and he lamented an erosion in “our capacity for rational, evidence-based critical thinking.”<br /></b><br />He may have been pushed over the edge by a pair of events from the past summer. In June of last year, Avi Loeb, an astronomer at Harvard, announced that he had found some tiny blobs of metal by dragging a magnetic sled over the bottom of the Pacific near Papua New Guinea. He claimed that these blobs were metallic droplets that had melted off an interstellar object that might have been “a technological gadget with artificial intelligence” — the product of beings from another star system.<br /><br /><b>In July, David Grusch, a former intelligence officer, stepped out of the shadows to announce that the U.S. military Establishment currently possesses a small fleet of nonhuman pre-owned flying saucers. He didn’t call them saucers; he called them UAPs, or “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” which used to be called UFOs. But basically, we’re talking saucers.</b><br /><br />Grusch’s story first reached the public via a journalist named Leslie Kean (pronounced Kane), who had co-written a hugely influential article about UFOs that appeared on the front page of the New York Times in 2017. She and Helene Cooper, a Pentagon correspondent for the paper, along with a writer named Ralph Blumenthal, revealed that <b>Senator Harry Reid had gotten the Pentagon to create a secret, “mysterious” $22 million program to study UFOs. </b>A few years later, Kean was the subject of a long profile in The New Yorker by staff writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus with the web title “How the Pentagon Started Taking U.F.O.s Seriously.”<br /><br />Thoughtful, sensible-seeming, non-crankish people at Harvard, at The New Yorker, at the New York Times, and at the Pentagon seemed to be drifting ever closer to the conclusion that alien spaceships had visited Earth. Everyone was being appallingly open-minded. <b>Yet even after more than 70 years of claimed sightings, there was simply no good evidence</b>. In an age of ubiquitous cameras and fancy scopes, there was no footage that wasn’t blurry and jumpy and taken from far away. <i><b>There was just this guy Grusch telling the world that the government had a “crash-retrieval and reverse-engineering program” for flying saucers that was totally supersecret and that only people in the program knew about the program.</b><br /></i><br />Grusch said he had learned about it while serving on a UAP task force at the Pentagon. He interviewed more than 40 people, and they told him wild things. He said he couldn’t reveal the names of the people he interviewed. He shared no firsthand information and showed no photos. <b>He said the program went back decades, back to the saucer crash that happened in Roswell, New Mexico.<br /></b><br />Grusch seems sincere and polite and cheerful. In interviews, he has said he’s on the autism spectrum, which helps him focus. <b>He uses military buzzwords sometimes, like near-peer adversaries and asymmetric national-defense advantages, but not in an off-putting way</b>. He says when he came to learn about the existence of the secret saucers, he was troubled and felt it was highly unethical for their existence to be kept from the public. He also says he has at times wondered whether he was being deceived: “Was this some kind of ruse against me? Am I being used in any kind of way?” No, he decided.<br /><br />In March 2023, Grusch was introduced to Kean. “It was always sort of established that I was going to — me and my colleague Ralph were going to — break his story because of the track record that we had,” Kean told me. “I wanted it that way, but David wanted it that way, too, because he thought we had a lot of credibility.” G<b>rusch showed Kean his security clearances and performance evaluations, and they talked for many hours online and in person. What he told her resembled what other sources had already described, though they couldn’t go on the record because the information was classified. </b>“People I had known for a long time,” she said, “I could call them and up say, ‘Is it credible that he’s saying that these crash objects exist, or whatever?’ And they would say, ‘Yes, we support what he says.’ ”<br /><br /><b>Kean and Blumenthal’s piece about Grusch ended up at a UFO-friendly website called The Debrief, which reports on “knowledge on the periphery of human understanding.”</b> They quoted Grusch as saying that the government keepers of the spaceships know the machines are from nonhuman intelligent beings because of “vehicle morphologies and material science testing and the possession of unique atomic arrangements and radiological signatures.”<br /><br />Next came a packed hearing in Congress, which happened at the end of July before the Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs. The topic was unidentified anomalous phenomena and “what threats they may pose.” Representative Andy Ogles asked Grusch whether these UAPs represented “an existential threat to the national security of the United States.”<br /><br />“Potentially,” Grusch answered.<br /><br /><b>Representative Nancy Mace asked Grusch whether there were bodies in the crashed craft.</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><br />“Biologics came with some of these recoveries, yeah,” he said, nodding.<br /></b><br />Mace then asked, with possibly the tiniest hint of a smile, “Were they, I guess, human or nonhuman biologics?” “Nonhuman,” Grusch replied, his forehead furrowing as if he’d taken a bite of a huge sandwich. “And that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the program I talked to that are currently still on the program.”<br /><br /><b>Representative Tim Burchett thanked Grusch and the other witnesses for their bravery: “They took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and daggum it, they are doing it and we owe them a debt of gratitude.” Sustained applause followed.<br /></b><br />After the hearing, Kean gave an interview on a news show called Rising. She reported that she had heard no disparaging or ridiculing remarks from the audience. The mood was “sort of joyful.” <b>People were “very excited.” When members of Congress are seriously engaging with the idea of UFOs, “the stigma starts to fade away,” she said.<br /></b><br />“What do you make of that claim there by Grusch of the nonhuman biologics?” the Rising announcer asked.<br /><br />“That is probably the most explosive statement that was made in the whole hearing in terms of trying to wrap your mind around something that hard to imagine,” said Kean. “That there’s actually biological material, if not bodies, of nonhuman beings in possession of the U.S. government.” She said she had no way of knowing whether it was true but added, “I have talked to others who have told me that it is true.”<br /><br />*<br />Who is Leslie Kean, and why is she making such an effort to put a respectable face on what are, let’s just say it, quite wiggy-sounding assertions? In 2010, Kean published a book about UFO sightings that talked about the “terrible stigma” of being UFO-curious and about how <b>when she first got interested in the subject, she felt shame, as if she were taking an illegal drug, and didn’t tell anyone.</b> But then, after a while, she was okay with it and gained confidence. <br /><br /><b>The book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record, was a best seller. She then began work on a book about the afterlife, called Surviving Death, in which she recounted how she went to a psychic who described her to herself with amazing accuracy, though maybe it was because she had given the psychic her phone number and the psychic used a reverse phone search and found some things out</b>, but she, Kean, thought that was unlikely. <br /><br />The psychic told her she could feel the energy and presence of Kean’s departed partner, whose name began with a B — and yes, it was a B, it was her departed partner, Budd, the famous Budd Hopkins, who had died a few years earlier and who before that was a very successful UFO writer and speaker, though he never got his byline on the front page of the New York Times, unlike Kean.<br /><br />Hopkins used to put people into hypnotic states and interview them in order to tease out from their tranced minds all the unpleasant things space aliens had done when they’d drawn them into the saucers. <i><b>He toured the country giving talks on alien abduction at UFO conferences, and he appeared on a very good Nova episode on PBS in 1997, “Kidnapped by UFOs?,” in which one of his informants said space aliens had harvested his sperm and a woman said she had been probed in her ears and her nose and another place, too — and then something came out of her and she looked down and it was an alien baby.</b></i><br /><br />Over the years, Hopkins showed his dubious methods of hypnotic suggestion to others, including David M. Jacobs, a history professor who wrote The Threat: Revealing the Secret Alien Agenda, and John E. Mack, who wrote Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens, and they thanked him in their books — “To Budd Hopkins, who led the way,” said Mack; “Budd Hopkins, my friend and ‘partner in crime,’ ” said Jacobs — and they produced a shelf full of fat books about creepy, naughty things that aliens had done, and that’s why the New York Times called Hopkins “the father of the alien-abduction movement.” <b>Hopkins coached children into believing they had met aliens; Jacobs suggested to “Emma Woods,” one of his alleged alien abductees, that she buy and wear a chastity belt to block space creatures intent on breeding hybrid babies. “They can’t take it off,” Jacobs told Woods. “It’s got a little lock and a key, and right where the vaginal opening is, it’s got a couple of nails sticking across. It’s a dead stopper, no doubt about it.”<br /></b><br />And then one day, somewhere around 2004, Hopkins was giving a talk about aliens at a UFO conference when — as he tells it in his autobiography — a “trim, attractive, petite woman with a mass of short, curly, dark-blonde hair and beautiful, steady blue eyes” came up to him and said she was interested in one of his abduction stories, the one in which a woman named Linda floated out a window in New York City and was pulled into a bright-red UFO. The attractive, petite woman was Leslie Kean. They struck up a friendship, became partners, and there you go. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Meanwhile, Hopkins divorced his third wife, who had by then begun to doubt his methods (she wrote a devastating article about him in a UFO magazine called Paratopia), and he dedicated his memoir “to Leslie Kean, a sun whose rays have warmed my life and renewed my hopes.”</b> Kean, in her UFO book, said, “A special thanks goes to my close friend Budd Hopkins for providing daily, steady support as I dealt with the myriad personal and professional challenges inherent in producing this book.”<br /><br />After <i>Surviving Death</i>, Kean continued her UFO advocacy work with the assistance of Christopher Mellon, a wealthy defense and intelligence insider. Mellon set up a meeting for Kean with Hal Puthoff, a mage of remote viewing and other outré telepathic experimentation, and a goateed counterintelligence officer, Luis Elizondo, who’d just quit his Pentagon job and was now part of an entertainment company Puthoff had set up with pop-punk singer-songwriter Tom DeLonge. (DeLonge is famous for the catchy, guitar-heavy songs he recorded with Blink-182, like “Aliens Exist,” in which he sings, <b>“I got an injection / Of fear from the abduction.”) Sitting in the lobby bar of a hotel near the Pentagon, Puthoff opened a laptop and played Kean some Navy UFO videos in which blips of light cavort on a cockpit screen. “I was completely floored,” she told me. Seeing actual military videos of UFOs “changed everything.”</b><br /><br />Kean’s 2017 Times article included two of the clips she watched at the meeting, and everyone who read it clicked on them and went, “Holy crackers!” Especially over the video called “Gimbal,” in which a black shape that resembles a flying saucer turns this way and that. Suddenly, everyone was saying to themselves, “That thing is very eerie and otherworldly, look at that glowing aura, maybe we are being visited by flying saucers — t<b>he Navy pilots sure think so.” 60 Minutes did a piece on the videos and interviewed the pilots.</b><br /><br />Some viewers were not convinced. Mick West, who runs a website called Metabunk, explained on YouTube that<b> the “Gimbal” video shows the heat image of a jet from behind and the aura is an artifact of image sharpening. The antics of the saucer-shaped craft, he demonstrated, which seemed effortless, porpoiselike, are the result of the laggy way the external camera mount adjusted itself when tracking an object.</b> It was clear that this really wasn’t a film of a flying saucer at all — and that Mick West should get some kind of Edward R. Murrow award for even-toned analysis.<br /><br />“If Mick were really interested in this stuff,” Kean told The New Yorker, “he wouldn’t debunk every single video.” She and Blumenthal wrote more UFO pieces for the Times, republishing the “Gimbal” video as if it still meant something when it almost certainly means nothing at all.</span><br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />This has all happened before: It’s the latest instance of what Marina Koren, a science writer for The Atlantic, calls <b>the “UFO-mania cycle.”</b> Before Grusch, there were military men like Robert Salas, who published a book a decade ago in which he said that one night in the 1960s a space alien floated him out of his bedroom window and inserted a needle into his groin. And before Salas, there was <b>Colonel Philip J. Corso, a retired Pentagon insider, who in 1997 published a memoir, The Day After Roswell, in which he claimed that in July 1947 he had opened a small shipping crate in a veterinary building in Fort Riley, Kansas, and found a dead space alien inside, submerged in a viscous blue liquid. </b>“It was a four-foot human-shaped figure,” Corso wrote, “with arms, bizarre-looking four-fingered hands — I didn’t see a thumb — thin legs and feet, and an oversized incandescent lightbulb-shaped head that looked like it was floating over a balloon gondola for a chin.”<br /><br />In the 1950s, Corso was an intelligence operative and counterpropagandist in Washington, and later he began working for President Eisenhower’s National Security Council.<b> The United States was fighting a two-front war, Corso wrote — against Communists on the one hand and space creatures on the other. Earth, he said, was “under some form of probing attack by one or more alien cultures who were testing both our ability and resolve to defend ourselves.”</b><br /><br /><b><i>The flights of Eisenhower’s U-2 spy plane over Soviet Russia had an undisclosed secondary purpose, Corso believed. Not only did they identify missile sites and bombing targets; they also carried on the search for extraterrestrial crash sites behind enemy lines: “We also wanted to see whether the Soviets were harvesting any of the alien aircraft technology for themselves.”</i></b><br /><br />In 1961, Corso was put in charge of the foreign-technology desk at the Pentagon, where (so he said) he was asked to “exploit” the secret Roswell files and alien remains, including autopsy reports and crash debris. Corso said his team farmed out various reverse-engineered extraterrestrial innovations to American industry, including tech for lasers, integrated circuits, fiber optics, stealth planes, and night-vision goggles — <b>also Kevlar, which was, according to Corso, inspired by the “cross-stitched supertenacity fibers” on the surface of the downed saucer. “The seeds for the development of all of them were found in the crash of the alien craft at Roswell,” he wrote.</b><br /><br /><b>Corso’s book became a New York Times best seller</b>. Reviews were mixed. The Baltimore Sun called it “disturbing.” The Financial Post’s review was titled “Book Reads Like Unidentified Lying Object.”<br /><br />“We absolutely stand by the book,” said the director of publicity at Pocket Books. “It’s a memoir.”</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br />On the same day Arnold saw saucers, a prospector in the Cascades, Fred Johnson, looked up to see five or six discs about a thousand feet above him. He estimated they were 30 feet in diameter. They were silent, and they made his compass needle wiggle wildly, he said.<br /><br />Another same-day report came in from Richland, Washington, 125 miles east of Mount Rainier and very close to the enormous Hanford plant, which was at that time going full blast turning uranium into plutonium to make atomic bombs. A Richland resident named Leo Bernier said he’d seen several discs or saucers heading west very fast, probably just before Arnold saw them. “I believe it may be a visitor from another planet, more developed than ours,” Bernier said.<br /><br /><b>Then came the “July 4 deluge” reported by the Los Angeles Times: “Two hundred persons in one group and 60 in another saw them in Idaho; hundreds saw them in Oregon, Washington, and other states throughout the West.” A group of policemen in Portland, Oregon, noticed several discs that they said looked like “chromium hubcaps”; they “wobbled, disappeared, and reappeared.” A United Airlines pilot and co-pilot, on their way from Boise to Seattle, had a surprise. “Brother, you could have knocked me over with a feather when about eight minutes after takeoff, at exactly 7,100 feet over Emmett, Idaho, we saw not one but nine of them,” said pilot Emil Smith. They were “evenly spaced in a line.”</b><br /><br />Smith had been a commercial pilot for years. The story he and his co-pilot told, said the Associated Press, “is the first confirmation by experienced, highly trained airmen of flying discs which have been reported over the northwest for the past two weeks.”<br /><br />“Lots of people are worried to heck about the things,” said a military PR man in Sacramento. “But there’s nothing to get excited about. If there were anything to them, the Army would have notified us.”<br /><br />Something unusual was going on, that’s clear. And <b>the reports had elements in common: roundish wobbly objects, shiny, grouped together, connected, tethered.<br /></b><br />BALLOONS</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwZlR51pz_knNqCWYLmHDryhUijBB0XOMdICjDpdrUGI4N7cdnhGpega7nlgNIi2j3hwd84F-epGEpWAh7HataP-Eb7Dz-0unWZNN5UOIip1pWZsAdhdgAAVXi7S4wEo56q-8NJT7PUMK-zdW3mXotK38Pe8c8p71XrlqcMltypwWUTHfBLLqMKwZ5TTAo/s1920/weather%20balloon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwZlR51pz_knNqCWYLmHDryhUijBB0XOMdICjDpdrUGI4N7cdnhGpega7nlgNIi2j3hwd84F-epGEpWAh7HataP-Eb7Dz-0unWZNN5UOIip1pWZsAdhdgAAVXi7S4wEo56q-8NJT7PUMK-zdW3mXotK38Pe8c8p71XrlqcMltypwWUTHfBLLqMKwZ5TTAo/w400-h225/weather%20balloon.jpg" width="400" /></a></div></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">What were these people looking at?<br /><br />I’m going to have to say it, and I’m sorry because I know UFO people roll their eyes at the word balloons. But they need to get over it because <b>balloons of various kinds — high-altitude weather balloons, cosmic-ray research balloons, sound-detecting balloons, thunderstorm-study balloons, aerial-reconnaissance balloons, “rockoons” that shoot missiles, propaganda balloons, toy balloons, and, most secret, crop-warfare balloons — are at the heart of this high-altitude adventure we’ve been on as a culture. None of it is paranormal, but it’s still strange.</b><br /><br />It began after the Second World War, when Soviet scientists dropped hints that they were on the verge of world-changing discoveries in the stratosphere that had to do with the untapped power of cosmic rays<b>. A team led by Artem Alikhanian had been working at a new high-altitude research laboratory near Mount Aragats in Soviet Armenia, and they’d been sending up research balloons to fish for new cosmic particles, one of which, the “varitron,” was heavier than all others. </b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In May 1946, Piotr Kapitsa, physicist and founder of the Institute for Physical Problems in Moscow, told startled reporters that bombs that harnessed the power of the new particles “could cause devastation several times greater than that of the atomic bomb that wiped out Hiroshima, Japan.” Gossip columnist Walter Winchell wrote about the threat in September 1946: “Reason Russians so cocky lately is they allegedly have Cosmic Ray Bomb.”<br /><br />The U.S. government quickly stepped up funding for cosmic-ray research, hoping to learn more about whatever the Russians might have found. (<b>The varitron was eventually determined not to exist.) At New York University, there was a physicist and balloon wrangler named Serge Korff who went all over the country helping scientists rig up enormous balloon trains — free-floating chains of weather balloons hundreds of feet long — in order to carry heavier payloads higher. These were composed of ten, 15, 20, even 30 large neoprene weather balloons.<br /></b><br />The problem was that sometimes the balloon trains, longer than football fields when airborne, went missing, and they were disturbing looking. <b>Out of scale, silent and spectral — especially after dark when they glowed, still sunlit, in the stratospheric sky — these apparitions distressed countless people.</b> “New Jersey residents who saw 28 ‘flying saucers’ linked together in a block-long aerial snake dance today were reassured by Princeton scientists that it was merely a cosmic ray experiment,” said the Camden Courier-Post in July 1947. “The scientists said they hoped someone would see the balloon chain descend so they could recover their cosmic ray equipment.”<br /><br />On top of the surge of cosmic-ray research, <b>the Air Force, early in 1947, funded a related program at NYU, the Constant Altitude Balloon Project, code-named Mogul, which aimed to listen for a nuclear explosion in the USSR </b>so that American strategists would know right away when the Soviets had the atomic bomb. A young engineer, Charles B. Moore, launched a number of Mogul flights using<b> a train of neoprene balloons to lift a low-frequency microphone high into the upper atmosphere. After some preliminary experiments on the East Coast, he and his team soon relocated to Holloman Air Force Base at Alamogordo, New Mexico.<br /></b><br />To the northeast, not far from Roswell, something crashed on a sheep ranch in June 1947. W. W. “Mac” Brazel, who found the wreckage, didn’t know what it was. “He described his find as consisting of large numbers of pieces of paper covered with a foil-like substance and pieced together with small sticks,” reported the Associated Press. “Scattered with the materials over an area about 200 yards across were pieces of gray rubber.” For his part, Brazel recalled, “At first I thought it was a kite, but we couldn’t put it together like any kite I ever saw.”<br /><br /><b>What Brazel didn’t know, because it was a secret, was that he’d found one of Moore’s Project Mogul balloon trains. The pieces of gray rubber were fragments of neoprene balloons that had darkened and hardened in the sun. </b>The item that looked like a kite was a foil-covered radar reflector of a somewhat unusual type; it was faceted so it would work in all directions, and it looked shiny and a bit starlike. It allowed the balloon launchers to track their experiment, to a degree. It was made of balsa wood.<br /><br />After Brazel gathered up some of the sunbaked neoprene scraps and the balsa sticks and the foil-and-paper covering, he went into town to see the sheriff, who got in touch with someone at the Roswell air base. Three intelligence officers visited the crash site, and one of them, Jesse Marcel, told a reporter the debris was from a flying saucer. In the ’70s, Marcel became a UFO celebrity. <b>The records of Project Mogul weren’t made public until the ’90s, so there was plenty of time for a lush Roswellian mythology to germinate and ripen.<br /></b><br />Toward the end of 1947, Moore and a rival balloon engineer, Otto Winzen, left neoprene behind. <b>They began making enormous research balloons out of newer materials — first Pliofilm, used to make shower curtains, then sheets of ultralight polyethylene plastic, used to bag carrots at the grocery store — sewn together on long tables at a factory run by General Mills, the cereal company, in Minneapolis. In October, a General Mills Pliofilm balloon, 70 feet wide and 100 feet high, caused a mass flying-saucer panic.</b> <br /><br /><b>“City residents flooded telephone switchboards at the Minneapolis Tribune, weather bureau, police department, and radio stations with inquiries about a strange light moving slowly across the sky,” said the newspaper.</b> “Police reported the calls reached a frantic state when the sun went below the horizon.” As darkness grew, the orb turned red, then purple. The Air Force scrambled up a plane to investigate, but the glowing thing, whatever it was, was too high to reach. Eventually, Winzen explained that it was one of his General Mills balloons: <b>“Its great visibility was due to the reflective powers of its Pliofilm shell, which expanded to many times its ground size as it reached its great height.”</b><br /><br />Winzen soon left General Mills and formed his own balloon company, Winzen Research, which manufactured plastic balloons as tall as 20-story buildings. Sometime around 1950, Moore took Winzen’s place as head of aeronautical research and development at the cereal company. “I’m very proud we began pushing them for polyethylene balloons,” Moore said. As these “Skyhook” balloons got bigger, they floated everywhere, sometimes thousands of miles away, sometimes across oceans, and wherever they went, people saw flying saucers.<br /><br /><b>So successful were the new balloons that by the mid-1950s, General Mills, flooded with military- and CIA-funded contracts, built a balloon factory in St. Paul twice as big as the old one</b>.<b> Nearly 400 people worked there, making 6,000 gigantic balloons and half a million smaller ones per year.</b> During his tenure at General Mills, Moore worked on Project Ultimate, which launched flocks of pillow balloons filled with anti-Communist propaganda flyers from West Germany into Czechoslovakia, treating the people below to “a siege of flying-saucer heebie-jeebies,” according to columnist Drew Pearson. <b>Moore also worked on the CIA’s Project Gopher, a plan to loft heavy unmanned cameras over the Soviet Union; they were first tested over the U.S. using the cover story that they were part of something called Project Moby Dick, which ostensibly studied wind currents and weather patterns at high altitudes. <br /></b><br />And Moore consulted on an insane <b>plan to destroy the Soviet wheat crop, called Operation Flying Cloud. The idea was to fill 80-pound gondolas with a mixture of turkey feathers and spores of wheat stem rust — a fast-spreading fungal disease — and then stealthily float this agent over enemy lands when the wind was right.</b><br /><br /><b>This biological weapon, known as the E-77 balloon bomb, had as its primary target the wheat fields of Ukraine. “The anti-crop program is aimed at the bread basket of the Soviet Union,” said an Air Force memo dated December 15, 1951</b>. By March 1953, the CIA, using Project Moby Dick as cover, had set up three balloon-testing and training outposts on the West Coast — two in California and one in Oregon — plus a site in Missouri and one at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia. According to another declassified Air Force memo (I found it in the National Archives), <b>2,400 test-balloon flights crisscrossed the U.S. in the early ’50s in preparation for the massive biological-warfare attacks planned by the Pentagon for World War III.</b> “On the surface, it appears that the balloon delivery system is feasible,” the memo read.<br /><br />The Associated Press issued a news bulletin in August 1953 that was published on the front pages of some newspapers: Project Moby Dick’s “whale like bags,” the article said, “have often been mistaken for flying saucers.” Because it was hard to judge the speed of shiny objects at high altitudes, <b>“the balloons sometimes seem to be racing at tremendous rates, whereas they actually are moving at 60 miles per hour or less.”<br /></b><br />The crop-disease balloon bomb was never used — or was it? “Hungary, once the granary of Central Europe, reports a wheat crop 40 percent below expectations,” the Associated Press reported in July 1953. Refugees reportedly claimed “thousands of families in Hungary recently were without substantial food for days.” In 1956, half of Ukraine’s wheat crop failed, according to the Associated Press, “a failure which the Russians have been concealing from the world.” Perhaps it was just bad weather.<br /><br />The effect on the U.S. of all this Cold War balloonery is pretty obvious. <b>The Air Force, the Navy, and the CIA seeded the sky with helium ghosts and made us crazy.</b> The country was, and is, suffering from a paranormalization of the plastic bag.<br /><br />And then, in 1955, just as some of the military balloon programs were being scaled back, another secret source of confusion appeared in the sky: the CIA’s Lockheed U-2 spy plane. Saucer sightings, especially from pilots, soared again. <b>“High-altitude testing of the U-2 soon led to an unexpected side effect — a tremendous increase in reports of unidentified flying objects,” according to a paper written by two CIA historians</b>.<br /><br />CHIMPS IN BALLOONS<br /><br />Were experiments performed, I was curious to know, on monkeys or chimps at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico?<br /><br />Turns out the answer is yes, there were. There was a whole colony of experimental chimps at Holloman. <b>Monkeys went up in balloons and in V-2 rockets. Many of them died. Chimpanzees were strapped into a rocket sled and abruptly decelerated; they were spun, tumbled, ejected from their seats, subjected to wind blasts, and slingshotted in the “bopper.” They died, they were autopsied, or they lived but suffered injuries and were “sacrificed” and autopsied.<br /></b><br />In August 1958, the Air Force announced that a chimpanzee had survived a wind-blast test at a speed of 1,400 miles an hour. It was the fourth chimp it had used in this extreme set of tests. “The other three died afterward because the suits they wore blew apart,” wrote the project’s lead researcher. This one, however, survived because it wore a “suit of Dacron sailcloth.” (The AP article said the chimp was anesthetized.)<b> Is Dacron sailcloth the super-advanced tight-fitting mesh that some witnesses claimed the aliens wore?<br /></b><br />Late in November, I reached Loeb, Harvard’s avid alien spotter, and asked him what he thought about Grusch’s testimony. He wasn’t impressed. “My issue is that he did not witness the materials he was talking about,” Loeb said. “To me, that doesn’t count as evidence. It’s just hearing people tell him about something he didn’t see himself.” Loeb also doubts that there are any alien bodies in government custody or any alien “biologics,” whatever they are. <b>“Biology cannot survive the journey across interstellar distances,” he said. “I would be very skeptical about biology.”<br /></b><br />Loeb does, however, agree with Grusch and other military folk that some reports of UFOs are probably real, and he has volunteered to help the Pentagon identify possible threats. He and his students have begun scanning the skies of Massachusetts around the clock with a network of advanced “multispectral” imaging systems to try to get good footage of any anomalies that may appear, using artificial intelligence to weed out the drones and the birds and the satellites — and the balloons. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And he continues to hold on to the possibility that he and his collaborators might already have discovered evidence of a nonhuman space-voyaging vehicle that came our way from outside the solar system only to burn up in our atmosphere.<b> In a preprint released in August 2023, he writes that five of the 57 tiny oceanic spherules that he collected and analyzed, with their unique pattern of beryllium, lanthanum, and uranium, “may reflect an extraterrestrial technological origin.”<br /></b><br />*<br />Other scientists, specialists in the geology of meteors and related matters, disagree. Christian Koeberl, an impact expert and cosmochemist at the University of Vienna, wrote me that Loeb’s spherule research is “very superficial.” There is no evidence, Koeberl said, that the spherules Loeb found came from the 2014 meteoric fireball: “It is pure speculation.” Patricio A. Gallardo, a cosmological physicist at the University of Chicago, has published a paper proposing that Loeb’s allegedly “weird” spherules are not weird at all — that they are, in fact, common products of coal-fired power plants. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>“Nickel, beryllium, lanthanum, and uranium concentrations are found to be consistent with expectations from coal ash from a coal chemical composition database,” he wrote. “The meteoritic origin is disfavored.”</b> Steve Desch, an astrophysicist at Arizona State University who has written a point-by-point critique of Loeb’s paper, told me, “Loeb has a habit of asking interesting questions. He just already believes he has the answers to the questions he’s asking.”<br /><br />Loeb strongly disputes the coal-ash explanation. The composition of these “beautiful metallic marbles,” he says, one of which holds nested spheres within it like a Matryoshka doll, shows a “pattern of elements from outside the solar system, never seen before.” He told me that some of his critics “behave like terrorists.” Loeb’s “Westward ho!” hope, expressed in his book Interstellar, is that in the future, having reverse-engineered nonhuman technology, humanity will build “spacearks” capable of “spreading terrestrial life throughout the universe.” <b>Sometimes, in his eagerness to come up with new theories of intergalactic visitation, he seems to be willfully self-destructing. It’s as if he’s a meteoric fireball sprinkling spherules of misplaced credulity over the seafloor.<br /></b><br />Still, <b>I find myself touched by the intensity of Loeb’s yearning for evidence of extraterrestrial technological civilizations. It’s fun to think about intelligent life evolving over billions of years on some of the millions of far-flung planets. </b>Are space aliens really an “existential threat” to the U.S.? Should the Pentagon and paranoid politicians be involved? Is there a hidden fleet of crashed spacecraft and jars of nonhuman remains? Probably not. But we’ve got the Crab Nebula, which is intimate and crowded and empty and gorgeous all at the same time. We don’t need flying saucers to feel awe.<br /><br /><a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/leslie-kean-ufo-sightings-aliens.html?utm_source=pocket_collection_story">https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/leslie-kean-ufo-sightings-aliens.html?utm_source=pocket_collection_story<br /></a><br />williamskevin090:<br />Then why are there so many references to beings from the sky and many pieces of ancient art work that depicts objects in the sky that people on the ground saw? The idea that some imaginary dude is watching over 8 billion people is ridiculous: show me the proof of your belief exists. <b>This is why people are moving away from religion in droves, because it's BS plain and simple. If there is this person, he is doing a really lousy job at protecting anyone let alone children. </b>Some book says there is a person, really a book that's been rewritten how many times? Religious beliefs are just that beliefs, no proof ever. You apparently don't know much about any of this otherwise you could look in your religious texts and see how many ancients claim knowledge and information came from the sky, <b>many references in many cultures for thousands of years have made these claims </b>and painted portraits showing what they saw. Your BS religion-based thought is just that, BS.<br /><br />patrickr:<br /><b>The question of whether we've been visited by intelligent life of extraterrestrial origin has become almost a theological dispute. There are the 'absolutely nots', like the author of this piece, and there are the 'of course we have, how can you deny it?' </b>And as in theological disputes, there is plentiful scorn and ridicule to heap on the other side. Perhaps an agnostic position would be the most honest: There is arguably some evidence for visitation, it's often ambiguous and disputed and perhaps suppressed, there is no consensus about the truth, and there is much we don't know. I'm personally much more comfortable with mystery and admitted ignorance than I am with absolute declarations of 'truth' that are more a matter of faith than of indisputable proof.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I find the explanation based on balloons (weather balloons or military balloons) to be quite convincing. However, this is my guess about the real aliens (who make us serve them):</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRVc2bkmSCqJxy3ib8dRyiY9bqberJMlv-qo04PZD0hwCaJ7vUio3d5uxHl4yQioKyByk9Il2bxfINBOcf2nBfKNRKUeNLmeyIpf1qUanipMWbUYuO9Gwpg31wsIZiaO56FmxA8-7cNfIRARLBUQd3Z6DxWFXp2YHzgtSTiv4b0Wlh0H7w3QiT-dL679Fa/s1686/cat%20UFO%20alien.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1686" data-original-width="1602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRVc2bkmSCqJxy3ib8dRyiY9bqberJMlv-qo04PZD0hwCaJ7vUio3d5uxHl4yQioKyByk9Il2bxfINBOcf2nBfKNRKUeNLmeyIpf1qUanipMWbUYuO9Gwpg31wsIZiaO56FmxA8-7cNfIRARLBUQd3Z6DxWFXp2YHzgtSTiv4b0Wlh0H7w3QiT-dL679Fa/w380-h400/cat%20UFO%20alien.png" width="380" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>A SYNTHETIC ANTIBIOTIC FOUND HIGHLY EFFECTIVE AGAINST DRUG-RESISTANT BACTERIA<br /></b><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>A new antibiotic created by Harvard researchers overcomes antimicrobial resistance mechanisms that have rendered many modern drugs ineffective and are driving a global public health crisis.</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />A team led by Andrew Myers, Amory Houghton Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, reports in Science that their synthetic compound, <b>cresomycin, kills many strains of drug-resistant bacteria, including Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa.<br /></b><br />“While we don’t yet know whether cresomycin and drugs like it are safe and effective in humans, our results show <b>significantly improved inhibitory activity against a long list of pathogenic bacterial strains that kill more than a million people every year</b>, compared with clinically approved antibiotics,” Myers said.<br /><br /><b>The new molecule demonstrates an improved ability to bind to bacterial ribosomes, which are biomolecular machines that control protein synthesis.</b> Disrupting ribosomal function is a hallmark of many existing antibiotics, but some bacteria have evolved shielding mechanisms that prevent legacy drugs from working.<br /><br /><b>Cresomycin is one of several promising compounds that Myers’ team has developed, with the goal of helping win the war against superbugs. </b>They’ll continue advancing these compounds through preclinical profiling studies, supported by a $1.2 million grant from Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X). A Boston University-based global nonprofit partnership, CARB-X is dedicated to supporting early-stage antibacterial research and development.<br /><br /><b>The Harvard team’s new molecule draws inspiration from the chemical structures of lincosamides, a class of antibiotics that includes the commonly prescribed clindamycin</b>. Like many antibiotics, clindamycin is made via semisynthesis, in which complex products isolated from nature are modified directly for drug applications. The new Harvard compound, however, is fully synthetic and features chemical modifications that cannot be accessed through existing means. <br /><br />“The bacterial ribosome is nature’s preferred target for antibacterial agents, and these agents are the source of inspiration for our program,” said co-author Ben Tresco, a Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences student. “By leveraging the power of organic synthesis, we are limited almost only by our imagination when designing new antibiotics.”</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><i><b>Bacteria can develop resistance to ribosome-targeting antibiotic drugs by expressing genes that produce enzymes called ribosomal RNA methyltransferases. These enzymes box out the drug components that are designed to latch onto and disrupt the ribosome, ultimately blocking the drug’s activity.</b></i><br /><br />To get around this problem, Myers and team engineered their compound into a rigidified shape that closely resembles its binding target, giving it a stronger grip on the ribosome. The researchers call their drug “pre-organized” for ribosomal binding because it doesn’t need to expend as much energy conforming to its target as existing drugs must do.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />The researchers arrived at cresomycin using what they call component-based synthesis, a method pioneered by the Myers lab that involves building large molecular components of equal complexity and bringing them together at late stages – like pre-building sections of a complicated LEGO set before assembling them. <i><b>This modular, completely synthetic system allows them to make and test not just one, but hundreds of target molecules, greatly speeding up the drug discovery process.</b></i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />The stakes are clear. <b>“Antibiotics form the foundation on which modern medicine is built,” said co-author and graduate student Kelvin Wu. “Without antibiotics, many cutting-edge medical procedures like surgeries, cancer treatments, and organ transplants, cannot be done.”<br /> </b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Myers’ component-based synthesis research received early support from Harvard’s Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator, part of the Office of Technology Development, which awarded funding to Myers’ lab in 2013 to enable testing of drug compounds. The Office of Technology Development protected the Myers Research Group’s innovations and, along with the Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator, will support the research team for the duration of the CARB-X agreement. The newly awarded CARB-X funding allows the researchers to continue profiling and optimizing drug leads.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />“Funding and other support from groups like the Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator and CARB-X are essential for the discovery and development of new antibiotics,” said Curtis Keith, the Harvard accelerator’s chief scientific officer. “These innovations from the Myers Research Group have<b> the potential to yield new drugs that will one day meet a global health need.</b>”</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1034410">https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1034410</a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> <br />*<br /><b>VIRAL INFECTIONS FOUND TO INCREASE ALZHEIMER’S RISK</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />~ With rates of Alzheimer's disease expected to rise, and still no cure for this type of dementia, finding new ways to treat this disease has been at the forefront of research over the past few years.<br /><br />Adding to this research is a new study from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. The findings recently published in the journal Neuron, found that<b> immune cells in the blood of people with Alzheimer’s disease are epigenetically altered.</b><br /><br />This alteration, the researchers say, is potentially caused by a previous viral infection, environmental pollutants, or other lifestyle factors.<br /><br />The research revealed <b>several genes that may be therapeutic targets for manipulating the body’s peripheral immune system.<br /></b><br />WHAT IS THE PERIPHERAL IMMUNE SYSTEM?<br /><br />The body’s immune system can be considered as comprising two parts —<b> the central immune system and the peripheral immune system, a term used to describe immune responses that happen outside the brain.</b><br /><br />The peripheral immune system includes circulating white blood cells that detect antigens, such as bacteria or viruses, when they enter the body. This part of the immune system acts as the first wave of attack against any foreign substance.<br /><br />According to Dr. David Gate, assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and senior and corresponding author on this study, there is mounting evidence that the peripheral immune system plays a role in Alzheimer’s disease.<br /><br />“In recent years, we have shown that <b>immune cells of the cerebrospinal fluid — a fluid that flows in and around the brain — are clonally expanded and activated,” Dr. Gate told Medical News Today. “This means that they have previously responded to some type of immune stimulus.”</b><br /><br />Previous research has connected the peripheral immune system to neurodegenerative diseases, and studies have shown an association between types of peripheral immune cells and cognition, brain structure, and Alzheimer’s disease pathology. <br /><br />As epigenetics only provides a snapshot into the past, Dr. Gate said we can only speculate on what might have caused these discovered epigenetic changes.<br /><br />“However, <b>in the past decade, we have grown to appreciate the fact that viral infections are a risk factor for the development of dementias like Alzheimer’s disease,”</b> he continued.<br /><br />“While our data do not provide evidence that epigenetic changes in Alzheimer’s disease patients’ immune systems were caused by viral infections, this is certainly a tantalizing possibility. In this scenario, viral infections promote inflammatory responses over the course of one’s life that promote Alzheimer’s disease risk via mechanisms that we do not yet understand,” suggested Dr. Gate.<br /><br />“Our ultimate goal is to design immune cell therapies for Alzheimer’s disease,” Dr. Gate added. “<b>Using information from this study, we can potentially target the genes that harbor epigenetic changes.</b>”<br /><br />For this study, Dr. Gate said the team wanted to find out whether there might be epigenetic changes within the immune system of Alzheimer’s disease patients that might promote the trafficking of these changes to the cerebrospinal fluid and the brain.<br /><br /><i><b>“Epigenetics essentially reflects changes to our DNA that have occurred in the past,” he explained. “There are many influences on epigenetics, such as the environment, pollutants, viral infections, lifestyle factors, and behaviors. It is possible that these influences work in concert, or in isolation, to promote inflammation that puts one at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.”</b><br /></i><br />Dr. Gate and his team examined immune cells from peripheral blood samples taken from people with Alzheimer’s disease. <b>When compared to healthy controls, researchers found that every immune cell type in the participants with Alzheimer’s disease had epigenetic changes indicated by open chromatin.</b><br /><br />Additionally, scientists looked for which genes were more open in the immune cells and found more exposure in the protein CXCR3 on T cells.<br /><br /><i><b>Epigenetic changes alter the way our genes are translated into proteins,” Dr. Gate explained. “In this study, we observed an epigenetic change in a gene that encodes the protein CXCR3. CXCR3 is a signal receptor on the surface of immune cells called T cells. This receptor essentially serves as an antenna that we believe allows them to traffic signals put out by the Alzheimer’s brain.”</b></i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><b>Researchers also found epigenetic changes in a type of white blood cell called monocytes.<br /></b><br />“Monocytes are very important to immune defense. They <b>secrete inflammatory proteins that protect your body in the case of infection.</b> In this study, we found that there are epigenetic changes to genes that encode these inflammatory proteins. This is significant because <b>it could signal that </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Alzheimer’s disease patients have a more pronounced pro-inflammatory immune system</b>,</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">” Dr. Gate stated.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/could-viral-infections-over-a-lifetime-influence-alzheimers-risk#Implications-in-prevention-and-treatment-of-Alzheimers">https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/could-viral-infections-over-a-lifetime-influence-alzheimers-risk#Implications-in-prevention-and-treatment-of-Alzheimers<br /></a><br /><i><b>ending on a childhood memory: </b><br /></i><br />MY GRANDMOTHER’S LAUGHTER<br /><br />One day in the street my grandmother <br />stops before another grandmother.<br />Both stammer: “It’s you —<br />you — in Auschwitz — ”<br /><br />Turning to me: “She and I shared <br />the same blanket. Every night <br />she said, ‘You’ve got more than I’<br />and pulled, and I pulled back –<br /><br />and so we’d tug across the bunk — ”<br />and the two grandmothers laugh.<br />In the middle of the sidewalk, <br />in old women’s dusk,<br /><br />widows’ browns and grays, <br />they are laughing like two schoolgirls. <br />Tears rain down the cracked <br />winter of their cheeks. <br /><br />On Piotrkowska Avenue,<br />in the busiest street,<br />they are tugging that thin blanket.<br />They are pulling back.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">~ Oriana <br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWNYR8m5q-gXRrDmd8ln3qj5MxJozsfZeu8S_iZAxOkccaCu_ZwJco8zuQrogendPERSbkvb-oGEIvV0vm2qbHcJU8oaaMpY_G0dxXApORSD0xtqa8hJzOh-m0pzOUgZ4tNhPiHUaNVHb-Iq_L7EAP5Qdm__IKuEiMJ1R3DXmw4Nt6XoOHTSOqxNeUi-4J/s720/Piotrkowska.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="720" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWNYR8m5q-gXRrDmd8ln3qj5MxJozsfZeu8S_iZAxOkccaCu_ZwJco8zuQrogendPERSbkvb-oGEIvV0vm2qbHcJU8oaaMpY_G0dxXApORSD0xtqa8hJzOh-m0pzOUgZ4tNhPiHUaNVHb-Iq_L7EAP5Qdm__IKuEiMJ1R3DXmw4Nt6XoOHTSOqxNeUi-4J/w640-h426/Piotrkowska.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">(P.S. this is a modern photo of Piotrkowska Street. It used to be crowded, full of pedestrians as well as vehicular traffic)<br /></span><br /></div><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-15509990584918646992024-02-10T21:50:00.000-08:002024-02-10T22:00:35.125-08:00A DOMINATRIX SPEAKS; GRAY HAIR CAN BE REVERSED; DINKS (DOUBLE INCOME, NO KIDS) ARE LIVING THE AMERICAN DREAM; SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE ILLUSION OF CLOSENESS; WHY UKRAINE WAS A THREAT TO PUTIN; DO RUSSIANS BELIEVE RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA? KING DAVID AND MACHIAVELLI’S PRINCE; KNOWING SOMEONE HAS DIED<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhTtSKrV5KpuxcPEUg3BuDsocHDsy769M0NC5VDsVdrBCps8faqkCospUsQFVa8SwNz8elLpWMvZxGPmAcrrm6JMlJlPbI1Ja6pnJG0q5IRvV51AGa9m3noVXQ-rmBsH7yoDe_ibHEbZDC376cITHKfHcAraz6Oww8_gAeHmbkoJ6aAzF6H2Q54dsFP4-Y/s1536/Polar%20bear%20asleep%20iceberg.webp" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="864" data-original-width="1536" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhTtSKrV5KpuxcPEUg3BuDsocHDsy769M0NC5VDsVdrBCps8faqkCospUsQFVa8SwNz8elLpWMvZxGPmAcrrm6JMlJlPbI1Ja6pnJG0q5IRvV51AGa9m3noVXQ-rmBsH7yoDe_ibHEbZDC376cITHKfHcAraz6Oww8_gAeHmbkoJ6aAzF6H2Q54dsFP4-Y/w400-h225/Polar%20bear%20asleep%20iceberg.webp" width="400" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Photo: Nima Sarikhami</i></span></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">To gaze at a river made of time and water<br />And remember that time is another river<br />To know we stray like a river<br />And our faces vanish like water</span><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">To see in every day and year a symbol<br />Of all the days of man and his years<br />And convert the outrage of the years<br />Into a music, a proverb, and a symbol<br /><br />To see in death a sleep, in the sunset<br />A golden sadness, such is poetry<br />Humble and immortal, poetry<br />Returning, like dawn and the sunset<br /><br />Sometimes at evening there is a face<br />That sees us from the deep of a mirror<br />Art must be that kind of mirror<br />Disclosing to each of us his face<br /><br />They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders<br />Wept with love on seeing Ithaca<br />Humble and green. Art is that Ithaca<br />A green eternity, not wonders<br /><br />Art is endless like a river flowing<br />It passes, yet remains, a mirror to the same<br />Inconstant Heraclitus, the same<br />And another, like the river flowing<br /><br />~ Jorge Luis Borges, Ars Poetica<br /><br />The penultimate stanza is my special favorite. At first it seems to veer away from the main theme of how things are mortal and immortal at the same time. But on closer look, it’s precisely an instance of that phenomenon: it’s ordinary and transient events that add up to immortality, an ordinary island that becomes someone’s Holy Land.<br /><br />They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders<br />Wept with love on seeing Ithaca<br />Humble and green. Art is that Ithaca<br />A green eternity, not wonders<br /><br />Here we may protest that poetry sometimes speaks of wonders, of the extraordinary as well as the ordinary. But Borges wants the emphasis on continuity, found in the ordinary, “humble and green,” rather than in the exceptional. <br /><br />After this magnificent detour into the Odyssey and “green eternity,” we return to the river “that passes and remains.” The poem returns to its beginning, and we can contemplate the rich symbolism of the river, “made of time and water” again and again, in our own flowing. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">By the way, the first stanza:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">To gaze at a river made of time and water<br />And remember that time is another river<br />To know we stray like a river<br />And our faces vanish like water<br /></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">reminds me of Keats's self-chosen epitaph: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." But that verdict of time is ultimately passed on everyone, even those who are world-famous now.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgERQpj-UrrZUykzkueQ88Sic9SRKxq0a29CE6ZdGY7XQ4avyC0UdOStcgFdags-pBmq-mtXAx6nXh2B9Ul6cqLGmAXANqJE0nhdfZ1oIMbWQOqu_VECCbq18f1w1LiXCtoNeKH-6p6-3zEzcb1mT1ds4T1xxpDXNnj3yHnA6KmPUrBKnaZQGmqz9p4UbdE/s473/keats%20tombstone.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="473" data-original-width="440" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgERQpj-UrrZUykzkueQ88Sic9SRKxq0a29CE6ZdGY7XQ4avyC0UdOStcgFdags-pBmq-mtXAx6nXh2B9Ul6cqLGmAXANqJE0nhdfZ1oIMbWQOqu_VECCbq18f1w1LiXCtoNeKH-6p6-3zEzcb1mT1ds4T1xxpDXNnj3yHnA6KmPUrBKnaZQGmqz9p4UbdE/w373-h400/keats%20tombstone.jpg" width="373" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>THE IMPORTANCE OF BORGES<br /></b><br />"The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance… A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resumé, a commentary... More reasonable, more inept, more indolent, I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books.” ~ Borges, 1941<br /><br /><b>Borges has been called the father of the Latin American novel, without whom the work of Mario Vargas Llosa, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes would not have been possible</b>. “Borges’ influence on Latin American literature is like Sherwood Anderson’s effect on American fiction: so deep it that has become difficult to name a major contemporary writer who hasn’t been touched by it,” says Valdes. “Some of them are affected indirectly – through Julio Cortázar’s short stories or César Aira’s novels or Roberto Bolaño’s everything. <b>The detached tone that marks so much of Bolaño’s fiction, giving it that eerie twilight-zone feeling, is straight out of Borges</b>, though Bolaño bent it to his own ends.”<br /><br />Over the decades since his death in 1986, Borges’ global stature has continued to grow. “Today <b>one could consider Borges the most important writer of the 20th Century</b>,” says Suzanne Jill Levine, translator and general editor of the Penguin Classics five-volume Borges series. Why? “Because <b>he created a new literary continent between North and South America, between Europe and America, between old worlds and modernity. In creating the most original writing of his time, Borges taught us that nothing is new, that creation is recreation, that we are all one contradictory mind, connected amongst each other and through time and space, that human beings are not only fiction makers but are fictions themselves, that everything we think or perceive is fiction, that every corner of knowledge is a fiction.</b>”<br /><br />And, Levine adds, "<b>the world wide web, in which all time and space coexist simultaneously, seems as if it were invented by Borges</b>. Take, for example, his famous story The Aleph. Here the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet becomes the point in time and space that contains all time and everything in the universe." As Borges writes in the story, “I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realized that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph’s diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished.”<br /><br />Readers and writers alike continue to discover new brilliance in Borges’ work. A fitting legacy for the man who once wrote <b>“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXNiG60Yp8NdFCPVHPX-Z4qQ2NnU_jmTjOIoV32-CcfYRjLQlSt9jcCDTfAjvUEWWVtvZ_dIlcj2n383HzNDXP-KuROw_yk6SDn8-4aP6-lsZDqInwZo4Y6Um8O0DE3XSrh6nrJcMdlD8mryuAnBBYArx1Ig1QLy3MggY7khfy7makNWEEyJKgRZqfgO5S/s590/borges%20cat%20Aleph.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="543" data-original-width="590" height="369" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXNiG60Yp8NdFCPVHPX-Z4qQ2NnU_jmTjOIoV32-CcfYRjLQlSt9jcCDTfAjvUEWWVtvZ_dIlcj2n383HzNDXP-KuROw_yk6SDn8-4aP6-lsZDqInwZo4Y6Um8O0DE3XSrh6nrJcMdlD8mryuAnBBYArx1Ig1QLy3MggY7khfy7makNWEEyJKgRZqfgO5S/w400-h369/borges%20cat%20Aleph.jpg" width="400" /></a></div></b><a href="http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140902-the-20th-centurys-best-writer?ocid=ww.social.link.facebook">http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140902-the-20th-centurys-best-writer?ocid=ww.social.link.facebook<br /><br /></a>*<br /><i><b>For this is a fact I’ve learned that has surprised me a little: we come to love our parents more as we grow older together, in a kind of jolting lockstep. Realizing at the midpoint of our lives, looking at them anxiously looking at us, My God, We’re in this together. ~ Joyce Carol Oates, Faithless</b></i><br /><br />*<br /><b>WHY THE OUTRAGE AT ISRAEL AND NOT HAMAS</b><br /><br />~ <b>50% of it is just outright anti-Semitism. A lot of people think that Hitler was right, and just didn’t finish the job. This view is incredibly common outside the US. Hamas routinely calls for killing all Jews everywhere</b>. It’s not like they bury the headline here.<br /><br /><i><b>50% of it is basically “everything the west (which, somehow, includes Israel) does is wrong and evil, and whoever opposes them is right and just, even if that involves the wholesale murder of innocent people for the express purpose of starting a war”.</b></i><br /><br />Those are the only reasons at play these days. Neither philosophy is of any value at all. Each philosophy is morally bankrupt and repugnant.<br /><br /><b>Under those philosophies, nothing is the fault of Hamas. Anything and everything they do is the fault of either the Jews or the west</b>, because reasons, yo. ~ Chris Everett, Quora<br /><br />Edgar Aguilar:<br />I’d add <b>the underdog camp, where the underdog is always right no matter what.<br /></b><br />Eial Teomy:<br />That's basically <b>a variation of “west is bad, others are good”<br /></b><br />Christy Chapin:<br />ISRAEL is the underdog!!!! There are about 6 millions Jews surrounded by 600 million Arabs & Persians who are mostly Muslim…not to mention how the leftist elites who control all major western institutions HATE Israel. Israel is the underdog!<br /><br />Rose Solomon:<br />Those who look at the standard of living in Gaza compared to Israel often miss pieces of the story. They see Palestinians not having access to clean water and blame Israel. In reality, <b>Israel built pipes for clean water to Gaza, and Hamas dug up the pipes and turned them into rockets. </b>Hamas has been a worse enemy to the Palestinian people than Israel has been historically. <b>Hamas restricts basic human needs to the Palestinian people, and then pays them to send their kids to them for indoctrination.<br /></b><br />Debopam Bose:<br /><b>It’s really antisemitism and hatred of other religions that is ingrained in Islam itself.<br /></b><br />Lee Jacobson:<br /><b>For the Left, the “West is evil” trope is a consequence of their Marxist/Progressivist dogma which divides the world into oppressors and oppressed. Israel, they have decided for a few reasons that make little sense, is the oppressor, and therefore anything the oppressed do is completely justified. </b>Do you think that they would criticize the Bolsheviks for their utter brutality? Maybe today, but back in the day, the Left always justified it and encouraged it.<br /><br />Hamos Rudgam:<br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Majority of support for Hamas comes from Muslims who blindly support whatever Hamas does to non-Muslims. They consider the acts of Hamas in line with what is written in Quran. </b></span><span style="color: #351c75;">This fact is sad and worrisome.<br /><br />*<br /><b>WHY THE LEFT SUPPORTS PALESTINE<br /></b><br />That is actually a very profound and important question, with a very sad answer:<br /><b>The left today is governed by loud, shallow, ideologically deprived social media bullies.<br /></b><br />These shallow bullies pretty much marginalized everything, all matters, into a pathetic narrative of victimhood and deprivation, which is about creating and building nothing, hating those who build and create and — of course — blaming those who build and create for the leftist bullies inequity and failure as if they are owed anything, leading to their demand to be compensated for the nothing they created and the nothing they went through, but whine over.<br /><br />Sounds familiar? This is exactly the Palestinian Narrative.<br /><br />Of course they embrace them.<br /><br /><b>The moral failure of the moderate left today is that it is scared to point out its fringes as extreme and out of fear of cancellation they let the idiots take over.<br /></b><br />This perfectly describes the shallowness of their support of “Palestine”, chanting “From the river to the sea” as some virtue signaling, not realizing they are being used by racist liars to advocate a genocide of Israelis.<br /><br />*<br /><b>WAS STALIN MORE CRUEL THAN LENIN?<br /></b><br /><b>Lenin hired Stalin before WW1 to murder and steal money from Banks to fund his revolution.</b></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Lenin was more the Mafia Boss, who didn’t get his hands dirty. He didn’t like Stalin, but Stalin was an accomplished thug, filling Lenin’s pockets.</b><br /><br />Lenin and Woodrow Wilson were infected by the H1N1 virus in early 1919, after the USA troops had brought it in 1918 to Europe. The virus was the deadliest disease in the Industrial Age and killed 100 Million, compared to 8.5 Million killed in all of WW1 by enemy fire.<br /><br />Wilson lost his ability to speak and walk straight, he got severe brain fog and the lingering virus infection gave him strokes; same with Lenin — they both died 3 weeks apart in the beginning of 1924 deaf, dumb and blind.<br /><br />Lenin wanted Trotsky, who was Lenin’s hired mass murderer, to kill everybody not aligned with the Lenin Regime. As Trotsky was murdering his way through Russia, Stalin built up the power base to take over for Lenin, who started to get incapacitated by 1922.<br /><br />As Trotsky was busy murdering people with his Killer Train, Stalin set up his Powerbase.<br /><br />He later chased Trotsky to Mexico and had him killed.<br /><br />Below, Trotsky's mass murder train.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie5iZN-TiWBdCrageJmuE_hVWmHo-lG-K8WaQGwzsuYWKE7tuExZQxb1xeyPf92Urn89gy3MLYk6TrkPIPE7yzC4S9H8eAa8yQmlk7dCGb2fFejfOCbqjIZ3zf3_PGGVm5DIjctQ7Y7kkjNhXsRWbwLSeYqEJ9jeHsUMERfEe2dynWcO1jrfA5gui8EV5P/s602/Trotsky's%20killer%20train.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="476" data-original-width="602" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie5iZN-TiWBdCrageJmuE_hVWmHo-lG-K8WaQGwzsuYWKE7tuExZQxb1xeyPf92Urn89gy3MLYk6TrkPIPE7yzC4S9H8eAa8yQmlk7dCGb2fFejfOCbqjIZ3zf3_PGGVm5DIjctQ7Y7kkjNhXsRWbwLSeYqEJ9jeHsUMERfEe2dynWcO1jrfA5gui8EV5P/w400-h316/Trotsky's%20killer%20train.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Starting in 1922, Stalin developed into the most ruthless Dictator in the 20th century, building 400 concentration camps, annexing 22 countries and oppressing them behind an Iron Curtain. Estimates are, that he murdered between 60 and 110 Million people of a population of 585 Million in 23 countries between 1922 and 1953 — Russia, Poland, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Georgia, Belorussia, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. ~ Otto Bihrer, Quora<br /><br />*<br /><b>LENIN’S STROKES</b><br /><br />Lenin’s stroke remains a matter of debate. Here, we propose to assess the potential mechanisms. Lenin died on January 21, 1924 at the age of 53 years. Although some doctors suggested that the origin of his health problems was neurosyphilis, the autopsy findings were consistent with a severe atherosclerosis. This process might account for his recurrent ischemic strokes. In view of the family vascular history, an early hereditary atherosclerosis may be proposed.<br /><br />The man who set fire to Saint Petersburg in October 1917 and threw Russia into chaos and merciless terror is commonly presented as a great proletarian leader wearing his cap. However, in March 1923, he appeared sadly struck by a stroke. In his wheelchair, he appeared a shadow of his former self, stiff with a right-sided hemiplegia and speechless.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrk6W8QGYEEd4XyHUdXsnuFxd75i-K5ej1T8gGJ2E69QCDrWATOlbRhzP-jkq633CNQKedgwjgf4nLP7F27Ijt0J0U9z3hn_MI8IMJKorgzQDeeF7p7w0M7-B91kOMpdiDxiSFb7aAu5oNOyfWDFvhqy-fxAtpGpju24kcJe6ts9WtaOqEOPqXUNjGd0sM/s960/Lenin%20after%20stroke.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="771" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrk6W8QGYEEd4XyHUdXsnuFxd75i-K5ej1T8gGJ2E69QCDrWATOlbRhzP-jkq633CNQKedgwjgf4nLP7F27Ijt0J0U9z3hn_MI8IMJKorgzQDeeF7p7w0M7-B91kOMpdiDxiSFb7aAu5oNOyfWDFvhqy-fxAtpGpju24kcJe6ts9WtaOqEOPqXUNjGd0sM/w321-h400/Lenin%20after%20stroke.jpg" width="321" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Historians thought that Lenin’s serious health problems dated back to 1921. When the Russian civil war ended, the country was gripped by famine and devastation. <b>Lenin started to suffer from chronic headaches, insomnia, and fainting spells. He was 51 years old and had difficulty maintaining his usual pace of work.</b> He wrote to Alexei Maximovich Gorky “I am so tired, I do not want to do anything at all.” Lenin suffered the first of his 3 strokes on May 26, 1922 which was associated with aphasia and a deficit of the right upper limb. He experienced a slow recovery and was still presented as healthy, able to hold a newspaper in his right hand.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRVIOc64aEGmjO9UNjEL9YcFgRBX2SAS5w-b_Jx268yR7GzPgEdcGDhG128vdVXEOqXND5WcvdaXruJ5IXojHlC81D_HeiNMbZNaFqyhnu-zQVpwN1DMmVnkiHiNNySHmRnjCTb04FzFZx6pXyic6i2sUeYJvo0xfdcHfB4_7WOSc4akqqggWd4MP0rZde/s520/Lenin%20at%20his%20home%20in%20Gorki%20in%20August%201922.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="462" data-original-width="520" height="355" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRVIOc64aEGmjO9UNjEL9YcFgRBX2SAS5w-b_Jx268yR7GzPgEdcGDhG128vdVXEOqXND5WcvdaXruJ5IXojHlC81D_HeiNMbZNaFqyhnu-zQVpwN1DMmVnkiHiNNySHmRnjCTb04FzFZx6pXyic6i2sUeYJvo0xfdcHfB4_7WOSc4akqqggWd4MP0rZde/w400-h355/Lenin%20at%20his%20home%20in%20Gorki%20in%20August%201922.jpeg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Lenin at his home in Gorky reading a newspaper, 1922<br /></i><br />On April 23, 1922, on the advice of one of the German doctors called to his bedside, he was operated to remove the bullet lodged near his neck since the 1918 attack. Indeed on August 30, 1918, Lenin spoke at the Hammer and Sickle, an arms factory in south Moscow. As Lenin left the building and before he entered his car, Fanny Kaplan called out to him. When Lenin turned toward her, she fired 3 shots with a Browning pistol. One bullet passed through Lenin’s coat, the other 2 struck him: one passing through his neck, puncturing part of his left lung, and stopping near his right collarbone; the other lodging in his left shoulder. Lenin refused to leave the security of the Kremlin to seek medical attention. Doctors were brought in to treat him but were unable to remove the bullets outside of a hospital. Despite the severity of his injuries, Lenin survived.<br /><br />The operation went well, but on May 22, Lenin had a stroke. In this context, the relationship between the previous attack and the surgical intervention may have favored carotid arterial wall damage may be more pronounced on the left carotid.<b> Stricken with hemiplegia on his right side, he also had difficulty speaking. He was examined again to find the origin of his illness; a test for syphilis was negative. Lenin gradually recovered at Gorky Manor and continued to keep himself informed of the work of the Politburo and Sovnarkom, in particular through Stalin who regularly visited him.</b> The propaganda showed him still active reading the newspaper. In December 1922, he suffered a second stroke, which marked the end of his political career and paralyzed his right side. In March 1923, a third stroke left him speechless. Lenin died on January 21, 1924 at the age of 53 years.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO3Ec27vAYir_LCweLRLPYdOM9mZ9NQqQKadYooGPHsN66Hz5wB30ZUqscHLWTBPbWWlmSTaSPL4SBhQ8q_G6y-V0TCPjUWSqla1JYe3ho8ANB-yGKvYwQXDzWAbfz1ElQ5dE03eeB0fHqI7L5sb9ZgMaa1QRFDwEsDFdy_G_-VRS_DksG6NqcTYstkGZt/s520/Stalin%20and%20ailing%20Lenin,%201920.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="466" data-original-width="520" height="359" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO3Ec27vAYir_LCweLRLPYdOM9mZ9NQqQKadYooGPHsN66Hz5wB30ZUqscHLWTBPbWWlmSTaSPL4SBhQ8q_G6y-V0TCPjUWSqla1JYe3ho8ANB-yGKvYwQXDzWAbfz1ElQ5dE03eeB0fHqI7L5sb9ZgMaa1QRFDwEsDFdy_G_-VRS_DksG6NqcTYstkGZt/w400-h359/Stalin%20and%20ailing%20Lenin,%201920.jpeg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Stalin and ailing Lenin</i><br />Although doctors suggested that his health problems were related to 2 bullets left in his body after the 1918 conspiracy, the direct cause of death is hardly in doubt today. The autopsy showed that Lenin’s repeated strokes were due to severe atherosclerosis of his cerebral arteries. These were found to be almost blocked. During the autopsy, a doctor found that when he struck one of these arteries with a surgical forceps, it made a mineral sound, as if its calcification had fossilized it. T<b>he large blood vessels in Lenin’s brain were stiffened by atheromatous plaques.</b><br /><br />But what could have caused such damage to a man in his early fifties with a healthy lifestyle? Lenin did not smoke and forbade people to light a cigarette in his presence. He drank moderately and was not obese. Vinters et al. [4] concluded that the large size of Lenin’s brain lesions and their location hardly correspond to what is usually found in cases of neurosyphilis. They also pointed out that none of the other potential signs of venereal disease (heart or bone damage) were found during autopsy. <b>Lenin’s father, Ilya Ulyanov, died at the age of 54 years – almost the same age as his illustrious son – of a stroke. Three of Lenin’s siblings also died of cardiovascular disease. </b>In this context, one may hypothesize a genetic component to account for these multiple, <b>severe atherosclerosis cases in this family. <br /></b><br />Mutations in the NT5E gene were associated with symptomatic calcifications of the arteries of the lower limbs and joints in several families. A similar, as of yet unidentified process targeting cerebral arteries, may have affected Lenin’s family. <b>This premature atherosclerosis may also be explained by an inherited lipid disorder. Stress may also have played a role in the progression of his atherosclerosis. </b>However, the autopsy and analyses at the time did not rule out other potential causes of genetic arterial disease such as homocysteinemia, pseudoxanthoma elasticum*, or Fabry disease; thus, mystery still surrounds the death of Vladimir Lenin. Many of the documents regarding his death remain classified to this day.<br /><br /><a href="https://karger.com/crn/article/13/2/384/821025/Lenin-s-Stroke">https://karger.com/crn/article/13/2/384/821025/Lenin-s-Stroke<br /></a><br />*Pseudoxanthoma elasticum (PXE), also known as Gröenblad-Strandberg syndrome, is an heritable multi-system disorder, characterized by aberrant mineralization of soft connective tissue resulting in fragmentation of elastic fibers, involving primarily the skin, eyes and cardiovascular system. [Oriana: It’s a rare genetic disease.]<br /><br />*<br /><b>NAZI CONTEST FOR THE MOST PERFECT ARYAN CHILD<br /></b><br />There was a competition for photographers to find the perfect representation of the Aryan child. The image above is the one that won, and the woman holding it is that little baby all grown up. Her name is Hessy Levinsons Taft.<br /><br />Why is this the most interesting? Because Hessy Levinsons Taft is Jewish, and the photographer knew that when submitting the image. The thought is that it was a joke, a little social disobedience by the photographer to silently protest what was happening in society at that time. It is also believed that he never thought the photograph would be chosen, but chosen it was.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The person who chose her image to be the image showing the world what a perfect Aryan child looked like? Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaUf_vwijyoUq_dQsc1UFhaNyJbawwRFyk8XPzi3xhX3uv82Wn9Nz5OOMztARs5BiGDo4K-e-RvA0nyfmww7CBUTUhNp1-PUX-eyYiVECPwmm0rVSFgxM6shcZEy-HY5NojVnUgtN4IbuutVTTfMRgwTMc3_O1q93Yekm6iZTVKC62QkAc452a5XqNP1B6/s602/Hessy%20Levinsons%20Taft%20perfect%20Aryan%20child.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="376" data-original-width="602" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaUf_vwijyoUq_dQsc1UFhaNyJbawwRFyk8XPzi3xhX3uv82Wn9Nz5OOMztARs5BiGDo4K-e-RvA0nyfmww7CBUTUhNp1-PUX-eyYiVECPwmm0rVSFgxM6shcZEy-HY5NojVnUgtN4IbuutVTTfMRgwTMc3_O1q93Yekm6iZTVKC62QkAc452a5XqNP1B6/w400-h250/Hessy%20Levinsons%20Taft%20perfect%20Aryan%20child.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Hessy Levinsons Taft</i> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The irony in this one is delicious. ~ Athena Walker, Quora<br /><br />*<br /><b>DO RUSSIANS BELIEVE OFFICIAL RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA?</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr3mw13o0gHmuq7YFERtBW7FFlqi89dg-0M5Mnrm7BTyT0ykKQCjTW-wCtv1McqFMSY-a9Y1VJaQuod7YaK4qU332kC4_M4S_MXX-r1N-V7v0OkFJzlWMEcluxpmfDaZmRZd-O7owJY5TAXYNQrbI3oFzHwdQUzKl78qn7yuJQ6jpYEKDbIOg9OCfXEp5J/s2156/lenin%201919%20making%20a%20gramophone%20recording.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2156" data-original-width="1600" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr3mw13o0gHmuq7YFERtBW7FFlqi89dg-0M5Mnrm7BTyT0ykKQCjTW-wCtv1McqFMSY-a9Y1VJaQuod7YaK4qU332kC4_M4S_MXX-r1N-V7v0OkFJzlWMEcluxpmfDaZmRZd-O7owJY5TAXYNQrbI3oFzHwdQUzKl78qn7yuJQ6jpYEKDbIOg9OCfXEp5J/w296-h400/lenin%201919%20making%20a%20gramophone%20recording.jpg" width="296" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b></b><i>Lenin making a gramophone recording</i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Propaganda in Russia is multifaceted. The official propaganda, managed by our Presidential Administration, is dominant and omnipresent, but it’s only part of it. <b>Anti-government propaganda spread by Russian anti-Putinists is also present.</b><br /><br /><b>Radical nationalist propaganda is very visible, too. It’s about our President being meek and indecisive, surrounding himself with lying oligarchs and hidden liberals</b>. Some even claim he’s an undercover agent of globalism where his Anglo-Saxon and Jewish masters order him to make stupid moves that, in the long run, will ruin Russia.<br /><br /><i><b>Leftist progressives are present, too, even if their voices are feeble and few. Mostly, it’s feminists, LGTB+ activists, ecologists, and other niche activists whom the government considers “extremists.” Muslims and other religious communities push their propaganda to the faithful as well.</b></i><br /><br />All this cacophony of voices has their target audience who are willing to listen and believe. Add to that the wall of messages like “I don’t like politics, and I don’t care,”— and you have the entire continuum of propaganda where 100% of Russians find something we believe. <br /><br />*<br />Below, a children’s new year party in Moscow back in the late 1960s. <b>Under Soviet rule,</b> <b>New Year’s Eve doubled as a Christmas-themed atheist carnival, with the tree, tinsel, table speeches, food, drinks, and gifts galore.</b><br /><br />These kids are about as old as I am now. You see their attempts to make their own “new year masks.” The result might not look perfect, but these guys did it by themselves. That matters.<br />“This mask may look ugly, and it’s not who I am—but I made it, and it’s mine.”<br /><br />The same goes for propaganda.<br /><br /><b>Once you find your tribe and embrace their message, their propaganda becomes yours. No matter how much veracity and common sense there is in it, it shines with higher truth. And once you give it your own voice, it kind of becomes your skin.</b><br /><br />Ownership matters. Belonging matters. Being part of a tribe makes you strong.<br /><br />As Karl Marx said, “Theory becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses.”<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqpTnGU6mTqaNE5l9krbI_Sj7sbXRNHnagMLqQ_W_ToGNJ8Ekl_b4BorajzEKdximf92wfNBtnwZ5YPk5s3ErHCiFbNBU1u4E5g3zx-LE00QkMKVQhwnI2eWuiNRtsHfGx0KOn4qyfVS4UGcM9awjYMXETwINkxg26DXI9LK1b7xH7ioaSoGLyQKxDUXFt/s602/russian%20children%20wearing%20New%20Year's%20Eve%20masks.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="452" data-original-width="602" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqpTnGU6mTqaNE5l9krbI_Sj7sbXRNHnagMLqQ_W_ToGNJ8Ekl_b4BorajzEKdximf92wfNBtnwZ5YPk5s3ErHCiFbNBU1u4E5g3zx-LE00QkMKVQhwnI2eWuiNRtsHfGx0KOn4qyfVS4UGcM9awjYMXETwINkxg26DXI9LK1b7xH7ioaSoGLyQKxDUXFt/w400-h300/russian%20children%20wearing%20New%20Year's%20Eve%20masks.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Russian children wearing New Year’s masks</i><br /> <br />~ Dima Vorobiev, Quora<br /><br />*<br /><b>WHY PUTIN CLAIMS UKRAINE WAS A THREAT TO RUSSIAN SECURITY<br /></b><br />~ The security threat that Ukraine posed to the Kremlin had nothing to do with the country aligning with NATO or having any military actions planned against the territory of the Russian Federation.<br /><br /><b>Ukraine’s ultimate sin (in the eyes of Putin and his thugs, of course) was that the country was going West: the people of Ukraine were embracing the individual freedoms and the financial benefits of living in a free and democratic society.<br /></b><br />As a result, their wealth and standard of living was continually rising. A Russian who came to visit Ukraine in the 2010s must have asked himself a lot of questions: “Why is everyone so poor in Russia and everything is broken when the Ukrainians (who weren’t that different from the Russians in the past) are living a prosperous, happy and free life?”<br /><br />And, even worse, “What do we have to change in Russia to become as successful as they are?”<br /><br />This was the true security threat to the Russian regime. <b>Ukraine had become too successful to be tolerated any longer. By the end of the 2010s this pro-Western transformation of the Ukrainian society was final and irreversible.</b><br /><br />It was too much for Moscow. The only way to remove this threat was to destroy Ukraine.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>It’s like a small boy who envies the toy of another kid. As he cannot have it, he smashes the toy so that at least the other kid is as miserable as he is himself.<br /></b><br />This “way of thinking” may not make much sense to people outside of Russia, but rest assured, for most Russians, it does.<br /><br />Welcome to the Russian world! ~ Roland Bartetzko, Quora<br /><br />Sahin Ahadli:<br />Russians are used to see Ukrainians beneath themselves. They can’t accept that the people they called “hohols” live better than them.<br /><br />Jonathan Schroeder:<br />Nailed it, Roland! This also explains his animosity towards the Baltic states and even Poland!</span><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoemmbWqeR5h-XCdIxRBBVVGG-SjULoXSvNiOCEgTK8HABdj27YFyT4QJKhYsRsoiQ8QGOFN116UhAovXGDdCyvgq7Vv4miS1OfhNKGMJ7c6hVNluEqUHL1EJtlLjKAKG1-vlLND39amVulvUtQoMf3OYvXAZCAAkG1AY3rYPEetBrB8G8MPEnplHAVfs3/s772/sun%20tzu%20an%20evil%20man%20to%20rule%20over%20the%20ashes.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="772" data-original-width="720" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoemmbWqeR5h-XCdIxRBBVVGG-SjULoXSvNiOCEgTK8HABdj27YFyT4QJKhYsRsoiQ8QGOFN116UhAovXGDdCyvgq7Vv4miS1OfhNKGMJ7c6hVNluEqUHL1EJtlLjKAKG1-vlLND39amVulvUtQoMf3OYvXAZCAAkG1AY3rYPEetBrB8G8MPEnplHAVfs3/w373-h400/sun%20tzu%20an%20evil%20man%20to%20rule%20over%20the%20ashes.jpg" width="373" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>TOMAŽ VARGAZON ON UKRAINE<br /></b><br /><b>Ukraine was rapidly moving westwards. </b>Ukrainians adopted a Western mindset and Western values. Ukraine was a dump in 2004 (when the first orange revolution happened), a bit less so in 2014 (maidan) and considerably less so in 2022. Ukraine was evolving, changing for the better, from the perspective of anyone who wasn’t a professional theft of public funds. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>While Ukraine was a genuine Little Russia she presented no threat whatsoever to the Russian kleptocrats. They could always point out to the common Russians Ukrainians have it even worse and be right about it as well.</b></i><br /><br />But once Ukraine became better for just about everyone, this did represent an existential threat to the Russian kleptocrats. Ukraine with a vibrant economy and prosperous people easily inspires Russians to follow their lead. Ukrainians don’t have to do anything but exist as happy, free and prosperous to represent a mortal peril to the Russian elites. <b>So long as Ukrainians are better off than Russians the situation in Russia grows steadily more and more dire for the elites.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Their only recourse was to invade Ukraine and destroy it, as to remove this threat to their power. It had nothing to do with NATO, threat of invasion, nuclear weapons or Russia feeling safe, no. Those were just excuses conjured up to somehow justify the invasion in some way. <b>The real reason was always the threat of Russians following Ukrainians in their quest for a better life. Kremlin can’t allow that and live.</b> ~ Tomaž Vargazon<br /><br />Dobromir Priborski:<br /><b>In contrast with the Baltics, which were always felt by Muscovites as more foreign so their turn westwards is not felt as much.<br /></b><br />But with Ukraine they have much more personal connections and in a sense they are the “same people” so their turn would have much bigger impression.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Interestingly even if we ignore the obvious destruction and unsafety of life in Ukraine, even if they truly start living better, by the propaganda masterstroke Moscow has been and will keep on discrediting them for years. So <b>Muscovites would happily boast that even if they live worse, at least they are not ruled by gays, Americans or something, that they are free.</b><br /><br />Jonas Hellberg Hellberg:<br /><b>Ukrainian freedom and prosperity is part of it, but the Russian oligarchs couldn’t accept that Crimea and with it Sevastopol should fall into Ukrainian, western-friendly hands, because then they couldn’t participate in the globalized economy and get as rich off the backs of regular Russians anymore.<br /></b><br />They needed a land connection to Crimea, and the Novorossiya project was the excuse to go for it.<br /><br /><b>Nationalism is the 20th century opium for the masses, apparently still potent in Russia.<br /></b><br />Michael Bechler:<br />Leadership is the hardest problem facing human civilization. The extent that the interests of the leaders align with the interests of the people they lead defines how civilized a nation can be. Russia is particularly bad, but this problem afflicts all nations.<br /><br /><i><b>Democracy, transparency and the rule of law are attempts to mitigate this situation, but as we can see from history, that is not enough to prevent the wars, kleptocracy and other problems that come from nation state competition and the concentration of resources in fewer and fewer hands.<br /></b></i><br />*<br /><b>JAMES BALDWIN: PEOPLE WHO SHUT THEIR EYES TO REALITY<br /></b><br /><i><b>“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” ~ James Baldwin, Stranger in the Village</b><br /></i><br />*<br /><b>MISHA FIRER ON RUSSIAN KINDERGARTENS<br /></b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFH0Jj2VFMKszkkGjXmAH_s1KUKwQfv0PkAescaOMTR14Jns1tAmDiaK_5r8NB1-qsTb6v9Whyphenhyphenh08KLk-ZODOgfZpL7nq0YtNEEIlhdBGeYzGb6RkxfqRPc6kqVMyUEr0oDm7Wntp0PEnkUGAIX-iWuSFdPddIhL8wMtkTkQ2sBY_Q961toXNPWFrmsiJ3/s602/manna%20kasha.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="602" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFH0Jj2VFMKszkkGjXmAH_s1KUKwQfv0PkAescaOMTR14Jns1tAmDiaK_5r8NB1-qsTb6v9Whyphenhyphenh08KLk-ZODOgfZpL7nq0YtNEEIlhdBGeYzGb6RkxfqRPc6kqVMyUEr0oDm7Wntp0PEnkUGAIX-iWuSFdPddIhL8wMtkTkQ2sBY_Q961toXNPWFrmsiJ3/w400-h261/manna%20kasha.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>manna (semolina). The fat doesn't look like butter, but more like palm oil.<br /></i><br />Above, manna kasha (semolina), <b>a Soviet child’s favorite dish to loathe and despise.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>A typical Soviet kindergarten resembled a boot camp to teach kids subordination and the communist spirit of collectivism </b>while their parents toiled for the state.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">There were two types of caregivers.<br /><br /><b>Vospitatelnitsi (from Rus. ‘to bring up’) had pedagogical education and taught lessons in the daytime. They were our officers who shaped our minds teaching us to feel awe and trepidation at the mere thought of the Motherland.<br /></b><br />Nyanechki (from Rus. ‘to babysit’) came in the mornings and evenings to shape our bodies through bad diet, exercises, commands, and punishments. As our sergeants, <b>they punished us by making stand in the corner and stay inside while other kids went out to play</b>.<br /><br /><b>We called them by their full first names (no diminutives permitted) followed by patronymic, like Lyudmila Ivanovna, and always using formal ‘vi.’<br /><br />In contrast, </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>my daughter attends a private kindergarten and calls her vospitateli and nyanechki by the diminutive form of their first names with no patronymics, Lyuba, and informal ‘ti.’ This was absolutely unimaginable when I was her age.<br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><b>This familiarnost (to speak on equal terms with a person of higher authority) is still not permitted in any of the schools, though, not even in private ones, of which they're very few.<br /></b><br />Before dropping out of kindergarten (I dropped out of Soviet/Russian school, too) I had spent about half a year there hating every day. I began to feign headaches and begged my mother to send me shipping to her grandparents in the village, and she obliged.<br /><br />I remember how on the first day in my kindergarten, sometime in the evening, my nyanechka yelled at me, “You’ve been crying all day, Misha. Just stop it already!”<br /><br />*<br />When so many kids are huddled together on small premises, it is next to impossible NOT to make friends.<br /><br /><b>In kindergarten and at school, I was friends with kids from ethnic minorities — Tatars, Chuvashs, Jews — because I always perceived myself as an outsider.<br /></b><br />I remember we drew with colored pencils and painted watercolors all day. For the holiday assemblies, I wore bunny ears and drummed on my tin drum with wooden drumsticks.<br />The food was bad, but to be fair it wasn’t much better at home with its cream of wheat semolina, cabbage, sausages, soups.<br /><br /><b>All of us were poor regardless of the work our parents did — children of engineers and doctors were as penniless as those whose parents were construction and factory workers.<br /></b><br />The state was equally stingy to all of us while being generous to all those foreign nations it tried to convert to communism.<br /><br /><b>A word to describe Soviet kindergarten — as well as the rest of the Soviet institutions — is </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>loveless</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>.<br /></b><br /><b>The state did not love us, and little surprise that we did not love it back. <br /></b><br />I believe in this respect nothing has changed in this country, and it is no different today than it was back then. ~ Misha Firer, Quora<br /><br />Oriana:<br />This post brings back to me many early memories. The memories are bittersweet, with more emphasis on “bitter.” But I am immensely grateful to Misha for providing the term that best summarizes my overall preschool (and beyond) experience: LOVELESS. <br /><br />Part of it was the overall culture, which emphasized power over relatedness and affection. Children were to be dominated into the ground. The harshness of childhood was supposed to prepare us for the harshness of adult life — and we were constantly reminded how it used to be worse, how our parents and grandparents had to obey or be subject to cruel punishment. All adults seemed to agree that children of the post-war generation were “spoiled.” Grandparents blamed it on “sparing the rod.” <br /><br /><b>Teachers too were supposed to be “severe.” </b><br /><br />I believe the amount of stress the adults were under during the Soviet era, as well as their own upbringing, caused this harshness — and, I repeat, <b>it used to be even worse for the previous generations, with physical and verbal abuse a daily reality</b>.<br /><br />The idea of a “happy childhood” always struck me as a shameless lie. What awaited us was youth, advertised to us as the “happiest time of life.” There were of course happy memories as well, but offhand it’s difficult for me to choose which was a more miserable time. <br /><br />Albina Griniute:<br />In Lithuania kindergartens were of the same Soviet type when I was that age, just less like the army and there was no Motherland indoctrination. But otherwise, they were the same.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">We had this porridge for breakfast every other day. By the time the kitchen lady brought it to the class in a big metal bucket, the kasha had lost a lot of heat, and by the time it reached our plates, it was lukewarm, at best. And it had CLUMPS in it. Because when you make food for hundreds of kids in a loveless way, you get clumpy goo instead of porridge.<br /><br />One morning I just couldn’t bring myself to eat the cold, clumpy goo on my plate. I don’t think anyone could, unless they were genuinely starving and facing death. The teacher thought it was a good idea to make all the other kids, who finished eating before the porridge became totally cold, shame me for not eating. So they all stood in front of me, all twenty of them, with the teacher leading the choir, and sang a shaming song (literally) while I sat there and cried into the cold goo.<br /><br />I’d like to see someone trying to pull something like that today.<br /><br />Alice Twain:<br /><br />Kindergardens tend to suck everywhere. My mom in the 1950’s went to one run by nuns. They only had pastina (small pasta boiled in meat stock) or semolino (cream of wheat, either with milk or with stock). If she refused to eat, a nun grabbed her between her knees and poured the food straight in her mouth holding her nose so that she had to swallow or drown.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZkUCl412xaNDo266v8bObFxxWbXLt79pM65Tw-LM72F-nXStA5dJUF3RIbe5ra1yTTokF_x7j9LV2zMKP3he7esA3v47AtTx8fJ1z_jZFVZjrZzGCXSLY_SpElSP36-vZBAZe0bnNRed-uKDO_KYuSEcofC4awVHAVwoTnfNi8rMgiYgTWkEFnfkRNhov/s1300/soviet%20kindergarten%20children.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1300" height="329" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZkUCl412xaNDo266v8bObFxxWbXLt79pM65Tw-LM72F-nXStA5dJUF3RIbe5ra1yTTokF_x7j9LV2zMKP3he7esA3v47AtTx8fJ1z_jZFVZjrZzGCXSLY_SpElSP36-vZBAZe0bnNRed-uKDO_KYuSEcofC4awVHAVwoTnfNi8rMgiYgTWkEFnfkRNhov/w400-h329/soviet%20kindergarten%20children.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>FOR A BRIEF SHINING MOMENT, THERE WAS AN OPPOSITION CANDIDATE IN RUSSIA</b><br /><br />~ On January 31, Boris Nadezhdin delivered 105,000 signatures in his support to the Central electoral commission. In fact, Nadezhdin’s team collected more than double this amount — but they are only allowed to file 105,000. (100,000 is the required number, 5% extra for errors.)</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Even if the commission refuses to register Nadezhdin (which is more than likely),<b> the regime has already suffered a heavy blow. </b><br /><br />The regime overestimated Putin. <b>The almighty presidential administration demonstrated that they have no idea how people really feel about what’s happening with the country. </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>They thought that Putin had no competition, but it turned out that even a no-name Nadezhdin can successfully oppose Putin. </b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><b><i>The regime underestimated Russians. The Kremlin could not even imagine that citizens would be able to collect over 200,000 signatures for some little-known guy in a few weeks.</i></b> The regime was confident that citizens are apathetic and intimidated, that the political landscape has been scorched to ashes and bulldozed over — but it’s still alive and able to surprise. <br /><br /><i><b>The Kremlin was unable to oppose Nadezhdin’s campaign in the social media.</b></i> The presidential administration was simply knocked out: <b>gigantic queues stood in cities to leave signatures for Nadezhdin</b>, while no one went to sign for Putin. Nobody. Even in Moscow, there were no photos of people standing in queues after work until late at night in support of Putin. “A picture is better than a thousand words.” Right?<br /><br />By now, whether Nadezhdin will be allowed to participate in the presidential elections or not, his campaign showed how massive is the demand for return to normality.<br /><br />Even more, <b>the whole country saw that Putin’s stated rating is grossly overinflated. <br /></b><br />Presumably, 15 times more people signed in support of Putin, but for some reason no one saw it happening (except for some governors doing it on camera).<br /><br />And the most important thing. <b>Nadezhdin understood what Russians want. That’s why his campaign quickly took off.</b><br /><br /><b>And Putin, for 24 years in power, failed to realize what Russians want. Putin isn’t a real politician.</b> He never does political debates with opponents; he only ever answers pre-agreed questions in press conferences. Putin came to power as a result of a special op called “Successor”, designed by oligarchs surrounding Yeltsin’s family.<br /><br /><b>Nadezhdin’s success shocked Putin’s administration so much, they had to use the heavy artillery: Vladimir Solovyov [Putin’s TV propagandist]</b><br /><br />Solovyov was given a long text to discredit Nadezhdin, linking him to opposition figures of Navalny and Khodorkovsky, saying he was only doing it for money, and at the end — <b>accusing Nadezhdin in treason. And hinting that the signatures in his support were fake.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnb2KgcutepOR0pRcTizdv3eyMhjdn-nSNPwQIuh1MCWJyI05R3ROGKEFJPTpEBJxaNJ4pK32S0UTo-XWFNX4OwXaP4VjGg25ntzwLFmWziFAF-tA_I7sFeBnvXOBRJOqC3MsUgkjsc8BflL7gktxt3qyfeYZ8y3-s8WUEEt0mjjs0wp3DICpMdx53vF-C/s1160/Boris%20Nadezhnin.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="653" data-original-width="1160" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnb2KgcutepOR0pRcTizdv3eyMhjdn-nSNPwQIuh1MCWJyI05R3ROGKEFJPTpEBJxaNJ4pK32S0UTo-XWFNX4OwXaP4VjGg25ntzwLFmWziFAF-tA_I7sFeBnvXOBRJOqC3MsUgkjsc8BflL7gktxt3qyfeYZ8y3-s8WUEEt0mjjs0wp3DICpMdx53vF-C/w400-h225/Boris%20Nadezhnin.webp" width="400" /></a></b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">So: yes, the plan is to refuse Nadezhdin’s registration. Because <b>Putin’s regime can’t risk having him on the ballot.</b><br /><br />At the same time, everyone understands <b>it’s not about Nadezhdin. It’s about having someone other than Putin</b>. ~ Elena Gold, Quora<br /><br />Wullie Grub:<br />He may be on the ballot paper but the result will be pre-determined. Look at what happened in Belarus.<br /><br />Elena Gold:<br />I don’t think they will allow Nadezhdin on the ballot — precisely because Putin remembers what happened in Belarus.<br /><br />Oriana:<br />At the same time, we mustn’t mistake Nadezhdin for someone with egalitarian values who respects the sovereignty of other nations. I watched him speak, and was startled by the display of Russian chauvinism and the denial that Ukrainians are anything except Russians. </span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Meanwhile Putin keeps claiming that Russia is only taking back what has always been its own land, and there is really no such thing as Ukraine. It's a "fake country." <br /><br />*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>WHY THE SOVIET UNION LOST ITS LEAD IN SPACE<br /></b><br />~ The Moon Race was the era when modern Project Management (CPM, PERT, and stuff) took shape as a consistent discipline in the US. In the USSR, we still viewed PM as a kind of art where all the magic was hidden in a project manager's brain, ego, and panache.<br /><br />Predictably, we were sucked into the “cursed triangle” of cost-vs-time-vs-quality. In there, <b>we burned lots of resources before the old men in the Politburo got sick and tired of the whole thing and shut it down in 1974.</b><br /><br /><b><i>Hubris</i></b><br /><br />We had <b>a string of amazing breakthroughs in early space exploration in the late 1950s and early 1960s. These created a sort of overconfidence among our rulers, scientists, and technicians. </b>With their heads in the clouds, they set unrealistic goals and overoptimistic timelines for the rest of the 1960s.<br /><br />This led to splitting the entire space program between three competing R&D centers. In addition, the head of the one that spearheaded the Moon program, legendary Sergey Korolev, and the man who made the engines for our missiles, Valentin Glushko, hated each other’s guts.<br /><br /><i><b>Misapplied diversification</b></i><br /><br />Also, <b>much of our successes in the 1940s and 1950s with jets, missiles, and the Bomb were built on the shoulders of American and German technologies. In the Moon race, we decided to go our own way.</b><br /><br />This was bold. <b>Way too bold. Blazing new trails in space tech is very costly</b>. It turned out, no one took this into account.<br /><br />As a result, according to one of the project managers, <b>the Soviet Moon program received only about 20% of the funding it should have had ahead of the original landing objective in November 1967. The stakeholders decided they could move heaven and earth on a shoestring budget.</b><br /><br /><b><i>Afterburn</i></b><br /><br /><b>When Neil Armstrong took his first step on the Moon, we still struggled to get our rockets off the start ramp. The Americans beat us in July 1969 to the finish line, but too many heavyweights in Moscow invested themselves into the venture. They refused to stop.<br /><br />The decision was made to cut some corners on rocket stand tests and run full-scale test launches “live.” This turned out to be more expensive and time-consuming. Four test launches were made. All failed. </b>~ Dima Vorobiev, Quora<br /><br />Attila Hatsagi:<br />Do I get it correctly that Korolev’s hard feelings — and, indirectly, the ultimate failure of the program — can be explained (at least partially) by Glushko’s ratting him out to the NKVD back in the late thirties, which led to his return from the Gulag as a wreck, and also to his untimely death by the way?<br /><br />Dima Vorobiev:<br />Murky story. They both got caught in the Great Purge. Everyone ratted on everyone, and those who didn’t simply got shot or rotted in the Gulag.<br /><br />Shrinivas S:<br />The Americans got the entire team of von Braun, that was a huge factor. Years after the cold war ended a retired NASA director admitted, all our space and missile programs would have gone nowhere without von Braun.<br /><br />Tim Orun:<br />One thing Russia has never lacked is an imagination to go big and bold. One example is the world’s largest airplane, the <b>Antonov AN-225.</b> Sadly destroyed in the Ukraine conflict.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXjG5hF7M2Mzixviq5-tymTQJdtZrpIQNY2gxYXs6pfPxmn6boDO0piWdqcOXM6pjjiiLAO7h__eyht_59MHSKGPMrxUXhPDY1HSxrYVRs3HqCjBb_TCIC-WdKsxA7VFn7vmOy9qN9_6l4V5kcv2X_hNYaGH786rnLK6M_Hg5T4CtnoLvknh5nF_zOaslF/s474/antonov%20A-225%20largest%20plane.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="185" data-original-width="474" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXjG5hF7M2Mzixviq5-tymTQJdtZrpIQNY2gxYXs6pfPxmn6boDO0piWdqcOXM6pjjiiLAO7h__eyht_59MHSKGPMrxUXhPDY1HSxrYVRs3HqCjBb_TCIC-WdKsxA7VFn7vmOy9qN9_6l4V5kcv2X_hNYaGH786rnLK6M_Hg5T4CtnoLvknh5nF_zOaslF/w400-h156/antonov%20A-225%20largest%20plane.webp" width="400" /></a></i></b></span></span><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Another example is the <b>Kalinin K-7</b>. Another world’s record for air flight. [Oriana: K-7 goes back to the early 1930s, before jet engines were developed. It survived seven test flights before crashing.)<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW6cwipLwMVdD4wSAc7mnkbd2bPlBuK-4b1ibCG4LCgmOb3VE1GkH-KnHOPLcGikmi-g0R7ZAOsA8NrOj4JNd1_4_rxilBq8GKDTMYlbWiQgo7EB7-xM0HhkMuuos8YGsdtarZr7bS6A7dFh-PfjAtFgsvKrLQbRCWXJ6ZEh9-nrh8QQaED2k1Y4Yc9i-3/s602/Kalinin%20K-7%20huge%20plane.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="271" data-original-width="602" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW6cwipLwMVdD4wSAc7mnkbd2bPlBuK-4b1ibCG4LCgmOb3VE1GkH-KnHOPLcGikmi-g0R7ZAOsA8NrOj4JNd1_4_rxilBq8GKDTMYlbWiQgo7EB7-xM0HhkMuuos8YGsdtarZr7bS6A7dFh-PfjAtFgsvKrLQbRCWXJ6ZEh9-nrh8QQaED2k1Y4Yc9i-3/w400-h180/Kalinin%20K-7%20huge%20plane.webp" width="400" /></a></b></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Given a functioning political and economic system Russia would already be on the moon and their moon rover would probably look something like this guy.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_nn_z0OEWna_aXv2WuLMjjqtWhXOhbRmqK_YLuCiqgGyNc87aMkM1RuBr-MdLUlnhEdLuGH_CMzf3JEqaRQfvE0zN2Hisa6w9_vq32zJ4L7M9hnuYTvPVH24qpZISKN60q8x-Sui-agJYVGLrVGinOeEXmkRknib9BWGkrdrAQqbYt36SHyOfyPU3g1Df/s602/Soviet%20moonrover%20imaginary.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="452" data-original-width="602" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_nn_z0OEWna_aXv2WuLMjjqtWhXOhbRmqK_YLuCiqgGyNc87aMkM1RuBr-MdLUlnhEdLuGH_CMzf3JEqaRQfvE0zN2Hisa6w9_vq32zJ4L7M9hnuYTvPVH24qpZISKN60q8x-Sui-agJYVGLrVGinOeEXmkRknib9BWGkrdrAQqbYt36SHyOfyPU3g1Df/w400-h300/Soviet%20moonrover%20imaginary.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Soumyadipta Majumder:<br />Still I admire Korolev and Glushko for having went through the vagaries of Communist rule. If the CPSU valued their technicians greatly and give them an absolute upper hand things would have been different. Also the US Saturn V rocket was made with the help of erstwhile Nazi scientists. <b>Von Braun, Hermann Oberth and others were poached by the CIA via Operation Paperclip to US</b>. They were lucky as compared to their Soviet counterparts.<br /><br />Minus silly politics if the two geniuses worked together we would have been selling hot dogs in the moon by now.<br /><br />Oriana:<br />Why do I return to the topic of the Soviet/Russian loss of the space race? <br /><br />Because it wasn’t a simple competition between two countries. Nor was it really about capitalism versus “socialism” (the Soviet system was hardly “socialist”; sooner a fascist dictatorship). It was a contest between the Western values (free speech and openness, including openness about one’s mistakes) and the supposed authoritarian “efficiency.” <br /><br />*<br /><b>A DOMINATRIX SPEAKS<br /></b><br />~ On 8 December 1869, t<b>he Austrian author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch signed a ‘love contract’ with his fellow writer Fanny Pistor.</b> The terms were straightforward. <b>He submitted himself to her as a ‘slave’ for six months, while she took on as many other lovers as she pleased.</b> She agreed not to ‘demand anything disreputable of him – anything that would make him disreputable as a human being and a citizen’ <b>and to allow him six hours a day to write.</b> Furthermore, ‘the subject shall obey his sovereign with complete servility and shall greet any benevolence on her part as a precious gift.’ <b>In exchange for Sacher-Masoch’s ‘slavish submission’, his mistress promised to wear furs as often as possible.<br /></b><br /><b>The affair inspired Sacher-Masoch’s most notable work, a Darwinian novella called Venus in Furs (1870). </b>It is about a similar arrangement between Severin von Kusiemski and Wanda von Dunajew – only Severin signed on as Wanda’s ‘absolute property’, giving her the right to kill him. The popularity of the book led the German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing to coin ‘masochism’ after the author (without his approval and much to his disdain) in his medico-legal study of sexual pathology, Psychopathia Sexualis (1886): ‘a peculiar perversion … in which the individual affected, in sexual feeling and thought, is controlled by t<b>he idea of being completely and unconditionally subject to the will of a person of the opposite sex; of being treated by this person as by a master – humiliated and abused.’<br /></b><br /><b>For Sacher-Masoch, supersensuality – the longing for cruelty over intimacy – was a symptom of ‘unnatural’ modern love</b>. His works are an exploration of these ‘dark sides’ of love, while Krafft-Ebing interpreted them as material for pathological investigation. An opponent of marriage, Sacher-Masoch argued in his cycle of novellas Die Liebe (1870) that male submission was a sensual escape from the pressures of being a sole provider, that female infidelity was a consequence of women’s exclusion from work, and that only when a man sees a woman as an intellectual equal are they able to achieve matrimonial bliss. It reveals that the foundation of <b>female dominance in BDSM (erotic practices including bondage, discipline and sadomasochism) is not female empowerment but men’s surrender to unrecognized female potential.</b><br /><br />As a female dominant (femdom) in the 21st-century fetish sphere, I still deal with the same gendered themes. Masculine subjectivity has evolved, mostly in the ways in which women can cater to it: <b>there is an enormous variety of female domination today.</b> There’s the domme who takes a more dominant role in the relationship, sometimes unwittingly. She may engage in pegging, or the anal penetration of her male partner using a strap-on dildo. Then there are <b>the extreme dynamics that typically don’t involve sexual intercourse</b>: the findomme who practices <b>financial domination (findom)</b> by letting men spoil her with gifts or ‘tributes’ for her attention; the dominatrix who charges for professional masochistic experiences, like physical or emotional degradation and humiliation; and the mistress, who typically ‘owns’ a domestic ‘slave’.<br /><br />I’m more of a hedonistic domme, like the character Venus who appears at the beginning of Venus in Furs, taunting the unnamed narrator with <b>the feminine advantage: ‘Man desires, woman is desired.’ In Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty (1967), Gilles Deleuze referred to this archetype in Sacher-Masoch’s work as Aphrodite:<br /><br />Her life … is dedicated to love and beauty; she lives for the moment. She is sensual; she loves whoever attracts her and gives herself accordingly. She believes in the independence of woman and in the fleeting nature of love; for her the sexes are equal …</b><br /><br />But it’s not that esthetic freedom that attracts my submissives. It is my coldness, my promiscuity, and my disregard of men outside their erotic purpose. In saying that, my perspective is not that of a sadist. I do not have violent sentiments against men. <b>If I’m cruel, it is only because my ways attack their unresolved beliefs of what a woman should be.</b> This, as Deleuze noted, makes me ‘the woman torturer of masochism [who] cannot be sadistic precisely because she is in the masochistic situation, she is … a realization of the masochistic fantasy.’<br /><br /><b>In 1889, Sigmund Freud popularized the concept of sadomasochism (now known as S&M), which positioned masochism as a feminine counterpart of sadism</b> – a term Krafft-Ebing coined based on Marquis de Sade’s sex crimes. Since then, we’ve adopted the misnomer of calling a masochist’s torturer a sadist, and a sadist’s victim – a masochist. In Sade’s novel Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue (1791), one of the monk’s victims states: ‘They wish to be certain their crimes cost tears; they would send away any girl who was to come here voluntarily.’ <b>As a willing servant, a masochist is of no interest to a sadist.<br /></b><br />The distinction, albeit overlooked, exists even in BDSM where consent is required and masochism has been far removed from its supersensual roots. <b>In female domination, the man selects a woman he will make his goddess</b>, like the male dominant who targets and grooms his prey. While the latter is not necessarily sadistic, the fantasy in both male dominance and sadism is the objectification of women, as exhibited in Sade’s literature. <b>In Sacher-Masoch’s tales, however, the female abuser is glorified. </b>Regarding what that makes of the dominant woman, Deleuze comments: ‘Whenever the type of the woman torturer is observed in the masochistic setting, it becomes obvious that she is neither a genuine sadist nor a pseudosadist but something quite different.’<br /><br />This became clear to me when one of my submissives left his girlfriend for me, a few months ago. I had met him only once, for which my time was compensated. ‘I would never ask you or anyone to do this for me,’ I remember saying, mindless that unappreciation aroused him. The gesture itself was not surprising. But the reason behind it was. When I asked why he suddenly wanted to ‘serve’ me, he said: ‘I see a beautiful, intelligent, powerful woman [who is] younger than me yet … able to tame me so easily.’ Our meeting was vanilla. It didn’t even involve the customary whipping, verbal degradation or any physical female domination, aside from him kissing my feet.<br /><br />After that, <b>I never talked to him again until he informed me about his breakup. He had simply eroticized my indifference like Sacher-Masoch’s supersensualist who voluntarily succumbs to the sternness of nature. </b>Although I’m sure my sub sees it as a power play, <b>female domination has never been a source of empowerment for me. To me, being a dominatrix has always been about providing a safe space for men to unburden themselves and be vulnerable.</b> That is what’s quite different about what I do. If anything, <b>I feel more like a distant mother to my clients.<br /></b><br />This reminds me of t<b>he Darwinian theme of Venus in Furs – man’s struggle with his recreational needs and achieving a more equal dynamic between the sexes.</b> It positioned men as a casualty of modernity, especially in this digital age when intimacy is as elusive as ever. The problem, like what Sacher-Masoch’s first wife Angelika Aurora Rümelin emphasized in her memoir, The Confessions of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch (1906), is that <b>the supposed female empowerment that comes with a supersensual husband didn’t give her the privilege of self-representation. She was placed on a pedestal as a fantasy, not as a woman who truly had equal or more social power than her man.</b><br /><br />Despite defending her husband when he was accused of suffering from a sexual anomaly, Rümelin felt trapped by the ‘occult power’ he held, the ‘“false” representation of female life in male art,’ as the historian Katharina Gerstenberger has said of Confessions. Sacher-Masoch’s masochistic tales failed to address the impact this power had on marriage and women’s social life. <b>Rümelin, who had three children with Sacher-Masoch, thought that ‘male sexuality [is] an unpredictable force that even the institution of marriage cannot always successfully contain,’</b> as Gerstenberger put it.<br /><br />After agreeing to cuck her husband per his submissive wishes, Rümelin later discovered that he had cheated on her. ‘I never saw Sacher-Masoch again,’ she said after learning that ‘there was a woman,’ as the maid informed her. She lamented how even the sanctity of marriage doesn’t secure her gendered roles as a wife and a mother: when a man betrays his wife due to complex sexual needs, she becomes an outcast of society and her own person, just as she was as a maiden.<br /><br />Meanwhile, <b>Sacher-Masoch reveled in his wife’s ‘honest’ infidelity and even prostituted her via newspaper ads.</b> ‘How delightful to find in one’s own respectable, honest and good wife a voluptuousness that must usually be sought among women of easy virtue,’ he said. Masochists have a special attraction to female sexual freedom. As an open domme, I receive a lot of these cuckolding or ‘seeking: hot wife who will…’ offers. But as with Sacher-Masoch’s marital integration of his kinks, they are presented like requirements. My sexual decadence has always been individual – going after who I want, when and where I want it. It is not at all akin to when men dictate the scenes in which I get to be ‘free’ with another lover, especially when it always has to include them, as a voyeur or an active participant. <b>A non-masochistic man doesn’t feel the need to be part of a woman’s sex life or what it symbolizes; he simply desires her.</b><br /><br /><b>Supersensuality in the 21st century isn’t that different from its sources in the 19th century. </b>Only, now, the lucrative demand for women in the sex and fetish industry has given us better self-representation and autonomy. In some capacity, there is more ‘shared work’, which Sacher-Masoch believed was key to a healthy bond between men and women. And with intimacy in trade, nature, as Sacher-Masoch claimed, is as cold as ever.<br /><br />In Venus in Furs, Wanda ends up finding a lover in the dominant Greek aristocrat Alexis Papadopolis, who goes on to join her in punishing Severin. Although he recalls ‘dying of shame and despair’ during that moment, facing his ‘successful rival’, Severin initially ‘felt a kind of fantastic, supersensual fascination’ that soon brought the ‘dreadful clarity [of] how blind lust and passion have led men’ since the beginning of time. Reflecting on the experiment while talking to the unnamed narrator, Severin says: ‘The therapy was cruel but radical. The main thing is: I am healed.’ In a comical, misogynistic conclusion, he shares the lesson: ‘if only [he] had whipped her’, he wouldn’t have been a slave to his desires.<br /><br /><b>Severin explains that it’s women’s lack of equal opportunities that keeps them an enemy of men. </b>From what I’ve seen in the journey of my supersensualists, as well as my masochistic admirers and lovers who inevitably measure themselves against my regular ‘stud’, it’s the increasing female independence that discharges the opposite sex from their traditional duties – a long-engrained purpose – that keeps men at the mercy of women. ~ <br /><br />Gia Marcosis a journalist based in Manila in the Philippines. She writes about pop culture for the online magazine TheThings. She also muses about existential eroticism and her experiences as a dominatrix on her Substack blog, The Defiling System.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlgEzGserhPkMay7uoQ0jhvcK7iaO7ThQIU5HtYCytn0PbLLzAd5AY61w48fK32SSDWTsoCDElBOVd4ni_Xlwn1iHVWaDFFE1qGL1-1xw6_LdbBhbpkfzxzV4l01VwYq2c0TNTSWtqau0y4R9Mb21JmsQvRDbc4Zsy_UPc9lEo7F_7ZgCvJfxOc2LzhZSr/s1300/dominatrix%20policewoman.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="1296" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlgEzGserhPkMay7uoQ0jhvcK7iaO7ThQIU5HtYCytn0PbLLzAd5AY61w48fK32SSDWTsoCDElBOVd4ni_Xlwn1iHVWaDFFE1qGL1-1xw6_LdbBhbpkfzxzV4l01VwYq2c0TNTSWtqau0y4R9Mb21JmsQvRDbc4Zsy_UPc9lEo7F_7ZgCvJfxOc2LzhZSr/w399-h400/dominatrix%20policewoman.jpg" width="399" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/my-take-on-venus-in-furs-as-a-modern-day-dominatrix?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=9f6ee16ada-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_02_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-a9a3bdf830-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D">https://psyche.co/ideas/my-take-on-venus-in-furs-as-a-modern-day-dominatrix?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=9f6ee16ada-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_02_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-a9a3bdf830-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE ILLUSION OF CLOSENESS<br /></b><br />~ The notification sign turns red as I unlock my phone one early morning. My university friend Abid has posted yet another passive-aggressive poem lamenting his breakup. This follows his emotionally exhausting 2am oversharing on WhatsApp, to which our friend circle has become accustomed. I recall his perfectly filtered Instagram photos with Amna that flooded my Instagram feed not long ago, projecting the appearance of #couplegoals. Yet now, their messy split plays out theatrically across all his social media, permeating digital spaces I can’t seem to escape. My finger hovers over the Like icon, before deciding that silence feels kinder.<br /><br /><b>Abid’s collapsed relationship drama encounters my wider ambivalence about social media. Since our offline and online worlds increasingly merge into perpetual visibility, what has become of basic dignity between individuals? </b>In his book In the Swarm (2017), the Korean-born philosopher Byung-Chul Han wrote that, historically, <b>respect required thoughtfulness to maintain interpersonal distance – not invasive overexposure, but restraint, allowing meaningful connection within cautious bounds.</b> This approach to interpersonal dignity now feels extinct as people broadcast intimate details and descriptions amid desperate bids for external validation.<br /><br />My parents prohibited my younger brothers from even having Facebook profiles well into their 20s, calling it vain attention-seeking. <b>They emphasized dignity in preserving some mystery in public presentation of themselves and respect for individual preferences</b>. Contrast this with the current norm of chronically oversharing personal information to infinity. The distressingly public meltdown of Abid’s relationship made me wonder – have our notions of restraint transformed so profoundly that all dignity becomes abandoned online? </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Not long ago, it would have seemed absurd to provide real-time life updates to vaguely known acquaintances or anonymous followers. Remember when you had to decide who to put in your ‘Close Friends’ list on Facebook? When you chose the friends who’d know what you were up to and whose interest in your posts you welcomed? Or when you accepted friend requests only of selected people whom you already knew offline?<br /><br />In my early teens, as I navigated the vast landscape of the internet, my journey of self-discovery took place in the concealed realms of niche chat rooms and forums. Unlike the current social media platforms with their emphasis on Likes and comments, t<b>hese online spaces didn’t offer instant validation in the form of digital affirmations. What they provided was far more valuable – a sanctuary of nonjudgmental interaction</b> where I could explore and shape my developing identity. <br /><br />It was a place where curiosity and self-exploration took precedence over the pursuit of Likes or the fear of judgment. Compare this with today’s expectation of 24/7 visibility and being digitally connected to everyone from one’s past, present and potential future encounters. <b>The once-private and intimate process of identity-exploration has become intertwined with the public sphere, making it challenging to differentiate personal growth from the constant stream of online interactions.</b><br /><br />As Han writes, respect once relied on carefully guarding interpersonal distance, governing interactions through restraint. What gets lost when these borders of respectable caution dissolve entirely into reckless over-revelation? The tendency to share salacious personal information all too frequently prioritizes a bid for attention over conveying depth. Abid’s shattered relationship plays out as a spectacle because the performance promises more eyes.<br /><br />Of course, past customs had downsides, too. <b>Earlier internet anonymity could protect abusive behaviors without accountability. And secrecy certainly enables repression. But contrast this with our current compulsion for excessive disclosure as default, seeking outside validation even around sensitive life changes.</b> Have we sacrificed self-regard for reach? Does authentic connection still have space to unfold offline before being marketed as content? <b>The tension between privacy and secrecy – dignity and deceit – has taken on newly heightened digital dimensions, still awaiting philosophical reconciliation.</b><br /><br />As Abid uploads another angsty poem, I feel for his suffering, having witnessed the relationship from inception to implosion. But I hesitate to celebrate his overexposure as vulnerability, when each revealed wound intensifies unease within our friend group. <b>Research affirms that Likes activate neural reward circuits, lighting up areas such as the nucleus accumbens that respond to pleasure and validation.</b> I ponder the implications of celebrating vulnerability when the exposure of every emotional wound contributes to our discomfort. Can sincerely ethical intimacy still flourish in the absence of clearly defined boundaries? Or <b>are we inadvertently sacrificing the depth of true intimacy for a mere superficial simulation of support, while the intricacies of our personal worlds crumble beneath the weight of public platforms?</b><br /><br />Just weeks ago, in photos on social media, Abid and Amna had projected such enviable bliss. But when I met Amna after their messy breakup, she told me that, ever since, she’s endured anonymous abuse and trauma online.<br /><br /><b>‘Each morning I wake up now dreading checking my phone, finding more messages from fake accounts attacking me,’ she said, tears welling up. ‘They hurl such violently sexist slurs, calling me unrepeatable names, a homewrecker, a fraud … with no way to stop these faceless smart mobs trying to destroy my spirit.’<br /><br />She described frequently sobbing herself to sleep, feeling violated by vicious lies constructing false narratives about her character and past. Once lively and outspoken, she has withdrawn from digital spaces and public activities vital for her work as an activist and entrepreneur.</b><br /><br />She pulled up one menacing post from an account named ‘JusticeForAbid’ casting her as a manipulative abuser while lauding her former partner. Seeing such harassment terrorize her every waking moment, I was at a loss to console her for the depths of depravity enabled by online anonymity. No wonder she appeared so drained of joy’s light once animating her ambitions to uplift her community. <b>This poisonous theater of intimacy left wider ripples of damage than I had anticipated.</b><br /><br />Digging deeper into social media’s rewiring of social contracts, I began researching online abuse. <b>Alongside declining privacy norms, anonymity frequently has a dehumanizing impact. </b>Han’s work shows how this disregard for others represents a stark departure from traditional notions of respect. True respect meant approaching even disagreement with consideration and thoughtfulness. Now, many online conversations frequently default to tribalism and heated conflict, which these ‘smart mobs’ instigate.<br /><br /><b>A survey in the United States in 2021 found that 64 per cent of adult social media users under 30 have endured online harassment or abuse, with anonymous attackers accounting for most incidents.</b> The anonymity afforded by digital spaces appears to remove inhibitions against unethical behaviors – it becomes easy to forget that real humans exist behind screens.<br /><br />Evidence also shows that online anonymity directly enables traumatizing experiences, especially for marginalized groups. In a study in 2022 by Compassion in Politics, 72 per cent of people said they’d experienced online abuse through anonymous or false accounts. Funneling prejudice through fake accounts allows bigots to dehumanize victims without backlash. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Researchers emphasize that <b>experiencing such harmful rhetoric tied to one’s identity often causes deep trauma and feelings of powerlessness. </b>Indeed, multiple investigations reveal that frequent exposure to online hate speech creates escalating psychological wounds. Victims of anonymous online abuse report experiencing nightmares, anxiety causing them to withdraw from digital spaces, as well as depression and symptoms resembling PTSD.<br /><br />The unchecked cruelty enabled by anonymous and fake accounts facilitates immense suffering. Experts argue that better regulation around online verification methods can help curb such caustic behavior tearing at our shared social fabric under the cloak of anonymity. But beyond policy fixes, we must also nurture cultural shifts – choosing dignity and mutual understanding as cornerstones for how we show up in all spaces, physical or digital.<br /><br /><b>Dignity is the innate worth in all people, regardless of allegiance. But it gets lost when social networks engage in personal matters and communicate without the thoughtful distance that allows understanding to take root</b>. In so much online communication empathy gets dismissed as time-consuming. I have witnessed the spread of toxic and divisive opinions, which harden ideological lines rather than build bridges. As Han warns: ‘A society without respect, without the pathos of distance, paves the way for the society of scandal.’ Studies also confirm that exposure to toxic online behavior and opinions actually increases polarization by sowing further misunderstanding. In this environment, can shared truth or mutual human regard still take root?<br /><br />In his book Understanding Media (1964), the philosopher Marshall McLuhan analyzes new technology as an extension of our faculties, enabling greater scale but demanding moral vigilance around unintended consequences. I contemplate this idea. Despite my misgivings around social media’s rewiring of social contracts and privacy loss, aspects of its global connectedness captivate me. <b>I recall the surge of optimism during the Arab Spring protests of 2011, facilitated through digital organizing against authoritarian regimes. I also remember an Earth Day when my university friends coordinated a beach cleanup, inspired by Facebook posts.</b><br /><br />Beyond activism, watching a musician friend’s video reaching 2 million views on Instagram sparked pride in him finding recognition, even though I understand the fleeting nature of internet fame. I even feel touched when forgotten high-school contacts message occasionally out of the blue thanks to our enduring social media connection. And while toxicity abounds online, I’ve also witnessed digital organizing expose injustice and spur change through collective action at unmatched speed. <b>Both cases reveal social media’s amplification of human potential beyond physical limitations.</b><br /><br />Yet McLuhan warns that even beneficial technologies risk numbing aspects of our humanity in overuse, necessitating constant ethical re-centering. I reflect on whether, in my impulse to share achievements online, I have sacrificed grounded self-worth for external validation without depth. Do I demonstrate respect on platforms designed to monetize public attention and data? If there are only pseudo-boundaries online, what responsibility comes with visibility?<br /><br /><b>Han’s notion of respect provides wise caution for maintaining distance. Otherwise intimate matters are put on display and the private is made public where one ought to allow a person’s true essence to develop before developing intimacy</b>. McLuhan argues that understanding media’s extensions of ourselves allows agency over its impacts. Between these thinkers may emerge a path to aligning technology with enduring values.<br /><br />I return to Abid’s relationship drama, playing out online in impulsive fragments. Beyond sympathy for his heartbreak lies <b>a lament for the public decay of private dignity between two individuals. </b>The precise contours of their inner world blur into one-dimensional visuals of what garnered external acclaim, signifying little. <b>Han may diagnose even well-intentioned support amid Abid’s overexposure as devoid of deeper care or understanding.<br /></b><br />Yet I hesitate toward outright technophobic protectionism, having witnessed social media empower marginalized voices and forge connections against great odds. McLuhan compels me to acknowledge enhancing and dangerous aspects within modern media as mirrors of our own capacities. He warns that we shape tools that in turn reshape us.<br /><br />I am left reflecting on ancient wisdom around self-knowledge determining fate. Internally sound moral foundations allow external engagements to elevate collective potential. But even the most advanced technologies alone cannot save us from losing touch with core human needs. <b>To preserve dignity, truth and community in rapidly evolving virtual spaces, we must anchor digital citizenship to older values of restraint and care for the sacred inner life.</b> Our humanity endures only if we sustain ethical relationships through wisdom and grace learned first beyond all devices.<br /><br /><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/the-illusion-of-closeness-how-social-media-redefined-respect">https://psyche.co/ideas/the-illusion-of-closeness-how-social-media-redefined-respect<br /></a><br /><br />*<br /><b>ARE INSECTS NATURALLY ATTRACTED TO THE LIGHT?<br /></b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjygW8I6-bPKyd7lOmzycfyAe-ywMVblK9U-Kt-mxJ71jSzyHQFCWtkgLWUZzhMCICPadnqj4tjan5znixbOkP4HTCoTlAdiVDNR-ql1DYzvChDyyODYbA9eQrASsOHbB9O8ryicV2ZwN9xUAMMO2JcXiD7ZIvK4M-pBvxF4kJE8pdHjR-kkfbwK25jOp8E/s1160/io%20moth%20confused.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="653" data-original-width="1160" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjygW8I6-bPKyd7lOmzycfyAe-ywMVblK9U-Kt-mxJ71jSzyHQFCWtkgLWUZzhMCICPadnqj4tjan5znixbOkP4HTCoTlAdiVDNR-ql1DYzvChDyyODYbA9eQrASsOHbB9O8ryicV2ZwN9xUAMMO2JcXiD7ZIvK4M-pBvxF4kJE8pdHjR-kkfbwK25jOp8E/w400-h225/io%20moth%20confused.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Io moth (Automeris) confused by artificial light<br /></i><br />At night, it’s not unusual to find a hoard of moths and other insects circling around a porch light or street lamp — but their reasons for being there are likely quite different from what most people assume, new research has found.<br /><br /><b>The insects are not actually drawn to the glow like “moths to a flame,” as the old saying suggests, but rather trapped in a disorienting orbit around the artificial light,</b> scientists reported in a study published January 30 in the journal Nature Communications.<br /><br />By using motion-capture cameras — and filming with infrared illumination so as not to disrupt the creatures’ vision — the researchers showed that when the insects flew around a light source, they were tilting their backs toward the light and keeping their bodies in that direction. By maintaining this orientation, the hapless critters created odd orbits and steering patterns, according to the study.<br /><br />Gaining a better understanding of the impact of artificial light on these winged creatures is crucial as light pollution plays an increasing role in the decline of global insect populations, the researchers wrote.<br /><br /><i><b>ARTIFICIAL LIGHT CONFUSES NOCTURNAL INSECTS</b></i><br /><br />“Insects in the air don’t inherently know which way is up, they don’t have a very good way of measuring that. … It’s assuming the light is the direction of up, but it’s wrong. And if you tilt, that’s going to create sort of weird steering patterns, in the same way that if you were riding a bike and you tilt over to one side, you’re going to get to steer in a big circle, it’s all going to go a bit funky,” Fabian said.<br /><br /><b>Orbiting, stalling, inverting<br /></b><br />The study team compiled hundreds of slow-motion videos capturing the behaviors of butterflies, moths, bees, wasps, dragonflies and damselflies, and found that the critters were not attracted to faraway lights. The insects only appeared to be drawn in when passing a light that was nearby. Consistently, the overwhelming majority of study subjects tilted their backs toward the light, even if doing so prevented sustained flight.<br /><br />“Maybe when people notice it, like around their porchlights or a streetlamp, it looks like they are flying straight at it, but that’s not the case,” said co-lead study author Yash Sondhi, a postdoctoral researcher at the Florida Museum of Natural History, in a news release. Sondhi contributed to the research while a doctoral student of biology at Florida International University in Miami.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The overwhelming majority of study subjects were observed tilting their backs toward the light. An Atlas moth is shown.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJM2-9BhyZjTbFQcfi8vPNFCFjdoJrf8UHwphfjhE71falNCvYYt9ZU8uaQVIAiXDaGxuc82l7uy_q9GmEgB8Iza1jOZs0gCYOE0xnK3eRtfKVFjv4r1SKPpaOer5HoB_7sYI6I0Sk4r3i3uCby3mdFyML8kKZ2Wv-iK9eK8xZUPeVeAo-AcrPDuYEz-W3/s1110/atlas%20moth.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="740" data-original-width="1110" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJM2-9BhyZjTbFQcfi8vPNFCFjdoJrf8UHwphfjhE71falNCvYYt9ZU8uaQVIAiXDaGxuc82l7uy_q9GmEgB8Iza1jOZs0gCYOE0xnK3eRtfKVFjv4r1SKPpaOer5HoB_7sYI6I0Sk4r3i3uCby3mdFyML8kKZ2Wv-iK9eK8xZUPeVeAo-AcrPDuYEz-W3/w400-h266/atlas%20moth.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The team observed three common responses to the light source made by the insects, including orbiting the light, stalling — which caused the insect to steeply climb above the light — and inverting, in which the insect flipped over and crashed into the ground.<br /><br />Some fast-flying insects, such as dragonflies, remained in orbit for minutes at a time, going swiftly round and round the light fixture, Fabian said.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>In one experiment, the researchers emulated the night sky by shining a light on a white sheet oriented above and found the insects were able to navigate under it without issues. If the insects were inherently seeking the light, they would have crashed into the sheet, Fabian said.</b><br /><br />“The behaviors of flying insects in the presence of artificial light close to the ground are non-uniform and surprisingly complex in a way that had not really been documented well previously,” said Floyd Shockley, the collections manager for the department of entomology at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.<br /><br /><b>Past theories on why many insects erratically fly around light sources have included the idea that they are drawn to heat and that the creatures — particularly those that ancestrally lived in caves and holes in trees — believe the light source is an escape to the outside.<br /></b><br />The most common one has been that insects are confusing the light with the moon, which they use as a compass cue. Since the critters are not flying directly toward the light, and the behavior has also been observed in species that are not migratory and do not use compass cues, these old theories no longer seem likely, Fabian said. <br /><br /><b>Light pollution and insect declines<br /></b><br />The world has experienced a widespread “loss of the night” — scientists found light pollution rose at a rate of 2.2% a year in a November 2017 report that looked at the world’s radiance through the first calibrated satellite radiometer for night lights.<br /><br /><b>The increase in artificial lights has several harmful effects on wildlife, including habitat loss and fragmentation</b>, according to a March 2022 paper cited by the National Wildlife Foundation.<br /><br />The authors of the new study noted that light pollution is a growing cause of insect declines, referencing a September 2020 report that had found artificial light affected moth behaviors when it came to reproduction and larval development.<br /><br />The new findings could help with conservation by fueling research on how to minimize the effects of light pollution on the insects, Dombroskie said. “I always advocate that if the light is not doing anything, turn it off.” ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/07/world/moths-drawn-to-light-behavior-study-scn/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/07/world/moths-drawn-to-light-behavior-study-scn/index.html<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>ARE FINNS MONGOLIANS?<br /></b><br />Some Scandinavian racists used to get a warm, fuzzy feeling when the called Finns Mongols, and some probably still do. <b>Finns do have approximately 7 to 10 percent of Northern Siberian DNA</b>, which is pretty cool, but that is not “being a Mongol”.<br /><br /><b>It is commonly accepted that Finnish descends from the Uralic proto-language, that was spoken in the proximity of the Ural mountains. </b>There is dispute about whether is was spoken on the Western (European) or the Eastern (Asian) side of the Urals. I think that this is irrelevant in the context of Finnish being mongoloid.<br /><br />Before proto-Uralic, there must have been an older parent language. Some hypotheses say that it was spoken around the Altai Mountains and that may or may not be the case. On the other hand, some sources say that the parent language of proto-Indo-European was spoken in Central Asia. Following the same logic that says that Finnish is a mongoloid language, we could say that English is an Asian language.<br /><br />Some sources hypothesize with the common root of the Uralic and Indo-European proto-languages. In that case, if Finnish is a mongoloid language, so is English as well.<br /><br />I’m not proposing that English is a mongoloid language. I’m proposing that <b>linguistics doesn’t reach that far to the prehistory to tell anything certain. </b>Even well established proto-languages are still under research and new results are revealed constantly, not to speak of their possible ancestors that are out of the reach of reliable linguistic tools (or that’s how I understand the situation).<br /><br />But people want simple, short and clear answers, and if there aren’t such available, they make them by themselves. And that’s why ”people say” that Finnish is a mongoloid language. I have no idea why they don’t say that English is an Asian language. ~ Vessa Hekkinen, Quora<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhREJrEn8xoLBHh_a48j-kslkIMRd1xnNH_CjVDa6_0MUcHLWrCQ_SwRwcr0Zo5H90eIrkq73ZVpZdLboaxRNwyvlZh0C16zRenGIE3gtQuoC7vITxNTyOIzrH-GgVKg2KFBEhXS5dvV8VVNoBk6NTW2UeEvXDNLXLdPZWyeeXgzmXA3L42l0_E02PtvmSS/s800/finnish%20children.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="800" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhREJrEn8xoLBHh_a48j-kslkIMRd1xnNH_CjVDa6_0MUcHLWrCQ_SwRwcr0Zo5H90eIrkq73ZVpZdLboaxRNwyvlZh0C16zRenGIE3gtQuoC7vITxNTyOIzrH-GgVKg2KFBEhXS5dvV8VVNoBk6NTW2UeEvXDNLXLdPZWyeeXgzmXA3L42l0_E02PtvmSS/w400-h268/finnish%20children.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>WHY AMERICANS FEEL NEGATIVE ABOUT THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY, BUT OTHERS DON’T<br /></b><br /><b>Although Americans are optimistic about their personal future, they are pessimistic where their country’s future is concerned.</b> This paradox may not be shared by people in other cultures.<br /><br /><b>A bright future for me<br /></b><br />Human beings have the fascinating capacity to mentally travel forward in time to pre-experience the future. We can imagine the fine details of our future wedding, the excitement of having our first child, rewarding collaborations with our future co-workers, fun trips with our future spouse, and even winning a lottery. We are optimistic about our future. In fact, researchers find that when people are asked to imagine events to happen in their future, they show a positivity bias: They imagine overwhelmingly positive events, and they find it difficult to think of negative future events.<br /><br />What’s more, this optimism about our personal future turns out to be important for our psychological well-being. <b>People who imagine more positive events in their future are also happier and more satisfied with their lives. The future optimism is attenuated or absent among people with emotional disorders such as depression.<br /></b><br />THE GLOOMY FUTURE FOR MY COUNTRY<br /><br /><b>Surprisingly, we become pessimistic when we think of our country’s future. Studies find that Americans imagine predominantly negative events in their country’s future, both short term, like next week or next year, and long term, like in 5 or 10 years. This is consistent across different demographics and political affiliations. Similar findings are also observed among Canadians as well as Europeans (e.g., Dutch), leading researchers to believe that people have a negativity bias toward their countries' futures. </b>Importantly, this pessimism negatively impacts psychological well-being, particularly among young adults for whom the country’s future matters greatly.<br /><br />However, studies outside of the North American and European populations suggest that the <b>negativity bias about things to happen in one’s country’s future is not universal.</b> For example, unlike Americans who imagine more negative than positive future events for their country and more positive than negative future events for themselves, <b>Chinese imagine similar numbers of positive and negative events for both their own and their country’s futures.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>Moreover, Chinese imagine a brighter future for their country — both short term and long term — than do Americans. Whereas Chinese often imagine events related to economic growth, technological breakthrough, and national celebrations, Americans are often worried about social-political issues, financial crises, and climate change.</b><br /></i><br />WHY THE CULTURAL DIFFERENCE ?<br /><br />Several factors contribute to these cultural differences. <b>One is how much people consider their country to be an important part of their identity (e.g., “My country is an important reflection of who I am”): Chinese report identifying with their country more than do Americans; and </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>the more that people identify with their country, the more positive they feel about their country’s future.</b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />Another factor is how people perceive the well-being of their country in the present day (e.g., “Everyone is satisfied with the way things are in our country”): Chinese view their country as doing better right now than do Americans; and the better people believe their country is currently doing, the more positive they feel about its future.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Interestingly, these research findings, based on data collected in mid 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, are consistent with the “What Worries the World” survey report from the similar period. <b>In April 2020, only 1% of Chinese respondents but 59% of US respondents thought that things in their country were off on the wrong track. According to the latest “What Worries the World” survey report, as of January 2024, 69% of US respondents think that things in their country are off on the wrong track</b>. The responses vary markedly across the participating countries.<br /><br />IN CLOSING<br /><br /><b>A pessimistic view of one’s country’s future can create worries about one’s own future and in turn impact one’s life satisfaction and well-being. On the bright side, this pessimism is not universal, nor is it fixed.</b> Instead, it reflects how important people feel about being a member of their country, whether they think things in their country are heading in the right or wrong direction, and possibly the influence of other factors such as news coverage (negative news may contribute to negative perceptions of the county’s current and future conditions) and cultural values (collectivism may facilitate positive views of one’s country).<br /><br />Researchers as well as policymakers need to find ways to address these factors and promote optimism about our collective future.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/time-travel-across-borders/202402/why-americans-see-a-gloomy-future-but-others-dont">https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/time-travel-across-borders/202402/why-americans-see-a-gloomy-future-but-others-dont<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>GRAY HAIR CAN BE REVERSED<br /></b></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeadzbQtKRYvNRUy-H8Ocn9slvISPODk9E2mhDrDEO1ImFb2nW8KYr-BotrGtWmsgzUeA_OXpQLj5UEPyFZtMPA-STYnRaNdl848nDq0WfgN-7eREK7QFoCz8TqHcwvza4IaAeBcGsQxN8DTp9KDt5yCHUqKgVx6rhfBO8btOK7fr1I5Jq0HLABVemM8BG/s2118/woman%20gray%20hair.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1415" data-original-width="2118" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeadzbQtKRYvNRUy-H8Ocn9slvISPODk9E2mhDrDEO1ImFb2nW8KYr-BotrGtWmsgzUeA_OXpQLj5UEPyFZtMPA-STYnRaNdl848nDq0WfgN-7eREK7QFoCz8TqHcwvza4IaAeBcGsQxN8DTp9KDt5yCHUqKgVx6rhfBO8btOK7fr1I5Jq0HLABVemM8BG/w400-h268/woman%20gray%20hair.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Few harbingers of old age are clearer than the sight of gray hair. As we grow older, black, brown, blonde or red strands lose their youthful hue. Although this may seem like a permanent change, research reveals that <b>the graying process can be undone—at least temporarily.</b><br /><br /><b>Hints that gray hairs could spontaneously regain color have existed as isolated case studies within the scientific literature for decades.</b> In one 1972 paper, the late dermatologist Stanley Comaish reported an encounter with a 38-year-old man who had what he described as a “most unusual feature.” Although the vast majority of the individual’s hairs were either all black or all white, three strands were light near the ends but dark near the roots. This signaled a reversal in the normal graying process, which begins at the root.<br /><br />In a study published in eLife, a group of researchers provide the most robust evidence of this phenomenon to date in hair from around a dozen people of various ages, ethnicities and sexes. It also <b>aligns patterns of graying and reversal to periods of stress, which implies that this aging-related process is closely associated with our psychological well-being.<br /></b><br />These findings suggest “that there is a window of opportunity during which graying is probably much more reversible than had been thought for a long time,” says study co-author Ralf Paus, a dermatologist at the University of Miami.<br /><br />Around four years ago Martin Picard, a mitochondrial psychobiologist at Columbia University, was pondering the way our cells grow old in a multistep manner in which some of them begin to show signs of aging at much earlier time points than others. This patchwork process, he realized, was clearly visible on our head, where <b>our hairs do not all turn gray at the same time.</b> “It seemed like the hair, in a way, recapitulated what we know happens at the cellular level,” Picard says. “Maybe there’s something to learn there. <b>Maybe the hairs that turn white first are the more vulnerable or least resilient</b>.”<br /><br />While discussing these ideas with his partner, Picard mentioned something in passing: if one could find a hair that was only partially gray—and then calculate how fast that hair was growing—it might be possible to pinpoint the period in which the hair began aging and thus ask the question of what happened in the individual’s life to trigger this change. “I was thinking about this almost as a fictive idea,” Picard recalls. Unexpectedly, however, his partner turned to him and said she had seen such two-colored hairs on her head. “She went to the bathroom and actually plucked a couple—that’s when this project started,” he says.<br /><br /><b>Picard and his team began searching for others with two-colored hairs through local ads, on social media and by word of mouth. Eventually, they were able to find 14 people—men and women ranging from nine to 65 years old with various ethnic backgrounds (although the majority were white). Those individuals provided both single- and two-colored hair strands from different parts of the body, including the scalp, face and pubic area.<br /></b><br />The researchers then developed a technique to digitize and quantify the subtle changes in color, which they dubbed hair pigmentation patterns, along each strand. These patterns revealed something surprising: <b>In 10 of these participants, who were between age nine and 39, some graying hairs regained color. The team also found that this occurred not just on the head but in other bodily regions as well.</b> “When we saw this in pubic hair, we thought, ‘Okay, this is real,’” Picard says. “This happens not just in one person or on the head but across the whole body.” He adds that because the reversibility only appeared in some hair follicles, however, it is likely limited to specific periods when changes are still able to occur.<br /><br />Most people start noticing their first gray hairs in their 30s—although some may find them in their late 20s.This period, when graying has just begun, is probably when the process is most reversible, according to Paus. <b>In those with a full head of gray hair, most of the strands have presumably reached a “point of no return,” but the possibility remains that some hair follicles may still be malleable to change</b>, he says.<br /><br />“What was most remarkable was the fact that they were able to show convincingly that, at the individual hair level, graying is actually reversible,“ says Matt Kaeberlein, a biogerontologist at the University of Washington, who was one of the editors of the new paper but was not involved in the work. “What we’re learning is that, not just in hair but in a variety of tissues, the biological changes that happen with age are, in many cases, reversible—this is a nice example of that.” The team also investigated the association between hair graying and psychological stress because prior research hinted that such factors may accelerate the hair’s aging process. <b>Anecdotes of such a connection are also visible throughout history: according to legend, the hair of Marie Antoinette, the 18th-century queen of France, turned white overnight just before her execution at the guillotine.</b><br /><br />In a small subset of participants, the researchers pinpointed segments in single hairs where color changes occurred in the pigmentation patterns. Then they calculated the times when the change happened using the known average growth rate of human hair: approximately one centimeter per month. These participants also provided a history of the most stressful events they had experienced over the course of a year.<br /><br />This analysis revealed that <b>the times when graying or reversal occurred corresponded to periods of significant stress or relaxation.</b> In one individual, a 35-year-old man with auburn hair, five strands of hair underwent graying reversal during the same time span, which coincided with a two-week vacation. Another subject, a 30-year-old woman with black hair, had one strand that contained a white segment that corresponded to two months during which she underwent marital separation and relocation—her highest-stress period in the year.<br /><br />Eva Peters, a psychoneuroimmunologist at the University Hospital of Giessen and Marburg in Germany, who was not involved in this work, says that this is a “very creative and well-conceptualized study.” But, she adds, because the number of cases the researchers were able to look at was relatively small—particularly in the stress-related portion of the study—further research is needed to confirm these findings.<br /><br />For now, <b>the next step is to look more carefully at the link between stress and graying</b>. Picard, Paus and their colleagues are currently putting together a grant to conduct another study that would examine changes in hair and stress levels prospectively—which means tracking participants over a specified period of time rather than asking them to recall life events from the past.<br /><br />Eventually, Picard says, one could envision hair as a powerful tool to assess the effects of earlier life events on aging—because, much like the rings of a tree, hair provides a kind of physical record of elapsed events. “It’s pretty clear that the hair encodes part of your biological history in some way,” he says.<b> “Hair grows out of the body, and then it crystallizes into this hard, stable [structure] that holds the memory of your past.” </b>~</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMQqgpjU6AUbMrGXAQnYuP0X_XVB9tlSxw9EcrT1NWc0Eov5PL-MijYRNJUZPa61sAFmnZhXZTsRXZ0Wnf_EIqGBEwkc63naiTPrs5Cig_ZRj5c58lCHp0PGkDGnNS3a-MRiQwib7GEuFmYc6fNGUvugTkEe8uyb1opTmn69CiJ8Inh75925XGCBfePO2b/s1125/woman%20with%20mostly%20gray%20hair.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="750" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMQqgpjU6AUbMrGXAQnYuP0X_XVB9tlSxw9EcrT1NWc0Eov5PL-MijYRNJUZPa61sAFmnZhXZTsRXZ0Wnf_EIqGBEwkc63naiTPrs5Cig_ZRj5c58lCHp0PGkDGnNS3a-MRiQwib7GEuFmYc6fNGUvugTkEe8uyb1opTmn69CiJ8Inh75925XGCBfePO2b/w266-h400/woman%20with%20mostly%20gray%20hair.webp" width="266" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><a href="https://getpocket.com/explore/item/gray-hair-can-return-to-its-original-color-and-stress-is-involved-of-course?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://getpocket.com/explore/item/gray-hair-can-return-to-its-original-color-and-stress-is-involved-of-course?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>DINKS (DUAL INCOME, NO KIDS) ARE LIVING THE AMERICAN DREAM<br /></b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRdHDlM7_C1XeWDm59r0JzJoczOPkinki4QxNO7t4YkrYfN5uULO0hauK8RQFSRVzcziOYHg4mQUBQq7VuWIYXCYcLnttNFe7WbFwuqdOfAvWCCB26eHQwyth797hjcEPi_pKd5526GGNDFz20hflqhkcdMRnz6xVfr_1T3NPIF_b8SHbVsk-XGIdJitow/s2000/DINKS.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="2000" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRdHDlM7_C1XeWDm59r0JzJoczOPkinki4QxNO7t4YkrYfN5uULO0hauK8RQFSRVzcziOYHg4mQUBQq7VuWIYXCYcLnttNFe7WbFwuqdOfAvWCCB26eHQwyth797hjcEPi_pKd5526GGNDFz20hflqhkcdMRnz6xVfr_1T3NPIF_b8SHbVsk-XGIdJitow/w400-h200/DINKS.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Elizabeth Johnson and her husband hit the vacation circuit hard over the past couple of years.<br />They went boating in Florida, hiking in the Swiss Alps, snorkeling in Hawaii, waterfall exploring in Oregon, and leaf peeping in Canada. They saw moose and orcas in Alaska, manatees in the Dominican Republic, and sheep in the Irish countryside.<br /><br />"We also volunteer at a local food bank each month, go to comedy shows at Mall of America, routinely go to concerts," she said.<br /><br /><b>Neither Johnson nor her husband grew up wealthy, and the couple never expected to have such an indulgent lifestyle.</b> Johnson's husband, in particular, faced "a very bleak outlook" for his career when he graduated from college in 2008 at the height of the Great Recession.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">But now, 16 years later, <b>the 30-something couple make a generous joint income of just under $300,000.</b> That income, their hard work, and a dash of savvy investing are largely responsible for the lifestyle they lead — but there's another big factor. The Johnsons are DINKS, a dual-income couple with no kids.<br /><br /><b>The costs of rearing a child have skyrocketed in recent years, especially as parents get less help from their families and communities. Raising a kid could cost parents upward of $26,000 this year. Being a DINK has always been a way to save money, but as the stigma around the choice to be child-free has faded, more and more Americans see being a DINK as the key to a new American dream of financial stability, freedom of choice, and a comfortable retirement.</b> DINKs are proudly emerging as an aspirational class for young people — and they're ready to live it up.<br /><br /><i><b>Lifestyles of the DINKS and the child-free<br /></b></i><br />Johnson's Tinder profile set her on her path to DINKhood. In early adulthood, she never felt the desire to have children but wanted to keep an open mind. As the years went on, even as she saw her peers having kids, she said her "beliefs just never changed and completely solidified." So when she set up her dating profile, Johnson included in her bio that she didn't want to have kids of her own.<br /><br />"I just wanted to weed out the ones I wouldn't be compatible with," she said. It worked. Johnson recalled that on their second or third date, she and her now-husband discussed the topic to make sure they were on the same page. The pair married in 2022, and Johnson said their decision to live as DINKs had been enriching.<br /><br /><b>"It makes my life more meaningful," the occupational therapist said of her choice to be child-free. "I feel like I can give more to my patients at work. I have more time to see my loved ones and family.”</b><br /><br />Beyond the emotional value Johnson ascribes to her DINK status, there are the dollars-and-cents benefits to the lifestyle. Her husband, who works in banking, is "a very big spreadsheet guy," Johnson said, and the couple track their finances "religiously." Part of that maniacal focus is tracking their net worth. The latest tally? About $1.1 million, a combination of the equity they've been able to accumulate in their new-build, suburban Minneapolis townhome and their retirement accounts.<br /><br /><b>As an occupational therapist who works with older people, Johnson said, she sees "one of the biggest downsides to being a DINK is not having your children there to support you and help you age in place as you get older." So in addition to enjoying travel now, it's important for the couple to have "the financial resources in place to support safe living when we're old," she said.</b><br /><br />For many adults, having children holds a massive amount of intrinsic value, but there's no denying that those who choose to forgo parenthood gain a serious financial edge. In fact, the net-worth data from the Federal Reserve's most recent Survey of Consumer Finances showed there's never been a better time to be a DINK. Child-free couples' median net worth of $399,000 in 2022 was the highest of all types of family structures studied by the survey and almost $150,000 more than couples with kids. <b>The median net worth of DINKs was also more than $100,000 higher than it was in 2019, and the gap between child-free couples and couples with kids has only widened as prices on items and services parents need most, such as childcare and food, have spiked.</b><br /><br />Amy Blackstone, the author of the 2019 book "Childfree by Choice," said that <b>the financial gap between DINKs and couples with kids wasn't solely because of the choice about children. In many cases, it's also a bit of selection bias.<br /><br />“It's the people who already have higher incomes, higher education, and are generally more privileged who opt out of parenthood,” she said.<br /></b><br />Still, DINKs like the Johnsons demonstrate that as the American dream of homeownership and putting kids through college gets further out of reach, <b>forgoing children is one way to achieve the upward economic mobility that many parents find more difficult to reach. </b>Child-free couples have more free cash flow that can be invested in real estate or stocks. And while the pandemic's fiscal stimulus left pretty much everyone with more cash, DINKs seemed to emerge victorious in the battle to grow wealth. After a few years of saving, the Johnsons are free of student debt and said they're in a financial position to start planning for an early retirement in their 50s.<br /><br />“I am from a middle-class family, and my husband from a lower-class upbringing,” Johnson said. <br /><br /><b>“He experienced paycheck-to-paycheck living, started his first job at age 11 delivering newspapers. We feel very fortunate for our current economic stability.”<br /></b><br />Of course, not all DINKs are raking in six-figure incomes and investing in real estate. Alex Killingsworth is a 25-year-old entrepreneur building a content-writing business, and his wife is a full-time graduate student. She makes $14,000 a year as a teaching assistant, while his business earned them $84,000 in 2023. Not having kids has allowed them to invest in his startup and her higher education, both of which they believe will pay off.<br /><br />“I'm 'investing' in the work I'm doing," Killingsworth said. “Likewise for my wife. Almost all of her income is going into research, so our actual take-home pay is quite a bit lower.” </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">If they had kids, paying the bills could be tougher for them. Instead, <b>they're buying wine and whiskey, maxing out a retirement account, and taking advantage of the freedom to spend Thanksgiving in Alaska, visit family in Texas, or go to Broadway shows in New York.<br /></b><br />"I don't know if we have any hacks or tricks here, but I have been told all of the extra income has a tendency to dry up when you have kids," Killingsworth said. "I don't know if that's true, but it's better to overprepare than under, right?”<br /><br />GROWING ACCEPTANCE<br /><br /><b>"When another school asked her to give a speech on her decision, angry parents carrying si</b></span></span><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The
financial upsides of being a DINK used to come with a cost: In 1974, a
substitute teacher named Marcia Drut-Davis was fired from her job and
received death threats after discussing her choice to be child-free on
"60 Minutes.</span></span></b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>gns calling her "the devil's sister" crowded the entrance, and the teacher who provided closing remarks after the speech denounced her in front of the auditorium.</b><br /><br />In her 2013 book, "Confessions of a Childfree Woman," Drut-Davis recalls the teacher saying: "How will you feel when you're old and alone with no one to take care of you? How will you feel without a grandchild to give you chocolate kisses? You're a sad excuse for a woman."<br /><b>For decades, the social stigma around choosing not to have children has been substantial, but Blackstone said that she'd noticed a major shift in acceptance since she began research for her book in 2008.</b><br /><br />"I would say that it's millennials and Gen Z who have really done the heavy lifting in terms of bringing this conversation out into the open," she said.<br /><br />That's not to say Gen X didn't contribute to the conversation — Blackstone is a child-free Xer — but <b>she said the younger generations' experiences with the 2008 financial crisis, accelerated climate crisis, and increasingly divisive politics made the choice to forgo kids more acceptable to a wider group.</b><br /><br />One 2022 Nature paper from the researchers Zachary P. Neal and Jennifer Watling Neal found that nearly half the adults they studied were parents and 22% were child-free by choice. The rest were ambivalent, undecided, unable to have kids, or planning to have them. In the 2020 US census, 87 million Americans were between the ages of 20 and 46. If you apply the findings from the Neals' study, that means roughly 19 million millennial and Gen Z adults of childbearing age were child-free by choice. That same research, which polled 1,500 Michigan adults, found that while parents felt warmer toward fellow parents, "both parents and child-free people feel about the same toward child-free people." The report concluded: "<b>Although parents really like other parents, they don't dislike child-free people</b>.”<br /><br />Sentiment actually seems to be shifting in the opposite direction: <b>In a summer 2022 Harris Poll of 1,054 American adults, 20% of all adults — and 27% of millennials — agreed "that people should stop having children because of the harm it causes," specifically the harm to the environment, animals, and even other people. Similarly, about one-third of all adults — and over 40% of millennials — said that they agreed "people should stop having children because their children's quality of life will be poor.”<br /></b><br />And then there's social media and our identity-obsessed culture. Child-free people now have more and more platforms to connect with each other and flaunt their no-kids lifestyles of extensive travel, impeccable homes, and spoiled pets. The communities devoted to a child-free lifestyle are booming: The subreddit r/childfree, focused on "topics and links of interest to childfree individuals," boasts 1.5 million members. TikTok videos about DINKs rack up millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes. DINKs, GINKs [not having children for environmental reasons], "rich aunties," and <b>DINKWADs — DINKs with a dog</b> — have become aspirational identities for younger generations. <br /><br />Stigma against DINKS certainly remains — just look at the comments of "selfish" and "missing out" on child-free TikTok videos. But they're overshadowed by comments of support. As Blackstone, who wrote the 2021 book on the topic, said, <b>what happened to Drut-Davis wouldn't happen today.</b><br /><br />"I've gotten the random email telling me that I'm miserable and going to die alone or that I'm right, I shouldn't have kids anyway," she said. "But nothing like what Marcia got in the 1970s."<br /><b>With the rise in childcare costs, education, and other parenting expenses that have outpaced inflation, it's hard to deny that a two-track economy has emerged. There are the DINKs who can seize the American dream and the parents who are struggling to stay afloat in a country without guaranteed paid leave or affordable childcare.</b> It's no wonder that so many people are suddenly interested in becoming a DINK.<br /><br />Johnson said that her DINK lifestyle kept her plenty busy. She invests time in her hobby of landscape photography, and though she's questioned whether it's a selfish choice, she overall feels more "well rounded and healthier" than she would if she had kids, she said.<br /><br />“We hang out with other people's kids every once in a while,” she said, “but then we happily just give them back to their parents.” ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/parents-dinks-winning-childfree-economy-finances-income-vacation-retirement-kids-2024-2?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://www.businessinsider.com/parents-dinks-winning-childfree-economy-finances-income-vacation-retirement-kids-2024-2?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /><br /></a>*<br /><b>LEADERS AS INDIVIDUALISTS<br /></b><br />If you search for books on leaders in history, you find a recurring cast of characters staring at you from the covers: Winston Churchill. Napoleon. Abraham Lincoln. Genghis Khan. Mao Zedong. They will often be military or imperial leaders, on horses or in uniform or armor, who triumphed in big wars or led their nation through crisis. Keep browsing and you will encounter another variant of works on leadership, featuring prominent figures from the business world. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">With varying degrees of sophistication, these men (and, sometimes, women) are treated as heroes, role models and inspirations – or, alternatively, as menaces. <b>Business leaders such as Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos are portrayed, whether positively or negatively, as uniquely powerful individuals – able, through sheer force of will or ruthless intelligence, to overcome any obstacles life put in their way.<br /></b><br />Such books are celebrations of individualism. Their primary effect is to promote an individualist perspective on the world. They are popular because their political appeal is so wide: liberals can love this perspective on leadership, and so will conservatives and libertarians. Almost everyone, it seems, enjoys a good success story. <b>But you will usually read little in them about all the things that provided the basis for the success stories but which had nothing to do with the protagonists personally, like being born to wealthy parents in a socially and economically stable country with myriad educational and commercial opportunities.</b> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The message from this literary cottage industry is that where there’s a will, there’s a way. ‘Leaders’ are ‘winners’. They built themselves up and achieved greatness through their extraordinary qualities. They made their own history.<br /><br /><b>It is hard to escape this view of leaders and leadership. It is all around us. We still tend to teach, study and celebrate ‘Great Men’.</b> All over the world, people are in search of larger-than-life figures who can lead them past crises and catastrophes, and into a bright future. Perhaps that is why leaders from a supposedly glorious past loom so large in the gloomy present. <br /><br />But <b>how did we get to this dominant view on leadership, with its focus on all-powerful individualism? To answer this question, we must go all the way back to antiquity, where mythology holds the key.</b> We need to revisit the earliest written works in human history and see what kinds of ideas about leadership they implanted in us. And then, we have to see how these early ideas were countered by a new and compelling vision of leadership that remains with us today.<br /><br />For hundreds of millions of people, the Bible is not just a book, or even just a sacred book, but the source of how to think about the world. It teaches us about kings, gods, wars, human nature and our origins. Its influence can be direct or indirect, depending on whether one is a religious or secular person. But its profound impact on world civilizations – and on us as individuals – is undeniable. This means that, even if you have never read any of it, you have imbibed many of its teachings and values. So <b>how has the Bible shaped us? What lessons on leadership are we meant to draw from it?</b><br /><br />The Book of II Samuel, chapters 11 to 18, presents perhaps the most dramatic and bloody story in the Hebrew scriptures. It begins with King David, sitting in his palace in Jerusalem, lazily gazing at a woman bathing in a nearby house. David has his servants bring her to him. The woman, Bathsheba, is married to a Hittite named Uriah, a soldier in the Israelite army, who is off fighting the Ammonites in one of the wars that had helped establish David as a powerful and wealthy king. From her tryst with David, Bathsheba conceives. Eager to hide his deed, David summons Uriah from the battlefield. After feting him in his palace, David sends Uriah to have a conjugal visit with his wife so that he will be assumed to be the father of David’s child. <br /><br /><b>But Uriah ruins David’s plan when he refuses to go to his house, and instead sleeps outside the king’s door. He explains to David that he could not possibly sleep with his wife and feel the pleasures of home while his fellow soldiers are mired in battle. </b>Uriah’s honor and integrity push King David to greater duplicity: <b>he sends Uriah back to the battlefield with a private message to David’s general, Joab, instructing the general to place Uriah in the battle frontline, where he is likely to be killed.</b> And so it happens: Uriah dies – because of a note that he was ordered to take to his commander without knowing its contents. Back in Jerusalem, Bathsheba grieves for her husband, and David soon makes her the newest of his many wives.<br /><br />One of the things that makes this episode shocking and disturbing is that David is a sacred figure to Jews, Christians and Muslims. His reputation, as such, is of a great and admirable leader, who rose from nothing; a favorite of God, the modest shepherd boy who was ordained by Him to be king; who felled the mighty Philistine warrior Goliath with only a sling and rock; who played the harp for the tormented first king of the Israelites, Saul; who saw the face of God, and spoke to Him, and according to Jewish tradition, his house would be the king of Israel’s in perpetuity, and the Messiah (for Christians, this was Jesus Christ) would come from his lineage. <b>In II Samuel, before his encounter with Bathsheba, David rises to great power and expands his kingdom by triumphing in wars, protected and beloved by God, and always with righteousness.<br /></b><br />But in his behavior towards Bathsheba and Uriah, David is human, not godly – even low and immoral and slothful. He is the exact opposite of what we might expect a great leader to be. <b>He no longer leads men on the battlefield or sets a personal example of modesty and courage, as he once did, but sits in a luxurious palace, a fat cat, a Peeping Tom, while others fight and die on his behalf. So the scriptures give us a darker portrait of David than those who only know him by reputation – as an icon, filtered through mythology or belief – might presume.</b><br /><br />Soon after Uriah’s death on the battlefield, the direct result of David’s orders to Joab, the Prophet Nathan pays King David a visit. Prophets play a crucial role: they carry the word of God and serve as spiritual authorities. <b>Nathan is thus one of the only people who can speak directly and freely to David, without fear, since it is like God speaking. </b>Nathan tells the king a story about a rich man and a poor man. The rich man had a large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had only one little lamb. ‘He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup, and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him,’ Nathan tells David. One day, the rich man had a visitor and, instead of taking one of his many sheep to prepare a meal for the visitor, he took the one little lamb that belonged to the poor man, killed it, and served it.<br /><br />The Bible then tells us that, upon hearing this story, ‘David burned with anger against the man’ and said to Nathan: ‘As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.’ Nathan’s response to David is: ‘You are that man.’ And Nathan continues, channelling God’s voice: ‘I anointed you king over Israel … Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own … Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house … Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity upon you.’<br /><br />Upon hearing Nathan’s words, David collapses in guilt, saying: ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’ Nathan reassures him that God will spare his own life. But, from this point on, David and his family experience a stunning series of tragedies. <b>First, Bathsheba’s baby, David’s son, becomes gravely ill. David and his servants pray and cry and fast, to no avail: the baby dies. </b>(After this, Bathsheba becomes pregnant again – this time with Solomon, whom we are told God loves, and who would eventually succeed David as king.)<br /><br />The biblical author then recounts <b>the grim episode involving three of David’s older children, Amnon, Tamar and Absalom</b>. Amnon becomes obsessed with his half-sister Tamar. He lures her to his house by pretending to be ill, and asks Tamar to feed him. She does, and offers to feed Amnon cakes of meat, but he declines, instead asking her to lay with him. When she is horrified at the idea and tries to placate him by telling him to speak about his desire with their father, he attacks and rapes her, despite her begging him to stop; once finished, he is consumed with ‘hatred’ for her and throws her out of his house. <b>The devastated Tamar goes to her brother Absalom, who upon learning what happened never speaks to his half-brother Amnon again; we are told that ‘he hated Amnon because he had disgraced his sister Tamar.’</b><br /><br />Two years pass. Absalom seems to have moved on (about Tamar we are told nothing). But then through trickery, Absalom manages to gather all the king’s sons – his brothers and half-brothers – and instructs his servants to murder Amnon. When the news gets to King David, he is first horribly misled to believe that Absalom has killed all his male siblings, all of David’s sons. Absalom flees Jerusalem and goes to Geshur, where he stays for three years. David is described as much more sad than angry; he ‘longed to go to Absalom, for he was consoled concerning Amnon’s death.’<br /><br />The rest of the episode is both moving and shocking. Absalom and David reconcile after three years of estrangement, a tender moment between father and son that inspired great works by artists from Rembrandt to Marc Chagall. But Absalom is soon overcome once again by his demons. He launches a rebellion against his father, who is forced to flee Jerusalem. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Eventually, after a bloody war between Absalom’s army and those who remain loyal to David, Absalom is killed in gruesome fashion. David does not celebrate his victory and restoration to the throne; instead, he is shattered, and the episode ends with David wailing in grief: ‘O my son Absalom! My son, my son, Absalom! If only I had died instead of you – O Absalom, my son, my son!’ What are we meant to learn from this horrific tale?<br /><br />*<br /><b>The Bible presents a theological conception of leadership: David is king by divine right, chosen and empowered by God. Earlier, the Hebrews were a wandering people with ‘Judges’ who led them, temporarily, though different hardships and crises. These were not true rulers, but more like guides or military leaders in an emergency.</b> The Israelites, under constant attack by their enemies, especially the Philistines, and aware of the great empires (such as Egypt) that dominated their world, ask the Prophet Samuel to petition God to give them a king, as all their powerful neighbors and enemies had. Samuel offers the people a stark warning about what it is like to be ruled by a king: he will take their sons to be his soldiers, their daughters to be his cooks and perfumers, take over their lands, and enslave the people, and no one will have the right or the ability to stand up to him. ‘When that day comes,’ Samuel warns the Israelites, ‘you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day.’<br /><br />In other words, <b>God tells the chosen people, once you have a king, there is no going back. The people, undeterred by Samuel’s bleak prophecy (which more than came true), choose to have a king rule over them.</b> And once they do, as Samuel warned them, that power is not meant to be challenged by other men – because the king is God’s choice and rules in his name. That was why regicide (the murder of a king) was considered, well into the early modern era, the worst crime one could possibly commit – it was against the ruler and against God. At the same time, <b>the emergence of a king with earthly power but still under God is a conception of leadership that is constrained by a sort of morality, even if that term did not exist then. David abuses his power, and the biblical author implies that the sorrows and violence that follow are God’s punishment for that original sin. David’s successes and sufferings as king are guided by God.</b><br /><br />A religious person might believe that the Bible gives us God’s literal word. But, from a secular perspective, we know that these stories are the product of human beings with human intentions. <b>The story of King David’s fall from grace is an example of the ways that societies have always found to empower certain people to be leaders, attributing to them virtue and handing to them authority – but also, at the same time, to limit the power of those rulers. On the one hand, the conception of leadership found in this story of King David’s crime and punishment gives the leader almost limitless power</b>. On the other hand, it implies that there is a threshold that even he cannot pass; David, as the king, remains subservient to the higher power of God. And so, even if ordinary people cannot check their leaders, God can. And faith in God, worshipping God, doing God’s work, means that the people can be sure of God’s protection from a leader who abuses his or her power. For <b>even a king is beneath the same divine authority as the lowest of his subjects.</b><br /><br />The Bible represents a foundational mythology – the works and stories that continue to give so many people a sense of themselves, their world and their history. But these were never merely words. They were bedrock principles for how humans organized their societies, in mostly religious and monarchical fashion, for centuries to come. <b>From the standpoint of political leadership, there really is little difference between King David and ruling monarchs well into the modern era. </b>Through social and economic upheavals, technological advancement, evolving bureaucracies and cultural changes, the basic idea conveyed in the Bible persisted: a king (or sometimes a queen, when there was no male heir to the monarch) ruling through divine authority.<br /><br /><b>But in the modern era, even as monarchies continued, there was a major shift in many states and societies, as people began to think of leadership as something independent of God.</b> It’s not simply that societies and people became less religious. It’s that divine authority over society, and people’s lives, lessened. And when that happened, even as most states and societies were still ruled by absolute monarchs, p<b>eople needed to find new explanations and justifications for leadership. It wasn’t enough to invoke God. </b>In this regard, in the history of how humans have thought about leadership, perhaps no one was more impactful than Niccolò Machiavelli, best known as the author of The Prince, which he wrote in 1513 but which was published only in 1532.<br /><br />Like the Bible, The Prince is a foundational work. Whether one has read it or not, we live in a world that it has helped to shape, directly or indirectly, for better or for worse. Nearly two millennia after the biblical story of David, Bathsheba and Uriah was written, The Prince was still part of a world in which the existence of God was as real to nearly everyone in Europe (and most other places) as the Sun and the Moon. Machiavelli acknowledged that God played some role in human affairs; at various points in The Prince, he seems to take for granted the idea that rulers rose and fell at least in part because of God’s will, and because of ‘fortune’ (which he coupled with ‘God’). But he also claimed that men had ‘free will’ and that while ‘fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions’, ‘she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less.’ Elsewhere, <b>Machiavelli recounts several miracles and punishments that God was responsible for, and with which he directed what happened in the world, but adds that: ‘God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.’</b><br /><br />But despite Machiavelli’s grudging acceptance that God still mattered, his prince exists in a new mental universe from the one in II Samuel, one in which l<b>eadership is bound not to the supernatural, or to morality, but to objectives. The Prophet Nathan’s parable about the rich man and the poor man and their sheep would be changed under Machiavelli: the prince shouldn’t avoid taking the poor man’s sole sheep because it is an immoral act that would anger God; he should avoid it because </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>such a mean act would make him hated and the people’s hatred would thwart his ambitions. </b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /> <br />On the other hand, because it is ‘better to be feared than loved’, it is fine, and even desirable, that those under the prince know that he is perfectly capable of taking their sheep (as it were) if they do not do as he tells them – and that he goes through with this punishment when it is necessary. This is a wholly new way of thinking of leadership because it provides a guide for the aspiring leader based not on what is morally right but on how politics works in the real world. Machiavelli, in that sense, helps usher us from the old world to the new, where anything seems possible, and in which the leader makes not only her own destiny, but also history.<br /><br /><b>Yet even in Machiavelli’s brave new world, in which leaders can supposedly shape their own destinies, not all is possible. Leaders still must deal with quite powerful and resistant things: structures. Systems. Institutions. Other leaders. Adversaries. Enemies. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>In a Machiavellian world, perhaps the most daunting challenge facing rulers is other people realizing that the ruler’s power is not guaranteed and protected by divine authority, so the ruler can be displaced – without incurring God’s wrath.</b> And so, reading about Machiavelli’s prince after reading about King David in the Bible brings us to the big question at the heart of the issue of leadership:<b> does the leader make history or does history make the leader?</b> If we want to understand leadership, and how it works in the world, should we be looking primarily at the ways the leader changed the world? Or should we focus on the ways in which the world produced, and then constrained, the leader?<br /><br /><i><b>Some people – let’s call them Machiavellians – are focused on individuals. Some are more focused on the constraints. Karl Marx, for example, in his essay The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852), argued that “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”</b></i><br /><br />The most interesting debate about leadership, then, is between those (like Machiavelli) who believe that leaders make (and overcome) history, and those (like Marx, and like the author of King David’s story) who believe that history makes (and constrains) leaders.<br /><br /><b>The Machiavellian model probably applies best to leaders who wield superior power, or who have a lot of built-in advantages.</b> If, say, you are a political leader in a functioning democracy and were elected democratically, you have broad legitimacy. If you are a dictator backed by your country’s military and other institutions, or you are the CEO of a large corporation in a country with a political economy designed to serve the interests of large corporations and their CEOs, you will have a lot of choices in how to ‘lead’. <br /><br />This is especially true if, following Machiavelli’s advice, you believe you are free from the constraints of morality, or God’s scolding oversight.<br /><br />There is a direct line from Machiavelli to the individualistic conception of leadership one sees everywhere today. But how does this view of leaders and their ability to shape reality apply to leaders who are in opposition to power? Leaders are sometimes heads of state or captains of industry, but other times they have considerably less power, trying to constrain the leaders above them in the hierarchy. Perhaps they are whistleblowers exposing corruption or misdeeds inside mighty companies or institutions, or members of an underground group fighting to overthrow a brutal dictator.<br /><br />Some of the leaders in history who provide us with the most insight and inspiration might not have had formal power or authority. They might not even be famous. They might not have succeeded, and they might not have won. But these leaders often make a lasting impression on us – and the biggest impact. Perhaps this is because <b>the conception of leadership that we find in II Samuel, with its insistence on morality as a constraint on even the most powerful rulers, still has purchase in our world today </b>– and that the message on leadership in the Hebrew scripture has not been entirely overturned by the Machiavellian viewpoint. At least, not yet.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqxQpsRrpWzP3TneuOQ3sw8d52hgU4XaIRVxTs6ZQMX4qZbRH0vb6vzYgoGMCWkudefaTBdgrReErCzvsoE3NvLRHSFnxaIBGbVenwfK9f5fx1QxdXt6Rv_ixuSPQ-AQNlH1n1Yzp_qdGNKbk26WYKQt7EzXJfsEMZ5qCAKJOsy-4Yab-KRTM8CM-1glrJ/s802/Bathsheba%20Rembrandt%201654.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="802" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqxQpsRrpWzP3TneuOQ3sw8d52hgU4XaIRVxTs6ZQMX4qZbRH0vb6vzYgoGMCWkudefaTBdgrReErCzvsoE3NvLRHSFnxaIBGbVenwfK9f5fx1QxdXt6Rv_ixuSPQ-AQNlH1n1Yzp_qdGNKbk26WYKQt7EzXJfsEMZ5qCAKJOsy-4Yab-KRTM8CM-1glrJ/w399-h400/Bathsheba%20Rembrandt%201654.jpg" width="399" /></a></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/who-are-the-leaders-in-our-heads-and-how-did-they-get-there">https://aeon.co/essays/who-are-the-leaders-in-our-heads-and-how-did-they-get-there<br /><br /></a>*<br /><b>CHURCHILL ON ISLAM<br /></b><br />“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine — must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.<br /><br />Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die. <b>But the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. </b>Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science -- the science against which it had vainly struggled — the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”<br /><br />*<br /><b>WHAT IF NEANDERTHALS HAD PREVAILED<br /></b><br />In evolutionary terms, the human population has rocketed in seconds. The news that it has now reached 8 billion seems inexplicable when you think about our history.<br /><br />For 99% of the last million years of our existence, people rarely came across other humans. <b>There were only around 10,000 Neanderthals living at any one time. Today, there are around 800,000 people in the same space that was occupied by one Neanderthal. </b>What’s more, since humans live in social groups, <b>the next nearest Neanderthal group was probably well over 100km away. Finding a mate outside your own family was a challenge.</b><br /><br />Neanderthals were more inclined to stay in their family groups and were warier of new people. If they had outcompeted our own species (Homo sapiens), the density of population would likely be far lower. <b>It’s hard to imagine them building cities, for example, given that they were genetically disposed to being less friendly to those beyond their immediate family.</b></span><b><br /><br /></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTGtZPLn5RIAOZ6v8SaIW2hgn99xYuVUyytcbyS6J1k2YhQ5EoMcemwlnVAiEplYHHnHeucRgI_VlfaB2BaKkA2GtOtITl1ErciP__9qyjXjZ6PlaDRbLBiU5_t7gS_AhdfdPHRXPwhT4U9farllNycXds0ncKi_CT2_bSU5vNaLPnlZ8annw0cF1ivD_4/s602/Neanderthal%20father%20and%20baby.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="452" data-original-width="602" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTGtZPLn5RIAOZ6v8SaIW2hgn99xYuVUyytcbyS6J1k2YhQ5EoMcemwlnVAiEplYHHnHeucRgI_VlfaB2BaKkA2GtOtITl1ErciP__9qyjXjZ6PlaDRbLBiU5_t7gS_AhdfdPHRXPwhT4U9farllNycXds0ncKi_CT2_bSU5vNaLPnlZ8annw0cF1ivD_4/w400-h300/Neanderthal%20father%20and%20baby.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The reasons for our dramatic population growth may lie in the early days of Homo sapiens more than 100,000 years ago. Genetic and anatomical differences between us and extinct species such as Neanderthals made us more similar to domesticated animal species. Large herds of cows, for example, can better tolerate the stress of living in a small space together than their wild ancestors who lived in small groups, spaced apart. These genetic differences changed our attitudes to people outside our own group. We became more tolerant.<br /><br /><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3qYQdNAOkrRzslnmeTTS_fyhq9M88Gliodg9-DG2knrgzE8dUiTQ-c4JDNRt6zbEgP0k8cSGFE3UVIJ7qNwj1GCu4fYz7ouZMQq2SXJ_q9eztuOG8QDqJSS36fG-SCT7PsER1JytzV8MyzbVMabxzqQlv2crNZkXxptlg6QMfh1dmGMIQD7X7BmiYN4gS/s1003/modern%20man%20versus%20Neeanderthal%20domesticated%20dog%20wolf.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1003" data-original-width="754" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3qYQdNAOkrRzslnmeTTS_fyhq9M88Gliodg9-DG2knrgzE8dUiTQ-c4JDNRt6zbEgP0k8cSGFE3UVIJ7qNwj1GCu4fYz7ouZMQq2SXJ_q9eztuOG8QDqJSS36fG-SCT7PsER1JytzV8MyzbVMabxzqQlv2crNZkXxptlg6QMfh1dmGMIQD7X7BmiYN4gS/w301-h400/modern%20man%20versus%20Neeanderthal%20domesticated%20dog%20wolf.png" width="301" /></a></div><br />Similarities between modern humans and domesticated dogs, in contrast to archaic humans (here Neanderthal) and wild wolves<br /></i><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>As Homo sapiens were more likely to interact with groups outside their family, they created a more diverse genetic pool which reduced health problems. </b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Neanderthals at El Sidrón in Spain showed 17 genetic deformities in only 13 people, for example. Such mutations were virtually nonexistent in later populations of our own species.</b><br /><br />But larger populations also increase the spread of disease. Neanderthals might have typically lived shorter lives than modern humans, but their relative isolation will have protected them from the infectious diseases that sometimes wiped out whole populations of Homo sapiens.<br /><br />OBTAINING MORE FOOD<br /><br /><b>Our species may also have had 10%-20% faster rates of reproduction than earlier species of human. But having more babies only increases the population if there is enough food for them to eat.</b><br /><br /><b>Our genetic inclination for friendliness took shape around 200,000 years ago</b>. From this time onwards, there is <b>archaeological evidence of the raw materials to make tools being moved around the landscape more widely.<br /></b><br />From 100,000 years ago, we created networks along which new types of hunting weapons and jewelry such as shell beads could spread. Ideas were shared widely and there were seasonal aggregations where Homo sapiens got together for rituals and socializing. People had friends to depend on in different groups when they were short of food.<br /><br />And we may have also needed more emotional contact and new types of relationship outside our human social worlds. <b>In an alternative world where Neanderthals thrived, it may be less likely that humans would have nurtured relationships with animals through domestication.<br /></b><br /><b>Dramatic shifts in environment<br /></b><br />Things might also have been different had environments not generated so many sudden shortfalls, such as steep declines in plants and animals, on many occasions. If it wasn’t for these chance changes, Neanderthals may have survived.<br /><br /><b>Sharing resources and ideas between groups allowed people to live more efficiently off the land, by distributing more effective technologies and giving each other food at times of crisis. This was probably one of the main reasons why our species thrived when the climate changed while others died. Homo sapiens were better adapted to weather variable and risky conditions. This is partly because our species could depend on networks in times of crisis.</b><br /><br />During the height of the last ice age around 20,000 years ago, temperatures across Europe were 8-10℃ degrees lower than today, with those in Germany being more like northern Siberia is now. Most of northern Europe was covered in ice for six-to-nine months of the year.<br /><b>Social connections provided the means by which inventions could spread between groups to help us adapt.</b> These included spear throwers to make hunting more efficient, fine needles to make fitted clothing and keep people warmer, food storage, and hunting with domesticated wolves. As a result, <b>more people survived nature’s wheel of fortune.<br /></b><br />Homo sapiens were generally careful not to overconsume resources like deer or fish, and were likely more aware of their lifecycles than much earlier species of human might have been. For example, people in British Columbia, Canada, only took males when they fished for salmon.<br />In some cases, however, these lifecyles were hard to see. During the last ice age, animals such as mammoths, which roamed over huge territories invisible to human groups, went extinct. <b>There are more than a hundred depictions of mammoths at Rouffignac in France dating to the time of their disappearance, which suggests people grieved this loss. </b>But it is more likely mammoths would have survived if it wasn’t for the rise of Homo sapiens, because there would have been fewer Neanderthals to hunt them.<br /><br /><b>Too clever for our own good<br /></b><br />Our liking for each other’s company and the way spending time together fosters our creativity was the making of our species. But it came at a price.<br /><br /><b>The more technology humankind develops, the more our use of it harms the planet. Intensive farming is draining our soils of nutrients, overfishing is wrecking the seas, and the greenhouse gases we release when we produce the products we now rely on are driving extreme weather. Overexploitation wasn’t inevitable but our species was the first to do it.</b></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">We can hope that visual evidence of the destruction in our natural world will change our attitudes in time. We have changed quickly when we needed to throughout our history. There is, after all, no planet B. But if Neanderthals had survived instead of us, we would never have needed one.<br /><br /><a href="https://getpocket.com/explore/item/8-billion-people-how-different-the-world-would-look-if-neanderthals-had-prevailed?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://getpocket.com/explore/item/8-billion-people-how-different-the-world-would-look-if-neanderthals-had-prevailed?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>EXPOSURE TO HEAT MORE BENEFICIAL FOR DEPRESSED PATIENTS THAN EXPOSURE TO COLD (ICE BATHS ETC)<br /></b><br />Researchers from the University of California – San Francisco recently found that <b>people with depression have higher body temperatures.</b><br /><br />Scientists believe this finding suggests novel therapies used to lower body temperature — such as ice baths or saunas — might provide a mental health benefit.<br /><br />Researchers estimate that 5% of the global adult population live with depression.<br /><br />While antidepressant medication is generally safe to use, it can have side effects such as stomach issues, headache, problems sleeping, sexual dysfunction, weight gain, and anxiety feelings, which can sometimes make a person’s quality of life worse.<br /><br />*<br /><b>DEPRESSION LINKED TO HIGHER BODY TEMPERATURE<br /></b><br />According to Dr. Ashley Mason, associate professor of psychiatry at the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences and the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Health at the University of California – San Francisco, and lead author of this study, depression is a major detriment to quality of life and the treatments currently available are not meeting the clinical needs of the population.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">This led to Dr. Mason and her team examining a potential link between depression and a higher body temperature.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“The link is particularly fascinating because there (is) data showing that <b>when people recover from their depression — regardless of how they got better — their temperature tends to regularize</b>,” she explained. Then we have newer data suggesting that temperature-based interventions may reduce depression symptoms. For example, data have shown that using HEAT-BASED TREATMENTS, particularly sauna, causes acute increases in body temperature.<br /><br />Dr. Mason said that </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b><i>these increases in body temperature engage the body’s self-cooling mechanisms — such as sweating — and can lead to subsequent decreases in body temperature — a person sweats, they cool themselves down.</i></b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“And<b> one study showed that decreases in a person’s body temperature in the days after a single heat treatment correlated with decreases in their depression symptoms over that same time period</b>,” Dr. Mason continued. “So what’s exciting here is that the link might operate in multiple ways — what’s new is that we might be able to intervene directly on body temperature to address depression symptoms.”</span></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">HIGHER TEMPERATURE LINKED TO MORE SEVERE DEPRESSION</span></span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">For this study, Dr. Mason and her team analyzed data from more than 20,000 study participants from 106 countries. The participants all wore a device measuring their body temperature and self-reported their body temperatures and depression symptoms each day for seven months.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">At the conclusion of the study, <b>researchers found study participants had higher body temperatures with each increasing level of depression symptom severity.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“Our finding that increasing levels of depression was associated with increasing body temperature is novel,” Dr. Mason said.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“There are many unanswered questions about the link between body temperature and depression,” said Dr. Mason.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“Inflammation may be a factor, and we are looking at this in our ongoing work. Thermosensory pathways may also play a role — these pathways relay sensory information from our periphery (think, our skin) to our central nervous system. We can think of them as ‘gateways’ to neural systems that impact our mood and cognitive function,” she added.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">SAUNA VERSUS ICE BATH FOR TREATING DEPRESSION</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The research team believes these findings highlight <b>the potential for new depression treatments focused on lowering body temperature.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In the study, they state these findings may support the use of interventions that temporarily raise body temperature, such a hot yoga, hyperthermic baths, and infra-red saunas.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“<b>Ironically, heating people up actually can lead to </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>rebound body temperature lowering </b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>that lasts longer than simply cooling people down directly, as through an ice bath</b>,” she explains.<br /><br />Research has also looked at the opposite by using cold therapies such as cryotherapy and ice baths as a potential depression treatment.<br /><br />A study published in June 2020 reported that whole-body cryotherapy helps reduce mental health deterioration in mood disorders, such as depression.<br /><br />Research published in December 2021 found<b> a single immersion in cold water can help improve a person’s mood.</b><br /><br />“Future controlled prospective studies comparing different methods for cooling off would help mental health professionals develop more efficacious body-temperature strategies for mitigating mood,” Dr. Small added.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/heat-therapy-sauna-better-outcomes-treating-depression-cold-exposure#More-research-needed-on-body-cooling-methods">https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/heat-therapy-sauna-better-outcomes-treating-depression-cold-exposure#More-research-needed-on-body-cooling-methods<br /></a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>STIMULATE YOUR VAGUS NERVE IF YOU NEED TO CALM DOWN<br /> </b><br />You’re likely very familiar with the calming effects of a few deep breaths. But take a step back: Have you ever considered *why* deep breathing—and its cousins meditation and yoga—is so dang relaxing? (Hint: It’s not just because it forces you to literally slow down.) When you partake in this activity, you’re stimulating your vagus nerve, which exercises incredible power within your body.<br /><br />It’s pronounced “Vegas,” like the city, but what happens in the vagus nerve doesn’t stay in the vagus nerve. The longest of the cranial nerves, it starts at the base of your brain. “It connects your throat, ear, and facial muscles and travels down both sides of the neck to the heart and lungs, through the stomach and intestines, touching almost every organ on its way down,” says Kelly Vincent, PsyD, a clinical psychologist in Encinitas, California. Makes sense, then, that vagus means “wandering” in Latin.<br /><br />This superhighway serves as a communication channel connecting the digestive system and your brain, which means it’s responsible for any “gut” feelings you get (reason enough to keep it in good shape!). Also hugely important: <b>It helps your nervous system switch between the sympathetic mode (triggering the fight-or-flight response that raises heart rate) and the parasympathetic mode (when breathing normalizes and bodily functions settle into neutral).</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">But <i><b>when you’re dealing with chronic stress, the vagus nerve loses its ability to send you back into parasympathetic mode (called vagal dysfunction), and you remain stuck on overdrive. </b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">This stress then puts you at risk for high blood pressure, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and depression and anxiety, as well as GI disorders, research shows. Problems with this nerve are also linked to symptoms of burnout, such as emotional exhaustion and lack of energy, per a study in Psychosomatic Medicine, and that can make you irritable and snappy in relationships. Whew, that’s a lot!<br /><br />The reassuring news is that just as with any other part of your body, you can strengthen and improve function. Take that, modern stressors. Toning the vagus nerve boosts your body’s resiliency, or the ability to toggle between states of stress and calm, says a study from U.K. researchers. <b>Greater vagal activation has also been shown to be anti-inflammatory (and it just helps ya feel better overall!).<br /></b><br />Working on it isn’t a one-and-done situation, though—repetition is key, adds Vincent (we’re talking at least once a day). “The more you practice something, the more the brain reaches for it when it needs it most. You’re essentially carving out new neural pathways you can access in a time of high anxiety,” she says. Here’s how to help that big fellow do its job, for the sake of your mental and physical health. And yes, deep breathing is involved, but if that’s not your thing? There are plenty of unexpected ways to give it a little push.<br /><br />Okay, starting with the biggie because it’s the foundation: “<b>There are sensory receptors in the lungs that connect to the vagus nerve and trigger the parasympathetic nervous system</b>,” says Cynthia Ackrill, MD, a fellow at the American Institute of Stress. But it’s not enough to just breathe. The calm-down process happens as you exhale, because this slows your heart rate. Therefore, <b>it’s important to make your exhale longer than your inhale</b>, she says. (Apps like Breathwrk can help with that.) </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">This is also why other practices that slow your breath, like yoga and meditation, are useful tools for vagal activation and de-stressing in general. But, deep breathing is tough if you’re upset. If you’re on the brink of a freak-out, imagine blowing through a straw. Adding resistance by <b>pursing your lips can help lengthen your exhale.<br /></b><br /><b>Happily hum</b><br />Talk about an earworm: “The vagus nerve passes through the inner ear, so you can stimulate it by engaging in active listening to soothing music,” says Arielle Schwartz, PhD, a clinical psychologist specializing in resilience in Boulder, Colorado. That can include not only a favorite song, but an audiobook or a guided meditation with an especially calming voice. (There are also vagus nerve music programs.) Soft, low sounds—like a cat’s purr—are inherently soothing.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Another way to tickle your vagus nerve? Generate sound on your own through singing or humming. </b>That will tap into the nerve as it passes through your larynx and pharynx in the throat. (Bonus: Your exhalation is also so much longer with these vocalizations.) Placing your hands over your ears will amplify the sensation of the sound, adds Schwartz.<br /><br /><b>Pursue the cold</b><br /><b>Frigid temps activate a physiological response called the diving reflex. This slows your heart rate and breathing and directs blood flow to the brain for relaxation</b>, says Schwartz. To trigger it, spend some time outside on a brisk day, or hold ice on your face or neck, or <b>splash your skin with cold water.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkpXDy9wBRYvIfi28RqJ3AH3abE95i3aw5QsfWduI-KQGJaXewYCudTsxcOOz23WXeSrO7utcz3bBGpug3ofmnt2XzRS7n_9UuIj0QwoMboKoQm5JTkCye970lGcL7ejoO-TacLao1SxmMp_Be8KoHcV-Mfjui88jqDFgBMd77nAXvP2afi6a7SG1pcBdH/s800/vagus%20nerves%20best.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkpXDy9wBRYvIfi28RqJ3AH3abE95i3aw5QsfWduI-KQGJaXewYCudTsxcOOz23WXeSrO7utcz3bBGpug3ofmnt2XzRS7n_9UuIj0QwoMboKoQm5JTkCye970lGcL7ejoO-TacLao1SxmMp_Be8KoHcV-Mfjui88jqDFgBMd77nAXvP2afi6a7SG1pcBdH/w400-h400/vagus%20nerves%20best.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b></b><b>Find fresh air</b><br />Taking a walk outside is one sure-fire way to downregulate your nervous system and improve your mood, says the psychologist B. Grace Bullock, PhD, author of Mindful Relationships: Seven Skills for Success, Integrating the Science of Mind, Body & Brain. And this doesn’t have to be a long-hike situation. <b>Nature is inherently relaxing to the nervous system, making it so much easier to slow down your breathing, which, again, helps the vagus nerve do its thing.</b> “I love to walk to my mailbox or take my dog out for a quick reset,” she says. Just leave your devices at home so you can take in the surroundings and get a truly calm. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-to-stimulate-the-vagus-nerve-to-de-stress-and-find-calm?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-to-stimulate-the-vagus-nerve-to-de-stress-and-find-calm?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>KNOWING SOMEONE HAS DIED<br /></b><br /><b>In ways yet to be explained by science, some people know when someone has died without being directly told.</b> The information may come through unexpected and nontraditional ways.<br /><br />Anecdotes:<br /><br />Writing to the Los Angeles Times in response to an article about the book Meaningful Coincidences (Beitman, 2022), psychologist Kevin Flynn reported that he knew when his older brother had died:<br /><br />~ In March 2021, I had a dream at 7:06 am regarding the release of a butterfly from a wine bottle. I woke up, noted the time and wrote in my journal that my only brother had died age 79. Five minutes later my sister-in-law called to tell me that my brother Matt Flynn had passed away.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Thank you for your article. Irish mysticism is alive and well. Cheers. ~</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Rawlette (2019) provided this dream example: A woman had terrifying dreams about a man she loved 20 years previously. She saw him in a velvet-lined casket, dressed in a blue suit. The next day, a mutual friend told her that the man had died and was placed in a velvet-lined casket wearing a blue suit.<br /><br />Carl Jung (1963) reported that he was suddenly awoken by a dull headache “as though something had struck my forehead and then the back of my skull.” The next day he received a telegram saying that his patient had shot himself in the head. The bullet had come to rest on the back wall of his skull.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>In the 1930s, Rose Rudkin woke up knowing her mother, living in London, had died. She did not know how she knew. A cablegram soon arrived confirming this impression (Stevenson, 1970).</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The simultaneous experience by one person of the distress of another at a distance is not uncommon. The most common triggers for these experiences are death or dying and major illnesses or injuries (Yusim, 2017).<br /></b><br /><b>Data-based research<br /></b><br /><b>Twins serve as a prototype for these kinds of experiences. The largest number of reports of this kind come from twins</b> (Playfair, 2012; Mann and Jaye, 2007). <b>There are similar stories about mothers and their children as well as other closely bonded pairs</b> (Stevenson, 1970).<br /><br />The more than 2,500 respondents to the Weird Coincidence Survey (Coleman, Beitman, Celebi, 2009) reported that they “occasionally” experienced the pain of a loved one at a distance. In Stevenson’s review of 160 published cases on this subject, <b>one-third involved a parent and child. Friends and acquaintances were involved in about 28 percent. Husband-and-wife pairs were involved in about 14 percent and siblings in about 15 percent. The similar percentages of parent–child and friend–acquaintance simultaneous distress suggest that emotional bonds, rather than genetic similarities, facilitate these interactions.</b> Stevenson’s reports are well-documented by follow-up interviews with both the person who experienced the coincidence and the people who witnessed the event (Stevenson, 1970).</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I named this coincidence pattern <b>"simulpathity," from the Latin word simul, which means “simultaneous,” and the Greek root pathy, which means both “suffering” and “feeling,” as in the words sympathy and empathy.</b> With sympathy (“suffering together”), the sympathetic person is aware of the suffering of the other. With simulpathity, the person involved is usually not consciously aware of the suffering of the other except for those pairs with whom this shared pain is a regular occurrence. Only later is the simultaneity of the distress recognized.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I coined the word simulpathity to describe a personal experience. Late in the evening of February 26, 1973, when I was 31 years old, I found myself bent over the kitchen sink in an old Victorian house in San Francisco, choking on something that was caught in my throat. But there was nothing to cough up as I hadn’t eaten anything. I choked for a very long time before I could swallow and breathe normally again. The next day, my birthday, my brother called to tell me that our father, 3,000 miles and three time zones away, had passed away in Wilmington, Delaware, just as I was choking in California. My father had bled into his throat and choked on his own blood. <b>The timing led me to think that it couldn’t possibly have been random. Through reading and research, I could confirm that my experience with my father was no anomaly.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“The data are friendly” according to a perennial scientific research motto. Sometimes data accumulate before the phenomenon can be explained, and that is as it should be. We need the accumulation of data to gather the required resources to formally develop a potential explanatory model.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Several different sources, both anecdotal and data-based, suggest that human beings do </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>occasionally</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b> experience the distress of a loved one at a distance. </b>This phenomenon takes many forms including dream symbols (the butterfly being released from a wine bottle) or realistic dream images (the man in a blue suit), direct analog (Jung’s head pain and my choking), and direct knowing, as reported by Rose Rudkin.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">These phenomena fit under the general term “parapsychology,” for which much data are accumulating to suggest the reality of many of these (Cardeña, 2018). Future research may confirm the wide range of ways in which people experience simulpathity and perhaps lead to models for how it happens. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/connecting-with-coincidence/202212/knowing-someone-has-died">https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/connecting-with-coincidence/202212/knowing-someone-has-died</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">My father had an interesting experience during wartime, while hiding out on a farm. He had a dream that five wild ducks flew across sky. Suddenly the middle duck fell to the ground. My father felt great sadness when he saw that. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">To him the dream was transparent: the five wild ducks were his five sisters. His grief led him to think that one of them must have just died.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">It turned out that around that time, one of his sisters did indeed die at Ravensbrück, the largest Nazi concentration camp for women. <br /><br />*<br /><b>ending on beauty</b> (the loveliest stanza of the opening poem)<br /><br />They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders<br />Wept with love on seeing Ithaca<br />Humble and green. Art is that Ithaca<br />A green eternity, not wonders<br /><br />~ Wallace Stevens</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKNGDiDIzJitKBwdyysMv_x8Q1YSeKreaY7q-rTbFtvU8BFKmfVxacR_NlDvO1UFmI6k-93D958HoJWb1XrdKAOPMPStzwMEuXxq4-Q2DNGulybX8kGqf-6zmm-psPn5QiBdfPejrIftpxvXjFtswz21S3lrtTanfj52AGnSd9uu5UpVO7LC5s6tkUzyZf/s1920/ithaca%20island.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1267" data-original-width="1920" height="422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKNGDiDIzJitKBwdyysMv_x8Q1YSeKreaY7q-rTbFtvU8BFKmfVxacR_NlDvO1UFmI6k-93D958HoJWb1XrdKAOPMPStzwMEuXxq4-Q2DNGulybX8kGqf-6zmm-psPn5QiBdfPejrIftpxvXjFtswz21S3lrtTanfj52AGnSd9uu5UpVO7LC5s6tkUzyZf/w640-h422/ithaca%20island.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span></span><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-41733495158438256492024-02-04T11:48:00.000-08:002024-02-06T09:53:58.571-08:00WHY LENIN HAD THE TZAR AND HIS FAMILY SHOT; "LARA," PASTERNAK’S MISTRES AND MUSE; WHY STALIN SENT RETURNING POWs TO GULAG; SOVIET WOMEN AND AMERICAN WOMEN, 1950s; THE APPENDIX IS NOT USELESS<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5bFC0BKWMQ2kygdIlnPz88hDI-FOuI1oXGtJ7SWQSqZhqcOM-NQZ9SEQPerZe2g6uBOY2cMM3gFyVq4tbq7I8TB8AruVZS0T-v2z91okNvx-WWi3WGjVwZDmK0HRiju2Q14PQijYU3WwRHyFic_5mXngTFwMVkghv0AXM3EBucRVReDUmUZ9gJRalkJOT/s1499/quarrel,%20the,%20Cyprus%20coast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1499" data-original-width="843" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5bFC0BKWMQ2kygdIlnPz88hDI-FOuI1oXGtJ7SWQSqZhqcOM-NQZ9SEQPerZe2g6uBOY2cMM3gFyVq4tbq7I8TB8AruVZS0T-v2z91okNvx-WWi3WGjVwZDmK0HRiju2Q14PQijYU3WwRHyFic_5mXngTFwMVkghv0AXM3EBucRVReDUmUZ9gJRalkJOT/w360-h640/quarrel,%20the,%20Cyprus%20coast.jpg" width="360" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>The Quarrel, coast of Cyprus; photo by Dalia Staponkute. (My thanks to Kerry Shawn Keys)</i></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />*<br />ENGLISH LESSONS<br /><br />When it was Desdemona’s time to sing,<br />and so little life was left to her,<br />she wept, not over love, her star,<br />but over willow, willow, willow.<br /><br />When it was Desdemona’s time to sing<br />and her murmuring softened the stones<br />around the black day, her blacker demon<br />prepared a psalm of weeping streams.<br /><br />When it was Ophelia’s time to sing,<br />and so little life was left to her,<br />the dryness of her soul was swept away<br />like straws from haystack in a storm.<br /><br />When it was Ophelia’s time to sing,<br />and the bitterness of tears was more<br />than she could bear, what trophies<br />did she hold? Willow, and columbine.<br /><br />Stepping out of all that grief,<br />they entered, with faint hearts,<br />the pool of the universe and quenched<br />their bodies with other worlds. <br /><br />~ Boris Pasternak, translated by Mark Rudman and Bohdan Boychuck<br /> <br />*<br />Oriana:</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">If poets can be divided into categories based on the ancient system of the four elements, Pasternak is overwhelmingly the poet of water. His early poems in particular are drenched in downpours and summer thunderstorms:<br /><br />Noon midnight, cloudburst – come for her!<br />Walking home, soaked to the skin!<br />Whole tree-loads of water<br />On eyes, cheeks, jasmine!<br /><br />Hosanna to Egyptian darkness!<br />Drops chuckle, slide, collide,<br />And suddenly the air smells new<br />As to patients who’ve come through.<br /><br />~ from “Rain,” from My Sister, Life, 1917<br />translated by Jon Stallworthy and Peter France<br /><br />and from an early poem that alludes to the revolution and Kerensky:<br /><br />It chuckles to a birdcherry and drenches<br />the lacquered carriages, the shivering trees.<br />Fiddlers wade through the moon’s wake<br />to the theater. Line up, Citizens!<br /><br />Puddles on cobblestones. Deep roses,<br />like throats welling with tears,<br />are sprayed with glistening diamonds.<br />Whips of joy splash eyelashes and clouds.<br /><br />But English Lessons is a quantum leap above these outpourings. The image of Ophelia floating in the stream must have easily found home in Pasternak’s mind. For him, water was a symbol of life and resurrection — including his inner life, made fertile by communion with watery nature outside and his inner rainstorms. <br /><br />While water is generally a symbol of life, it can also be associated with death. Lorca does it with marvelous subtlety:<br /><br />Narcissus.<br />Your fragrance.<br />And the depth of the stream.<br /><br />*<br /><br />I'm pondering the difficulty of writing transcendent poems without relying on religious terminology. It took centuries to develop that terminology, and it will take a while to develop words that express the sense of the sacred outside of the traditional framework. In English Lessons, ”other worlds” (note the plural) works for me — the mystery is there, the mystery of the visible transposed onto the imaginary. <br /><br />*<br /><b>‘LARA': THE TRUE STORY OF PASTERNAK'S MUSE AND MISTRESS<br /></b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8GpdMxK_4SpT2RK1SYfcCVnMSbpanAVCeOiifIBsIcrFKq52cbt8L5xH6zpSKGNFXNf4ujb3uGyy1np5htP_FEnsYkN3iHH8iqpu1MhIpH31M3Z_9PyZLPNW1IBWj1S4UPo6QvDyBvczbCw6eLDF8rxzDba8hipS53RcsrQMPFLPaLqrHwBPbrI24IJ3l/s600/Lara%20book%20cover.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="397" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8GpdMxK_4SpT2RK1SYfcCVnMSbpanAVCeOiifIBsIcrFKq52cbt8L5xH6zpSKGNFXNf4ujb3uGyy1np5htP_FEnsYkN3iHH8iqpu1MhIpH31M3Z_9PyZLPNW1IBWj1S4UPo6QvDyBvczbCw6eLDF8rxzDba8hipS53RcsrQMPFLPaLqrHwBPbrI24IJ3l/w265-h400/Lara%20book%20cover.webp" width="265" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">~ <b>What price love? Lara chronicles the horrifically steep costs for Olga Ivinskaya, Boris Pasternak's mistress, muse, and model for Yuri Zhivago's lover in Doctor Zhivago</b> (alluringly played by Julie Christie in David Lean's 1965 movie adapation). <b>Olga's connection with the persecuted author and her role in ushering his novel into print made her “a pawn in a highly political game” that landed her in the brutal Soviet gulags — twice</b>.<br /><br />Anna Pasternak, a British journalist and granddaughter of Boris Pasternak's sister, Josephine, (who married a Pasternak) notes up front in this sympathetic account of Olga's heartbreaking, courageous ordeal that "both Olga and her daughter, Irina, have received a bad rap from my family." <b>Relatives and biographers, she writes, have regularly "belittled and dismissed" the woman who was Boris's mistress from 1946 until his death in 1960, at age 70, as "a temptress" and "a woman on the make." Why? Because recognizing Olga's role in the lionized writer's life would have meant acknowledging his "moral fallibility.”</b><br /><br />With Lara, Anna Pasternak sets out to correct the record. Did Boris use Olga? Sifting through the evidence more than 50 years after his death, his great-niece concludes that Boris Pasternak truly loved Olga Ivinskaya. But while he had the backbone to defy Soviet repression in his literary work, he was less steadfast in his personal life: "his great omission was that he did not match her cast-iron loyalty and moral fortitude. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">He did not do the one thing in his power to do: he did not save her." <b>By divorcing Zinaida, his second wife, and marrying Olga, Anna Pasternak argues — as did Olga herself, often angrily — the author would have given his lover and helpmeet status and protection. Yet, partly out of cowardice, partly out of selfishness, and partly out of a declared unwillingness to “live a life together on the ruins of somebody else’s,” Pasternak's long public affair with Olga left her woefully vulnerable.<br /></b><br /><b>The couple met in 1946 at the offices of the Soviet literary journal Novy Mir, where Olga, a twice-widowed, blond-haired, blue-eyed, 34-year-old "tired beauty," worked as an editorial assistant.</b> The revered poet, 22 years her senior, was 10 years into his unhappy second marriage — to Zinaida, the wife he'd stolen from one of his former best friends. He had one son from each of his marriages. Olga had a son, Mitia, and a daughter, Irina — who was immortalized as Lara's daughter Katenka in Doctor Zhivago. <b>Irina, too, paid for her close relationship with the writer, and was sent to a labor camp with her mother within months after his death.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjpoR235wIav5nT9BnBLcrl6D_fEQJs1p3LDcddAHaBK7ogY9KRN0YVn07RAPZQ1OrNtpVAGIKC_l62cGM_vWM97-VTnEsPbNMOyaAwy2_jWjqwNZtG7Y-ah3uRjGDk5vp8efFNE2Boi5_xJWvTFpS1eq-TVxW7lor4gJEWv-BWkTkeB7s2Y5fuCDKIB4w/s594/pasternak%20with%20Olga%20and%20her%20daughter%20Katya.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="465" data-original-width="594" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjpoR235wIav5nT9BnBLcrl6D_fEQJs1p3LDcddAHaBK7ogY9KRN0YVn07RAPZQ1OrNtpVAGIKC_l62cGM_vWM97-VTnEsPbNMOyaAwy2_jWjqwNZtG7Y-ah3uRjGDk5vp8efFNE2Boi5_xJWvTFpS1eq-TVxW7lor4gJEWv-BWkTkeB7s2Y5fuCDKIB4w/w400-h314/pasternak%20with%20Olga%20and%20her%20daughter%20Katya.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Pasternak's parents and two sisters had left Russia for Germany and England in 1921, but he refused to abandon the country he loved</b> and live as an exile; this unwavering loyalty to his homeland enhanced his enduring stature. <b>While Pasternak was dogged by the KGB, vilified as a Jew, and blocked from publishing for years — forced to subsist on his work as a renowned translator of Shakespeare and Goethe — his life was spared because of an order from Stalin: “Leave him in peace, he dwells in the clouds.” </b><br /><br />The protection did not extend to his lover. <b>First arrested in 1949, Olga refused to denounce Boris through months of interrogations in Moscow's notorious Lubyanka prison — where she lost the child she was carrying. Postcards from Boris (pretending to write as her mother, a ruse that probably fooled no one) helped sustain her during grueling, blazing hot summers and arctic winters in the abysmal Potma labor camp</b>. Boris, meanwhile, argued continuously for Olga's release and <i><b>helped support her family with his meager earnings as a translator, despite suffering a severe heart attack during her incarceration.</b><br /></i><br /><b>Lara is both a tragic love story and a dramatic account of the sheer determination it took to write and publish an uncompromising literary masterpiece under dismal circumstances.</b> The book, enhanced by family photographs, vividly captures Olga's risky loyalty to the defiant, desperate, and strikingly handsome author during increasingly hostile persecution in the late 1950s, when Doctor Zhivago was first published in Italy and<b> Pasternak was forced to renounce the 1958 Nobel Prize in literature</b>. <b>As Julian Barnes also makes clear in The Noise of Time, his novel about Dmitri Shostakovich, the toll of artistic oppression is acute; it can be argued that </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Pasternak, who had been called "the last romantic in Russia," was essentially hounded to death.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />With its overview of Russian history in the mid-20th century, including the privations of World War II, the abominations of Stalin's Great Terror, and Khruschev's insufficient thaw, Lara is a chilling, upsetting reminder of what can happen when free speech is curtailed. One particularly sobering fact among many: <b>Doctor Zhivago wasn't published in Russia until 1988.</b> ~</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcxZZfbiU94AIUuKY9Pbxbl59idcRW0cYUcTDIpJtMbT9-8EY57wKTfyK7faKKqUHVPa8HujoWRI3ozXH6jHHEU7awQCF2Zf_41BudbAOLz9FXPGKvM6QiQoNVmz2D-lr72hn9LClXZQLihhgj9CUp1JuVeYCDP5fSTFfFMrxlQIsiihEzAFKpQX4-9oKm/s225/pasternak%20and%20olga.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="148" data-original-width="225" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcxZZfbiU94AIUuKY9Pbxbl59idcRW0cYUcTDIpJtMbT9-8EY57wKTfyK7faKKqUHVPa8HujoWRI3ozXH6jHHEU7awQCF2Zf_41BudbAOLz9FXPGKvM6QiQoNVmz2D-lr72hn9LClXZQLihhgj9CUp1JuVeYCDP5fSTFfFMrxlQIsiihEzAFKpQX4-9oKm/w400-h263/pasternak%20and%20olga.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/01/25/510816406/in-lara-the-true-story-of-pasternaks-muse-and-mistress">https://www.npr.org/2017/01/25/510816406/in-lara-the-true-story-of-pasternaks-muse-and-mistress<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>BORIS PASTERNAK’S HIS COUNTRY DACHA</b><br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjog35urmletVDlEcO75Pb9LSO_S2F_T-ArqJkAdH05-XwRiRt8Cldn6HXAOOKg9wbx7PcCLM_7ZFdHYEcr0evqHzM5GzryOo8iw47JIm_GAFFMYVpABHPWtGZ9A4KO771E4vjUx30yTD5MQr0n5YvAZY7mTVQBmUTsCkC3FjEETVQyUf_-NtPiQnT0DCPn/s602/PASTERNAK%20dacha%20studio.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="452" data-original-width="602" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjog35urmletVDlEcO75Pb9LSO_S2F_T-ArqJkAdH05-XwRiRt8Cldn6HXAOOKg9wbx7PcCLM_7ZFdHYEcr0evqHzM5GzryOo8iw47JIm_GAFFMYVpABHPWtGZ9A4KO771E4vjUx30yTD5MQr0n5YvAZY7mTVQBmUTsCkC3FjEETVQyUf_-NtPiQnT0DCPn/w400-h300/PASTERNAK%20dacha%20studio.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Pasternak's study in his dacha; Misha Firer is our guide</i><br /><br />This is the writing desk of Boris Pasternak, winner of Nobel Prize in Literature, in his dacha in Peredelkino, a Soviet writers’ commune southwest of Moscow. Pasternak wrote parts of his epochal novel “Doctor Zhivago” right there.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijjJUJpwz_xmUij1HH-9fPg4tw05yZ395FEhn5prt-RANP6wI60n2DMZinxGyQhdKLRtA2WNSRJo-7xYD8xTgbQV9C0vv4CjMJG5o-Dlp4SLarswTmOtXzPowsPhDR3mB0A5XG7Re_KnybS7nQPtEcLWUy5hTUN-nPjCzlzI1XBoFw6F4p5oou4cvmKXVA/s799/pasternak%20outhouse%20peredelkino.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="799" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijjJUJpwz_xmUij1HH-9fPg4tw05yZ395FEhn5prt-RANP6wI60n2DMZinxGyQhdKLRtA2WNSRJo-7xYD8xTgbQV9C0vv4CjMJG5o-Dlp4SLarswTmOtXzPowsPhDR3mB0A5XG7Re_KnybS7nQPtEcLWUy5hTUN-nPjCzlzI1XBoFw6F4p5oou4cvmKXVA/w301-h400/pasternak%20outhouse%20peredelkino.jpg" width="301" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />And this is Pasternak’s outhouse that he used when Mother Nature disrupted his lyrical train of thought. [Oriana: One reason I decided to use this image is that it shows the lush vegetation that the writers in Peredelkino enjoyed.]<br /><br />Up until his death in 1960 from cancer having endured a two year smear campaign by the Soviet government and KGB, the Nobel Prize winner hadn’t had a sewer installed.<br /><br />Nor any of his fellow writers inside the dacha compound surrounded by a pine tree forest, whose books were known to millions of readers in the workers’ paradise.<br /></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7vZo8QH9M16oukQSOF7wU1o4KTK8WnJTFCUADZ-1rQInJcqrK4XMScwx43FTb72fml0g1_7-7cSbivMaNBvqNsL_kQK0A9tYtWV8WddXLqRyvidnhcnJ5a90dkbGymACJQMLZmXbyJuYHfnOK4tuO29ZdA8mMS7kFlgwYOsj3BdPBh8rRatFnZXKzq2OO/s700/Pasternak%20Dacha%20in%20Peredelkino%20lived%201936-60.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="700" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7vZo8QH9M16oukQSOF7wU1o4KTK8WnJTFCUADZ-1rQInJcqrK4XMScwx43FTb72fml0g1_7-7cSbivMaNBvqNsL_kQK0A9tYtWV8WddXLqRyvidnhcnJ5a90dkbGymACJQMLZmXbyJuYHfnOK4tuO29ZdA8mMS7kFlgwYOsj3BdPBh8rRatFnZXKzq2OO/w400-h300/Pasternak%20Dacha%20in%20Peredelkino%20lived%201936-60.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><br /> <span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq32g-loqvs9KMQRvVIkEME_fXwWCgOTAGdkWJqayPF1NXmPQnhxZWelzDxWTfSVVMVYw1E2gs_ACdNUEGpvAvXtgWB34IVPW9QDXR6g9tSDRk9ljjKgGQlKwmWWQAAHI8lOKapw3mdQsQiW_cy3fKgmIOBGhdc6-CJp88OM1GvSNKsOYS_KlpOSpuTdRi/s1920/pasternak%20dacz%20exterior.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1920" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq32g-loqvs9KMQRvVIkEME_fXwWCgOTAGdkWJqayPF1NXmPQnhxZWelzDxWTfSVVMVYw1E2gs_ACdNUEGpvAvXtgWB34IVPW9QDXR6g9tSDRk9ljjKgGQlKwmWWQAAHI8lOKapw3mdQsQiW_cy3fKgmIOBGhdc6-CJp88OM1GvSNKsOYS_KlpOSpuTdRi/w400-h300/pasternak%20dacz%20exterior.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Pasternak's dacha, </span></span></i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>exterior. So much for my expecting it to be a mere "cottage."</i><br /><br />Boris Pasternak hailed from a family of famous artists. His mother was a pianist and his father Leonid collaborated with Lev Tolstoy to draw illustrations for his novels.<br /><br /><b>In the summer of 1903, Pasternak family stayed in a rural area in the Urals. One summer day, Boris tried to get on a wild horse of an herd grazing on the hill and fell down.<br /><br />A herd of horses galloped over him as he lay frightened pressed to the ground. Miraculously, his only injury was a broken leg which never healed properly giving him a slight limp.<br /></b><br />As little Boris lay motionless expecting to be trampled to death he heard an Orthodox Church bell toll in a distance. He would hear the bell toll again, at a church near his dacha, a day before his death, and knew that his time had come.<br /><br />The tour guide was licensed by Boris Pasternak’s son Yevgeny. She vouched that all the stories that she told us are true. It was endearing as she called every family member in the Pasternak family by patronymic and hasn’t mentioned even once that they were Jewish.<br /><br /><b>Due to his limp but mostly for his father’s protection, Boris was not drafted into the army during the First World War. For seven years, Boris studied philosophy. Then he made a turnaround, and pursued music studies for another seven years.</b><br /><br />He decided to test his music mentor, famous composer Alexander Skryabin. If Boris played an overture on his piano and Skryabin notices a dissonant note that he deliberately plays, he’s going to continue studying music. And if he doesn’t that would mean that Skryabin is tone-deaf and Boris would switch to writing poetry.<br /><br />Skryabin didn’t notice the wrong note that Pasternak played, and Pasternak became a poet. [Oriana: I suspect that Skryabin did notice but was too polite to say anything.]<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYdhEyn0-YnmZR45oJpr4CzjMBSIKDslmS6hABjekjrs2nEVXrx-8XkM9wfMNp6PC-EgtfGaKqaBV1ygUbIdTboOKl39GOXZvR7B3YBd6dPmK2Io1EZSQDWWW3XgcW7GD_udgdgWyriUXzilB_cntD4QKMTbnI5X6_N4srviZ0nPzAWuP6wPYqO-0TQ7pU/s803/pasternak%20visitors%20touring%20dacza.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="803" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYdhEyn0-YnmZR45oJpr4CzjMBSIKDslmS6hABjekjrs2nEVXrx-8XkM9wfMNp6PC-EgtfGaKqaBV1ygUbIdTboOKl39GOXZvR7B3YBd6dPmK2Io1EZSQDWWW3XgcW7GD_udgdgWyriUXzilB_cntD4QKMTbnI5X6_N4srviZ0nPzAWuP6wPYqO-0TQ7pU/w300-h400/pasternak%20visitors%20touring%20dacza.jpg" width="300" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>I have been to half a dozen guided tours in Moscow and whereabouts and I’m yet to meet a male in the group.</b> I guess Russian men are nekulturniki.<br /><br />Pasternak’s poetry was only popular among the immigrants but got little traction in the new country of the Soviet Union. All of his extended family fled abroad from the Bolsheviks but Boris kind of liked the new regime and decided to stay. <b>He made a living translating books from English and Georgian into Russian.</b><br /><br />Boris has remained untouchable for years even during purges as Stalin specially told his henchmen to leave this ethereal man alone since he was not of this world ["dwelled in the clouds"]<br /><br />This decision would come to bite his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, because <b>Boris had finally got disappointed in the Bolsheviks and accepted the reality of who they were: tyrants and assassins, and sped up on writing his novel that had portrayed them in a hyper critical light.<br /></b><br />In “Doctor Zhivago”, Pasternak criticized October Revolution, totalitarian regime, and expressed his bitter disappointment in communism wrapped up in a love story.<br /><br />For years <i><b>Pasternak, a quiet man flying in the clouds, has been putting together the most damning book about the Soviet Union except for Solzhenitsyn’s Archipelago Gulag, while living in the heart of the KGB monitored commune of the state scribes.</b></i><br /><br />The book was smuggled to Italy where it was published and quickly became an international sensation.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWa95CksikiaHp2QZU_DVjq7rEj3-f_cEryOOUmNrZuAbdWQVCF0QSjiwa43Lh1LH2iS64buGphWyGTj4lpG2a_MldvlFAMrz_sN7pBzqd87HG87WcctkcZRztUMZIzhyB32wdHAbrvkufrWsYXnYG_b1LWTBnAnKYm6gbBKg5pLUshVq6OTsORNW2xI1O/s803/Nehru%20portrait%20Pasternak.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="803" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWa95CksikiaHp2QZU_DVjq7rEj3-f_cEryOOUmNrZuAbdWQVCF0QSjiwa43Lh1LH2iS64buGphWyGTj4lpG2a_MldvlFAMrz_sN7pBzqd87HG87WcctkcZRztUMZIzhyB32wdHAbrvkufrWsYXnYG_b1LWTBnAnKYm6gbBKg5pLUshVq6OTsORNW2xI1O/w300-h400/Nehru%20portrait%20Pasternak.jpg" width="300" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>The portrait of Nehru in Pasternak's dacha<br /></i><br />If not for the intervention by Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Pasternak would be thrown into a forced labor camp. Soviet general secretary wanted to be friends with India after China had pivoted away from the Soviet Union and he went easy on Pasternak suggesting that he leave the country.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzsLtYRIv-IHCXRSUx0UT3Rvyh-Ym8xu5ps29jEhwRSeFujngKu9TzOhXAaZpRfd6ZefFierskPcxnQI6uyrtIMjc_xRcyKd0kU4_-CQJkukMbcKAnSXTVwAzh0xtatgpiCqJ26z_T0Kz3nRukl1ImIoj9gKOn6Js4mcvNU6Tu4hLpGNd6jEo6ArdEbsc5/s803/pasternak%20kitchen%20bust.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="803" data-original-width="602" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzsLtYRIv-IHCXRSUx0UT3Rvyh-Ym8xu5ps29jEhwRSeFujngKu9TzOhXAaZpRfd6ZefFierskPcxnQI6uyrtIMjc_xRcyKd0kU4_-CQJkukMbcKAnSXTVwAzh0xtatgpiCqJ26z_T0Kz3nRukl1ImIoj9gKOn6Js4mcvNU6Tu4hLpGNd6jEo6ArdEbsc5/s320/pasternak%20kitchen%20bust.jpg" width="240" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Kitchen at the dacha</i><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">KGB used Pasternak’s mistress to strong arm him into rejecting the acceptance of the Nobel prize. But this was not enough and they pressured Pasternak’s literary friends to denounce him.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Literary Gazeta wrote: “Pasternak received “thirty pieces of silver…He was awarded for agreeing to play the role of bait on the rusty hook of anti-Soviet propaganda.” Pravda called Pasternak a “literary weed.” Pasternak was thrown out from the Union of Writers of the USSR.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMAx6AjUjnIUS1gZsCpg2OgSEmen6lB9MtTPjqGimlhZSUayKWdon3vMo0-K7xPJkoXG9onZCDoZZwx48F7kquuBb_a9QcxRpgrxxQcacEGjfGd4Y_5a1zo3xkZkuhe4iTTU07kdi0rBdVXV7JswMZ8lWdExckqF260xdzceM3dV3bqP0o_NUUe1wCNRlS/s602/pasternak%20nobel%20prize.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="371" data-original-width="602" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMAx6AjUjnIUS1gZsCpg2OgSEmen6lB9MtTPjqGimlhZSUayKWdon3vMo0-K7xPJkoXG9onZCDoZZwx48F7kquuBb_a9QcxRpgrxxQcacEGjfGd4Y_5a1zo3xkZkuhe4iTTU07kdi0rBdVXV7JswMZ8lWdExckqF260xdzceM3dV3bqP0o_NUUe1wCNRlS/w400-h246/pasternak%20nobel%20prize.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Boris Pasternak drinks a toast with his dacha neighbor, famous children’s author Kornei Chukovsky for receiving Nobel Prize in Literature.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU6Btg5g49rUV192VG7VcDPtieb1zcQ55DEk1HfxEIIKUO4npEpBQb55oHbwkih2JQG-3fk_R19rAYHIM1kAWs-1Ax3UlClESARvMDhm4HbaFBI26dvEYszG_l0Ma380FyMXDROkG1sOJKce4pi9pJfHEVb54tDI-_vU13pX3SUVOXLtaU826pxHAPeTc9/s602/Chukovski%20dacha.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="452" data-original-width="602" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU6Btg5g49rUV192VG7VcDPtieb1zcQ55DEk1HfxEIIKUO4npEpBQb55oHbwkih2JQG-3fk_R19rAYHIM1kAWs-1Ax3UlClESARvMDhm4HbaFBI26dvEYszG_l0Ma380FyMXDROkG1sOJKce4pi9pJfHEVb54tDI-_vU13pX3SUVOXLtaU826pxHAPeTc9/w400-h300/Chukovski%20dacha.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Chukovsky's dacha</i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Kornei Chukovsky , Soviet author of “Crocodile” and “Moydodyr” children’s poems. His dacha is a short walk from Pasternak’s. <b>Chukovsky never denounced his friend.<br /></b><br />Last story that the tour guide had told us was about <b>Nancy Reagan visiting Moscow and deciding to stop at Peredelkino to visit Boris Pasternak’s museum.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The KGB top brass felt insulted — they’re so many fine writers in our motherland why does US president’s wife want to pay dues to the one who wrote nasty stuff about it.<br /><br />However, they couldn’t help but oblige the honorable guest, and <b>didn’t want to shame themselves and say that there’s no such museum in existence. So</b> <b>they built on a fly a Potemkin museum with Potemkin exhibits to show Nancy which they gutted right after her visit.</b><br /><br /><b>This, I believe, is the country that Pasternak wanted to reveal in his novel to the readers: behind the glittery facade, there’s nothing but cruelty and deceit. </b>~ Misha Firer, Quora<br /><br />*<br /><b>WHY STALIN SENT THE RETURNING SOVIET POWs TO THE GULAG<br /></b><br />Stalin sent the returning POWs to gulags because, even in Nazi forced labor, they saw it was better than communism. This is not an exaggeration — many jumped off the trains going back and told the tales. Stalin knew that returned, disgruntled WW1 soldiers were a key component of the Bolshevik rebellion. <b>For the same reason, Putin does not want back POWs from Ukraine</b>. ~ JP Norair, Quora<br /><br />*<br /><b>AWAITING THE BLACK CROW DURING THE GREAT TERROR: THE FEAR THAT SPARED NO ONE</b><br /><br />~ On August 13, <b>1990, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev ordered the rehabilitation of millions of people killed and jailed under Josef Stalin. Stalin's repressive campaign reached its peak in 1937-38, a period that is today known as the Great Terror.<br /></b><br />No one was spared — the Great Terror spanned all age groups, genders, professions, and ethnic backgrounds across the Soviet Union. <br /><br />Vladimir Besleaga, a prominent Moldovan writer, was six years old in 1937. He recalls the climate of fear that hung over his small village in what is now Moldova. <br /><br /><b>Awaiting The 'Black Crow’</b><br /><br />"During this period, people in the village were being arrested on a massive scale,” says Besleaga. <b>"Every morning, the neighbors would ask: 'So, who's been taken away last night?' The words 'black crow' were on everyone's lips. That referred to the car that came in the depth of night to arrest people.”</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">This was also the time when reading and writing in Romanian became a crime. Books were confiscated and the Romanian language was banned from schools.<br /><br />Despite the risk of being denounced, Besleaga's mother secretly taught him to read Romanian with a zoology manual stolen from a government storeroom. Besleaga says he has never completely shed the fear in which he spent his childhood. <b>"Fear enveloped everyone, no one could say anything openly," Besleaga says. "People were vigilant so that nobody would report on them. The fear was so great that it's still in our blood to this day.”</b><br /><br /><i><b>Stalin's regime, wary of the well-educated, cracked down particularly hard on intellectuals.</b><br /></i><br /><b>In 1992, archeologists discovered a mass grave outside the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. It contained the bodies of 138 intellectuals and high-ranking officials shot and buried in secret. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Mar Baijiev is a famous Kyrgyz playwright and former lawmaker. His father died in prison during the Great Terror. <b>"Orders were given to arrest, shoot, exterminate all those who were educated and understood what was happening," </b>Baijiev tells RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service. "Just look at the Atabeyit, how many great people are resting there. There are no words to describe it, these were ghastly times. While our fathers were in prison, we were ordered to recite slogans such as 'long live Stalin, hurray!' There was such huge propaganda at that time. But what else could we do? <b>My father's body was buried at [Kazakhstan's] Karaganda [prison camp.] I've visited his grave there.</b>"<br /><br /><b>'Without Right Of Correspondence’</b><br /><br /><b>The Belarusian poet Todar Klyashtorny also lost his life during the Great Terror</b>. His daughter, Maya Klyashtornaya, tells her family's story to RFE/RL's Belarus Service. <br /><br />"I was born in 1937. My father was already in prison, my mother was in detention," Klyashtornaya recalls. "Once, through the intervention of an acquaintance who was a lawyer, my parents were granted a meeting. Both were so shocked at each other's disheveled appearance that my father lost consciousness." <br /><br /><b>Klyashtornaya's father was executed a few month after this reunion. But only much later did her mother learn of his fate. <br /></b><br />"She hoped that he would be released since she'd just had a baby," Klyashtornaya says. "She hoped up to the very end, until they told her that he was sentenced to 10 years in jail without right of correspondence. <b>This essentially meant that the person was no longer alive. This was used when people were to be executed: sent away for 10 years, to some unspecified destination, without right of correspondence." <br /></b><br /><b>Like many relatives of so-called "enemies of the state," Klyashtornaya and her mother served time in a prison camp. <br /></b><br />Klyashtornaya's tragic childhood has shaped her whole life. After the Soviet collapse, she became the president of an organization formed to protect the memory of the repressions. <b>Today, she takes care of a memorial built on the site of a mass grave outside Minsk.<br /></b><br />Ethnic minorities suffered heavily as a result of the repressions and other Stalin-era policies. While Chechens were deported to Central Asia in 1944, ethnic Koreans were forcibly displaced as early as 1937. Many community leaders were executed.<br /><br /><b>All-Encompassing Repression<br /></b><br />Between September and October, 1937, approximately 170,000 ethnic Koreans living in the Soviet Union's Far East were rounded up and herded onto cattle trains bound for the bare steppes of Central Asia. The official motive: "Suppress the penetration of Japanese espionage." The parents of Roman Shin, a lawmaker in Kyrgyzstan, were among the deported Koreans. <br />"They were deported without being asked anything, in cattle trains," Shin tells RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service. "My parents were also deported. People were sent to Kazakhstan, to the steppes, or to Uzbekistan. <b>We can praise our government for having already rehabilitated a great number of Koreans, although many died without having been rehabilitated." The rehabilitation process is slowly moving forward as former Soviet countries gradually unlock their archives.</b><br /><br />But millions of people scarred by their childhood under the Great Terror are still hoping to obtained redress for their jailed, tortured, or murdered families. ~<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRj3-_9ZzYFrL_RKNUHkeNnyG0MtV-nLEFh14u1c6S_dSQ3hzuhNOseM-ARJXbSAxlIK9331jzk1xo1BOnmZK2V1XGh74Qur5-MqSUfkpKCBIwPiDx9anERrztkSv7k8soYCe8gvceLdJG4uOuCJYFuKFCPPHelnjzVYVb32bEn7fYLbAl5ixk7rgdgClF/s2560/Solovetsky%20Stone%20Moscow%20memorial%20to%20victims%20of%20Soviet%20repression.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="2560" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRj3-_9ZzYFrL_RKNUHkeNnyG0MtV-nLEFh14u1c6S_dSQ3hzuhNOseM-ARJXbSAxlIK9331jzk1xo1BOnmZK2V1XGh74Qur5-MqSUfkpKCBIwPiDx9anERrztkSv7k8soYCe8gvceLdJG4uOuCJYFuKFCPPHelnjzVYVb32bEn7fYLbAl5ixk7rgdgClF/w400-h300/Solovetsky%20Stone%20Moscow%20memorial%20to%20victims%20of%20Soviet%20repression.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>The Solovetsky Stone in Moscow, near Lubyanka Square<br /></i><br />The Solovetsky Stone (Russian: Солове́цкий ка́мень) is a monument on Lubyanka Square in Moscow to the victims of political repression. It is in close proximity to the Lubyanka Building, headquarters since 1918 of Soviet security services, from the Cheka to today's FSB. The monument is made up of a large boulder brought from the Solovetsky Islands in the far northern White Sea, where the first permanent camp of the Soviet penal system, the Solovki prison camp, was set up in 1923. The boulder rests on a granite plinth inscribed "To the victims of political repression". The monument was erected in 1990 to honor victims of political repression in the Soviet Union. Since then it has been the focus of annual and occasional gatherings and ceremonies: in particular, the Day in Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression from 1991 onwards on 30 October and, since 2007, "Restoring the Names" on the day before.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguSKpFARJgKgzYH-ffStCKkwAbyWEffZ4DLwqcssAzy4AIRX5637zSUaGBPqfAl2FTYPtcpAA25_QwXCvAaSszTol_D5pGeZ-phwpsAMpBw426YtCtwjofodMF0elHcsbINcrZtn7_quovTce1ieP_YKb6C4rNRoN2v4RmC6ewIS9KFFBAOC0sMjIkNKRy/s2560/solovetski%20stone%20St%20Petersburg.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="2560" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguSKpFARJgKgzYH-ffStCKkwAbyWEffZ4DLwqcssAzy4AIRX5637zSUaGBPqfAl2FTYPtcpAA25_QwXCvAaSszTol_D5pGeZ-phwpsAMpBw426YtCtwjofodMF0elHcsbINcrZtn7_quovTce1ieP_YKb6C4rNRoN2v4RmC6ewIS9KFFBAOC0sMjIkNKRy/w400-h300/solovetski%20stone%20St%20Petersburg.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Solovetsky Stone in St Petersburg</i><br /><br /><a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/1078131.html">https://www.rferl.org/a/1078131.html</a><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Will Russia ever admit the truth about Stalin and the Great Terror? Will it be taught in schools as part of history lessons? How can such huge facts be concealed? How is the existence of mass graves explained?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Never underestimate the power of non-stop propaganda. It's hard for a "good boy" or "good girl" not to believe their teachers, to accept the simple fact that these adults (especially the history teachers) are lying. The child can find herself torn between loyalty to the family and wanting the believe the teachers. And this is not something that you discuss with other children. It's a marvelous relief to realize, sooner or later, that the parents are right and that other children know that too. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Speaking from personal experience, I can state that the great majority of Polish parents effectively counteracted the official lies. And there was the BBC (my favorite), the Voice of America, and Radio Free Europe coming across heavy static with a different version of the evening news. I chose to trust the BBC. And still do! Every morning I get my news from the BBC website. Of course there's no longer any conspiratorial, secretive feeling about it, nor is my trust completely uncritical -- I've certainly learned that "truth" is a complex matter, and no one can be 100% unbiased. But even in this approximate situation, it's possible to at least steer toward the truth.<br /><br />*<br /><b>THE PALESTINIAN NEUROSURGEON WHO WANTED TO STAY IN GAZA<br /></b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk0G2PaROYCyJoG5QVy9zLjTvHotj2EyRnr8HJVHKFkhfGpAc-OqJSnqDoK41EHqxfwW7UI-5w4Gr4WBzFKQW-d1n7WefHPjSskJrW-3OG5pgdZ-FITPyBqPM5cNO-vj89ffMiC2wVkjSOllEkrS6F4csusNKhn0Mdx4iItMnIatjdsUfwTjqUGarm3lCn/s1800/husam%20Abukhedeir%20palestinian%20neurosurgeon.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1198" data-original-width="1800" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk0G2PaROYCyJoG5QVy9zLjTvHotj2EyRnr8HJVHKFkhfGpAc-OqJSnqDoK41EHqxfwW7UI-5w4Gr4WBzFKQW-d1n7WefHPjSskJrW-3OG5pgdZ-FITPyBqPM5cNO-vj89ffMiC2wVkjSOllEkrS6F4csusNKhn0Mdx4iItMnIatjdsUfwTjqUGarm3lCn/w400-h266/husam%20Abukhedeir%20palestinian%20neurosurgeon.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Husam Abukhedeir, a Palestinian neurosurgeon, photographed on Thursday at his home in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates. He left his native Gaza in November because he felt that conditions caused by the war had stripped him of his power as a physician — and endangered his family.<br /><br />As a boy, Husam Abukhedeir had a dream.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"I would tell myself, 'Husam will not be anything except a doctor,'" he recalls.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">He wanted to help the people of his beloved Gaza, where he spent his carefree childhood summers. His parents worked as teachers in Saudi Arabia during the year, and they all traveled to Gaza almost every summer. After he finished high school, his parents retired and the family went back to live in Gaza.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Abukhedeir did indeed become a doctor — with a specialty in neurosurgery. He went on to head the neurosurgery department at Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza, and began training other doctors in the field.</b><br /><br />Then came the war: On Oct. 7, Hamas attacked Israel, killing some 1,200 Israelis and taking about 200 hostages. Israel's subsequent military campaign in Gaza has so far killed nearly 27,000 Palestinians and caused countless injuries, displaced millions and left extensive damage to infrastructure, including hospitals.</span><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQM9xwd8IFi0NKdOnGNegQkOBOG0iP4Fig2ML4s_nQxG5Q5W2sonUyIBdgwCic7iEiY7aPRAesYCwhHTC6uZOattI9_dUlTgRG1XNuWiWppenNKx3koq-QQjPI3Mi2lUIkI2CsDZopXGVax4AgnceRX3AVnpBTKuSYy2TKGKOAotdELOpum5ZqMpSYJGXt/s1018/husam%20abukhedeir%20with%20his%20team.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="763" data-original-width="1018" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQM9xwd8IFi0NKdOnGNegQkOBOG0iP4Fig2ML4s_nQxG5Q5W2sonUyIBdgwCic7iEiY7aPRAesYCwhHTC6uZOattI9_dUlTgRG1XNuWiWppenNKx3koq-QQjPI3Mi2lUIkI2CsDZopXGVax4AgnceRX3AVnpBTKuSYy2TKGKOAotdELOpum5ZqMpSYJGXt/w400-h300/husam%20abukhedeir%20with%20his%20team.webp" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Dr. Husam Abukhedeir (second from right) stands with his neurosurgery team inside the operating room at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza in October.</i><br /><br />Abukhedeir confronted cases unlike anything he'd seen before.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">On Nov. 14, he decided he and his family had to leave Gaza for their safety. Because he has a U.S. green card and his wife and their five children are U.S. citizens, they were able to enter Egypt after a week. He has since <b>relocated with his family to the United Arab Emirates for a neurosurgery position.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The 43-year-old is haunted by his experiences at Al-Shifa during the war. He worries that the war has cost his community greatly — not just lost lives and demolished buildings, but also human capital and talent that may be hard to make up for years to come</b>.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">But he holds out hope that he can return to rebuild and help his community.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>Abukhedeir's path to becoming a doctor was full of challenges. When he finished high school in Gaza he came face-to-face with a realization: Being from Gaza hamstrings you in many ways.</b><br /><br />"You always feel you're different. You're not like other people ... just because you're from Gaza," he said.<br /><br />That was clear when he was applying to medical school.<br /><br />His retired parents didn't have the funds to finance an education abroad. The only medical school he could consider at the time was Al-Quds University in Jerusalem. He was accepted in 1999, but friends discouraged him — what if the need for permits from Israeli authorities to exit and reenter Gaza or possible conflict interrupted his medical education?<br /><br />He applied to study engineering in Gaza as a backup. But he kept hoping he'd find a way to pursue medicine, remembering how his parents always told him "Gazans are destined to struggle. But tomorrow is going to be better.”<br /><br /><b>Then he landed a scholarship to study medicine in Sudan. Abukhedeir made the hard choice of not going back to Gaza to visit his family the entire six years of his studies out of fear that he might not be able to return to Sudan.</b><br /><br />"My colleagues would travel back to their families every summer and I would just stay behind," he says. "[Travel] is like a dream for people from Gaza. To plan for it, you need months. And it may not work out in the end. Other people just book a ticket and go.”<br /><br /><b>Once Abukhedeir graduated in 2005, he returned to Gaza as an intern at Al-Shifa Hospital, then got a job as a general practitioner at the neurosurgery department.<br /></b><br />"And honestly, I started to really love the specialty.<b> It's a very delicate specialty and I found myself in it," he says.<br /></b><br />The three-week war between Israel and Gaza in 2008-09 made Abukhedeir determined to pursue neurosurgery.<br /><br /><b>During the fighting, severely injured patients flowed into Al-Shifa, including brain and spinal cases. Abukhedeir realized he didn't have the skills to treat some of the most complex cases. That's when he decided he needed to enroll in a neurosurgery residency program — training that can take as long as seven years. But there were no such specialized programs in Gaza.</b><br /><br />Abukhedeir's choice was to leave again. It took years to make it happen. Paperwork delays — the kind that many Gazans are used to — saw precious opportunities come and go. <b>In 2011, he secured a scholarship to a six-year program in Jordan and gained additional expertise in the U.S., Asia and Europe through short-term courses and conferences.</b><br /><br />In 2021, he finally came home as a credentialed neurosurgeon.<br /><br />"I knew that it is Gaza forever," he says.<b> "I wanted to go back to serve my people and fulfill a mission." Part of that mission was helping to grow a neurosurgery department and a residency training program — the kind of infrastructure he dreamed of having at home when he was younger.</b><br /><br />"We built a good neurosurgery department," he says. "We had seven residents at Al-Shifa and seven residents at the European hospital [another hospital in Gaza they partnered with]. We really cared about teaching residents the way we learnt abroad.<br /><br /><b>"Years ago, we really needed a program like that, and finally we were able to build it for the trainees. Thank God. I swear it was like a dream," he says.<br /></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnO3J7aOpT0Qpbw7fAY04RpkHjEvtlfUhn0V8cIHQTvDhKw0utFAC0DkcQ-25M59atdIRFJvWgIIn3oNkPl3mvto140aAwcKhvO7qeKN5i2L1QzsxAPrjwS54wUlZ5mCQNItCHrablIKWHvUWkKj864lh97FvW7nk9QcoEkYc7HzPR1mzXu7goBjJ3UOgg/s1023/STRIKES%20on%20Gaza%20from%20inside%20Al-Shifa%20Hospital%20November%203%202023.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="767" data-original-width="1023" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnO3J7aOpT0Qpbw7fAY04RpkHjEvtlfUhn0V8cIHQTvDhKw0utFAC0DkcQ-25M59atdIRFJvWgIIn3oNkPl3mvto140aAwcKhvO7qeKN5i2L1QzsxAPrjwS54wUlZ5mCQNItCHrablIKWHvUWkKj864lh97FvW7nk9QcoEkYc7HzPR1mzXu7goBjJ3UOgg/w400-h300/STRIKES%20on%20Gaza%20from%20inside%20Al-Shifa%20Hospital%20November%203%202023.webp" width="400" /></a></i></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><i>Abukhedeir took this photo, showing the toll of Israel's strikes on Gaza, from inside his office at Al-Shifa Hospital on Nov. 3.</i><br /></b><br />Abukhedeir and his family could have left Gaza when the war began in October. But they chose to stay.<br /><br />"I couldn't leave my patients," he said. "But also, as the head of the department, I couldn't just leave my younger colleagues and trainees. They needed a leader.”<br /><br /><b>He considered sending his family to safety, but his wife and kids all believed in his mission and didn't want to leave.</b> <b>He says his 7-year-old son cried and said he didn't want his dad to be alone in Gaza.</b><br /><br /><i><b>So they stayed, camping out in his small office at Al-Shifa Hospital for a month after he and his wife decided Israeli airstrikes meant their home was not safe.</b><br /></i><br />His 13-year-old daughter, Hanin, says it was such a hard time.<br /><br />"There were terrifying sounds," she remembers. "And we all slept together in a small room. There were no beds or covers for sleeping.”</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKtsIp_hcZ6KH00etiSfmTg8uOBewu2Q69yv7YavF7crLy_6JUsw-rULJoZL778mWrbCHq8415Z-I88Ou4VUsGCLaqv2STcxkicRYAAtC-ZlTSUcfV3M5gcwPiaLg2vig24g0drjl1kBbhE2PDtMn7JMsSpn8T4z6-POR-SyWsphdOA25mH40ip2FaHeF0/s1160/gaza%20january%2024.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="653" data-original-width="1160" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKtsIp_hcZ6KH00etiSfmTg8uOBewu2Q69yv7YavF7crLy_6JUsw-rULJoZL778mWrbCHq8415Z-I88Ou4VUsGCLaqv2STcxkicRYAAtC-ZlTSUcfV3M5gcwPiaLg2vig24g0drjl1kBbhE2PDtMn7JMsSpn8T4z6-POR-SyWsphdOA25mH40ip2FaHeF0/w400-h225/gaza%20january%2024.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>How do you decide who lives and who dies?</b><br /><br />Abukhedeir had to operate in grueling shifts to try to keep up with the continuous flow of patients. He was devastated by what he saw: children as young as 2 with concrete or wooden shards piercing their faces.<br /><br />"Skulls are completely crushed sometimes, bleeding, brains oozing out, shrapnel filling the brain," he says. <b>Many patients came in with no IDs or surviving family members. The doctors had to give each a numerical tag, writing on their skins "anonymous patient 1," "anonymous patient 2" and so on.</b><br /><br />He said patients would come to Al-Shifa in waves of a hundred or so after airstrikes leveled residential buildings. Abukhedeir and his team saved some patients but had to face a bitter reality: <b>They did not have the resources to treat everyone.<br /></b><br />"These are my people, my community" he says. "My goal as a physician is to heal them — not to decide who I'm going to treat and who I'll leave.”<br /><br />Abukhedeir recalls a young man in his 20s who was injured in an Israeli airstrike and paralyzed due to suspected bleeding in his spine. He needed an MRI scan before Abukhedeir could perform surgery, but Israel's blockade of Gaza meant that the hospital's dwindling supply of electricity and fuel wasn't capable of powering the machine.<br /><br />"You look at this young man, and his family is around you screaming, 'He will be paralyzed.' It's one of the hardest situations to be in," he says. "As a surgeon you see people you can't serve, even though you have the expertise to do the surgery.”<br /><br /><b>In late October, an Israeli airstrike killed the stepson of his 40-year-old sister Dalia; she was badly injured. She came to the hospital with more than 60% of her body covered in second- and third-degree burns.<br /><br />"I actually couldn't recognize her from how burnt she was," he says.<br /><br />Dalia died shortly after.<br /><br />Abukhedeir had no time to mourn.<br /></b><br />Israeli forces were encircling Al-Shifa Hospital, cutting supplies to the medical complex as they were looking for what they believed to be a Hamas command center underneath. (On the edge of the hospital compound, they found a tunnel shaft leading to several underground rooms, part of the larger tunnel network in Gaza. The Israelis also said they found weapons in the hospital. But the evidence presented by the Israelis did not show evidence of a command center.)<br /><br /><b>During that phase of the war, says Abukhedeier, "most of the patients who were in the ICU, they died because there were no resources. "We stopped offering surgeries because resources at the OR were depleted.”</b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Abukhedeir felt he had been stripped of his power as a physician. He'd become a mere witness to the death and suffering of his people.<br /><br />He feared for the lives of his wife and kids — and his own life.<br /><br />That's when he decided to leave.</span></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>From his new home in the United Arab Emirates, Abukhedeir keeps in constant contact with his young neurosurgery trainees who are still in Gaza serving other hospitals. Their situation breaks his heart.<br /></b><br />He says it feels like everything he dreamed of, worked for and was able to accomplish was demolished.<br /><br />"The end of the war is unclear. And even when the war is over, everything is gone. My house is gone," he says.<br /><br /><b>Gaza has also lost Abukhedeir's expertise — for the near future and potentially for years to come. He is one of many health care workers who left Gaza fearing for their lives.</b> That's on top of hundreds who were killed since the war started and others who were injured, arrested and detained, including the director-general of Al-Shifa Hospital, who was arrested on Nov. 23, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgisvBH-Z1e8Zf4sjACIyy67pOeUHGRbeJY0b8wAQskwHofliG_T_GSms5b8l5gs37nn5eSvb6uih8m7Te-W58q0juX07OfTZD8bOLUhPY_Q9HN5-6AfD8L3h7ttjn25v77jHOhdHYfyztghfsMGZxMYf8L_HDl_gFjmIyY6rOvRRUB-lpiq2n7Gyf2500V/s1024/Husam%20removing%20shrapnel.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="768" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgisvBH-Z1e8Zf4sjACIyy67pOeUHGRbeJY0b8wAQskwHofliG_T_GSms5b8l5gs37nn5eSvb6uih8m7Te-W58q0juX07OfTZD8bOLUhPY_Q9HN5-6AfD8L3h7ttjn25v77jHOhdHYfyztghfsMGZxMYf8L_HDl_gFjmIyY6rOvRRUB-lpiq2n7Gyf2500V/w300-h400/Husam%20removing%20shrapnel.webp" width="300" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Abukhedeir removes shrapnel from a patient injured during the Hamas-Israel war in October.<br /></i><br />Abukhedeir says that even though he and his family are now safe, he is full of dread: His elderly parents are still in Gaza. He lost connection with them multiple times for weeks at a time.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"Their living conditions are horrid," he says. "God be with them.”<br /><br />He worries constantly that he will get a phone call about yet another family member or friend killed in Gaza.<br /><br /><b>But when he talks to his children, he tries to strike the same cheery note his parents struck when they encouraged him as a child.<br /><br />"God willing, this hardship will pass," he softly tells them. "We will be back to rebuild our house that was destroyed. And will repeat all the happy memories we lived together there."</b></span><b><br /></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2024/02/02/1228089758/israel-gaza-war-palestinian-neurosurgeon">https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2024/02/02/1228089758/israel-gaza-war-palestinian-neurosurgeon</a><br /><br />*<br /><b>A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR IDENTIFIES WITH THE PAIN OF BOTH SIDES IN THE ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR<br /></b></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilOwzjZ2NCqTHonphCOm34lqy7urxDUaIxK8isAf80PC43iVCIpRJAdyBTmEl46bKTTYHVpry3NauR0hiTDRihDcug0YMFYiGPFfkIH-8mAeGFvhhuDcukZaZ-tqoHVXYtmwGXSksF2A4bXyhEYZrjH86ua7aKYmx1TLw0LscytdjcuDBNPMfBEatCTTLk/s1800/Estelle%20Laughlin%2094%20camp%20survivor.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1800" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilOwzjZ2NCqTHonphCOm34lqy7urxDUaIxK8isAf80PC43iVCIpRJAdyBTmEl46bKTTYHVpry3NauR0hiTDRihDcug0YMFYiGPFfkIH-8mAeGFvhhuDcukZaZ-tqoHVXYtmwGXSksF2A4bXyhEYZrjH86ua7aKYmx1TLw0LscytdjcuDBNPMfBEatCTTLk/w400-h266/Estelle%20Laughlin%2094%20camp%20survivor.webp" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Estelle Laughlin, 94, survived the Nazi concentration camps along with her older sister and mother. She was photographed in her living room in Lincolnshire, Illinois, on October 6, 2023.<br /><br />Last week, the International Court of Justice issued a preliminary ruling that the charge brought by South Africa that Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza is "plausible." The court called on Israel to take all measures to prevent the killing of civilians in the Palestinian enclave.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">As expected, the court's decision is controversial, with both those in favor and those expressing disapproval.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>It's not the first time that a direct or indirect reference to the Holocaust has surfaced since the war began after Hamas struck southern Israel on October 7</b>, killing some 1,200 people and taking more than 200 hostages. The day of the attack has been described as the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In late September, days before the Hamas attack, we interviewed Estelle Laughlin, a Holocaust survivor, about a study that examined whether social connections improved the odds of someone surviving a concentration camp like Auschwitz. According to the authors, the answer was yes, but by the smallest of margins.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>We got back in touch with Laughlin this month to ask her how, as someone who lived through the Nazi genocide, she reacts to this current crisis — and the suffering on both sides.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">FROM THE GHETTO TO LUBLIN-MAJDANEK</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In the fall of 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, Laughlin was 10 years old. She and her family were among the 400,000 Jews who were soon forced to move into the Warsaw Ghetto.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Despite fierce acts of resistance, including the Warsaw Ghetto uprising that her father helped to organize, most of the Jews there were unable to save themselves from the Nazi extermination campaign. Laughlin, her older sister and her mother were transported in cattle cars to the Lublin-Majdanek concentration camp in the spring of 1943 and later to two other forced labor camps, all within Poland. The Soviets liberated her months before World War II officially ended. Today, at age 94, she lives in a suburb of Chicago and is the author of a <b>memoir, Transcending Darkness: A Girl's Journey Out of the Holocaust.<br /></b><br />Laughlin doesn't remember how she first learned of the events of October 7, when Hamas launched its deadly attack against Israel. But that difficult day haunts her.<b> "Once you have [endured] a dramatic experience like the Holocaust," says Laughlin, "some part of [it] stays with you all your life." The attack by Hamas and ensuing war reawakened in her a decades-old sadness that human cruelty still burns strongly in the world.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><i>Laughlin says she identifies with Israel and the Jews whose lives were threatened or taken. But the stories and images of Palestinian suffering and loss that have poured out of Gaza feel eerily familiar to her, too. "To me, they are human beings like I am a human being," she says. "I want the best for them as I want the best for us."</i></b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"All life is sacred," she continues. "And it's unfortunate that human beings have to feel threatened for generations for no good reason. It's devastating.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Laughlin sees the Hamas attack as the latest eruption in a historic current of violence directed against Jews. "We contribute to the good of all humanity," she says, "and yet we are so often persecuted."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Laughlin says that as a young woman, her mother was chased out of Belarus for being Jewish. And yet she told Laughlin that the Russians were "a suffering people."</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"And I couldn't understand," she says, "how could she have sympathy for somebody who chased her out of her little shtetl?" Somehow, her mother identified with the suffering of those who'd imposed suffering upon her. "And that amazed me."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">When Laughlin was a schoolgirl in Warsaw, children regularly pelted her and the other Jewish kids with pebbles. "We were so frightened," she recalls. "The antisemitism was right in front of me — it was so visceral."<br /><br />Then came the German and Soviet occupation of Poland, the ghetto and worse. To the Nazis, "we had no value as human beings," she says.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">As Laughlin tells it, <b>in those most difficult of times, her community of Jewish people found ways of supporting one another. "We recognized the sanctity of simple moments with friends — that was our sustenance," she says.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">For Laughlin, besides luck, it was her mother and sister who helped her make it out of the camps alive. "We were like one organism," she recalls. <b><i>"The people in our barrack called us the three monkeys in a very affectionate way because we would pick the lice from each other's heads to relieve the itching. In order to survive a hell like a ghetto or concentration camp, you had to have something to hold onto. So you hold onto memories, you hold onto love. I doubt that my mother, my sister or I would have survived without the other."</i></b></span></span></p><p><b><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"Love maintained us," she says.</span></span></i></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">One day at the concentration camp in Majdanek, Laughlin spotted her sister's name on a list. She and her sister and mom had a pact — if one of them was to be sent to the crematorium, all three would go together.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"So my mother and I, we traded places with two women who were on the list who hoped to see another sunrise," she says. "And the following day, my mother and I went with my sister, absolutely sure that we are being marched to the crematorium."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Instead, they were taken to work at an ammunition factory in a forced labor camp.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Ultimately, in 1947, two years after they were liberated, Laughlin, her sister, and mother all made it to the U.S. And <b>she says she survived with an enduring sense of compassion and love for humanity, including for the Germans. "Without those values, survival would be hardly meaningful," she says.</b><br /><br />To Laughlin, Israel has represented the one safe harbor in the world for Jews who've been persecuted throughout their history. Indeed, a few of her friends — fellow survivors — moved to Israel after the war. She has some family there too.<br /><br />But now she feels that October 7 has endangered that refuge. Laughlin says the Hamas attack was directed at Jews, resulting in hundreds of deaths and the more than 200 hostages being taken into Gaza. <b>The events set in motion by that day have shaken "the security of my people, of my children, of my grandchildren," she says. Laughlin's cousins who live in Israel have told her how frightened they've felt these last several months.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Feeling the pain of Palestinians</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Over that same time period, Laughlin has also been watching and reading the news coming out of Gaza. The enclave has been devastated by Israel's military response — the leveling of buildings, the displacement of nearly two million people, soaring rates of starvation and disease and the deaths of more than 26,000 Palestinians.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Laughlin says she's holding the Jewish pain of this war alongside the Palestinian pain. "When the dignity of any human being is diminished, the dignity of all humanity is diminished," she says. "Not only in relationship to my community but to any community of innocent people being attacked."</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">When Laughlin considers the Palestinians living in Gaza, she says, "I identify with their plight ... with their isolation that the rest of the world keeps on going on as though nothing happened, and their world is crumbling."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"I feel their pain," she adds. "I know their insecurity. I think suffering needs witness."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">As a measure of self-protection, one she's unintentionally honed in the decades since her childhood in Poland, she bears witness with empathy but "with a distance."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Laughlin has a metaphor for the intractability of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. "I guess it's like when you see somebody hitting their head against the wall. And you say, 'It hurts — why don't you stop?'"</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"I am an old woman," Laughlin reflects. "I wanted to leave this planet, this Earth, a better place than I found it. <b>It's sad to see that people are still so self-destructive.</b> We live in the 21st century. We accumulated so much knowledge, but our values are still Stone Age. We have not learned to control our emotions."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">She longs for a better way forward. "There are two people claiming the same piece of land, and that's a problem," she says. "Somehow, they'll have to work it out. I hope that they will use [their] better instincts [of] compassion and reason. I have faith that there are bright, well-meaning, resourceful people — both among the Arabs and among the Jews in Israel. And that they will listen to their wiser parts, [their] kinder parts... and find a resolution.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2024/01/30/1227849885/a-holocaust-survivor-identifies-with-the-pain-of-both-sides-in-the-israel-hamas-?ft=nprml&f=327351768">https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2024/01/30/1227849885/a-holocaust-survivor-identifies-with-the-pain-of-both-sides-in-the-israel-hamas-?ft=nprml&f=327351768<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>KING OF THE EXTRINSICS: WHY SOME VOTERS VOTE FOR TRUMP<br /></b><br />~ Many explanations are proposed for the continued rise of Donald Trump, and the steadfastness of his support, even as the outrages and criminal charges pile up. Some of these explanations are powerful. But there is one I have seen mentioned nowhere, which could, I believe, be the most important: Trump is king of the extrinsics.<br /><br />Some psychologists believe our values tend to cluster around certain poles, described as “intrinsic” and “extrinsic”. <b>People with a strong set of intrinsic values are inclined towards empathy, intimacy and self-acceptance. They tend to be open to challenge and change, interested in universal rights and equality, and protective of other people and the living world.<br /><br /></b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>People at the extrinsic end of the spectrum are more attracted to prestige, status, image, fame, power and wealth. They are strongly motivated by the prospect of individual reward and praise. They are more likely to objectify and exploit other people, to behave rudely and aggressively and to dismiss social and environmental impacts. They have little interest in cooperation or community. People with a strong set of extrinsic values are more likely to suffer from frustration, dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, anger and compulsive behavior.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />Trump exemplifies extrinsic values. From the tower bearing his name in gold letters to his gross overstatements of his wealth; from his endless ranting about “winners” and “losers” to his reported habit of cheating at golf; from his extreme objectification of women, including his own daughter, to his obsession with the size of his hands; from his rejection of public service, human rights and environmental protection to his extreme dissatisfaction and fury, undiminished even when he was president of the United States, <b>Trump, perhaps more than any other public figure in recent history, is a walking, talking monument to extrinsic values.</b><br /><br />We are not born with our values. They are shaped by the cues and responses we receive from other people and the prevailing mores of our society. They are also molded by the political environment we inhabit. If people live under a cruel and grasping political system, they tend to normalize and internalize it, absorbing its dominant claims and translating them into extrinsic values. This, in turn, permits an even crueller and more grasping political system to develop.<br /><br /><b>If</b> <b>people live in a country in which no one becomes destitute, in which social norms are characterized by kindness, empathy, community and freedom from want and fear, their values are likely to shift towards the intrinsic end.</b> This process is known as policy feedback, or the “values ratchet”. The values ratchet operates at the societal and the individual level: a strong set of extrinsic values often develops as a result of insecurity and unfulfilled needs. These extrinsic values then generate further insecurity and unfulfilled needs.<br /><br /><b>Ever since Ronald Reagan came to power, on a platform that ensured society became sharply divided into “winners” and “losers”, and ever more people, lacking public provision, were allowed to fall through the cracks, US politics has become fertile soil for extrinsic values</b>. As Democratic presidents, following Reagan, embraced most of the principles of neoliberalism, the ratchet was scarcely reversed. The appeal to extrinsic values by the Democrats, Labour and other once-progressive parties is always self-defeating. <b>Research shows that the further towards the extrinsic end of the spectrum people travel, the more likely they are to vote for a rightwing party.</b><br /><br />But the shift goes deeper than politics. For well over a century, the US, more than most nations, has worshiped extrinsic values: the American dream is a dream of acquiring wealth, spending it conspicuously and escaping the constraints of other people’s needs and demands. It is accompanied, in politics and in popular culture, by <b>toxic myths about failure and success: wealth is the goal, regardless of how it is acquired. The ubiquity of advertising, the commercialization of society and the rise of consumerism, alongside the media’s obsession with fame and fashion, reinforce this story. </b><br /><br /><b>The marketing of insecurity, especially about physical appearance</b>, and the manufacture of unfulfilled wants, dig holes in our psyches that we might try to fill with money, fame or power. For decades, the dominant cultural themes in the US – and in many other nations – have functioned as an almost perfect incubator of extrinsic values.<br /><br />A classic sign of this shift is the individuation of blame. On both sides of the Atlantic, it now takes extreme forms. Under the criminal justice bill now passing through parliament, people caught rough sleeping can be imprisoned or fined up to £2,500 if they are deemed to constitute a “nuisance” or cause “damage”. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">According to article 61 of the bill, “damage” includes smelling bad. It’s hard to know where to begin with this. If someone had £2,500 to spare, they wouldn’t be on the streets. The government is proposing to provide prison cells for rough sleepers, but not homes. Perhaps most importantly, <b>people are being blamed and criminalized for their own destitution, which in many cases will have been caused by government policy.</b><br /><br />We talk about society’s rightward journey. We talk about polarization and division. We talk about isolation and the mental health crisis. But what underlies these trends is a shift in values. This is the cause of many of our dysfunctions; the rest are symptoms.<br /><br />When a society valorizes status, money, power and dominance, it is bound to generate frustration. It is mathematically impossible for everyone to be number one. The more the economic elites grab, the more everyone else must lose. Someone must be blamed for the ensuing disappointment. <br /><br />In a culture that worships winners, it can’t be them. It must be those evil people pursuing a kinder world, in which wealth is distributed, no one is forgotten and communities and the living planet are protected. <b>Those who have developed a strong set of extrinsic values will vote for the person who represents them, the person who has what they want. </b>Trump. And where the US goes, the rest of us follow.<br /><br />Trump might well win again – God help us if he does. If so, his victory will be due not only to the racial resentment of aging white men, or to his weaponization of culture wars or to algorithms and echo chambers, important as these factors are. It will also be the result of values embedded so deeply that we forget they are there. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/29/donald-trump-americans-us-culture-republican">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/29/donald-trump-americans-us-culture-republican<br /></a><br /><br />*<br />Thomas Camlet: <b>WHY LENIN HAD THE TSAR AND HIS FAMILY SHOT</b><br /><br />I once heard from an expert that Pasternak gave a very accurate description of the major events of the Russian Revolution in Doctor Zhivago.<br /><br />My “expert” was stationed at the British Embassy in Moscow at that time.<br /><br /><b>He was a founding member of the British Communist Party. (He renounced communism in the 1930s because of Stalin’s purges and declared himself a Socialist.)</b><br /><br />In 1917 he was a young British naval officer attached to the British Embassy in Moscow. <b>(He knew Lenin personally.)</b><br /><br />I attended a lecture of his at Fairleigh Dickinson University and afterward had a long one-on-one lunch with him.<br /><br />At that time he was an 88-year-old Socialist Member of Parliament.<br /><br />I was introduced to him by my ‘History of the Middle East’ Professor. (Whose father signed the UN Charter for Iran in 1945. But I will save that remembrance for another day.)<br /><br />I will leave you with one tidbit from our conversation:<br /><br /><b>I asked him; Why did Lenin have the Tsar and his family killed? Was it because people could rally around them to fight the Whites and the Reds?<br /><br />He sat back. and while laughing, shook his head and said: No. He said that at that time everyone wanted nothing to do with the Tsar.<br /></b><br /><b>I asked again; Well then, why did Lenin have the Tsar and his family shot?<br /><br />He then looked me straight in the eye and replied: “Because they were arrogant”.<br /></b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE68l4hkv8S-DRPWSdQ1pa9Q3Bd722xRH4WmEiFCYlj_qpWrBl45bZ5T-ZGso_4-uoMlzVhNtWGPFWV3Po9OFO-PYpE8NerpU0F7HOHNG21O0H4klyU2MKW2c1DoeHJdB0VC5Zm9kdPDTGy06jFXdnIm5TnUTeLnkdD7v_VkegpYfmV0jv4ETGAoLnuRxn/s1360/tzar%20and%20familyl.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="765" data-original-width="1360" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE68l4hkv8S-DRPWSdQ1pa9Q3Bd722xRH4WmEiFCYlj_qpWrBl45bZ5T-ZGso_4-uoMlzVhNtWGPFWV3Po9OFO-PYpE8NerpU0F7HOHNG21O0H4klyU2MKW2c1DoeHJdB0VC5Zm9kdPDTGy06jFXdnIm5TnUTeLnkdD7v_VkegpYfmV0jv4ETGAoLnuRxn/w400-h225/tzar%20and%20familyl.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>DIMA VOROBIEV ON “IS RUSSIA A MAFIA STATE?”</b><br /><br /><b>Post-Communist Russia is a private enterprise of a few state-oligarchical clans around President Putin</b>. On his watch, this circle produced 100+ billionaires. This makes many anti-Putinists call Russia a “Mafia State.”<br /><br />This is misplaced.<br /><br />It’s true that inside their business network, they practice neoliberal principles of governance. However, the way they organize things around Russia in general, harks back to the Mercantilist era. <b>They consider attempts of civil society to organize itself independently of the State as subversive and even “extremist” activity.</b><br /><br />You need to understand that Running Russia is an extremely “high-risk-high-reward” project. Therefore, we can see here in action several management principles shared by criminal cartels.<br /><br />1. Clear Project Objectives and Scope<br /><br /><b>Profit maximization through ruthless elimination of competition. Priority on business with very short investment horizons. </b>High liquidity and relentless focus on the cash stream flow. Performance indicators are pervasive on all levels of bureaucracy.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">2. Robust Risk Management<br /><br />Potential risks are detected and assessed early on. Anything deemed “non-systemic opposition” and “extremism” is taken care of right away by the concerted effort of legislators, courts of justice, the police, and the media. <b>Mitigation and risk assessment are reviewed and updated 24/7/365.</b><br /><br />3. Agile Governance<br /><br />Extreme flexibility and rapid adaptation to changing circumstances. <b>The SMO in Ukraine</b>, for example, quickly metamorphosized from a lightning commando attack to <b>a prolonged, well-funded mercenary war where all participants are given a chance to get rich.</b> Agile methodologies, iterative development, and frequent reassessment of outcomes.<br /><br />4. Cross-Functional Teams<br /><br />Already, the Crimea annexation and the 2014–2022 insurgency in Eastern Ukraine showed how good Putin's Russia is at forming cross-functional teams that bring together diverse skills and perspectives. Problem-solving capabilities and innovation help mitigate the many bureaucratic hurdles and rampant corruption that still plague the system.<br /><br />5. Easy Reporting and Communication<br /><br />The de-institutionalization of the Russian state in the post-Soviet era had at least one positive effect. <b>Communication between key decision-makers that could be stuck in the top-heavy, strictly hierarchical bureaucratic structures flows easily through informal channels.<br /></b><br />6. Adaptive Leadership<br /><br />President Putin is a star example of adaptive leadership. He started off in the 1990s as a “pro-Western liberal,” and now has the full turn-around to become a champion of anti-Western resistance and “traditional values.” His unique blend of stubbornness, indecisiveness, and procrastination encourages competition and innovation among people who want to win his attention and trust. As a former spy, he seems to be open to feedback and capable of navigating uncertainties.<br /><br />7. Governance Committees<br /><br />The use of consigliere is how governance committees work in classical cartels. They are experts who can provide oversight and ensure alignment with organizational goals but aren’t powerful enough to become independent sources of power.<b> Inside the circle of uniformed silovikí, Nikolai Patrushev is the most prominent one. Among “Putin’s liberals”, it’s Alexei Kudrin. Neither belongs to the circle of Putin’s billionaires, yet often surpasses them in influence.<br /></b><br />8. Flexible Project Management Approach<br /><br />President Putin’s PM accommodates uncertainty and change. A decade ago, priority in handling the military operations in Eastern Ukraine, Syria, and Africa was given to private contractors. After Prigozhin’s mutiny, the contractual part was moved back to the top brass in the military and security forces—but the commercial principle remained in place.<br /><br />9. Strict Compliance Oversight<br /><br /><b>Compliance requirements remain robust, no matter what. When some players in the petroleum and banking sector tried to defect and take with them assets after the start of SMO in 2022, quite a few of them were eliminated.</b> There is also a possibility that the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up to mitigate legal and regulatory risks.<br /><br />10. Learning Culture<br /><br />President Putin fosters a culture of continuous learning. Witness him upgrading the SMO from a WW1-style trench war to a new type of battle dominated by drones, electronic warfare, unmanned aircraft (“cruise missiles"<br />), and missiles. Another impressive example is dodging Western sanctions and export bans.<br /><br />*<br />Below, a piece of patriotic art celebrating the resurgence of Russian nationalism. A combatant in the distinctive uniform of Wagner mercenaries stands alongside a medieval Rus warrior. The shield is adorned with Russia's imperial eagle. The word "Rus" is written in ethnic fonts. Behind them are onion domes of the Orthodox Cathedral.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOj5RFAUoikjISe1x4La_euFEVmGggiRZ1P0DVopinXBwazHg6StWvCkP44jkVu3k9wC6iKjngXqFTEYgeYdycjO57gmOZ0E6yPR74DC-5OLM250u4q8dQKACkiznaNUiSSiAfMNs06ZIr_zsQXT4MHf21uh0kZAIZfzLtQA-qQI-bmwwSvI4GGiWtGJRH/s635/wagner%20warrior%20ancient%20warrior.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="635" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOj5RFAUoikjISe1x4La_euFEVmGggiRZ1P0DVopinXBwazHg6StWvCkP44jkVu3k9wC6iKjngXqFTEYgeYdycjO57gmOZ0E6yPR74DC-5OLM250u4q8dQKACkiznaNUiSSiAfMNs06ZIr_zsQXT4MHf21uh0kZAIZfzLtQA-qQI-bmwwSvI4GGiWtGJRH/w379-h400/wagner%20warrior%20ancient%20warrior.jpg" width="379" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The warrior holds a battle-axe, the preferred weapon of the Varangians [Vikings]. These diverse groups were comprised of Scandinavians, Slavs, and Turks. They played a foundational role in our civilization.<br /><br /><b>Their economic model bore a strong resemblance to that of Colombian cartels. They exploited the land for local resources such as honey, tar, pelts, and slaves. They transported the stuff across extremely hostile territories and sold them to wealthy Mediterranean "gringos" at astonishing markups. </b>Haters may call this "mafia"—but these guys were our government! ~ Dima Vorobiev, Quora<br /><br />Kurt Scholz:<br /><b>Russia reminds me of East Asia, where the criminal elements were part of the state for centuries, for whom they provided services and could in return expect leniency in the enforcement of the law if they ever were caught</b>. “Journey to the West” nicely explains that principle, with each evildoer being redeemed through past services and never destroyed after being defeated.<br /><br />*<br /><b>HOW MONGOL RULE INFLUENCED RUSSIA; THE TURKIC INFLUENCE<br /></b><br />Dima: Not much. <b>Many people confuse Mongolian influence on us with Turkic influence. Turks impacted the Russian civilization much more</b>. This a big secret buried in our history books.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Mongol rule was “Mongol” only during the first decades of their dominance over the eastern Russian principalities. The rest of the time it was an era of de-facto Turkic rule.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"> The descendants of Genghiz Khan were Turkified about as fast as the Scandinavian Rus aristocrats became Russians.<br /><br /><b>Yoke, for real?</b><br /><br /><b>Rus principalities enjoyed a great degree of autonomy under the Mongols. They were not very interesting for the Empire of Juchi (a.k.a. the Golden Horde) economically</b>. <i><b>The empire also valued the Orthodox church as their trusty ally. The clergy beatified Count Alexander Nevsky, the champion of Mongolian subjugation of Kievan Rus.</b><br /></i><br />A combined annual tax used to be between 1–2 ton of silver, or grain enough to feed a force a 10–20 thousand men for a year. Much more important for “Mongols” were Russian troops for military expeditions to Europe, North Caucasus, and against their neighbors in the prairies.<br /><br />Russian principalities, on their part, had a powerful ally in their wars against Germans, Lithuanians, and Poles. <b>The centralized tax collection, introduced by the Mongols, meant an end to internecine wars between Russians themselves. </b>Russian merchants had permission to trade along the Volga river and its tributaries.<br /><br /><b><i>Turning the tide</i></b><br /><br />From the end of the 15th century, Muscovy took increasing control of the northern part of the Baltic-Caspian trade route. We managed to turn the tables on our former masters by conquering Kazan and Astrakhan. <b>We remained, however, in a vassal relationship with the Crimean Khanate. The full independence came only in 1700, thanks to Czar Peter the Great.<br /></b><br />The total duration of the “Mongol-Turkic yoke”, as Karl Marx called it, lasted, therefore,<b> more than 450 years. For most of that time, the front end of the Empire that we had to deal with was Turks, Turks, Turks.</b><br /><br /><b><i>The secret brotherhood</i></b><br /><br />The Turkic influence was profound. It included:<br /><br /><b>The highly centralized absolutist government, centered around tributary taxation. The poll tax in Russia is a Golden Horde’s innovation.</b><br /><br />Turkic weapon systems and battlefield tactics.<br /><br />The widespread use of mercenaries as expeditionary troops and tax collectors (Cossacks).<br /><br />Food. <b>The abundance of Russian recipes for meat wrapped in dough, from pelmeni to pirogí, comes from our Turkic neighbors</b>. Meat was an exclusive feast in old Russia.<br /><br />Interiors and clothes. <b>The trademark padded jacket of Soviet troops in WW2 is a descendant of the fabric armor worn by Turkic warriors.</b> Turks also brought to us the elaborate and colorful floral designs from Iran. Tápochki (light heelless footwear) are essential inside Russian homes, and shápka (warm headgear) is almost always needed outside, even in the sauna.<br /><br /><b>Female ring dance.</b><br /><br /><b>Many Russian nouns related to trade, clothes, tools, household items, and military originated from Turkic languages.</b><br /><br />The image below features high fur hats for noblemen and a tall headgear beneath a large shawl for noblewomen. Both were Turkic influences. Pointy boots with upward-turned noses were borrowed from Mongol fashion. <b>The knee-length sleeves, too. They symbolized that the wearer delegated manual work to their subordinates.</b> </span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Irene Bolz:<br />Going along with your first bullet point, I have read that<b> Census was introduced the first time.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Many words come from Turkic; some examples:</b><br /><br /><b>bashka = from Turkish “bas” head<br /><br />Izyum = from Turkish uzum means grape<br /><br />sarai = palace</b><br /><br />Scynthiana Turanturk:<br />Mongols in Kipchak Khanate (Golden Horde) Islamized and were assimilated by the local Kipchak Turks/Kazakhs. So there is not much Mongolian culture that can influence Russia.<br /><br />Rob Lim:<br />It says much that <b>Moscow would rather accept the rule of the Golden Horde rather than help from the Papacy. The former, however harsh, did not look to extinguish the Eastern Orthodox religion.</b><br /><br />Andrei Moutchkine:<br />Czapka - Wikipedia Czapka is Polish, originally an Ulan headgear. <b>Ulan is originally a real Mongol word, meaning rider. </b><br /><br />Dima Vorobiev:<br />There are very few Mongol artifacts in the area of the old Rus, and a very limited DNA footprint. The few Mongol words we have seem to come by the way of Turkic languages.<br /><br />Scythiana Turanturk:<br /><b>The language of the Golden Horde was mainly Turkic, not Mongolian.<br /></b><br />Biswa Jyodi:<br />Now I understand why old Russian portraits look like Turkic portraits.<br /><br />B Toms:<br /><b>The triumph of Moscovy was in essence the triumph of the Mongols whose way of life the assimilated to and with whom their rulers intermarried. In the end Kazan was effectively merged into Moscovy making Moscovy (later renamed Russia) the true successor to the Mongol Empire</b>.<br /><br />Rinat Magsumov:<br />The cultural exchange between Eastern Slavs (Ukrainians, Russians, Byelorussians) and Turkic people (Khazars, Pechenegs, Kipchaks, Bulgars) had to begin long before the Mongol invasion.<br /><br />Moonflower:<br /><b>Genghis Khan and his descendants most likely spoke a Turkic language. And the modern Mongolian language is a mixture of Tungus, Han and Turkic languages.</b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyDQDIjtqE1CpFC_-fW19AYUUFBvVHopbVu9j2madjgLB4n8L48JJW2CcQCOle1xnOBbYaYIsteoRXM8bkuun85zRot-e3aq0aJAgF65oskxSpE_UcEFeP9cMM-2avnU8OTSf4YmPjiETp6KnC94l7SBkUCO8FOPJH2wOJJd7RqPJFXnK4OmqVU6S1eo4_/s602/turkic%20costumes%20mosque.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="602" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyDQDIjtqE1CpFC_-fW19AYUUFBvVHopbVu9j2madjgLB4n8L48JJW2CcQCOle1xnOBbYaYIsteoRXM8bkuun85zRot-e3aq0aJAgF65oskxSpE_UcEFeP9cMM-2avnU8OTSf4YmPjiETp6KnC94l7SBkUCO8FOPJH2wOJJd7RqPJFXnK4OmqVU6S1eo4_/w400-h266/turkic%20costumes%20mosque.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Sergey Berezovikov:<br /><b>The Mongols inadvertently lead to the unification of Russia. Before the Mongol Invasion, there was no Russia. </b>There were small, endlessly warring statelets. When the Mongols came, those princedoms could not muster enough force to counter them. This resulted in an appalling loss of life, property, and cultural artifacts. <b>In many respects, the development of Rus was thrown back decades. Russian lands lived under the Golden Horde’s influence for centuries.</b> However, as a result, the threat of endless raids from the Great Steppe in the East has vanished — Golden Horde held firm order on their territories. Now the Russians had to deal with threats only from the West, while paying taxes to the East.<br /><br /><b>In the first half of the XIV century, Moscow Great Kniaz Ivan Kalita (John the Moneybag) established all trade and administrative routes from the Rus to the Horde through Moscow. That strengthened Moscow immensely, and the Russian unified state began to form around Moscow. In XV century, Great Prince Ivan III attached so many lands to Moscovia, that he became known as the Great. At this time, the Horde was weakening and disintegrating into smaller states that no longer could affect Russian policy. </b><br /><br />Eamon Colfer:<br />It led to Moscow becoming the most important Russian city, because the Prince of Moscovy was in charge of collecting the tributes to pay the Mongols.<br /><br />Gian Paulo:<br />The Mongol rule kept Russia disconnected from cultural changes that happened in Western Europe, adding a kind of Eurasian approach. I could feel this influence visiting the interesting Republic of Tatarstan.<br /><br />The Russian soul can be considered European but now western: Europe can be seen as a single block actually but the differences still exist. The former communist states made movements towards transition at different speeds.<br /><br />Eric Schrnhorst:<br />The figure of the Czar was invested with the same powers as the Mongol Khan. his state's growth was powered by semi-assimilated Turkic freebooters ('cossack' is etymologically identical with 'kazakh') who retained an uncomfortably wild and self-regulating independence with headmen ('ataman', another Turkic word) of their own choosing. accommodations were made with the old ruling strata, who become 'service tatars' or were deeded high titles and estates and hands in marriage. The old extractive mechanisms were applied to slavic serfs and to foreign subjects further and further east in Siberia. That 'yasak' was still paid in furs. <br /><br />Whatever the Tsars wanted to be in the end of days and they really badly wanted to be German, <b>a third of the Russian nobility still had surnames of Tatar origin </b>(did you think *Rachman*inoff and *Yusup*ova were Russian?). before the Romanovs, the Rurikids were insistent on co-opting Horde authority through blood union. for example Ivan the Terrible was himself descended through his mother from Chingissids.<br /><br />*<br /><b>ELENA GOLD ON RUSSIA’S NEAR FUTURE</b><br /><br />“Plan ‘B’ has already been put into action,” stated an expert on Russian political talk show ‘The Meeting Place’. “This plan means that they [Ukraine] won’t try to advance at the front, and will concentrate on striking deep in the Russian territory with the goal to destabilize the situation in Russia.”</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“The Meeting Place” is the TV show on NTV channel that was the first major TV channel that Putin took over after he was elected as the president of Russia 24 years ago. There are no independent TV channels in Russia anymore. NTV was nationalized in 2001 — less than a year after Putin’s inauguration.<br /><br />Rumors are, <b>Boris Nadezhdin is no longer in good books with the presidential administration because he called “the special military operation” a mistake.</b> There is a directive not to give him any air time or mentions in the media. The electoral commission will likely get an order to disqualify him from the race, formally because of “too many mistakes” in signatures, so his name won’t appear on the ballots.<br /><br />There are no elections in Russia: it’s a show to re-appoint Vladimir Putin.<br /><br />Putin’s regime cannot risk to repeat the Belarus scenario from 2020, when the whole country voted against the re-appointment of Alexander Lukashenko and gave votes to Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the wife of an oppositioner jailed by Lukashenko.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA7ScjMBGq9NqwM8jpeMMFKxkhjORW96h5dnaSWHMUiCpYSmd0SF_61SvdOMCIMBWZsc9AW7GmIBGFmZ__Rso_JAGU3re2sFyW2fqJqTphb-AE7P5RJBz1z70k35_ifuD-FfNRrO4fm2Ipm6D2XcPldZ4TfB0rybJB6u-KcY6aX3VPnWp-Cc_nXaVNG6P4/s602/LUKASHENKO%20and%20Svetlana%20Tihanovskaya.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="601" data-original-width="602" height="399" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA7ScjMBGq9NqwM8jpeMMFKxkhjORW96h5dnaSWHMUiCpYSmd0SF_61SvdOMCIMBWZsc9AW7GmIBGFmZ__Rso_JAGU3re2sFyW2fqJqTphb-AE7P5RJBz1z70k35_ifuD-FfNRrO4fm2Ipm6D2XcPldZ4TfB0rybJB6u-KcY6aX3VPnWp-Cc_nXaVNG6P4/w400-h399/LUKASHENKO%20and%20Svetlana%20Tihanovskaya.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Protests were so huge that Lukashenko had to ask Putin for help to suppress the uprising. The uprising was drowned in blood; enforcers shot into the crowd. At least 3 people died and over 200 were wounded. Mass repressions and arrests of participants followed.<br /><br />Putin’s administration cannot afford a situation like this — not with an ongoing war in Ukraine and a giant amount of weapons circulating in Russia (it’s really easy to buy grenades, guns, assault rifles and even larger systems on the black market).<br /><br />But by allowing Nadezhdin to collect signatures, they might have already created a movement that endangers Putin’s monopoly on power: <b>in the queues, people could meet and chat with like-minded individuals, seeing — for the first time since February 2022 — that there are a lot of people who want an alternative future for Russia. (Anti-war protests were immediately forbidden in Russia after the start of the war, under the threat of 15 years in prison.)</b><br /><br />After the last week mass protests in Bashkiria, there are mass protests in Yakutia that have been ongoing for several days.<br /><br /><b>The situation in Russia is “boiling and seething”, and the silent discontent becomes more and more vocal.<br /></b><br />In his 2002 book “Blowing up Russia”, ex-FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko said that the explosions of residential buildings were done by the FSB as part of the secret plot that made Putin the president of Russia. In 2006, Litvinenko was poisoned in London with radioactive polonium-210 by Russian assassins and died within weeks. His killers fled to Russia. One of them conveniently died in 2022; the other is now a senator of the Russian parliament.<br />If Putin was ready to kill hundreds of Russians to become the president, he will be willing to kill tens — or even hundreds — of thousands of people, to keep this power.<br /><br />Nothing good is awaiting Russia in the near future — for as long as Putin is in power.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5UsZtlUFvCcuF_tdvuD-s7awyNgRUe9uAXWVLA1gfAL-HzUcuGPWxFUrvciydm8CsOA2zW5FgViaD45oUfYzAAZ3s95YySibE5ij_u4JS24IkUJfah9p_BBGWdUYeenV0Lb3ZZ2NnOUWpwClmcwFG-PybTBtK1vZmFT7QlUDX8JeumSRPG6wnqnpVM4xk/s635/wagner%20warrior%20ancient%20warrior.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="635" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5UsZtlUFvCcuF_tdvuD-s7awyNgRUe9uAXWVLA1gfAL-HzUcuGPWxFUrvciydm8CsOA2zW5FgViaD45oUfYzAAZ3s95YySibE5ij_u4JS24IkUJfah9p_BBGWdUYeenV0Lb3ZZ2NnOUWpwClmcwFG-PybTBtK1vZmFT7QlUDX8JeumSRPG6wnqnpVM4xk/w379-h400/wagner%20warrior%20ancient%20warrior.jpg" width="379" /></a></div> *<br /><b>ONE OF THE HEROES OF OCTOBER 7</b><br /><br />When the terrorists infiltrated the Nova festival Ben heard screams and gunfire. He managed to get to his car, picked up 4 people he didn't know on the way and set off. When he reached a nearby town, he dropped them off at a safe place and called his brother who begged him to come home, but he refused. Instead of running away, he took an unusual and brave decision and turned back to the festival grounds. He entered a fire ground, a place where thousands of terrorists are slaughtering hundreds of people, and there he gathered 8 more people he didn't know, brought them to a safe place and again.. came back. On the way he called his girlfriend who begged him to come home, but Ben wanted to reach his friends, he knew they must have already been injured, he wanted to save them. On the way he picked up 3 more people, but this time, the terrorists caught him and brutally murdered him. His vehicle was found with hundreds of bullet holes. This is a story about Ben, an unusual person. It's a story about courage, about a guy who came to enjoy and dance at a party and in one moment found himself in a fight for life. It's a story about Ben, who didn't think about himself, and wanted to save others. He could have escaped, but returned to hell for others and paid for it with his life. ~ RDX PRO, Quora<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4YPsvu5JRujAiJIFxWrSr26jR-HeYikb7vL1qb0UudnUHj2Ud0Q4EGXvcSnPT65XhMzKAojW1W-NBMBS8-GGihFySCKuhNMamkS8m1RUP7s_Ngm-Rj3pHRE-t1jx8Zz4_ymGrfJ3O-fnKcZJTkP2lXwkze3gZfjw5_FyzlAr3U1o8m7on08Jj0n8TMhYl/s741/Ben%20israel%20hero%20October%207.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="741" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4YPsvu5JRujAiJIFxWrSr26jR-HeYikb7vL1qb0UudnUHj2Ud0Q4EGXvcSnPT65XhMzKAojW1W-NBMBS8-GGihFySCKuhNMamkS8m1RUP7s_Ngm-Rj3pHRE-t1jx8Zz4_ymGrfJ3O-fnKcZJTkP2lXwkze3gZfjw5_FyzlAr3U1o8m7on08Jj0n8TMhYl/w325-h400/Ben%20israel%20hero%20October%207.jpg" width="325" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Yegal Herstein:<br />May his memory be a blessing.<br /><br />Ultra Violet:<br />Beautiful man inside and out! What inspiring selflessness. I thank him. What heroic deeds. I'm speechless at this beautiful man's commitment to others.<br /><br />Sean Kane:<br />May His Name be Remembered.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">**</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><span style="color: #351c75;">The alignment of the global left with Hamas is the final evidence of its
moral and intellectual bankruptcy. Now it's others who will have to
advance Enlightenment values. ~ Haaretz</span></b></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />*<br /><b>SOVIET WOMEN AND AMERICAN WOMEN IN THE 1950s</b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRe8Tlusp0D6iLJXLf1RSVELkLpTUx1dlW7aV5tauTqAov0COVFmyow-Bn_B6EnvAZMQQM_YQC3Tu9acBxxL2f6zDVHWP-UvniNAkJ-f07s2bFxcrMNRMp8N_U57S-GMx02q3jLUSbZWJbN2MnKcjeyVxj1FE85vqp3aWiFFpMKAmNyg8uoW2Mxb3jsQ0q/s832/soviet%20women%20kolhoz%201950s%20American%20women.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="832" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRe8Tlusp0D6iLJXLf1RSVELkLpTUx1dlW7aV5tauTqAov0COVFmyow-Bn_B6EnvAZMQQM_YQC3Tu9acBxxL2f6zDVHWP-UvniNAkJ-f07s2bFxcrMNRMp8N_U57S-GMx02q3jLUSbZWJbN2MnKcjeyVxj1FE85vqp3aWiFFpMKAmNyg8uoW2Mxb3jsQ0q/w290-h400/soviet%20women%20kolhoz%201950s%20American%20women.jpg" width="290" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">These 2 photographs are from the same time and possibly from the same year. <b>Women of the same age.</b><br /><br />The first photo is from the USSR. <b>The women are from a “collective farm” (“kolkhoz”). No money, no documents, not allowed to leave the village, working for ”trudodni” — in literal translation, “workdays”. Basically, for a scribble in a notebook — once the crops were harvested and the required amounts of grains, vegetables, meat, milk and produce had been delivered to the Soviet processing plants, what was left, was divided between the workers — based on the number of “workdays” scribbled in the notebook. Farm workers in the USSR weren’t paid.</b></span><b><br /></b></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The dream time of the lovers of the USSR, who despise freedom and critical thinking. That was the dream that the USSR carried to other countries of Eastern Europe.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The second photo from the USA. A completely different life. Looks like another universe. ~ Elena Gold<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijWxeEokVZpZcAwmjiJ-8oB67mA9F7uEj2-iVDKwQJg_AV2hjem92lMMVAmD_PLs8N_7L8xJvc966anjHFAHsFQpuYO5ojBz19YyuhpOGFs_TPVG2xP5fF4RqnUKuk8DDwk117W13nxxhvzZYIHZtnfF40KwUpwtdeNfQAHly7A3uiueeG0-82lVlfXJ-e/s602/soviet%20women%20students%20American%20women%201950s.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="378" data-original-width="602" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijWxeEokVZpZcAwmjiJ-8oB67mA9F7uEj2-iVDKwQJg_AV2hjem92lMMVAmD_PLs8N_7L8xJvc966anjHFAHsFQpuYO5ojBz19YyuhpOGFs_TPVG2xP5fF4RqnUKuk8DDwk117W13nxxhvzZYIHZtnfF40KwUpwtdeNfQAHly7A3uiueeG0-82lVlfXJ-e/w400-h251/soviet%20women%20students%20American%20women%201950s.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">John Mears:<br />"once the crops were harvested and the required amounts of grains, vegetables, meat, milk and produce had been delivered to the Soviet processing plants, what was left, was divided between the workers — based on the number of “workdays” scribbled in the notebook. “<br /><br />The crazy thing to me, is that we still call them communist or socialist.<br /><br />I get that is what they have claimed, but the above quote is not only true, but it is also about as far away from being socialism as outright capitalism is.<br /><br />Marx was right when he said Russia was't suitable. They never even got close. Just went straight to fascism. [Oriana: This reminds me of what<b> Misha Iossel wrote: “The Soviet Union was never a socialist country. It was a Fascist country.”</b>]<br /><br />Viktor Sergenko:<br />Problem is, <b>that’s exactly what you get when you try to implement communism in practice. So far every single attempt has landed in the same place.<br /></b><br />Elizabeth Koenig:<br /><b>Communism has not worked wherever it has been imposed.</b><br /><br />Gregg Goodfellow:<br /><b>What is astonishing to me is that some people living in the West bought the lie of a better, more wholesome and well rounded life under communism and worked to help Russia. Propaganda was one element that USSR seemed quite skilled at. Spies who eventually made it to the USSR were invariably hugely disappointed at the reality as you have accurately depicted it.</b><br /><br />Elena Gold:<br />And now Putin wants to de-privatize apartments that were privatized in 1990s — so, this wonderful USSR practice where the state controls all of your life entirely can return.<br /><br />Under Khrushchev, there was a “political spring”: executions and being sent to GULAG for nothing were mostly canceled (my father was still prosecuted by KGB for being “the son of the enemy of the state” in late 1950s — sent to work to the middle of nowhere after the college, to build cities in “virgin lands”, rather than assigned a job in a city.)<br /><br /><b>Some leaks of the foreign music and fashion into the USSR were happening in 1970s and 1980s — short skirts on women were widespread. There was also some dancing to pop music, but it was considered “harmful bourgeoise influence” and if reported, could stain one’s “references” for life — you’d be labeled unreliable and would never get a responsible position in any company, only low-level jobs like a janitor.</b><br /><br /><b>The USSR of 1970s-1980s was a mild version of today’s North Korea, with slightly more food.<br /></b><br />*<br /><b>MUSLIM MAN REFUSED GERMAN CITIZENSHIP BECAUSE HE WOULDN’T SHAKE HANDS WITH A WOMAN</b><br /><br />A Lebanese Muslim doctor applied for a German citizenship through naturalization and passed the naturalization test.<br /><br />But <b>he was not granted the citizenship because he refused to handshake with the female official when the naturalization certificate was handed over.</b><br /><br />The woman withheld the certificate and rejected the application.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">He filed a petition which was turned down by a German court.<br /><br />The court said “anyone who refuses to shake hands on gender-specific grounds is in breach of the equality enshrined in the German constitution”.<br /><br />The Administrative Court of Baden-Württemberg (VGH) ruled that someone who rejects a handshake due to a "fundamentalist conception of culture and values" because they see women as "a danger of sexual temptation" was thereby rejecting "integration into German living conditions.” ~ Ajax, Quora<br /><br />Travel Zone:<br />Great.<br /><br /><b>Kudos to the German court for upholding German equality and gender laws.<br /></b><br />It is time that those who move (of their own free will) to another country follow the host country rules and do not demand, on some spurious grounds, rules for themselves which are different from the host country constitution, norms and practices.<br /><br />USA, UK, Europe and others in the west ought to follow this rule too.<br /><br />*<br /><b>A QUESTION MARK IN SPACE</b><br /><br />The object is far outside our galactic neighborhood, possibly billions of light-years away. But astronomers have seen similar objects closer to home.<br /><br />Two of our galaxy’s most famous stars were recently photobombed by what appears to be a celestial question mark.<br /><br />The symbol was spotted in a new image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) of the forming stars Herbig-Haro 46/47, which are well-known and have been frequently observed by astronomers. These two stars can provide clues about how our own sun may have formed. They’re relatively close to Earth, about 1,400 light-years, and relatively young, only a few thousand years old. In fact, they’re still in gestation and have not technically been “born” yet, which is marked when the stars start shining from their own nuclear fusion.<br /><br /><b>The image is the first of the twin protostars from the NIRCam instrument on JWST</b>. It was captured using infrared light, which penetrates space dust more easily than visual light, and it is the highest resolution image of the objects ever seen at these wavelengths.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_V0plZJEo-pKWrChi_lWsHwm2-ySWH7X6Dz_Eu55ecnl8P4NzTYXA-NJERA41HSYjxnw1vhZ1hw0qtuAIo4TR79eDxe_vLIPl7jgfCDWguVSyq8ejxfGQpLxg08hI1ourKVY6lXT4voXsh2o8-I_NhRzdeKAMkHnP-O04N3cveMDiuusvJ503u_ZRlkji/s1200/question%20mark%20in%20space.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_V0plZJEo-pKWrChi_lWsHwm2-ySWH7X6Dz_Eu55ecnl8P4NzTYXA-NJERA41HSYjxnw1vhZ1hw0qtuAIo4TR79eDxe_vLIPl7jgfCDWguVSyq8ejxfGQpLxg08hI1ourKVY6lXT4voXsh2o8-I_NhRzdeKAMkHnP-O04N3cveMDiuusvJ503u_ZRlkji/w400-h225/question%20mark%20in%20space.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75;">The telescope’s astonishing sensitivity allowed the glowing red question mark to be captured in the lower center of the image. The object is far outside our galactic neighborhood, possibly billions of light-years away, says Christopher Britt, an education and outreach scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute who helped plan these observations.<br /><br />His <b>best guess is that the question mark is actually two galaxies merging.<br /></b><br />“That's something that's seen fairly frequently, and it happens to galaxies many times over the course of their lives,” he says. “That includes our own galaxy, the Milky Way … [it] will merge with Andromeda in about four billion years or so.”<br /><br />The hints pointing to two galaxies are found in the question mark’s strange shape. There are two brighter spots, one in the curve and the other in the dot, which could be the galactic nuclei, or the centers of the galaxies, Britt says. The curve of the question mark might be the “tails” being stripped off as the two galaxies spiral toward each other.<br /><br />“It's very cute. It's a question mark … <b>But you can find the colons and semicolons, and any other punctuation mark, because you have 10,000 little smudges of light in each image taken every half hour,” says David Helfand, an astronomer at Columbia University.</b> The sheer number of shining objects we find are bound to create some serendipitous images, and <b>our brains have evolved to find those patterns</b>, he says.<br /><br />Astronomers have seen similar objects closer to home. Two merging galaxies captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2008 also look like a question mark, just turned 90 degrees.<br /><br /><b>Helfand says the question mark seems to be two objects, the curve and the dot, but could be more that just happened to line up. They could also be completely unrelated objects, he says, if one is much closer to Earth than the other.</b><br /><br />Britt warns that estimating distance based only on colors in the image can be tricky. The red of the question mark could mean it’s very far away (light waves stretch as they travel through the expanding universe, shifting to redder wavelengths) or that it’s closer and obscured by dust near the object.<br /><br />It would take more investigation to identify exactly how far away the question mark is. This could be done by measuring photometric redshifts, determined by the brightness observed through different filters, but this would only provide an estimate for the distance, Britt says. Spectroscopy, which analyzes light from the source to determine its elemental makeup, could provide a more exact distance but requires a separate instrument to measure.<br /><br /><b>Given the number of intriguing targets spotted by JWST, the question mark may never receive this treatment. For now the source of this symbol in the sky remains a cosmic mystery.</b></span><b><br /></b><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/nasa-question-mark-james-webb-telescope?rid=E18AE510841C77329A0E2626CC03D351&cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=Editorial::add=reactivation3">https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/nasa-question-mark-james-webb-telescope?rid=E18AE510841C77329A0E2626CC03D351&cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=Editorial::add=reactivation3<br /></a><br /><br />*<br /><b>NORMAL FORGETFULNESS VERSUS DEMENTIA</b><br /><br /><b>It may be reassuring to hear from neurologist Richard Restak, 82, whose new book is How to Prevent Dementia: An Expert’s Guide to Long-Term Brain Health. He says there might be a more everyday reason for memory lapse: “All through life, stress causes a decrease in normal brain function: you have difficulty with memory; you can’t come up with names.”</b><br /><br />Of course, it’s impossible to completely avoid stressful things, but one you can choose to swerve, he says, is worrying that you’re getting Alzheimer’s because of mild forgetfulness: <b>“There are examples of people coming out of shopping malls and being unable to remember where they parked the car. Well, that’s just normal forgetting.”<br /><br />A more worrying version of the story would be, Restak says, “If you come out of the mall and you can’t remember, ‘Did I drive here, did I take a bus or did somebody drop me off?’”<br /></b><br />Restak is clearly still mentally sharp: as well as writing books, he is a clinical professor at George Washington University in Washington DC. But <b>he calmly accepts a mild decline in his abilities that comes with age.</b> He recalls a book tour dinner many years ago in which he was introduced to a dozen new people. “I had no trouble at all remembering the names,” he says. “I’m not sure I could do that today.”<br /><br />Problems recalling names are easily fixable, in any case, Restak tells me: <b>“Memory is based on images, not words. So I could take your name, Amy Fleming, and see a picture of you in flames – flaming – and so when I next see you, your name will come to me.”</b><br /><br />Memory is also often more about paying attention than cognitive deficits. Returning to Restak’s mall analogy, he says if you’ve got something more interesting than car park coordinates on your mind when you arrive, you won’t pay attention to the seemingly insignificant car park zone, and therefore you won’t lay down a memory of it. <b>It is much harder to pay attention to things that don’t excite us.</b><br /><br />Signs of a dementia-depleted memory are far more marked, says Linda Clare, professor of clinical psychology of aging and dementia at the University of Exeter. “It’s a real gap somewhere that there shouldn’t be,” she says.<b> “My own experience of this was telling my mum that I was going to make a big move from Cambridge to north Wales and that I’d found a house. And the next morning, she had no recollection of any of it. Then I knew for sure that this wasn’t just normal forgetting.”</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Clare recalls another example, of a man who got into the car and couldn’t remember what the controls were for. </b>“It’s those crunch moments that send you off to the doctor.” But she concedes that it is hard to draw precise markers, as circumstances other than dementia can cause dramatic momentary lapses – such as urinary tract infections, hormone imbalances, mini strokes, depression and anxiety.<br /><br />If you experience a dramatic memory lapse, or cognitive changes that aren’t normal for you, the usual investigative pathway would be a visit to a memory clinic, via GP referral.<br /><br />“We’re trying to encourage people, if they do notice a change in functioning, to go to the doctor,” says Clare. This is partly because other health problems causing the cognitive symptoms, such as cardiovascular disease affecting blood flow to the brain, could be picked up, but also because<b> drugs can help slow the progression of dementia if taken early.<br /></b><br />But let’s roll back a little: if you’re panicking because you’re getting older and can’t name the actor in the film you’ve just seen, it’s worth diverting this mental energy into positive action. For example, you might want to start by learning new ways to manage stress. <b>“Try to decrease stress, and cognitive function will improve,” Restak says.</b><br /><br />Clare suggests breaking the vicious cycle of worrying about your health by focusing on taking care of yourself. “It’s not always easy,” she says. “Responsibilities don’t go away. But is there a way to get a little bit more sleep, or have someone give you a break for an hour or two to do something you want to do? Small things that keep you going are worth doing.”<br /><br />On the other hand, <b>having a mentally demanding job can be beneficial because it keeps the brain agile and strong, and make a dementia diagnosis less likely.</b> “Whatever a person can do to stimulate their mental functioning is a good thing,” says Clare. “We think complex mental activities are protective.”<br /><br />Not that having a mentally taxing job is a prerequisite for brain health. <b>Restak’s key phrase for tackling dementia is “cognitive reserve”, which is something you can build like a muscle. He says: “The brain remains highly malleable throughout the lifespan, and cognitive reserve can be built up from childhood and at any time during the next 70 years.”</b><br /><br />Having a well-exercised brain will not necessarily prevent dementia, but it can keep you functional for longer if you do get the disease. Restak’s top tip is to find something that “viscerally interests you” and indulge it like a “magnificent obsession: you continue to build on it with books, you go to movies about it – that’s the way the mind stays sharp”.<br /><br />Keeping your brain doing new stuff, he says, is a way of “forming new networks within the brain”. This applies to learning new languages, to musical skills, and is also why you should keep up with new technology instead of letting others do it for you.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />Reading novels is another cognitive reserve-building power move. “They demand a lot more in terms of cognitive functioning than a nonfiction book, which you can open up to whatever chapter is of interest to you,” says Restak. “You can’t do that with a novel.” You have to hold in your mind the story so far, who everyone is, follow the text and subtext and use your imagination.<br /><br /><b>Novels and puzzles require working memory. “Working memory is associated with IQ,” he says. “If you’ve got a strong working memory, there is not a chance in the world you have dementia.”</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Some of the exercises he suggests would “strain anybody” he says. The medical definition of dementia is a loss of memory, language, problem-solving and other cognitive abilities that is severe enough to impact daily life.<br /><br />“So if you’ve enough working memory to learn and name, say, all the prime ministers since the second world war, it can be stated categorically that you do not have dementia,” Restak says. “If you don’t follow politics, listing the members of your football team according to position, or alphabetically, would do just as well.”<br /><br /><b>Along with reducing stress and keeping mentally agile, sleep – particularly naps – is your memory’s friend.</b> “Laboratory studies confirm that naps solidify already learned information,” writes Restak. “When we first learn something, that knowledge goes into the hippocampus, the brain region responsible for the initial formation of a memory. <b>When we nap, hippocampal activity matches the pattern of activity that occurred when we learned the new information. This is called neural replay.”</b><br /><br />Sleep problems often increase with age, though. Restak says: “A daytime nap can prove helpful in regulating your night-time sleep.”<br /><br />None of this advice comes with guarantees. <b>“You can’t take a specific person and predict whether or not they’re going to get Alzheimer’s on the basis of their lifestyle,” says Restak. “A high percentage of it is genetic, but these steps will lower the odds.”<br /></b><br />Avoiding drinking to excess is another one, he says. “Everybody recognizes that alcohol is harmful, but you have to live. If one drink a day causes you to feel better about life, I would say fine. Make up for it with the other ways of preventing dementia, – doing plenty of exercise and sticking to a healthy diet, say.”<br /><br />The evidence continues to mount, too, for looking after your cardiovascular health and hearing, and for socializing as much as possible.<br /><br />Cheeringly, just as it’s never too late to build your cognitive reserve, it’s never too late to boost your systemic health. “Making changes to benefit your health, at any stage, has an impact,” says Clare. “Even if you start exercising when you retire, it will still have a benefit. Do whatever you can do at that time – we’re never a lost cause.” ~</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/26/the-difference-between-memory-loss-and-dementia-and-how-to-protect-your-brain?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/26/the-difference-between-memory-loss-and-dementia-and-how-to-protect-your-brain?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I think genetic testing should be easily available, and not just from dubious small companies. Past the age of 65 (that's when Medicare benefits begin), it should be routine. And simple tests of cognitive function should be a part of the yearly check-up. <b><br /></b><br />*<br /><b>YOUR APPENDIX IS NOT USELESS</b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEpXHkiWdzz6bf3LcsWTARnIuW06iGzCeR8zIyBfwzqbLXPlSwFtwRUtJkga1u_iGVuvS2OP21oGf8ZjBb9htLemL4dV3EQk0XOuJRZq0xSjMfEJyLcoo7SfiuIh1nb0ek_AMiqPtgbbCcJw7Dcwf1IvylfkyJiqLk0EPop0jo-VccBln-d46xJTZKlVzi/s900/heather%20smith%20anatomist.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="900" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEpXHkiWdzz6bf3LcsWTARnIuW06iGzCeR8zIyBfwzqbLXPlSwFtwRUtJkga1u_iGVuvS2OP21oGf8ZjBb9htLemL4dV3EQk0XOuJRZq0xSjMfEJyLcoo7SfiuIh1nb0ek_AMiqPtgbbCcJw7Dcwf1IvylfkyJiqLk0EPop0jo-VccBln-d46xJTZKlVzi/s320/heather%20smith%20anatomist.webp" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>As an evolutionary anatomist, Heather Smith studies the fossil record of extinct species. A sudden appendectomy as a child made her curious about what the appendix is for and why it gets inflamed.</b><br /><br />It was the first day of spring break in 1992 in Phoenix, and 12-year-old Heather Smith was excited for her family's upcoming ski trip.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">But before Smith and her family had even packed their snow pants, she realized she didn't feel good. "I woke up feeling just a little bit nauseous, and I wasn't sure why. Throughout the course of the day, I started to feel worse and worse and started to develop pain in the abdomen," she says.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">By about midafternoon, her father took her to urgent care. She ended up getting emergency surgery to have her appendix out.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Smith still has a small scar from the appendectomy. And after the surgery, she found herself intrigued by the part of her body she had so suddenly lost. "It inspired me to wonder: Why do we have this weird little organ in the first place? What does it do? Why does it get inflamed?"<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Smith grew up to be a professor of anatomy at Midwestern University and editor-in-chief of a journal called The Anatomical Record. And all these decades later, Smith has made a mark in the field by studying the very organ that threw off her family's vacation plans in 1992.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">She acknowledges that the appendix has a bad rap as a useless organ that can cause you pain and require emergency surgery. "But it turns out recent research shows it does have functions that can help us," she says.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>What and where is the appendix?</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The type of appendix that humans and some primates and rodents have looks like a little worm. <b>It's about the size of your pinky finger, and it projects off the cecum, which is the first part of the large intestine</b>.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">You can identify the location based on a landmark called McBurney's point. So if you draw a line between your bellybutton and the part of your pelvis that sticks out [on the right], two thirds of the way down, that's about where the appendix is.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>How did scientists get the idea that the appendix was useless?</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">There had been a lot of discussion about what the appendix might do as a function, whether it served a function, prior to [Charles] Darwin's time.<b> The [fact] that we can live without it does provide some support for the idea that it's vestigial and it doesn't really do anything. </b>And so Darwin's interpretation of it as a vestige was reasonable at the time, given the information that he had.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">But now with modern technology, we can see things like the microanatomy and the biofilms in the appendix, and we have a better understanding of what it is and what it's doing.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>How has the appendix evolved over time?</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>If you map the distribution of appendices across a phylogeny — a tree of mammal life — you can interpret that the appendix has actually evolved independently. It has appeared independently multiple times throughout mammalian evolution. So that is evidence that it must serve some adaptive function</b>. It's unlikely that the same type of structure would keep appearing if it wasn't serving some beneficial role.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>So what are the appendix's beneficial roles?</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">It turns out that the appendix appears to have two related functions. The first function is supporting the immune system.<b> The appendix has a high concentration of immune tissue, so it's acting to help the immune system fight any bad things in the gut.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The second function that it serves is what we refer to as the safe house</b>. So this was a hypothesis that was put forward by a team from Duke University in 2007. And they argued that the appendix may serve as <b>a safe reservoir for the beneficial gut bacteria that we have.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">During times of gastrointestinal distress — you know, a diarrhea episode where all of your good gut bacteria is getting kind of flushed out of the system — the appendix is kind of this blind tube with a very narrow diameter and narrow lumen, so the good bacteria doesn't get flushed out of the appendix. <b>The idea is it's safe during this time of gastrointestinal distress and it can then exit the appendix and recolonize this good bacteria throughout the rest of the gut.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">So <b>the appendix is kind of helping us in two ways, both within the gut: It's helping to fight off invading pathogens, but also to repopulate the gut with beneficial bacteria after gastrointestinal issues.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><i>Why do some people get appendicitis?</i></b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Appendicitis is predominantly happening in the industrialized nations of the world </b>— <b>areas where fiber content of the diet tends to be lower.</b> So one hypothesis is that, with the lower fiber content, we're more likely to get little pieces of food that's being digested stuck [inside] the appendix and cut off blood supply and cause this inflammation.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The other hypothesis that doesn't seem like it's quite as plausible these days has to do with an old idea called the hygiene hypothesis. The idea is that <b>these days we do so much oversanitization, with all of our antibacterials and all our antibiotics that we take, that</b> <b>our immune systems are not developing properly because they don't have exposure to the full range of pathogens that we would otherwise. And so the immune system overreacts and panics. And because the appendix has so much immune tissue, it's one of the areas where this manifests.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Could this new understanding lead to new treatments?</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I think there's some promising treatments out there. People are looking into antibiotics and other ways of treating appendicitis without completely removing it, given the evidence that is accumulating that it is in fact helpful for your health to have an appendix. <b>Studies have shown that infections with the really bad, nasty bacteria C. diff tend to be higher in people who have had their appendix removed.</b><br /><br />So there are health benefits to retaining the appendix. In an ideal world, we would have a future where we wouldn't have to always remove it.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>What have you gained from studying this "weird little organ"?</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I think this study has shown me the importance of looking into small anatomical details. Anatomy is just the study of the body, so you'd think that it's a dead science. You'd think we know everything about the body, especially the human body.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">But <b>it turns out that there's actually a lot more variation and function and microanatomical adaptations that haven't been fully realized</b>. So doing just descriptive studies of exotic animals that have never been described or looking at small parts of our own bodies that haven't been well documented are absolutely worthwhile.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/02/02/1228474984/appendix-function-appendicitis-gut-health?ft=nprml&f=191676894">https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/02/02/1228474984/appendix-function-appendicitis-gut-health?ft=nprml&f=191676894</a><br /><br />*<br /><b>WHEN PEOPLE DIE IN THEIR SLEEP, THIS IS WHAT THEY DIE OF<br /></b><br />When someone dies in their sleep, it's usually due to natural causes, especially in older adults. <b>The most common reason is a heart condition, like heart failure or a heart attack. The heart just stops working effectively, and it's often peaceful, without any pain.</b><br /><br /><i><b>Another reason could be a stroke, where the blood supply to the brain is interrupted. This can happen without any warning, especially if the person has underlying health issues. Then there's something called 'sleep apnea', which is when breathing repeatedly stops and starts during sleep. If severe, it can lead to sudden death.</b></i><br /><br />Of course, <b>there are other reasons too, like aneurysms or chronic diseases that finally take their toll. But usually, when someone passes away in their sleep, it's because their body has reached a point where it can no longer sustain life, and it shuts down in the most gentle way possible</b>. It's nature's way of allowing a peaceful exit, I guess. Sad, but in a way, it's also kind of serene, don't you think? ~ Audrey Lewis, Quora<br /><br />Kate Robinson:<br />I had a seizure in my sleep 20 years ago caused by apnea that caused me to have a bad dream that I was having a seizure. I was just experiencing in my head what was happening in reality. It caused me to arch my back and <b>struggle for air as if I was choking. It wasn’t pleasant — sort of a nightmare or anxiety dream. So</b> <b>dying in your sleep may not be as peaceful as many think.</b><br /><br />Angela Sibbald:<br /><b>Sometimes people near death experience terminal delirium.</b> This can cause restlessness and agitation. There are medications that can assist in alleviating these symptoms. <b>A combination of reassurance (presence of family/friends or caregivers) and medications can then lead to a peaceful passing.<br /></b><br />Cynthia C:<br />I have often seen elderly couples who were together since very young. That many of them pass away from a “broken heart”. They have been with one another since almost their entire existence that they cannot bear to be away from one another, that they end up passing away not much longer from each other.<br /><br />Betsy Chalen:<br />As a veterinarian I know that the best way to die is under the gentle and compassionate hands of a well qualified doctor who first sedates you painlessly and then gives you an an IV overdose of barbiturates.<b> We show so much love to our pets when we choose gentle compassionate euthanasia. We know 100% that they do not experience pain. They are not alone and they are not scared. I wish that this option was available to humans. Especially children and those we know have a terminal and painful condition.</b><br /><br />Elle See:<br />This happened to my dad. He had recently been released from the hospital with heart issues. He fell asleep in a chair waiting for mom to bring him lunch. If someone has to go, that's the way to do it! The only thing better would be if he got to eat first!</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>Ending on beauty:</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">All the true vows<br />are secret vows.<br />The ones we speak out loud<br />are the ones we break.<br /><br />There is only one life<br />you can call your own<br />and a thousand others<br />you can call by any name you want.<br /><br />~ David Whyte, All the true vows, for John Donogue</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i></i></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjblgnigbPYPENhNF6EIuIW4Zd-kzSmKC4xAaY0QGZFk0ff1YH3tqjBpwSx_FsnaCICUCCsMgeKUa_ZdVRtObsOXbKNZd2rb_2OCDf9BnrKRd-7pimFr5ZA48LUzYMbvEF0_S6-R2mOzTUhohB73mUowI4pDXrxef9Pd5OjnNc7g0pfqUt4oAktDegxWyCb/s600/forest%20blue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjblgnigbPYPENhNF6EIuIW4Zd-kzSmKC4xAaY0QGZFk0ff1YH3tqjBpwSx_FsnaCICUCCsMgeKUa_ZdVRtObsOXbKNZd2rb_2OCDf9BnrKRd-7pimFr5ZA48LUzYMbvEF0_S6-R2mOzTUhohB73mUowI4pDXrxef9Pd5OjnNc7g0pfqUt4oAktDegxWyCb/w400-h300/forest%20blue.jpg" width="400" /></a></i></div><i><br /><b><br /> </b><br /></i><br /><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-61501614896902371952024-01-27T18:51:00.000-08:002024-01-31T20:34:35.153-08:00KEEP YOUR NOSE WARM AND ENJOY FEWER COLDS; BORGES AND BLINDNESS; ESTRANGEMENT BETWEEN PARENTS AND ADULT CHILDREN; THE HAMAS FAN CLUB; HUMAN MILK CONTAINS A BRAIN-BUILDING MOLECULE; THE BIOCRUST THAT PROTECTS THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA; RUSSIA’S LOVE-HATE FOR JAMES BOND<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmpXQZ003H3NwqMSqMz7UlV2aVOPtx54iXEe025Ga-h36TOAC1OxJ8Qrs7TVAS8PvequIQggD6S2zaajklrKAsGWKeq4iu5yWgU7uHS2P-9UOhWNdEQxikzdYLtwjsk04xvJQpaFGjIfwXr4q8JwjmJrZnXg6LVyI4-lD0HF7j7WLRa8xiowFRT7R_-5XY/s1600/Scotland%20round%20tower.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmpXQZ003H3NwqMSqMz7UlV2aVOPtx54iXEe025Ga-h36TOAC1OxJ8Qrs7TVAS8PvequIQggD6S2zaajklrKAsGWKeq4iu5yWgU7uHS2P-9UOhWNdEQxikzdYLtwjsk04xvJQpaFGjIfwXr4q8JwjmJrZnXg6LVyI4-lD0HF7j7WLRa8xiowFRT7R_-5XY/w400-h225/Scotland%20round%20tower.webp" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">JUDGMENT DAY <br /><br />I saved a dragonfly, <br />with a canopy pole I hoisted him up<br /><br />from the pool. Without pausing to dry<br />the stained glass of his bronze-veined wings,<br /><br />he took to the air, a weightless shimmer <br />zigzagging across the dazzled yard.<br /><br />Perhaps this brilliant buoyancy<br />will save me on Judgment Day —<br /><br />on one scale, my heart <br />heavy with darkness;<br /><br />on the other, like the Egyptian <br />Feather of Truth, <br /><br />a translucent dragonfly wing.<br /><br />~ Oriana</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjspbjfjbIbDVDy1vUMlmqqFM_JKFOM3yh65YtGbRK2BR837Gz3Dyhb_iMTlNa2PzxaJaSFouJE-9DG0MQXaild_ZqU1rCgducZnJy6FOInSb5I_pa0wVGtJpGDRh82a4yITrj_HxTN-ZiODzZEBQphNiknk-o9ZUJXr0golaRjI4OhtP8M50PD62SbNqlA/s960/dragonfly%20flame%20skimmer%20dragonfly.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="838" data-original-width="960" height="349" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjspbjfjbIbDVDy1vUMlmqqFM_JKFOM3yh65YtGbRK2BR837Gz3Dyhb_iMTlNa2PzxaJaSFouJE-9DG0MQXaild_ZqU1rCgducZnJy6FOInSb5I_pa0wVGtJpGDRh82a4yITrj_HxTN-ZiODzZEBQphNiknk-o9ZUJXr0golaRjI4OhtP8M50PD62SbNqlA/w400-h349/dragonfly%20flame%20skimmer%20dragonfly.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>BORGES LEARNED THE OLD ANGLO-SAXON TO COMBAT THE ANXIETY ABOUT GOING BLIND</b><br /><br /><i><b>The Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges lost his vision—what he called his “reader’s and writer’s sight”—around the same time that he became the director of the National Library of Argentina. This put him in charge of nearly a million books, he observed, at the very moment he could no longer read them.</b><br /></i><br /><b>Borges, who went blind after a long decline in vision when he was fifty-five, never learned braille. Instead, like Milton, he memorized long passages of literature (his own, and those of the writers he loved), and had companions who read to him and to whom he dictated his writing.</b><br /><br /></span><br /><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Much of this work—he published nearly forty books after he went blind—was done by his elderly mother, Leonor, with whom he lived until her death at ninety-nine, and who had done the same work for Borges’s father, Jorge Guillermo Borges, a writer who also went blind in middle age. (Borges’s blindness was hereditary, and his father and grandmother “both died blind,” Borges said—”blind, laughing, and brave, as I also hope to die.”)<br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Borges kept his job as director of the National Library, and he became a professor of English at the University of Buenos Aires. <b>But literature had become, for him, entirely oral.<br /></b><br />Borges decided to use the occasion of his blindness to learn a new language, and his description of the pleasure of learning Old English reminds me of my first forays into learning to read tactilely:<br /><br /><i><b>~ What always happens, when one studies a language, happened. </b></i></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Each one of the words stood out as though it had been carved, as though it were a talisman. </b></i></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>For that reason poems in a foreign language have a prestige they do not enjoy in their own language, for one hears, one sees, each one of the words individually. We think of the beauty, of the power, or simply of the strangeness of them. ~</b><br /></i><br /><b>In the newness of Old English, Borges found an almost tactile relief in the unfamiliar words, as though they were “carved,” like the raised print in those first books for the blind printed in Paris nearly two hundred years before</b>. But because Borges never learned braille, his experience of literature remained fundamentally sonic: <b>“I had replaced the visible world,” he said, “with the aural world of the Anglo-Saxon language.”</b><br /><br />In the same lecture, Borges listed the “advantages” that blindness had brought him, but they all strike me as banal, things he could have easily had as a sighted writer: “the gift of Anglo-Saxon, my limited knowledge of Icelandic, the joy of so many lines of poetry.” He is pleased to have a contract from an editor to write another book of poems, provided he can produce thirty new ones in a year, which he notes is challenging considering he’ll have to dictate them. This makes it sound like adapting to blindness for Borges meant, very simply, carrying on his work as a writer.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But in his poems and stories, Borges strikes a less sanguine tone about becoming blind. In “Poem of the Gifts,” Borges observes the coincidence that one of his predecessors in directing the National Library, Paul Groussac, was also blind. <b>The poem, which begins with the irony of God’s granting him “books and blindness at one touch,” is written in a slippery voice that may be Borges’s, or Groussac’s.</b><br /><br />“What can it matter, then, the name that names me,” he says, “given our curse is common and the same?” Borges cannot distinguish between himself and “that other dead one”:<br /><br /><b>Which of the two is setting down this poem—<br />a single sightless self, a plural I?<br /></b><br />The transience of the writer’s identity was a long-standing theme for Borges, one he developed in the work published after his blindness. <b>“So my life is a point-counterpoint,” he wrote in “Borges and I”: “a kind of fugue, and a falling away—and everything winds up being lost to me, and everything falls into oblivion, or into the hands of the other man.<br /><br />I am not sure which of us it is that’s writing this page.”<br /></b><br />Written in the years following his blindness, Borges must have dictated both this story and “Poem of the Gifts,” and both texts express a kind of authorial identity crisis. I wonder how much of this anxiety grew out of the loss of control he felt once he was forced to dictate his work.<br /><br />I’ve experienced a form of this anxiety myself, as I confront the loss of my visual relationship with language. Once I can’t rely on sight to write anymore, will I, like Borges, no longer be quite sure who is writing this page? When I first tried writing with a screen reader, turning off my monitor to see what it was like, I had a flash of this dissolution: I typed too fast for the screen reader to keep up, so I wrote into a void, the words audible in my mind, but without any confirmation that they were actually being recorded on the screen.<br /><br /><b>It was like writing in water, or calling out into the darkness.</b> Even when I stopped, and the computer at last read the text back, my words sounded strange, echoed in an unfamiliar, mechanical voice.<br /><br />But in between writing the first and second drafts of this book, my eyes have gotten weaker, and I now leave the screen reader on all the time. <b>The anxiety of losing my own voice to the computer’s has given way to a relief that I don’t have to strain and stretch so much to see.</b> I’m like a guy who could walk haltingly on his own if he had to, but it’s so much easier to just use the crutches.<br /><br />I find myself looking away from the screen more and more, resting my eyes as I listen back to a paragraph I’ve just written. If I suddenly lost all of my residual vision tomorrow, I know I’d be overwhelmed, and the grieving process I’ve begun would be painfully accelerated. But I also know I’d be able to finish my work.<br /><br />I’m still getting used to certain quirks—my braille display doesn’t always show me paragraph breaks, and when I’m speed-listening to a book, the reader burns through the ends of chapters and on to the next without stopping. I have to rewind, slow down, and artificially re‑create the resonant pause that the blank space on the page naturally offers a sighted reader.<br /><br /><b>But while I’m losing print, I’m not losing literature itself, which exceeds the eyes. </b>The other day, with my phone’s screen reader on, I was reading the newspaper at a pretty furious clip. I’d run across the obituary of Ben McFall, the legendary New York City bookseller who worked at the Strand for forty-three years.<br /><br />The piece ended by describing McFall’s deep commitment to his work, even after the pandemic and his failing health had forced him into the Strand’s corporate office, away from the line of friends and fans who would wait next to his desk amid the stacks to get a personal recommendation, or just to talk books. The obituary ended,<br /><br />Mr. McFall, who was so attached to his Strand name tag that he sometimes wore it around his apartment, chose to keep it on even though he no longer spoke to customers.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">It read: “Benjamin. Ask me.”<br /><br />I had the speech turned up so fast that these last two paragraphs—which didn’t even register as paragraphs, since the babbling screen reader ignored the line break—took only a few seconds to read. And yet I still felt tears burst out of my eyes at that final image of McFall’s commitment: not just to the pleasure of solitary reading, but to the community of readers who sustained him to the very end. My response felt like a sign that however awkward it might feel to read this way, I still felt the power of that community; I’m still a reader.<br /><br /><a href="https://lithub.com/borges-dealt-with-his-anxiety-about-going-blind-by-learning-a-new-language/">https://lithub.com/borges-dealt-with-his-anxiety-about-going-blind-by-learning-a-new-language/<br /></a></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbbjgMUjLrAW0jo5Q5IwdSoOX4_po3aYtQWVngHQ93n8ulFdnkAbrHxoRe9_u6Qc1_gujSVhMqlNB6Q7V1xXGyFJmFjP0fMQ4ljgHTdekPmj9Uy-hsJarbIkeoDhPtfavA_oiebFiHxszDGfS4zI_-5cOJdSm2wtmicM-k6NhyphenhyphenbAnbo1WhNwlXkPE87aF6/s960/borges%20grave%20cimetie%CC%80re%20des%20Rois%20geneva.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbbjgMUjLrAW0jo5Q5IwdSoOX4_po3aYtQWVngHQ93n8ulFdnkAbrHxoRe9_u6Qc1_gujSVhMqlNB6Q7V1xXGyFJmFjP0fMQ4ljgHTdekPmj9Uy-hsJarbIkeoDhPtfavA_oiebFiHxszDGfS4zI_-5cOJdSm2wtmicM-k6NhyphenhyphenbAnbo1WhNwlXkPE87aF6/w400-h300/borges%20grave%20cimetie%CC%80re%20des%20Rois%20geneva.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>The tomb of Borges in Geneva depicts a Viking ship and Viking warriors.</i><br /><br />*<br /><b>THE HAMAS FAN CLUB</b> <br /><br />~ On October 17, just ten days after Hamas massacred over 1,400 Israelis, an email on our faculty listserv announced that, on the following day, there would be a national student walkout and protest in support of the Palestinian people. <br /><br />This was at Berkeley, where I teach College Writing. Since I had classes on the 18th, I quickly put an assignment together to replace our in-person sessions in case any of my students wanted to attend the protest. The theme of my classes is Conformity Sucks and, given that protest is a key component of nonconformity, I wanted to give them the opportunity to attend.<br /><br />The protest was to take place on Sproul Plaza, Berkeley’s main drag. Sproul is where student groups, clubs, fraternities, and others, including outside special interests and the occasional obnoxious street preachers, are free to market their services, petition for a redress of grievances or, as is often the case concerning the preachers, rant. <br /><br />The email, as it turned out, was wrong. The protest was for the following week. I had canceled my in-person class for nothing. I then told my students that, if they planned on participating in the upcoming walkout, they’d have to eat the absence. None of them did.<br /><br />I myself had been frequenting Sproul for another reason, to hawk Peregrine, College Writing’s new undergrad journal. I was out there a couple days after the misdated walkout and, as usual, both sides of the Plaza were filled with rows of tables stretching 200+ yards from the ornate Sather Gate to the southern border of campus on Bancroft Way. It was hot for mid-October, and I had a full two hours between classes. My plan was to spend half that handing out flyers, but I was only 10 minutes in when <b>a pro-Palestinian/Hamas group showed up. It was a fairly large gathering, with a megaphone blaring the now familiar slogans by any means necessary, long live the intifada, and from the river to the sea; slogans that, whether tacitly or no, call for the elimination of Israel as a state and Jews as a people. </b>Their signs and shouted rhetoric disgusted me enough that I packed up and left. <br /><br />Rhetoric is a Greek word meaning persuasive speech, and is essentially what I teach. So when Berkeley law professor Steven Davidoff Solomon published an op-ed in the “Wall Street Journal” entitled “Don’t Hire My Anti-Semitic Law Students,” the law students in question cried foul, claiming that their First Amendment rights were being violated. This accusation, however, is erroneous, and I explained why to my students with a demonstration I perform every semester: “Who has a job? I ask the class, and then randomly choose one raised hand.<br /><br />“What’s your bosses name?” would be my next question. <br /><br />“Fidel,” the student might answer. <br /><br />“Ok. So suppose you go to work tomorrow wearing a ‘Fuck Fidel’ t-shirt?” <br /><br />This always elicits scattered laughter, followed by the student saying, “I’d get fired.” <br /><br />“Yes. You’d get fired, which is perfectly Constitutional because your speech is only protected against government interference. Fidel has the right to prevent his employees from acting offensively. He cannot, however, force you to take off that t-shirt, and you can stand out in front of your former job every day wearing it because that is your right.”<br /><br />I perform this little show because I want my students to understand how the First Amendment applies to them. “Free speech is exceedingly permissive,” I continue. “Because of this, it can also have consequences. If you side with terrorists, others are allowed to call you on it. And they sure as shit don’t have to hire you.” <br /><br />To be clear, I have no love for Netanyahu, his policies, or his retaliatory actions in Gaza, but bombing civilians during a war is hardly a novel tactic, which I’ll return to presently. At that moment, however, I was trying to instill in my students that <b>one can be both pro-Palestinian and anti-Hamas</b>, and that openly supporting the latter is the equivalent of wearing a “Fuck Israel” t-shirt. </span><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1KrS-761Q2dPAHVt4gYZIbcrnYhDRcKHb8kV77IiybRxdX42KkyalNVWK6S4l7OswwPjFO9IqB4TNPLiQZFaLIy23C-szV65a4VN8AJhVv6PZKm8t9RNbhVqnnHQyxmA8CAOz8cbY1TTs4Ff4kZnvIvm7cZI7gBvtzGhachzD3I1x3i8uKQHGZ7q7pSAj/s2048/Palestinian%20and%20Israeli%20supporters%20outside%20the%20Israeli%20consulate%20in%20san%20francisco,%20October%208%2023.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="2048" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1KrS-761Q2dPAHVt4gYZIbcrnYhDRcKHb8kV77IiybRxdX42KkyalNVWK6S4l7OswwPjFO9IqB4TNPLiQZFaLIy23C-szV65a4VN8AJhVv6PZKm8t9RNbhVqnnHQyxmA8CAOz8cbY1TTs4Ff4kZnvIvm7cZI7gBvtzGhachzD3I1x3i8uKQHGZ7q7pSAj/w400-h266/Palestinian%20and%20Israeli%20supporters%20outside%20the%20Israeli%20consulate%20in%20san%20francisco,%20October%208%2023.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Hamas and Palestinian supporters at the Israeli consulate in San Francisco</i><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But I also recognize that they are students, and students can easily get caught up in wrongheaded movements, as “The Messenger” points out: “A letter expressing ‘unwavering support of the resistance in Gaza and the broader occupied Palestinian lands’ was signed by 51 groups representing students at colleges around the country, according to Bears for Palestine, an organization affiliated with students at the University of California, Berkeley.”<br /><br />This was misguided at the very least, but again, I thought it was just students being students, and that they’d all eventually come to their senses. But they didn’t. And haven’t. And moreover aren’t likely to, especially after faculty (and, yes, even college presidents) jumped on the Hamas war wagon sporting “Fuck Israel” t-shirts of their own. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The University of California’s Ethnic Studies Faculty Council sent a letter to our Board of Regents stating flatly that “the UC and other higher education institutions’ administrative statements in the last week and a half, that irresponsibly wield charges of ‘terrorism’ and ‘unprovoked’ aggression, have contributed to a climate that has made Palestinian students and community members unsafe, even in their own homes.” This as opposed to the relative unsafety of over 1,400 Jewish men, women, and children butchered by Hamas – even in their own homes.<br /><br /><b>I don’t get how students at UC Berkeley – students who are currently occupying “the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo speaking Ohlone people” – are made to feel unsafe simply by labeling terrorists as, well, terrorists.</b> But <b>what I really don’t get is that students and faculty who regularly cringe at terms like homeless, master class, ex-con, and field of study, suddenly find indiscriminate slaughter, torture, rape, mutilation, and hostage-taking perfectly acceptable. Apparently, not one of these barbarisms are a trifle triggering, at least among members of the Hamas T-Shirt Fan Club. <br /></b><br />And it is they who are choosing the nomenclature; <b>their authority decides exactly what is abhorrent violence and what is acceptable violence.</b> Note especially, however, how the word violence – and so too, by that token, acts of violence – have become acceptable to this particular faction. Almost overnight.<br /><br />What happened to civil disobedience? Direct action? Good trouble? Where are the lessons of Gandhi? The labor and civil rights movements? MLK? Nelson Mandela? John Lennon? Need I remind these students and their overseers that <b><i>African Americans have clawed their way to a modicum of equal rights without murdering a single baby? Without massacring children in front of parents or parents in front of children? Without raping and torturing and kidnapping a single grandparent?</i></b><br /><br />Given these facts, support for Hamas shows not only a profound lack of knowledge, but so too empathy. I<b>n a December column entitled “Cheering Hamas on campus, too uneducated to grasp how grotesque that is,” George Will unabashedly states: “Today, the desire of Hamas to complete the Holocaust is applauded by moral cretins in academic cocoons (some Princetonians chanted ‘Globalize the intifada’), too uneducated to understand the grotesque pedigree of their enthusiasm.” </b><br /><br />What I can say is that the academic cocoon at UC Berkeley is tiny. Only 400+ participated in the walkout, out of a student population of approximately 45,000. <br /><br /><b>Moreover, Hamas started this war, horrifically so, and are now using the Israeli response to garner both sympathy and support.</b> And although I applaud the calls for a ceasefire, they are unrealistic given our history. Contrary to popular belief, there are no rules in war, a hallmark of which is that indiscriminate bombing will take place. Recall Kurt Vonnegut’s book Slaughterhouse-Five, which describes the Allies firebombing of Dresden, Germany. The book, like its predecessor Catch-22, was one of the first to satirize WW II, beginning with its title. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Vonnegut explains that, in gathering material for a first draft, he visited an old war buddy, and the latter’s wife accused them of being babies: “You’ll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you’ll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we’ll have a lot more of them.” Vonnegut both agreed and promised to title the book The Children’s Crusade. And he did.<br /><br />And that’s what the pro-Hamas movement reminds me of: babies wearing “Fuck Israel” t-shirts. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The United States also firebombed Tokyo, killing over 100,000 civilians.</b> This of course was followed by two nuclear bombs dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which combined killed between 110,000 and 210,000, including at least 25 POWs, 12 of them Americans. <br /><br />So <b>if you start a war with a country that has an air force you can count on getting bombed</b>, and that is precisely what Hamas is counting on, not to mention the scuttling of an historic peace treaty between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and, oh yeah, we get to keep the hostages during ceasefires. <br /><br />What I find most grotesque, however, is that the civilian slaughter sirens echoing over Gaza are also echoing over a continent where they have been heedlessly echoing for decades: <b>Africa – a large swath of which has been conquered by a multitude of invaders, including Arabs.</b> <i><b>One tiny sliver of land hugging the Mediterranean has been occupied by Jews who, for the record, have a legitimate claim to it. Meanwhile, completely surrounding them and touching the Atlantic and Indian Oceans as well as the Mediterranean, Arabian, Red, Black, and Caspian Seas are a bevy of subjugated lands, many illicitly occupied by Arab and/or Islamic states, and all dying to exterminate Jews. </b></i> <br /><br /><b>The bombing and sexual violence has been especially brutal in the Sudan where, according to the Holocaust Museum, “ethnic Arab militia groups, known as the ‘Janjaweed,’ … attack the ethnic African groups.</b> The government would attack from the air, and then, the Janjaweed forces would enact a scorched earth campaign, burning villages and poisoning wells. Nearly 400,000 people have been killed, women have been systematically raped and millions of people have been displaced as a result of these actions.” Black people, by the way. Black lives. <br /><br />Then there’s <b>Yemen, where an estimated 85,000 children have starved to death as a direct result of Saudi Arabia’s intervention there</b>, according to “The Washington Post.” Starvation, to be clear, is agonizing. It’s torture, and so a war crime in more ways than one, which is highlighted in another WAPO piece entitled “Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen have been called war crimes. Many relied on U.S. support.” The title kind of says it all, but it also explains how “U.S. support for the Saudi war effort… began during the Obama administration and has continued in fits and starts for seven years.” While in Syria, 12,000 children were killed or injured between 2012 and 2021; “that’s one child every eight hours.” And this is not even mentioning the bombing of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine, or that <b>15,000 children die every single day on our planet from starvation and preventable diseases</b>, even on Christmas. <br /><br />Where are the protests? The walkouts? The students and professors marching in lockstep? The freedom fighters on paragliders? The language police lined up to make sure no offensive words are used when describing dead and dying children? <b>Why are none of these arbiters of altruism divesting from purchasing devices and fucking Teslas to show their unwavering support for child slaves mining cobalt in the Congo?</b> Where are the proxy social justice warriors of all the continents and countries of the world where war and injustice and colonialism and slavery and starvation have taken root? Inexplicably, I don’t see or hear any of them. <br /><br />Must be a frat party tonight. ~ Matthew Parker<br /><br /><a href="https://voxpopulisphere.com/2024/01/23/matthew-j-parker-the-hamas-t-shirt-fan-club/">https://voxpopulisphere.com/2024/01/23/matthew-j-parker-the-hamas-t-shirt-fan-club/</a><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJgK01psT9rQbs76M0a5kOS7aeWQ-uWZvI_gyFvuVL7u4bWSm7JUv8oEP7tcnWKTE70_p_S2BqIQWj03MFJnOg9HGSx3RjXg64TzSVfX0wuIlIiX73qe6r9RpGfDj2GNqbwg2mzU3Og4Rp_5hvdUx4y-ZAj7CiGdwvQHzeYXwaMbV2tto58R40UgZVYP5l/s2020/hamas%20flag%20after%20Israeli%20airstrikes%20in%20Gaza%20City.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1346" data-original-width="2020" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJgK01psT9rQbs76M0a5kOS7aeWQ-uWZvI_gyFvuVL7u4bWSm7JUv8oEP7tcnWKTE70_p_S2BqIQWj03MFJnOg9HGSx3RjXg64TzSVfX0wuIlIiX73qe6r9RpGfDj2GNqbwg2mzU3Og4Rp_5hvdUx4y-ZAj7CiGdwvQHzeYXwaMbV2tto58R40UgZVYP5l/w400-h266/hamas%20flag%20after%20Israeli%20airstrikes%20in%20Gaza%20City.webp" width="400" /></a></span></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Hamas flag in the rubble of Gaza</i><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;">Mary: THE PERSISTENCE OF GENOCIDAL ANTISEMITISM<br /><br />The discussions on the pro-Hamas/pro-Palestinian demonstrators attempt to illuminate a troubling phenomenon. Key, for me, is that it involves excusing/accepting the horrific acts of the terrorists...why are the dead Palestinian children bemoaned so furiously when the children tortured and murdered on Oct 7 even produced some skepticism — (did they really behead babies? posing that question with an air of disbelief) even when the acts were filmed by the terrorists themselves. As the authors note, children are being starved and slaughtered in conflicts elsewhere, without the same, or any, outcry.<br /><br />To simply assume that the error in the "Hamas fan club" is lack of knowledge, historical and practical, is, I think, merely handing them an undeserved excuse for what is basically antisemitism. This is true especially when you consider their support for goals that ARE genocidal...to "finish" the Holocaust, to remove the state of Israel and eradicate Jews entirely...that slogan "from the river to the sea" made real.<br /><br />Also, there is no understanding of war itself. There are no rules in war, despite the assumption that there can be, that there are war crimes. Those who wish for "surgical strikes" seem unaware that those are rarely possible, that airborne weapons cannot make fine distinctions, and avoiding civilian casualties is even more impossible when the enemy is embedded in (or under) the civilian population. Even more impossible when military operations are concentrated deliberately under places like hospitals and schools.<br /><br />Witness what has recently been revealed: UN relief workers were acting with Hamas in the Oct 7 terrorist attack. This one fact reveals the nature of the situation. Also, I think any peace effort that allows Israel to exist, that allows Jews to exist, will be refused before it even starts. The terrorists, who are unmistakably in control, do not want a "Two State Solution” — putting one into effect would only mean the continuation of terrorist activity.<br /><br />It is telling to see that the "surgical strike" of Israeli soldiers entering a hospital in disguise to take out certain Hamas leaders, has been met with accusations of "war crime." So what, exactly, can Israel do when fighting this strategically embedded enemy? It seems any action will be condemned. The human empathy for the innocent victims of this war slams up against the adamant refusal of the terrorist ideology to allow for any truly humane solution. The general population, and all its children, are hostage to that terrible intent, useful to Hamas as cover and propaganda, more valuable dead than alive.<br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />Oriana: THE DOUBLE STANDARD<br /><br />If Israel happened to be just another third-world country, poor and militarily weak, there’d be pro-Israel marches. We’d have “Concerts for Israel” the way we had a Concert for Bangladesh. But Israel, surrounded by impoverished third-world countries, had the nerve to become prosperous, and a regional military power at that. They’ve developed the best desalinating plants, they’ve built modern cities, won Nobel Prizes, turned desert land into fields and orchards. The descendants of victims, they decided not to be victims — “never again.” <br /><br />Also, the non-Islamic Israelis got classified as white, even though that doesn’t actually apply to a significant percentage of Israel’s population. And being white is perhaps an even worse crime than being successful. Note, however, that it’s only after WW2 that Jews began to be regarded as white. Before then, their alien, Near-Eastern origin was emphasized. But no matter which aspects were singled out as reasons for their persecution, no mater what obstacles put in their way, the Jews managed to thrive and prosper. Give them the worst kind of land, and they’ll turn it into orchards and vineyards. Can such against-all-odds-success be forgiven? No. <br /><br />Maybe it’s seen as an unspoken rebuke to other ethnic groups, or maybe it’s just that anti-Semitism goes back thousands of years, so it’s seen as normal. But seeing people who claim to be progressive suddenly scapegoat Israel and deny it the empathy they claim to feel for the children in Gaza was an unpleasant surprise (I realize that I will be seen as naive, but I was truly surprised at the reaction to the barbarous atrocities of October 7). <br /><br />I know a Hispanic proverb that may apply here: “Mala hierba nunca muere” — Weeds never die. Neither does anti-Semitism. <br /><br /><br /><b>*</b></span></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>NICHOLAS KRISTOF: WHAT WE GET WRONG ABOUT ISRAEL AND GAZA<br /></b><br />~ With the bilateral slaughter in the Middle East unleashing poisons that are worsening hatred worldwide, let me outline what I see as three myths inflaming the debate:<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>The first myth is that in the conflict in the Middle East there is right on one side and wrong on the other </b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">(even if people disagree about which is which).<br /><br />Life isn’t that neat.<b> </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>The tragedy of the Middle East is that this is a clash of right versus right. </b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b><br />That does not excuse Hamas’s massacre and savagery or Israel’s leveling of entire <br />neighborhoods in Gaza, but </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>underlying the conflict are certain legitimate aspirations that deserve to be fulfilled.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /><b>Israelis deserve their country, forged by refugees in the shadow of the Holocaust, and they have built a high-tech economy that largely empowers women and respects gay people, while giving its Palestinian citizens more rights than most Arab nations give their citizens.</b> Israel’s courts, media freedom and civil society are models for the region, and <i><b>there is something of a double standard: Critics pounce on Israeli abuses while often ignoring prolonged brutality against Muslims from Yemen to Syria, Western Sahara to Xinjiang.</b></i><br /><br /><b>Likewise, Palestinians deserve a country, freedom and dignity — and they shouldn’t be subjected to collective punishment.</b> We’ve reached a searing milestone: In just five weeks of war, half of 1 percent of Gaza’s population has been killed. To put it in perspective, that’s more than the share of the American population that was killed in all of World War II — over the course of four years.<br /><br />A great majority of those killed have been women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-controlled Health Ministry, and <b><i>one gauge of the ferocity and indiscriminate nature of some airstrikes is that more than 100 United Nations staffers have been killed, which the U.N. says is more than in any conflict since its founding. Perhaps that’s because, as an Israeli military spokesman put it early in the conflict, “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.”</i><br /></b><br /><b>“We are normal people, trying to live,” an engineer in Gaza told me by phone. He despises Hamas and would like to see it removed from power, but he says that Hamas fighters are safe in tunnels while he and his children are the ones most at risk: “We’re the civilians paying the price.”</b><br /><br />Whichever side you are more inclined toward, remember that the other includes desperate human beings merely hoping that their children can live freely and thrive in their own nation.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>The second myth is that Palestinians can be put off indefinitely</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>, strung along by Israel, the United States and other countries</b>. That was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy, his way of avoiding a Palestinian state, and it worked for a time — the way a pressure cooker works, until it explodes.<br /><br />It’s difficult to know the counterfactual, <b>whether a Palestinian state would have been better for Israeli security. But Palestinian statelessness in retrospect has not made Israel safe,</b> and risks may increase if the Palestinian Authority collapses from corruption, ineffectiveness and lack of legitimacy.<br /><br />Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, said that one of the Hamas attackers on Oct. 7 was carrying instructions for releasing chemical weapons, and that’s a reminder of the risk that terrorism experts have worried about for years of extremist groups turning to biological and chemical agents.<br /><br />Israel has a right to feel anxious in any case, but I suspect that the best way to ensure its security may be not to defer Palestinian aspirations but to honor them with a two-state solution. This is not just a concession to Arabs but a pragmatic acknowledgment of Israel’s own interests — and the world’s.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>The third myth is found on both sides of the conflict and is approximately: It’s too bad we have to engage in this bloodshed, but the people on the other side understand only violence.<br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />I hear that from friends who support the war in Gaza and regard me as well-meaning but misguided, as a naif who fails to comprehend the sad reality that the only way to keep Israel safe is to pulverize Gaza and uproot Hamas at whatever human cost.<br /><br />Hamas indeed understands only violence, and it has been brutal to Israelis and Palestinians alike — but <b>Hamas and Palestinians are not the same, just as violent settlers in the West Bank do not represent all Israelis. </b>I’m all for surgical strikes against Hamas and I would be delighted if Israel managed to end extremism in Gaza. But so far, I’m afraid that the ferocity and lack of precision in Israel’s attack has fulfilled Hamas’s goal of escalating the Palestinian issue and changing the Middle East dynamic (and Hamas is indifferent to Palestinian casualties).<br /><br /><b>In that sense, Hamas may be winning.<br /></b><br />Five weeks into this war, <i><b>I don’t see evidence that Israel’s military has degraded Hamas in a significant way, but it has killed vast numbers of civilians, put the Palestinian struggle on top of the global agenda, dissipated the initial torrent of sympathy for Israel, prompted people around the globe to march for Palestine, distracted attention from kidnapped Israelis and ruptured any possibility soon of Israel’s normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia.</b></i><br /><br />My friend Roy Grow, an international relations specialist at Carleton College who died in 2013, used to say that <b>a crucial goal of terror organizations was getting the adversary to overreact.</b> He compared this to jujitsu, with terrorist organizations using their opponents’ weight against them — and that is what Hamas has done.<br /><br /><b>Each side has dehumanized the other, but people are complex and neither side is monolithic</b> — and remember that wars are not about populations but about people. These are people like Mohammed Alshannat, a doctoral student in Gaza, who has been sending desperate messages to friends who shared them with me; he agreed to allow me to publish them as a glimpse into Gazan life.<br /><br />“There was heavy bombing in our area,” he wrote in English in one message. “We run for our lives and I lost two of my children in the dark. Me and my wife stayed all night searching for them amidst hundreds of airstrikes. We miraculously survived an airstrike and found them fainted in the morning. Please pray for us. The situation is beyond description.”<br /><br />“I see death a hundred times a day,” he wrote another time. “We defecate in the open and my children defecate on themselves and there is no water to clean them.”<br /><br />If he survives the war, what will we Americans say to him and his children? How will we explain that we supplied bombs for this war, that we were complicit in his family’s terror and degradation?<br /><br />If there is a path forward toward peace — whether in two states or one state — it will begin with all of us moving beyond stereotypes. <i><b>Israelis are not the same as Netanyahu, and Palestinians are not the same as Hamas.</b></i><br /><br /><b>Seeking humanity in each side means demanding the release of Israeli hostages and calling out the dehumanization that leads people to pull down posters for kidnapped Israelis.</b> It also means renouncing what Netanyahu called “mighty vengeance” that transforms entire neighborhoods of Gaza into rubble, with bodies buried underneath.<br /><br /><b>I’m exasperated by people whose hearts bleed for only one side</b>, or who say about the toll on the other: “It’s tragic, but ….” No “buts.” <b>Unless you believe in human rights for Jews and for Palestinians, you don’t actually believe in human rights.<br /></b><br />If you weep only for Israeli children, or only for Palestinian children, you have a problem that goes beyond your tear ducts. Children on both sides have been slaughtered quite recklessly, and fixing this crisis starts with acknowledging a principle so basic that it shouldn’t need mentioning: All children’s lives have equal value, and good people come in all nationalities. ~<br /> </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfnkUiwuli2BOzFsHZS7MdF8pc79BmWen_b7oUn-UXedU1lrPJbqGnaaI9ghDirObQsY6dH3Ryadka8u1-7ax33uRUdU1UQns4ZCysyyC28UISobF6soIS-HPXMWumQS4VmnneTfuqm-MdTvH2A2q6ORHqfSMQSW2nAlzTRyeJW8136TGg7yaRid9seHH8/s976/gaza%20Jabalia%20refugee%20camp.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="976" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfnkUiwuli2BOzFsHZS7MdF8pc79BmWen_b7oUn-UXedU1lrPJbqGnaaI9ghDirObQsY6dH3Ryadka8u1-7ax33uRUdU1UQns4ZCysyyC28UISobF6soIS-HPXMWumQS4VmnneTfuqm-MdTvH2A2q6ORHqfSMQSW2nAlzTRyeJW8136TGg7yaRid9seHH8/w400-h225/gaza%20Jabalia%20refugee%20camp.webp" width="400" /></a></b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://voxpopulisphere.com/2023/11/18/nicholas-kristof-what-we-get-wrong-about-israel-and-gaza/">https://voxpopulisphere.com/2023/11/18/nicholas-kristof-what-we-get-wrong-about-israel-and-gaza/</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:<br /><br />Finally a voice of empathy and compassion for BOTH sides. <br /><br />The danger, as so often, lies in being inflexible. The poem below by Yehuda Amichai expresses well the barrenness of a frozen, unresolved conflict:<br /><br />THE PLACE WHERE WE ARE RIGHT<br /><br />From the place where we are right<br />Flowers will never grow<br />In the spring.<br /> <br />The place where we are right<br />Is hard and trampled<br />Like a yard.<br /> <br />But doubts and loves<br />Dig up the world<br />Like a mole, a plow.<br /><br />And a whisper will be heard in the place<br />Where the ruined<br />House once stood.<br /><br />~ Yehuda Amichai<br /><br />*<br /><b>RUSSIA’S LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH JAMES BOND<br /></b><br />~ On the morning of 29 May 1962, Commander James Bond crash-landed on to 200 million Soviet breakfast tables. But he wasn’t on a mission deep behind borscht lines. Instead, he was on show trial, ordered by the highest echelons of the Party. The USSR was at war with 007. <br /><br /><b>That day’s Izvestiya – the Party’s official newspaper – carried an extraordinary three-page denunciation of Dr No, the first Bond film, then filming in Jamaica. It reserved especial spite for Ian Fleming, the author of the Bond novels, thundering: “Who is interested in this rubbish?</b> [His] products enjoy great popularity with American propagandists [but they] are in a bad way if they need to have recourse to the help of an English free-booter – a retired spy who has turned mediocre writer.” <br /><br />It went on scoff at the film’s plot. Bond, it admitted, was “a great detective, who foils the Russians’ plans”, but his squeeze, “Honey Child” [sic], amused herself with “favorite hobby… collect[ing] seashells in the nude”. While Dr No’s glitzy trappings earned a stern Soviet stare: the picture was full of “hair standing on end, chilled spines, exotic dishes, subtle wines, luxurious beds and beautiful virgins”. <br /><br />Fleming took the notice in his stride. In fact, he asked his editors at Cape if the dust jacket of his new novel, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, could carry the damning review in full. It would have one addition – “Ouch! (I.F) [Ian Fleming]”<br /><br />The end of Bond’s tangle with Russia? Not a bit of it – after all, only in 2022, Ukraine’s spy agency released a list of 620 Russian agents active within European countries on Twitter. One listed their Skype address as “jamesbond007”, and went by the username “DB9”. <b>007’s relationship with Russia, then, is the spy’s most enduring – and strangest – in the history of his tangled romantic career</b>. And the Izvestiya editorial was just the start.<br /><br /><i><b>“The Soviets were very fearful [about Bond],” says James Fleming, Ian Fleming’s nephew, and author of Bond Behind the Iron Curtain. “It was the usual fear that an authoritarian state has of ideas that are outside of its control.” </b><br /></i><br />Like everything Izvestiya published, the editorial was approved by the Politburo. Its subtitle – ‘On the Other Side’ – suggests it was to be the first in a series of critiques damning the cultural output of the fevered Capitalist mindset. But no further broadsides were published; Bond, as usual, stood alone. <br /><br />Fleming explains: “They must have thought: ‘We can show how awful Capitalists are’. <b>Particularly in the 1960s, the Russians were quite a prudish nation, and here was Bond going off with a different woman every book, and sometimes more than one, and so they had no hesitation labeling [Bond] pornography.” </b><br /><br />Not that Fleming set out to offend the Soviets. On the contrary, he learnt Russian as part of his Foreign Office exams, and <b>he spent long periods in the USSR.</b> <b>As a journalist for The Times, he covered the Metro-Vickers show trials in 1933 – where Soviet authorities accused six British suspects of sabotaging their electricity supply – and returned in the late 1940s, after the end of the Second World War. </b><br /><br /><i><b>“His general attitude to Russia was very respectful,” says James Fleming. “He saw them as strong, intelligent, cunning – worthy opponents. He thought it was in the nature of the beast that Russia wouldn’t always be seen as the enemy, but certainly not as a friend. It was unique.”</b><br /></i><br />In the novels, Russia was the great threat lurking over the eastern horizon. <b>SMERSH, Bond’s nemesis in the early books, was a real-life Soviet counterintelligence agency.</b> A conjunction of two Russian words SMERt and SHpionam (Смерть Шпионам) – which means “death to spies” – it worked with blood-thirsty efficiency between 1941 and 1946, rooting out German spies on the eastern front. Officially, it was dissolved in May 1946 when its duties were transferred to the MGB (Russia’s Ministry of State Security); unofficially, as all inhabitants of Bondiana know, it carried on operating long afterwards, its networks burrowing deep into Allied operations across the globe. <br /><br />Few Russians, though, would have been aware of their fictional representation. While Western music – such as the Beatles’ first single Love Me Do, which was released the same day as Dr No – was available in pirated editions, novels and films were far dicier propositions for smugglers. <b>Towards the end of the Soviet Union, underground “kinos” surreptitiously screened western films, but literature was another matter.</b> <br /><br /><b>Only one samizdat copy of a Bond novel is known to exist; an error-strewn and laboriously typed-out version of Dr No, annotated with notes which suggest it was used to warn impressionable young apparatchiks of the beguiling danger it contained.</b> As one Soviet critic put it in Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper: “James Bond lives in a nightmarish world where laws are written at the point of a gun, where coercion and rape is considered valor, and murder is a funny trick.”<br /><br />But it wasn’t simply the novels’ themes that had the Soviets running scared. They had some very powerful readers, too. <b>In 1961, John F Kennedy was asked by Life magazine about his favorite books, one of which was From Russia With Love. This commendation persuaded Eon to rush into filming of Dr No. Kennedy asked for a special screening: he was shown a rough cut on November 20, 1963, the day before he left for Dallas. </b>It was the last film he ever saw.<br /><br /><b>Bond might even have inspired Kennedy during one of the darkest moments of the Cold War. Two weeks after Dr No was released, Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of Cuba, and commanded Castro to send back what nuclear missiles had already been installed on the island. He refused. The Soviets signaled their intentions to escalate. The world looked on the brink of nuclear war. <br /></b><br /><b>Yet charming, dapper and cool under pressure, Kennedy channelled his hero in negotiations with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and the crisis was defused. Dr Jaap Verheul, editor of The Cultural Life of James Bond, explains: “In a way, </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>both James Bond and John F Kennedy embodied a new, glamorous, and cosmopolitan masculinity in the wake of the Second World War – although this was arguably more the case in Sean Connery’s cinematic impersonation of 007 than in Fleming’s literary creation.”</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />The Soviet Union, though, was now wise to the power of Fleming’s creation. And so, alongside other denunciations of the films and novels, they attempted to launch a spy franchise to rival Bond. It didn’t go to plan.<br /><br />By the mid 1960s, things were looking up for Bulgarian novelist Andrei Gulyashki. A bookish, unassuming man, he was the editor of the literary journal Plamuk, and his series of novels featuring a studious, pipe-cradling detective, Avakoum Zahov, were selling well. But in 1965, he was tapped on the shoulder by the Bulgarian intelligence service: they wanted to kill Bond, and Gulyashi was the man to do it. <br /><br />Or rather his detective Zahov was. <b>Gulyashi sketched out a plot whereby Zahov would triumph against the British intelligence agent in a climatic struggle above a crevasse in Antarctica. Much like Conan Doyle’s Reichenbach Falls, the two would tussle above the drop before Bond would overreach a kick and giving “a long drawn-out scream” would plummet into “the snow-obscured bottomless depths”. </b><br /><br />To gather inspiration, Gulyashki was packed off to London. Keen to ensure he wasn’t swayed by the decadent enchantments of the West, the KGB provided funding – and a minder. No one, though, told the Bulgarian secret service, who promptly put their own tail on Gulyashki. So ensured a scene from a Tintin comic strip: one agent tailing another agent, tailing a hapless Bulgarian novelist as he tramped around literary London. <br /><br />There were further complications. </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>While anyone could write a book about “James Bond”, his signature “007” was copyrighted. </b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Ann Fleming, Ian’s widow, who controlled his estate, was immovable on this point: though initially sniffy about her husband’s potboilers, after the success of Dr No, she now saw them as her pension plan. </b>Gulyashki, then, was stumped. <b>Bond’s dramatic death at the hands of a USSR agent would have to occur in a book called Avakoum Zahov versus 07 – the missing “0” allowed Gulyashki to weasel past copyright laws. <br /></b><br />Finding a publisher was the next issue. Cassells expressed interest at first, but were warned off by Ann Fleming. In the end, the only Western publisher would dared pick it up was Script, a boutique imprint who otherwise trafficked in adult entertainment; their output, observed one reviewer, consisted largely of “male prostitutes, bored housewives and women in prison”. Copies of Avakoum Zahov versus 07 did not fly off the shelves. <br /><br />Yet as the Cold War hardened into geopolitical status quo, the Soviet Union began to lose their interest in Bond. For a start, <b>the film adaptations depoliticized Fleming’s novels, as though the producers realized the high stakes with which they were playing. The Soviet SMERSH became SPECTRE, an organization of international criminals; and the villains gradually morphed from Cold War ghouls to lonesome megalomaniacs. </b>This transnational villainy was captured well by the first villian, Dr No, in Connery's titular debut: “East, West, they are just points of the compass, each one as stupid as the other… Now they will both pay.” </span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieFWMp1041Pdgro2boR1NJOfBF4BRfes0QXC7kmPlycZ06T1czEYTF2Sg7PkIQEits1DwtDd-Iz41_BSlrbxQqPDsi_95lEruvEAU0bA6Q6KouviXxPmvSMPtr8JdoldwNYGogJGskI2QFET7s0h_5sDYDO7B4pK6IHKNnxD3O__jzsVJH9p4AQ5Nor3rF/s450/dr%20no%20sean-connery-south-african-poster-1962.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="300" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieFWMp1041Pdgro2boR1NJOfBF4BRfes0QXC7kmPlycZ06T1czEYTF2Sg7PkIQEits1DwtDd-Iz41_BSlrbxQqPDsi_95lEruvEAU0bA6Q6KouviXxPmvSMPtr8JdoldwNYGogJGskI2QFET7s0h_5sDYDO7B4pK6IHKNnxD3O__jzsVJH9p4AQ5Nor3rF/w266-h400/dr%20no%20sean-connery-south-african-poster-1962.jpg" width="266" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Moreover,<b> the Soviets at last had a credible answer to Bond. Teetotal, quiet and diligent, Max Otto von Stierlitz was closer to George Smiley than the gadabouting 007</b>. But the hero of Yulian Semyonov’s Seventeen Moments of Spring novels – a Soviet spy who infiltrates the Nazi secret service – was enormously popular in the USSR. This was especially the case when his exploits were adapted into a 17-part TV series, originally broadcast in the summer of 1973. <br /><br />In the avowedly secular state, <b>showings became moments of national communion: when Stierlitz was on, electricity demand surged and crime dropped. An estimated 80 million people watched the NKVD-SMERSH agent outfox his German pursuers, and prevent the nefarious Americans cooking up a secret peace deal with the Nazis. By contrast, 10.2 million caught Dr No when it was first broadcast on ITV in 1975. </b><br /><br /><b>So popular was Seventeen Moments of Spring that the Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev rescheduled committee meetings to avoid missing its annual airings</b>. And it was credited with a surge of applications to join the KGB – including by Vladimir Putin, who was 21 when it was first broadcast. This enthusiasm wasn’t surprising: the head of the KGB Yuri Andropov had a direct hand in its inception, believing that Russians needed a model Soviet citizen to aspire towards. And in the steely, calculating, but most of all, devotedly patriotic Stierlitz, they had their Bond.<br /><br /><b>There was one final twist in Bond’s longest affair. In 1996, GoldenEye became the definitive post-glasnost Bond – and marked the most dramatic shift in 007’s attitude to Russia since Dr No. </b>Brash, thunderous and glitzy, its pre-credits sequence features Pierce Brosnan’s Bond (in his first appearance as the character) literally dropping into the Soviet world as he infiltrates a Russian hydroelectric plant.<br /><br />But as the film begins proper, nearly a decade has passed, and Bond emerges into a technicolor post-USSR world. <b>To illustrate the change, the titles depict scantily-clad iconoclasts smashing statues of Lenin and Marx.</b> Designer Daniel Kleinman said: “Statues really were torn down, and <b>although it wasn’t literally girls in lingerie who caused icons to fall and the Soviet State to break up, in an analogous way perhaps it was, the Soviet people wanted what the west had, goods and glamor.”</b><br /><br />Director Martin Campbell went further to appeal to newly-liberated (and wealthy) audiences of the Russian Federation. <b>While set largely in Russia, the Russian state is not the enemy in GoldenEye.</b> Rather the film follows Bond’s efforts to retrieve Soviet satellite technology stolen by a rogue British agent. In accordance with Fleming’s worldview, the Russians are an ambiguous presence: not quite allies, but never outright foes – a duality embodied by the two (Russian) Bond girls in the film. Isabella Scorupco’s Natalya Simonova is his fragrant comrade-in-arms; Famke Jannsen, meanwhile, plays the femme fatale Xenia Onatopp, whose party trick is to squeeze the life out of men while making love. <br /><br />Despite these concessions, GoldenEye’s production wasn’t painless. The film’s climactic chase sequence, where Brosnan pilots a T54 tank through St Petersburg, ripping j-turns and smashing walls and traffic, was originally due to be filmed on location. But the Russian authorities were understandably reluctant to have a 42-ton armored vehicle tearing through the equivalent of Westminster. So, after months of negotiations, the sequence was eventually filmed on the backlot of Leavesden Studios in England. <br /><br />There were further troubles, too – members of the art department were threatened with deportation after the wife of Mayor Anatoly Sobchak accused them of vandalizing balustrades on the central Moika canal. The militia were called, and the panicked set-designers had to hastily explain they were in fact working on timber replicas. <br /><br />Despite these difficulties, <b>GoldenEye was swaggering success on both sides of the newly swished-aside Iron Curtain. Two months after it opened in the US, it premiered in Moscow. </b>The Central House of Cinema was draped in Bond iconography, and the street outside was lined with posters and images of its golden gun barrel. News crews from international and Russian state media filmed the event. Eon’s Russian gamble paid off: <b>GoldenEye became the highest-grossing film in the country in 1996. It was, says Verheul, “the first truly global Bond adventure at the ‘end of civilization’”</b>. <br /><br /><b>But what of Bond and Russia now? In No Time to Die, Daniel Craig’s Bond dies on the Russian Kurily islands while thwarting a Russian villain, Rami Malek’s Lyutsifer Safin – the only significant Russian character in Craig’s five films. A return to Cold War culture wars? Not quite: despite the Russian specificity of his backstory, Safin is yet another antagonist in a long line of placeless villains. </b><br /><br />His confused plan – a whizz-bang fandango of “nano-bots” and biological weaponry – owes little to geo-political reality (or storytelling sense). Of course, Craig’s swansong was completed long before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. (If not before his canary-in-a-coalmine incursions into the Donbas and Crimea). <b>Now, though, with columns of charred T54 tanks clogging the roads towards a European capital, how might the Bond franchise respond? <br /></b><br />As it stands, the war is too close, too awful, for Eon to rush anything into production. No Time to Die was a conscious pause; a wiping clean of the slate. But <b>surely the next Bond – </b>whoever he or she may be<b> – cannot avoid being enmeshed in this sudden, bloody end to the end of history?</b> With Bond 26, there is all to play for. “If I were Barbara Broccoli,” James Fleming says. “I would be rubbing my hands together.” <br /><br /><a href="https://getpocket.com/explore/item/inside-russia-s-love-hate-relationship-with-james-bond?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://getpocket.com/explore/item/inside-russia-s-love-hate-relationship-with-james-bond?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>RIVER OF POOP IN KAZAN</b></span><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUJfd2Ar1xAMpvyll_OstLmsuU5fmEbiGcNzOcq11ZLeatGHm6v5PWMeY-jdKqFVHujIPrNzcavW3YJ5M4FmzzUGmTk6KsVdQy5piNeCopTWGM2WPfdgyVO6QQYLeLxBG9g7fF-RJH-rmuZtz04aZOi_TiL521uC4tlcEVN94RirHkYEaVTMtznDbjkeHZ/s998/river%20of%20raw%20sewage%20in%20Kazan.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUJfd2Ar1xAMpvyll_OstLmsuU5fmEbiGcNzOcq11ZLeatGHm6v5PWMeY-jdKqFVHujIPrNzcavW3YJ5M4FmzzUGmTk6KsVdQy5piNeCopTWGM2WPfdgyVO6QQYLeLxBG9g7fF-RJH-rmuZtz04aZOi_TiL521uC4tlcEVN94RirHkYEaVTMtznDbjkeHZ/w241-h400/river%20of%20raw%20sewage%20in%20Kazan.jpg" width="241" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">River of Poop runs through the heart of Kazan, fifth largest city in Russia. Sewerage couldn’t deal with snow this winter, backed up and flooded the streets.<br /><br />Marat Hasnullin, construction tsar in the occupied territories in southern and eastern Ukraine, hails from Kazan but he’s too busy erecting Potemkin high-rises on the ruins and human bones of destroyed Mariyupol to worry too much about his hometown.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5JlG5b_IOU-5wfiJT0utok0XHCcmfDZMr4Hw73QeeLbNsKpb0UuOIJGnLQUErFb1Zg0mryQKK5A19JeywBPH880bQaVhjMquc6qJD2KqacDwhehpqNHVqGnz4wIUiYtrrdgNhnY_yXbNDviMFw2VULajG6nrK3EiEMhF8qAclgETon7aMT33LXL0opfcQ/s900/new%20highway%20Moscow%20Kazan%20January%2024.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5JlG5b_IOU-5wfiJT0utok0XHCcmfDZMr4Hw73QeeLbNsKpb0UuOIJGnLQUErFb1Zg0mryQKK5A19JeywBPH880bQaVhjMquc6qJD2KqacDwhehpqNHVqGnz4wIUiYtrrdgNhnY_yXbNDviMFw2VULajG6nrK3EiEMhF8qAclgETon7aMT33LXL0opfcQ/w268-h400/new%20highway%20Moscow%20Kazan%20January%2024.jpg" width="268" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>This is what the brand new highway inaugurated by Putin last year that runs from Moscow to Kazan looks like in January.</b> It’s part of China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.<br /><br /><b>How are Chinese overlords gonna haul plastic goods and electric cars to the EU via Russia’s road corridor when there is a shortage of gas stations and no snow removal services in winter and sewage gushes out of manholes?<br /></b><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>This is the main issue with this whole mega project — the Chinese gotta deal with developing countries where maintenance of infrastructure is often subpar.<br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><i><b>And what would be the contingency when a local dictator decides to spend all the allocated money on fighting collective west rather than maintaining roads and clearing snow from the highway?<br /><br />What the Chinese overlords with global ambitions gonna do when truck drivers and warehouse employees can’t access running water in the country with the largest freshwater reserves in the world?</b></i><br /><br />Water supply was turned off in Sevastopol, Crimea. Melted snow caused groundwater to rise and it got contaminated.<br /><br />There was a shutdown of the water purification system. People were sent home from work to have three days off. Schools and kindergartens were closed. People stood in a long line to get freshwater from a water truck.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Q1jXl4L9ZLZwRUq7TPHhhGWncbLr9TTgMvriKfDISAaFdZ5DCwLP-zOFnViyVa-3MtSAT_VBhKKKlS7U_CybsNsGRhC0wjrMV2BQGiXIyYrTiUc-6ZUq_xab8yXub1MWQccZIJOEhaJ3_OeWC-xINJPzZespl7w66VP4SRP2pea-W6oErXXRcIAFrBDQ/s602/water%20truck%20Russia.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="452" data-original-width="602" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Q1jXl4L9ZLZwRUq7TPHhhGWncbLr9TTgMvriKfDISAaFdZ5DCwLP-zOFnViyVa-3MtSAT_VBhKKKlS7U_CybsNsGRhC0wjrMV2BQGiXIyYrTiUc-6ZUq_xab8yXub1MWQccZIJOEhaJ3_OeWC-xINJPzZespl7w66VP4SRP2pea-W6oErXXRcIAFrBDQ/w400-h300/water%20truck%20Russia.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Water trucks that are normally seen in hot places like Pakistan and India have become a familiar fixture in the occupied Crimea.<br /></b><br />Russia doesn’t have technology to build desalination plant and instead of asking Israel to do it, decided instead to support their enemies, terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah. Alas, Hezbollah won’t build them a desalination plant but they can ship cocaine from Venezuela.<br />“My daughter is telling me: “Mom, change your apartment. This building is cursed!” This mom hasn’t had any heating in her apartment since last year.<br /><br />Rather than changing the president, whose re-election in March will surely guarantee drama and thrills compatible only with watching wet paint dry on the wall, she wants her to change the apartment!<br /><br />Moreover, <b>she thinks there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the local authorities who embezzle municipal funds and don’t bother to repair mains pipes</b>.<br /><br /><b>She believes it’s a supernatural phenomenon involving demons and possibly ghouls. This place is cursed, but local authorities are doing their best. Fighting demonic forces is no easy enterprise despite twenty new churches built in the area. </b>For example, authorities could have provided temporary accommodations to her mother but of course they won’t.<br /><br />The general issue is that snow is such a rarity in Russia that it caught officials in the municipal services off guard.<br /><br />They believed Western scientists and technocrats that due to global warming there won’t be a cold winter ever again.<br /><br />This was a convenient excuse not to upgrade heating infrastructure, water drainage, etc, and rather spend the funds on purchasing luxury apartments in sunny Dubai to prop up sheikhs’ real estate bubble. ~ Misha Firer, Quora<br /><br />Roni Bechtel:<br /><b>The majority of Russians have chosen to ignore the obvious reasons for their troubles which is the rampant corruption in their leaders.<br /></b></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcGI6Bxw7uczilWcCt01pr6XZuTH8BXWS2VDsUmHrSr98a7c7WAa6hxCLLV7kBzgni43mfpM0uwfkkpdsfz7UBnIgPI-awRunek8oUeDrDQPp9U68xUWJ26ZazCP8cQF985h9-sTjCNle6jsk7uM8XeGE0_8JpVMM-6XAi37VuGhRLgO-Gqx8waIJWd2dD/s602/russian%20culture%20ballerina%20ruins.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="397" data-original-width="602" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcGI6Bxw7uczilWcCt01pr6XZuTH8BXWS2VDsUmHrSr98a7c7WAa6hxCLLV7kBzgni43mfpM0uwfkkpdsfz7UBnIgPI-awRunek8oUeDrDQPp9U68xUWJ26ZazCP8cQF985h9-sTjCNle6jsk7uM8XeGE0_8JpVMM-6XAi37VuGhRLgO-Gqx8waIJWd2dD/w400-h264/russian%20culture%20ballerina%20ruins.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>RUSSIA IS NOT THE “THIRD ROME”<br /></b><br /><b>If you want to know what is wrong with Russian culture in a nutshell you have to look at how Gorbachev and Stalin are viewed. </b>Gorbachev was not perfect; he was naive, but he tried for something better, and he is vilified. Stalin is the second-greatest mass murderer in history. Included in his butcher bill are millions of Russians, yet he is a hero. Gorbachev was the most decent man to lead Russia since Czar Alexander II. There wasn't much competition. <br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>I think the biggest lie the Russians tell themselves is that they are tough, when really they are a nation of sheep who have repeatedly and willingly been led to slaughter.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> That is not a superpower I would brag about. <b>They have been brutalized by their own government forever so in turn they see nothing wrong in brutalizing innocence in other countries</b>. <b>They also have a vastly overrated opinion of themselves and think everybody wants what they have</b>. News flash, we don't. I can go out and buy a car both American made and maybe a dozen other countries. Russia can keep the Lada. ~ Tim Brennan. Quora<br /><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_GTkN_2pqSJiuQpTQYG-6mkuxaq2txnMZPEy7Uz_zcAs2FoBrOTd6QFQtnIcdMCULKWqkjSYpmG1iDrwyiN5WZmj7st1vDQwE_2__CPFJheaAyoLyg_Ez2If4z2aH8ZlQDurFQJYxSJ2u5xlDEFUyNt8C3PfLUYQNA4nWA3WpZ-gghIOG9RIArMCJtqCh/s290/lada%20buckling%20in.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="174" data-original-width="290" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_GTkN_2pqSJiuQpTQYG-6mkuxaq2txnMZPEy7Uz_zcAs2FoBrOTd6QFQtnIcdMCULKWqkjSYpmG1iDrwyiN5WZmj7st1vDQwE_2__CPFJheaAyoLyg_Ez2If4z2aH8ZlQDurFQJYxSJ2u5xlDEFUyNt8C3PfLUYQNA4nWA3WpZ-gghIOG9RIArMCJtqCh/w400-h240/lada%20buckling%20in.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>“RUSSIA’S POWER IS A SOAP BUBBLE”</b><br /><br />According to General Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine (GUR), Russia spends more on weapons and ammunition than it produces, thus seeking them from other countries.<br /><br /><b>North Korea is the largest supplier of weapons to Russia; without its assistance, Russia's situation would be catastrophic</b>, he said in an interview to The Financial Times.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Russia also has issues with the quality of the munitions and weapons it’s getting.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">"The entire legend of Russia's power is a soap bubble,” Budanov asserts.<br /><br /><b>Another problem that Russia faced is manpower. Kremlin is losing as many or more troops than it can recruit, says Budanov.<br /></b><br />GUR strikes on the enemy's rear annoy Western partners fearing a nuclear response, but "everything we've done, we will continue to do,” says Budanov.<br /><br />GUR and SBU (The Security Service of Ukraine) guerrilla operations intensified in recent weeks.<br /><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdXMzW44uZfJqcq1WExbL-sO9W-g6PO_V_A0qUDXYmthyQZyCJi37XgI6lxXG2S8ZmQOo-2sHb1nSXh68dZ-WEPtACM3GZ_oRxW2qe4tyHTPdqy0kQ26Vs_r2_bEJRF1l-M509VT9J44_TwAWSX2r_KlTP8fb-Yo6e1Pp44MMuv3GcNGmBo95DDBuSxMER/s600/OIL%20depot%20port%20of%20St%20Petersburg.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdXMzW44uZfJqcq1WExbL-sO9W-g6PO_V_A0qUDXYmthyQZyCJi37XgI6lxXG2S8ZmQOo-2sHb1nSXh68dZ-WEPtACM3GZ_oRxW2qe4tyHTPdqy0kQ26Vs_r2_bEJRF1l-M509VT9J44_TwAWSX2r_KlTP8fb-Yo6e1Pp44MMuv3GcNGmBo95DDBuSxMER/s320/OIL%20depot%20port%20of%20St%20Petersburg.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></span></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Oil depot in the port of St. Petersburg</i></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>There’s barely a day without some important Russian weapons-producing factory, oil depot or military barracks full of Russian soldiers being hit by drone strikes or put on fire by saboteurs.</b> GUR uses all options to cause damage to military goals on the territory of Russia and in Russia-controlled regions of Ukraine.<br /><br />Ukrainians managed to hit a gunpowder-making factory in Russia and an oil-distributing plant in the port of St. Petersburg — that’s 800 km into the Russian territory.<br /><i></i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX-9xBjVWTYNn_BV2_E9JdiE_nJjGxzq6YfeHtzgyoBKEvCXGq8S3Tvw9uk_0BOdDPWePIYkYWWNog2sJPn9qu-TVUQTFSIql5Inc0vVK2NyVO05doS4zMi-SUXmq1K8Zhw9ocOfi7JUY8rl9bhWZLc-fz7VEfb5GEZx5JHGl_itt7R9nzTUVzuszaKGCS/s602/oil%20depot%20in%20flames.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="514" data-original-width="602" height="341" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX-9xBjVWTYNn_BV2_E9JdiE_nJjGxzq6YfeHtzgyoBKEvCXGq8S3Tvw9uk_0BOdDPWePIYkYWWNog2sJPn9qu-TVUQTFSIql5Inc0vVK2NyVO05doS4zMi-SUXmq1K8Zhw9ocOfi7JUY8rl9bhWZLc-fz7VEfb5GEZx5JHGl_itt7R9nzTUVzuszaKGCS/w400-h341/oil%20depot%20in%20flames.jpg" width="400" /></a></i></span></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>oil depot in flames</i><br /><br />“Budanov and Ukrainian GUR are running rings around the Russians. They’re conducting effective net-centric guerrilla warfare with strategic effect,” says General Ben Hodges, former commander of the USA Army in Europe.<br /><br />Ukraine is rewriting the manual of modern warfare, brilliantly improvising and innovating.<br />But of course, it comes at cost. Budanov says it’s not going to be an easy year for Ukraine, but he is quietly confident: "I hope our success will surpass theirs.”<br /><br /><b>Interesting that no one predicts the end of the war in 2024. I always had the feeling that this war will end abruptly. Like the USSR did in December 1991.</b> ~ Elena Gold, Quora</span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqJK5U_NeHjrc4u7TvfCi1gRDP4riKV6OyJJEUIjy7ngw8rpqKbEhwYOBMvU2Wd9PMfWoRbPUBSB_UGR7fd0XCHFWc8TYzhhRz_n2tVlLbSM11IblEZSynVpOqJBvSGRCTT6o8Em6mZ6EgLQkpMMUF9RK3q0dkdFWuobNtWG_vHkFP3T5BEwHKrxkJR92Z/s1200/Moscow%20anti-Communist%20demonstration%201991.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="760" data-original-width="1200" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqJK5U_NeHjrc4u7TvfCi1gRDP4riKV6OyJJEUIjy7ngw8rpqKbEhwYOBMvU2Wd9PMfWoRbPUBSB_UGR7fd0XCHFWc8TYzhhRz_n2tVlLbSM11IblEZSynVpOqJBvSGRCTT6o8Em6mZ6EgLQkpMMUF9RK3q0dkdFWuobNtWG_vHkFP3T5BEwHKrxkJR92Z/w400-h254/Moscow%20anti-Communist%20demonstration%201991.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><i><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Anti-Communist demonstration, Moscow 1991</span></i><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Vernon McKenzie:<br />Unfortunately Russia does not appear quite civilized enough to benefit from something resembling the Marshall Plan, to drag them out of the Dark Ages. The corruption and the mafia protection-racket flavor of its institutions seems too entrenc<br />hed to succeed. Two decades and $2 trillion couldn’t civilize Afghanistan. I hope Russia could do better, but the odds are not good based on their past history. <b>I suspect China will be the saviors after the collapse, but rather than invade like the Golden Horde, they’ll just buy their way to full control. It’ll be a fire sale.</b><br /><br />Orel Valcour:<br /><br />Moscow is their showpiece. Go look at the neglect in Eastern Russia. <b>Moscow sucks the wealth from the east and leaves them in third world conditions. </b>If you`re homeless in Moscow, you get a ticket to Siberia.<br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6k4W4b0JgTcew7f7h6r345VgLeizqQZKpxgPgEs_D2z0AHyOtN9vHH6seQSDcahZds8u5dA0ncRTo0B4yRKBe1_HNXwa60DEdRY7ONY7Kjqj3_NVBAxALQQPCG3WwTk_JUmci1kB9685HY5WbviZe0AcX13P48ljdQASy2HdqdWd4H14S0Db0yDGM6rEt/s602/russia%20apartment%20blocs%20courtyard.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="602" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6k4W4b0JgTcew7f7h6r345VgLeizqQZKpxgPgEs_D2z0AHyOtN9vHH6seQSDcahZds8u5dA0ncRTo0B4yRKBe1_HNXwa60DEdRY7ONY7Kjqj3_NVBAxALQQPCG3WwTk_JUmci1kB9685HY5WbviZe0AcX13P48ljdQASy2HdqdWd4H14S0Db0yDGM6rEt/w400-h266/russia%20apartment%20blocs%20courtyard.jpg" width="400" /></a></div></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>The courtyard of a residential building</i></span><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br /><b>WHERE TRUMP GETS SUPPORT<br /></b><br />~ The evidence cuts strongly against the common view of the movement as driven by “lumpen” Rust Belt rage and economic despair in the country’s shrinking rural hinterland. Rather, the picture that emerges is one of greenfield <b>suburbs that are both fast growing and rapidly diversifying, where inequalities between relatively well-off white households and their non-white neighbors have been shrinking the most. Low voter turnout in these places has, in turn, helped to deliver large margins to Republican candidates.</b> These facts both help us to understand what is animating Trump’s most committed supporters and point the way to defeating Trumpism electorally.<br /><br /><b>Growing and diversifying exurbs</b></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In addition to being <b>considerably more suburban </b>than Democratic districts, as all Republican districts are, residents of objectors’ districts are nearly twice as likely as residents of other Republican districts to live in exurban “sparse suburban areas.” These are districts like Wisconsin’s 5th in the western suburbs of Milwaukee and North Carolina’s 9th, which runs from the southern suburbs of Charlotte to eastern Fayetteville (but does not include either city itself). The latter’s representative, Dan Bishop, authored that state’s infamous 2016 legislation prohibiting transgender individuals from using the gendered public facilities of their choice and preempting local minimum wage ordinances. He was also a signatory to the brief in support of Texas v. Pennsylvania, President Trump’s final direct appeal to the Supreme Court to forestall the certification of his loss.<br /><br /><b>These districts are also among the fastest-growing in the country. </b>On average, their population growth outpaced that in districts represented by Democrats and other Republicans over the last twenty years. </span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>And almost all of this growth has been among non-white groups, specifically Latinos and Asian Americans, resulting in a dramatic shift in the demographic composition of these districts.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Since they are, on average, younger, this growth in non-white residents has also meant age and race have become increasingly correlated. </b>Residents under the age of 18 are 3.6 times more likely to be Hispanic and 1.6 times more likely to be Black or Asian American than those over the age of 65. Debates over policies involving a transfer of resources between generational cohorts—Social Security and Medicare, public education, housing—have, therefore, also become even more polarized by race in these parts of the country.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In their work studying the Tea Party protests of the early 2010s, Vanessa Williamson of the Brookings Institution and Theda Skocpol of Harvard identified this nexus of racial and generational resentment as central to the ideology animating its white, middle-class activists. Gabriel Winant, historian at the University of Chicago, has also written about the ways that <b>the concentration of wealth among older Americans has helped enable the authoritarian right to stoke fears about youth-led political movements challenging their direct and indirect claims on younger Americans’ labor and income as employers, landlords, lenders, and pensioners.</b><br /><br />WHITE MIDDLE-CLASS STAGNATION<br /><br />Constituents of Republican objectors do tend to have lower levels of formal educational attainment than constituents in other districts. But this in no way flatters these representatives’ pretensions as spokespeople for the marginalized working class. </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Partisan polarization by education has risen dramatically over the last forty years</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>, but post-election surveys show tha</b>t<b> voters with higher incomes and greater wealth are still significantly more likely to support Republican candidates.</b> This correlation may have weakened slightly in the last two presidential elections, but national <b>exit polling from both 2016 and 2020 confirm that even with President Trump at the top of the ballot, the positive relationship between household income and Republican support persisted.</b><br /><br />One reason for persistent confusion on this point is the conflation of districts with voters. Republicans do tend to represent congressional districts with lower median incomes, but it does not follow that their base of support is therefore drawn from those places’ working-class residents. In fact, reconciling the fact of these districts’ lower incomes with national survey results suggests the very opposite: the Republican base is composed of the wealthiest voters residing in lower-income districts.<br /><br /><b>Using educational attainment as a proxy for class obscures the extent to which many white Americans without a four-year college degree receive relatively high incomes and own some wealth, primarily in residential real estate and pensions</b>. According to the Census’s 2019 American Community Survey, more than half of white Americans without a four-year degree have household incomes greater than $65,000 a year—roughly the national median income—and over 70 percent of them are homeowners. <b>White homeowners are also significantly less likely to have a college education in districts represented by Republicans than in those represented by Democrats.</b><br /><br />Since 2000, strong demand for housing due to relatively fast population growth has put upward pressure on housing prices in Republican objectors’ districts, shrinking the gap in home values between their districts and other Republican districts. One such case is Texas’s 17th, which snakes through the northern Austin suburbs to include Bryan-College Station and Waco. It saw median home values rise by an inflation-adjusted 3.3 percent a year (from $108,000 to $199,000 in constant 2019 dollars).<br /><br /><b>In Republican objectors’ districts, home ownership rates over the last twenty years were largely stable for white households, plummeted to less than half among Black households, rose modestly among Hispanic households, and rose considerably among Asian Americans.</b> The latter two groups have been the main beneficiaries of real estate appreciation in these districts and also saw the fastest household income growth over the same period. Low levels of home ownership among Black households is both the near-term legacy of the 2007–09 housing market crash and recession and the longer-term legacy of redlining and Jim Crow segregation. Virtually no progress has been made in the last fifty years in closing the Black-white wealth gap, the expansion of home ownership among Black households in the 1990s and 2000s having been fueled by fraudulent subprime mortgage lending that left them saddled with high debt burdens after housing prices collapsed.<br /><br /><b>While the home ownership rate among Latinos remains well below that for white households in Republican objectors’ districts, the gap in median home values between white and Latino homeowners in these places has nearly closed in the last twenty years. </b>This indicates strong housing price growth has largely benefited existing Latino homeowners rather than new buyers. <b>Latino homeowners in these districts are also on average more likely to identify as white and to have been born in the United States than Latinos residing in other parts of the country.</b> These facts perhaps go some way in explaining President Trump’s modest inroads among Latino voters in 2020.<br /><br />The story from the perspective of the bottom of the income distribution is similar. With the exception of indigenous and multi-racial residents, people of color in objectors’ districts have seen significant reductions in poverty since 2000. <b>Asian Americans, for example, are now no more likely to be in poverty than white families.</b> This suggests that income growth among Hispanic and Asian American households over this period also buoyed the very poorest among them. While the Black family poverty rate remains alarmingly high nationwide, only in objectors’ districts did median wages among Black workers grow faster than median wages among white workers. It was also in these districts that the average Black-white poverty gap shrank the most.<br /><br /><b>White homeowners’ perception of a loss of status relative to upwardly mobile Hispanic and Asian American households is the social context out of which emerged the nativist politics at the center of Trumpism.</b> Middle-class whites in Republican objectors’ districts are nevertheless considerably more likely to own their own home and receive higher incomes than any other racial group except Asian Americans. <b>It is whiteness itself that has lost salience as a signifier of social status and class, and it is to this status anxiety that Trumpism is addressed.</b><br /><br />White evangelical Christians have been integral to the Republican coalition since the 1980s and remain President Trump’s most unwavering base of support. In more than half of Republican objectors’ districts, evangelicals account for at least a fifth of constituents, making objectors far more likely to represent evangelicals in Congress than other Republicans or Democrats.<br /><br /><b>Public opinion surveys reveal just how much white evangelical Protestants stand apart in their politics. The Public Religion Research Institute’s 2020 American Values survey found that they are the only demographic-religious group among whom a majority expresses a preference for living in a country “made up of people who follow the Christian faith.”</b> Just over half believe “society punishes men just for acting like men,” and they are <b>the only group for whom abortion and terrorism rank in their top three most important issues</b>. <i><b>White evangelicals are also the least likely to agree that President Trump has encouraged white supremacist groups, though a majority of Americans overall do, and the most likely to claim that he “models religious values with his actions and leadership.”</b></i><br /><br />Even those who do not agree with this claim defend their support for Trump on the grounds that he is an “imperfect agent” of God’s will. <b>White evangelicals’ aversion to religious pluralism and providential view of the United States stands in stark contrast to the reality of a secularizing country where regular attendance of religious services is declining and younger Americans are less likely to identify as Christian.</b><br /><br />As for local economic activity, workers in Republican objectors’ districts are more likely to be employed in sectors of the economy Trump has routinely identified as most threatened by the political left—heavy manufacturing, and law enforcement. While the average share of workers employed in these industries is small, they loom large in regional economies dependent on them to provide relatively high-wage employment to workers without a four-year degree. In his analysis of the 2020 election, geographer and historian Mike Davis notes how <b>both large concentrations of workers employed in border security and the region’s expanding shale oil industry created new opportunities for Republicans to grow their vote share in south Texas’s Rio Grande valley.</b><br /><br />Moreover, though Trump has chosen to prioritize policies like environmental deregulation, the leasing and sale of public lands, and trade restrictions over a real full employment agenda—mainly to the benefit of owners and investors rather than rank-and-file workers—he has been able to burnish his support among workers in these sectors by simultaneously emphasizing the <b>potential threats posed to them by demands to decarbonize the economy</b>, prosecute police violence, and defund local and federal law enforcement agencies. <br /><br />President Trump’s incitement of his supporters to disrupt the electoral process by force is the <b>culmination of the Republican Party’s decade-long campaign to maintain minority rule by depressing political participation and diluting the vote of their political opponents. </b>Having secured control over governor’s mansions and both houses of state legislatures in twenty-three states, Republicans are once again positioned to ensure district boundaries maximize their representation in Congress for the next decade as well.<br /><br />Bleak as this prospect is, Democrats’ dual Senate victories in Georgia have vindicated a strategy of organizing and mobilizing a latent majority of voters who will reject Trumpism’s antidemocratic politics, even in a state where voter suppression efforts have been infamous. The fact that Republican objectors command some of the least popular support among their own constituents of any congressional elected officials in the country is both a testament to their effectiveness in entrenching their own power and the foundation on which we must ground our hopes for political change to end minority rule. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/jacob-whiton-where-sedition-rewarded/?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=840aa7d210-reading_list_1_21_2024&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-840aa7d210-40729829&mc_cid=840aa7d210">https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/jacob-whiton-where-sedition-rewarded/?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=840aa7d210-reading_list_1_21_2024&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-840aa7d210-40729829&mc_cid=840aa7d210<br /></a></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkbRbVSJxaGH4CUz2GMXTjHQnDq6-v21gH7VXDGdlKx4PI78BLA-0TtvE3eZnpxFUYAFHnz9UTwq4gO2PbiiK7uuTfoqseummsN6xkBzphzqRhdg-E2eZ0hPteqJi3lYagGu1EkW9vGxoZoOYxRMwOQc-eIoXucz8Wm9ybVXt9YKHA2kGSwCDNc3-REXME/s1140/pittsburgh%20PA.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="641" data-original-width="1140" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkbRbVSJxaGH4CUz2GMXTjHQnDq6-v21gH7VXDGdlKx4PI78BLA-0TtvE3eZnpxFUYAFHnz9UTwq4gO2PbiiK7uuTfoqseummsN6xkBzphzqRhdg-E2eZ0hPteqJi3lYagGu1EkW9vGxoZoOYxRMwOQc-eIoXucz8Wm9ybVXt9YKHA2kGSwCDNc3-REXME/w400-h225/pittsburgh%20PA.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>ALAN WATTS: THE SAGE AND THE MAN</b><br /><br />~ On <b>16 November 1973</b>, Joan Watts received a phone call that began in the worst possible way: ‘Are you sitting down?’ Her father, the English writer and philosopher Alan Watts, had died during the previous night, as a storm lashed his home in Marin County, California. <i><b>His heart had failed at the age of just 58. Watts’s third wife, Mary Jane Yates King or ‘Jano’, blamed his experiments with breathing techniques intended to achieve samadhi, or absorptive contemplation: he had left his body, she thought, without knowing how to come back. Joan took a different view. Her father had become lost in work and alcohol. He had finally ‘had enough’, she concluded, and had ‘checked out’.</b></i><br /><br /><b>It seems fitting that, even in the manner of his dying, Watts should divide opinion</b>. He frequently did so in life. Born in 1915, in Chislehurst in Kent, Watts moved to the United States with his first wife shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. Living first in New York, <b>he ended up making his home on the West Coast, where he joined the likes of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder as a leading light of the 1960s counterculture.<br /></b><br /><b>Countless young Americans heard Watts speak, on campuses and on the radio, extolling the wisdom of the East and informing them in wry, patrician English that the ideals into which their parents and teachers had indoctrinated them were, by comparison, empty. </b>Life did not have to be ‘about’ something or ‘going’ somewhere, any more than the point of playing or listening to a Bach prelude was to get to the end as quickly and efficiently as possible. One’s aim instead should be <b>to tackle the monstrous case of mistaken identity from which so many modern Westerners suffered</b>:<b> each believing themselves to be a small, anxious self when underneath lay a glorious greater Self, entirely at one with the rest of reality.</b><br /><br />To his detractors, Watts was an unlettered dilettante –<b> he lacked an undergraduate degree – guilty of peddling a mash-up of Zen, Taoism and Vedānta to the unwary, throwing in psychotherapy, psychedelics and quantum physics for good measure. He lacked moral seriousness, too, preferring forms of religion that emphasized insight over conduct as a path to the divine. </b>The result was a bleak contrast between Watts’s high talk of compassion and love and <b>a series of affairs that, combined with his low view of fatherhood – ‘mow the lawn, play baseball with the children’ – helped to destroy his family.</b><br /><br />The man himself gave as good as he got. Watts dismissed his academic critics as hopelessly out of touch with intellectual goings-on beyond the confines of their own institutions and networks. He wrote to the editors of Playboy magazine that:<br /><br />Under the cover of lusty and curvaceous chicks (of whom I approve), and of silly bunnies (of whom I disapprove), you have turned Playboy into the most important philosophical periodical in this country … by comparison, the Journal of the American Philosophical Society is pedantic, boring and irrelevant.<br /><br /><b>But if a life philosophy may be judged by its fruits, Watts had become a poor advert for his own ideas by the early 1970s. Desperate and drinking heavily, he was capable of remaining lucid at the lectern but was exposed when he drifted off to sleep during the Q&A</b> (devoted fans sometimes interpreted this as a silence wiser than words). And in the years after his death, several intellectual trends conspired to undermine much of what he had stood for. <br /><br />Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) helped to kickstart decades of academic criticism of the damage wrought when skewed and self-interested Western views of ‘the East’ pass into global circulation. <b>A year later, the equally influential social critic Christopher Lasch argued, in The Culture of Narcissism, that a vogue for ‘psychic self-improvement’ and ‘the wisdom of the East’ was a sign that Americans had given up on serious politics and social change, lapsing instead into self-indulgence</b>.<br /><br />Flares and campervans were soon being traded in for sensible alternatives, the aging hippie became a stock comic character, and parodies proliferated of Yoda’s gnomic utterances in Star Wars (which owed much to George Lucas’s interest in Asian and world mythologies). Any hint of personal convenience in a philosophy that draws elements from far afield was always going to render it vulnerable, at some point, to charges of ‘cultural appropriation’: a notion that feels prudish and incoherent when applied to the serving of sushi on US college campuses but which has force when <b>profound ideas and practices are taken and twisted without regard for those to whom they are sacred</b>.<br /><br />Those who treasured – and continue to treasure – Watts have felt equally strongly about the man and his legacies. <b>Here was someone who understood, in a visceral way as a young man, the terror of loneliness and lack of meaning.</b> With warmth, humor and an extraordinary gift for communicating complex ideas, <b>Watts had shown people that the wrongness they sensed in life was not built into the universe. It was the outcome of degraded modern ways of living</b>. The good news, as he preached it in person, in broadcasts and in his bestselling books, was that <b>this fearfully bleak situation could be cured</b>. There is no underestimating his posthumous ability to save or redeem lives, as Tim Lott revealed in his moving Aeon essay about Watts some years ago.</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>It is tempting to believe that the intellectual and cultural backlash against thinkers of the counterculture era like Watts has now peaked, and is being replaced by what the philosopher and cognitive scientist John Vervaeke calls the ‘meaning crisis’. </b>From wellness and yoni eggs through to<b> Jordan Peterson and a roster of new and often socially conservative Christian converts, we seem no less interested now than Watts in his day about how we might foster a society more in tune with natural and even cosmic realities. Watts himself remains an inspiration, enjoying a busy online afterlife thanks to the uploading of his talks as podcasts and YouTube videos. </b>His gift for the pithy one-liner turns out to be perfect for the age of X/Twitter and Instagram. And his books, like The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951), still enjoy the status of classics.<br /><br /><b>Given the somewhat unexpected role of Christianity in this new moment, the time has come to include Watts’s much underrated stint as an Episcopal priest in our assessment of him. His view of Christianity’s potential in the modern West, and his cautions about the ways in which it can go wrong, feel as relevant and psychologically astute now as ever.</b> As we negotiate religion in the 21st century, Watts can help us understand some of <b>its great tensions: between pride and grace, insight and morality, spiritual renewal and nostalgia for an idealized Christian society of the past.<br /></b><br />Watts’s experience of Christianity as a child was almost wholly negative. During his childhood in Chislehurst, he spent many a lonely night in bed, resisting sleep lest he die and find himself <b>in heaven or hell – as pictured in Victorian and Edwardian hymns and described in lessons at school. </b>Those hymns seem to have upset the young Watts, ill-equipped as he was to treat as anything other than very literal accounts of life after death phrases such as:<br /><br />How sweet to rest<br />For ever on my Savior’s breast.<br /><br />And:<br /><br />Prostrate before Thy throne to lie,<br />And gaze and gaze on Thee.<br /><br />Only after discovering and practicing Zen and yoga, thanks to a handful of friends and the bookshops of Camden Market in London, <b>did Watts begin to taste for himself what he later called the ‘supreme identity’.</b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b> In our imaginations, he argued, we are here while God or the good life is over there. </b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The journey from here to there, we are told, consists of some combination of earnest striving and good behavior. Drawing on Carl Jung, Zen, Taoism and Vedānta, Watts questioned the reality of this lonely, striving self. Let it go, he suggested, and you may glimpse a truer – supreme – identity that lies beneath it, and which the Upanishads capture in three words of Sanskrit: </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Tat tvam asi (‘You are that’). This deepest identity, a person’s soul or Self (ātman), is identical with the Absolute.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />Watts always insisted that one had to experience this truth directly, rather than merely consider it in the abstract, in order to derive any serious benefit. But when in the late 1930s and early ’40s he did find himself mulling these ideas, he felt something lacking. As he put it to one of his correspondents:<br /><br />~ <b>Yes, we are united with Reality, and cannot get away from it, but unless that Reality is in some profound sense absolutely good and beautiful, what is the use of bothering to think about it? </b>~ <br /><br />His love of East Asian art prompted similar questions. He was mesmerized by the ‘turn of a bird’s wing’ and ‘the kiss of the wind on a particular blade of grass’. Talk of artistry or refinement here was beside the point, he thought. The real question was this: <b>how does it come about that human beings possess so nuanced and profound a sense of significance in the natural world?</b><br /><br />Watts had tended, up until this point, to picture the Absolute rather hazily as an electric current. This now seemed inadequate to what he felt compelled to imagine and appreciate as a personal dimension to ultimate reality. <b>He was impressed to discover that some of the greatest thinkers in the Christian tradition had always conceived of God in this way: not as a being within the cosmos, but as the source of all, whose nature was ‘personal’ in the sense of being – in Watts’s words – ‘immeasurably alive’.</b><br /><br />For anyone who has seen or heard Watts at his best – courtesy, perhaps, of his podcast talks – <b>‘immeasurably alive’ is quite a good description of the man himself. </b>It is easy to see how a basic understanding of God in these terms might have resonated with him. Watts also had moments when <b>the sheer wonder of life around him made it feel as though it was not merely ‘there’, as brute fact, but was being poured out with extraordinary generosity. It seemed ‘given’, convincing Watts that there must be a giver and filling him with the desire to say ‘thank you’. </b>He found backing for all of this in the writings of the 14th-century German theologian Meister Eckhart and the 6th-century Greek author Pseudo-Dionysius the Areo pagite. It was there, too, in the ‘I-Thou’ thought of the modern Jewish philosopher Martin Buber.<br /><br /><b>A decade earlier, C S Lewis had completed his journey via Idealism and pantheism to theism</b>. He was far from alone: many in that era, and since, have found the borders between these views – or experiences – of life to be quite porous. In Watts’s case, there may well have been other reasons why he found himself a theist and decided to relocate his family to Evanston in Illinois so that he could train for the Episcopal priesthood at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary. It was, in part perhaps, an attempt to make himself at home in the Christian culture that surrounded him. Some have claimed that his ‘vocation’ was even an attempt to avoid the draft, as the war that he had left Britain to avoid threatened to swallow him up.<br /><br /><b>The Watts family arrived in Evanston in September 1941, and Watts began an almost </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>decade-long struggle with Christian ideas and practices</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>. </b>Realizing that the way people relate to God is shaped profoundly by how they grow up relating to other human beings, <b>Watts found himself questioning his desire to say thank you to some not-less-than-personal dimension of ultimate reality.</b> How straightforward was it, really, to separate out a ‘thank you’ born of wonderment and desire – which might, with luck, lead a person deeper into life’s mysteries – from a ‘thank you’ tinged with feelings of inferiority or a nagging need to please?</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPU0qrKnpqlffJlRbpLaKF80o6kIAVkTfwVqjUiElN4agJA6Kwdvxwh3M9yD2PBH-572oSVtnvu3oYGnWG_KNM5Hy5cCtIjlPdh2xWO-dW74HoOHchrUk_hErHxQXItZk_X4T4satro9ZJ6mKWcPdYjPi6Fk_jxurh1RbklooPDUyNfuqrPSfafNXWVBHz/s4785/alan%20watts%201964.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4785" data-original-width="3840" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPU0qrKnpqlffJlRbpLaKF80o6kIAVkTfwVqjUiElN4agJA6Kwdvxwh3M9yD2PBH-572oSVtnvu3oYGnWG_KNM5Hy5cCtIjlPdh2xWO-dW74HoOHchrUk_hErHxQXItZk_X4T4satro9ZJ6mKWcPdYjPi6Fk_jxurh1RbklooPDUyNfuqrPSfafNXWVBHz/w321-h400/alan%20watts%201964.webp" width="321" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Alan Watts, 1964</i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The answer became clear the moment that Watts stepped into a church. In Indian traditions, Shiva danced and Krishna played the flute. In the Episcopalian Christianity of his acquaintance, ‘thank you’ was offered up amid heavy wooden furniture that was reminiscent of a medieval monarch’s court or a modern courthouse. There was much talk of ‘grace’ in such places: God’s free, redeeming gift to humanity. <br /><br /><b>But few people brought up in competitive societies like the US found it plausible that something so wonderful was (or indeed ought to be) available free of charge, entirely unconnected to graft or station in life.</b> ‘Corny hymns’ like What a Friend We Have in Jesus suggested to Watts a fake, forced joy, eked out under the gaze of <b>a God who had constantly to be placated through assurances of his gloriousness </b>and implored ‘not to spank [us]’.<br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Watts’s experience of US Christianity was no doubt rather narrow, but
it was far from niche. And what he saw chimed with his broader sense
that much of modern Western culture was underpinned by <b>a sense of
needing to earn God, salvation or the good life. One detected this,
thought Watts, beyond purely Christian language, in the equation of
meaning with purpose. </b>The idea that meaning might actually be <b>more
closely related to play, and </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>that God might not just be a maker of plans
but also – in some meaningfully allegorical sense – a reveler, would
strike a great many Americans as blasphemous.</b></span></p>
<p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Watts set out to tackle these problems in books like Behold the Spirit (1947) and in his handling of Church services after his ordination and appointment, in 1944, as Episcopal chaplain at Northwestern University. <b>Some of these services were as High Church as he could make them, convinced as he was that the power of the liturgy lay in giving people a sense of the ‘sacred dance’ of the cosmos, eternally moved – as Dante Alighieri pictured it – by love. Other services were casual and intimate, blending conversation, piano improv, jokes, Gregorian chant, smoking and drinking.</b><br /><br />Both sorts of service honored a God who is ‘immeasurably alive’, but <b>over time the second, more bohemian sort began to feel truer for Watts.</b> Desire was a strong feature of his character – as a young man, he had been pleased to find that although ‘the Buddha had taken a dim view of wenching and boozing … he never called it sin’. Still a young-ish man while he was working as chaplain on a college campus, <b>he appears not to have been able to resist the potential for one-to-one counseling sessions with students to become intimate. In the end, an affair with a graduate student in mathematics, Dorothy DeWitt, helped to finish off both his marriage and his clerical career. Watts decided to jump before he was pushed.<br /></b><br />He had, in any case, <b>struggled to develop a clear idea of how God could be both the Absolute – the ‘ground of being’ as Eckhart put it – and capable of entering into a relationship with human beings. </b>To put it the other way around, how could human beings have their deepest identity in God and be separate enough from God that the idea of a ‘relationship’ could be intelligible?<br /><br />Here was a difficulty that had bedeviled Western interest in Asian and especially Indian thought for centuries. Samuel Taylor <b>Coleridge had fallen out of love with Indian Idealism when he began to suspect that it was little but a ‘painted Atheism’. For him, the value of nature and solitude lay – in part, at least – in their potential to lead people beyond themselves to the divine source of all.</b> The Idealism of Indian philosophers like Shankara (c8th century) came perilously close, in Coleridge’s understanding at least, to picturing nature as a giant conjuring trick or a veil with nothing behind it. As Coleridge put it in one of his poems:<br /><br />… If the breath <br />Be Life itself, and not its task and tent, <br />If even a soul like Milton’s can know death; <br />Oh Man! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant …<br /><br /><b>Watts tried to suggest that a truly all-inclusive God would not be bound by Western logic, with its insistence on mutually exclusive propositions</b>. <b>In Asia, argued Watts, one found not just ‘either-or’ forms of logic but ‘both-and’ forms, too</b>. This was not to say that every Christian must become an accomplished logician. It was a matter, thought Watts, of clergy being trained to do more than ‘go out and bang Bibles in the back woods among lumberjacks and hillbillies’. Like the best of their counterparts in Asia, they ought to be able not just to teach people but <b>to help them unlearn some of the habits of thought and feeling that were holding them back.</b><br /><br />In the end, Watts’s personal life helped to render such questions moot. He packed his bags and started life again on the West Coast. <b>For his critics, Watts’s moral failings undermined his idea of a ‘supreme identity’.</b> He had claimed that a person would naturally live a moral life when they had tasted the fruits of that true identity, since <b>so much immorality is the result of insecurity; an ultimately pointless compulsion to look after the interests of a small, mortal self. </b><br /><br />He had meanwhile objected to traditional moral codes that appeared to expect things to run the other way: do a, b, and c, and there’s a prize for you at the end. Look, his detractors could now say, where a philosophical prospectus that starts from vision rather than morality may take you.</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Watts never returned to a serious consideration of Christianity, placing his faith in Zen, Taoism, Hinduism, psychotherapy and good, eye-opening conversation. <br /></b><br /><b>And yet his period of struggle with Christianity went on to inform the work of countless Christian thinkers after his time, including the Franciscan priest and writer Richard Rohr.</b> It has much to say, too, to our own ‘meaning crisis’. <i><b>If we imagine the religious instinct as incorporating elements of need, desire and sense of obligation, Watts shows us how necessary – and yet how difficult – it is to hold these three things in balance or tension.</b></i><br /><br /><b>Allow obligation entirely to take the reins, and we risk what Frank Lake, a pioneer of clinical theology, described as a ‘hardening of the oughteries’.</b> For Watts, this revealed itself in people striving to be dutiful or to appear cheerful, or else sitting glumly in the pews when they might be dancing in the aisles. There is a caution, here, for strands of the renewed interest in Christianity that seem focused on battling non-Christian or ‘woke’ forms of thought and ways of living. ‘Cultural Christianity’ of this kind risks locating its beginnings and ends in mere conformity, with little of the joy or vision that one might expect if Christianity is in any meaningful sense ‘true’.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>If, on the other hand, need rules us, then we may stay or become Christians out of what Watts described as a collective nostalgia, or a clinging to the past. Again, it is hard not to see something of this in the contemporary mourning of Christianity’s decline by those who regard it primarily as a source of cultural identity – whether of the old church-bells-and-community-feeling sort or a newer and more combative kind, intended for call-up in the culture wars.<br /></b><br />What of desire? The pastor and writer Tim Keller, recently deceased, used to say that <b>if religious people don’t desire God, then the chances are that their faith is more about getting something from God – a distinction, he cautioned, which can be hard to discern.</b> Desire may all too easily stop short of its ultimate object, causing people like Watts the sorts of problems to which his critics enjoyed calling attention. <b>A better lesson from Watts’s life might be his honesty about the power of desire in general, and the need to include it – even integrate it – in any search for meaning.</b><br /><br />This is where, in retrospect, the inquisitorial style of the New Atheism fell short. By reducing religion to propositions, and testing the faithful on their scriptural knowledge – how can you be a Christian if Richard Dawkins quotes the Bible better than you do? – it made people doubt that emotions, intuitions and desires have any legitimate role in the religious life. Even now, our contemporary conversations about culture and religion often seem ruled by ‘oughts’ – intellectual, moral and political.<br /><br /><b>From Watts, we learn that desire may be the royal road to truly experiencing reality as gift, of the most recklessly generous kind. For all their differences in temperament, C S Lewis, too, found that desire was the key that unlocked life’s mysteries.</b> His autobiography, Surprised by Joy (1955), is the record of a journey from writing off desire as a feature of biology and psychology to discovering that it is etched into human nature as an invitation from God.<br /><br />Never having had a mentor on this point, Watts seems to have struggled with the art of discernment. And as the disappointed editor of his autobiography, In My Own Way (1972), could have told you, <b>he didn’t enjoy digging very deep into his own emotions and motivations. The ‘supreme identity’ was handy in this respect, since the small, everyday self could be dismissed as unworthy of much attention.</b><br /><br />But when has recognizing, exploring and ordering our desires ever been easy? In his writings, and in the contours of his eventful life, Watts has bequeathed us a passionate and persuasive advocate for the exploratory potential of desire. <b>Either everything is religious, or nothing is: this was his message, and it may be the only basis on which people will consider religion worth bothering with beyond the 2020s.</b> For those who try to live this way, holding that balance of need, desire and a sense of ‘ought’ – responsibility to others and to the divine – it may be no bad thing to have the spirit of Alan Watts hovering somewhere overhead.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJTGR4BSj2slzxZT5lrGGVHGD4YepUCo-sWOn_Wgju9TLD5FK0FO3qiBsegAp4qBAdVLB1QJSStsD7eUZfhoLNKeA5oCwY4SZx-nivVZOaBnzb22n4w7wV7QoS2_gZ-bpwETu0wgsi4Gdm4hL-Fv-JWmAeHpB2GCvlDhaofhf7QA9agSUoM-IZW-Fv5EkP/s720/Alan%20Watts%20meaning%20of%20life.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="601" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJTGR4BSj2slzxZT5lrGGVHGD4YepUCo-sWOn_Wgju9TLD5FK0FO3qiBsegAp4qBAdVLB1QJSStsD7eUZfhoLNKeA5oCwY4SZx-nivVZOaBnzb22n4w7wV7QoS2_gZ-bpwETu0wgsi4Gdm4hL-Fv-JWmAeHpB2GCvlDhaofhf7QA9agSUoM-IZW-Fv5EkP/w334-h400/Alan%20Watts%20meaning%20of%20life.jpg" width="334" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/how-alan-watts-re-imagined-religion-desire-and-life-itself?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=3d7e9a28b6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_01_26&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-b43a9ed933-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D">https://aeon.co/essays/how-alan-watts-re-imagined-religion-desire-and-life-itself?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=3d7e9a28b6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_01_26&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-b43a9ed933-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:<br /><br />It’s easy to dismiss Watts as someone who failed to be “saved” by his own philosophy: he was known as a womanizer and an alcoholic, and a heavy smoker as well; he died at 58. But was his Gospel to the Western seeker really rendered worthless by the personal flaws of the teacher? To me, it was his style that was made reading his works worthwhile — and style, as Nietzsche reminds us, is not separate from thinking. Watts never tired of praising Eros rather than Logos — again, like Nietzsche, but in a very different personal manner, trying to correct the West’s torturous relationship with both. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Watts would never say that God was dead, but would certainly agree that Western religion was dead — at least the kind preached in churches.</b> He wanted not the Judeo-Christian god of punishment, but <b>a god of joy</b>. He was a Dionysian, but with enough disciplined Logos to be able to lecture and write books. His message is two-fold: first, you are not an isolated individual, doomed to loneliness — we are all incredibly connected not only with other humans, but also with all of nature; secondly, trust your feelings. And that meant not only following your bliss, but also fully experiencing grief or whatever life might throw at us. Accept yourself as yet another incarnation of the unfinished divine seeking to expand its consciousness through your experiences; don’t live in denial of joy and emotional and sexual repression. Enjoy life. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And, barring extremes, don't offhand reject anyone. A large part of Alan's charisma, it seems to me, was his ability to come across as welcoming to anyone who'd listen. And if you listen, you become charmed; you chuckle softly to yourself,<b> a little happier for the experience of having listened to someone so accepting.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And it's not "Sinners Welcome." Seeing yourself as a sinner and endlessly calling yourself a sinner is not the proper approach to the divine. It's rather through identifying with the divine and rejoicing in it that we drop our self-obsession and are naturally inclined to be kind to others, who divinity we recognize and revere.<b><br /></b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Nothing new here, just the use of a different vocabulary, different examples. Mystical Christians who emphasize joy and Buddhists of various schools can walk and talk together, or sit together in silence, simply enjoying the moment. <br /><br />*<br /><b>THE UNKNOWN VERSUS THE MYSTERIOUS<br /></b><br />~ Freud was interested in what a particular dream, slip of the tongue, or object meant to an individual. For example, a young man once told Freud about a recurring dream, one involving a river and certain strange events. Freud reasoned that the symbols in the dream reflected that the young man was anxious of a particular possibility—becoming an unexpectant father. The young man did not see this link between the symbols in the dream and his own fears. Jung was interested in what symbols mean, not just to the individual, but to all humanity. According to Jung, these meanings could be inborn and stored in what he called “the collective unconscious.”<br /><br /><b>Thus, Freud and Jung attempted to illuminate what symbols mean to an individual (because of his or her life history) or to everyone (because of inborn knowledge or shared experiences).</b> To them, the mysteries of the mind concerned the deep, true meaning of mental events. Thinking of water actually means X, which is really not about water, and dreaming of falling really means Y, which is not really about falling. To them, one does X (e.g., a slip of the tongue) because of Y, which is not obviously related to the malapropism. One dreams of falling, because one is worried that one’s soccer team will be dropped to second division, for example. <br /><br />Regarding the brain, <b>Freud and Jung were interested primarily in “semantic” (meaning) processes, which are largely carried out by the medial temporal lobes.</b> It is important to circumscribe the kinds of processes in which they were interested. As in the anecdote above, <b>semantics are often associated with one’s desires and motivations.<br /></b><br />Of course, the popular press became interested in these insights, and of course, people at cocktail parties wanted to discuss the deep meaning of their own dreams and random thoughts. All symbols and thoughts held by one now became much more special. Regardless of the validity of the conclusions by Freud and Jung (many of which were controversial), it is important to note that <i><b>these mysteries concern semantics—that is, the meaning of things. And the meaning of things naturally varies to some extent across individuals. The sight of a piano means one thing to a frustrated musician; it means something else to a young child; and it means yet a different thing to a piano tuner. And the sight of certain colors might sadden someone who is a fan of a soccer team that wears those colors and that just lost a very close match.</b></i><br /><br />Freud, through various kinds of analyses, was trying to ascertain the deep meaning of dream images, actions, and out-of-the-blue thoughts for an individual. To find out the true meaning, one must know much about the individual, about his or her history. The conclusions about the meaning of a symbol might be correct or wrong, but in either case, the question was about the true, deep meaning of the symbol (e.g., the meaning of “the sun”).<br /><br />When an undergraduate student participates in one of my experiments, I do not know all the associations that he or she has toward, say, the image of a sun or a dog. For the latter, the image could be a generic line drawing of the dog. This would be the stimulus, and the activations in the temporal lobes in response to the stimulus would be the “semantic activation.” The participant might be a dog lover or could be a dog trainer or could be fearful of dogs, because of some past event that may or not be remembered (e.g., a dog barked at the participant when he or she was very little). Thus, to me, the experimenter, the meaning of “dog” to a particular participant is an unknown, at least to a consequential extent. To me, this is an unknown. However, <b>that a stimulus will activate mental associations and meanings is, at least conceptually, not a real mystery today in cognitive science.<br /></b><br /><b>It is true that much is unknown about the semantic process, certainly, but it is not a mystery in the sense that it is what the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn would call an “anomaly” in the current scientific approach</b>. There are plenty of neural network models, and other kinds of models, that explain how neurons in the temporal lobe reflecting “semantic representations”—the meaning of objects or words—can be activated by external stimuli and possess meanings that are peculiar to an individual. Freud and Jung were trying to crack the ‘mystery’ of what a particular thing meant to an individual (or humanity, in the case of Jung). This was their mystery about the mind. But this is not a deep mystery regarding how the mind works. <b>What is a deep mystery, and continues to be an “anomaly” in the current approach of the cognitive sciences is how neurons are capable of generating conscious states, the subjective experiences that you and I have every day, every waking moment—and in dreams. </b><br /><br />The neurons, each of which is unconscious, form networks that, somehow, create conscious experiences, be they of after-images, the smell of coffee, or ringing in the ears. The cardinal mystery regarding how the mind works is consciousness. It is important to note that Freud and Jung were trying to crack a different kind of “deep” puzzle. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/consciousness-and-the-brain/202401/the-unknown-vs-the-mysterious">https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/consciousness-and-the-brain/202401/the-unknown-vs-the-mysterious</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Of special significance here is the phenomenon of EMERGENCE. </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">"</span><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span class="hgKElc">Emergence <b>describes the distinct patterns and behaviors that can arise out of complex systems</b>." When only details are observed, the picture appears to be chaotic. Cells appear to generate random electric pulses, but when combined together with other seemingly chaotic cells, we get phenomena such as heart beat or neural activity. Or, to change imagery to more "macro," when birds start congregating in large and seemingly formless groups, we can expect the emergence of an orderly migration. </span></span></p><p><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span class="hgKElc">Now, it doesn't get us very far to say that the theories of chaos and emergence account for much of our physiological function. We can't even define consciousness to everyone's satisfaction, much less relate its quality to its physiological/bio-electric origins. But hopefully we are at least asking empirically verifiable questions. </span></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />*<br /><b>“FREUD’S LAST SESSION”: THEORY AND SUFFERING<br /></b><br />~ “Freud’s Last Session,” directed by Matthew Brown and starring Anthony Hopkins as Sigmund Freud and Matthew Goode as C.S. Lewis, is a period piece set in 1939 London, just as Britain is threatened by Nazi Germany. Based on a two-person stage play by Mark St. Germain, which won the 2011 Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best Play, it imagines a possible encounter between Freud and Lewis as humans and thinkers.<br /><br />The film sees them debating between reason and the existence of God, with the very real backdrop of war, suffering, and disconnections around them. It might be of keenest interest to those interested in psychoanalysis, Christian theology, or the lives of these two men. I liked the cinematography, which reminded me of moody Old Masters oil paintings, and I enjoyed the acting. <b>The film humanizes Freud and Lewis</b>, but also had me rolling my eyes and wincing at analytic concepts and techniques which are revered as gospel to this day.<br /><br />If you’re interested in Freud on film, you might want to also check out “A Dangerous Method” (my review in references), which portrays Freud and Jung. If you’re interested in the evolution of therapy, I highly recommend “Yalom’s Cure: A Guide to Happiness” available on Kanopy. I found Yalom’s approach most like my own, and in the film, <b>Yalom says his years of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic training were “a waste of time.”</b> Take that, Siggy!<br /><br /><b>Freud in this film, like the Freud in “A Dangerous Method” seems quite conscious of being and needing to be a “great man,” and perhaps favoring authority over humility, assertion over reception, certainty of theory over uncertainties in relatedness.</b> He’s rubbed elbows with Einstein, essentially founded an entire profession, and set in motion what has been called a “Copernican revolution” in psychology.<br /><br /><b>Analysis names important concepts</b>, like the unconscious, transference (which I prefer to think of as a transmission), and boundaries, <b>and is one route to naming, understanding, and validating difficult emotional states. </b>Freud and Freudian analysis have stalwarts, defenders, and detractors to this day. Janet Malcolm in her classic book Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession described intramural disputes in psychoanalysis in which those who differed with classic Freudian psychoanalytic theory were accused of having Oedipal complexes about Freud, and <b>long-running debates in analytic schools between relatedness and compassion versus distance and austerity.<br /></b><br />I am actually really glad I didn’t study analytic theory in depth before I started working with patients and entering my own therapy. I learned to think and feel for myself, rather than adhere to a “school.” People are different from theory, and I really find Freud’s “model” of human psychology and the classic psychoanalytic techniques he promoted often quite problematic and unhelpful. And yet, many trainees are turning to psychoanalytic education to do depth work, and look to analysis as the holy grail of the inner life.<br /><br />There have been important revisions in terms of cultural and “relational” analysis, and I’ve appreciated learning from analysts working with narcissism, borderline personality disorders, racism, colonialism, and even love. <b>I’ve met many fine, warm, collegial analysts, and I’m sure most are doing their best to help their patients. But my conclusion so far is that analysis, at best, is far better at deconstruction than reconstruction and repair.<br /></b><br />Analysis has made fine contributions to the understanding the origins of psychological suffering in early childhood experiences — but there’s a whole lot more to it than that, and not all analysts are prepared to go there. Some analysts operate from a critical and not compassionate perspective. Some analysts are quite narcissistic themselves and, not infrequently, they inhabit institutions where they promote being “right” rather than related. Some are more comfortable in their heads rather than their hearts.<br /><br /><b>Many analysts seem to favor an evocative and cerebral absence and abstinence, allowing patients to flounder, but perhaps also to explore their needs, belongings, fantasies, and wishes.</b> Some, like Orna Guralnik in Showtime’s “Couples Therapy” are adept at unearthing childhood trauma and, from a power position, creating the conditions for catharsis. (See my review of her show in references.) The 2023 Holmes Commission report (in references) revealed that analysts and analytic institutions have great difficulty dealing with racialized experiences, racism, and racial enactments. Freudian analysis and psychiatry famously failed to understand and pathologized homosexuality until the 1970s.<br /><br /><b>I favor relational cultural theory, whose central insight is that “suffering is a crisis in connection, and the opposite of suffering is belonging.” I’ve written that even affects (emotional experiences) need belonging – meaning validation, understanding, and comforting, even as the patient becomes more aware of their own inner life. </b>Patients often come to us with inherent self-worth and relatedness eroded, and need support and growth in these areas. <br /><br />Yet <b>analysis can become pathologizing, instead of humanizing.</b> Indeed, in the film Freud delivers cutting “analyses” off-the-cuff which seemed horribly cruel and unnecessary. After making a grand interpretation, he was fond of lighting a cigar in celebration. One of own mentors, Seymour Boorstein, was classically trained as an analyst, but he always told me "don't add insight to injury; instead of an insight, give them a crust of bread." He would also raise the ire of colleagues by <b>asking in case conferences, "do you like the patient?" He told me that he only later became brave enough to ask "do you love the patient? If you don't love your patient, then the therapy won't work."</b> His words were a reminder for me to work harder at loving and caring for my patients.<br /><br />Relational cultural theory, and compassion more broadly, recognize shared humanity, even in distressing states or variations in character and personality. But we know best what we treat. In fact, “we are who we treat!” And different people might benefit from different approaches. And most good depth therapists can modify their approach based on their patients’ needs. Most important is learning from our patients — retaining a “beginner’s mind” to see the world through their eyes and relating to them thoughtfully, compassionately, and knowledgeably; not as “problems to be solved,” or as completely separate individuals constructed only of their personal life history (a stereotypical analytic view), but people to be cherished in some way, who exist in a broader cultural and historical context, and who need us to be there for them. <b>As humans, we make each other special with our time and attention.<br /></b><br />Therapy and analysis deal with human suffering — and there’s a lot of it. <b>“Freud’s Last Session” gets most real and poignant where we see Freud dealing with his own pain and in need of aid from his daughter, doctors, pain medications, and even Lewis.</b> He is perhaps most helpful to Lewis when Lewis experiences a flashback of being in the trenches in WWI. He is really there for him. Anna Freud (Liv Lisa Fries) is pathologized for her love of her father, and her love of another woman. Freud seems to blame himself for her lesbian identity. Their fraught relationship of intimacy, power imbalance, confused relatedness, unmet needs, and disconnection speaks volumes about "what analysis hath wrought" so to speak.<br /><br />All these people lean on each other in a time when conflict and war threaten them all. And <b>perhaps Lewis’s God is a manifestation of his needs for order, values, meaning, and to be cared for, as Freud would have it </b>– <b>or an experience of awe and mysterious connections </b>that gave him faith and hope in trying personal and cultural times. In any case, Lewis lives between concrete and emotional reality, and his theory of God, and Freud lives between his theory of psychic suffering and actual relationships with other human beings. <b>In both men we see imperfect attempts to make sense of the world and the hope that, in making sense of it, we might somehow either tame suffering or inspire others to look more closely at it.<br /></b><br />Psychotherapy has advanced far beyond the reckonings of Freud. Neurobiology, social psychology, cultural psychology, as well as the science of mind offer great possibilities for the relief of suffering. But technology, human isolation, and profoundly interdependent global stimuli and crises make for a dangerous stew of possibilities. You don’t need to be an analyst to recognize <b>we need to affirm and cultivate our better angels of reason, compassion, and shared humanity </b>to transform our predicament to possibility, our suffering into belonging, our paths apart into reunion. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-pacific-heart/202401/freuds-last-session-theory-suffering-and-humanity">https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-pacific-heart/202401/freuds-last-session-theory-suffering-and-humanity<br /></a><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJxDQH8jdFaBwPWKTXOaOMERl8jaeqeTp2JpLlsJ-aiiQDsuOZdpRmfS_qTA8-HmVBvhzy8opLMhAUA3ji1wMdG6FzrAW2Dxkw3yNHwTLqaUrB4uttz-0M81B9qW3_0J-wuSeiWYxVDeb_sAdIJD1wVTTn7ru3JYNq6Azb2y5ycQ8gDIIb0uMOHBow0TSy/s1000/Freuds%20Last%20Session%20Hopkins.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="1000" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJxDQH8jdFaBwPWKTXOaOMERl8jaeqeTp2JpLlsJ-aiiQDsuOZdpRmfS_qTA8-HmVBvhzy8opLMhAUA3ji1wMdG6FzrAW2Dxkw3yNHwTLqaUrB4uttz-0M81B9qW3_0J-wuSeiWYxVDeb_sAdIJD1wVTTn7ru3JYNq6Azb2y5ycQ8gDIIb0uMOHBow0TSy/w400-h225/Freuds%20Last%20Session%20Hopkins.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:<br /><br />I was unable to see the movie, but managed to find the screenplay. I realize that it’s not the same as watching a master actor like Hopkins, but at least I read the dialogue, which helps grasp the arguments for and against the existence of a deity. A secondary matter is Freud’s dependence on the care provided by his youngest daughter, Anne, which disrupts her work. Of course Freud regards himself as Anne's priority. <br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Anne is also uncomfortable trying to conceal from her father her lesbian relationship with Dorothy Burlingham, an heiress to the Tiffany fortune. <b>Freud believed that male homosexuality was “harmless,” but female homosexuality threatened the social order: lesbians rejected any need for men. And women, Freud proclaimed, depend on men to guide them in matters of morality. (Only men acquire morality thanks to the fear of castration, Freud claimed </b></span><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">— yes, he really staked everything on sex.)</span></b><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Some years ago I went through a period of reading some of Freud’s books (he was a good writer, lucid and elegant) and well as books and articles about Freud. The latter always mentioned Anna’s devotion to her father and Freud’s worry that Anna was going to pay a steep personal price for that devotion. Yet none of those books or articles mentioned Anna’s homoeroticism. They skirted it by saying that Anna never married or had children — so yes, indeed she paid a price. But did she, if she was happily partnered with another woman, and enjoyed working with children? For whatever reason, that used to be a secret not all that long ago. Are happy lesbians still seen as such a threat to the established social order? </span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPrLB3m2bGQ9bpV7SpcFWmIFuXgJlnIRxO4Ti49EKiEL1fOOpvBr8cc-jLPa4X-Ck8TwgYXd76nqBHdsbf340_Wj59ClA_cFDBdMTQeyMHsKe184F0ih-aLRNsvoCC1-03SbF756x2TXii0R0xofbDumj9NWVyrnBeOHvrsF0rYRCzM-XWRV95-rcjHIxn/s600/Anna%20Freud%20older.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="450" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPrLB3m2bGQ9bpV7SpcFWmIFuXgJlnIRxO4Ti49EKiEL1fOOpvBr8cc-jLPa4X-Ck8TwgYXd76nqBHdsbf340_Wj59ClA_cFDBdMTQeyMHsKe184F0ih-aLRNsvoCC1-03SbF756x2TXii0R0xofbDumj9NWVyrnBeOHvrsF0rYRCzM-XWRV95-rcjHIxn/w300-h400/Anna%20Freud%20older.jpg" width="300" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><i><b>“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” </b></i>~ attributed to Winston Churchill.<br /><br />*<br /><br /><b>FAMILY ESTRAGEMENT: WHY ADULTS ARE CUTTING OFF THEIR PARENTS<br /></b><br />~ <b>Polarized politics and a growing awareness of how difficult relationships can impact our mental health are fueling family estrangement, say psychologists.<br /></b><br />It was a heated Skype conversation about race relations that led Scott to cut off all contact with his parents in 2019. His mother was angry he’d supported a civil rights activist on social media, he says; she said “a lot of really awful racist things”, while his seven-year-old son was in earshot.<br /><br />“There was very much a parental feeling like ‘you can’t say that in front of my child, that's not the way we're going to raise our kids’,” explains the father-of-two, who lives in Northern Europe. Scott says the final straw came when his father tried to defend his mother’s viewpoint in an email, which included a link to a white supremacist video. He was baffled his parents could not comprehend the reality of people being victimized because of their background, especially given his own family history. “‘This is insane – you're Jewish’, I said. ‘Many people in our family were killed in Auschwitz’.”<br /><br />It wasn’t the first time Scott had experienced a clash in values with his parents. But it was the last time he chose to see or speak to them.<br /><br /><b>Despite a lack of hard data, there is a growing perception among therapists, psychologists and sociologists that this kind of intentional parent-child ‘break-up’ is on the rise in western countries.</b><br /><br />Formally known as ‘estrangement’, experts’ definitions of the concept differ slightly, but the term is broadly used for <b>situations in which someone cuts off all communication with one or more relatives, a situation that continues for the long-term, even if those they’ve sought to split from try to re-establish a connection.<br /></b><br />“The declaration of ‘I am done’ with a family member is a powerful and distinct phenomenon,” explains Karl Andrew Pillemer, professor of human development at Cornell University. “It is different from family feuds, from high-conflict situations and from relationships that are emotionally distant but still include contact.”<br /><br />After realizing there were few major studies of family estrangement, he carried out a nationwide survey for his 2020 book Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them. <b>The survey showed more than one in four Americans reported being estranged from another relative.</b> Similar research for British estrangement charity Stand Alone suggests<b> the phenomenon affects one in five families in the UK</b>, while academic researchers and <b>therapists in Australia and Canada also say they’re witnessing a “silent epidemic” of family break-ups</b>.<br /><br />On social media, there’s been a boom in online support groups for adult children who’ve chosen to be estranged, including one Scott is involved in, which has thousands of members. “Our numbers in the group have been rising steadily,” he says. “I think it’s becoming more and more common.” <br /><br />The fact that estrangement between parents and their adult children seems to be on the rise – or at least is increasingly discussed – seems to be down to a complex web of cultural and psychological factors. And the trend raises plenty of questions about its impact on both individuals and society.<br /><br /><b><i>Past experiences and present values</i></b><br /><br />Although research is limited,<b> most break-ups between a parent and a grown-up child tend to be initiated by the child</b>, says Joshua Coleman, psychologist and author of The Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict. One of the most common reasons for this is <b>past or present abuse by the parent</b>, whether emotional, verbal, physical or sexual. <b>Divorce is another frequent influence, with consequences ranging from the adult child “taking sides”, to new people coming into the family such as stepsiblings or stepparents, which can fuel divisions over both “financial and emotional resources”. <br /></b><br /><b>Clashes in values</b> – as experienced by Scott and his parents – <b>are also increasingly thought to play a role</b>. A study published in October by Coleman and the University of Wisconsin, US, showed value-based disagreements were mentioned by more than one in three mothers of estranged children. Pillemer’s recent research has also highlighted <b>value differences as a “major factor” in estrangements, with conflicts resulting from “issues such as same sex-preference, religious differences or adopting alternative lifestyles”.</b><br /><br />Both experts believe at least part of the context for this is increased political and cultural polarization in recent years. In the US, an Ipsos poll reported <b>a rise in family rifts after the 2016 election, while research by academics at Stanford University in 2012 suggested a larger proportion of parents could be unhappy if their children married someone who supported a rival political party, which was far less true a decade earlier. </b><i><b>A recent UK study found that one in 10 people had fallen out with a relative over Brexit.</b></i> “These studies highlight the way that identity has become a far greater determinant of whom we choose to keep close or to let go,” says Coleman.<br /><br />Scott says he’s never discussed his voting preferences with his parents. But his decision to cut them off was partly influenced by his and his wife’s heightened awareness of social issues, including the Black Lives Matter movement and MeToo. He says other adult children in his online support group have fallen out due to value-based disagreements connected to the pandemic, from older parents refusing to get vaccinated to rows over conspiracy theories about the source of the virus.<br /><br /><b><i>The mental health factor</i></b><br /><br /><b>Experts believe our growing awareness of mental health, and how toxic or abusive family relationships can affect our wellbeing, is also impacting on estrangement.<br /></b><br />“While there’s nothing especially modern about family conflict or a desire to feel insulated from it, conceptualizing the estrangement of a family member as an expression of personal growth, as it is commonly done today, is almost certainly new,” says Coleman.<b> “Deciding which people to keep in or out of one’s life has become an important strategy.”</b><br /><br />Sam, who’s in her twenties and lives in the UK, says she grew up in a volatile household where both parents were heavy drinkers. She largely stopped speaking to her parents straight after leaving home for university, and says <b>she cut ties for good after witnessing her father verbally abusing her six-year-old cousin at a funeral.</b> Having therapy helped her recognize her own experiences as “more than just bad parenting” and process their psychological impact.<b> “I came to understand that ‘abuse’ and ‘neglect’ were words that described my childhood. Just because I wasn't hit didn't mean I wasn't harmed.”</b><br /><br />She agrees with Coleman it’s “becoming more socially acceptable” to cut ties with family members. <b>“Mental health is more talked about now so it’s easier to say, ‘These people are bad for my mental health’. I think, as well, people are getting more confident at drawing their own boundaries and saying ‘no’ to people.”</b><br /><br /><b><i>The rise of individualism </i></b><br /><br />Coleman argues our increased focus on personal well-being has happened in parallel with other wider trends, such as <b>a shift towards a more “individualistic culture”</b>. <b>Many of us are much less reliant on relatives than previous generations.</b><br /><br />“<b>Not needing a family member for support or because you plan to inherit the family farm means that who we choose to spend time with is based more on our identities and aspirations for growth than survival or necessity</b>,” he explains. <b>“Today, nothing ties an adult child to a parent beyond that adult child’s desire to have that relationship.”</b><br /><br /><b>Increased opportunities to live and work in different cities or even countries from our adult families can also help facilitate a parental break-up, simply by adding physical distance.</b></span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“It’s been much easier for me to move around than it would have been probably 20 years ago,” agrees Faizah, who is British with a South Asian background, and has avoided living in the same area as her family since 2014. <br /><br /><b>She says she cut ties with her parents because of “controlling” behaviors like preventing her from going to job interviews, wanting an influence on her friendships and putting pressure on her to get married straight after her studies. “They didn’t respect my boundaries,” she says. “I just want to have ownership over my own life and make my own choices.” <br /></b><br /><b><i>The impact of estrangement</i><br /></b><br /><i><b>There are strong positives for many estranged adult children who’ve detached themselves from what they believe are damaging parental relationships. “The research shows that the majority of adult children say it was for the best,” says Coleman.</b><br /></i><br />But <b>while improved mental health and perceived increased freedom are common outcomes of estrangement, Pillemer argues the decision can also create feelings of instability, humiliation and stress.</b><br /><br /><b>“The intentional, active severing of personal ties differs from other kinds of loss,” </b>he explains. “In addition, people lose the practical benefits of being part of a family: material support, for example, and the sense of belonging to a stable group of people who know one another well.” <br /><br />Feelings of loneliness and stigma seem to have been exacerbated for many estranged people during the pandemic. While the ‘Zoom boom’ enabled some families to feel closer and stay in touch more regularly, recent UK research suggests that adults with severed ties felt even more aware of missing out on family life during lockdown. Other studies point to <b>Christmas and religious festivals being especially challenging periods for estranged relatives</b>.<br /><br />“I have my own family and my partner and my close friends, but nothing replaces those traditions you have with your parents,” agrees Faizah. Now in her thirties, she still finds the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr particularly tricky, even though she’s distanced herself from her parents’ religion. “It’s so tough. It’s so lonely... and I do miss my mum’s cooking.”<br /><br />Choosing not to stay in touch with parents can have a knock-on effect on future family bonds and traditions, too. “For me, the biggest regret is my kids growing up without grandparents,” says Scott . “It’s preferable to [my parents] saying – gosh, I don’t know what – to them [but] I feel like my kids are missing out.”<br /><br />Of course, all of this also has an impact on the parents who have, often unwillingly, been cut out of their children’s – and potentially grandchildren’s – lives. <b>“Most parents are made miserable by it,” says Coleman. As well as losing their own footing in the traditional family unit, they typically “describe profound feelings of loss, shame and regret”.</b><br /><br />Scott says his mother recently tried calling him. But he texted her saying he’d only consider re-establishing contact with his children if she recognized her comments had been “horribly racist” and apologized. So far, he says she hasn’t done that. “Even if all those things happened, I would always limit what I tell them about my life and certainly supervise any visits with the kids. Unfortunately, I don’t see any of that happening.” <br /><br />Attempting to bridge rifts?<br /><br /><b>With political divisions center-stage in many nations, as well as increasing individualism in cultures around the world, many experts believe the parent-child ‘break-up’ trend will stick around.</b><br /><br />“My prediction is that it's either going to get worse or stay the same,” says Coleman. “Family relationships are going to be based much more on pursuing happiness and personal growth, and less on emphasizing duty, obligation or responsibility.”<br /><br />Pillemer argues that we shouldn’t rule out attempting to bridge rifts, however, particularly those stemming from opposing politics or values (as opposed to abusive or damaging behaviors). <br /><br />“If the prior relationship was relatively close (or at least not conflictual), I think there is evidence that many family members can restore the relationship. It does involve, however, <b>agreeing on a ‘demilitarized zone’ in which politics cannot be discussed</b>,” he says.<br /><br />For his book, he interviewed over 100 estranged people who had successfully reconciled, and found the process was actually framed by many as “an engine for personal growth”. “It is of course not for everyone, but for a number of people, bridging a rift, even if the relationship was imperfect, was a source of self-esteem and personal pride.” <br /><br />He argues that both more detailed longitudinal studies and clinical attention are needed to get the topic of estrangement further “out of the shadows and into the clear light of open discussion”. <b>“We need researchers to find better solutions — both for people who want to reconcile, and for help in coping with people in permanent estrangements.”<br /></b><br />Scott welcomes the growing interest in adult break-ups. “I think it will help lots of people,” he says. <b>“There is still a big stigma around estrangement. We see these questions in the group a lot: ‘What do you tell people?’ or ‘How do you bring it up when dating?"</b>.<br /><br />But he’s unlikely to reconcile with his own parents, unless they recognize they’ve been racist. <b>“The whole ‘blood is thicker than water’ — I mean, that's great if you have a cool family, but if you're saddled with toxic people, it's just not doable.”<br /></b><br /><a href="https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20211201-family-estrangement-why-adults-are-cutting-off-their-parents">https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20211201-family-estrangement-why-adults-are-cutting-off-their-parents<br /></a><br />Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Estrangement seems eminently solvable </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">— you may simply agree not to discuss certain subjects.</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Religion and politics are the two most common areas of family disagreement, and both are relatively easy to leave out from discussion. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In the past, family had a bigger weapon against dissenters and anyone who might be called a "black sheep" </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> disowning. If you were disowned, it wasn't just that wouldn't get your share of the inheritance. It was as if you were dead, but worse: your name was never mentioned, memories were revised to exclude you. You became a non-person </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">— and back then, the family was the most powerful social institution that existed. </span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br /><b>AFTER MY MOTHER DIED, I FOUND COMFORT IN A MEDIEVAL TALE FROM ANDALUSIA</b><br /><br />~ My mom died of cancer in November 2020 and, as clichéd as it may sound, not a day goes by that I do not think of her and miss her. Her death sparked in me a need to discuss death and grief. It is in talking about it, contemplating it, facing it, and inviting others to join me in these discussions, that I have been able to construct ways forward.<br /><br />While the specifics of my loss are mine, I know I am not alone in knowing grief. Perhaps many of you reading this also know its heaviness. As a medievalist and literary scholar, it is unsurprising that I find comfort in stories and the written word. <b>One text that particularly resonates with my reaction to grief is the Andalusi polymath Ibn Tufayl’s 12th-century philosophical tale, Hayy Ibn Yaqzān (‘Alive Son of Awake’). </b><br /><br />Among other details, it is an autodidactic story where <b>the protagonist contemplates his place within the universe. This self-guided journey is prompted by the death of the only mother he’s ever known, a gazelle who raised him from infancy. </b>It is this life-changing loss that prompts Hayy to explore the divide between the body and the soul – or the material and the nonmaterial. <b>He meditates on how the soul must be part of a larger creational energy uniting everything in nature, ultimately discovering ‘God’ without any revelatory text.</b><br /><br />In Hayy I saw aspects of myself: someone whose mother-loss prompted them to question existence and seek a way to support the weight. <b>This story doesn’t ‘solve’ grief</b>, nor should we want anything to do so, <b>but it does prompt questions and reflections that can help us lean into the discomfort. What can we do when we are forced to face death? Do we continue ignoring it or do we weave it into our understanding, possibly creating a more nuanced appreciation for both the fleetingness of life and its interconnected nature?</b> I find that it is this very activity that can arm us with the tools needed to continue living in a world that no longer physically holds our loved ones as we once knew them.<br /><br />Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzān circulated widely in North Africa and Iberia in its original Arabic until the 14th century when it was translated into Hebrew. By the 17th century, it was translated into Latin and English, and it has many modern editions today. Regardless of the language, the core message is that of <b>how, through introspection, without the intervention of social norms or religion, one can reach a mystical understanding of the cosmos. <br /></b><br />As a work, it is widely philosophical but especially powerful considering the protagonist’s connection with grief and love. Indeed, <b>Hayy’s desire to understand his role in the cosmos is triggered by the death of his gazelle-mother</b>. She raised him, and years later, upon seeing her lifeless body, he tries to fix her. He searches her body for a blockage yet sees no physical damage. He concludes that something is missing and that she ‘who had nursed him and showed him so much kindness could only be that being which had departed’ and that <b>her body was ‘simply a tool of this being’</b>. Her form changed.<br /><br />Her death opened his mind to conceiving existence beyond the material world and drove him to see the cyclical nature of energy in the ever-transforming world. In apprehending these patterns, Hayy came to the realization that ‘all physical things, despite the involvement of diversity in some respects, are one in reality’. If everything is one, then <b>nothing is lost, it is simply changed. </b>When applied to the death, this meant that those that died ‘have taken off one form and put on another’. This means that his mother, and by extension anyone, never truly dies in the sense of ceasing to exist, but rather takes on a new form, free from the constraints of any one material entity.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">For me, this type of conclusion was so very comforting. My loss stems from the shed material appearance of the energy that fueled my mom. I will always long for the form she once held, that way of being, but seeing the nonmaterial as part of the larger cosmic energy calms much of my anxiety. It’s not that she, as she was, is now floating about, but rather that <b>the energy that made her remains, even with the loss of her material form.</b><br /><br />While written in an Islamic context, a lot of what Hayy realizes through observation and contemplation mirrors many mystical, neo-Platonic, Sufi and hermetic ways of thinking. These different approaches share a common theme of unity. Indeed, Hayy is able to reach some of the same conclusions without any official doctrine. It is this universality that most captured my attention. One of his conclusions is that <b>everything is cosmically connected through energy, and that this unity is powered by love </b>– something reinforced in the introductory pages of the story. Indeed, many magical treatises of the time echo the power of love. <br /><br />This cyclical thesis can form part of more institutionalized modes of knowledge but is also inherently accessible to us without direct instruction through observation, as Hayy demonstrates. Within this line of thinking, the good news is that love, as something nonmaterial, remains. Moreover, the energy that fueled loved ones lingers as a part of the cosmos, just manifested differently. Everything is knit together. While the materiality of existence creates difference and individuality, there is a comfort in seeing the interconnection of all things.<br /><br />We don’t have to become wild mystics like Hayy and seclude ourselves to <b>benefit from recognizing the added layer of unity within difference. </b>In many modern societies, death, grief and loss are rarely discussed openly. In such situations, a disposition to consider the ways <b>nothing is really destroyed, but is rather transformed yet also interconnected</b>, can be very rare to encounter – in fact, something many never encounter – but it can also bring immense metaphysical comfort.<br /><br />Practically, what this framework does for me regarding my mom’s death is that it allows me to move forward with her in shifting how I understood what ‘her’ was. Now I am deviating slightly with a more secular approach to Hayy’s discoveries and Ibn Tufayl’s commentary on the ways of knowing ‘God’ or the universe, but I think that it is such contemplations and other pantheistic/panentheistic non-dual mentalities that are essential for embracing grief in a world that too often stifles such discussions as taboo. Just as in the case with Hayy, deep loss can trigger existential questions that have the potential to progressively drive forward conversations of death and grief, despite their relegation to the margins.<br /><br />As long as I identify with my individual material self, I will always long for mi mami’s physical presence as I knew it.<b> The cyclical nature of life and death, of the transformation of nonmaterial energies that give life to the material, helps me to see beyond my self, a picture of the cosmos really, that helps me slowly let go of the fear of death.</b> It’s still very much an endeavor in progress. Even a fleeting awareness of the temporality of it all helps me continue to see her in beautiful scenes of nature like sunrises, the Sun’s rays reflecting fall leaves as birds fly by, or the various stages of the Moon in the night sky. There is energy all around us and energy within us. Whether or not we’ve met grief yet, beginning to have these conversations can help us map a path we will all inevitably walk. ~</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWmbRrkeoYjQgQ8bQ2pT9uK7M10xvWhH7ze9vHxC9HmrPEORXYszqhwwRLDkYTGbIuu4iuO56ROrNeCMqa0_utK_WzphWk-R5_3aERyqZgiF6x8LhE8M4AdTKFCLrWckFDdQRinvPerYQoZXGkgJyrZvrJYNL0G-yGdisEXFTntWkhxLzE85L0vlXCZx7D/s777/autumn%202%20lane%20highway.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="406" data-original-width="777" height="334" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWmbRrkeoYjQgQ8bQ2pT9uK7M10xvWhH7ze9vHxC9HmrPEORXYszqhwwRLDkYTGbIuu4iuO56ROrNeCMqa0_utK_WzphWk-R5_3aERyqZgiF6x8LhE8M4AdTKFCLrWckFDdQRinvPerYQoZXGkgJyrZvrJYNL0G-yGdisEXFTntWkhxLzE85L0vlXCZx7D/w640-h334/autumn%202%20lane%20highway.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/after-mom-died-i-found-great-comfort-in-a-medieval-andalusian-tale?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=b1ab7f2d30-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_01_26&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-a9a3bdf830-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D">https://psyche.co/ideas/after-mom-died-i-found-great-comfort-in-a-medieval-andalusian-tale?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=b1ab7f2d30-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_01_26&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-a9a3bdf830-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D<br /></a></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br /><b>THE “LIVING SKIN” OF TINY PLANTS PROTECTS THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA<br /></b><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr6wbU9DN9N1LHsNeMYBGJXWnOHcwsRNfBOeoKL2cfeB-LESRzJThttbbODoHUlpub5d77jkGW_ZBoFIWqeBZS9lh40bLcxRP1fYo8FWN9DAcezftkByHMGBO8sS0YS6qKB-oDgbT3VRmSyPZ48REqnMvrWk-ddMyyUxh9PxbPhLzjpiyno6-kjIGuPtW7/s1160/PLANTS%20biocrust%20on%20great%20wall%20of%20china.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="653" data-original-width="1160" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr6wbU9DN9N1LHsNeMYBGJXWnOHcwsRNfBOeoKL2cfeB-LESRzJThttbbODoHUlpub5d77jkGW_ZBoFIWqeBZS9lh40bLcxRP1fYo8FWN9DAcezftkByHMGBO8sS0YS6qKB-oDgbT3VRmSyPZ48REqnMvrWk-ddMyyUxh9PxbPhLzjpiyno6-kjIGuPtW7/w400-h225/PLANTS%20biocrust%20on%20great%20wall%20of%20china.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Rammed earth portions of the Great Wall of China — built by compressing natural materials with soils — have been regarded as a weak point in its structure. But these swaths of the iconic landmark developed a natural line of defense against the looming risk of deterioration, a new study has found.</b></i><br /><br />These soil surfaces on the Great Wall are covered by a “living skin” of tiny, rootless plants and microorganisms known as biocrusts that are a source of the heritage site’s staying power, according to soil ecologist Matthew Bowker, a coauthor of the study published December 8 in the journal Science Advances.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“(Biocrusts) are common throughout the world on soils of dry regions, but we don’t typically look for them on human-built structures,” said Bowker, an associate professor at Northern Arizona University, in an email.<br /><br />Past studies have found lichen and moss biocrusts to be a destructive threat to modern heritage stone structures due to the microbial communities’ long-term impacts on aesthetic value, production of acid and other metabolites, and alteration of microenvironments, which may cause erosion and rock weathering. Those findings have led to the removal of plants growing on the top of parts of the Great Wall. <b>But the effects of biocrusts look different for earthen landmarks, and communities of cyanobacteria and moss actually increase the Great Wall’s stability and improve its resistance to erosion</b>, according to the new paper.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhefOL0O-ok8GjTnuQ1IwwsCkiAmsTefNhkeO6lBUtXKnE1ItkrthCnv-pLFfQxGlV1hFCZLoKpHgSUTBh3s60BdYpcuKJ8IX3ppScHw7kXFvurfYgEGQKEBAmyIL87jrCWwkfBSCrpzCsbvbH-hEUNo315LQ_OF9-CLy6ONOpJ40ZBPpkrRVpErfdWT5an/s1110/lichen%20on%20Great%20Wall%20of%20China.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="832" data-original-width="1110" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhefOL0O-ok8GjTnuQ1IwwsCkiAmsTefNhkeO6lBUtXKnE1ItkrthCnv-pLFfQxGlV1hFCZLoKpHgSUTBh3s60BdYpcuKJ8IX3ppScHw7kXFvurfYgEGQKEBAmyIL87jrCWwkfBSCrpzCsbvbH-hEUNo315LQ_OF9-CLy6ONOpJ40ZBPpkrRVpErfdWT5an/w400-h300/lichen%20on%20Great%20Wall%20of%20China.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Examining samples taken from over 300 miles (483 kilometers) across eight rammed earth sections of the site built during the Ming Dynasty between 1368 and 1644, </b>the study authors found that <b>more than two-thirds of the area is covered in biocrusts. </b>When the researchers compared the stability and strength of samples layered in biocrust with samples sans “Earth’s living skin,” they discovered that <b>samples with biocrusts were as much as three times stronger than those without.</b></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“They thought this kind of vegetation was destroying the Great Wall. Our results show the contrary,” said study coauthor Bo Xiao, a professor of soil science at China Agricultural University. <b>“Biocrusts are very widespread on the Great Wall and their existence is very beneficial to the protection of it.”</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">LIKE A BLANKET</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Made up of components such as cyanobacteria, algae, moss, fungi and lichen, biocrusts dwell on the topsoil of drylands. </b>Covering an estimated 12% of the planet’s surface, the communities of tiny plants and microorganisms can take decades, or longer, to develop. <b>Forming miniature ecosystems, biocrusts stabilize soil, increase water retention, and regulate nitrogen and carbon fixation.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">They are able to do so partly thanks to a dense biomass, which acts as an “anti-infiltration layer” for soil pores under the right conditions, as well as a natural absorption of nutrients that promote salt damage. <b>The secretions and structural layers of biocrusts also intertwine to form a “sticky network” of aggregating soil particles that promote strength and stability against corrosive forces threatening the Great Wall</b>, according to the new study.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Climatic conditions, the type of structure and type of biocrust all play a role in a biocrust’s protective function, with its reduction of erodibility “much greater” than its risk of weathering, the researchers found.<br /><br /><b>Compared with bare rammed earth, the cyanobacteria, moss and lichen biocrust-covered sections of the Great Wall exhibited reduced porosity, water-holding capacity, erodibility and salinity by up to 48%, while increasing compressive strength, penetration resistance, shear strength and aggregate stability by up to 321%. Of the bunch, the moss biocrusts were found to be the most stable.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“(Biocrusts) cover the Great Wall like a blanket that separates the Great Wall from air, from water, from wind,” Xiao said.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Working to keep water out and prevent salt buildup, the biocrusts resist chemical weathering, </b>he noted,<b> producing substances that act as a “glue” for soil particles to bind together against dispersion, making soil properties stronger.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Most of the communities that make up a biocrust start from a single organism that grows and makes the environments it grows within suitable for others. Although they are still vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, these constantly evolving organisms are expected to deploy internal mechanisms to adapt to future extremes, said Emmanuel Salifu, an assistant professor at Arizona State University who studies nature-based solutions for sustainable engineering.<br /><br />That inherent adaptability makes biocrusts great contenders for nature-based interventions to address structural conservation in our warming world, said Salifu, who was not involved with the new study.<br /><br />“Even if we have warmer temperatures, they are already suited to performing in those conditions,” he said.<b> “We hypothesize that they will be better able to survive if we engineer their growth at scale.”</b><br /><br />Wind erosion, rainfall scouring, salinization and freeze-thaw cycles have led to cracking and disintegration across the thousands of miles of structures that link together the Great Wall, which is at risk of severe deterioration and vulnerable to collapse. Rising temperatures and increasing rainfall could also result in a reduction of the wall’s biocrust cover.<br /><br /><b>Still, the wider construction industry remains divided over the historic conservation potential of biocrusts</b>, according to Salifu.<br /><br />“The conventional idea is that biological growth is not great for structures. It affects the aesthetics, it leads to degradation, affects the overall structural integrity,” he said. However, there is a lack of concrete research that supports those conclusions, Salifu added, noting that “the jury is still out on that.”<br /><br /><b>Salifu sees the new study as evidence of the potential advantages to engineering biocrusts for the conservation of earthen heritage sites — though that is still an emerging field. The research establishes that the natural communities of plants and microorganisms “have the capacity to improve the structural integrity, longevity and durability of earthen structures like the Great Wall of China,” Salifu said.</b><br /><br />The paper “goes a long way in further pushing the hand on the clock in bringing the industry closer to where we might be able to start thinking about (engineering biocrusts),” he noted.<br />The study’s authors also say their work makes a case for exploring the possibility of cultivating biocrusts for preservation of other rammed earth heritage sites worldwide.<br /><br /><b>Beyond its status as a tourist destination that draws millions of visitors each year, the Great Wall has great cultural relevance, which is why the biocrusts preserving it are so significant, Xiao said.</b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQo5T-Zv53YzM6CoscNH6r0kmcq0MwFGgQlSTOIzHFFSe0eOfIrDt-V0kfYdT8kMB-inJ7uNsAO4EE2A5m7Ad5-kXy_6dXe1sfFuyq7Cr5Spxpln_Oxq83038KkL573vCkxxQvrdPeaYjaAW8z1lSmLSx2weaZL4Ma2j1f3Q3iqLAEiRVlubgPzk5fnBCg/s4288/great%20wall%20of%20china%20green.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2848" data-original-width="4288" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQo5T-Zv53YzM6CoscNH6r0kmcq0MwFGgQlSTOIzHFFSe0eOfIrDt-V0kfYdT8kMB-inJ7uNsAO4EE2A5m7Ad5-kXy_6dXe1sfFuyq7Cr5Spxpln_Oxq83038KkL573vCkxxQvrdPeaYjaAW8z1lSmLSx2weaZL4Ma2j1f3Q3iqLAEiRVlubgPzk5fnBCg/w400-h266/great%20wall%20of%20china%20green.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“The Great Wall is the cultural center of Chinese civilization,” he told CNN. “We should do our best to protect it for our next generations. For our children, for our grandchildren.”<br /><br /><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/04/world/great-wall-biocrusts-strength-living-skin-scn">https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/04/world/great-wall-biocrusts-strength-living-skin-scn<br /><br /></a></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Note: </span><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span class="hgKElc">The total length of all sections of the Great Wall of China ever built adds up to about <b>21,196 kilometers (13,171 miles)</b>,
including overlapping sections that were rebuilt. The wall constructed
during the Ming dynasty, the most well-preserved section, is about 8,850
kilometers (5,499 miles) long.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>BREASTMILK CONTAINS A MOLECULE THAT HELPS TO ENHANCE BRAIN CONNECTIVITY</b><br /><br />A new study published in July 2023 found that a sugar molecule that is a component of breastmilk called <b>myo-inositol is important in enhancing brain connectivity. </b>The researchers studied breastmilk samples from mothers in very different locations (Cincinnati, Mexico City, and Shanghai) to make sure that they were identifying a substance that was universal to breastmilk (that is, not dependent on diet, race, or location). <b> </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Myo-inositol is present in the highest concentrations in early breastfeeding (during the first months of life) and gradually decreases over the first year (however, it is still found in breast milk at 12 months)</b>. See the graph below for the concentrations of myo-inositol over the first year of life. The researchers found that putting this molecule with neurons (translation: brain cells) increased connectivity among these cells.<br /><br />Although we don’t necessarily know that this molecule makes brains more efficient or more intelligent in any way—only that it increases connectivity, this study suggests three important lessons about breastmilk: </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">1) Breastmilk is likely more than just sustenance and calories for an infant but may provide micronutrients that are involved in brain development, </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">2) breastmilk may have the same benefits regardless of diet—the researchers found that the concentration of myo-inositol was the same regardless of a mother’s location or diet, </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">3) <b>breastmilk adapts to the baby’s needs over the course of development—this molecule is produced in the highest concentration when the baby needs it the most (when brain cells are forming connections in the first few months of life)<br /></b><br /><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-translator/202401/3-key-findings-about-breastfeeding">https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-translator/202401/3-key-findings-about-breastfeeding<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>WHY COLDS AND FLU ARE MORE FREQUENT IN WINTER </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">There’s a chill is in the air, and you all know what that means — it’s time for cold and flu season, when it seems everyone you know is suddenly sneezing, sniffling or worse. It’s almost as if those pesky cold and flu germs whirl in with the first blast of winter weather.<br /><br />Yet germs are present year-round — just think back to your last summer cold. So <b>why do people get more colds, flu and now Covid-19 when it’s chilly outside?</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In what they called a “breakthrough,” scientists uncovered the biological reason we get more respiratory illnesses in winter — the cold air itself damages the immune response occurring in the nose.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“<b>This is the first time that we have a biologic, molecular explanation regarding one factor of our innate immune response that appears to be limited by colder temperatures</b>,” said rhinologist Dr. Zara Patel, a professor of otolaryngology and head and neck surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine in California. She was not involved in the new study.<br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In fact, <b>reducing the temperature inside the nose by as little as 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) kills nearly 50% of the billions of helpful bacteria-fighting cells and viruses in the nostrils</b>, according to the 2022 study published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>“Cold air is associated with increased viral infection because you’ve essentially lost half of your immunity just by that small drop in temperature,” said study author Dr. Benjamin Bleier, </b>director of otolaryngology translational research at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“It’s important to remember that these are in vitro studies, meaning that although it is using human tissue in the lab to study this immune response, it is not a study being carried out inside someone’s actual nose,” Patel said in an email. “Often the findings of in vitro studies are confirmed in vivo, but not always.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />A respiratory virus or bacteria invades the nose, the main point of entry into the body. <b>Immediately, the front of the nose detects the germ, well before the back of the nose is aware of the intruder</b>, the team discovered.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">At that point, <b>cells lining the nose immediately begin creating billions of simple copies of themselves</b> called <b>extracellular vesicles, or EV’s.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>“EV’s can’t divide like cells can, but they are like little mini versions of cells specifically designed to go and kill these viruses,” Bleier said. “EV’s act as decoys, so now when you inhale a virus, the virus sticks to these decoys instead of sticking to the cells.”</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Those “Mini Me’s” are then expelled by the cells into nasal mucus (yes, snot), where they stop invading germs before they can get to their destinations and multiply.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“This is one of, if not the only part of the immune system that leaves your body to go fight the bacteria and viruses before they actually get into your body,” Bleier said.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Once created and dispersed out into nasal secretions, the billions of EV’s then start to swarm the marauding germs</b>, Bleier said.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“It’s like if you kick a hornet’s nest, what happens? You might see a few hornets flying around, but when you kick it, all of them all fly out of the nest to attack before that animal can get into the nest itself,” he said. “That’s the way the body mops up these inhaled viruses so they can never get into the cell in the first place.”<br /><br /><b>When under attack, the nose increases production of extracellular vesicles by 160%, the study found. </b>There were additional differences: EV’s had many more receptors on their surface than original cells, thus boosting the virus-stopping ability of the billions of extracellular vesicles in the nose.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“Just imagine receptors as little arms that are sticking out, trying to grab on to the viral particles as you breathe them in,” Bleier said. “And we found <b>each vesicle has up to 20 times more receptors on the surface, making them super sticky</b>.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Cells in the body also contain a viral killer called micro RNA, which attack invading germs. Yet EVs in the nose contained 13 times micro RNA sequences than normal cells, the study found.<br />So the nose comes to battle armed with some extra superpowers. But what happens to those advantages when cold weather hits?<br /><br />To find out, Bleier and his team exposed four study participants to 15 minutes of 40-degree-Fahrenheit (4.4-degree-Celsius) temperatures, and then measured conditions inside their nasal cavities.<br /><br />“What we found is that <b>when you’re exposed to cold air, the temperature in your nose can drop by as much as 9 degrees Fahrenheit. And that’s enough to essentially knock out all three of those immune advantages that the nose has,” Bleier said.<br /></b><br />In fact, <b>that little bit of coldness in the tip of the nose was enough to take nearly 42% of the extracellular vesicles out of the fight</b>, Bleier said.<br /><br />“Similarly, you have almost half the amount of those killer micro RNA’s inside each vesicle, and you can have up to a 70% drop in the number of receptors on each vesicle, making them much less sticky,” he said.<br /><br />What does that do to your ability to fight off colds, flu and Covid-19? It cuts your immune system’s ability to fight off respiratory infections by half, Bleier said.<br /><br />MASKS HELP — ‘LIKE WEARING A SWEATER ON YOUR NOSE’<br /><br />As it turns out, the pandemic gave us exactly what we need to help fight off chilly air and keep our immunity high, Bleier said.<br /><br /><b>“Not only do masks protect you from the direct inhalation of viruses, but it’s also like wearing a sweater on your nose,” he said.<br /></b><br />Patel agreed: <b>“The warmer you can keep the intranasal environment, the better this innate immune defense mechanism will be able to work. </b>Maybe yet another reason to wear masks!”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In the future, Bleier expects to see the development of topical nasal medications that build upon this scientific revelation. These new pharmaceuticals will “essentially fool the nose into thinking it has just seen a virus,” he said.<br /><br />“By having that exposure, you’ll have all these extra hornets flying around in your mucous protecting you,” he added.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/06/health/why-winter-colds-flu-wellness/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/06/health/why-winter-colds-flu-wellness/index.html<br /></a><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYlScjDvJaI2VngMDK6TPM1DM67XoR8fFlSOzmUdn4x6QZWPhXxkicdYczH9XIsSZL3gN9Zb3_Svo1JjJsn0nRilsaXy1b2otiITRkSHEtetCNLO04o6d31dNO1yG9BIkwJepCp6I2kPI410BjYJdTpvyWYKouqKlfngqQebthSZJ1YWtPjWDo3D7VjX9o/s1191/snow%20fog.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="794" data-original-width="1191" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYlScjDvJaI2VngMDK6TPM1DM67XoR8fFlSOzmUdn4x6QZWPhXxkicdYczH9XIsSZL3gN9Zb3_Svo1JjJsn0nRilsaXy1b2otiITRkSHEtetCNLO04o6d31dNO1yG9BIkwJepCp6I2kPI410BjYJdTpvyWYKouqKlfngqQebthSZJ1YWtPjWDo3D7VjX9o/w400-h266/snow%20fog.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana:</span><br /><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">It's no longer just because of Covid. And not only because the mask if a physical barrier. The main advantage of wearing a mask in winter could be its ability to keep the nose warm, thus making it more difficult for the virus to get past our first line of defense.<br /><br />*<br /><b>ending on beauty:</b><br /><br />Snow falls<br />the way we walk.<br />Slowly.<br />Without a word.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">~ John Guzlowski<br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyNMub5YTF6MA6VB4NCv0YOWw_rdZU7KCAVUUpu1rqhdKXGo3QBsyRcxKGuVc2dPPPr6yij54Oen6EkPDQaF5GvX0bR1E_04omdqpqU3tmIvp1u4URohZ9OWsgzmGxpkb53pP4-AzpR7iovjXszFbPdlGCpNs4gmPqfo_w1NCIDfdchRV9M-aP-WCyZ4H9/s2560/snow%20fox.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="2560" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyNMub5YTF6MA6VB4NCv0YOWw_rdZU7KCAVUUpu1rqhdKXGo3QBsyRcxKGuVc2dPPPr6yij54Oen6EkPDQaF5GvX0bR1E_04omdqpqU3tmIvp1u4URohZ9OWsgzmGxpkb53pP4-AzpR7iovjXszFbPdlGCpNs4gmPqfo_w1NCIDfdchRV9M-aP-WCyZ4H9/w400-h250/snow%20fox.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-14216259627385515192024-01-20T19:17:00.000-08:002024-01-24T20:51:48.013-08:00FREUD'S LESBIAN DAUGHTER; JEWISH ISRAELIS: INDIGENOUS OR COLONIZERS? THE PLAY THAT GAVE US THE WORD “ROBOT”; BANNING THE SMART PHONE AT SCHOOL; STARS ALONE DON’T EXPLAIN BLACK HOLES; MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS AND ANCIENT MIGRATIONS; TIGER PARENTING: AT WHAT PRICE? ARE BOOMERS RESPONSIBLE FOR HIGH PRICE OF HOUSES? <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwmZ2cOMqCXsceKPo0U1NZP3KbQvYboOP0QvZiOyGPAGNsyKcAZuZyBYCa3N8IwjovACLqxKKEH5nSLWmwdb58pzEMcdGdD1NUpNkYrwMQrFUtM_afcWMz_BareE7IuXSo6c6tPrrNjcRvMtNseMSSO_TbcwehPEQwNXjjjsOroeWZPK8PBtM6dw_y333F/s2742/kitten%20in%20a%20bag%20ginger.png" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1530" data-original-width="2742" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwmZ2cOMqCXsceKPo0U1NZP3KbQvYboOP0QvZiOyGPAGNsyKcAZuZyBYCa3N8IwjovACLqxKKEH5nSLWmwdb58pzEMcdGdD1NUpNkYrwMQrFUtM_afcWMz_BareE7IuXSo6c6tPrrNjcRvMtNseMSSO_TbcwehPEQwNXjjjsOroeWZPK8PBtM6dw_y333F/w400-h224/kitten%20in%20a%20bag%20ginger.png" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /> *<br />TWO OWLS IN LOS ANGELES<br /><br />They fly over the roofs<br />in a ghostlike flight;<br />disappear into a tree.<br />Then they perch in parallel,<br />each on a TV antenna.<br /><br />Absolute in upright stillness, <br />in a silent overlap of feathers,<br />urn-shaped bodies <br />on metal branches that draw <br />signals from the city sky,<br /><br />the owls are ambassadors,<br />come to relay messages<br />even to us, <br />unvisited as we are<br />by the gods.<br /><br />Only my lover and I,<br />meeting here in secret,<br />see them.<br /><br />~ Oriana<br /> <br />*<br /><b>THE CZECH PLAY THAT GAVE US THE WORD “ROBOT”<br /></b><br /><b>By the time his play “R.U.R.” (which stands for “Rossum’s Universal Robots”) premiered in Prague in 1921, Karel Čapek was a well-known Czech intellectual. Like many of his peers, he was appalled by the carnage wrought by the mechanical and chemical weapons that marked World War I as a departure from previous combat.</b> He was also deeply skeptical of the utopian notions of science and technology. </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>“The product of the human brain has escaped the control of human hands,” Čapek told the London Saturday Review following the play’s premiere. “This is the comedy of science.”</b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />In that same interview, Čapek reflected on the origin of one of the play’s characters:<br /><br /><b>The old inventor, Mr. Rossum (whose name translated into English signifies “Mr. Intellectual” </b>or “Mr. Brain”), is a typical representative of the scientific materialism of the last [nineteenth] century. <i><b>His desire to create an artificial man — in the chemical and biological, not mechanical sense — is inspired by a foolish and obstinate wish to prove God to be unnecessary and absurd.</b></i> <br /><br />Young Rossum is the modern scientist, untroubled by metaphysical ideas; scientific experiment is to him the road to industrial production. He is not concerned to prove, but to manufacture.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Thus, “R.U.R.,” which gave birth to the robot, was a critique of mechanization and the ways it can dehumanize people. The word itself derives <b>from the Czech word “robota,”</b> or forced labor, as done by serfs. Its Slavic linguistic root, “rab,” means “slave.” The original word for robots more accurately defines androids, then, in that they were neither metallic nor mechanical.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi20L9fN8pm_mKxO_L71IQopLLjZkB78Jm0p8U2sKuJBu09KrBSPKouTLmzGhJEEr0VfCkaWsjMWaDhSwb13I54JxtEIfoij93oPN5FxMngA8YSKIHrc9QeYcfO-mHSIQNz80WbPl0HX1G_7es5CwYdZIXdet8S-b9gw1Zb_uuhAXouDbSlE5zRNL-DLK-J/s475/Capek%20RUR.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="297" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi20L9fN8pm_mKxO_L71IQopLLjZkB78Jm0p8U2sKuJBu09KrBSPKouTLmzGhJEEr0VfCkaWsjMWaDhSwb13I54JxtEIfoij93oPN5FxMngA8YSKIHrc9QeYcfO-mHSIQNz80WbPl0HX1G_7es5CwYdZIXdet8S-b9gw1Zb_uuhAXouDbSlE5zRNL-DLK-J/w250-h400/Capek%20RUR.jpg" width="250" /></a></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>The contrast between robots as mechanical slaves and potentially rebellious destroyers of their human makers echoes Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and helps set the tone for later Western characterizations of robots as slaves straining against their lot, ready to burst out of control. The duality echoes throughout the twentieth century: Terminator, HAL 9000, Blade Runner’s replicants.</b></i><br /><br />The character Helena in “R.U.R.” is sympathetic, wanting the robots to have freedom. Radius is the robot that understands his station and chafes at the idiocy of his makers, having acted out his frustrations by smashing statues.<br /><br />Helena: Poor Radius. … Couldn’t you control yourself? Now they’ll send you to the stamping mill. Won’t you speak? Why did it happen to you? You see, Radius, you are better than the rest. Dr. Gall took such trouble to make you different. Won’t you speak?<br /><br />Radius: Send me to the stamping mill.<br /><br />Helena: I am sorry they are going to kill you. Why weren’t you more careful?<br /><br />Radius: I won’t work for you. Put me into the stamping mill.<br /><br />Helena: Why do you hate us?<br /><br />Radius: You are not like the Robots. You are not as skillful as the Robots. The Robots can do everything. You only give orders. You talk more than is necessary.<br /><br />Helena: That’s foolish Radius. Tell me, has any one upset you? I should so much like you to understand me.<br /><br />Radius: You do nothing but talk.<br /><br />Helena: Dr. Gall gave you a larger brain than the rest, larger than ours, the largest in the world. You are not like the other Robots, Radius. You understand me perfectly.<br /><br />Radius: I don’t want any master. I know everything for myself.<br /><br />Helena: That’s why I had you put into the library, so that you could read everything, understand everything, and then — Oh, Radius, I wanted to show the whole world that the Robots were our equals. That’s what I wanted of you.<br /><br />Radius: I don’t want any master. I want to be master over others.<br /><br />Helena’s compassion saves Radius from the stamping mill, and he later leads the robot revolution that displaces the humans from power. Čapek is none too subtle in portraying the triumph of artificial humans over their creators:<br /><br />Radius: The power of man has fallen. By gaining possession of the factory we have become masters of everything. The period of mankind has passed away. A new world has arisen. … Mankind is no more. Mankind gave us too little life. We wanted more life.<br /><br />Humans were doomed in the play even before Radius led the revolt. <b>When mechanization overtakes basic human traits, people lose the ability to reproduce. As robots increase in capability, vitality, and self-awareness, humans become more like their machines </b>— humans and robots, in Čapek’s critique, are essentially one and the same. <i><b>The measure of worth, industrial productivity, is won by the robots that can do the work of “two and a half men.” Such a contest implicitly critiques the efficiency movement that emerged just before World War I, which ignored many essential human traits.</b><br /></i><br /><b>The debt of “R.U.R.” to Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is substantial, even though the works are separated by almost exactly a century. In both cases, humans show hubris by trying to create artificial life. </b>(Recall that even today, Rodney Brooks, an esteemed roboticist and former director of he MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, refers to robots as “our creatures.”) <br /><br />Whether humans get the recipe wrong, as in the earlier novel, or make beings smarter than the humans who spawned them, as in the case of Čapek’s play and its offspring, humans pay the price for aspiring to play God. In both works, the flawed relationship between creator and creature drives the plot, and in both cases, the conflict ends in bloodshed.<br /><br /><b>Few people today know “R.U.R.” But in its time, the play was a sensation, with translations into more than 30 languages immediately after publication. </b>Nearly 100 years on, apart from our obvious reliance on the play’s terminology and worldview, we still hear its echoes. The author and play title turn up as Easter eggs in such popular venues as Batman cartoons, Star Trek, Dr. Who, and Futurama: The people who portray our culture’s robots certainly know of their debt to Čapek, even if most of us do not.<br /><br /><a href="https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-czech-play-that-gave-us-the-word-robot?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-czech-play-that-gave-us-the-word-robot?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br /><br />*<br /><b>WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A SCHOOL BARS SMARTPHONES <br /></b><br />~ When the weather is nice, the Buxton boarding school moves lunch outside. Students, faculty and guests grab their food from the kitchen, and eat together under a white tent that overlooks western Massachusetts’ Berkshire mountains.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">As the close of the school year neared last June, talk turned to final assignments (the English class was finishing Moby-Dick) and end-of-year fun (there was a trip planned to a local lake). <b>It was, in most ways, a typical teenage afternoon – except that no one was on their phones.<br /></b><br />Buxton was wrapping up the first year of a simple yet novel experiment: banning cellphones on campus. Or, rather, smartphones.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Instead, the school gave everyone on campus – including staff – a Light Phone, that is, a “dumb” phone with limited functionality. The devices can make calls, send texts (slowly) and can’t load modern applications; instead coming with deliberately cumbersome versions of music and mapping apps. They are about the size of a deck of cards, with black and white screens.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">As one student put it: “It’s like the demon baby of an iPad and a Kindle.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Most everyone agrees, however, that the school is better off without these hell devices. (And yes, that includes students.)<b> There are fewer interruptions during class, more meaningful interactions around campus, and less time spent on screens.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“It’s a problem we’ve found a pretty good way to address,” Scott Hunter, who teaches English and music, said of smartphones. Bea Sas, a senior at Buxton, added: “<b>I think people are a lot more social.”</b><br /><br /><b>For many teachers, their students’ phone use is exasperating. “It’s every class, every period,” said Mark McLaughlin, a math teacher at Neah-Kah-Nie high school in Oregon. “The worst part of my job is being the cellphone police.”</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Educators across the country report waging a near-constant battle against phones. A survey of a school district in Virginia found that about a third of teachers were telling students to put away their cellphones five to 10 times a class, and 14.7% did so more than 20 times a class.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">When a middle school in Canada surveyed staff, 75% of respondents thought that cellphones were negatively affecting their students’ physical and mental health. <b>Nearly two-thirds believed the devices were adversely affecting academic performances as well.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“It’s a big issue,” said Arnold Glass, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University who has researched the impact of cellphones on student performance.<b> “They lose anywhere between a half and whole letter grade if they are allowed to consult their phones in class.”</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Ian Trombulak, a guidance counselor at Lamoille Union high school in northern Vermont, is also facing a flood of cellphones at his school. “I have kids who during the day get a Snapchat or text and it ruins their entire day,” he said. Another issue he’s seeing is that students use cellphones to coordinate mass trips to the bathroom so they can hang out during class. “It feels like it distracts from the learning that happens on the academic level.”<br /><br />When I mentioned the Buxton experiment to Trombulak, he was intrigued. One thing it could address, he noted, was the argument from students that they need phones to communicate with their parents. And, he said, teenagers often adapt to new parameters relatively quickly. <b>He remembers a field trip with his students where, at the last minute, everyone learned that cellphones wouldn’t be allowed. At first, the news was apocalyptic.<br /></b><br />“They were so upset. They didn’t know how to handle themselves. I was really nervous,” said Trombulak, reliving the drama. But part way through the trip, the kids largely forgot about their phones and, at one point, they self-policed a girl who tried to sneak a phone on to the rope source.<br /><br /><b>“At the end of the first day, sitting around the campfire, they said, ‘We didn’t think about our phones all day,’” said Trombulak. “That was really cool.”<br /></b><br />When the weather is nice, the Buxton boarding school moves lunch outside. Students, faculty and guests grab their food from the kitchen, and eat together under a white tent that overlooks western Massachusetts’ Berkshire mountains.<br /><br />As the close of the school year neared last June, talk turned to final assignments (the English class was finishing Moby-Dick) and end-of-year fun (there was a trip planned to a local lake). It was, in most ways, a typical teenage afternoon – except that no one was on their phones.<br /><br />Buxton was wrapping up the first year of a simple yet novel experiment: banning cellphones on campus. Or, rather, smartphones.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Instead, the school gave everyone on campus – including staff – a Light Phone, that is, a “dumb” phone with limited functionality. The devices can make calls, send texts (slowly) and can’t load modern applications; instead coming with deliberately cumbersome versions of music and mapping apps. They are about the size of a deck of cards, with black and white screens.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">As one student put it: “It’s like the demon baby of an iPad and a Kindle.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Most everyone agrees, however, that the school is better off without these hell devices. (And yes, that includes students.) There are fewer interruptions during class, more meaningful interactions around campus, and less time spent on screens.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“It’s a problem we’ve found a pretty good way to address,” Scott Hunter, who teaches English and music, said of smartphones. Bea Sas, a senior at Buxton, added: <b>“I think people are a lot more social.”</b><br /><br />A student decorates a piece during a ceramics class, while other students interact during an art block at Buxton school.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">When I mentioned the Buxton experiment to Trombulak, he was intrigued. One thing it could address, he noted, was the argument from students that they need phones to communicate with their parents. And, he said,<b> teenagers often adapt to new parameters relatively quickly. He remembers a field trip with his students where, at the last minute, everyone learned that cellphones wouldn’t be allowed. At first, the news was apocalyptic.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>“They were so upset. They didn’t know how to handle themselves. I was really nervous,” said Trombulak, reliving the drama. But part way through the trip, the kids largely forgot about their phones</b> and, at one point, they self-policed a girl who tried to sneak a phone on to the rope source.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>“At the end of the first day, sitting around the campfire, they said, ‘We didn’t think about our phones all day,’” said Trombulak. “That was really cool.”</b><br /><br />To an extent, Buxton saw a similar progression through the stages of panic, grief and ultimately some level of acceptance. “When it was announced I practically had a breakdown,” said then senior Max Weeks. And while he’s still not a fan of what he says was a “unilateral” decision to switch to the Light Phone, he said, overall, the experience “hasn’t been as bad as I expected”.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">It’s an open secret that students still sneak phones into their rooms on campus, with some testing the limits more than others. “People get pretty ballsy,” said Yamailla Marks, also a Buxton senior, and get caught. Generally, though, it’s hard to spot a smartphone on campus.<br /><br />That includes staff. The head of the school, Peter Beck, says he gave up his iPhone for a Light Phone and installed an old GPS system in his car for when he needs to go out into the world. <b>He’s thrilled with how the first year has gone.</b> (Beck left the school at the end of the summer).</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">It’s difficult to tell how the new phone policy is affecting academic performance because Buxton uses a narrative evaluation system. But culturally, Beck says, the move has been transformative, often in small but cumulatively meaningful ways.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“People are engaging in the lounges. They are lingering after class to chat,” said Beck, who estimates that he’s now having more conversations than ever at the school. “All these face-to-face interactions, the frequency has gone through the roof.”<br /><br /><b>Another effect has been a surge of students signing up for the school’s photography class, which uses film cameras.</b> Enrollment nearly tripled. While a popular new teacher may have been a factor, <b>Light Phones also don’t have cameras</b>.<br /><br />“It’s much more of a process to get photos now than with the phone,” said Marks, but she’s fallen “in love” with photography. Still, when she goes home for breaks it’s back to her smartphone. Then she has to give it up again when she comes back to school. “It’s really funny how you adjust very quickly. Like subconsciously.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Buxton isn’t alone in trying to curb the use of smartphones in schools. As of 2020, the National Center for Education Statistics reported more than three-quarters of schools in the US had moved to restrict the non-academic use of the devices. France banned smartphone use in schools in 2018. But whether the private schools’ Light Phone approach could – or should – be applied to public schools wrestling with how to handle cellphones is up for debate.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">As a parent, Mark’s mother, Nina Marks, has been thrilled by the Buxton experiment. The school picked, and largely won, a fight that she hadn’t been able to with her daughter. But as a teacher, she’s hesitant.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“Children and adolescents have supercomputers in their pockets … It’s a constant battle to deal with,” she said, agreeing with other educators. But, she adds, <b>having to police cellphones has created friction with her students in the past and can single out students in ways that can be problematic. She likes her current school’s policy, which is to let each teacher decide how to handle phones in their classrooms.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Marks isn’t alone in being skeptical of outright bans. A staff survey at a school district in Illinois found that 70% of the 295 respondents thought students should be allowed to have their phones at school. “We aren’t teaching them accountability and responsibility by storing it for the day,” wrote one anonymous commenter.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Trombulak also sees phones as a potential teaching moment for students. “They’re struggling with the phone, but they didn’t invent the phone. They didn’t buy the phone,” he said. “If school is a place you’re supposed to learn how to do things, then safe technology use needs to become more part of the curriculum.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Providing dumb phones could be part of the way forward, Nina Marks admits, but she wonders if funds at already strapped public schools could be put to better use. “If you think of people as addicts, you have to replace that with something else,” she said. “If there was extra money to go around, rather than buying every kid another device, I would give every kid a journal and some really nice paint markers.”</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Nonetheless, Light Phone has seen interest from other private schools and school groups, intrigued by the Buxton model, as well as organizations such as churches.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The company bills itself as an antidote to smartphone overuse – <b>a non-alcoholic beer of phones.</b> “We’re actually pretty into tech – we built a phone. We’re just not into extractive tech that manipulates your emotional state,” said Joe Hollier, one of the founders. “So many people got a smartphone and didn’t intend to wake up and check their email before they brush their teeth. But that’s what started happening.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Light Phone is also working on potential tweaks to the design. While Hollier says that Light Phones are intentionally small and slow, so that people use them less, students report that they also break easily and the batteries die quickly, which wasn’t in the plan. They are also debating whether to add the option for a camera, or other features. But, Hollier doesn’t want the broader message to disappear in the details.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>“It’s about trying to find a balance that’s appropriate for you, whether that’s a Light Phone, a simplified iPhone or whatever it is,” he advised. “[The goal] is to hopefully remind people that we have the agency to decide how we use these things.”</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Hollier was among the diners as lunch wound down at Buxton. When the chatter waned, staff and students started making daily announcements. Seniors should meet in the library to go over their graduation speeches. A reminder that prom was just a few days away, followed by a reprimand for whoever stole sparklers from the chemistry lab and a note that the biology class was changing locations.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Then, over the speakers, Can I Call You Rose? by Thee Sacred Souls started to croon. And, on a walkway replete with flowers, a proposal to prom unfurled – they said yes. “The best promposal ever,” cheered one member of the crowd. Another added: “That was soooo good.”<br />No one caught the moment on camera.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/17/cellphone-smartphone-bans-schools?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/17/cellphone-smartphone-bans-schools?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Mary:</span></span></p><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Cell phones are not only a "computer in your pocket"</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> –</span></span><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> they are full of all kinds of entertainment, and foster a kind of "connection" that is not face to face </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> – </span></span><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">and there lies one of the most problematic issues. Because it's not face to face people seem to feel free to be more mean and critical than they would otherwise be...just as Facebook seems to invite invective from so many. But this can be devastating to teenagers with poor self image and that terrible adolescent vulnerability to being "cut out" of the group. The smartphones can be addictive in very negative ways</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> – </span></span><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">as a substitute for real interactions and real life relationships, and as a continual distraction from any learning environment </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In my mind the replacement of "real life" with "virtual life" in all its forms, gaming, avatars, etc, is the most dangerous effect of absorption in the smartphone. Especially in those formative adolescent years where you're learning your way in the world. The most telling sentence in the article is that when told no smartphones would be on the outing the kids "were so upset..they didn't know how to handle themselves."</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">One time I passed a group of four teenage boys all staring down at their phones and texting. Since I knew one of the boys as a neighbor, I later found out that they were calling and texting one another. Instead of simply talking, they preferred to text. Instead of looking at each other's faces, they preferred to look at their screens. Instead of laughing, they preferred to type "LOL."<br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Though I did appreciate the quiet, I also found this scene deeply disturbing. It would be perfectly normal and even "life-enhancing" if these boys happened to be separated by physical distance </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">– </span></span><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">if they lived in different cities, yet chose to sustain their friendship with the help of marvelous technology. But they were standing in a tight group, never looking at each other, never talking. </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And this preference for the screen has been noted in girls' interactions as well. Weren't girls supposed to be the queens of verbal communication, excelling at social skills? I suppose one answer is that "social skills" have become cyber skills, and facial expression and tone of voice no longer have a place in casual teenage chats. </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Body language? Remember the big fuss some years ago over how to be successful by using effective body language? Forget it. Use smiley or frowning emojis instead. Nuances are lost, but that's perhaps the idea: one doesn't have to process the complex information that comes with real face-to-face interaction. </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Still, note that the adolescents described in the article quickly adapted to what you and I consider normal conversation. They even admitted they enjoyed it. It seems that human brains are wired for socializing. (Of course there are exceptions, more prevalent among boys and men. When we talk about the "autism spectrum," we don't need to worry about pronouns too much: it's "he, him, his." This is a disorder with 80% male prevalence.)<br /></span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b><br />GAZA TUNNEL NETWORK MORE EXTENSIVE THAN FIRST THOUGHT</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMDGLhM91vMDlRvFRHlhxOru5UOmROovUvpQmOF5osZu5G8svM-IERb8vEAdjCQQEuCjx1F4OfuCiiL0Lx0Czoj0H_HkYPVqpIivmVgEiJCKnlI_-xAWFRTok6JNyBC2HKIzRu3nch15r0tWcYxp8sMIamwoFcu13lbgbxD28H7bDpUYCmJMxi_w5RIpdc/s640/ISRAEILI%20soldier%20Shifa%20Hospital%20Tunnel.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="640" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMDGLhM91vMDlRvFRHlhxOru5UOmROovUvpQmOF5osZu5G8svM-IERb8vEAdjCQQEuCjx1F4OfuCiiL0Lx0Czoj0H_HkYPVqpIivmVgEiJCKnlI_-xAWFRTok6JNyBC2HKIzRu3nch15r0tWcYxp8sMIamwoFcu13lbgbxD28H7bDpUYCmJMxi_w5RIpdc/w400-h250/ISRAEILI%20soldier%20Shifa%20Hospital%20Tunnel.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Israeli soldier, Shifa Hospital Tunnel</i><br /><br />Senior Israeli defense officials now assess that Hamas’s Gaza tunnel network is <b>between 350 and 450 miles long, far longer than previously believed</b>, according to a Tuesday report.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The estimate reported by The New York Times is markedly higher than an Israel Defense Forces’ assessment last month that there are some 250 miles of Hamas tunnels under the Gaza Strip, and an astounding figure given the enclave is only some 140 square miles in total size.<br /><br />The newspaper quoted Israeli intelligence officials <b>estimating there are around 100 miles of tunnels under Khan Younis in southern Gaza, where IDF troops are engaged in intensive fighting as they search for Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and other terror commanders believed to be hiding underground.</b><br /><br />Two Israeli defense officials who spoke anonymously said there were<b> roughly 5,700 separate shafts leading down to the tunnels.</b><br /><br />The report stressed that the estimates could not be independently confirmed and noted there are different assessments among Israeli officials on the extent of the subterranean passages.<br />Since launching a ground offensive following in the wake of the October 7 massacres, in which Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took around 240 hostages, Israeli forces have worked to destroy the tunnels, uncovering more and more of the Gaza-ruling terror organization’s underground network. A defense official told the Times that this task has grown easier as the ground offensive pushes deeper in the Strip.<br /><br /><b>The official said the IDF previously may have needed a year to detect a single tunnel, but is now able to do so much quicker as a result of the vast reams of intelligence gathered in Gaza during the ground campaign, finding details on the computers of Hamas operatives involved in the digging and discovering a list of families that “hosted” tunnel shafts in their homes, among other information.</b><br /><br />The official said <b>the IDF has also figured out about the “triangle” system, with troops likely to find tunnels below an area with a school, hospital or mosque.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>The official cautioned that it could take years to dismantle the tunnels, noting that underground passages must be mapped and checked for booby traps and hostages before Israeli forces can destroy them.</b></i><br /><br />Additionally, <b>the report highlighted the different types of tunnels that Israeli forces have come across in Gaza, such as those used for fighting or manufacturing weapons. There are also differences in quality, with the more sophisticated tunnels slated for senior figures and rudimentary ones for fighters.</b><br /><br /><i><b>Last week, the IDF said Hamas has used more than 6,000 tons of concrete and 1,800 tons of steel for its extensive tunnel network, citing new intelligence. It also said Hamas likely invested tens of millions of dollars in the project.</b><br /></i><br />Several hostages freed in a ceasefire deal in late November described being held inside tunnels, which Hamas has laid throughout the Gaza Strip and which Israel says have long been used to smuggle weapons and fighters throughout the enclave.<br /><br />It is believed that 132 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza — not all of them alive — after 105 civilians were released from Hamas captivity during the late November truce. Four hostages were released prior to that, and one was rescued by troops. The bodies of eight hostages have also been recovered and three hostages were mistakenly killed by the military. The IDF has confirmed the deaths of 25 of those still held by Hamas, citing intelligence and findings obtained by troops operating in Gaza. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/gaza-tunnels-stretch-at-least-350-miles-far-longer-than-past-estimate-report/?utm_campaign=most_popular&utm_source=website&utm_medium=article_end&utm_content=8">https://www.timesofisrael.com/gaza-tunnels-stretch-at-least-350-miles-far-longer-than-past-estimate-report/?utm_campaign=most_popular&utm_source=website&utm_medium=article_end&utm_content=8</a><br /><br />*</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;"><span>Mary:</span></span></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #20124d; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small;">The extent of the Hamas tunnel network, the resources used to build and maintain it, the millions it cost, and the obvious use of human shields evidenced by placing hubs beneath hospitals, schools and mosques, are all testament to the enormous dedication of the terrorists to their evil goal...which is neither peace nor a separate state, but the total eradication of Israel and the Jewish people.</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">You are absolutely right. At the same time, one has to admit that the dream of Theodore Herzl and other Zionists was a Jewish homeland without the Arabs. Each side can make a strong historical claim to the land (though the Arab population began arriving only with the expansion of Islam). Youtube is a rich terrain of a never-ending e-war of words over "whose land it is." </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I know this is going to sound naive, but I dare hope that eventually there might be enough intermixing and intermarriage to cancel out any sharp ethnic differences </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span>— but that could take a century or two . . . </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span>But yes, I totally agree that the funds used by Hamas to build the tunnels would be better spent on real schools and clinics, cultural activities, tree-planting, sports, and so on. But those who seek power rarely care about the welllbeing of the population. Grocery shopping is so boring compared to urban warfare. And not a week passes by without someone saying we are close to the Third World War </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">— that this war is actually already happening, but is not yet "hot" except for a dozen or so trouble spots. </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">ELENA GOLD ON TOILETS AND GENOCIDE<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In Russia, more people are dying annually because of falling into the toilet hole and drowning than there were civilians killed in Donbas in 2021 — the year when Russia decided to invade Ukraine, “to stop the genocide” (21 civilians died in Donbas in 2021, because of hostilities).<br /></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi44H2XniYQAazrzXmzuk3gK336Oz3xsgqsB1D0-FfkjmGeFbts3feuwdbxrNuwS3m9jpdy1SNAeARxRNwVEXImh4s4D9cHwvfPKw6gDGsMaVaNETbkzdeh0nEvZ2kZYBGnYex1VZdYf0Nk0CoSoqOZCL8jyXzrjWNjPf5-5nCyjjdN24ybhao7e2FD7vn-/s602/outhouse%20wooden%20Russia%20.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="339" data-original-width="602" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi44H2XniYQAazrzXmzuk3gK336Oz3xsgqsB1D0-FfkjmGeFbts3feuwdbxrNuwS3m9jpdy1SNAeARxRNwVEXImh4s4D9cHwvfPKw6gDGsMaVaNETbkzdeh0nEvZ2kZYBGnYex1VZdYf0Nk0CoSoqOZCL8jyXzrjWNjPf5-5nCyjjdN24ybhao7e2FD7vn-/w400-h225/outhouse%20wooden%20Russia%20.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">So, Russian toilets are “committing genocide” of Russians.<br /><br />Thanks to Beglov, we now know: Russian soldiers destroy Ukrainians schools, universities, kindergartens, cafes, shopping centers, raze the whole villages and towns to ruins, so that people in Russia never have access to bathrooms that can be used both by boys and girls.<br /><br />Got it. ~ Elena Gold, Quora<br /><br /><b>*</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>TIGER PARENTING<br /></b><br />It's been over a decade now since tiger parenting became a parenting buzzword with the release of Amy Chua's book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" in 2011. In it, Chua details the strict way she was raising her two daughters and the academic and extracurricular achievements she expected them to have.<br /><br />While she may have popularized it, <b>Chua didn't invent tiger parenting: the concept is similar to an "authoritarian" parenting style that's been around for decades</b>. But she definitely got people talking about this intense style of child-rearing. So, what is tiger parenting? And is this firm approach worth it? Experts explain.<br /><br /><b>Tiger parenting is a term coined in Western culture by Yale Law School professor and mom Amy Chua. As Chua explains in her book, her parenting style was inspired by Confucian virtues and philosophy, which emphasize strong personal ethics and morality.</b> Her book also compared traditional Chinese and Western approaches to parenting.<br /><br />"It refers to a parenting style characterized by <b>strict discipline, high expectations, and an intense focus on academic and extracurricular achievements</b>," says Alisa Ruby Bash, PsyD, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Malibu, CA. <b>"Tiger parents typically push their children to excel academically and often demand perfection in various aspects of their lives.”</b><br /><br />Tiger parenting "puts a lot of demand on the child and there's a lot of parent direction, as opposed to child direction," says Robert Keder, MD, a pediatrician who specializes in developmental behavior at Connecticut Children's Medical Center. Meaning parents call the shots and children must follow their rules or face punishments. <b>"Tiger parents have high demands on their kids but also produce kids who are very high achievers," </b>Dr. Keder says.<br /><br /><b>What Does Tiger Parenting Look Like?</b><br /><br />There are a few hallmarks of tiger parents, according to the experts we polled:<br /><br /><b>High academic expectations: "Tiger parents set extremely high academic standards for their children, expecting them to excel in school and achieve top grades," Dr. Bash says.</b></span></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Intense schedules: Children in tiger parenting households usually have tightly regimented schedules that include extensive study time and extracurricular activities, with little room for free play, social interactions, or relaxing, Dr. Bash says.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Strict rules: "Tiger parents enforce strict rules and discipline, with little tolerance for disobedience or excuses," Dr. Bash says. "This can be accompanied with physical or emotional disciplinary measures."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Focus on specific skills: <b>Parents usually require their children to master certain skills, like musical instruments or sports.</b> Tiger parents "invest a significant amount of time and resources into these pursuits," Dr. Bash says.<br /><br /><i><b>Kids raised in tiger households are also usually very polite, Dr. Keder says. "They say 'please' and 'thank you,'" he says. "Everybody loves a child or young adult who says 'please' or 'thank you.’"</b><br /></i><br /><b>The Pros and Cons of Tiger Parenting</b><br /><br />There are definite pros and cons of tiger parenting. "Kids may learn to be disciplined and push themselves," says Gina Song, MD, a pediatrician at Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital. Kids raised by tiger parents also tend to develop strong goals and work ethics, Dr. Bash says. <b>These children often grow up to have mastery of a craft or skill and excel in their careers</b>, she says.<br /><br />But while tiger parenting can produce successful kids, it has plenty of drawbacks. "There are tiger parents who have good intentions, but <b>their kids might be more anxious</b>. This style of parenting just might not be the best fit for them," Dr. Keder says.<br /><br /><b>Tiger parenting can also lead to high levels of stress in kids, "which may have long-term mental health implications," Dr. Bash says. "These children often have experienced trauma and abuse if they ever disobeyed their parents' demands," she says. <br /></b><br />Kids raised in tiger parenting households tend to have <b>limited social development</b>, per Dr. Bash. "Children raised in this style may have limited opportunities to develop social skills and make friends, as their schedules are often dominated by academic and structured activities," she says.<br /><br /><b>Tiger parenting can also strain relationships between parents and kids</b>, Dr. Song says. "Kids may see the strict upbringing and their relationship with the parent as unfavorable," she says.<br /><br />Some kids may even rebel or only follow the rules laid down by their parents when the parents are around, Dr. Keder says. "Sometimes the presence of the parent keeps the behavior there, but when the parent is not there, the behavior is not always there either," he says.<br /><br />When it comes to choosing a parenting style, doctors recommend tapping into the needs of your kids, as well as those of your family, to settle on a method that works for you. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>"Understanding your kid's needs at each stage of growth and figuring out what you would like them to learn may help on how to parent your children," Dr. Song says.<br /></b><br />"Overall, it's up to parents to do their own inner work to discover how they can find their own parenting style," Dr. Bash says. "At the end of the day, parents must remember that their children are not their possessions or experiments, but <b>unique sovereign beings who are on the planet to fulfill their potential and to know who they are</b>.”<br /><br /><a href="https://www.popsugar.com/family/tiger-parenting-49330974">https://www.popsugar.com/family/tiger-parenting-49330974</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">When a parent is attuned to the child's talents, and provides opportunities to develop those talents, all is well. But that implies that the child needs to try out various activities and have a say as to the field s/he in which to excel. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Come to think of it, if here is a natural talent, usually nothing will stop the child from developing it </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">— parental pressure is not necessary. A gifted child will find ways to learn </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">— just let him or her be. A smart parent will enjoy watching a child pursue his activities with astonishing persistence. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In fact I've met students whose uneducated parents weren't in the least interested in matters of the mind, and yet the children turned out to be academic achievers. "There was a public library within a walking distance," they'd say. "Once I discovered it, there was no stopping me." </span></span></p><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Mary:</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;"> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">I think I'm with you on Tiger parenting. It may force performance, but I think at great psychological cost, and the truly bright and talented do not need such overseers...you can't stop them from learning and creating, even under less than supportive circumstances. My suspicion is that the child's performance feeds the parents' needs--not the child's...whose happiness is nowhere part of the Tiger parents plans.</span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>ONE LAST ARTICLE ON MAESTRO <br /></b><br />~ Maestro, like many recent biopics about the great artists of our past, is more about the man than his art. The new Netflix film tracks the life of the great conductor Leonard Bernstein, but surprisingly <b>sheds little light behind the making of his greatest works, Candide and West Side Story. Instead, Maestro—starring and directed by Bradley Cooper—focuses on Bernstein's complicated relationship with the many loves of his life. This includes, but certainly isn't limited to: music, his wife, Felicia Montealegre, and his various affairs.</b><br /><br />In many ways, Maestro is exceptionally faithful to Bernstein's life. For starters, it was an open secret that he had extramarital relationships with men. In a letter to his clarinetist, David Oppenheim (played by Matt Bomer), he even suggested that it would be a good idea to marry a beard. Maestro alleges that the two friends and longtime collaborators also shared a relationship. The film may have inferred this through the letter's hint that Oppenheim second-guessed his marriage to singer Judy Holliday.<br /><br />But after meeting at a party and having full awareness of Bernstein's struggles with his sexuality, actress Felicia Montealegre (played by Carey Mulligan) married him anyway. As she once wrote to him in a letter published alongside Oppenheim's in 2014's The Leonard Bernstein Letters,<b> their marriage was "a bloody mess." Still, they two stayed married for over 25 years and had three children together, until Montealegre's death in 1978.<br /></b><br />“You are a homosexual and may never change,” she wrote at the time. “You don’t admit to the possibility of a double life, but if your peace of mind, your health, your whole nervous system depend on a certain sexual pattern what can you do?... I am willing to accept you as you are, without being a martyr... let’s try and see what happens if you are free to do as you like, but without guilt and confession.” <br /><br /><b>Montealegre also admits in the letter that she never regretted marrying Bernstein. She gave up her career as an actress to raise their family, and even converted to Judaism</b>. "My mother was a fairly conventional lady and so she expected to be treated like one,” Bernstein's youngest daughter, Nina, told the London Times back in 2010. "The deal was that he would be discreet and that she would maintain her dignity.” </span></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHmKdRDmdodmdwMrmjelpKdRhw1Od2Cshvn45PgbuMkj6DKqVUQJpXr39jApQRKpVgFuIAvAqpRE2tGOy74e99NgW0KyIwXzd1jl0l7MrRHvJ6aFpjOGoHIz0_rIq19GU1kDbJi_VLtzwqLWUaY3_LvAO-AW59XhUcPp7AMJgB0gjpxTP9f95o6rtCF-FB/s980/LEONARD%20bernstein%20and%20Felicia%20Montealegre%201959.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="553" data-original-width="980" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHmKdRDmdodmdwMrmjelpKdRhw1Od2Cshvn45PgbuMkj6DKqVUQJpXr39jApQRKpVgFuIAvAqpRE2tGOy74e99NgW0KyIwXzd1jl0l7MrRHvJ6aFpjOGoHIz0_rIq19GU1kDbJi_VLtzwqLWUaY3_LvAO-AW59XhUcPp7AMJgB0gjpxTP9f95o6rtCF-FB/w400-h226/LEONARD%20bernstein%20and%20Felicia%20Montealegre%201959.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Leonard and Felicia, 1959<br /></i><br /><b>All the while, Bernstein tried to hide his affairs from a deeply homophobic 1950s America.</b> He sought advice from Aaron Copland (played by Brian Klugman), a fellow composer who was openly gay but still held a very private life. Russian conductor Serge Koussevitzky, one of Bernstein's mentors, allegedly urged the composer to marry Montealegre to conceal his private activities. In the film, Koussevitzky (played by Yasen Peyankov) goes even further—suggesting that Bernstein change his Jewish surname as well. <br /><br /><b>Maestro also details Bernstein's recurring affairs with music scholar Tom Cothran (played by Gideon Glick), with whom he would share many vacations in North Carolina. When his wife fell ill with lung cancer in the late '70s, Bernstein returned and stayed with her until her death. </b>Even through all the fighting, resentment, and loose loyalties, many friends and family members affirm that Bernstein and Montealegre did share love for one another.<br /><br />"<b>They were really great friends and probably that counts for the most in the long run, that they could still make each other laugh</b>," Bernstein’s daughter Jamie (played by Maya Hawke in Maestro) told PBS during an interview in 1997. "They could do things that they were interested in together, read the same books and go to the same theater and be interested in [what] one another has to say about those things, you know, I think that’s probably what keeps a marriage together more than, I don’t know, more than passion.” ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a46166568/leonard-bernstein-felicia-montealegre-true-story-maestro/">https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a46166568/leonard-bernstein-felicia-montealegre-true-story-maestro/</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I am somewhat puzzled by the sharp dislike of Felicia I instantly felt whenever she was on the screen, and especially in the love scenes. Her barracuda smile and his pretending to be a conventional family man. I didn't think the two had any erotic chemistry on the screen. That existed in the glimpses of Lenny's yearning for his male lovers: the subtlety, the secrecy of that forbidden love. That was the real, private side of the complex artist, not the "normal family" façade. The movie, by protesting too much, actually makes it all the more obvious.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">One of my favorite moments in the movie: Lenny and another man don't actually hold hands when sitting side by side; but they do hook their pinkies in a wonderful way.) <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">(It's not that I am against conventional families. It's just "for other people.")<br /><br />*<br /><b>STARS ALONE DON’T EXPLAIN BLACK HOLES</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhColuhhkorfQ_iE9a0ptV0-ytBlNErv8NHOSyLVLbyemoxNvLI_CMIP3_H-xHgANAT3h8Zlu7rnu9v67fE77Aua9_68DHHo1PZijI9lwyMBmcgnfFG0toMEhoNi7zllUopl6_4R3WNULrYKYCala-7J7lK-Wu3pYgiEFtyfIyhF0RsJ_owhVJI3T5by-Um/s3017/einstein%20and%20Bronislaw%20Huberman.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3017" data-original-width="2408" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhColuhhkorfQ_iE9a0ptV0-ytBlNErv8NHOSyLVLbyemoxNvLI_CMIP3_H-xHgANAT3h8Zlu7rnu9v67fE77Aua9_68DHHo1PZijI9lwyMBmcgnfFG0toMEhoNi7zllUopl6_4R3WNULrYKYCala-7J7lK-Wu3pYgiEFtyfIyhF0RsJ_owhVJI3T5by-Um/w319-h400/einstein%20and%20Bronislaw%20Huberman.webp" width="319" /></a></b></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Einstein and violinist Bronislaw Huberman, 1937</i><br /></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><b>At the center of practically every galaxy </b>today isn’t just a collection of stars, gas, and dust, but <b>a monster behemoth: a supermassive black hole. </b>Ranging from millions to billions of solar masses, these cosmic monstrosities are responsible for some of the most violent, energetic events in the known Universe.<br /><br /><b>When a star or other massive object passes too close to one, the black hole’s gravity can violently tear it apart: a tidal disruption event.</b></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">When gas or other matter gets accreted around that black hole, the acceleration of that matter produces jets of radiation and particles: an active galactic nucleus, blazar, or quasar, depending on how we view it.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">And <b>when another black hole merges with a supermassive one, it generates incredibly energetic gravitational waves: perhaps the most energetic events in all the cosmos.<br /></b><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Today, even the most massive of the known black holes represent only about 0.1% of the stellar mass of the galaxy: just one-thousandth of the amount of mass found by summing up all the stars in the galactic environment surrounding it. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">For a long time, astronomers have wondered just how these supermassive black holes came to be: did they form from earlier generations of stars, or was something else needed to explain them? With a large suite of new data now available owing to the advent of JWST [James Webb Space Telescope), the answer now seems certain: <b>stars alone can’t explain these black holes. </b>Here’s the evidence that leads us to that conclusion.<br /><br />The first thing we have to understand is that there are two main ways that black holes can grow:<br /><br />1. by the steady, gradual accretion and infall of matter, such as gas; </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">and </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">2. by individual events such as mergers and the swallowing of massive objects, such as stars, stellar remnants, and other black holes.<br /><br /><b>The first one, in general, is the primary method that leads to growth over time, while the second can lead to growth in leaps, jumps, and bursts, particularly when violent events such as galactic mergers occur.</b> (And, specifically, when two supermassive black holes, one originating from each progenitor galaxy, merge together.)<br /><br />When you have an accreting black hole, such as an active galactic nucleus or a quasar, there has to be a balance between the outward force/pressure of the radiation and winds that emerge from the object and the gravitational force of matter that falls inward. <b>If there’s too much infall of matter, then there will be a rise in the amount of radiation and winds, and that will blow the infalling matter back out</b>: a phenomenon that occurs when black hole growth proceeds at a rate that exceeds a certain theoretical limit. Because of this relation, <b>there’s a limit to how quickly objects like black holes can grow, and hence, if we extrapolate backward in time, there’s a limit to how large an initial “seed” for these supermassive black holes must have been.</b><br /><br />For a black hole of even tens of billions of solar masses today, that doesn’t necessarily pose any sort of problem, because today’s black holes have had 13.8 billion years of cosmic history over which they grow. But <b><i>if we look back in time, we would have naively expected that the most massive black holes that we would have seen at early times would be far less massive than the enormous black holes spotted today: in the billions or even tens of billions of solar masses.</i><br /></b><br />In the pre-JWST era, it was rare to find astronomical objects — things like galaxies and quasars — from the first ~1.5 billion years of the Universe’s history (beyond a redshift of z = 4, in astronomy-speak), as those objects were not only incredibly far away, but were fainter, lower in mass, and had their light severely redshifted by the expansion of the Universe. The few that we did find, if they had enough activity coming from their centers, gave enough information to infer the masses of the supermassive black holes they housed from data in the non-visible portion of the spectrum: such as at infrared or X-ray wavelengths.<br /><br />Quite surprisingly, </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>we began to find that, even before the Universe was a mere 1 billion years old, some of these black holes had masses that rivaled or even exceeded a billion solar masses.<br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />That led to a big puzzle: <b>how did black holes get so massive so quickly?</b> After all, there were three major options to consider that would still be consistent with the other data we had about the Universe from observations of cosmic structure, galaxy evolution, the leftover radiation from the Big Bang, and more.<br /><br />1. The Universe was born without black holes, and none arose until the first stars lived-and-died, with the most massive among them leaving black hole remnants behind.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">2. The Universe was born without black holes, but<b> formed them not only from stars, but from clumps of matter — such as streams of gas — that directly collapsed to form event horizons around them.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">3. The Universe was born with either primordial black holes or <b>incredibly massive, overdense seeds that would swiftly collapse to create black holes, long before any stars had the opportunity to form.</b><br /><br />The first option is a certainty:<b> as soon as our Universe made stars, many of those first stars would die in a catastrophic supernova explosion, their cores would collapse, and many of those stars would leave a black hole behind as a remnant. Those black holes, however, would only have masses around 100 times that of the Sun. </b><br /><br />The second option is an intriguing possibility, bolstered by recent theoretical simulations by Muhammad Latif and Daniel Whalen, that could lead to more massive seeds: up to 10,000 or even perhaps 100,000 solar masses each. The third option, while exotic, would perhaps require invocation if still more massive seeds were needed.<br /><br /><b>Now that we’re in the JWST era, we’ve discovered our first black holes from when the Universe was less than 600 million (0.6 billion) years of age: from when the Universe was just 4.3% of its current age or younger. In fact, we now have three detected black holes from that era.<br /></b><br />Seeing black holes that are more massive early on, as compared to the stellar masses we find in the galaxies that house them at those early times, is strong evidence that — at least in these galaxies — the black holes that we are seeing did not arise from the stars themselves, but rather from more massive seeds than stars, alone, can provide. <b>The fact that these black holes are “only” a factor of 10, 100, or even 1000 times larger than they are at present suggests that they didn’t form from stars, but rather from the direct collapse process of clouds of normal matter</b>, further suggesting that invoking something exotic, like primordial black holes, is unnecessary.<br /><br />We still don’t know whether there are other, smaller black holes out there that have yet to be revealed, particularly among the faintest, lowest-mass galaxies that strain the limits of what JWST can detect. There could yet be multiple populations of galaxies with black holes: some of which were formed by direct collapse, and others that formed from the remnants of the first stars, as we are only beginning to take a census of these objects.<br /><br />However, the era of claiming that nothing more than stars — living and dying as normal, with some of the most massive ones having their cores collapse down to black holes — are required to give rise to <b>the supermassive black holes</b> we find at later times is now over. <b>Something more is required: perhaps it’s direct collapse, which is the leading suspect, or perhaps it’s something even more exotic. </b><br /><br />Perhaps stars can still explain many of the supermassive black holes that arise in the Universe — or perhaps stars are only a sub-dominant effect, and it’s direct collapse that is responsible for the majority of supermassive black holes in the Universe. With the JWST era now in full swing, the good news is, we’re likely to soon find out.<br /><br /><a href="https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/stars-cant-explain-black-holes-jwst/">https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/stars-cant-explain-black-holes-jwst/<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>ARE BOOMERS TO BLAME FOR THE HOUSING SHORTAGE?<br /></b><br />~ <b>Buying a family-sized home with three or more bedrooms used to be manageable for young people with children.</b> But with home prices climbing faster than wages, mortgage rates still close to 23-year highs and a shortage of homes nationwide, many Millennials with kids can’t afford it. And Gen Z adults with kids? Even harder.<br /><br />Meanwhile, <b>Baby Boomers are staying in their larger homes for longer, preferring to age in place and stay active in a neighborhood that’s familiar to them. And even if they sold, where would they go? There is a shortage of smaller homes in those neighborhoods.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">As a result, <b>empty-nest Baby Boomers own 28% of large homes</b> — and Milliennials with kids own just 14%, according to a Redfin analysis released Tuesday. Gen Z families own just 0.3% of homes with three bedrooms or more.<br /><br />“Boomers love their homes. Even if they did want to sell, it is now prohibitively expensive for many Millennials,” said Sheharyar Bokhari, senior economist at Redfin, who did the analysis, to CNN. “<b>These are larger homes where there are only one or two people living there and, typically, they bought it a while ago, so it has value.</b>”<br /><br />This is a change from the historical norm, according to the research.<b> Ten years ago young families were just as likely as empty nesters to own large homes.</b><br /><br />The report defines age groups in the 2022 Census data as: adult Gen Zers were 19 to 25 years old, Millennials were aged 26 to 41, Gen Xers were 42 to 57, and Baby Boomers were 58 to 76.<br />Even though Millennials with kids own half as many large homes as empty nesters, <b>Millennials make up roughly 28% of the country’s adult population, the largest share of any generation.</b><br /><br />With many young people already delaying having children as they work to find stability in their family and career, the well-established milestone of purchasing a home for the family is increasingly out of reach.<br /><br />THE LOCK-IN EFFECTS, BECAUSE OF THE RATES, IS ONLY HALF OF IT<br /><br /><b>Few homeowners of any age want to sell right now. This is crushing inventory of homes for sale and keeping prices high.<br /></b><br /><b>Even though current homeowners have record high levels of equity in their homes, there is very little incentive to sell.<br /></b><br />More than 90% of current homeowners with mortgages have rates that are 6% or under, according to ICE Mortgage Technology, a mortgage data firm. With the current average rate for a 30-year, fixed loan hovering around 6.6%, nearly all but the most recent homeowners would be taking on a mortgage rate higher than their existing rate if they were to sell and buy another home.<br /><br />While that is surely keeping some Boomers in their home, said Bokhari, it is only part of the reason.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>“Half of these Baby Boomers own their home outright, so the rate lock-in doesn’t even apply to them,” he told CNN. “They just aren’t downsizing. Even if it is just one or two people, or a couple. They love their big house.”</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />For those who own their home outright, the median monthly cost of owning a home, which includes insurance and property taxes, among other costs, is just $612, according to the report.<br /><br />“Logically, empty nesters are the most likely group to sell big homes and downsize,” said Bokhari. “They no longer have children living at home and don’t need as much space. The problem for younger families who wish their parents’ generation would list their big homes: <b>Boomers don’t have much motivation to sell, financially or otherwise</b>.”<br /><br />BOOMERS HAVE ALWAYS LOVED THEIR HOMES<br /><br /><b>Older Americans today own a much bigger share of large homes than they did a decade ago</b> and young families own a smaller share.<br /><br />But who owns them has changed.<br /><br />Ten years ago, in 2012, empty nesters of the Silent Generation, who were between the ages of 67 and 84 at the time, took up 16% of homes that were three-bedrooms or larger. That is a smaller share than Gen Xers with kids, who were aged 32 to 47 at the time, and took up 19% of those large homes.<br /><br />But even then empty nest Baby Boomers had the most large homes. In 2012, empty-nest boomers, who were then aged 48 to 66, owned and occupied 26.4% of three-bedroom-plus homes in the U.S., comparable to today’s share.<br /><br />Young families take up the smallest share of large homes in coastal areas like California and Florida, where large homes tend to be more expensive. Instead, the Midwest is where Millennials own the largest share of larger homes. <b>But there is no city where Millennials with kids own more than 18% of large homes.</b><br /><br />Empty nesters own at least 20% of large homes everywhere in the country. But they take up the smallest share of three-bedroom-plus homes in popular migration destinations as well as California cities like Riverside, California, with 21.9%; Salt Lake City at 22%; and Austin, Texas, at 22.2%.<br /><br />WHAT’S AHEAD<br /><br />There’s some small silver lining in the year ahead, said Bokhari: Affordability is expected to improve somewhat in 2024.<br /><br />Mortgage rates are trending down and are expected to come down more as 2024 goes on. That will bring the cost of homeownership lower for young families.<br /><br /><b>As mortgage rates fall, more homeowners will see the gap shrink between their existing mortgage rate and current rates for another home, making selling more palatable.</b><br /><br /><b>But would-be homebuyers waiting for a so called “Silver Tsunami” of older homeowners selling their homes en masse should not hold their breath, said Bokhari.</b><br /><br />“Some Boomers are ready to downsize into a condo or move somewhere new for retirement, and the mortgage-rate lock-in effect is starting to ease,” he said.<br /><br />But <b>“there won’t be a flood of inventory. There will be a trickle,” he added.<br /></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQM-quCk3OMH1o9qBusZRPDUl1mI24t1uptx0OpmAZ9xsdYp6FcMVlJNalh0B6RHsawYSQK3kFRC73UsW1YnC2E6Fi9d3ueuJJ_RDcOT7BAemxzbb_Oa-qONIKphV7TVj4xRWgnUtqQk0dhokPxsw6Vz5kWdSwesL92lxwIB1e7lqX8fizE1QrUSd2XXJZ/s355/suburbs.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="235" data-original-width="355" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQM-quCk3OMH1o9qBusZRPDUl1mI24t1uptx0OpmAZ9xsdYp6FcMVlJNalh0B6RHsawYSQK3kFRC73UsW1YnC2E6Fi9d3ueuJJ_RDcOT7BAemxzbb_Oa-qONIKphV7TVj4xRWgnUtqQk0dhokPxsw6Vz5kWdSwesL92lxwIB1e7lqX8fizE1QrUSd2XXJZ/w400-h265/suburbs.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/16/economy/boomers-own-more-larger-homes-than-millennial-families/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/16/economy/boomers-own-more-larger-homes-than-millennial-families/index.html</a><br /><br />Oriana:<br /><br />The joy of having a large house and yard is undeniable, though there are of course times when you want to strangle the politicians responsible for property taxes and the insurance people who use every ruse and “act of God” to charge more. <br /><br />But it is indeed a easy to comprehend the resentment that at least some young people feel about having to live in cramped apartments, with rent going up every year, while their parents enjoy a spacious house at a fixed mortgage, or perhaps even already paid off. The children of boomers typically grew up in single-family houses, and dislike seeing how they, and <b>basically their whole generation, is stuck with a lower standard of living — at least for a while.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #800180;"><b>The expectation that each new generation would in fact be ahead of their parents ended a long time ago</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;">. And mind you, even some well-to-do boomers complain that they can’t give their children what their parents gave to them. <br /><br />And while the adult children used to help out their parents financially, this situation seems to have reversed itself: <b>now it’s the parents and grandparents who keep on subsidizing the younger generations. </b><br /><br />I was puzzled as to why this article never mentions one big reason for not wanting to move: the expense and the back-breaking chores of moving. For me, moving is like a serious illness — or, without confusing the matter with analogies, moving is a huge upending of one's life and it takes a terrible amount of work! Even if you hire professional movers, you still have to figure out what to keep and what to discard. And then, in the new place, the weeks of taking things out of boxes and arranging the new space. To the younger set, with more muscle and energy, that may be relatively trivial; the “parent generation” gets physically and mentally exhausted as perhaps never before, now that various electronic gadgets have to connected and set up just right. <br /><br /><b>But it’s losing the trusted doctor and dentist, one’s favorite bank and grocery market, and the helpful friends that the old neighbors gradually became, that may hurt most.</b> Establishing everything from scratch and notifying a gazillion places about “change of address” — just thinking about it can be exhausting. (OK, maybe that's just me: I find such chores incredibly boring and exhausting. But when I saw tears in the eyes of an elderly man who was moving out because his wife wanted to be "closer to the kids and grandkids," I thought that perhaps my attachment isn't unique after all. And did the wife look happy to be moving out? No.)<br /><br />Unless property taxes become unbearably high, it’s a lot easier to stay put. Besides, there may not be a suitable place to move into. But supposing you do find a good-enough new place, the chores and expenses of moving are quite stressful. And finally, finally, let’s admit the real reason, even if it sounds sentimental: we love our house and the tall tree in front of it; we love the hummingbird that weaves its nest in the lower branches, and the owl that hoots near the top; we love the indestructible bougainvillea and hibiscus; we love the whole familiar neighborhood, down to a neighbor's dachshund. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Like a cat happy in a cardboard box, we too feel happy and safe when we live in a familiar space, dear to us. <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixSLbcLNbvGxmzGE7vRxKa4pzsUaaSPGd07KFumziD5Bog16FSsvEmYKdlQHK35jBv-D-aUKOSm9VGD901G8XL0KrCV9-qV0OP6wBuZZCJYnySXPMB3IJbsE377fVhu6Wc0NhorFbhc4kMjLZTPHliQ-9JjDpUMr0qlAHCbHrd5fTNY1Be85JFUTTkNaiq/s1024/HOUSE%20greenery%20Emily%20Hunt%202010.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="830" data-original-width="1024" height="324" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixSLbcLNbvGxmzGE7vRxKa4pzsUaaSPGd07KFumziD5Bog16FSsvEmYKdlQHK35jBv-D-aUKOSm9VGD901G8XL0KrCV9-qV0OP6wBuZZCJYnySXPMB3IJbsE377fVhu6Wc0NhorFbhc4kMjLZTPHliQ-9JjDpUMr0qlAHCbHrd5fTNY1Be85JFUTTkNaiq/w400-h324/HOUSE%20greenery%20Emily%20Hunt%202010.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>THE LONG-FORGOTTEN PUBLILIUS SYRUS AND HIS IMMORTAL WORDS</b><br /><br />Some quotes are far more famous than the people who invented of them. The best example of this was a man named Publilius Syrus. Syrus was a slave from Syria, brought to Rome and freed by his master on account of his wit. His master then educated Syrus, who ended up a writer.</span><br /></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqooFTWGr3CIwFZ87jbHMJOPTzA9rhUErrko-F3PS5O3xpSuTeGfotmiXjYBR-r30-WLICbVdmXPpKPg1A2JiKzOHG7EuInkR8ZNu-rnEj7ooToly-InzEM_IHpXE6Y1QghYsVsnomBDyCgdM846w9IGSnOf00OnCIn2DZ4KNj8qIWlEq8Vl9nQQ5Rg81U/s602/Publius%20Syrus%20Roman%20writer%20sage.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="418" data-original-width="602" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqooFTWGr3CIwFZ87jbHMJOPTzA9rhUErrko-F3PS5O3xpSuTeGfotmiXjYBR-r30-WLICbVdmXPpKPg1A2JiKzOHG7EuInkR8ZNu-rnEj7ooToly-InzEM_IHpXE6Y1QghYsVsnomBDyCgdM846w9IGSnOf00OnCIn2DZ4KNj8qIWlEq8Vl9nQQ5Rg81U/w400-h278/Publius%20Syrus%20Roman%20writer%20sage.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Publilius Syrus</i> <br /></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Among the enduring sayings of Publilius Syrus, we count, for instance <b>“ignorance is bliss”</b>. He also coined <b>“the end justifies the means”, “a rolling stone gathers no moss” and “honor among thieves”</b> — all of these from a humble Syrian slave who lived and died decades before Jesus was born. Another great quote by the man that I hear less often, but that is no less apt: <b>“To do two things at once is to do neither.” </b>And of course the legendary and still-relevant: <b>"Pardon one offense, and you encourage the commission of many.”</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>It’s remarkable to me how almost everyone on earth knows these sayings. Yet so very few people know the name of the man who coined them.</b> His name was Publilius Syrus. A great mind who found himself in a shitty situation, climbing out of it by sheer power of will, using only that great and enduring mind. ~ Jean-Marie Valheur</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">What strikes me here is not only the easy way those sayings roll of the tongue, but also the wisdom contained in them. This is the marriage of art and wisdom. A saying won't survive just because it rhymes, for instance. To survive, it needs to contain an insight. <br /><br />*<br /><b>ISRAEL’S ECONOMY WILL SUFFER IF THE WAR ESCALATES<br /></b></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCZ8nDBJMEMlDQN5tVptQqdpfap7VEUjkjDYWm6laFGyeIUdLBYg3R7wTH63mcYjbFmsbzzOSj2uLJx99JC1EGnspY9Y2rJgOb69phyDl8GeHAE6p_LPypGkZeVJQuo6r1Ue7nheT9XbqIk_rChSEhDA5R-BPL4PnFWCIadwIuQ7eOH4QTKJIg2wkGPfr2/s1800/Goland%20Heights%20winery.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1195" data-original-width="1800" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCZ8nDBJMEMlDQN5tVptQqdpfap7VEUjkjDYWm6laFGyeIUdLBYg3R7wTH63mcYjbFmsbzzOSj2uLJx99JC1EGnspY9Y2rJgOb69phyDl8GeHAE6p_LPypGkZeVJQuo6r1Ue7nheT9XbqIk_rChSEhDA5R-BPL4PnFWCIadwIuQ7eOH4QTKJIg2wkGPfr2/w400-h265/Goland%20Heights%20winery.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">KATZRIN, the Golan Heights — The tours at the Golan Heights Winery used to take place daily, stopping by the fermentation tanks and the cellar where thousands of oak barrels are stacked 20 feet into the air.<br /><br />But the tourists and honeymooners stopped coming to this pastoral hills region after Oct. 7, 2023, when fighters from the militant group Hamas attacked southern Israel and touched off a war that has continued into the new year.<br /><br />The Oct. 7 attack happened far from here, more than 100 miles away from the winery. But much closer is Israel's border with Lebanon, home to Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed armed force with whom Israel warred in 2006 — and with whom tensions have risen this month.<br /><br /><b>"The sound of planes, helicopters, booms, that's kind of routine," said Victor Schoenfeld, the head winemaker.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUCDTUQErCxVvgnBkgdi0VMJQbzR9SzQwKL_DLf5Iglzrqc8WmlxX2b8ss1LDxfD0D4TgGdyaT6xCHXi-K2P-IFhUv3G9sV7GS6GtLU2puJXzlLtu3-x3_bah3R11pkj0eypTR27ovvsSosUvQEEIxHMGdicFnUh96OIXc6RFnB9WIPYa61Qz_VCo4bR2g/s1104/israeli%20vinyard.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1104" data-original-width="1104" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUCDTUQErCxVvgnBkgdi0VMJQbzR9SzQwKL_DLf5Iglzrqc8WmlxX2b8ss1LDxfD0D4TgGdyaT6xCHXi-K2P-IFhUv3G9sV7GS6GtLU2puJXzlLtu3-x3_bah3R11pkj0eypTR27ovvsSosUvQEEIxHMGdicFnUh96OIXc6RFnB9WIPYa61Qz_VCo4bR2g/w400-h400/israeli%20vinyard.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">No Hezbollah rockets have struck nearby — for now, the winery's top executive said. "Not yet," said CEO Assaf Ben Dov. "We don't know."<br /><br /><b>The conflict, even at its current simmer rather than the full-blown war taking place in Gaza, has already taken an economic toll in these northern regions: Towns are emptied of people. <br /></b><br /><b>Businesses are shuttered. Farm fields, including vineyards, lie untended</b>, putting production timelines in jeopardy.<br /><br />"We will need to find new strategies. I don't see any new or quick solution that will appear," said Ben Dov.<br /><br /><i><b>Six Israeli civilians have died in cross-border attacks from Lebanon, Israeli officials say, including an elderly mother and son killed Sunday by a pair of anti-tank missile strikes on their home in Kfar Yuval. Lebanese officials say at least 20 civilians have died on the other side of the border.</b><br /></i><br /><b>Residents have fled the region by the tens of thousands. </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>If they decide it will never be safe enough to return home, "it will affect the economy in these places in the long run in a way that could definitely be lethal,</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>" </b>said Tomer Fadlon, an economist at Tel Aviv University.<br /><br />Even if Israel achieves its military objectives in the south, an economic recovery in the north is far from guaranteed, Fadlon said. "So this war was not only about winning the war. It is also about gaining back the feeling that they can go home safe, run a business and run their life," he said.<br /><br /><b>The winery is located in the Golan Heights, a territory claimed by Syria that Israel seized in 1967 and has occupied ever since. Hezbollah's rockets haven't yet reached as far as the winery, about 13 miles from the Lebanon border, but much of its staff lives in northern Israel, where the sounds of war are now routine.</b><br /><br />Of the 130 employees at the Golan Heights facility, 12 are reservists who were called up to active duty after the war began. (In total Israel has mobilized some 360,000 reservists, causing significant labor shortages, including in the country's high-powered tech sector.) The loss of staff means the winery is running behind their normal production schedule.<br /><br />Much more affected is the ownership group's second winery, the Galil Mountain Winery, which is located in Kibbutz Yir'On, only a few hundred yards from the Lebanon border. <b>Visitors can see into Lebanon from the winery building, Ben Dov said. "You used to see Hezbollah flags right next to us," he said. "I hope they're not there anymore.”</b></span><b><br /></b><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The Israeli military ordered the evacuation of areas along the border in October, including Yir'On. The Galil Mountain Winery has been entirely shut down ever since. Managers must seek daily permission from the Israeli military to access the facility</b>, Ben Dov said.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Most concerning are the winery's vineyards, 90% of which are located along the border and are currently inaccessible</b>, Schoenfeld said.<br /><br /><b>Grape vines must be pruned in the winter</b>, an important step in wine making. Were there not a war, the staff would be pruning now. But the military will not let staff access the vineyards while the conflict with Hezbollah is still so volatile, he said.<br /><br />The pruning can be put off for a couple months, perhaps, Schoenfeld said. But eventually there comes a natural deadline: The plants will start pushing leaves by the end of March or early April, meaning pruning must be done before then.<br /><br />"If things aren't accessible by then, we have some strategies," Schoenfeld said. "But the longer it goes on, the more complicated it's gonna be.”<br /><br /><b>In communities along the border, the economy is still far from normal<br /></b><br />Consumer spending in Israel has been depressed since the outbreak of war, said economist Fadlon, who has tracked credit card spending. (Only in one week of the war so far — in late November, when a temporary ceasefire was negotiated to exchange Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners — did Israelis spend more than a typical pre-war week, he said.)<br /><br /><b>Unlike cities further from the conflict, like Tel Aviv, which have mostly rebounded from the initial shock of war, the economies of border communities are still profoundly impacted</b>. In Kiryat Shmona, the largest city on Israel's side of the northern border, credit card spending levels are still 70% or more below normal, Fadlon said.<br /><br /><i><b>One of the few open businesses in Kiryat Shmona is Shlomi Baguette, a counter-service shawarma restaurant. "Most of Kiryat Shmona is evacuated. But we're working as usual," said Toby Abutbul, 22, whose father runs the restaurant.</b></i><br /><br />Soldiers stationed in the north now make up 80% or more of the restaurant's sales, Abutbul said. "We will not let the soldiers stay hungry, you understand? We help them how we can," he said.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>An estimated 60,000 people have fled the border region</b>, staying for months with family or in hotels away from the conflict.<br /><br />In November, <b>the Bank of Israel estimated that the absence at work of 144,000 evacuated residents, about 40% of whom have fled the north, had cost Israel's economy about 590 million shekels, or $158 million, each week.<br /></b><br />That impact would be felt even more widely should evacuees decide not to return, Fadlon said. "If you have so many people that want to stay in these places and want to move elsewhere, it will affect everything, the cost of living, even the real estate and everything else," he said.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>The central bank has assessed that the total budgetary cost of the war, to Israel, will be 210 billion shekels, or about $56 billion — nearly half an entire year's budget for Israel, a country with fewer than 10 million residents.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />That forecast "assumes that the lion's share of the war will occur on one front, Gaza," said Amir Yaron, the bank's top official, on New Year's Day. "It is clear that the length of time, and the developments of the war to additional areas, can change the estimates markedly.”<br /><br />THE RISK OF A BROADER WAR WITH HEZBOLLAH<br /><br /><b>A potential second front could be the north. Leaders from Hezbollah and Israel have both said they are prepared to go to war if necessary.</b> "We will restore security to both the south and the north. Nobody will stop us – not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anybody else," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday.<br /><br /><i><b>"If we have a war with Hezbollah, given the arsenal that they have, they can paralyze the country for a month or longer," said Esteban Klor, a researcher at Hebrew University of Jerusalem who studies the intersection of terrorism and economics.</b></i><br /><br /><b>Hezbollah, the world's most heavily armed non-state actor, is far better equipped than Hamas, analysts say. It is estimated to have 130,000 or more rockets and missiles in its arsenal, some with a range that could allow the group to strike targets all across Israel.<br /></b><br />The effects of a full-blown war with Hezbollah would extend far beyond the north, Klor said. "People are going to have to stay home in shelters, and so the entire country will probably stop working for the duration of that war," he said.<br /><br />The question has taken on greater urgency this month after a strike in Lebanon's capital Beirut killed a top Hamas official. Israel has not taken responsibility for the strike, but still Hezbollah has retaliated. In addition to the two civilians killed in Kfar Yuval, attacks from Lebanon in recent days have damaged Israeli military infrastructure and injured at least six soldiers, officials say.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>An outbreak of war with Hezbollah could drive the cost to Israel two or three times higher, Klor said. Such an increase might send the country into a period of economic stagnation like the one that followed Israel's last major war, the Yom Kippur War of 1973. It took Israel more than a decade to recover economically, he said.<br /></b><br /><i><b>In Lebanon, where the economy was already in a state of catastrophe before Oct. 7, the United Nations estimates that more than 76,000 people have fled the border region.</b></i> The crisis, which dates back to 2019, is one of the worst the world has seen since the mid-1800s, the World Bank has said. Over the past four years, Lebanon's currency has collapsed and poverty has skyrocketed as political and financial leaders have resisted reform.<br /><br />An outbreak of war along its southern border "could be truly, truly devastating, especially if we see what has happened in the Gaza Strip," Klor said.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/01/16/1224767491/israel-hezbollah-economy-lebanon-gaza">https://www.npr.org/2024/01/16/1224767491/israel-hezbollah-economy-lebanon-gaza<br /></a><br /><br />*<br /><b>ARE ISRAELI JEWS INDIGENOUS OR COLONIZERS?</b><br /><br />~ Are Jews “indigenous” or settler colonialists in Palestine? They are both. <br /><br /><b>The Jewish people originated in this land, and after two thousand years of exile, they developed an ideology and a political rather than purely religious movement of “return.” But their historical memory was not shared by the land’s inhabitants.</b> The historical memory of the Jewish people did not create the right or capacity to confiscate or occupy a single dunam of land against the will of its possessors. The historical memory of one people, however tenacious, creates no right to rule over another.<br /><br /><i><b>Israeli Jews are settler colonialists with a historical memory of indigenous origin. This includes the Jews who fled or were expelled from Arab and other Muslim countries. They were indigenous to the region but not to Palestine, except in their own historical memory. That historical memory distinguishes Israel from other settler colonial states. </b></i><br /><br />So does the fact that <b>the nation founded through settler colonialism has no “mother country” to which its members might return, as the French did from Algeria. Today’s settlers in the West Bank and the Golan Heights could indeed return—their “mother country” is Israel—but the same is not true of the citizens of Israel as a whole. They cannot return to the scenes of the Holocaust or to the Arab and Muslim states that expelled them. </b><br /><br />Great Britain, and then the United States, played the role of mother country by conquering the land, facilitating its settlement, and arming the settlers, but they have assumed no responsibility for the fate of Jewish refugees—whether from Hitler, from the persecution of Jews in Iraq in the early 1950s, or from a future conflagration in Palestine.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Instead, <b>the Zionist movement and the Jewish state succeeded in building a new nation that is now indigenous to the land—though to what parts of the land, and with exactly what rights, is the core of the dispute over whether Israel is an apartheid settler state.</b> The question “does Israel have the right to exist?” could have been meaningfully debated before the state existed, but now the only answer is, “Israel exists.” <br /><br />As a member of the United Nations, it has the right to continue to exist and to exercise the right to self-defense against other states. According to the UN charter, it also has the right to defend its territorial integrity, but implementation of that right requires defining the borders of the State of Israel. This depends on a peace settlement recognizing Palestinian national rights. Only such a settlement can establish Israel’s security as a state.<br /><br />Genesis is not destiny. <b>Documenting the historical fact that Israel came into existence in part through Zionism’s collaboration with colonialism does not mean that the only solution is a “decolonization” that would destroy the state and expel its inhabitants</b>. What is objectionable about colonialism is not the immigration or settlement of a population of a different ethnic or national origin, or of people that are in some sense non-indigenous, but the domination of one group over another. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">It is impossible to rewind and rerun history. But <b>it is possible, indeed necessary, to assure a future where Palestinians and Israelis have equal rights</b>. Both peoples must be able to participate in choosing the government that rules them. Palestinians and Israelis must live either in two sovereign, equal states, or in one state as individuals with equal rights. The international consensus (excluding the government of Israel) in favor of the former—and the apparent impossibility of Israelis and Palestinians sharing a common sole polity—make the former the apparent choice.<br /><br /><b>Herzl’s utopian novel, The Old New Land (1902), addressed the messianic origins of Zionism. </b>In his narrative of a 1923 visit to a futuristic—yet very Viennese—“Jewish Palestine,” the narrator visits the magnificent Opera House in Jerusalem to attend a performance of an opera based on the life of Sabbatai Zevi. In 1648, during massive massacres of Jews in Ukraine, which some Jews saw as the “birth pangs of the messiah,” Sabbatai proclaimed his messianic calling in a synagogue in Smyrna (now Izmir, Turkey). He gathered a following among Jewish communities worldwide. <b>Many sold off their belongings and prepared to move to Palestine, until their messiah was summoned by the Ottoman sultan, in whose presence he converted to Islam in September 1666.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In the novel, during the opera’s intermission, the audience puzzles over the history. How had such a con man gathered such a following?<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>The longing creates the Messiah<br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><b>Zionism aspired for the Jews to assert their “folk personality” to become one of what Europeans then called “civilized nations.”</b> The distinction between civilized nations and others contained the essence of colonialism. In his manifesto, The Jewish State (1896), <b>Herzl wrote, “We [the Jewish state in Palestine] should there form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia</b>, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.” That concept of salvation as domination ultimately proved to be yet another false messiah.<br /><br /><b>Without that salvation, the narrative of modern Jewish history loses its essential arc.</b> Israel continues to lurch headlong into an offensive that leading scholars of the Holocaust have warned appears to be on the path to genocide. The transformation of victim into perpetrator does not inspire hope or give suffering meaning. Nor does comparing current events to the Holocaust amount to equating the two. As Masha Gessen has argued, it is impossible to learn lessons from an event if all comparisons to it are forbidden.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The destruction of the Second Temple, reversing the return of the Babylonian exile, destroyed the previous narrative of Jewish history as well.</b> Third-century Palestinian rabbis had recent and bitter experience of failed messiahs. The Tractate Sanhedrin of the Talmud records that Rabbis ‘Ullah, Rabbah, and Johanan all said of the messiah, “Let him come, but let me not see him.” </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Reish Lakish, another rabbi of that generation, asks whether it is because of the birth pangs of the messiah, as told by Jeremiah. Rabbi Johanan answers: “God says, These [the Gentiles] are my handiwork, and so are these [the Jews]; how shall I destroy the former on account of the latter?” Without justice, God himself cannot bear to see the salvation of Israel.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/false-messiahs/">https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/false-messiahs/</a><br /><br />~ there is also<b> the other goal of Zionism: that Jews need to become proud of themselves.</b> They need to have a sense of dignity. <b>Herzl writes in many places that only by becoming a political force in the world and only by taking their fate in their hands can the Jews regain their honor.<br /></b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Herzl also envisions the future Jewish national home as an ideal society that has harnessed technology for the good of all and is a model for the world. Herzl does not envision the Jewish-Arab conflict or of the need for a strong defense force.</span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-7aGxwx3jrqCSFfRajVxUyY_LC5r0_vKS37ch5x992O6C-UR5aLKpNK-nTJa1IfO_MjIl158m2CtIMe2Zzwku8PYPchkv_beX2_jP_-oejM9JUCXGGKKZj_a5s1H9l67_aGQ6BQhZ3IksqjjSirEFl8Xfvx29Ehi4qVDUu2TysKy8Yf5jKIEyRigFrQ-t/s1600/herzliya%20affluent%20Tel%20Aviv.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="784" data-original-width="1600" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-7aGxwx3jrqCSFfRajVxUyY_LC5r0_vKS37ch5x992O6C-UR5aLKpNK-nTJa1IfO_MjIl158m2CtIMe2Zzwku8PYPchkv_beX2_jP_-oejM9JUCXGGKKZj_a5s1H9l67_aGQ6BQhZ3IksqjjSirEFl8Xfvx29Ehi4qVDUu2TysKy8Yf5jKIEyRigFrQ-t/w400-h196/herzliya%20affluent%20Tel%20Aviv.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Herzliyah, an affluent suburb of Tel Aviv</i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Charles:</span></span></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span face="arial, sans-serif" style="color: #351c75;">It's also important to note that the Islamic army colonized three continents, Asia, Europe and Africa, from 630 to 1722.</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i> </i><br /><br />*<br /><b>RUSSIAN ECONOMY: GUNS AHEAD OF GOODS</b><br /><br /><b>According to Rosstat, only 7.4% of Russians have income over 100,000 rubles ($1,000) per month.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">That’s the number everyone should keep in mind when Putin is talking about:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Revival of Russia.<br />Continuous breakthroughs and advances.<br />The country “getting off its knees.”<br /><br />And still, only 7% of Russians have more than a mere thousand dollars a month.<b><br /></b><br />Rosstat is the official Russian government’s statistics service. It’s known for fudging numbers to present a rosier picture to the public. But even Rosstat can’t fudge the numbers enough to hide the fact that most Russians live in poverty.<br /><br /><b>20% of Russians have an income of less than 20,000 rubles ($200) per month.<br /></b><br />This means, every 5th person in the “great superpower” is dog-poor with a maximum income of $200 per month — and many don’t get even $100 per month.<br /><br />This is not just poverty, but hopeless poverty, without any prospects of getting out of it.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>These 20% of Russians — 30 million people! – will spend their entire lives in poverty.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“Russia is the largest economy in Europe,” Putin recently raved.<br /><br />“They are trying to strangle and crush us from all sides, but in terms of the volume of the economy as a whole, we are the first in Europe. We overtook Germany and took the 5th place in the world: China, USA, India, Japan, Russia. In Europe, we are number one,” Putin stated to a few dozen of loyalists — mostly, undercover officers of his FSO bodyguard service — during his pre-election stop in Khabarovsk. (Verbatim quote.)<br /><br /><b>Nothing is impossible if you have dementia.<br /></b><br />In terms of democracy and freedom, Russia is ahead of the whole planet! (According to Kremlin bots.)<br /><br />Reality check:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Germany's GDP is $4.4 trillion, Russia's GDP is $2.3 trillion.</b></span></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The minimum wage in Germany is several times higher than in Russia.</span></span></b></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The average salary in Germany is several times higher than in Russia.</span></span></b></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Pensions in Germany are several times higher than in Russia.</span></span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Germany annually exports hundreds of billions of euros worth of high-tech industrial goods, while Russia continues to export raw materials.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">For a prosperous and safe life, people travel from Russia to Germany, and not vice versa.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>In Germany, retirees are traveling the world, while in Russia pensioners are standing in lines for hours, in hopes to buy cheaper eggs (outside, in winter) — or even fight for expired produce at the rubbish bins of large supermarkets.<br /></b><br />Hello, Putin: in which ways (besides theft, lies and aggressiveness), has Russia overtaken Germany?<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix9qQrGFW3SLkD0ZD14qmc1ibTrJ83mh5Bl8KMk3nNG2-7zAw2O7DMTQ0i_pT0XOZt0XmaZB-Bg69rOHuLbPidpDyYm8ARwFWlz4cjQPl8wCnPZqnQsFMTCVmFxCqyZx0LtZ64ioBCoQXg2fGOGIKYqbVuk2_tuxc2X5LGhT8zmFQmiWrgMum_KCzZhnrQ/s779/busy%20with%20basic%20needs.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="779" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix9qQrGFW3SLkD0ZD14qmc1ibTrJ83mh5Bl8KMk3nNG2-7zAw2O7DMTQ0i_pT0XOZt0XmaZB-Bg69rOHuLbPidpDyYm8ARwFWlz4cjQPl8wCnPZqnQsFMTCVmFxCqyZx0LtZ64ioBCoQXg2fGOGIKYqbVuk2_tuxc2X5LGhT8zmFQmiWrgMum_KCzZhnrQ/w309-h400/busy%20with%20basic%20needs.jpg" width="309" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Dave Kaiser:<br />Russia has overtaken Germany as “biggest threat to the free world” and remained there since 1945.<br /><br />Jorge Lopez:<br />The world would be much better off without Putin and some of his thug cohorts.<br /><br />Allan Blackwood:<br />The problem for Russia is that its economic growth is fueled by <b>‘‘military Keynesianism”, which means that as in the UK or Germany in WW2 there is full employment but a large</b> <b>part of the output doesn’t become consumer goods but instead goes straight to the military </b>to be fired (shells, missiles etc.) or destroyed (tanks, aircraft, ships etc.). <b>The troops on the front line are employed and paid, but contribute little or nothing to the national income.</b> The latest Russian budget devotes 30% of GDP to the military, so when calculating GDP or PPP p.c. It is necessary to reduce the gross figure by at least this amount.<br /><br />*<br /><b>FREUD’S LESBIAN DAUGHTER; HIS PREJUDICES ABOUT WOMEN AND LESBIANS<br /></b><br />~ December 3 is the 120th anniversary of Anna Freud's birth. She was a profoundly influential child psychoanalyst. Still, her main claim to fame was as Sigmund Freud's daughter. <b>What most people don't know about Anna Freud is that it may have been particularly difficult for her to be Sigmund's favorite child. </b>How and why was that the case?<br /><br /><i><b>Sigmund believed that homosexuality in men is neurotic but not particularly problematic. Lesbianism, however, he considered a gateway to mental illness.</b></i><br /><br />This (according to Sigmund) is because only men have moral sense. We all evolve from apes, so no human is born with it. But boys acquire morality through the castration complex—the fear that their fathers will emasculate them for their misbehavior.<br /><br /><b>Having nothing obvious to neuter, girls and women are essentially amoral,</b> lying and conniving to get what they want. Girls must be guided through civilized life by a father, and a woman by a husband. And because they choose not to marry, <b>lesbians remain loose cannons</b>, fundamentally untrustworthy and unstable.<br /><br />His daughter Anna was his closest intellectual and emotional companion. Yet she was a lesbian.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaMi7u9YEsQbd6qDA7yddbs7TMPZbwtIMz7xBiIAFjXIQjI_CTQNCx_1M9LhO6D0nISH536awW72lJPb9HOQJMSLmw9SnHxHjcIaO7WL-4pGqlIWpUOCcryCGg2JA-vgDgs5AdpFRP0bM478cDenWCJHk_BK-AbGQjCsDArD2i-iJQcrKcVyw2gSel5N1X/s318/ANNA%20FREUD.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="318" data-original-width="318" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaMi7u9YEsQbd6qDA7yddbs7TMPZbwtIMz7xBiIAFjXIQjI_CTQNCx_1M9LhO6D0nISH536awW72lJPb9HOQJMSLmw9SnHxHjcIaO7WL-4pGqlIWpUOCcryCGg2JA-vgDgs5AdpFRP0bM478cDenWCJHk_BK-AbGQjCsDArD2i-iJQcrKcVyw2gSel5N1X/s1600/ANNA%20FREUD.webp" width="318" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Freud taught that lesbianism is always the fault of the father and is curable by psychoanalysis.<br /></b><br /><b>Freud cautioned followers that analysis is an erotic relationship</b>. Analyst and patient together must scrutinize the amorous feelings that flow between them. This being the case, by rules he asked his followers to honor, Freud could not attempt to cure his own daughter’s lesbianism.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">When Anna was 23 and enjoying an especially close friendship with another woman, he took her into analysis anyway. <br /><br /><b>In six nights a week over several years, he and Anna analyzed and dissected her masturbation fantasies, which featured an angry father figure (Freud?) beating a child who had made a mistake over which she had no control (Anna and her homosexuality?) <br /></b><br />He spoke publicly about her fantasies at a conference while Anna sat on stage in “the wife’s’ chair” near the podium. (He did not, however, name the patient under discussion. We know the patient was Anna because, when she wanted to become an analyst, she described the same fantasies in a paper titled “Beating Fantasies and Daydreams.” She also wrote to her friends about her fantasies. )<br /><br /><b>Freud failed to “correct” Anna’s lesbianism. She enjoyed 54 years of happy monogamy with Dorothy Burlingham, heir to the Tiffany fortune.</b><br /><br />All this being said, compared with his contemporaries, Sigmund Freud was indeed a compassionate, forward-thinking physician. </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>He became a doctor at a time when lesbianism and masturbation were considered symptoms of hysteria</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>. </b>Most doctors treated hysteria with opiates, ovariectomies, and clitoridectomies. <b>Freud profoundly misunderstood lesbianism, but he treated “hysterical” women by talking to them</b>. He urged patients to look inside themselves and marvel at what they found. As problematic as details of his life and theory were, his idea that physical illnesses can be caused by emotions was a remarkable advance for humankind.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLOr8EiKpQozSNDGEc1GSbq3dYvVBOlfoTo0O9w0XJ1T7xuM9q42oU1MN2XNNRM2XQFT3-LRpXBlcaFsVkEKE2dbMAufwY6j3PjfrMfrPEkbQlXv9GMboDlJTLXtTGsQREx3QrehHO-eYoagi2g0jqyiFmABx0mXe58tWUtPBVXDcLyoYK2w5Z4p1tQpXY/s600/Anna%20Freud%20older.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="450" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLOr8EiKpQozSNDGEc1GSbq3dYvVBOlfoTo0O9w0XJ1T7xuM9q42oU1MN2XNNRM2XQFT3-LRpXBlcaFsVkEKE2dbMAufwY6j3PjfrMfrPEkbQlXv9GMboDlJTLXtTGsQREx3QrehHO-eYoagi2g0jqyiFmABx0mXe58tWUtPBVXDcLyoYK2w5Z4p1tQpXY/w300-h400/Anna%20Freud%20older.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-bejeezus-out-me/201512/10-things-about-sigmund-freud-youll-wish-you-hadnt-learned">https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-bejeezus-out-me/201512/10-things-about-sigmund-freud-youll-wish-you-hadnt-learned</a><br /><br />Oriana:</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I'd love to see a movie based on her life. Anna was the only one of Freud's children to have followed a career as a therapist.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">As for Freud's bigoted opinions of women (even though he knew quite a few brilliant women who became his disciples and, like Anna, were among the first analysts), I've been familiar with them for decades, especially the notion of a woman as a castrated man.<br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />*<br /><b>THE UNKNOWN VERSUS THE MYSTERIOUS<br /></b><br />~ <b>Freud was interested in what a particular dream, slip of the tongue, or object meant to an individual.</b> For example, a young man once told Freud about a recurring dream, one involving a river and certain strange events. Freud reasoned that the symbols in the dream reflected that the young man was anxious of a particular possibility—becoming an unexpectant father. The young man did not see this link between the symbols in the dream and his own fears. </span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Jung was interested in what symbols mean, not just to the individual, but to all humanity. According to Jung, these meanings could be inborn and stored in what he called “the collective unconscious.”</b><br /><br />Thus, <b>Freud and Jung attempted to illuminate what symbols mean to an individual (because of his or her life history) or to everyone (because of inborn knowledge or shared experiences). To them, the mysteries of the mind concerned the deep, true meaning of mental events. </b>Thinking of water actually means X, which is really not about water, and dreaming of falling really means Y, which is not really about falling. To them, one does X (e.g., a slip of the tongue) because of Y, which is not obviously related to the malapropism. One dreams of falling, because one is worried that one’s soccer team will be dropped to second division, for example. <br /><br />Regarding the brain, <b>Freud and Jung were interested primarily in “semantic” (meaning) processes, which are largely carried out by the medial temporal lobes</b>. It is important to circumscribe the kinds of processes in which they were interested. As in the anecdote above, <b>semantics are often associated with one’s desires and motivations.<br /></b><br />Of course, the popular press became interested in these insights, and of course, people at cocktail parties wanted to discuss the deep meaning of their own dreams and random thoughts. All symbols and thoughts held by one now became much more special. Regardless of the validity of the conclusions by Freud and Jung (many of which were controversial), it is important to note that <b>these mysteries concern semantics—that is, the meaning of things. <br /></b><br />And the meaning of things naturally varies to some extent across individuals. The sight of a piano means one thing to a frustrated musician; it means something else to a young child; and it means yet a different thing to a piano tuner. And the sight of certain colors might sadden someone who is a fan of a soccer team that wears those colors and that just lost a very close match.<br /><br /><b>Freud, through various kinds of analyses, was trying to ascertain the deep meaning of dream images, actions, and out-of-the-blue thoughts for an individual.</b> To find out the true meaning, one must know much about the individual, about his or her history. The conclusions about the meaning of a symbol might be correct or wrong, but in either case, the question was about the true, deep meaning of the symbol (e.g., the meaning of “the sun”).<br /><br /><b>When an undergraduate student participates in one of my experiments, I do not know all the associations that he or she has toward, say, the image of a sun or a dog. </b>For the latter, the image could be a generic line drawing of the dog. This would be the stimulus, and the activations in the temporal lobes in response to the stimulus would be the “semantic activation.” The participant might be a dog lover or could be a dog trainer or could be fearful of dogs, because of some past event that may or not be remembered (e.g., a dog barked at the participant when he or she was very little). Thus, to me, the experimenter, the meaning of “dog” to a particular participant is an unknown, at least to a consequential extent. To me, this is an unknown. However, <b>that a stimulus will activate mental associations and meanings is, at least conceptually, not a real mystery today in cognitive science.<br /></b><br />It is true that much is unknown about the semantic process, certainly, but it is not a mystery in the sense that it is what the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn would call an “anomaly” in the current scientific approach. There are plenty of neural network models, and other kinds of models, that explain how neurons in the temporal lobe reflecting “semantic representations”—the meaning of objects or words—can be activated by external stimuli and possess meanings that are peculiar to an individual. <b>Freud and Jung were trying to crack the ‘mystery’ of what a particular thing meant to an individual (or humanity, in the case of Jung). </b><br /><br />This was their mystery about the mind. But this is not a deep mystery regarding how the mind works. <b>What is a deep mystery, and continues to be an “anomaly” in the current approach of the cognitive sciences is how neurons are capable of generating conscious states, the subjective experiences that you and I have every day, every waking moment—and in dreams.</b> <b>The neurons, each of which is unconscious, form networks that, somehow, create conscious experiences</b>, be they of after-images, the smell of coffee, or ringing in the ears. The cardinal mystery regarding how the mind works is consciousness. It is important to note that Freud and Jung were trying to crack a different kind of “deep” puzzle.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/consciousness-and-the-brain/202401/the-unknown-vs-the-mysterious">https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/consciousness-and-the-brain/202401/the-unknown-vs-the-mysterious<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>WHAT CATS’ LOVE OF BOXES TEACHES US ABOUT FELINE PERCEPTION<br /></b><br /><b>It is a truth universally acknowledged</b>—at least by those of the feline persuasion—<b>that an empty box on the floor must be in want of a cat</b>. Ditto for laundry baskets, suitcases, sinks, and even cat carriers (when not used as transport to the vet). This behavior is generally attributed to the fact that cats feel safer when squeezed into small spaces, but it might also be able to tell us something about feline visual perception. That’s the rationale behind a study in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science with a colorful title: “If I fits I sits: A citizen science investigation into illusory contour susceptibility in domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus).”<br /><br /><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbJBeKijtO064Kh_O3v7LhCyi5RNan3qWZyOl3HbX-dEEfH-qjfAH-S_LDOq6n9PKE3Zof4katElJppG36Zq0K1QPDhO9Zc1oKOP2hkFWx5MCjd-vf-yz8yJJaY1pWeFShLOO-OHYSIV8HsnmMBVNqvBG-Il4D8aFauAGtxrF_QmdPNr8Pb-VhLTwwphSl/s476/cat%20box%20happy.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="248" data-original-width="476" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbJBeKijtO064Kh_O3v7LhCyi5RNan3qWZyOl3HbX-dEEfH-qjfAH-S_LDOq6n9PKE3Zof4katElJppG36Zq0K1QPDhO9Zc1oKOP2hkFWx5MCjd-vf-yz8yJJaY1pWeFShLOO-OHYSIV8HsnmMBVNqvBG-Il4D8aFauAGtxrF_QmdPNr8Pb-VhLTwwphSl/w400-h209/cat%20box%20happy.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The paper was inspired in part by a 2017 viral Twitter hashtag, #CatSquares, in which users posted pictures of their cats sitting inside squares marked out on the floor with tape—kind of a virtual box.</b> The following year, lead author Gabriella Smith, a graduate student at Hunter College (CUNY) in New York City, attended a lecture by co-author Sarah-Elizabeth Byosiere, who heads the Thinking Dog Center at Hunter. Byosiere studies canine behavior and cognition, and she spoke about dogs’ susceptibility to visual illusions. While playing with her roommate’s cat later that evening, Smith recalled the Twitter hashtag and wondered if she could find a visual illusion that looked like a square to test on cats.<br /><br />Smith found it in the work of the late Italian psychologist and <b>artist Gaetano Kanizsa, who was interested in illusory (subjective) contours that visually evoke the sense of an edge in the brain even if there isn’t really a line or edge there.</b> The Kanizsa square consists of four objects shaped like Pac-Man, oriented with the “mouth” facing inward to form the four corners of a square. Even better, there was a 1988 study that used the Kanizsa square to investigate the susceptibility of two young female cats to illusory contours. The study concluded that, yes, cats are susceptible to the Kanizsa square illusion, suggesting that they perceive subjective contours much like humans.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But the 1988 study was conducted in the laboratory and “primed” the two feline subjects via standard operant conditioning methods. Smith wanted to design a similar study that increased the sample size and observed the cats’ behavior in their natural environment—which is less stressful for cats than a lab environment—with no advance priming. A “citizen science” project involving cat owners recruited on Twitter seemed like just the ticket, especially given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. People were spending a lot more time at home with their pets, and they were likely to have more time to conduct the trials.<br /><br />The only supplies participating owners needed were a printer with black ink, printer paper, scissors, tape, and a ruler, plus sunglasses and a digital camera or smartphone to record their cats’ behavior. Smith serially sent participants six randomized daily stimuli to print out and set up on the floor, per instructions, while the cat was not in the room. <b>The stimuli included a simple square, the Kanizsa square illusion, and a Kanizsa control in which the Pac-Man mouths faced outward instead of inward. All dimensions were such that a cat could comfortably sit or stand inside with all its limbs without being able to sprawl.</b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaFYducyFy_yguLvJ9FuL61gyPp-gETROrkShbnhml6ODVuzK-xiMRMJUw2XMzxdCvDLQ2FXvkBj1HuDEl9j7rKxwKAl_ovytbuSbqls5o34MxqLBjxV4UhDvG517-na1fBnAdMPdxJu1QaahKk_5lqXea3-YMBWfm0bN0GWbB21wmYsol0F__JQsYWAbl/s800/Kanitza%20square.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="449" data-original-width="800" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaFYducyFy_yguLvJ9FuL61gyPp-gETROrkShbnhml6ODVuzK-xiMRMJUw2XMzxdCvDLQ2FXvkBj1HuDEl9j7rKxwKAl_ovytbuSbqls5o34MxqLBjxV4UhDvG517-na1fBnAdMPdxJu1QaahKk_5lqXea3-YMBWfm0bN0GWbB21wmYsol0F__JQsYWAbl/w400-h225/Kanitza%20square.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The cats would be permitted into the room, and the owners would don the sunglasses and avoid interacting with their pets so as not to give the beasts any cues. The humans would videotape the cats’ behavior with the pairs of stimuli and upload the videos to a shared Dropbox for the project. If the cat sat or stood with all its legs inside the contours of a stimulus within the first five minutes, the owners would stop recording and make note of the chosen shape. If the cat didn’t select one of the stimuli in the first five minutes, the trial would end.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Although some 500 pet cats and their owners expressed interest, only 30 completed all six of the study’s trials over the course of the two-month study last summer. Of those, nine of the cats selected at least one of the stimuli by sitting within its contours (illusory or otherwise) for at least three seconds—a pretty good duration given the notorious fickleness of cats. As for preferences, <b>cats selected the Kanizsa illusion just as often as the square; they selected both of those more often than the control stimulus</b>. In other words,<b> the cats treated the illusory square the same way they treated the real square.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“</span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>It’s the presence of the contours, either in the Kanizsa square or in the real square, that</b> <b>causes cats to sit inside</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;">, rather than the presence of shapes on the floor,” Smith told Ars. <b>“Brains are very sensitive to contours that differ in luminance. Vision has evolved to answer questions having to do with boundaries and contours.”</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The study comes with the usual caveats, notably the final small sample size (the result of participant attrition, a common challenge with citizen science projects). Smith and her co-authors also suggest replicating the study in a more controlled setting, despite the advantages gained from conducting the trials in the comfort of the cats’ own homes. “For the sake of cats, the home was really ideal, but otherwise, for the sake of science, it is best to do things in controlled settings [like a lab],” said Smith.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Smith and Byosiere are also keen to adapt some of the latter’s work with dogs and visual illusions to the study of cat behavior and cognition. "Cat cognition research is certainly lacking in comparison to domestic dogs," the authors concluded. “Although the reason for this is unclear, the use of citizen science as a precursor to in-lab investigations of cat cognition could greatly help bridge this divide.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiigkE3XsTp_tyEdFO59pgbPKwfaET0FmDd7z1aOc1wzTLaseYjOh3LGBC8ka4Z_VFLtoeGo1_gAR-IJKsXp4dMxry8JaWJTV9y5-xW23Fh0UpnjXCkRv1Q1qXiwm47zaoBqRuVFEnadA92JMJfBcFXzjxYeoJiT8jOkHqUCQ71YWwHjwyOj-wFv54Suit-/s640/cat%20box%20fortunate.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="494" data-original-width="640" height="309" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiigkE3XsTp_tyEdFO59pgbPKwfaET0FmDd7z1aOc1wzTLaseYjOh3LGBC8ka4Z_VFLtoeGo1_gAR-IJKsXp4dMxry8JaWJTV9y5-xW23Fh0UpnjXCkRv1Q1qXiwm47zaoBqRuVFEnadA92JMJfBcFXzjxYeoJiT8jOkHqUCQ71YWwHjwyOj-wFv54Suit-/w400-h309/cat%20box%20fortunate.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://getpocket.com/explore/item/what-cats-love-of-boxes-and-squares-can-tell-us-about-their-visual-perception?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://getpocket.com/explore/item/what-cats-love-of-boxes-and-squares-can-tell-us-about-their-visual-perception?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>NEW EVIDENCE FOR THE STRANGE SYMMETRY OF THOUGHT<br /></b><br />In 2014, the Swedish philosopher and cognitive scientist <b>Peter Gärdenfors</b> went to Krakow, Poland, for a conference on the mind. He was to lecture at Jagiellonian University, courtesy of the Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, on his theory of conceptual, or “cognitive,” spaces. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Gärdenfors had been working on his idea of <b>cognitive spaces, which explain how our brains represent concepts and objects, </b>for decades<b>. </b>In his book Conceptual Spaces, from 2000, he wrote, “It has long been a common prejudice in cognitive science that the brain is either a Turing machine working with symbols or a connectionist system using neural networks.” In Krakow, Gärdenfors pushed against that prejudice. In his talk, “The Geometry of Thinking,” he suggested that humans are able to do things that today’s powerful computers can’t do—like learn language quickly and generalize from particulars with ease (to see, in other words, without much training, that lions and tigers are four-legged felines)—because <b>we, unlike our computers, represent information in geometrical space.<br /></b><br />In a 2018 Science paper, co-authored with Jacob Bellmund, Christian Doeller, and Edvard Moser—neuroscientists from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig and the Kavli Institute in Trondheim—Gärdenfors, of the University of Lund, buttressed his idea with recent advances in brain science. <b>He argued that the brain represents concepts in the same way that it represents space and your location, by using the same neural circuitry for the brain’s “inner GPS.”</b></span><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-1Wvv8tfZ9kJWsuW6sK6ijFGOruCnHYFjll4aFW74UUkN2ZtPSRpGPHQf4u5-GijN4Co5q8ei0KxH_7KRReNC_mHW390XrerWPPauHGyLuD4rQu_v5MeXPverOUQq6wxVgxOP1ECDgUEu0yR6yWECoqCTu6N7zTNS1Vz-FnBMrr-1O01R6ANoxQEASUcX/s1242/escher%20on%20the%20beach.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="913" data-original-width="1242" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-1Wvv8tfZ9kJWsuW6sK6ijFGOruCnHYFjll4aFW74UUkN2ZtPSRpGPHQf4u5-GijN4Co5q8ei0KxH_7KRReNC_mHW390XrerWPPauHGyLuD4rQu_v5MeXPverOUQq6wxVgxOP1ECDgUEu0yR6yWECoqCTu6N7zTNS1Vz-FnBMrr-1O01R6ANoxQEASUcX/s320/escher%20on%20the%20beach.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“Cognitive spaces are a way of thinking about how our brain might organize our knowledge of the world,” Bellmund said. It’s an approach that concerns not only geographical data, but also relationships between objects and experience. “We were intrigued by evidence from many different groups that suggested that <b>the principles of spatial coding in the hippocampus seem to be relevant beyond the realms of just spatial navigation</b>,” Bellmund said. The hippocampus’ place and grid cells, in other words, map <b>not only physical space but conceptual space. It appears that </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>our representation of objects and concepts is very tightly linked with our representation of space</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>.</b></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Work spanning decades has found that regions in the brain—the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex—act like a GPS. Their cells form a grid-like representation of the brain’s surroundings and keep track of its location on it. Specifically, neurons in the entorhinal cortex activate at evenly distributed locations in space: If you drew lines between each location in the environment where these cells activate, you would end up sketching a triangular grid, or a hexagonal lattice. <b>The activity of these aptly named “grid” cells contains information that another kind of cell uses to locate your body in a particular place.<i> </i><i>The explanation of how these “place” cells work was stunning enough to award scientists John O’Keefe, May-Britt Moser, and Edvard Moser, the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. </i>These cells activate only when you are in one particular location in space, or the grid, represented by your grid cells. Meanwhile, head-direction cells define which direction your head is pointing.</b> Yet other cells indicate when you’re at the border of your environment—a wall or cliff. Rodent models have elucidated the nature of the brain’s spatial grids, but, with functional magnetic resonance imaging, they have also been validated in humans.<br /><br />Recent fMRI studies show that <b>cognitive spaces reside in the hippocampal network—supporting the idea that these spaces lie at the heart of much subconscious processing</b>. For example, subjects of a 2016 study—headed by neuroscientists at Oxford—were shown a video of a bird’s neck and legs morph in size. Previously they had learned to associate a particular bird shape with a Christmas symbol, such as Santa or a Gingerbread man. The researchers discovered the subjects made the connections with a “mental picture” that could not be described spatially, on a two-dimensional map. Yet grid-cell responses in the fMRI data resembled what one would see if subjects were imagining themselves walking in a physical environment. This kind of mental processing might also apply to how we think about our family and friends. We might picture them “on the basis of their height, humor, or income, coding them as tall or short, humorous or humorless, or more or less wealthy,” Doeller said. And, <b>depending on whichever of these dimensions matters in the moment, the brain would store one friend mentally closer to, or farther from, another friend.<br /></b><br />But the usefulness of a cognitive space isn’t just restricted to already familiar object comparisons. “One of the ways these cognitive spaces can benefit our behavior is when we encounter something we have never seen before,” Bellmund said. <b>“Based on the features of the new object we can position it in our cognitive space. We can then use our old knowledge to infer how to behave in this novel situation.” Representing knowledge in this structured way allows us to make sense of how we should behave in new circumstances.</b><br /><br /><b>Data also suggests that this region may represent information with different levels of abstraction. If you imagine moving through the hippocampus, from the top of the head toward the chin, you will find many different groups of place cells that completely map the entire environment but with different degrees of magnification. </b>Put another way, moving through the hippocampus is like zooming in and out on your phone’s map app. The area in space represented by a single place cell gets larger. Such size differences could be the basis for how humans are able to move between lower and higher levels of abstraction—from “dog” to “pet” to “sentient being,” for example. In this cognitive space, more zoomed-out place cells would represent a relatively broad category consisting of many types, while zoomed-in place cells would be more narrow.<br /><br />y</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Yet
the mind is not just capable of conceptual abstraction but also
flexibility—it can represent a wide range of concepts. To be able to do
this, the regions of the brain involved need to be able to switch
between concepts without any</b></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> <b>informational cross-contamination: It wouldn’t be ideal if our concept for bird, for example, were affected by our concept for car</b>. Rodent studies have shown that when animals move from one environment to another—from a blue-walled cage to a black-walled experiment room, for example—place-cell firing is unrelated between the environments. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Researchers looked at where cells were active in one environment and compared it to where they were active in the other. If a cell fired in the corner of the blue cage as well as the black room, there might be some cross-contamination between environments. The researchers didn’t see any such correlation in the place-cell activity. <b>It appears that the hippocampus is able to represent two environments without confounding the two</b>. This property of place cells could be useful for constructing cognitive spaces, where avoiding cross-contamination would be essential. “By connecting all these previous discoveries,” Bellmund said, “we came to the assumption that t<b>he brain stores a mental map, regardless of whether we are thinking about a real space or the space between dimensions of our thoughts.”</b><br /><br />Scientists still need to experimentally verify the link between the hippocampus and higher-order cognitive functions in humans. fMRI studies like the ones from the group in Oxford are, as yet, only suggestive. “Although the coarse nature of the fMRI signal urges caution in making conclusions at the level of neuronal codes,” the researchers concluded, “we have reported an unusually precise hexagonal modulation of the fMRI signal during nonspatial cognition.” It is also <b>unknown whether place cells can actually represent objects at particular locations in a cognitive space.</b> Revealing this in experiments with human subjects is hard, since they require very fine-resolution brain imaging. But recent advances in higher-resolution fMRI could possibly provide a solution.<br /><br />Bellmund pointed out that rodent research could also reveal the existence of cognitive spaces. A 2017 paper, for example, found that place cells in rats can form a map of sound frequencies. <b>Different cells in the hippocampus respond to different frequencies of sound—forming a cognitive space of sound. What’s more, studies in humans that have seen grid-like activity in the hippocampus have also seen this activity in other parts of the cortex. </b>Therefore, it is highly likely that complicated, higher-order cognitive abilities arise from interactions between several parts of the brain.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Gärdenfors’ theory highlights a fruitful path, not only for cognitive scientists, but for neurologists and machine-learning researchers. It is a kind of incomplete, generic sketch on a canvas that invites refinement and elaboration.<b> Cognitive spaces are</b>, as Gärdenfors and Bellmund put it, a “<b>domain-general format for human thinking</b>,” an “overarching framework” that can help unravel the causes of neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s, and “to inform novel architectures in artificial intelligence.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://getpocket.com/explore/item/new-evidence-for-the-strange-geometry-of-thought">https://getpocket.com/explore/item/new-evidence-for-the-strange-geometry-of-thought<br /></a><br />*<br /><br /><b>"ONE AND DONE”</b><br /><br />Among social and economic considerations, more parents are foregoing siblings, choosing to stop at one child.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNSgtuAIl-rUVkt2742lvJF_slV7NE83JDEScL9w9OnHxX1EreDNIYZJMo6x6Am67e142uLXxE0IuKhUOdq-aGa_qLRz2QM8fyKYqzdaXVaXeIfM-hcwr0aXd16tqtD1HhLRQFAnDQjr_68UyeNSFA2q4T7sKro6HRf_vJrXCL-61hSNQfIu7pRLfF5Lfo/s1920/couple%20and%20child.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNSgtuAIl-rUVkt2742lvJF_slV7NE83JDEScL9w9OnHxX1EreDNIYZJMo6x6Am67e142uLXxE0IuKhUOdq-aGa_qLRz2QM8fyKYqzdaXVaXeIfM-hcwr0aXd16tqtD1HhLRQFAnDQjr_68UyeNSFA2q4T7sKro6HRf_vJrXCL-61hSNQfIu7pRLfF5Lfo/w400-h225/couple%20and%20child.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">When Jen Dalton got pregnant in 2018, she made a spreadsheet. Taking into account maternity leave, family-spacing health recommendations and even potential family holidays, she planned out when to have each of the four kids she thought she wanted. "I look at it once in a while and I giggle at how naïve I was," says Dalton, 31.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">That’s because, just two months after her daughter's birth, she and her husband decided they were 'one and done'. Part of it was their struggle with sleep deprivation and mental health; Dalton dealt with a traumatic birth, postnatal depression (PND) and postpartum anxiety (PPA). But even when life became easier, the decision felt right.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">It wasn't only that Ontario, Canada-based Dalton and her husband didn't want to risk her – and their family's – wellbeing by going through it all again. It was also that t<b>hey knew there wasn't anything "wrong" with not "giving" their child a sibling. "I'm an only child, and I'm very happy," says Dalton. "I'm so close with my parents.” </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Then, in 2022, Dalton had a wobble. She and her husband moved into their "forever home". Close friends had a new-born, who reminded them of their daughter. She felt if she had PPD or PPA again, she'd have more tools to manage it. And social-media algorithms kept pushing content showcasing big, beautiful families. "It really made us think like, 'Yeah, we could do it again'," she says.<br /><br />It's not surprising that Dalton started to question her decision. Even though, in many countries, only children are becoming the norm, pressure to have more than one remains. Stereotypes about only children being spoilws or lonely persist, despite consistent debunking. Parents say they feel pressure to have more kids from everyone from family members to perfect strangers. On social media, mothers post adorable moments of their broods with captions like, "This is your sign, give them the younger sibling" and "I never met a mama who regretted having that one more". </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Even as deciding to be one-and-done becomes more common, this background noise means parents who make this choice often find themselves having to convince other people – and even themselves – that they've done the right thing.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>More common, but still judged</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Particularly after the contraceptive revolution of the mid-20th Century, which gave many women some real control over fertility, the choice of how many children to have has been personal. But there have been clear social and cultural trends, too. <br /><br />In many countries, those trends are shifting towards fewer kids.<b> In the EU, the largest proportion of all families with children – 49% – have one child. In Canada, only-child families make up the largest group, ticking up from 37% in 2001 to 45% in 2021.</b> And looking at mothers near the end of their childbearing years – arguably a better way to measure the popularity of only children, since census data gives only a moment-in-time snapshot –<b> 18% of US women in 2015 had one child, up from 10% in 1976.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The fact that women are having children later is a significant piece. But there's also an element of choice involved, says investigative journalist Lauren Sandler, author of One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child, and the Joy of Being One. </b>"There are a lot of people who will say, no-one wants to have just one kid – that [the rise in only-child families is] all because of delayed fertility," she says. "Well, that is a way of making this choice, too, right? You're saying, 'There are all of these other things that are really important to me as well, and I am going to prioritize them, and hopefully I'll get there.' Instead of, 'Those things don't matter and what comes first is my motherhood'." </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Widespread ideas about the ideal number of children are also changing. For millennia, the preference to have more than one child made sense. Even just two centuries ago, more than four in 10 children died before their fifth birthday</b>. Having multiple children helped the family with the many tasks required to survive. And, of course, in the absence of reliable contraception, and with women getting married at far younger ages, having just one child wasn't just undesirable. It often wasn't feasible.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Today, however, in many cultures (though not all), the picture is rather different.<br /><br /><b>Portugal, where 59% of families with kids have just one</b>, is a good example: while the age of first-time mothers rose from 26.6 to 29.9 years from 2001 to 2019, <b>almost one in five women also say today that one child is the ideal family size. </b>Before the 1970s in the US, meanwhile, only 1% of poll respondents thought having just one child was best. While still a fraction of the total, that proportion has tripled. (There is, of course, still a big discrepancy between what people say is the ideal, versus how many kids they're actually having – but some of it has to do with how these data were collected. For both the Portugal and US numbers, for example, respondents were as young as 15 years old in Portugal and 18 in the US, and not necessarily parents themselves; like Dalton, many people change their mind once they become older or start their own families. For the US data, respondents were also answering what they thought the ideal was in general, not necessarily what an ideal size would be for them, personally.)</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Yet the stigma against parents who consciously choose to have one child persists. <b>When Sandler became a mother in 2008, she says, "I found myself with this kid who I was crazy about". But she also loved other elements of her life, like her career. Well aware of issues like the 'motherhood penalty', having one child seemed like the best way to have it 'all' – or as close to it as possible.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"I felt very excited by what it would mean to be able to love and raise this kid in a dynamic where I was also true to myself," she says. "And <b>yet all of this cultural noise kept creeping in. I'd be accosted by people on the subway and in the supermarket saying things like, 'When will you have another one?' And I would say, very plainly, 'I'm not planning to'. </b>And it would be all of a sudden like I was an abuser – like, call the Department of Social Services on this person. It felt to me, like, what is this calculation? … Why is the world telling you that, if you make this choice, you're a terrible parent, and you're a terrible woman?"</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>It's not just parents who face judgement. Only children have been stigmatised as 'weird' – or, as the researcher behind one 1896 study put it, "peculiar and exceptional" – for more than a century</b>. Some of that stigma has persisted well into the 2000s, even in pop culture. Sandler references the popular TV show Glee, pointing out that despite the show's efforts to break down stereotypes, one main character that goes unexamined is that of the "spoiled, annoying" only child. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"I've had a lot of comments like, 'Oh, he's going to have only-child syndrome. He is going to be unable to share. He's going to be spoiled," says Victoria Fahey, 25, in Calgary, Canada. "I know plenty of people who have siblings who are spoiled and rude and entitled. To say that's just because of being an only child, not circumstances – that's crazy." (There is, in fact, <b>no evidence that only children are any less well-adjusted or successful than those with siblings</b>).<br /><br /><b>An intentional decision</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">These social pressures mean that, often, parents who are one-and-done by choice are "very conscientious" of their decision, says Dalton. "It's not just an auto-pilot approach."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Their reasons range from financial constraints to feeling like their family is already complete. </b>But what many one-and-done-by-choice families have in common is that they feel, in contrast to what society often tells them, that <b>being one and done isn't just best for them. It's best for their children, too.</b><br /><br />While many people see a sibling as a 'gift' to a child, one-and-done parents point out that there is <b>no guarantee children will get along. For some, it was their own experiences of growing up in larger families that made them consider having only one.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Fahey was the youngest of five. "The sibling rivalry was intense, to say the least. It really turned me off," she says. She sees introducing a new family member as a 'roll of the dice' with family dynamics. And, like many other one-and-done parents, <b>she wants to make sure she and her husband can give their child everything they can. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">One-and-done parents also worry that <b>more children would divide their attention</b>. "I see moms of two or more being torn in different directions, especially as kids get older," says Cristina Zaldivar, 44, of Miami, Florida. "Even at parent night at school, moms had to choose which child's teacher's presentations to sit through. I don't ever want to have to choose."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Because they have more patience and energy to draw on, many one-and-done families also say they feel like they can be more intentional parents.</b> In Poland, Gosia Klimowicz, 39, grew up as the eldest of three. She says<b> it's crucial to her that she can raise her family differently. "It is really important to me to have a calm and nurturing environment," she says. "</b>And just to be able to control myself and my emotions, and make sure that I don't lose it" – aspects she feels like her overstretched parents couldn't manage.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Wanting to offer one child more also extends to other resources, including finances</b>. Raising children today is expensive: one study showed raising two children in the US costs, on average, $310,605 (£255,369), not including college tuition. In the UK, one child is estimated to cost nearly £160,000 ($194,607) for a couple. In Australia, it costs almost AU$160,000 ($107,442, £88,307) or, by another estimate, nearly AU$550,000. Struggling to pay these bills, many families are falling further and further behind. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Indeed, compared to past generations, says Sandler, <b>millennials are growing up forced to be more hard-nosed about life's challenges. "We haven't decided to make higher education affordable, or change our tax system so that there's a middle class again, or put a cap on inflated housing costs, or do any of the things that make a viable life possible," she says. "How on Earth do I bring a kid into that mix? And how on Earth do I then bring two kids into that mix?"</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">This has factored into Fahey's calculation, too. "If my son wants to do soccer and hockey and music, I want to be able to give him all of those things, not say, 'Oh no, your brother wants to do hockey, so you can only choose soccer'," says Fahey. "I want him to have all the opportunities to become who he wants to become, without any hindrance." </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Some one-and-done parents also <b>cite their concern over the kind of future their children will inherit."The planet is dying and there's not seemed to be as big of a push as needed to clean that up," says Fahey. "For those future generations, we're kind of leaving them to sort it out. I think it's really scary. There could be a struggle for resources – I don't want my kid to ever worry where he's going to get water</b>."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Given that each new person is another consumer and another producer of carbon emissions, stopping at one seems to be the responsible, more selfless choice, says Berlin-based Vicky Allan, 33. (It’s worth noting not everyone agrees). </b>"A long time ago, I heard that one of the best things you can do for the environment is to have one less kid, and this has always stuck in my mind," she says. "Bringing another human onto the planet is not a decision that should be taken lightly.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The happiness factor</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Part of many one-and-done parents' contentment is the impact their decision has on other parts of their lives, such as careers, hobbies and interests. "There's the question of what you want an adulthood to look like," says Sandler. "Like, what does it take to go to the movies? What does it take to go out to dinner? What does it take to have adult friendships where you actually get to have an uninterrupted conversation?"</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">It is also, of course, potentially easier to maintain one's health. Pregnancy, labor and the postpartum period all carry risks, including for fathers. Particularly for women older than 35, those giving birth to a second or later child, rather than their first, are at increased risk of pregnancy complications like eclampsia, gestational hypertension and preterm labor.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">For women in particular, careers, too, take a hit the more children they have.<b> In Europe, each child is associated with an average drop in wages of 3.6% – although this varies from no wage disadvantage in Nordic countries to a 6% decline per child in Germany and the Netherlands. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b> </b>In the US, one study showed that, even accounting for differences in education or experience, <b>the wage gaps between mothers of one or two children versus childless women are roughly the same, around 13%. But the decline falls to 17.5% at three children.</b><br /><br />There are longer-term considerations, too. D<b>alton often hears that, even if it's hard to raise multiple children, you'll reap the benefits of a "full table" when they're adults.</b> "It's rude to put that onto your children," she says, adding that she doesn't want her daughter to ever feel guilted by these kinds of expectations. And there are, she points out, no guarantees: <b>"You could have another one and your children could hate each other. Or you could have another child that is disabled and may need care beyond 18 years old.”</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Having one child also makes it easier to be a better partner, believes Laura Bennett, 33, in Cornwall, England. As it is, she says, she's able to take time for herself, going to festivals or away for weekends with friends. As a result, she feels no resentment when her partner goes surfing or out for a pint. She's not sure how they'd achieve that balance with another. <br /><br />All of this might be part of why research has showed that, while <b>having one child is associated with a gain in happiness, having a second is associated with a drop in happiness for mothers. (That study found no effect of a second child on fathers).</b> Other research has showed that while parents are happier in the lead-up and first year after having their first child, there are diminishing returns: the boost of happiness for the second child is half that of the first, and by the third, there's no boost at all. <b>"Globally, happiness decreases with the number of children parents have," one analysis across 86 countries put it. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">It also depends on culture. <b>Parenthood usually has a neutral or negative effect on wellbeing for US and Canadian parents, while it's the opposite for families in Northwest Europe – a possible result of how social policies in Nordic countries help parents balance the stressors of family life. </b><br /><br />The impact on partnerships isn't imagined, either. <b>One analysis found that more than six in 10 men and five in 10 women experienced a significant change in their relationship satisfaction after their first child, usually for the worse. After a second child, it was even higher, particularly among men.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Living with your choice</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>No matter how carefully they've made their decisions, many one-and-done parents say they still experience pressure.</b> Melissa Urban, CEO of the diet program Whole30, is the mother of an only child – and the author of a book on boundaries. She's seen many parents in her Utah community receive unwanted comments, she says, she included scripts in the book for how to respond.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"Many people find the question uncomfortable, but just hint that it's unwelcomed. They'll laugh it off, or say, 'You know, we just aren't ready for another one.' But that's not setting a boundary, and it's likely to keep coming up," she says. Instead, <b>she suggests having some phrases ready – like "Please don't ask, that's not something I want to talk about"</b> – and practicing them so they feel natural.<br /><br /><b>As only children become more common, these kinds of questions are likely to become rarer. Even so, for many families, becoming one-and-done remains a difficult decision – one to which they give a great deal of thought and, at times, may even doubt.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In Dalton’s case, it was seeing idealized images of siblings everywhere that began to make her question herself. By then, she’d been content in her decision for most of her daughter's life, and had even, in 2020, started a community supporting parents who felt the same, an Instagram page called @oneanddoneparenting. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">She and her husband decided to do regular check-ins to figure out whether they really wanted a second child or were just internalizing outside messages. At the end of every day, they'd ask each other if they would have liked to have had another child with them. Would they have preferred doing day-care drop-off, then school drop-off? Or going to the Science Museum with a four-year-old and a new-born? The answer, every evening, was no. <br /><br />Dalton also took a step back from social media. "Truthfully, I thought I'd probably be away for, like, six months, because I thought it would take a really long time to make this decision," she says. Instead, within days she was asking herself, "What the heck was I thinking?", she says. <br /><br /><b>"Happy only child raising an only child"</b>, her @oneanddone bio now reads. She's happy, she says, for it to stay that way. ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230110-only-child-or-siblings-one-and-done">https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230110-only-child-or-siblings-one-and-done<br /></a><br /><br />*<br /><b>MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS AND ANCIENT MIGRATIONS<br /></b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4BnE9OXB9WgIWJuOfW3Gr69gtHTjurTwvCYT7nXqQ-u2L1SOO2V9AlDTmYoltxkjmBfeKTfxVtg0V8HmKKTqtIo8m8L_NPBzMksY4O2jJQukRVF4TFPq8M82VMk2M0vv_Gru0BdeUvckbFe1iMcBJlJibu084TdnoYFbn3uSJ4y2FUpH73uk-09Q_gshl/s1280/ancient%20migrations.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4BnE9OXB9WgIWJuOfW3Gr69gtHTjurTwvCYT7nXqQ-u2L1SOO2V9AlDTmYoltxkjmBfeKTfxVtg0V8HmKKTqtIo8m8L_NPBzMksY4O2jJQukRVF4TFPq8M82VMk2M0vv_Gru0BdeUvckbFe1iMcBJlJibu084TdnoYFbn3uSJ4y2FUpH73uk-09Q_gshl/w400-h225/ancient%20migrations.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Genetic risk for multiple sclerosis (MS) was brought into Europe by sheep and cattle herders migrating from the east approximately 5,000 years ago, DNA profiles from archaeological bones and teeth suggested.<br /><br />Migration among pastoralists from the Pontic steppe -- a region that includes parts of what are now Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan — brought genetic variants that, in a modern environment, raise the risk of MS</b>, reported Lars Fugger, MD, PhD, of Oxford University in England, and co-authors in Nature.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>In the past, however, these variants may have served a purpose: they likely protected livestock herders against pathogens from their domesticated animals.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"The situation today is different because the diseases these variants originally provided protection against are no longer as big a problem as they likely were then," Fugger said in a news briefing. "Because in the intervening millennia, we have antibiotics, vaccinations, and far, far higher standards of hygiene than people had thousands of years ago. <b>The risk genes are now miscast in terms of their original biological role</b>."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>Inherited risk for MS is located within or in close proximity to immune-related genes. </b></i><b>Variants tied most strongly with MS are located in the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region, with the most prominent one -- HLA-DRB1*15:01 -- tripling the risk of MS for people who carry at least one copy of the allele.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>MS prevalence varies throughout the world and is highest in Northern Europe. Why MS develops isn't clear, but gene-gene or gene-environment interactions are thought to play a role. Collectively, genetic factors are estimated to account for about 30% of disease risk. </b><br /><br /><b><i>Environmental factors, like the Epstein-Barr virus exposure, also raise the likelihood of developing MS.</i></b><br /><br />To identify patterns in modern genomes, Fugger and co-authors evaluated ancestry at specific loci for 410,000 participants in the U.K. Biobank who self-identified as white British individuals, using a reference panel of 318 ancient DNA samples from the Mesolithic period to the Bronze Age and new Medieval and post-Medieval genomes. They compared the ancestry at each single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) to genome-wide ancestry in the U.K. Biobank to determine an anomaly score.<br /><br />Two regions stood out as having the most extreme ancestry compositions: the LCT/MCM6 region on chromosome 2, which is well established as regulating<b> lactase persistence</b>, and the HLA region on chromosome 6, Fugger and colleagues observed.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"The frequencies of the alleles conferring the highest risk for MS (odds ratio >1.5), all of which are within the HLA class II region, showed striking patterns in our ancient groups," the researchers wrote.<br /><br />The tag SNP (rs3135388[T]) for HLA-DRB1*15:01, which carries the highest risk for MS, was first observed in an Italian Neolithic individual and<b> rapidly increased in frequency around the time of the emergence of the Yamnaya culture about 5,300 years ago in steppe and steppe-derived populations</b>, they added.<br /><br /><b>MS-associated immunogenetic variants underwent positive selection both within the steppe population and in combination with other groups, "probably driven by pathogenic challenges coinciding with changes in diet, lifestyle, and population density,"</b> Fugger and colleagues noted.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"Our interpretation of this history is that co-evolution between a range of pathogens and their human hosts may have resulted in massive and divergent genetic ancestry-specific selection on immune response genes according to lifestyle and environment followed by recombinant-favoring selection after these populations merged," they added.<br /><br /><b>From a genetic perspective, the Yamnaya people are thought to be the ancestors of present-day people in much of northwestern Europe, they pointed out. Their genetic footprint in southern Europe, where MS risk is less, is much smaller.</b><br /><br />The findings may help demystify MS, Fugger noted.<br /><br />"We can do away with the conventional perception of MS, which defines the disease in terms of the impairments it causes, and instead understand and seek to treat MS for what it actually is: the result of a genetic adaptation to certain environmental conditions that occurred back in our prehistory and which has endured in our DNA, even though the environmental conditions have changed hugely in the time between then and now," he said.<br /><br /><b>The paper is one of four published simultaneously in Nature in which researchers compared modern and ancient human DNA. Other findings showed that the APOE4 gene associated with Alzheimer's disease could be traced back to early hunters-gatherers. </b>Future work will look at genetic markers of autism, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.medpagetoday.com/neurology/multiplesclerosis/108209?xid=nl_popmed_2024-01-12&eun=g2215341d0r&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=PopMedicine_011224&utm_term=NL_Gen_I">https://www.medpagetoday.com/neurology/multiplesclerosis/108209?xid=nl_popmed_2024-01-12&eun=g2215341d0r&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=PopMedicine_011224&utm_term=NL_Gen_I</a>nt_PopMedicine_Active<br /><br />*<br /><i><b>Ending on beauty:</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Winter comes from the East,<br />winter comes at Christmas,<br />crows from the frozen heart <br />of Russia, a black wind off the Urals.<br /><br />A ruddy ring around the moon <br />means frost. <br />Moon in a fox-fur hat <br />brings cold, great cold.<br /><br />I paint ghost roses <br />with my breath, <br />lick icicles, wade <br />into wind-tilted snowdrifts. <br /><br />One night across <br />the bright darkness, <br />I see a falling star. I’m young, <br />and do not make a wish.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">~ Oriana</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">(photo: Cody Sanantonio) <br /></span></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifjs8vsp3KD749mVcx7avzZPpiFLaa_sYC8mxv6gH6qnZlP2W0ePqJr8vkYF18hOsAi9nu4CoPzsLfxw_GmeIxul6CRABdmT0c79HhEXk-esGKdPNKJMZCFdEu89SqJe-_4b0SWHBs3Jpt1EmffptAjgaR686w8VdUQVWE_27PwFy1GDWLZepy2GAZX6mK/s2048/frost%20flowers%20Cody%20Davis.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifjs8vsp3KD749mVcx7avzZPpiFLaa_sYC8mxv6gH6qnZlP2W0ePqJr8vkYF18hOsAi9nu4CoPzsLfxw_GmeIxul6CRABdmT0c79HhEXk-esGKdPNKJMZCFdEu89SqJe-_4b0SWHBs3Jpt1EmffptAjgaR686w8VdUQVWE_27PwFy1GDWLZepy2GAZX6mK/w400-h300/frost%20flowers%20Cody%20Davis.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><br /><br /></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-28521551385009495242024-01-14T15:15:00.000-08:002024-01-16T21:13:15.547-08:00MARK TWAIN, THE QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN; THE ASIAN WORLD ORDER; PLAUSIBLE REAL REASONS FOR THE RUSSO-UKRAINIAN WAR; TROTSKY’S RISE AND FALL; NEGATIVITY FAST; IS HAVING A FAVORITE CHILD “BAD PARENTING”? THE SECRET OF SOUND SLEEP IS THE OPPOSITE OF SLEEP<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-igue6Xe5VG7rjF01vfj8cARkaQ3SorfOzP9oWTAtoHK1ocXVI6G49zf4H1dkZfxp396XacJmFSFw4ZovsvNP3ECSFVt5tPE2gkExz5QuNgdK8yGYyTr9dpibG-Pc_xK7WJr3EphBCfUlOByjGRdbkysdjzaDYLLJSfzOuKalEiv0Bt0YTmCKkktnKMUm/s4096/archangel%20gabriel%20c.1430%20Masolino%20da%20Panicale.jpg" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4096" data-original-width="3148" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-igue6Xe5VG7rjF01vfj8cARkaQ3SorfOzP9oWTAtoHK1ocXVI6G49zf4H1dkZfxp396XacJmFSFw4ZovsvNP3ECSFVt5tPE2gkExz5QuNgdK8yGYyTr9dpibG-Pc_xK7WJr3EphBCfUlOByjGRdbkysdjzaDYLLJSfzOuKalEiv0Bt0YTmCKkktnKMUm/w308-h400/archangel%20gabriel%20c.1430%20Masolino%20da%20Panicale.jpg" width="308" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Archangel Gabriel by Masolino da Panicale, c. 1430</i></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>*</i><br />PARADISE ANONYMOUS<br /><br />To me the Archangel came <br />not with a lily but a branch of flame.<br />In bed he covered me with wings<br />so soft I thought I’d drown.<br /><br />If I roll over, I said, your wing <br />could break. He said those wings <br />were made of wishing on a star, <br />an astral amalgam. <br /><br />Amalgam! My knees go weak.<br />I wade in liquid syllables. <br />Gabriel rustled in my sleep:<br />God makes love all the time,<br /><br />his only interest is sex, <br />that’s what comes of being immortal. <br />We have dying so we can transcend<br />the body’s umber aftermath.<br /><br />In memory of me, Gabriel said, <br />wear a silk slip like an embrace. <br />What matters in the end, he said, <br />is delinquent underwear —<br /><br />the only heaven you will have,<br />unless you make it hell. <br />Black on black fire like the skin <br />of the ocean at night, I slip <br /><br />into more slips than dresses now. <br />O little town of Bethlehem,<br />O little House of Bread or Breath,<br />how soft we let thee go.<br /><br />~ Oriana<br /><br />This is the title poem of my first full-length collection of poems from Moonrise Press (available on Amazon).</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD1iGrm5fGni9U77HBTWp9CF5XfCdPp09BpDEjdgcD-kaH7dnBPkKPtnzja8zNlzRGB3mFeh1D3hhPdSdKHx0PB1CqnsUDZetjDbgSMuaOfDOBkNwoEV5qvRUCVbu8PAYLHzEdZvx-0CnqvqAIBnyaLebEaPPRVTisuOsF4VSdJpS6RoTcKgXu1_dpqghy/s824/paradise%20anonymous%20book%20cover.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="824" data-original-width="554" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD1iGrm5fGni9U77HBTWp9CF5XfCdPp09BpDEjdgcD-kaH7dnBPkKPtnzja8zNlzRGB3mFeh1D3hhPdSdKHx0PB1CqnsUDZetjDbgSMuaOfDOBkNwoEV5qvRUCVbu8PAYLHzEdZvx-0CnqvqAIBnyaLebEaPPRVTisuOsF4VSdJpS6RoTcKgXu1_dpqghy/w269-h400/paradise%20anonymous%20book%20cover.png" width="269" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Cover art: Charles Sherman</i><br /><br />*<br /><b>MARK TWAIN: NOT AN AMERICAN BUT THE AMERICAN<br /></b><br />~ <i><b>All American literature comes from one book . . . called Huckleberry Finn,' Hemingway declared. The novel remains both one of the most beloved and most banned books in the US.</b></i><br /><br />He was so famous that fan letters addressed to "Mark Twain, God knows where" and "Mark Twain. Somewhere (Try Satan)" found their way to him; the White House accommodatingly forwarded something addressed to "Mark Twain, c/o President Roosevelt". <b>Like Charles Dickens, Twain achieved immense success with his first book, became his nation's most famous and best-loved author, and has remained a national treasure ever since – America's most archetypal writer, an instantly recognizable, white-haired, white-suited, folksy, cantankerous icon. </b><br /><br />Since his death on 21 April 1910, Twain's writings have reportedly inspired more commentary than those of any other American author and <b>have been translated into at least 72 languages.</b> Despite being dead for a century, Twain is not only as celebrated as ever, he is also, apparently, just as productive: <b>the first volume of his unexpurgated three-volume autobiography appeared for the first time in 2010, a hundred years after his death.<br /></b><br />Like the premature news of his death, however, reports that his autobiography has been embargoed for a century in honor of the author's wishes are somewhat exaggerated. He did indeed decree that it should be withheld for 100 years after his death, but various heavily edited versions have appeared since then, controlled by Twain's surviving daughter, Clara, his first biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, and subsequent editors, all of whom <b>cut anything they deemed offensive or problematic, standardized Twain's idiosyncratic punctuation, and</b> <b>reordered the narrative to create precisely the conventional cradle-to-grave structure he explicitly rejected.<br /></b><br />Twain would have been apoplectic at the presumption: one of the letters he included in his drafts, reprinted in the autobiography's first volume, is a rebuke to an editor who dared to alter the great man's diction in his essay on Joan of Arc. <b>Twain responded with an outraged rant restoring each correction with an explanation of his original choice and demanding: "Have you no sense of shades of meaning, in words?”</b><br /><br />If the mot juste was always a priority – "I suppose we all have our foibles. I like the exact word, and clarity of statement, and here and there a touch of good grammar for picturesqueness" – structure was always a problem for Twain. As readers have noted since its publication, t<b>he plot of Huckleberry Finn, for example, deteriorates markedly at the end; Ernest Hemingway dismissed the story's resolution as a "cheat"</b>. Despite having been thinking about an autobiography since at least 1876, <b>it wasn't until 1906 that the writer almost as famous for his lectures as for his books – he has been called America's first stand-up comic – found a method he liked. <br /></b><br /><b>He simply hired a stenographer to follow him around and record his stories, while he talked and talked.</b> He had decided by then not to publish for a century, in order that he might speak freely, without considering reputation or others' feelings. "From the first, second, third and fourth editions all sound and sane expressions of opinion must be left out," he decreed. "There may be a market for that kind of wares a century from now. There is no hurry. Wait and see." <b>The spirit of this wish was followed mostly by accident, because the unfinished and multifarious drafts he left when he died made it extremely difficult for scholars to reconstruct.</b><br /><br /><b>Twain's eventual solution to the problem of autobiographical structure was characteristic: he ignored it, deciding instead to "start it at no particular time of your life; wander at your free will all over your life; talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment; drop it the moment its interest threatens to pale," </b>and move on to the next subject. This is exactly what he does, confident that his "combined Autobiography and Diary" would be "admired a good many centuries" as inventing a form "whereby <b>the past and the present are constantly brought face to face"</b>. The result runs to 500,000 peripatetic words across 2,000 pages, the first 700 of which comprise the first volume.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Twain famously announces at the start of Huckleberry Finn that "persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"> A similar – if less threatening – caveat could be offered to readers of the autobiography. Those in search of the story of Twain's life should turn to any of a dozen biographies, by a roll-call of eminent American critics; <b>those in search of explosive secrets should read the more controversial revisionist histories. </b><br /><br /><b>Twain was by no means free of Victorian inhibitions, and he was vain; consequently there is much he would never reveal.</b> Instead of cupboards and skeletons, <b>the unexpurgated autobiography offers the "storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head"; not the "facts and happenings" of Twain's life, but his voice. </b>Fortunately for us, perhaps more than any other writer Twain was his voice; the result, for all its frustrations, is a revelation.<br /><br />Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, Twain spent his childhood in the backwater of Hannibal, Missouri in the decades before the US civil war. After apprenticing as a printer, he worked briefly as a journalist before training as a steamboat pilot, a career interrupted by the outbreak of war in 1861. <i><b>He served fleetingly as a Confederate soldier before deserting (“his career as a soldier was brief and inglorious,” said the New York Times obituary; in the autobiography Twain includes a sympathetic account of deserting soldiers being shot, without revealing the reason for his sense of identification).</b></i> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">As would Huck Finn, the young Clemens "lit out for the territory" of the west, where Confederate forces were unlikely to pursue him, and sought his fortune in silver-mining. When that failed he returned to reporting, and adopted his pseudonym, a name derived from the call for safe water from riverboat pilots.<br /><br />His journalism began to establish his reputation; he started lecturing and <b>published his first book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches in 1867</b>. <b>Two years later, The Innocents Abroad, the story of Twain's trip with a group of other Americans through Europe and the Holy Land (its subtitle was The New Pilgrims' Progress) was a bestseller, selling 100,000 copies within two years. <br /></b><br />He followed it in 1872 with Roughing It, another successful travelogue, and for the next 20 years, Twain produced instant classics, including not only The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but perennial favorites such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and The Prince and the Pauper, works of social criticism such as The Gilded Age and <b>Following the Equator (an early indictment of imperialist racism that deserves rediscovery), Life on the Mississippi, blending autobiography and social history, and The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, a novel using the device of babies switched at birth to expose the malignant senselessness of American racism.</b><br /><br />Across their disparate subjects and audiences, <b>what unites Twain's works is his quintessential Americanness. In Twain's obituary, the San Francisco Examiner wrote that he was "curiously and intimately American . . . He was our very own"</b>. Twain went further. Living in Europe in the 1890s, he wrote in his notebook: <b>"Are you an American? No, I am not an American. I am the American." He was arrogant, but he wasn't wrong. </b>It isn't just that Twain's books remain as popular as they are critically esteemed, or that <i><b>his themes – the individual and society, free-market capitalism and social justice, populism and snobbery, deception and honor, idealism and cynicism, freedom and slavery, wilderness and civilization – represent such characteristically American preoccupations.</b></i><br /><br />Twain was just as American in life, in his self-promotion, commercial ambition, pursuit of celebrity and narcissism. (As a child, Twain's daughter Susy began a biography of her famous father, in which she reports his explanation for never attending church: "<b>He couldn't bear to hear any one talk but himself</b>, but [. . .] could listen to himself talk for hours without getting tired, of course he said this in joke, but I've no dought [sic] it was founded on truth.") <b>Equally American was Twain's mix of idealism and cynicism, sentimentality and skepticism. </b>Hemingway pronounced in the 1930s that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn"; but Twain didn't invent only modern American literature — he invented modern American authorship, as well.<br /><br />And now it turns out <b>he also felt he'd reinvented modern autobiography – a favorite American genre, given its emphasis on hubristic individualism and self-invention</b> – calling his new method, with characteristic modesty: "One of the most memorable literary inventions of the ages . . . it ranks with the steam engine, the printing press & the electric telegraph. I'm the only person who has ever found the right way to build an autobiography." The comparison is revealing: like the old Scottish "makar" for poet,<b> Twain saw his writing as an object he built; by no coincidence, he was in the forefront of debates about intellectual property. <br /></b><br />More than businessman, inventor, showman or even writer, <b>at heart Mark Twain was a speculator. </b>His instinctive grasp of branding and publicity was far ahead of his time, as he flung himself enthusiastically into 19th-century new media. Today he'd be blogging and tweeting his heart out – as long as he could monetize it. <b>He sat for hundreds of daguerrotypes and photographs, displaying what he himself called a “talent for posturing” that suited the burgeoning cult of celebrity. </b><br /><br />Even his iconic white suit developed from commercial objectives: he first wore it to appear before Congress, arguing that copyright, which he viewed as a patent, should be extended in perpetuity. When that failed, he incorporated his pen name to establish it as a trademark, prompting the New York Times front-page headline: "Mark Twain Turns Into A Corporation". He designed his own board game, as well as "Mark Twain's Patent Self-Pasting Scrapbook", which sounds like something the Duke and Dauphin in Huckleberry Finn might sell.<b> It is no accident that so many of Twain's characters are hucksters and hustlers, or that deception and opportunism are abiding themes in his writing.</b><br /><br />He was susceptible to get-rich-quick schemes: the ventures he invested in and promoted – even as he was writing his greatest books – included vineyards, a steam generator, a steam pulley, a watch company, an insurance company, marine telegraphy, a food supplement called Plasmon, a chalk engraving process called Kaolatype, <b>self-adjusting suspenders and the Paige typesetting machine, which bankrupted him at the height of his fame and forced him back on to the lecture circuit to pay his debts</b>, in part, it's been suggested, to protect the value of his "honorable" brand. <br /><br />(In fact, James Paige, the absurdly impractical and possibly fraudulent inventor of the machine, inspires the most uncensored moment in the first volume. Previous editions included Twain's bitter remark: "Paige and I always met on effusively affectionate terms, & yet he knows perfectly well that if I had him in a steel trap I would shut out all human succor & watch that trap until he died." It turns out that Twain was more specific: "he knows perfectly well that if I had his nuts in a steel-trap I would shut out all human succor and watch that trap till he died.”)<br /><br /><b>Twain understood publicity so well that he was merely amused when Huck Finn was banned by libraries across the US</b>; when it was banned in Omaha, Nebraska, for example, he sent a telegram to the local newspaper, observing facetiously: "I am tearfully afraid this noise is doing much harm. It has started a number of hitherto spotless people to reading Huck Finn [. . .] <b>The publishers are glad, but it makes me want to borrow a handkerchief and cry</b>.” <br /><br />Twain's cult of personality – as lecturer and novelist, commentator and social critic, travel and humor writer, gadfly and avuncular curmudgeon – was carefully judged, his folksy humor natural, but strategically deployed. <b>He wrote out of a tradition of tall tales; this is why he was particularly suited to travel writing, which allowed him to be anecdotal and digressive, without much regard to structure or plot. Huck Finn itself is travel writing, in which the raft-trip down the Mississippi provides the picaresque structure for an episodic tale, an Edenic journey away from civilization, as well as an occasionally frightening glimpse of the (all-too-human) wilderness.<br /></b><br /><i><b>Twain was always a </b></i></span><span style="color: #800180;"><i><b>barometric writer</b></i></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>, with a knack for registering contemporary social pressures in sharp-eyed aphorisms that weren't merely quotable, but often well ahead of their time. </b></i>His indictments of imperialism in Following the Equator, for example, read like post-colonialist mottos avant la lettre: <b>"The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice"; "There are many humorous things in the world, among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages"; "Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.” </b><br /><br />The autobiography adds some new aperçus: "Man is the only [creature] that kills for fun; he is the only one that kills in malice, the only one that kills for revenge [. . .] He is the only creature that has a nasty mind." [Oriana: Now we know that male chimps are capable of great cruelty.] The autobiography is driven more often than not by outrage – personal outrage at times, as at the malfeasance of Paige, or the hapless "Joan of Arc" editor, or the American countess from whom the Clemens family rented the Florence villa, whom Twain roundly abuses.<br /><br />But most of the outrage here is social and political, including <b>startlingly contemporary denunciations of American military interventions abroad, and condemnations of a society increasingly dominated by corrupt corporations, greedy capitalists, and vested interests</b>. Writing of gilded age monopolists and robber barons, Twain's prescience is remarkable: he denounces Jay Gould, the financier and speculator, for example, as "the mightiest disaster which has ever befallen this country”.<br /><br />He is equally critical of American foreign policy, <b>condemning its imperialist ventures in Cuba and the Philippines and calling its soldiers "uniformed assassins"</b>. He discusses with some pride his affiliation with the "Mugwumps", a faction of Republicans who voted Democrat in the elections of 1884 in protest against the corruption of the Republican candidate. They were derided as traitors in an age when party loyalty was at a premium, but the Mugwumps were reform-minded independent voters. In this respect, they might be held to anticipate the Tea Party movement, but <b>although Twain would have sympathized with the Tea Partiers' anti-tax, small government agenda, he would have loathed their historical ignorance and their susceptibility to manipulation by the same corrupt corporate interests he was railing against.</b><br /><br />Twain's social impulses are not always angry; he was extremely gregarious and, if he was egotistical, he was also keenly interested in others, in ways that may frustrate readers in search of a self-portrait. There are far more sketches of others than of Twain, including many once-famous figures who have since been forgotten (such as the memorably named Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby). The better-remembered appear in tantalizing glimpses: Harriet Beecher Stowe ("her mind had decayed, and she was a pathetic figure"), <b>Lewis Carroll ("he was only interesting to look at, for he was the stillest and shyest full-grown man I have ever met</b> except 'Uncle Remus' [Joel Chandler Harris]") and Helen Keller, with whom Twain became good friends; a letter from Keller ends this first volume.<br /><br />He does relate some (distant) family history, and tell some <b>vivid stories of growing up in Hannibal. In 1849 Missouri was a frontier, where life was ugly, brutish and often short. Twain remembers witnessing much random violence, including stabbings and shootings, a slave brained with a rock "for some small offense", and two brothers trying repeatedly to kill their uncle with a revolver that wouldn't go off. </b>There is a man shot through his eyeglasses, who shed tears and glass when he cried, and a local surgeon who stored his dead daughter in a cave (the model for "McDougal's cave" in Tom Sawyer) to see if the limestone would "petrify" her body – although this is an anecdote that requires the clarification offered by the "Explanatory Notes" at the volume's end. <br /><br />The exhaustive notes (250 pages of them) are often considerably more informative, factually speaking, than Twain: <b>he never mentions, for example, that his father-in-law was an abolitionist who served as a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, helped Frederick Douglass to escape and became his friend. Instead, Twain dwells – characteristically – on his father-in-law's success as a businessman.</b><br /><br />All the memories are not brutal: there is an extended, evocative meditation, likely to become famous, describing childhood summers on an antebellum Southern farm, a memory of prelapsarian happiness eating green apples and watermelons; and <b>a poignant tale of Jane Clemens teaching her son to consider a young slave boy's feelings</b>. But most readers will doubtless be in search of the childhood tales of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn – and Twain doesn't altogether disappoint, although he certainly digresses. <br /><br />He admits that <b>Tom Sawyer was largely a young Sam Clemens, while Huck Finn was based on a real boy: "In Huckleberry Finn I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed, but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had </b>. . . He was the only really independent person – boy or man – in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy, and was envied by all of us . . . I heard, four years ago, that he was Justice of the Peace in a remote village in Montana, and was a good citizen and greatly respected." Again the helpful notes clarify: there's no evidence for this rumor; <b>Blankenship was repeatedly arrested in Hannibal for stealing food, and died of cholera in 1889, soon after Huck Finn's publication.<br /></b><br />It is largely thanks to Huck Finn's continued popularity, and controversy, that Twain has defied his own supposed definition of a classic as "a book which people praise and don't read". Most American schoolchildren still read Huck Finn, and if they don't, it is because it also remains the most frequently banned book in the US. Although <b>it might seem paradoxical that a book could be both its nation's most frequently banned and its most beloved</b>, this is not as silly as it sounds. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Huck Finn is itself an ambivalent story about two of America's foundational preoccupations, individualism and race.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"> Many readers cannot (or will not) distinguish between a book with racist characters and a racist book; the fact that the novel's sympathies are clearly with Huck and Jim, and against all the slave-owners (who are also all the white adults), is outweighed, for these readers, by its casual use of the word "nigger" – even though that was the only word that illiterate backwoods white boys in the 1840s would have used to describe a slave. <b>Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer are rednecks, and Twain's language depends on verisimilitude for its comedy.</b> <i><b>Twain's appreciative ear for American vernacular is another reason for Huck Finn's abiding popularity; its vulgar, demotic language is why Hemingway celebrated it (and why Louisa May Alcott, for one, was among the first generation of readers to argue for banning it).</b></i><br /><br /><b>But most representatively American of all, perhaps, is the way Huck's struggle between selfish individualism and collective responsibility defines the book's action. </b>Almost uniquely, Twain bridges the perpetual ideological divide that continues to cleave America today, right up to next week's midterm elections: he embraced the "mainstream media" of his day, and promoted democratic egalitarianism and social justice – but he was also a free-market libertarian whose small-town populism was marked by a fundamental suspicion of government. <b>Huck Finn registers America's eternal ambivalence about individualism, simultaneously glorifying and condemning the doctrine that has so shaped the nation's history and continues to define it.</b><br /><br />Those who finish Huck Finn still doubting Twain's own racial attitudes should read Following the Equator or Pudd'nhead Wilson, in which Twain excoriates <b>the "one-drop rule" (the American law decreeing that "one drop of negro blood" made a person black</b>): "To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black out-voted the other fifteen parts and made her a 'negro'." When writing in an educated voice, rather than Huck Finn's, Twain puts the then-respectful term "negro" in scare quotes, questioning the category itself. <br /><br /><b>He also paid for the tuition of a young African American who wanted to attend Yale, saying that "he was doing it as his part of the reparation due from every white man to every black man".</b> The autobiography includes some passing references to slavery and a revealing contemporary episode: Twain goes to a lecture supporting Booker T Washington's Tuskegee Institute and comments the next morning that although he'd met Washington many times before, he'd never realized that he was mixed race and had blue eyes: "How unobservant a dull person can be. Always, before, he was black, to me, and I had never noticed whether he had eyes at all, or not.”<br /><br />Similarly, if less frequently, Twain has been accused of misogyny, and it is true that his female characters tend toward the cardboard. But just as he learned over time to reject the casually cruel racism of his upbringing, so <b>he was persuaded out of his early objections to women's suffrage by his wife, Olivia. A friend of feminists and suffragists, she persuaded him that women's innate moral superiority justified their presence in the public sphere.</b> Soon Twain was donating money to suffragist movements and writing in his notebook: "No civilization can be perfect until exact equality between man and woman is included.”<br /><br /><b>Without question the greatest love that Twain reveals in this first volume (excepting perhaps self-love) is for his wife and daughters, especially his eldest daughter Susy, who died in 1896, at 24, of meningitis. Twain outlived his adored wife and three of his four children, which might put his supposed misanthropy and bitterness at the end of his life in perspective. </b> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In perhaps the autobiography's saddest moment, Twain tells himself that Susy's death was for the best, because life is unavoidably tragic: "Susy died at the right time, the fortunate time of life; the happy age – twenty-four years. At twenty-four, such a girl has seen the best of life – life as a happy dream. After that age the risks begin; responsibility comes, and with it the cares, the sorrows, and the inevitable tragedy. For her mother's sake I would have brought her back from the grave if I could, but I would not have done it for my own.”<br /><br /><b>The autobiography's many tender, grieving passages about Susy anticipate what Twain couldn't see coming: the death of another daughter, Jean, on Christmas Eve 1909. </b>He spent his last months writing his account of Jean's death – "it is a relief to me to write it. It furnishes me an excuse for thinking" – which he declared should be the autobiography's final chapter. He died soon after.<br /><br />At one point in this first volume, Twain observes that man is loving and lovable to his own, but "otherwise the buzzing, busy, trivial enemy of his race – who tarries his little day, does his little dirt, commends himself to God, and <b>then goes out into the darkness, to return no more, and send no messages back – selfish even in death</b>". But in this autobiography, Twain defies his own description and comes back to us,<b> "speaking from the grave" just as he promised – and with 1,200 pages more to say</b>. ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/30/mark-twain-american-sarah-churchwell">https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/30/mark-twain-american-sarah-churchwell</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><span>Mary:</span></span></p><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;">I have always thought that Huckleberry Finn was both Twain's masterpiece and the quintessential American novel. Huck and Jim's journey on the Mississippi, the great American river, is a journey across the landscape and deep into the essentials of what made, and still makes, America what it is. I think it remains controversial because it strikes at the heart of our greatest, and still unresolved, problems..the weight of our history and its promise.</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;">Jim is the moral heart of the story, the lodestone and guide for Huck's development , a good father figure and example for a boy who had none. Through the journey Huck learns humanity and responsibility as both he and Jim seek freedom. Twain entertains with biting satire, showing the false system of romantic "honor" borrowed from the novels of Walter Scott, that fed the illusions and delusions of the wealthy southern slaveholders...without polemic,..he simply lets them act on the stage he provides...displaying their errors as obvious and profound. Such polite and fancy manners in the white mansions built on blood and suffering and the brutal system of slavery.</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;">Twain uses the American myth to de-mythologise itself. All the parts are there: freedom and slavery, enterprise and chicanery, the new world and its old sins. It is interesting that Twain's great work still has the power to make us uncomfortable, to want to turn away from the mirror and deny its accuracy, to blame him for the racism we want to say we reject. Blame it on the words, but it's more than the words that makes folks squirm.</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;">And of course he serves up the whole pretension puncturing act with irresistible humor. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">* *<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhElZyq7WAo5epuK53OTv59bHsgWy31hhBotIBELHon6pP0hxxhB14Vig8ZiVvtmYmdVqjJWPhcpeMXLcdoYDNASdFsNzhhs3spAgRjZRumjwWKnaPS5fOohlU5mI0xdZWE9rZdAiQtcVKSFL37bZEF9HGEU3uzbWJFu0kf4vxr01hyphenhyphen9N9WacibFrVEYqnT/s3606/asian%20world%20order.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1770" data-original-width="3606" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhElZyq7WAo5epuK53OTv59bHsgWy31hhBotIBELHon6pP0hxxhB14Vig8ZiVvtmYmdVqjJWPhcpeMXLcdoYDNASdFsNzhhs3spAgRjZRumjwWKnaPS5fOohlU5mI0xdZWE9rZdAiQtcVKSFL37bZEF9HGEU3uzbWJFu0kf4vxr01hyphenhyphen9N9WacibFrVEYqnT/w400-h196/asian%20world%20order.png" width="400" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><b>BEFORE THE RISE OF MODERN EUROPE: THE ASIAN WORLD ORDER<br /></b><br />~ <b>The process that gave rise to Eurocentrism in social sciences and history is somewhat comparable to the follies of youth. Little children have difficulty believing that their parents existed before their birth. </b>Teenagers often think that they are the first ones to have the experiences they are having as they make their way into adulthood. Young people usually think of previous generations as stodgy and old-fashioned, and of themselves as uniquely special and innovative. And they imagine they will be forever so, as if time will stop moving after them.<br /><br /><b>Part of growing up, however, is gradually breaking out of such narcissistic naiveté. </b>As we get older, we start realizing that others before us had many experiences that resemble ours, even if they enjoyed different fashions and lacked certain technologies. Then the cycle repeats with the next generation. <b>It is perhaps not particularly surprising that our social sciences, which came of age in the 19th and early 20th centuries – ie, ‘the youth’ of European/Western hegemony – also had a similar naiveté about world history. Europe/the West mattered the most at that moment, so it must have always been so. </b>And perhaps it is a sign we are now nearing the twilight years of this hegemony that <i><b>critiques (and self-critiques) of Eurocentrism have become so commonplace in most social sciences as to be banal.</b><br /></i><br />But <b>while it has been easy to level critiques of Eurocentrism against the social sciences – a low-hanging fruit if there ever was one – it has proven much harder to find solutions to it. </b>There is always the danger that, in attempts to get away from Eurocentrism, we replace one kind of self-regarding history with another. It is also naive to think that only Europeans produce/have produced self-centered and whiggish narratives of history. <b>A Sinocentric or Russocentric world history is no solution – it would just repeat the cycle.</b><br /><br /><b>In international relations, too, until recently, students were taught that there was no international order (and thus no international relations) until the 17th century, until Europeans created a regional order via the Westphalian Peace in 1648 and then expanded that around the world. </b>The rest of the world was assumed to be disconnected, stuck in their regional silos, uninterested in the wider world, until European actors connected them first to Europe, and then to each other.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In such textbook accounts, <b>‘international order’ is usually defined as referring to the system of rules, norms and institutions that govern relations among states and other international actors.</b> The principles and norms that underpin the modern international order are considered to include sovereignty, territorial integrity, human rights, non-interference in internal affairs, peaceful settlement of disputes, multilateralism and the rule of law. <b>Westphalia is considered the origin point because of its supposed introduction of the non-interference principle.<br /></b><br />*<br />The ‘Westphalian myth’ in international relations has come under considerable criticism in recent years, but given the way international order is traditionally defined, <b>it is not particularly surprising that experts maintain that there were no comparable international orders before our modern one (though it is also questionable how long such an order has existed even in modernity). </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">But if we relax the assumption that only orders created by nation-states are worth studying, then there is plenty of international relations material in history outside of Europe and before modernity that we can investigate. This is why I prefer to speak of ‘world orders’ instead of ‘international orders’, defined as the (man-made) rules, understandings and institutions that govern (and pattern)<b> relations between the primary actors of world politics </b>(but those actors can change over time: nation-states, aristocratic houses, city-states, etc).<b> A ‘world order’ also has a universalizing ambition at its core and is expansive in its vision.</b><br /><br />When we think of it that way, it is not hard to see that there certainly were world orders before Westphalia and the 17th century: <b>‘the East’ too has been home to world orders (and world orderers). By looking at Asian world orders that came before European hegemony, we can learn a great deal.</b><br /><br /><b>There was </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>a ‘Chinggisid’ world order as created by Genghis (Chinggis) Khan and members of his house (13th-14th centuries), followed by the ‘post-Chinggisid’ world order of the Timurids and the early Ming (14th-15th centuries)</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b> and, finally, a globalizing world with its core position occupied by three post-Timurid (and, therefore, Chinggisid) empires</b> (15th-17th centuries):<b> the Ottomans, the Safavids and the Mughals (along with the Habsburgs).</b> These orders were also linked to each other just as our contemporary order is linked to the 19th-century international order – there was a continuity in their shared norms. <br /><br />In each of these periods, the world was dominated and ordered by great houses who justified their sovereignty along Chinggisid lines.<br /><br /><b>‘Chinggisid’ sovereignty means the following: in the 13th century, Genghis Khan reintroduced to Eurasia a type of all-powerful sacred kingship we associate more with antiquity but one that had disappeared from much of this space after the advent of monotheistic religions and transcendental belief systems that checked the earthly power of political rulers by pointing to an all-powerful moral code that applied to all humans.</b> <i><b>As such religions gained more power from late antiquity onward, the power of kingship was greatly diminished throughout Eurasia. Kings could no longer make laws as they had to share their authority with the written religious canon and its interpreters. </b></i>Genghis Khan and the Mongols broke this pattern of constrained kingship (others had attempted to do so before as well, but never so successfully). The adjective Chinggisid is more apt than Mongol to describe the worlds thus created because these orders were orders of great houses (dynasties) rather than nations.<br /><br /><b>Genghis Khan claimed law-making power above and beyond that of religious (and other) actors. He made himself the lawgiver but did not claim to be a prophet. </b>Nor did he claim to be merely verbalising divine laws. He made the law and still expected people to obey, even if they already had their own religious rules and laws. Such centralization of supreme authority in one person requires robust legitimation. <b>The claim to have such awesome authority could be justified only by a mandate for universal sovereignty over the world, as corroborated and manifested by world conquest and world empire. And because Genghis Khan succeeded in creating a nearly universal empire, he also diffused this particular understanding of sovereignty across Eurasia.</b><br /><br />The story of Genghis Khan as a world-conqueror and lawgiver lived on for centuries (as inflected by the example of Timur/Tamerlane later), legitimizing a certain type of political rule throughout this space and strengthening the hands of rulers desiring to claim centralizing political authority, even in places where religious authority (eg, the Islamic jurists) posed a challenge to absolute kingship. And such rulers always chased world empire and ended up ordering the world (often violently and brutally but also at times productively) in their competition for this mantle. <b>The Asian world orders between the 13th and 17th centuries constitute an important history of powerful and influential world orders outside of European hegemony. And insofar as political centralization is an essential component of modern sovereignty, it may be argued that similar Asian understandings and practices of sovereignty both predate and may have even influenced the European trajectory.<br /></b><br /><b>First was the original ‘world order’ created by Genghis Khan (and his house) in the 13th century.</b> If there is indeed an ‘East’ that is distinct from the ‘West’, one of the points of separation can be placed here. After all, <i><b>Genghis Khan’s empire was primarily an ‘Asian’ one, spanning the distance from the Pacific Ocean in the East to the Mediterranean in the West. A</b></i>ctors of (and within) this order interacted with the Indian subcontinent to their South and the European/Mediterranean regional orders to their West (and influenced developments therein and vice versa) but, for the most part, polities in those regions were not incorporated into this order and retained their own logics of power, legitimation, warfare, etc.<br /><br />In this ‘Asian’ order, <b>people living in the geographies that we now call ‘Russia’, ‘China’, ‘Iran’ and ‘Central Asia’ – basically, most of continental Asia – shared the same sovereign for the first time and then were ruled/dominated by dynasties (the Golden Horde/Jochid, the Yuan, the Ilkhanate and the Chagatai) that directly inherited Chinggisid norms, ie, ambitions of universal sovereignty and dynastic legitimacy based on world conquest, high degrees of political centralization around the supreme authority of the Great Khan.</b> They were also significantly connected to each other through overland and naval routes that spanned the entire continent, as well as the Indian Ocean.<br /><br />The existence of such trade routes – the ‘silk roads’ – predated the Chinggisid Empire. After their conquests, however, the Mongols strengthened these connections through the postal (yām) system and homogenized the points of contact throughout by their presence in the major spheres of influence within the continent. Thus, late 13th-century Eurasia was as connected as it had ever been (and even more so than some subsequent periods). <b>Famous explorers of the 14th century – eg, Marco Polo or Ibn Battuta – could thus make their way from Europe or North Africa to China with relative ease, causing hardly any more commotion than some curiosity among hosts (who must have been accustomed to travelers along these routes) and facing not much more than some demand for updated information about cities and rulers encountered along the way.</b><br /><br />Yet others traveled in the opposite direction from China to West Asia, and started new lives in Europe or what is now called Iran, under new rulers. A mostly forgotten aspect of this order is the facilitation of epistemic exchange of all sorts, most notably between ‘Iran’ and ‘China’: <b>in the 13th and 14th centuries, bureaucrats, scientists, artists, craftsmen and engineers could be born on one side of Asia and finish their careers on the opposite side, with profound implications for artistic, cultural and scientific standards of both societies.</b> The best (but not only) <b>example of this cultural exchange is the fundamental transformation of Islamic art from the 13th century onward under Chinese influences, producing among other things the blue-and-white ceramics that are now so closely associated with the Middle East. </b>This process is sometimes called the ‘Chinggisid exchange’ by historians of the Mongol Empire, similar to the Columbian exchange in terms of its world-historical impact.<br /><br /><b>After holding most of Asia under the same sovereign for more than half a century</b> – which would be no small feat even today, let alone in the 13th century – <b>the world empire/khanate ruled by the Great House of Genghis Khan fragmented into four smaller khanates, each based in territories originally given to different branches of his descendants to govern. Once autonomous, rival khanates went through a brief period of intense fighting to reclaim the mantle of universal sovereignty, but none managed to dominate the others. </b>Eventually they settled into a ‘balance-of-power’ type equilibrium in the early 14th century. <b>This period was particularly good for overland trade across Eurasia, extending the period known as Pax Mongolica.<br /></b><br />The spread of the Black Death from the East (or Central Asia) to the West in the mid-14th century spelled the end of that status quo, however, as all but one of the khanates fell apart. <b>The Golden Horde continued to rule the north-western steppes of Asia (present-day Russia)</b>, but the Chagatai Khanate (Central Asia) and the Ilkhanate (the Middle East) disintegrated, eventually giving way by the end of the 14th century to the Timurid Empire originating from Transoxiana, and the Yuan were overthrown by the Ming dynasty in 1366. Thus ended the first would-be world order organized by Chinggisid sovereignty.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>The next world order that succeeded Genghis Khan’s and its successor khanates brought more diversity, and a competition between two great powers.</b> <b>From the last third of the 14th century to the middle of the 15th century, the Great Houses of Timur (Tamerlane) and Zhu Yuanzhang (Hongwu), ie, the Ming dynasty, competed to succeed the Great House of Genghis Khan from the two sides of Asia.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br /><b>As long as the Ming and the Timurids competed, they ordered the world in post-Chinggisid ways</b>. They were post-Chinggisid because neither the Timurids nor the Ming were directly linked to the house of Genghis Khan but were nevertheless very much influenced by the order of their predecessors. They had different views about the Chinggisids but, just as in our modern world, one cannot escape an institutional legacy only by rejecting its creators.<br /><br />The post-Chinggisid influence is easy to demonstrate in the case of the Timurids because <b>Timur, as a Turco-Mongol ruler himself, did his best to play up any connections. He married a Chinggisid princess. He ruled through a puppet khan from a Chinggisid lineage, never taking the title for himself (he was called amir himself).</b> Still, in all ways that mattered, <b>he deliberately fashioned himself after the model of Genghis Khan and died on the way to attempting to conquer China, just like Genghis.</b> He centralized authority in the Chinggisid mold, seeking world conquest and recognition. He even found a novel way to reconcile the tension between Chinggisid sovereignty and Islam via the title of<b> sahibkıran (Lord of Conjunction), as astronomy/astrology was a bridge between the Chinggisid and Islamic ways of seeing the world.</b><br /><br /><b>By contrast, the Ming, who were Han, ostensibly rejected any Chinggisid influences after they overthrew the Yuan dynasty</b>. Still, the preoccupation of the early Ming emperors Hongwu and Yongle with world recognition also demonstrably derived from Chinggisid ideals and thus can be considered post-Chinggisid.<b> In 1403, the Ming emperor ordered the construction of 137 ocean-going ships; later, he ordered the construction of 1,180 more. </b>He put Zheng He in charge of these expeditions which went as far as the Indian Ocean. Modern-day China’s power-projection ambitions have reintroduced <b>these so-called ‘Ming treasure voyages’ t</b>o the popular imagination.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">However, what is often missed in contemporary discussion is the larger context and historical antecedents of these voyages. <br /><br /><b>The maritime envoys were only part of the story – Yongle also sent overland envoys, including to Herat, the Timurid capital.</b> Even experts in the growing field of China’s historical international relations often overlook the degree to which the goal of external recognition drove the early Ming and how that ideal derived from their Yuan (Chinggisid) predecessors and was shared by Central Asian rivals. <b>Much of international relations scholarship, with its bias for a 20th-century world, still imagines inner Asia to be peripheral to world politics in history. But in the 15th century, it was the center of a world ordered by the Timurids on the one side and the Ming on the other.</b><br /><br /><i><b>Timur failed to conquer China and eventually he had to settle into something like mutual recognition with the early Ming dynasty.</b></i> A continent of lesser houses connected the great houses of Timur and Yuan or Ming. Some had their own Chinggisid-style world-empire aspirations, and others, the Joseon dynasty in Korea, for example, operated at a minimum with an understanding of the same Chinggisid legacy. <br /><br /><b>Material connections were also part of the legacy of the Chinggisid world order, across Asia. Overland trade brought Ming wares to West Asia (which then sold them to the Middle East and Europe) and silver to the East. Both the Timurid and the Ming also sponsored great works of art and craftsmanship in this period</b><i><b>.</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b></b></i></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWVsbGFh3sLByagE7mtp3xU7IcBPGe8w9iHpTGb3xJsIRbX0Ot3Dpp7fgbGqkkSyNwzw9TaErE2dN96FEhvQz1zW7cMzrY8HCzauOHl9ogenwV1pooPXTDAvQSoxuhnlAYfy5w-Z6a_R9q08_npVAqmpLvXyyZtg0FihsNO3eDa-NFX0_Ul9P2x9U_YBCp/s512/ming%20bowl%20flowers.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="463" data-original-width="512" height="361" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWVsbGFh3sLByagE7mtp3xU7IcBPGe8w9iHpTGb3xJsIRbX0Ot3Dpp7fgbGqkkSyNwzw9TaErE2dN96FEhvQz1zW7cMzrY8HCzauOHl9ogenwV1pooPXTDAvQSoxuhnlAYfy5w-Z6a_R9q08_npVAqmpLvXyyZtg0FihsNO3eDa-NFX0_Ul9P2x9U_YBCp/w400-h361/ming%20bowl%20flowers.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></i></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Even when the Timur and Ming dynasties did not directly interact, they competed with each other symbolically and in so doing reinforced the normative fabric of the 14th- to 15th-century world order in Asia.<br /></b><br />Also like the Cold War order, the Timurid-Ming rivalry was not around for very long. <b>In the middle of the 15th century, a bullion famine, a shortage of money, hit Eurasia and precipitated a period of structural crisis by contracting overland trade.</b> The Timurid dynasty of West Asia was particularly hard hit. <b>The Timurids lost control over their territories. </b>I<b>n the second half of the 15th century, Chinggisid influences on the Ming also faded, and </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>neo-Confucianism took over. </b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br /><i><b>The neo-Confucian movement empowered bureaucrats and officials and constrained the power and authority of the Ming rulers, checking centralization</b></i>. The Ming realm turned more inward-looking, or isolationist. <b>The ‘bipolar’ world order of the Timurid and the Ming Great Houses fragmented before it had the opportunity to congeal into something more institutionalized.</b><br /><br />*<br /><b>The next fertile ground for world-ordering projects based on Chinggisid sovereignty norms came from the southwestern corner of Asia.</b> In the 15th century, the region had been dominated by the Timurid Empire/khanate, and Chinggisid sovereignty norms had merged with existing Persian notions of kingship, millennial expectations, astrology and other occult sciences, as well as folk practices of Islam within this region. <b>This fusion of Chinggisid, Persian and Islamic political cultures gave rise to at least three great houses with some of the more ambitious universal sovereignty claims in history: the Ottomans, the Safavids and the Mughals.</b><br /><br /><b>By the 16th century, these three Great Houses together claimed sovereignty over more than a third of the human population of the world.</b> They also controlled the core of the world economy. Though often called Islamicate empires, the Ottomans, the Safavids and the Mughals shared more than Islam (and at times contravened prior Islamic practice). As with the previous examples discussed, they too subscribed to the same sovereignty model (at least in the 16th century): <b>a type of sacred kingship, a fused form of vertical political centralization achieved by the unification of political and religious authority in the same person, made possible by the Chinggisid-Timurid legacies they inherited. </b><br /><br /><b>Following Timur, the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal claim to greatness was based on the claim of the rulers from these houses to be sahibkıran, universal sovereigns marked by signs from the heavens, living in the end of days, delivering on millennial expectations</b>. Astrology and other occult sciences supported the universal sovereignty projects of these would-be world empires. Thus, <b>in the 16th century, it was primarily the post-Chinggisid and post-Timurid ‘millennial sovereigns’ in Southwest Asia who ordered an increasingly globalizing world, not yet the Europeans.</b><br /><br />Scholars of international relations tend to see the 16th century as holding the seeds of a world order based on European hegemony. It is undeniable that the 16th century was a period of growth and expansion for Europe (especially for Habsburg Spain), but </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Europe was growing from a position of greater deprivation than Asia. If we do not read the ending of the story back into the historical narrative, in the 16th century it was still not at all obvious that European actors would come to dominate the world. </b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />Almost all histories of this period within international relations treat the Habsburgs’ eastern relations as relatively insignificant, but that is also a projection of the standards of a later time to the 16th century. <b>Especially in the first two-thirds of the 16th century, the main rival of the Habsburgs were the Ottomans, who were themselves engaged in a simultaneous rivalry with the Safavids, from whose orbit the Mughals were trying to break.</b> Smaller European houses had aspirations, to be sure, but their time in the sun had not really come yet, and they initially <b>had to rely on Eastern alliances as well as trade with Asia to get on an upward trajectory.<br /></b><br /><b>The expansion of this Eastern world order was stopped in its tracks not by destiny or European greatness, but rather by the unpredictable developments of the late 16th to mid-17th century, a politically tumultuous period throughout Eurasia. Some historians label this period </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>‘the 17th-century general crisis’, a period of prolonged rebellions, civil wars and demographic decline throughout the northern hemisphere. </b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />Historians have given different explanations as to what ushered in this upheaval: some suggesting financial causes (eg, the global repercussions of the Spanish ‘price revolution’ – inflation – due to the influx of surplus silver from the New World), whereas others point to demographic contraction. <br /><br /><b>Others now </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>link the chaos of this period to the Little Ice Age: the peak moment of a cooler period in the Northern Hemisphere that extended from the 13th to the 19th century</b>. <i><b>Prolonged periods of cooler temperatures and storms may indeed have been responsible for all the other factors we associate with the period: crop failures, disruption of overland trade, demographic collapse in hinterlands, rebellions and civil wars.</b></i></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><br /></i><br />Whatever the cause, <b>the continued disorder of the 17th century caused the irreversible fragmentation of the 16th-century world order. This was the turning point for the East because, while aspects of the Chinggisid sovereignty norms survived the 17th century and motivated particular rulers (eg, Nader Shah of Persia), </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>no new ‘world orders’ organized around those norms were successfully created after the 17th century. </b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><b>A global perception set in the 19th century that Asia had been irreversibly declining for centuries, even though most Asian and Eurasian states had materially recovered from the crises of the 17th century, and had, in some cases, even gone on to territorially expand in the 18th century (eg, Russia, China).</b> These two developments – the loss of ‘world orders’ originating in the East, on the one hand, and the perception of decline despite continued durability of Eastern states, on the other – are linked.<br /><br />*<br /><b>A similar observation can be made about great power competition in the 19th century or the Cold War. Rivalry is constitutive of order (almost as much as trade and cooperation); order decline almost always originates from elsewhere.</b> A final observation is that world orders were not immediately replaced after fragmentation; there were periods without ‘world order’-ers around (or, even if they were around, their presence was not felt by other actors). <b>The 17th-century crisis period of fragmentation lasted the longest and perhaps for that reason spelled the end of Eastern world orders.</b><br /><br />Contrary to the assumptions of the international relations literature about great powers, this history suggests that rivalries by great houses that shared the same understanding of ‘greatness’ in fact strengthened and reinforced the existing world order (even when those rivalries turned violent).<br /><br />Unfortunately, there are enough reasons to suspect that we may be in for a similar period of turbulence and disorder in the 21st century. <b>All the factors that were at play in the 17th century – climate change, demographic unpredictability, economic volatility, internal chaos – that took the attention of world orderers from maintaining world order are also present today.</b><br /><br /><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/the-first-world-orders-were-not-european-they-came-from-asia?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=e56efdc064-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_01_12&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-b43a9ed933-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D">https://aeon.co/essays/the-first-world-orders-were-not-european-they-came-from-asia?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=e56efdc064-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_01_12&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-b43a9ed933-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D<br /></a></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijeWcpbPMF9PVWkG_e16iVsIDnnBOQMHnuieV7-1eWl6zarUFFRE2IAEcNBtNGMjZNS3K8f7uEYXW-P1Ci02LkROsDzY1W20ZTDFaT4xYzCdwJeCp1zr-Y0JcVhVw-rJePdfmFs1nTDR7x_Kb1UWWex6t-VagbB9__5pIWjbnUr43f9U1KQkcF8otzWW8y/s1000/blue%20and%20white%20porcelain.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="1000" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijeWcpbPMF9PVWkG_e16iVsIDnnBOQMHnuieV7-1eWl6zarUFFRE2IAEcNBtNGMjZNS3K8f7uEYXW-P1Ci02LkROsDzY1W20ZTDFaT4xYzCdwJeCp1zr-Y0JcVhVw-rJePdfmFs1nTDR7x_Kb1UWWex6t-VagbB9__5pIWjbnUr43f9U1KQkcF8otzWW8y/w400-h200/blue%20and%20white%20porcelain.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>PLAUSIBLE REAL REASONS FOR RUSSIA’S WAR ON UKRAINE<br /></b><br />Oriana:<br /><br />For the average person in the West, it’s still difficult to explain why Russia invaded Ukraine. Poles are prone to think that, historically speaking, Russia has always had the nasty habit of invading it neighbors. This of course won’t fly with historians and political scientists. As for Putin’s reasons, such as the alleged need to defend the speakers of Russian in Ukraine — not to mention that Ukraine is a “fake country” in need of “de-Nazification” and “de-Satanization.” </span><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">All this would be very funny if not for the amount of human suffering caused by this sudden war of aggression. So — what are the real reasons? This brief article on Quora was the best answer yet. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">**<br /><b>Natural resources</b>. The Ukraine has vast reserves of fossil fuels and minerals. <b>Russia doesn’t want them. What it wants is for the Ukraine to NOT have them and sell them into Europe, undercutting Putin’s “private captive market.” </b>Notice how closely any map of these resources matches Putin’s military objectives.<br /><br /><b>Democracy.</b> The Ukraine was moving with surprising ferocity to move from a corrupt Russian oligarchy to a modern Democratic state. <b>If this were to happen, it would set a clear and shining example to the Russian people that they do not have to live in a kleptocracy.<br /></b><br />Russia actually sees both of these as a threat to its own existence. But it has backfired badly. Russia has lost its European market, likely permanently. And Zelenskyy is emerging as a major world democratic leader whereas Putin is emerging as a war criminal and pariah. ~ R. W. Carmichael, Quora<br /><br />Oriana:<br /><br />One of the best things done by <b>Prigozhin</b>, the leader of the doomed rebellion against Putin, was the public statement about Russia’s official reasons for invading Ukraine. <b>“They are lying to you. This war has nothing to do with the expansion of NATO. The real reasons are greed and ambition.”</b><br /><br />Greed and ambition account for practically all wars of aggression. <b>Prigozhin’s words are true, but not specific enough. </b>The brief Quora article points to wanting to prevent Ukraine from becoming an economic rival, and also, should it succeed at becoming a democratic country, a disturbing example of liberation from a dictatorship and political servility to Russia. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"They are lying to you" — Yes, but doesn't everyone already know that and takes it for granted? Just make sure you have at least five blankets in order to survive the night. And that chair — do you really need that wooden chair? It could be burned to produce some heat.<br /><br />*<br /><b>TROTSKY’S RISE AND FALL<br /></b><br />~ <b>Trotsky was an outsider in the Bolshevik crew. </b>His involvement in the revolutionary movement happened parallel to what Lenin and Stalin did before 1917.<br /><br /><b>His power move was collecting coffers full of money with lightning speed after Czar Nicholas II abdicated</b> in early 1917 in America and bringing the juice just in time to Petrograd (a.k.a. St. Petersburg), where Lenin with comrades set up shop for proletarian revolution.<br /><br /><b>Money talks, also in revolutionary matters. This catapulted him right to the center of Lenin’s situation room. In the months and years that followed, he performed like you won’t believe.<br /></b><br /><b>Top performer</b><br /><br /><i><b>Trotsky’s star moment was planning and leading the commando operation that overthrew the liberal Provisional Government and installed Soviet rule in 1917. Further, in 1918–1920, his performance as the Soviet defense minister secured the Communists their victory in the Civil War.</b></i><br /><br />The man impressed everyone and himself so much that he deemed his role as Lenin’s crown prince as 100% assured.<br /><br /><b>The front-runner<br /></b><br /><b>Trotsky had the military in his pocket. His role as the acknowledged architect (along with Lenin) of the Revolution went unchallenged. He was a brilliant speaker and debater. He made a serious claim to be a theorist of Marxism.</b><br /><br />The last anti-government rally in the USSR before Perestroika in 1927 was organized by Trotsky’s followers—it showed the level of support he once enjoyed at the grassroots level before Stalin stomped out all embers of opposition.<br /><br /><b>Hubris comes before the fall<br /></b><br />Full of this impossible awesomeness, he geared down at the critical moments in the Communist internal power struggle. Hypochondriac as he was, he spent too much time away from his power base. <b>He didn’t put too much effort into courting possible allies. He ignored Stalin’s silent but huge reshuffling of party cadres in order to have his supporters at the right places the day the definitive battle began.<br /></b><br />And he underestimated the degree of hate against his Jewish ancestry that permeated younger Party members from the worker and peasant classes.<br /><br />As a result, Stalin robbed him of his support in the military through the Communist cells in the troops. From there, the only way for Trotsky, as for any fiery radical Socialist who lost the game, was the one to total destruction.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><i>Below, Trotsky addresses Red Army troopers in Crimea in 1921.<br /></i><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivr4axVICrMMk7CJwP_imjt2t9OKl_5gGIjI_DkKmM4nIV67UAyY6W2gx3XlGZGff0ExgNumskaINtZ7Hme9c-7GuD_Xa1_IajiZiVuSsj8olF86SUDwL3NDBy6n7qkecarjpKOLwk6GMz1-3LzvTZqCi9Bl9McAWvGzHq0grYTAChbOCQJacit1YNOjZB/s1500/Trotsky%20ddresses%20Red%20Army%20soldiers%20in%20Crimea.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1059" data-original-width="1500" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivr4axVICrMMk7CJwP_imjt2t9OKl_5gGIjI_DkKmM4nIV67UAyY6W2gx3XlGZGff0ExgNumskaINtZ7Hme9c-7GuD_Xa1_IajiZiVuSsj8olF86SUDwL3NDBy6n7qkecarjpKOLwk6GMz1-3LzvTZqCi9Bl9McAWvGzHq0grYTAChbOCQJacit1YNOjZB/w400-h283/Trotsky%20ddresses%20Red%20Army%20soldiers%20in%20Crimea.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>In his own eyes, he soared high over the comrades he worked with. Not many of them could match his brain, his energy, and his gift of words.</b> But to bring him down, Stalin didn’t need too much. He just stayed below Trotsky’s radar. A few more years of consorting with a bunch of other Bolsheviks who hated and feared Trotsky, and he would dislodge the brilliant Jew from his high horse. Forever. ~ Dima Vorobiev, Quora<br /><br />*<br /><b>RUSSIA’S WINTER WONDERLAND<br /></b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgKaBbnha_mnD3ZSOZKYk8KDDRYGg5SB94gO56XrqtMOOvvtQRB0D7osQqwPhdUboIWpY8w8MFC_cTJAim6QU3o0lN_TemccPgFOvY2nbRN1jmlDCdbQx3MYGdhF1pa3ANXX3Z5eoFhhl2rzlXjquXNul5iZ_PyDFssaP24oabgbRV2AzwpnwSfVRKduk_/s602/RUSSIA%20lobby%20stairway%20winter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="481" data-original-width="602" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgKaBbnha_mnD3ZSOZKYk8KDDRYGg5SB94gO56XrqtMOOvvtQRB0D7osQqwPhdUboIWpY8w8MFC_cTJAim6QU3o0lN_TemccPgFOvY2nbRN1jmlDCdbQx3MYGdhF1pa3ANXX3Z5eoFhhl2rzlXjquXNul5iZ_PyDFssaP24oabgbRV2AzwpnwSfVRKduk_/w400-h320/RUSSIA%20lobby%20stairway%20winter.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">One of the obvious pros of living in Russia: <b>for those who like extreme tourism, you don’t have to go far — you can experience extreme conditions at your own home. Test your survival skills!</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Even the Moscow region, pumped by money extracted from the whole of Russia, became a scene out of <b>climate change horror movie for tens of thousands of locals.<br /></b></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEbcknLLLt6uQ6cJ-HQ2KtNUlch_JZjh2lnuqEtwq1FVuq095nMgFvbiSRAZbHPQz8a3WbyBcePfvqmUhiDtDLPr3njZTtHMAiAzv-P5Hu6P4MXPoSw3c5JU9-Xv3a12OSxsxYgJGZLei3ih4wdNDuagAWXXEhBwvXVEhNQJq426Gq5UuchKQE583E-HI2/s798/Moscow%20icicles.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="798" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEbcknLLLt6uQ6cJ-HQ2KtNUlch_JZjh2lnuqEtwq1FVuq095nMgFvbiSRAZbHPQz8a3WbyBcePfvqmUhiDtDLPr3njZTtHMAiAzv-P5Hu6P4MXPoSw3c5JU9-Xv3a12OSxsxYgJGZLei3ih4wdNDuagAWXXEhBwvXVEhNQJq426Gq5UuchKQE583E-HI2/w301-h400/Moscow%20icicles.jpg" width="301" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Severe frosts hit the European part of Russia, and the worn-out equipment and pipes couldn’t cope with pressure.</b> <b>The central heating system for housing collapsed in several districts of the Russian capital.</b><br /><br />For almost a week, residents of villages and towns near Moscow have been living without heating in temperatures down to -28 degrees C.<br /><br />People started using electricity for heating their homes and then the electricity grid began to collapse. Videos of burning wires on the street polls are circulating online.</span><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #800180;"><b>In the Moscow region, a missile attack command center (responsible for warning about nuclear strikes) froze.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />The authorities keep assuring people that they will soon solve the problem, but they can’t explain how they will fill the heating pipes that burst underground.<br /><br />In Solnechnogorsk, half of the city was left without heating, the families of enforcers at Vystrel, Timonovo and the Solnechnogorsk-7 base are freezing.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Solnechnogorsk-7 is a military base that serves the command post. It is there that the crew of the Missile Attack Warning System is on duty around the clock: “All information from the ground and space echelons of early warning systems flows here, and it is there that the decision on a retaliatory nuclear strike is executed.”</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Heating interruptions have reached Balashikha. Authorities are complaining about power surges that have led to the shutdown of gas boilers in boiler houses. Residents of Balashikha began to freeze.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Yesterday, <b>the turn to freeze reached the prosperous Rublyovka, where top Russian officials and oligarchs live. Several residential complexes and villages in Romashkovo area were left without electricity and heating for 8 hours. High-ranking and wealthy residents of the Rublevka stormed the phones Moscow region administration.<br /><br />How did the Russian authorities respond?<br /></b><br /><b>Residents of Klimovsk near Moscow, who have been left without heating for 5 days in 20-degree frosts, were told </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>they would not have to pay the bills for heating in January.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">After the accident at a boiler house in Podolsk, which left thousands of residents of the Klimovsk microdistrict without heat and hot water, the investigative committee conducted searches and opened a criminal case. The accident occurred on January 4 at the boiler of JSC Klimovsky Specialized Bullet-Making Plant, which provided heating to the whole area. <b>The owners of the company reportedly fled abroad.</b><br /><br /><b>That’s the standard KGB approach: any problem in the country is solved by searches, arrests and special operations.<br /></b><br />In Tyumen, people organized an Orthodox street procession. I suppose, they asked Jesus to give them heating in their homes.<br /><br /><i><b>Following the collapse of the heating system in the Moscow region, in other regions authorities were told to lower the pressure in the pipes for hot water and heating, to prevent breakdowns. Immediately, the heating radiators in apartments turned barely warm. Temperatures in homes dropped.</b></i><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_mVGnQ2Z6e6rbXnjcU9p5CgNI4H7BOkhPYxi9gfF3v4RgKYCX9HEtcSiATWUGo9KrieYX0B3j7AuXsQ45v3rYifF9rryQfeeXJikGtY9s8jkVl0V4QNOvshLR4XlbjBnFKIUsLyC-reKxTiA3JJHK5YFOVBljsJrRlrEsp2skJESGPFdt9t1qNzj_WrKg/s803/moscow%20garbage%20collapse.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="803" data-original-width="602" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_mVGnQ2Z6e6rbXnjcU9p5CgNI4H7BOkhPYxi9gfF3v4RgKYCX9HEtcSiATWUGo9KrieYX0B3j7AuXsQ45v3rYifF9rryQfeeXJikGtY9s8jkVl0V4QNOvshLR4XlbjBnFKIUsLyC-reKxTiA3JJHK5YFOVBljsJrRlrEsp2skJESGPFdt9t1qNzj_WrKg/w480-h640/moscow%20garbage%20collapse.jpg" width="480" /></a></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Garbage collapse hit Moscow’s Khimki</b>. <i><b>There are no cleaners or garbage removal</b></i>. People who complain about it online are accused of working for the “Ukrainian PSYOP” and banned from chats.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>The collapse of systems in Russia is exacerbated by the severe shortage of employees: the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences estimated the personnel shortage in Russia at 4.8 million people.<br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />According to SuperJob recruitment portal, in 2023, the number of vacancies increased by 57%, and the number of employee resumes dropped by 2%.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>54% of enterprises in Russia are experiencing staff shortages.<br /></b><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><i><b>Putin's authorized representative Boris Titov proposed sending pensioners to work, who, in his opinion, "retired too early.”</b></i><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />Attempts to attract migrants to rectify the personnel shortage “will in no way solve the problem,” this is “just patching up holes,” Titov said.<br /><br />(I wonder, what happened? Why is there such a crisis, all of a sudden?)<br /><br />“In order to resolve the issue properly, we need to use other available opportunities — all those reserves that exist within Russia itself. Let’s take, for example, <b>pensioners, according to official statistics, there are more than 40 million of them in Russia,” Titov said.</b><br /><br />“At some point, it may be beneficial,” Titov said, to use labor camps, as happened in the USSR during the Stalin’s era. GULAGs will be back!<br /><br /><b>After Vladimir Putin announced mobilization of 300,000 citizens in September 2022, and then the Ministry of Defense announced that they have recruited another 500,000 people as contract soldiers into the army, </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>the labor market is severely lacking skilled workers, truck drivers, special transport drivers, laborers and engineers.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><br /></b><br />Another Aeroflot plane broke down in Thailand: 400 people are stuck at the airport. <b>It’s the 8th plane in the last 5 weeks that broke down before the scheduled takeoff.</b><br /><br />But there is also good news.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>After Russia’s minister of finance proposed to use people’s savings to continue financing the war, the price of Bitcoin jumped by 6.21% (up by $4,000) in one day, and it now exceeds USD $47,000.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><br /></b><br />Russia may single-handedly finance the revival of crypto.<br /><br /><b>The demand for foreign citizenship among Russians soared to record heights.</b> The number of queries for “foreign citizenship” in Yandex search engine from Russian IP’s reached 134,832 in November 2023, and didn’t fall below 94,000 requests within the last 3 months.<br /><br />Looks like even <b>those who stayed in Russia hoping for the best, are starting to realize that this “best” isn’t going to happen.</b> ~ Elena Gold, Quora<br /><br />Philippe S:<br />That’s kind of what happens when money is spent on missiles lobbed on a neighbor country’s civilians instead of improving infrastructure for the citizens of their own country.<br /><br />Paul Brawley:<br />Going out on a procession should help you get warmed up. <b>In ruzzia you can have a winter camping experience without even have to leave your home! </b>All you need is a minus zero rated sleeping bag.<br /><br />Julian Beirne:<br />Looks like mighty Russia may be defeated by a domestic system failing, like the heating, or factory manpower. A bit like The War of the Worlds.<br /><br />Pauli Vaara:<br />The pictures of ice on the buildings look extreme. It lends a lot of credibility to the bedroom ice scene in the movie, “Doctor Zhivago,” another tragic story from the region.<br /><br />Fedya L:<br /><b>Russians tend to be nice, hard-working people after they have left Russia.</b><br /><br />Marcus Hartman:<br />Fix everything with criminal investigations? And who will carry out the maintenance work while the culprit entrepreneurs sit behind bars? Jesus?<br /><br />*<br /><b>HEATING PROBLEMS IN RUSSIA<br /></b></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGEvIWns8jKcs2RU-UfkL6c-dFDlhO1IZ-XZ45YiacO6WgCTWPNu_2AWk7YDtnKGTBkdUO5tu34Ht8D5TZk7-6wrqDpwtG1SnBazAZgLAry8CFAFhKmQvQNmjK4Y4x0FvWWiCTZeO-JnO95_ZZSxagoa3uksKzj6rUrlG7zOAttmbtKdZmv3S9YXQ9qMql/s784/icy%20building%20Russia.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="784" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGEvIWns8jKcs2RU-UfkL6c-dFDlhO1IZ-XZ45YiacO6WgCTWPNu_2AWk7YDtnKGTBkdUO5tu34Ht8D5TZk7-6wrqDpwtG1SnBazAZgLAry8CFAFhKmQvQNmjK4Y4x0FvWWiCTZeO-JnO95_ZZSxagoa3uksKzj6rUrlG7zOAttmbtKdZmv3S9YXQ9qMql/w308-h400/icy%20building%20Russia.jpg" width="308" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>January 2024: Collapse of the heating system in Russia causes havoc in 20+ Russian cities in minus 25°C (–13°F) temperatures.<br /></b><br />Residents are dancing around bonfires, recording messages for Vladimir Putin, begging him to help — because in Russia, there is only one man who can solve problems.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga3jD0a5J-P49DLqtImMI932qY7xsg6tH04Llzm_D_K3FgpQXlP4Dmo2ijGev5aHUI2dkYsJDVpPVyft7uLj0OJBDMhTiUltVmIod2i_dGEUKO1MbjOaFKHAIr15G69IbN1q7z7k-4P32Wh5hlf74FD6XD9iDyCHGz4AAUj8b8WLbN0ByvL5QEoEsBvRpf/s602/around%20bonfire%20in%20Russia.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="338" data-original-width="602" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga3jD0a5J-P49DLqtImMI932qY7xsg6tH04Llzm_D_K3FgpQXlP4Dmo2ijGev5aHUI2dkYsJDVpPVyft7uLj0OJBDMhTiUltVmIod2i_dGEUKO1MbjOaFKHAIr15G69IbN1q7z7k-4P32Wh5hlf74FD6XD9iDyCHGz4AAUj8b8WLbN0ByvL5QEoEsBvRpf/w400-h225/around%20bonfire%20in%20Russia.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Most Russians live in big apartment buildings, and all apartment buildings have central heating.<br /><br />This central heating system is connected to a centralized boiler room that’s pumping hot water into hundreds of buildings via underground pipes, to individual heating elements in apartments.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAONLqjfR9SU27XX7m6PeT46hLL_Ter5p5qCKVAZqdyhaX6Kfy7lVyaKAh1UMfFbTnYEC0Ic3DVoFDokg6FoSR8A6wMXQYvYIjyRCy2Cgs-FB9bwsaXYmdTSEaodIK5nS9YAV4ShoNpHNgrC5o2n7EKynJ3mK-HoEMs0r40h7WO9j-LhnbpjzINV-ICsDM/s554/radiator%20Russian%20apartment.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="438" data-original-width="554" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAONLqjfR9SU27XX7m6PeT46hLL_Ter5p5qCKVAZqdyhaX6Kfy7lVyaKAh1UMfFbTnYEC0Ic3DVoFDokg6FoSR8A6wMXQYvYIjyRCy2Cgs-FB9bwsaXYmdTSEaodIK5nS9YAV4ShoNpHNgrC5o2n7EKynJ3mK-HoEMs0r40h7WO9j-LhnbpjzINV-ICsDM/w400-h316/radiator%20Russian%20apartment.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">These systems, most built back in the times of the USSR, are now collapsing, leaving tens of thousands of residents with no heating in abnormal frosts up to –35°C.<br /><br /><b>The residents resort to using electric heaters, the grid can’t cope, the wires start burning, towns lose electricity as well.<br /></b><br />“My mother is bedridden, group 1 disabled, I cover her with 5 blankets,” complains a resident of Podolsk, Moscow region.<br /><br />In 24 years of Putin’s rule, Podolsk residents had to rely on heating from the boiler of the bullet-making factory — a lucrative money-making venture (given the government contracts). But despite the astounding profits, its essential hot water system failed, leaving 20,000 people with no heating.<br /><b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfiH66VBybmby976nPozIMGkG1UMT56aQFgyW9xO9oNEUJgvvvCIM_Yr1jVW3t6YKnNT71k0ThIao190JbRmAWuSmt88p_p__7L8RdX-XFcfGZZfgs2aw78Pp-QZ2KYHuUzODf_9SMkAog4ovGD-w9_aoZJ63vtG0wCDS3giECWR_i6OF6ODD9HxxUfcC1/s602/worn%20out%20infrastructure%20Russia.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="602" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfiH66VBybmby976nPozIMGkG1UMT56aQFgyW9xO9oNEUJgvvvCIM_Yr1jVW3t6YKnNT71k0ThIao190JbRmAWuSmt88p_p__7L8RdX-XFcfGZZfgs2aw78Pp-QZ2KYHuUzODf_9SMkAog4ovGD-w9_aoZJ63vtG0wCDS3giECWR_i6OF6ODD9HxxUfcC1/w400-h297/worn%20out%20infrastructure%20Russia.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>60–70% of the public utilities infrastructure in Russia is worn out.<br /></b><br />2 days ago, after much uproar about the disaster, Vladimir Putin announced he’s taking the situation under his personal control — and ordered to nationalize Podolsk’s bullet-making plant.<br /><br />The Investigative Committee opened a criminal case, detaining the head of the boiler room, the director of the plant and the deputy head of the administration of Podolsk. Someone has to be the scapegoat.<br /><br />Just think of that: <b>Putin, the ruler of “Great Russia”, who declared war on the entire civilized world, has to deal with the heads of boiler rooms and the heat supply systems of little towns around Moscow. Someone who wants to fight for world domination is now dealing with rotten pipes.</b> How pathetic.<br /><br />And here, some interesting facts popped up:<br /><br />Since May 2023, the general director of the bullet-making plant is Igor Kushnikov. Reportedly, it’s the same Igor Kushnikov who was accused of leading a local organized crime group in the late 1990s, responsible for over 40 murders (Kushnikov personally was only accused in 1 murder). He combined leadership in the group with working in the FSB, where he rose to the rank of colonel.</span><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Before him, the plant was managed by Igor Rudyka. He is an FSB officer and in 2017-2019, he was Putin’s personal bodyguard.<br /><br /><b>The fact that Putin-FSB government is to blame for the collapse of the public utilities sector is not a figure of speech. It’s literally true.<br /></b><br />And here’s the most ironical fact: 2 weeks before the boiler room accident, Podolsk received the “Breakthrough of the Year” award in the ‘Effective Resource Management’ category.<br /><br />"The Breakthrough" was truly epic!<br /><br /><i><b>Didn’t spend any money on repairs? Here’s an award for your dedication! The handcuffs to follow.</b></i><br /><br />However, the disaster in Podolsk is just one of dozens. <b>In the Moscow region alone, almost 500 thousand people were left without heating.</b><br /><br /><b>Residents of Elektrostal near Moscow have not had heating in their homes since mid-December.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>In St. Petersburg region, a captain of the Russian Navy froze to death. </b>60-year-old Vladislav Shevashkevich died in his own home in a gardening community. Relatives said that he died from hypothermia due to the lack of electricity, without which his home could not be heated.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBeJuxNdFz4N9eh2TFavsojNBKwFQqWOT4B-jJvKkKRToXbq7J3J8oJ76afUL1Eu_TBQw12ceSQarrIlqdnoyoyzcO38htboBs0F2xoHyeL-OfVi8JVwaTn2oUIPf1HRRNRQl7Y7Dc8tcaXfQn-nXgKUn9covIpNpTZGg34roDih7TlYreC9OzuEnEisgc/s956/cars%20swimming%20in%20hot%20water%20Russia.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="956" data-original-width="936" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBeJuxNdFz4N9eh2TFavsojNBKwFQqWOT4B-jJvKkKRToXbq7J3J8oJ76afUL1Eu_TBQw12ceSQarrIlqdnoyoyzcO38htboBs0F2xoHyeL-OfVi8JVwaTn2oUIPf1HRRNRQl7Y7Dc8tcaXfQn-nXgKUn9covIpNpTZGg34roDih7TlYreC9OzuEnEisgc/w391-h400/cars%20swimming%20in%20hot%20water%20Russia.png" width="391" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Cars are swimming in a river of boiling water in Novosibirsk, while residents are freezing in their apartments. Schools canceled classes and hospitals suspended hospitalizations. Tonight, it’s going to be below minus 20°C.<br /></i><br /><b>Terrified of Putin, after quick repairs, the new manager of the boiler room in Podolsk turned it at full capacity.<br /><br />All the remaining rotten pipes immediately burst and the buildings got drenched in boiling-hot water. In several buildings, boiling water was pouring from the ceiling, and the apartments turned into saunas.<br /><br />The system had to be switched off again. Electrical panels are now covered with ice, basements are flooded.</b><br /><br />Water in pipes at a temperature of minus 25 degrees freezes within 3 hours. Because of underground breakages, hot water doesn’t reach buildings even when the system is switched on. Electricity constantly disappears.<br /><br /><b>Because Putin’s opposition jumped on the topic of disasters with the public heating system, the Russians who publicly complained and posted videos on the Internet are now visited by police, who threatens them with criminal cases. In Russia, speaking up is dangerous — even if you simply don’t want to freeze to death.</b><br /><br />The Russian government intended to halve its spending on public utilities: in 2024-26, federal budget spending on housing and communal services was supposed to be cut by 57%.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Now, after the series of disasters that affected towns from Moscow to Vladivostok, where will Putin get the money for repairs? ~ Elena Gold, Quora<br /><br />Tanner King:<br /><b>The irony is that villagers with their primitive Russian stove heating systems are best set to keep warm. You just need wood.<br /></b><br />Tim Doherty:<br />Russia becomes, inch by inch and day by day, a memento on why we should really keep a democracy, power rotation and personality cult in check. I feel for the Russians, but as Nemtsov said “Putin can only be overthrown by the Russian people”. We’re a bit closer to that day.<br /><br />Catalin Ilie:<br />No we’re not. Russians will never, ever revolt against their leadership. Their capacity to endure is endless. It’s the best people that a cruel, ruthless dictator would want. That’s why that job is the most sought job in Russia. It guarantees a lifetime of doing whatever you want, endless riches, no liability whatsoever.<br /><br />Neil Quorite:<br />Putin is not at the end of his road by any means but he senses the end on the horizon. The true result of the election will show Putin the depth of his support. If he had worked on improving the lot of the population as he did at the beginning of his premiership, he would undoubtedly be in a much stronger position instead of mired in an unwinnable war in Ukraine. <b>He wants to be remembered as Vladimir the Great. He'll be lucky if he's even remembered as Vladimir the Greedy.</b><br /><br />Vladimir Savkovic:<br />It’s not “democracy” they have no tradition of. They simply don’t know what it is. No, <b>it’s the tradition of valuing human life and dignity that is entirely absent. Everything else is just a consequence and continuation of that.</b><br /><br />Evan Dick:<br /><b>But they still believe that they are the Master Race and God's own people.<br /></b><br />Elena Gold:<br />Of course they do. <b>And they believe all other nations are envious of Russia.<br /></b><br />Wally Bond:<br />You can’t complain about the maintenance program because there isn’t one.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><span>Mary:</span></span></p><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The news of no heat in a Russian winter is so horrible it is hard to believe. How many poor souls will freeze to death now?? The negligence and corruption is like last year's Texas grid failure on an Apocalyptic scale.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht3zwA4hOC2NFxHDWzPccA_UzddT7RdiC7zmnVmTSVxP1c-m9CYREqk-VlaPQJy6vnj6mLGWCWNO2ksS2Ho5Iloo9zYjbuDpVFa3Jb-5778bET3c65CRKRVFXtfV5VJ-4RfgHpBpv7ovwGCtWnSQzMnLAT-s-or8nMdQuaFREKsrw8A9fwhgUZntAbTe4l/s1300/Podolsk%20heating%20system.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="867" data-original-width="1300" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht3zwA4hOC2NFxHDWzPccA_UzddT7RdiC7zmnVmTSVxP1c-m9CYREqk-VlaPQJy6vnj6mLGWCWNO2ksS2Ho5Iloo9zYjbuDpVFa3Jb-5778bET3c65CRKRVFXtfV5VJ-4RfgHpBpv7ovwGCtWnSQzMnLAT-s-or8nMdQuaFREKsrw8A9fwhgUZntAbTe4l/w400-h266/Podolsk%20heating%20system.webp" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>WHY THE SOVIET UNION COLLAPSED (YES, AGAIN: BUT BEST ANSWER YET)<br /></b><br />1. Inefficient socialist economy.<br /><br />2. High level corruption.<br /><br />3. Expensive arms race with the US.<br /><br />4. Low oil prices in the 1980s, which was their only export of significant value.<br /><br />5. Enormously long guarded border stretching all the way from Norway to North Korea, which was very expensive to maintain.<br /><br />6. Expensive war in Afghanistan.<br /><br />7. Expensive cleanup of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.<br /><br />8. Resistance to Soviet rule by eastern European countries who ultimately refused to subsidize the USSR economy and eventually broke free of the USSR.<br /><br />9. Widespread alcoholism.<br /><br />10. Low standard of living despite having a well educated population and more natural resources than any other country.<br /><br />11. Resources wasted by spying on and trying to control the population.<br /><br />12. Resources wasted on propaganda.<br /><br /><b>So what's happening in Russia at the moment:</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">1. <b>Inefficient kleptocratic economy. Putin is essentially a mafia boss with nuclear weapons.<br /></b><br />2. Severe corruption. About a third of Russia's GDP is stolen by Putin, the oligarchs, and other high and mid level officials.<br /><br />3. Extortion of small businesses, which form the key to a strong economy.<br /><br />4. Expensive arms race with the West.<br /><br />5. Very expensive war in Ukraine.<br /><br />6. Resistance to Russian rule by republics in the Caucasus such as Chechnya and Dagestan.<br /><br />7. Sanctions by western countries.<br /><br />8. Widespread alcoholism although not as prevalent as in the USSR.<br /><br />9. Low standard of living despite having a well educated population and more natural resources than any other country.<br /><br />10. <b>Widespread brain drain of the most intelligent and best educated.<br /></b><br />11. Low birth rate except in the Caucasus where the birth rate is high.<br /><br />12. <b>High rate of death and crippling injuries among working age males fighting in Ukraine.<br /></b><br />13. <b>High rate of death and crippling injuries from automobile accidents.<br /></b><br />14. <b>Resources wasted by spying on and trying to control the population.<br /></b><br />15. <b>Resources wasted on propaganda.<br /></b><br />So there are some parallels between the USSR and today's Russia. ~ Fred Touche, Quora<br /><br />Jussi Brown:<br />Number 5 in the first list is interesting. <b>Maintaining and protecting the border was more to avoid defectors than to protect the USSR from being invaded</b>. Many analysts think that Kremlin wants the 1340 km (830 miles) long Finland-Russia border to be closed so existing or future conscripts don’t leave Russia. My guess is that if someone wants to leave Russia instead of fighting in Putin’s meaningless so-called SMO they will leave.<br /><br />Peter Rowley:<br /><b>China is a possibility. Russia stole so much land from the Chinese.<br /></b><br />Richard Leong:<br />Keep an eye on Serbia. It looks a repeat of the Maidan Square protests in 2014, that led to regime change, and the Russian invasion.<br /><br />Eugene Borisenko:<br />Stalin’s granddaughter; she lives in Portland, Oregon.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjEfWdcbvzm7WClL7oVtoCSQbKQ9ce80rzl-NJbTXvm4rusbYfSVK2CdFc2BFBhPX-jBhK34KettOrbf62bbE4rPz6vfRajxDzhMY_kTDnkZ9G8mfKKJ7mkLkFnmKqm6Va1PcWf0s9KGJjMwnkBhtF_E6In4XuGO70vFwROOdfipml6i0RfMctVnC2mJ2m/s600/stalin's%20granddaughter%20Portland%20OR.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjEfWdcbvzm7WClL7oVtoCSQbKQ9ce80rzl-NJbTXvm4rusbYfSVK2CdFc2BFBhPX-jBhK34KettOrbf62bbE4rPz6vfRajxDzhMY_kTDnkZ9G8mfKKJ7mkLkFnmKqm6Va1PcWf0s9KGJjMwnkBhtF_E6In4XuGO70vFwROOdfipml6i0RfMctVnC2mJ2m/w400-h400/stalin's%20granddaughter%20Portland%20OR.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>PUTIN LOSING PUBLIC SUPPORT<br /></b><br />The independent Russian news agency Verstka released a survey this morning that reveals <b>Putin is rapidly losing public support for his war in Ukraine.<br /></b><br />According to the survey, <b>a majority of Russian citizens now want an end to the conflict </b>“without achieving the goals of the war” and Russian troops brought back to the Motherland. <b>They also said they view the war to be the single largest negative aspect of their lives.</b><br /><br />At this point it appears the only viable option for ending the insanity is in possession of the Russian people themselves. ~ Izzy Luggs, Quora<br /><br />James:<br /><b>It would help a great deal to get rid of Putin too. That’s the only point I see as what could be called the beginning of the end to the war.<br /></b><br />Charlie Johnson:<br />Yes, because it is down to drafting the rich people inside the big cites and college educated boys. Same thing happened here in the Vietnam war.<br /><br />*<br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><i><b>Between two evils, Russia always chooses both. ~ Susanna Viljanen</b><br /></i></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />*<br /><b>TRY A TWO-WEEK NEGATIVITY FAST<br /></b></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFKsUZOCPlK_sb3acnyAW9QgeMDbIxlWNMXNOOU6MqY7nHTIMBvag9ZCoVVgO-t_j8Lsn60UX4fkqWgY5JYj7xcTKcXTTSIhIy7UeYRnYGHlfNrAHcEO1U-zRf9pCgyYTcc3sYNR4SVSwLPVfL47FQGIrQAg5zRIcJPS2KO-LtczSxZCnone7Kn_3FNmsn/s1250/DAISY%20head%20Muhammed%20Aslam%20Aslam.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="703" data-original-width="1250" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFKsUZOCPlK_sb3acnyAW9QgeMDbIxlWNMXNOOU6MqY7nHTIMBvag9ZCoVVgO-t_j8Lsn60UX4fkqWgY5JYj7xcTKcXTTSIhIy7UeYRnYGHlfNrAHcEO1U-zRf9pCgyYTcc3sYNR4SVSwLPVfL47FQGIrQAg5zRIcJPS2KO-LtczSxZCnone7Kn_3FNmsn/w400-h225/DAISY%20head%20Muhammed%20Aslam%20Aslam.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The human brain is wired to focus on the negative. It’s tied to survival.<br /></b><br /><b>“Our seven dominant emotions are anger, contempt, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness, and surprise,” says Anthony Iannarino, author of The Negativity Fast</b>: Proven Techniques to Increase Positivity, Reduce Fear, and Boost Success. “Five dominant emotions are negative, with happiness the only positive one, unless the surprise happens to be positive.”<br /><br />Iannarino didn’t realize how negativity impacted his life until a mentor told him, “You know, you’re really angry. All these things that you’re worried about? You can’t do anything about them. The best thing you can do is just let all this go and try to take care of your family.”<br /><br /><b>Positivity is a choice, and it’s possible to spend more time in a positive state versus a negative one</b>, says Iannarino. While it took six months, he finally took his mentor’s advice, deciding to remove all the negative sources in his life for 30 days.<br /><br /><b>“I got rid of every single magazine, newspaper, and book,” he recalls. “I started to remove some people in my life that I felt were causing me to be more negative than positive. I started looking around at everything that was negative.”<br /></b><br /><b>At the end of 30 days, Iannarino liked the results so much that he did another 30 days and then another. During his third 30-day negativity fast, he only consumed positive information, such as reading content by Stephen Covey, Brian Tracy, and Les Brown.</b> “I was blasting out all the negative that I had put into my mind for many, many years, and it worked really well for me,” he says.<br /><br />Iannarino also leaned on the work of Albert Ellis, founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. <b>Ellis taught </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>the ABC theory, which includes an activating event, your belief about what it means, and the consequences of how you react to it.<br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />“If somebody cuts you off in traffic, for example, you can believe that they have road rage and they’re a terrible person or reckless, or you can believe that they could be rushing home because somebody was sick or they are under some sort of duress,” says Iannarino. “<b>If you can change the belief, then you won’t be triggered anymore</b>. It’s one of the more powerful things that you can do when you’re on a negativity fast.”<br /><br />Another tool that helped Iannarino purge negativity was to look at his mortality. The average lifespan in the United States is 78.2 years, which boils down to 4,108 weeks. <b>Iannarino uses a countdown app that tells him how many weeks he has left.</b><br /><br />“I’m close to about 1,300,” he says. “People often think that’s morbid. Well, I’m here for a short time. You should do everything that you want to do and try to make the best contribution that you can while you’re here.”<br /><br />Positivity sounds, well, positive, so I decided to tip the daily scale in its favor for a week to see what would happen. I started with the news. I noticed that the morning news shows I watched while enjoying my coffee were focused on fear-mongering. And at night, I usually watch ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir on weekday evenings. <b>While the broadcast always ends with an upbeat story, the reporting in the first 25 minutes is mostly concerning.<br /></b><br />I switched out the morning news with a walk and an uplifting podcast, such as Happier with Gretchen Rubin or The Moth Radio Hour. I also learned I could visit World News Tonight’s website and watch their positive news segments without having to sit through the bad first.<br />When I wanted a news fix, I did a quick scan of the headlines on neutral sources like NPR and Associated Press. <b>Iannarino told me not to worry about missing anything important.<br /></b><br />“This is the one concern that people have when I suggest getting rid of the things you watch,” he says. “They wonder, ‘How am I going to know what’s going on?’ <b>I promise, everybody’s going to be talking about it, and they’re going to share it with you.</b> They’ll still try to help you understand that there are bad things happening in the world.”<br /><br /><b>While I didn’t consider myself a negative person, I also realized I am a regular complainer, especially low-grade things like finding fault or comparing. I’m not alone, says Iannarino.<br /></b><br />“Humans complain a lot and often don’t recognize they’re doing it,” he says. “It makes you more anxious and stressed. It can cause you to have other mental problems like depression. <b>The antidote is gratitude</b>.”<br /><br /><b>Iannarino recommended that I adopt the “three blessings” exercise by Martin Seligman, who is often called the father of positive psychology. </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Each day, write down three things that went well for you.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><br /></b><br /><i><b>“Seligman’s research said it’s more powerful than pharmaceuticals and can keep you from being anxious, stressed, and depressed for as long as six months,” says Iannarino. “When you start looking back at what you wrote, you start to realize a lot of good things happen to you all the time.”</b><br /></i><br />I did my negativity fast before Christmas, and the stress I usually feel about getting everything done didn’t arise this year.<b> The three blessings practice helped me realize I have much to be thankful for, which made me more patient with others.</b> The ABC Theory helped me avoid jumping to conclusions.<br /><br />By the end of the first week, I felt calmer, so I kept it going for another week. I was surprised at how just two weeks of avoiding negativity changed what I want to consume. For example, a friend recommended watching The Bear. When I tuned into the Hulu series, I found the family arguments and drama overwhelming. The dialogue and violence felt like an assault on me, so I decided to turn it off.<br /><br /><b>Iannarino has been on a negativity fast for more than two decades. I am keeping it going, too, being more mindful of what I consume. Iannarino told me that a lot of people choose to continue</b>.</span><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />“Going on a negativity fast will help you be a lot less angry, stressed, and anxious,” he says. “You’ll feel like you have greater control of what’s going on in your life.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiki2i-tJh8i0DNwoeh5mrUHNo1DgyxeGUL2kr3IIUQsyftRGQBoBvuW7oyfQbFsHfpiCC_Lbs-YcVVmbfKfaRG17CbJlhGtvwdLhqhw9PWEfwdDnCjCzHdeJzK8C67-Fo9zmvZhDIqImt4MhaFx5Ed0EF3SRfwhHfeSVHjdY7l-HOrxPfAhkaBtJLe91Sf/s1500/negativity%20fast%20iannarino.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="994" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiki2i-tJh8i0DNwoeh5mrUHNo1DgyxeGUL2kr3IIUQsyftRGQBoBvuW7oyfQbFsHfpiCC_Lbs-YcVVmbfKfaRG17CbJlhGtvwdLhqhw9PWEfwdDnCjCzHdeJzK8C67-Fo9zmvZhDIqImt4MhaFx5Ed0EF3SRfwhHfeSVHjdY7l-HOrxPfAhkaBtJLe91Sf/w265-h400/negativity%20fast%20iannarino.jpg" width="265" /></a></b></span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/91004340/i-tried-2-week-negativity-fast-heres-how-it-went">https://www.fastcompany.com/91004340/i-tried-2-week-negativity-fast-heres-how-it-went</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Mary:<br />I usually find those touting "positivity" very irritating...and even worse— irresponsible. Like the woman who told me "I love my bubble," refusing to entertain the negatives — which are everywhere around us — seemed smugly self indulgent and juvenile. However, the flood of negatives has become overwhelming...threatening to sweep all away into chaos in a cascade of disasters we feel powerless to control. <br /><br />I may not be outlawing all the negative input, but have felt it necessary to limit the time and attention i can give to it. For instance, one half hour of news only, limited scrolling on Quora and social media. I think of these as reasonable self protective measures, still maintaining responsibility to keep up with the world enough to inform thought and action.<br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />Oriana:<br />The worst thing about Quora is the level of hostility that is often expressed by those who hold opposing opinions. Worse than Facebook, since much more tolerant of vulgar language and blatant ad-hominem name calling. <br /><br />No, it’s not possible to live in a bubble — life takes care to introduce plenty of stress and just sheer unpredictability into our lives. But shortening our exposure to the news and cutting out toxic people (e.g. alcoholics) out of our lives can go a long way toward lessening the load of negative emotions. I say this I someone who used to wallow in negative emotions — until I came to my senses, embarrassingly late in life. <br /><br />And now I’m totally in favor of doing what you’re doing — keeping the exposure short — because life is too short to be mired in huge problems we cannot solve. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Also, I've discovered that it's when I'm relatively calm and happy that I can be of most help to someone in distress. <br /><br />*<br /><b>TIME FOR A BIT OF COMIC RELIEF<br /><br /></b>A person is traveling and calls home to ask how things are at home. The kid says the cat died. Kid is told you don’t break news that directly, you first say cat is on the roof, next day cat it injured, third day cat died, so it isn’t a shock. Next day calls home to see how things are and is told “grandma is on the roof”.<br /><br />Oriana:<br />I remember when one of my great-aunts died, and my mother decided to try the “gradual” approach with breaking the news to her mother, my grandmother who lived with us. “We just had a telegram that Aunt Florcia (nickname of Florentyna) is very sick,” my mother said. “She’s dead, isn’t she?” my Grandmother answered. And that was the end of that stratagem. </span></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">**</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Some Russian jokes feature "Radio Yerevań" (after the capital of Armenia).</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Q: Can socialism be built in Monaco?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Radio Yerevań: No. A calamity of such magnitude can't fit into such a tiny country." <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />*<br /><b>IS HAVING A FAVORITE CHILD A BAD THING?<br /></b><br /><i><b>Although it may be uncomfortable to admit, many parents play favorites among their children. Is that 'bad' parenting?</b><br /></i><br />Joanna knew she had a favorite child from the moment her second son was born. The Kent, UK-based mum says she loves both of her children, but her youngest child just “gets” her in a way that her first-born doesn’t.<br /><br />When Joanna’s first baby was delivered, he was rushed away from her due to a health concern, and she couldn’t see him for 24 hours. Missing this valuable bonding period was, she believes, the start of a long-lasting preference for her second son, whom she was able to spend time with immediately after he was born.<br /><br />“To sum our relationships up: I have to make an appointment to speak to my eldest,” says Joanna, whose full name is being withheld to protect her children. “With my youngest, I could call him at 0230 and he’d drive miles to meet me. My youngest is the nicest guy on the planet. He’s caring, generous, courteous and friendly. He’s the kind of person who would help anyone out.”<br /><br /><b>Though she battled her feelings for years, Joanna says now she’s in a place of acceptance. “I could write a book on why I love one more than the other,” she says. “It’s been hard, but I haven’t got any guilt.”<br /></b><br />Unlike Joanna, most parents’ favoritism is subtle and goes undiscussed. Having a favorite child might be the greatest taboo of parenthood, yet research shows that the majority of parents do indeed have a favorite.<br /><br />With plenty of evidence to suggest that being the least-favored child can fundamentally shape the personality and lead to intense sibling rivalries, it’s no wonder that parents might worry about letting their preferences slip. Yet research also shows that <b>most kids can’t tell who their parents’ favorite child really is. The real issue, then, is how parents manage their children’s perception of favoritism.</b><br /><br /><b>Playing favorites<br /></b><br />“Not every parent has a favorite child, but many do,” says Jessica Griffin, an associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, US. “<b>Data suggests that mothers, in particular, show favoritism to children who have similar values to them</b> and that engage more with family, over qualities such as being highly ambitious or career driven.”<br /><br /><b>In one study, up to 74% of mothers and 70% of fathers in the UK have been shown to exhibit preferential treatment towards one child.<br /></b><br />Yet for most, the topic remains off-limits. In other research, when parents were surveyed, just 10% admitted to having a favorite child, suggesting that for most mothers and fathers, feelings of favoritism remain a tightly held family secret.<br /><br />When parents do admit to having a preferred child, research suggests birth order plays an important part in who they favor. According to the same YouGov survey, <b>parents who admitted having a favorite child showed an overwhelming preference towards the baby of the family, with 62% of parents who have two children opting for their youngest</b>. <b>Forty-three percent of parents with three or more children prefer their last-born, with a third selecting a middle child and just 19% leaning towards their eldest.<br /></b><br />Dr Vijayeti Sinh is a clinical psychologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. She says that a favoritism towards a youngest child is often to do with the social and emotional skills associated with birth order – <i><b>as parents gain more practice in child-rearing, they have a better idea of how they want to shape their offspring’s childhood, and what attributes are most important to pass on.</b></i><br /><br /><b>Sometimes, parents play favorites more towards younger children, possibly because they feel more confident as child-raisers after having done it already.<br /></b><br />“<b>Parents tend to favor a child that is most like them, reminds them of themselves, or represents what they view as a success of parenting</b>,” she says. “Younger children are most likely to have been raised by a parent who, over time and experience, is more confident and skilled in their child-raising.”<br /><br />‘Bad’ parenting?<br /><br /><b>Though parents do often have a favorite, many are racked with guilt, knowing that showing a preference will have a long-lasting impact on their child’s sense of self-worth. The concern is not entirely unfounded.</b><br /><br />“Children who grow up in families where they feel that they are treated unfairly may experience a deep sense of unworthiness,” says Sinh. “They might feel that they are unlovable in some way, or do not possess the special traits and characteristics needed to be loved by others. <b>Feeling like the black sheep of the family can lead to fears and insecurities – children might become self-protective and try to be overly nice and agreeable around others</b>.”<br /><br />But for most parents, their worries are misplaced. <b>Evidence suggests that unless preferential treatment is very extreme, most children are not impacted by being the least favorite child.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“Sometimes parents are blatantly obvious in their demonstration of love and affection,” says Sinh. “But when parents are mindful and thoughtful and do their best to ensure that any feelings of closeness or likeability factor aren’t plain and clear, then children don’t feel unworthy of their parents’ love and support.”<br /><br />In fact, <b>in most cases children might not even know that their parents prefer their sibling in the first place. In one study, when people who stated that their parents had a favorite child were probed, a staggering four out of five claimed that their sibling was favored over them</b> – a seemingly improbable statistic. Other studies have shown that <b>children incorrectly identify who the favorite child is more than 60% of the time.<br /></b><br />Of course, it’s possible that parents are doing a much better job of disguising their preferences than you would expect. Or – as Griffin suggests – we’re simply very bad at guessing who the favorite child really is.<br /><br />“Although you might think that children instinctively know whether their parent has a favorite child and who that child is, the data is surprising,” she says. <b>“Children might assume that the first-born or the ‘baby’ of the family is the favorite, or the child who is an overachiever in the family and causes less parenting stress. Whereas in actuality, the parent might have different and varied reasons for the favoritism – such as favoring the child who struggles the most, or the child that is most similar to them.”</b><br /><br /><b>Griffin argues that it’s perfectly OK – and even expected – for parents to have favorites, and that parents shouldn’t feel guilty if they find themselves feeling closer to one child over another. </b>She says that although children who believe they are the least-favored child tend to have lower self-esteem and higher rates of depression, in the majority of cases, children have no idea which sibling their parent or parents prefer.<br /><br /><b>Perhaps who the favorite child really is isn’t so important after all.<br /></b><br />Griffin has found that the favorite-child conundrum has shown up in both her professional and personal lives: her three children constantly joke about who the ‘favorite’ child must be.<br /><br />Although she recommends parents or children who find that favoritism is affecting their relationships or mental health should speak to a pediatrician or mental health provider, she believes most imbalances can be addressed with simple tactics that demonstrate care and attention.<br /><br />Griffin says that although parents might not readily admit to favoritism, they certainly won’t be alone if they find themselves feeling closer to one child over another. <b>Most mothers and fathers have favorites – and that’s OK.</b><br /><br />“There are going to be days when we prefer to be around one child over another, for a number of different reasons,” she says. “<b>The important thing to remember is that having a favorite child does not mean that you love your other children less</b>.”<br /><br /><a href="https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220119-is-having-a-favourite-child-really-a-bad-thing">https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220119-is-having-a-favourite-child-really-a-bad-thing<br /></a><br />Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">And in some families, the "favorite child" is a dog. But if you have two dogs, beware! A dog can become very jealous if s/he notices that more affection is going to the other dog. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhessK47dVBD54dnxPDRzbFJvvJDXjmZjxuyHyc7rXbCQOdxn7Y6bO3BiYWFLV7CycZrPavsXz6Tei17IodwzYCghd-qKO-YWReqRg8fwTsJ9h5MVC-ail-dp58H1S31DY7_bh1Ej3k98vEfzhuvPzBvoDkAwRZQZJPjNa7H3V_67iT8DKAN3Wqr5xGUmaW/s625/2%20dogs%20big%20small.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="417" data-original-width="625" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhessK47dVBD54dnxPDRzbFJvvJDXjmZjxuyHyc7rXbCQOdxn7Y6bO3BiYWFLV7CycZrPavsXz6Tei17IodwzYCghd-qKO-YWReqRg8fwTsJ9h5MVC-ail-dp58H1S31DY7_bh1Ej3k98vEfzhuvPzBvoDkAwRZQZJPjNa7H3V_67iT8DKAN3Wqr5xGUmaW/w400-h268/2%20dogs%20big%20small.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>LIBERALISM IN CRISIS</b><br /><br />~ <i><b>Liberalism, it has frequently been said, is in crisis. In his recent book Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times, historian Samuel Moyn attempts to explain why. The Cold War, he contends, pushed prominent liberal theorists in a new direction—one that continues to haunt politics today</b></i>.<br /><br />As part of our virtual event series co-hosted with The Philosopher, Becca Rothfeld, contributing editor at Boston Review and nonfiction book critic at the Washington Post, recently sat down with Moyn to discuss his argument. (Rothfeld reviewed Moyn’s book for the Post in August.) Their conversation, moderated by Philosopher editor Anthony Morgan, ranges over Moyn’s portraits of Cold War liberals, <b>cooperation and dialogue between liberals and the left, and whether it is possible to construct—or revive—an alternative to what Moyn sees as our Cold War liberal inheritance.</b><br /><br />Below is a transcript of their conversation, which has been edited for concision and clarity.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Becca Rothfeld: The first question I wanted to ask is how to improve liberalism. Despite some misreadings of Liberalism Against Itself as illiberal, it’s very much not an anti-liberal book. It’s a book that’s <b>disappointed with the direction that postwar liberalism has taken, but it’s also cautiously optimistic about the liberal tradition’s ability to redeem itself.<br /></b><br />Tallying up your objections to Cold War liberalism in the book, I noticed that it was possible to construct a better ideal of postwar liberalism by imagining a sort of mirror image of the failed liberalism you describe. Could you say a little bit about<b> the positive conception of liberalism glinting in the background of the book</b>?<br /> <br />Samuel Moyn: This book is a series of portraits of liberals in the middle of the twentieth century, and I take a pretty deflationary view of the politics that they wrought. I claim that they introduced a rupture in the history of liberalism. I do imply that they’ve left us, at least in part, in our current situation, intellectually and even practically. <br /><br />I don’t know if I would agree that I’m optimistic about liberalism: I would say that there are resources from the past to draw on before Cold War liberalism that could be used to argue for a new liberalism. But I certainly think that we need to give tough love to liberals, not just for their abuse of their own tradition, but also because they seem recurrently incapable of confronting some nagging criticisms of their platform.<br /><br />You’re right that I do suggest (albeit indirectly) some laudatory features of liberalism before it became transmogrified through the Cold War liberals. I’ll mention a few. The first half of the book is about what liberalism was before Cold War liberals abandoned its core motivation—human emancipation. I start out with a chapter on the Enlightenment that defines the epoch through its promotion of emancipation from the ruins of authority and tradition. <br /><br />But <b>a much bigger component of Liberalism Against Itself is the contrast I draw between the self-perfectionism of the Enlightenment and the tolerationism that surged through the careers of more recent liberals like John Rawls.</b> In the beginning, liberals were total perfectionists. <b>They offered a novel, controversial ideal of the highest life, one premised on personal fulfillment through creativity</b>. </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>That’s because the early liberal thinkers were also romantics, were deeply connected to the Romantic movement in literature and philosophy.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br /><b>Another component of early liberalism that should be resuscitated is an ethos of progress. Liberals before the middle of the twentieth century were connected to a sense that history was a forum to achieve emancipation and to construct interesting lives. </b>Agency doesn’t just materialize—the conditions for it must be built. To the early liberals, those conditions aren’t going to appear overnight. <br /><br />There were a lot of reasons in the middle of the twentieth century to give up on progress—certainly the notion of inevitable progress. What I worry about is an overcorrection: that <b>Cold War liberals lost any sense of an uplifting, radiant future to offer through policy, both locally and globally. A truly emancipatory vision for liberalism would involve reversing some of the damage of that pessimistic thinking.</b><br /><br />BR: Liberalism Against Itself is very concerned with canonization and how rewriting the canon specifically is a big part of the Cold War’s impact. I was wondering how you might rewrite the canon today. What figures from the tradition would you reintroduce?<br /> <br />SM: I would put back those who got expunged by the Cold War. I agree with Harvard thinker Judith Shklar that <b>Cold War liberals expunged the Enlightenment from their canon. They saw it as the source of totalitarianism</b>.<b> We agree that this was a disastrous mistake.</b><br /><br /><i><b>The Romantic movement was also central for all the early liberals—Benjamin Constant, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill—all of said that that liberalism was about creating the conditions for living interesting lives. </b></i>I wouldn’t say Hegel was a liberal, but liberals certainly became Hegelians in their intellectual premises. <br /><br />And <b>toward the end of the 19th century liberals became</b>, if you like,<b> liberal Marxists</b>. <b>They learned from Karl Marx about their own mistakes in adopting laissez-faire economics. That realization is why we got the welfare state.</b> I don’t think John Rawls is doing something that’s thinkable but for the late-nineteenth century new liberalism.<br /><br />Along with all these other movements that get expunged during the Cold War, <b>we have to go back to the French Revolution, which was the birth of political emancipation in modern times.</b> <b>Liberalism began as a continental phenomenon, not as an Anglophone phenomenon. </b>The American Revolution, for instance, was not on par with the French Revolution. <br /><br /><b>In the Cold War, the terms were reversed. The American Revolution, in the work of figures like Hannah Arendt, was made the font of a more libertarian freedom. The French Revolution was represented as the source of terrorism and totalitarianism</b>. But the French Revolution deserves to be in the liberal canon, as a fulcrum between the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Hegel’s attempt to blend them.<br /><br />BR: What about the utopian socialists?<br /> <br />SM: <b>Liberals helped invent socialism</b>. Bernie wasn’t the first liberal socialist. We should hold a place of honor in the tradition of liberalism for socialism. <br /> <br />BR: I think Rawls is a democratic socialist, but that’s a conversation for another time.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /> <br /> BR: You claim in your book that Cold War liberals reject the Enlightenment. I felt that was a striking claim because some of liberalism’s loudest opponents—Patrick Deneen, a reactionary communitarian, for example—are fond of accusing liberalism of being steeped in Enlightenment thinking. I was wondering whether there are certain aspects of the Enlightenment that you’re emphasizing, certain aspects of the Enlightenment that the Cold War liberals dispense with. <b>The Enlightenment is a capacious tradition, so there’s space for you to say that there are indeed some aspects they jettison, and some they keep.<br /> </b><br />SM: In her early work, Shklar worked with <b>a definition of the Enlightenment as the emancipation of human agency from authority and tradition.</b> I’m for that reading. Whether those ideals were actually at the core of Enlightenment thought is secondary because, when we canonize, we also pick and choose and winnow.<br /><br />Scholars today might say <b>there was no Enlightenment; there were multiple enlightenments.</b> Shklar herself, as she became more of a Cold War liberal figure, <b>associated the Enlightenment not with emancipation but with skepticism.</b> So obviously, in any of these inventions of liberalism, we’re also going to be, in a sense, inventing our own lineage in the past. I’m for thinking about intellectual history as also a political act of finding what we want in the future in our past. Luckily, the Enlightenment provides a resource for that view of modernity as about human emancipation.<br /><br />There are other views, from both Enlightenment-phobes and Enlightenment enthusiasts. Take <b>Stephen Pinker</b>, a later Harvard professor, who should be treated with caution for the way he <b>associates the Enlightenment with a conflict between reason and religion or scientism versus positivism</b>. That’s not what I want to rescue, although it’s only fair to note that there’s going to be some connection between the emancipation of agency and, say, natural science and what it has done for human beings in the world in the last couple hundred years.<br /><br />BR: <b>Pinker was someone that I had in mind as a kind of cautionary tale for adopting a triumphalist conception of liberalism</b>. I was wondering how we could be optimistic and emphasize progress without becoming triumphalist in the way that Stephen Pinker is. <b>Pinker </b>is someone who<b> celebrates modernity as a great achievement while underemphasizing the things that were bad about it.</b> How do we avoid that pitfall if we want to bring a focus on progress back into liberalism?<br /> <br />SM: <b>Stephen Pinker is a really interesting person to think with, because he is a progressivist liberal who is downright celebratory about modern times.</b> And we need to look carefully at the basis of his giddiness: it turns out that it’s almost biopolitical. The criterion that he uses to measure progress is not a full-fledged sense of emancipation but questions like, Do you live or die? Do you survive past a certain age? Is there violence? How much is there? What’s the murder rate? <br /><br />Those questions aren’t trivial by any means, but they’re cramped. <b>When we think about freedom, of whether we’ve created the conditions for distinctive personalities in a relatively conformist age of consumer capitalism, we begin to see that Pinker has left a lot out, and has not seen the way liberals have allied themselves with the forces of the market—which may have had salutary effects but also had a dark side. </b><br /><br />I’m suggesting that we need to have a story about freedom, the kind that Hegel had. And we can imagine a future of universal emancipation, but we can’t get ahead of ourselves. The Cold Warriors weren’t only trying to provide cautionary notes against giddy Enlightenment enthusiasts. <b>They rejected the Enlightenment and progress out of fear that the Soviets, their enemies, had taken ownership of them.</b> They went further than course correction to r<b>einvent liberalism as a tragic creed of those who should abandon hope and give up emancipation as an ambitious political project.<br /> </b><br />BR: Do you think that Cold War liberalism has any redeeming features? It seems like you do think that history is to some extent teleological, and that there’s many respects in which modernity is better, hopefully not just with respect to the death rate and child mortality and the like.<br /> <br />SM: I wanted to be empathetic to it. The second chapter of my book is about one of the most famous Cold War liberals, <b>Isaiah Berlin</b>. The chapter is pretty upbeat because because it shows that <b>against essentially all the other Cold War liberals who denounced romanticism as a font of totalitarianism, he wanted to rescue it, and with it, the moral core of a perfectionist liberalism.<br /> </b><br />National Socialism and <b>the early years of the Cold War’s nuclearized standoff. These were indeed very scary, and made it very difficult to believe in progress. </b>And yet I wonder if they overcorrected. So my book is polemical: it’s about the Cold War liberals’ unintended consequences of so overcorrecting in their reinvention of liberalism that they might themselves have been appalled. <br /><br />It’s not a polemic in the sense of indicting them as human beings; it’s about the worth of their thought. And we should have tough love for those in whose tradition we find ourselves in today. We should ask what led to this crisis with people like Patrick Deneen declaring the definitive failure of liberalism and Donald Trump looming once again as the possible president in 2024.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> BR: I wanted to ask you a little bit more about <b>Isaiah Berlin</b> because <b>I also read him as a perfectionist. But I also read him as a good model for how liberals could better go about their perfectionism, because he seems to think that a pluralistic form of life is a good form of life. </b>Martha Nussbaum has a paper where she describes Isaiah Berlin and philosopher Joseph Raz as both pluralists and perfectionists in contrast to Rawls, who she sees as an antiperfectionist liberal. I wonder if you think Berlin is a promising model for a perfectionist liberalism going forward.<br /> <br />SM: What strikes me about Berlin is first his contribution to the analytical distinction of forms of liberty. It’s fairly clear that his intent was to write a Cold War tract, distinguishing the West from the Communist rest for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of readers. <b>Berlin provided an optimistic answer as to why the United States was involved in the Cold War. His answer was a libertarian conception of freedom against positive freedom understood through self-realization in a perfectionist mode.</b><br /><br />But it’s also true that <b>at the same time, in his loving reconstruction of the significance of Romanticism as leaving us in a situation of inevitable self-making, Berlin struggled with libertarianism. </b>This comes out most clearly in an essay called “John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life,” where <b>he portrays Mill as in the situation he himself was most devoted to: a perfectionist sense of what would make liberalism worth having that was also oriented to a fear of the state harming individuals.</b> Therefore, Berlin wasn’t necessarily thinking about the kind of institutional conditions—like state action—that might be required <b>to create a society that could promote broad-based perfectionist self-making.</b><br /><br />As the aged Berlin began to speak a lot more about pluralism, which he understood with a tolerationist spirit—there are various groups in society with incompatible goals that don’t easily square with one another. I think the roots of any healthy pluralism, one defined by the pursuit of individual emancipation, were obscured by his later career, though. <b>He loses a theory of pluralism of individual perfection, asking only, How do we promote mutual coexistence between groups with different ideologies and approaches? </b>That kind of theory brings us very close to the later Rawls. Unfortunately, both of these figures—the later Berlin and the later Rawls—lost cognizance of the kind of individual or group identity that would be worth defending philosophically, one rooted in freedom and self-making.<br /><br />BR: I think that’s right: there’s also lots of different Berlins and so you can sort of find him in a more celebratory mood or like a less celebratory mood. Next, I have a question about Lionel Trilling. <b>Trilling is a postwar literary critic who was pessimistic, and he cautioned his fellow liberals to be more realistic about human nature.</b> He was also into Freud. In the book you criticize Trilling for his pessimistic politics. Is Trilling is genuinely invested in politics per se or should his claims about liberalism be read as an argument about interpersonal ethics, or even aesthetics? <b>Trilling talks a lot about liberal novels, for example. There, he’s not calling for a different political platform but for fewer black-and-white fictions.</b> A lot of the stuff he’s talking about is authors that he likes because they have complex characters, like E.M. Forster. I wondered what you thought about this. <br /> <br />SM: Trilling is such a rich figure, and I detected in him an ambivalence to the construction of a Cold War liberalism. He understood that liberalism, as he theorized it, was about the person and their need for self-regulation. <b>Trilling’s liberalism, to me, comes from the trauma he experienced in the 1930s, which he never overcame. But in his own account his politics come from his discovery of Sigmund Freud, and especially Freud’s account of the death drive.</b> To me there’s no way of distinguishing someone like Trilling who is insisting on a new kind of liberal self, one very controlled and self-regulating, and liberal politics generally.<b> Trilling believed, unlike Berlin, that politics is rooted not just in whether the state is interfering with individual choice, but how the individual is put together.<br /></b><br />Trilling overreacted to his own ideological experience his sense that progressive liberals were innocent and naive, unschooled in the reality of death and the death drive and thus likely to play into the hands of liberalism’s enemies. He constantly wavers on the brink of renouncing his self-denying liberalism, especially in his sole novel The Middle of the Journey. To use a Freudian category, Trilling is a melancholic who never moves to mourning, who <b>can never overcome his longing for the kind of Romantic liberalism he’s insisting that everyone now renounce.</b><br /> <br />BR: Liberalism Against Itself is a history book, but it has many resonances with the contemporary political situation. It seems like every day there’s a eulogy to liberalism or another piece about how liberalism has fallen out of favor. <b>Patrick Deneen’s book is called Why Liberalism Failed, as if liberalism’s failure isn’t even a debatable question. </b>You write that Cold War liberalism styled itself as a series of “defenses in an emergency,” which seems true of liberalism today, particularly in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency. I wondered if you could talk about the book’s resonances with our current situation. Do you think that liberalism is not popular now because it’s not making a good case for itself? How can we save liberalism from Patrick Deneen and his ilk?<br /><br />SM: I feel like this is not a new situation. It’s true that in the past, liberalism didn’t have as many enemies inside the gates as was revealed on January 6. But my whole life has been under the regime of the reassertion of Cold War liberalism. I think that is especially true after 1989, when liberals didn’t take the opportunity to make their ideology credible enough to be durable. One of the main reasons for this is that Cold War liberalism is, in many ways, a precursor to neoliberalism. And to this date, liberals haven’t repudiated neoliberalism strongly enough. <b>In our time, after the War on Terror, a state of emergency where the United States faced overseas enemies, you find a lot of liberals taking the same attitude about an almost elemental need to preserve freedom against its enemies</b>—whether they are postmodern professors, woke young people, or Donald Trump’s voters.<br /><br />Through all of that history, Cold War liberalism has done two things. It’s helped us scapegoat a lot of people, and not face the need to reinvent liberalism, to return it to some of its optimism from the past and pivot to a future where it could be appealing, in boring terms, to enough voters to survive some of these decisive elections when we think liberalism itself is on the line. <b>If we just scold people for not understanding how a very minimal liberalism is worth retaining, we’ll have missed the opportunity to offer them something worth embracing. <br /></b><br /><b>Liberalism can’t be minimalist anymore</b>. It must take on board its older resources and renovate itself in completely different ways than any early liberals allowed. So it’s not as if going back to the future just means exhuming some earlier version of liberalism: I’m just suggesting that there are resources there if liberals want to be a credible source of appeal in an ideologically contentious world that’s no longer at the end of history. <br /><br />BR: <b>At the beginning of the Obama presidency, it seemed for a moment like there was an air of optimism, but then it became neoliberal business as usual.<br /> </b><br />SM: The enthusiasm of that moment, the emotion that many experienced, is worth remembering, because it’s almost impossible to have that kind of stance toward politics now. The investment that a lot of people, especially young people, had in politics got crushed because, when it came to economics and foreign policy, Obama didn’t break with what he’d inherited. The consequences of this have been very grave for liberalism itself.<br /> <br />BR: Even though Biden is leftist in certain ways, he’s not articulating a rousing vision for progressive politics or liberalism. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> Anthony Morgan: I want to start with some more specific questions about Samuel’s theme of Cold War liberalism. First, could you explain more about what in liberalism was rejected after the Cold War and what its political consequences were?<br /><br />SM: After the Cold War? I would say not a lot was rejected from the Cold War liberal period. It’s only fair to note there were the 1960s and the New Left who named the Cold War liberals—those are the dissidents to whom we owe the phrase “Cold War liberalism.” But in the 1970s and ’80s, especially in the cold climate of the defeat of George McGovern’s campaign and the victory of Ronald Reagan, a certain wisdom crystallized that we had to adopt to Cold War liberal precepts, to meet the Republicans halfway by adopting neoliberalism in the Democratic Party. <br /><br /><b>Nothing changed after 1989. Liberals doubled down on their libertarian turn in the later Cold War. </b>I have argued that the same is true for American militarism. After the Vietnam War and the failed McGovern candidacy,<b> liberals learned to be forceful as a condition of winning. But down through Barack Obama, they never took seriously the illiberal consequences of American geopolitical leadership</b>—and after 1989, that became very graphic in ways we’re still processing.<br /> <br />AM: Next is a question from an audience member. <b>What role did Roosevelt and his Four Freedoms play in the development of postwar liberalism?</b><br /> <br />SM: </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Roosevelt tried to think of himself as enacting the “new liberalism,” a socially conscious, welfarist liberalism. And of course, he said that “the only thing to fear is fear itself.” Yet later, Cold War liberals reoriented liberalism around the elemental experience of fear: fear, in particular, of the Soviet Union. </b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />It’s important to note that for a while, this established a mismatch where Cold War liberal thinkers were radically transforming liberal theory while <b>in practice, liberals were building redistributive welfare states—the biggest, most interventionist, most egalitarian ones they had ever built. But if you read “Two Concepts of Liberty” by Isaiah Berlin you would have no idea that liberals were doing this in practice.</b> And this mismatch just couldn’t be sustained. And though Rawls would remedy this on the theoretical side, it only created a new situation where liberal theory was completely out of sync with the practical victory of neoliberalism’s hollowing out of the welfare state. <br /><br /><b>So I want to credit Roosevelt as being sort of the last new liberal who dies before he can save America from the coming of Cold War liberalism.</b> And while he has some heirs through the Great Society, ultimately his practical program has no ideological support, especially at the heights of liberal theory, until John Rawls. But at that point, the practical energy to realize it had evaporated.<br /> <br />BR: There’s now a cottage industry of left-liberal Rawlsians who dominate political philosophy, <b>a huge intellectual tradition justifying FDR-style liberalism</b>, but it’s too little, too late. I love Rawls, but I don’t see much of his intellectual tradition being realized in politics.<br /><br />AM: Another audience question asks, Are there lessons to be learned from the Cold War liberals for progressives working outside of the liberal tradition, in movements like ecosocialism, the Green New Deal, abolitionist movements, or Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions?<br /><br />SM: Absolutely. The liberals of the kind I’m calling for would be allies for leftists. We’re familiar, because of the Cold War, with the idea that there is an unbridgeable gap between liberals and the left. But I think that’s anachronistic: in the later nineteenth century, the left proved to be a productive element in the reinvention of liberalism. That’s why I use the phrase “liberal Marxism” to describe the work that was done. <br /><br /><b>In the United States, the entire progressive campaign against laissez-faire economics can be interpreted along the lines of what Marxists were saying in Europe about purely formal freedom that doesn’t lay the foundations for a society in which the conditions for freedom exist and make freedom credible.</b> So philosophically and strategically, there’s no reason to think that liberals and the left can’t establish a mutually supportive relationship. That doesn’t mean there won’t be bickering and there won’t be lines to be drawn, but those will be less and less important as time goes on—especially to the extent there is a powerful new right and the center begins to fail even more visibly than it has already done. At that point, solidarity across the left spectrum will be essential.<br /> <br />BR: <b>The Cold War liberals are also just worth reading because they’re smart, and they’re good writers.</b> Even when they’re wrong about things, they’re important figures to learn from. In particular, Berlin, in his more celebratory passages about pluralism, articulates what could be developed into a perfectionist liberalism that is more obviously sympathetic to leftism. And <b>Trilling is just a great prose stylist. </b>[Oriana: As Nietzsche said, "To improve your style means to improve your thinking."]<br /><b> </b><br />AM: Next are some more general questions. Which are the main kinds of freedom that liberal thinkers focus on and how do they come into conflict? I’m thinking of how liberal ideas of economic freedom undercut other kinds of freedom, for instance.<br /> <br />SM: One of the revolutions in our understanding of liberalism is the refusal to begin the story with John Locke, a thinker who was only understood as a liberal in the twentieth century. <b>Locke focused on a more libertarian sense of pre-political rights, especially on property as the basis for government.</b> The first self-styled liberals only came about in the 1820s, in continental Europe. <b>Most people don’t know that there weren’t large numbers of American self-styled liberals until after World War I, with the founding of The New Republic magazine. The first American liberals, those associated with The New Republic, were not economic liberals. </b>There’s no reason to believe that one should associate free self-creation of the kind that the early perfectionist liberals championed with laissez-faire economics.<br /><br />It’s true that <b>these liberals often thought of laissez-faire, overly optimistically, as a tool of emancipation, because it did make people transacting in marketplaces equal despite their different faith traditions or even, at times, gender and race. </b>That was enormously liberatory. <b>But Mill is a great example of someone who understood that that the market wasn’t just a tool for emancipation but a recipe for oppression.<br /></b><br />We live in an ideological world where Berlin’s portrait of liberty as freedom from state interference could be easily mistaken for neoliberal—and did help bolster the ideological conditions in which it was plausible to have a liberalism that was about economic freedom against state intrusion, interference, taxation. But I still think we can make the relevant distinctions and return to a liberalism that is concerned with economic freedom to the extent it’s useful for abundance and growth and liberation and challenges it when it leads instead to class hierarchy and oppression.<br /> <br />BR: <b>Kant is arguably one of the first liberals, and he has a much more extensive understanding of freedom as self-determination or compliance with laws one set for themself. People like John Stuart Mill and even the later existentialists also understand liberalism as creative self-determination.</b> A lot of left liberals, though, are less interested in freedom than they are in justice, which they understand as a matter of distributive equality. <i><b>Rawls, for example, cares about civil liberties a great deal. He thinks there should be a Bill of Rights ensuring freedom of speech and the like. But his primary concern is how resources should be distributed so that people get equal portions. He doesn’t necessarily see liberties and distributive justice as opposed, although he does think that liberties are prior to the distribution of resources. </b></i><br /><br />AM: One last question: <b>What would be lost if liberalism was lost?<br /> </b><br />SM: It really depends. Liberalism stands for some important values, but we could imagine a world in which those values are reclaimed by another tradition with another label. In that case, very little would be lost, especially given all of liberalism’s flaws. But if we take Patrick Deneen’s views seriously, we have to say that <b>everything is at stake in the endurance of liberalism because it stands for what we all care about: the possibility of living beyond authority and tradition and making the meaning of our life ourselves—not according to the dictates of someone else. I think everyone has a stake in self-determination, and liberalism, ultimately, is a great purveyor of that ideal. </b>That’s what makes its dire straits today so sad.<br /> <br />BR: I think that’s right. <b>At its best liberalism establishes the conditions for pluralism and celebrates difference. </b>While we can imagine that being captured under a leftist regime, I think that’s something in liberalism that’s worth preserving.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/what-happened-to-liberalism/?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=50ae362f74-ourlatest_1_9_2024&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-50ae362f74-40729829&mc_cid=50ae362f74">https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/what-happened-to-liberalism/?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=50ae362f74-ourlatest_1_9_2024&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-50ae362f74-40729829&mc_cid=50ae362f74</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij3cVNIqD1_L8VpRrl85qNJDynFvKZYsyC49FqAolvBAX4aYJ73CHW53iLqTeFqJfUkqPJqyrfsc79MlLV9K32sc_w7MbDEloa_4qRT79LEGNCO-ruGO1EglNMbrxlLHfguKMRLJyeg1ma_r7nZkcBFbB1Q2j4PY-jf0oQF9os-A3ukBzPgV6F6vK3xmCB/s400/lionel%20and%20diana%20trilling.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="337" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij3cVNIqD1_L8VpRrl85qNJDynFvKZYsyC49FqAolvBAX4aYJ73CHW53iLqTeFqJfUkqPJqyrfsc79MlLV9K32sc_w7MbDEloa_4qRT79LEGNCO-ruGO1EglNMbrxlLHfguKMRLJyeg1ma_r7nZkcBFbB1Q2j4PY-jf0oQF9os-A3ukBzPgV6F6vK3xmCB/w338-h400/lionel%20and%20diana%20trilling.jpg" width="338" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana: </span><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I would call myself an "FDR liberal." Social Security was a gigantic achievement, and it paved the way for Medicare. Historians claim that FDR ultimately envisioned medical access for all, but knew he had to work gradually. Lyndon Johnson realized it too. </span></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFNdmMACHuxVrzUt2L6Qq6YTFXEDzEMM1fpuSPUC5ZYcFVfd4-eFpP1XWkI1OLftdiUDFZKfM-gxK4v67Pabxg7pmIjmBPQSYoWJaEIxrymgVy7RCONg_K04a5xR9QbdmvWNYecRdwK1miCCJdFvKf1sqWrzrkSMN7nf1l4d15Q_TuQ31ZnDctEVpgG1oj/s650/FDR%20Frances%20Perkins%20social%20security.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="411" data-original-width="650" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFNdmMACHuxVrzUt2L6Qq6YTFXEDzEMM1fpuSPUC5ZYcFVfd4-eFpP1XWkI1OLftdiUDFZKfM-gxK4v67Pabxg7pmIjmBPQSYoWJaEIxrymgVy7RCONg_K04a5xR9QbdmvWNYecRdwK1miCCJdFvKf1sqWrzrkSMN7nf1l4d15Q_TuQ31ZnDctEVpgG1oj/w400-h253/FDR%20Frances%20Perkins%20social%20security.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>FDR signing Social Security into law. Behind him stands Frances Perkins, who was essential in the creation of Social Security.</i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Before I came to the US, certain words were purely positive in my mind, terms of high praise. Those terms included “intellectual” and “liberal.” I grew up in an intellectual milieu, so negativity about being “intellectual” was particularly shocking. When it came to the exercise of the intellect, my only concern was not being intellectual enough. <br /><br />But I wouldn't put "FDR liberal" (= strong social safety net </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">— </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> add to this human rights with special emphasis on women's rights) in first place in my self-description. Being an intellectual is primary to me. My paraphrase of “You can never be too rich or too thin” was “You can never be too educated or too intellectual.” <br /><br />As for “liberal,” I didn’t have quite the same clarity and love for it, but I was aware that the word was derived from “liberty” — surely a good thing. On the whole I saw liberal attitudes as naturally going together with being an intellectual, which came to me naturally as soon as I started reading for pleasure. I fell madly in love in learning new things, wanting to study everything, to learn many languages, try doing all kinds of things (including, in my teens, exploring the Amazon jungle and climbing Mt. Everest — talk about discarded ambitions). <br /><br />As for “conservative,” I had no idea what it was that the conservatives were trying to “conserve.” The most memorable answer I got was “their own privilege.” </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"The rich get richer" has also been suggested as the essence of the conservative worldview, with one person telling me, "Americans are too selfish to let everyone have access to medical care." Free college tuition wasn't even mentioned </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">— that, I assumed, would be perceived as truly the end of the world. </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />Have I become more liberal with age? Probably only more bold in expressing my views. I’m not sure if it’s statistically true that women become more radical as they age, but it seems to me that they become more outspoken. They are no longer concerned with pleasing men. When they become widows, they don’t wish to remarry. Some truly blossom as human beings, finally putting their needs and desire first, not last. For men, acting in their own best interest may seem the only way to live; for women born before feminism, it can be revolutionary. <br /><br />Finally, soon after my arrival, I was told that “The English language loves the number three” — three of anything, including names and groups of three words. So to characterize myself, I need to add “atheist.” Intellectual, liberal, and atheist — yes, that’s me. And an indelible memory comes back: during a friendly conversation with like-minded people, I casually said, “Of course I don’t believe in god” — and to my shock, got sternly warned never to say it in public. “You’re not in Europe anymore; here people might be offended.” </span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The blatant irony of this wasn’t lost on me, since freedom of speech is so enshrined in America; various foreign-born writers and activists have sought asylum in America, citing chiefly freedom of speech. But the last thing an immigrant wishes to do is offend the natives; thus, in spite of the sanctified constitutional right, I realized I better stay silent </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">— about both religion and politics.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But I did manage to find a solution. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">For some mysterious reason, “secular” seems a less controversial word than atheist, and I could live with that more easily than with the cowardly word “agnostic.” <br /><br />Fortunately, there is no need to reduce oneself to three labels. As I say in one poem, “We are not infinite, but we are / not finished.” The feast of life still has much to offer.<br /><br /><br />*<br /><b>A NEWLY CLASSIFIED TYPE OF HEART DISEASE IS ON THE RISE: CKM SYNDROME<br /></b><br />~ Today, we’re talking about a newly recognized form of heart disease—CKM syndrome, which is when you have <b>overlapping cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, and metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes and obesity.</b><br /><br />We’ve got a highly specialized medical system. Sometimes it seems like each doctor has their own organ. If I had a heart problem, I’d go see a cardiologist. And if my kidneys weren’t healthy, I’d check in with a nephrologist. Or if I had diabetes or some other hormone-related problem, I’d see an endocrinologist.<br /><br />But it turns out that <b>these organs, or health problems, have a lot to do with one another. In particular kidney problems and metabolic problems raise the risk for cardiovascular disease, which means everything from a heart attack to clogged arteries. <br /></b><br />So all this medical specialization might keep a doctor from seeing the big-picture risk. And that’s been worrying cardiologists like Sadiya Khan of Northwestern University. People who write diabetes guidelines write about that, people who write kidney guidelines write about that, people who write about heart guidelines write about that. But really, <b>one patient isn't going to go to three different guidelines and clinicians aren't going to go to three different sets of guidelines.<br /></b><br />That’s why Khan helped write a new set of guidelines from the American Heart Association, in collaboration with kidney and endocrine specialists. The guidelines, which were just released a few months ago, define a new form of heart disease called<b> cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome: CKM.</b><br /> <br /><b>The heart association says that one third of U.S. adults have at least 3 risk factors for the syndrome. There are many risk factors, and they include obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar. And from the kidneys, the rate they remove contaminants from the blood.</b><br /><br />When these are present, and when more than one is present, they synergistically increase the risk of developing heart disease or dying prematurely from heart disease.<br /><br />But <b>how do problems in one organ drive problems in another?</b> <b>Oftentimes, people talk about how the kidneys and heart are like an old married couple. We've known for some time that having kidney disease increases your risk of developing heart disease. </b>So there's this connection that exists. <b>And the reverse is also true. Having heart disease makes you more at risk for having kidney disease. </b><br /><br />Basically, <b>it starts with obesity. Excess fat cells secrete chemicals that cause inflammation. And that can harm blood vessels and damage both heart and kidney tissue. Inflammation also reduces cells’ sensitivity to insulin, the hormone that moves sugar out of the blood and into those cells. More blood sugar, and less of it in cells, is the hallmark of diabetes, of course.</b><br /><br />So in the old married couple analogy, if one spouse gets upset about something, it upsets their partner too. And the whole marriage fails.<br /><br />Cardiologists have known about this couple for a long time. So why are they just getting around to treating them now?<br /><br />One of the key drivers was <b>the awareness that there's a growing burden of these risk factors or conditions, and they're often clustering together. So we know that the rate of obesity, diabetes, kidney disease and heart disease have increased in the past several decades. So everyone is more at risk for CKM today.</b><br /><br />This recognition has also been complemented by <b>the availability of therapies that aren't just treating someone's diabetes, but they also have cardioprotective benefits, as well as kidney protective benefits. And so the availability of therapies that allow us to more holistically manage our patients was a key piece of this. </b><br /><br />Therapies that have really emerged in the last several years include SGLT2 inhibitors and GLP1 receptor agonists, specific classes of medications that have cardiovascular benefits, but also have been demonstrated to have benefit in people with kidney disease and people with diabetes and people with obesity or overweight. <br /><br /><b>Drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, which have been used to treat diabetes and obesity might also protect against heart disease and kidney disease. And SGLT2 [Sodium-glucose cotransporter-2] inhibitors work on the kidneys, helping them filter out extra glucose in the blood, so they were originally developed as diabetes drugs. But then some big clinical trials showed they reduced the rates of heart disease as well.</b><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Even though they were developed as drugs for diabetes, we found that they're not really diabetes drugs. You could call them a heart disease drug or a kidney drug. And I think that's again where this construct is very helpful, because we're not really just treating someone's diabetes. We're trying to treat the patient in front of us</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;">.<br /><br />Because of these advances, the heart association has also rolled out a new risk calculator for doctors to use, one that incorporates kidney disease and diabetes indicators along with heart risks. It’s a complex formula but it ends up giving doctors a good picture of a person’s likelihood of developing CKM, or some more specific form of heart disease, like heart failure.<br /><br />One important difference is <b>this tool lets doctors start evaluating risk at age 30.</b> The previous assessment tools were only applicable for age 40 and up. <b>If someone is going to get heart disease, the very first signs show up in that 30-to-40 decade. And at that early stage, the symptoms can be rolled back with the right treatments.</b><br /><br />Recognizing CKM could mean more people will be diagnosed and treated sooner, and stay healthy for a greater part of their lives.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/a-new-type-of-heart-disease-is-on-the-rise1/">https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/a-new-type-of-heart-disease-is-on-the-rise1/<br /></a><br />Oriana:<br />I think it’s ludicrous to call CKM a “new” heart disease. It’s the same heart disease as before — it’s just that physicians are finally aware that the term “heart disease” is too restrictive. Heart disease means that the kidneys are involved as well, and we are probably looking at obesity and diabetes too (if not full-blown diabetes, then at least high fasting blood sugar). No major dysfunction progresses in isolation; it has a multitude of consequences in various other organ systems. So ultimately we have to treat the whole person. Fortunately it doesn’t mean lots of different drugs; Drugs that help the kidneys also help the heart, and so on.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The same applies to to supplements. If they are truly effective (hint: a lot depends on the dose), then they have multiple benefits. Berberine doesn't just lower blood glucose; it gives you an amazing lipid profile. Black seed doesn't just protect against infections; it protects against various types of cancer as well. Lion mane mushroom doesn't just alleviate neuropathy; it protects against dementia as well. And we know that anything that's good for the heart is good for the brain as well </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">— but the obverse has not yet been empirically demonstrated. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Still, I appreciate the frustration of people who read information about diets and supplements who end up exclaiming, "How come everything does everything?" Because the thigh bone is connected to the hipbone, is connected to . . . however this goes. If you lower blood sugar, a multitude of benefits follow, and so on. The interconnectedness of the whole body should never be forgotten. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>HOW TO FALL ASLEEP EVEN THOUGH YOUR MIND IS RACING<br /></b><br /><i><b>Create a relaxing bedtime routine</b></i><br /><br />Anita Yokota, LMFT, a therapist and the author of Home Therapy, tells SELF that sticking to a sleep ritual can help things seem less chaotic when it’s time to wind down. “Create a pattern or process that ‘feels’ like bedtime. This might include washing your face, carrying out your skin care routine, meditating, or <b>reading with a dim light</b>. Each of these steps reminds your brain that you’re preparing for sleep,” says Yokota. “Our brains like consistency.”<br /><br /><b>The key is doing whatever most helps you relax and feel good.</b> For instance, you could get in a warm bath before hitting the sheets—and add a couple of drops of your favorite essential oil to the water to make it extra soothing and luxurious. <br /><br />Figure out what you want your nightly sleep schedule to look like in terms of timing; then, as the Sleep Foundation recommends, <b>get rolling with your routine at least a half hour before you actually want to be in dreamland.</b> If planning ahead isn’t always realistic, that’s okay—just squeeze in a few minutes to do something calming and familiar each night. (This doesn’t mean spending an hour scrolling your social media feeds—too much bright light and quick stimulation before bed can keep you awake!) Following a set plan, even loosely, can reliably help you snooze even when life feels haywire.<br /><br /><b>2. Set your surroundings—and yourself—up for success<br /></b><br />Your sleep environment goes hand in hand with your nighttime routine: Where you’re trying to rest can have a lot to do with how easy (or not) it might feel to drift off, especially when you’re stressed out and in extra need of some peace.<br /><br />First, check out how dark your room is when you’re getting ready for bed: Are street lights coming in through the window? Is your partner streaming movies? <b>“Too much light at the wrong time can tell your body to stay awake,” </b>says Dianne Augelli, MD, a fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Light exposure throws off your circadian rhythm (your sleep-wake cycle) and can slow or halt your body’s production of melatonin, a hormone that promotes sleep. There are easy tweaks you can make to help with this: To keep the room dark, Yokota uses blackout shades to make sure she gets the deep sleep she needs. You can also try wearing an eye mask—it’ll block out any annoying light that manages to peek through the cracks of your blinds.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Make your room as quiet as possible, especially because hyperarousal caused by stress makes you extra-sensitive to outside noise.</b> It’s not always possible to shut out all the sounds around you, but you can listen to white noise to drown out what you can’t control (the sounds of a bustling city, say, or your upstairs neighbor’s late-night pacing) and to help you fall asleep. If you don’t have a machine, check out white noise apps like White Noise Lite or BetterSleep. Pop in some earplugs if any amount of noise feels too disruptive.<br /><br />And even if you like things toasty in your home, cool things down at night. A<b> room temperature between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit tends to be most people’s sleepy-time sweet spot.</b><br /><br /><b>3. Face your worries head-on<br /></b><br />“If you’re hyper-focused on an issue that you can’t let go of, write down what’s on your mind and tell yourself it will be there for you tomorrow,” Yokota says. This can majorly help with racing thoughts at night. A 2019 study investigating the effects of writing in a journal before bedtime found that jotting down a to-do list (or a “worry list,” as the researchers referred to it) helped people fall asleep faster. While you might be used to writing about your day, the research suggests that <b>paying specific attention to future events will redirect your brain away from rumination about the past </b>(like that work presentation you can’t stop thinking about because it didn’t quite go as planned)<br /><br />Rather than writing down, “Pay the bills,” you might try, “Pay $135 electric bill tomorrow by 5 p.m.” Just five minutes of journaling can offer relief to your anxious brain. The study determined that people who wrote lists between 30 and 35 items fell asleep the fastest, so jot down as many future tasks as possible—consider it an all-the-things-that-are-weighing-on-me brain dump. To make this task easier, keep your favorite notebook and pens by your bed.<br /><br /><b>4. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR BREATH NOT YOUR STRESS<br /></b><br /><b>When life’s occasionally gnarly demands are keeping her clients up at night, Nicole Flynn, ASW, a therapist based in Los Angeles who specializes in mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), recommends breathing exercises to help with relaxation. She particularly likes the 4-7-8 breathing technique because it can reduce your heart rate and blood pressure, both of which can spike when you’re stressed and make it harder to sleep.</b><br /><br />To do this breathing pattern, you inhale for four seconds, hold your breath for seven seconds, then exhale for eight. Repeat as many times as you’d like (or until you’re snoring away). Don’t be discouraged if you find this a bit unnatural at first. “It takes time to teach our brains and bodies these new patterns,” says Flynn. Keep trying and you’ll likely get more comfortable as you go. If you’re new to this or just want someone to walk you through it, try SELF’s 10-minute guided sleep meditation to help lull you into slumber.<br /><br />When life is busy (and beyond stressful), it can be tough to prioritize sleep. Though rest can be hard to come by when you’re anxious as all get-out, even small improvements here will help you feel way better in the long run, since too many late nights can be taxing on your health. It’s all about taking active steps to calm yourself down, rather than just lying in the dark and hoping for the best. You got this! ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://www.self.com/story/how-to-fall-asleep-fast?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://www.self.com/story/how-to-fall-asleep-fast?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br />Oriana: THE SECRET OF SLEEP IS GETTING SUFFICIENT ACTIVITY DURING THE DAY<br /><br />The best sleep advice I ever read came from an article in The Guardian. It came from a woman who suffered from chronic insomnia and had tried proverbially “everything.” Then she finally met a woman who revealed the secret: <b>Stop thinking about sleep. Concentrate on ACTIVITY.<br /></b><br />Ah, did that hit home! I had to admit that on days when I had been busy doing things — both mental and physical — a delightful tiredness would come over me, to the point of having to fight off sleepiness if it was still to early for bedtime. Demanding mental activity was enough when I was younger (writing a new poem worked great). Now I want to make sure I get enough physical activity. A long walk (others would not find it especially long) is the best sleeping pill. <br /><br />But anything that tires me out, for instance going to the dentist, works well. Leaving the house for any reason helps. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Vacuuming the house helps too. Instead of thinking, Oh, no, what a chore, think, Ah, I'm getting a lot of activity. <br /><br />As for sleep potions, <b>high-potency CBD oil, a tranquillizing cannabis product</b>, has made a difference. Years ago it used to be valerian extract — oddly enough I don’t miss it anymore, though I may try it again some time. But valerian and CBD came before I read the wonderful article in The Guardian, to the effect that the secret of sleep is sufficient amount of activity during the day. Sufficient activity practically guarantees good sleep. I know I need to do enough to get myself tired out. Chores like cleaning, which used to evoke pure dislike, are now exalted to sleep-inducing activity — and activity means that good sleep will follow. <br /><br />Having accomplished something thanks to that daytime activity is all the better. Positive emotions benefit our physiological function and make everything easier — including falling asleep. Occasionally, however, a negative, disturbing thought just floats up. Here Buddhist wisdom comes handy: acknowledge the thought. Don’t try to fight it. Witness it and watch it vanish like trillions of other thoughts that have come and gone. And welcome sleep, sweet sleep. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglGYJTRb3pPrS3whOvjE4ZMZuj0Fv91R0F1GpYnLbepjQ9RCu_jfRzF5ZQZhvYIKuC9QCGMfO9HJ1ZKYgrhm1QaERVKBDb8IDY1lbdw1WiW87dw-9tyOdWkOCmCoaGlIVXI11s1kk3Whr_eT0wF8U5GIqS_ezcnQ6e5fp5Mkp0Kf4iTGaiGI4qChHmGj4u/s800/kitten%20ginger%20sleeping.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="404" data-original-width="800" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglGYJTRb3pPrS3whOvjE4ZMZuj0Fv91R0F1GpYnLbepjQ9RCu_jfRzF5ZQZhvYIKuC9QCGMfO9HJ1ZKYgrhm1QaERVKBDb8IDY1lbdw1WiW87dw-9tyOdWkOCmCoaGlIVXI11s1kk3Whr_eT0wF8U5GIqS_ezcnQ6e5fp5Mkp0Kf4iTGaiGI4qChHmGj4u/w400-h203/kitten%20ginger%20sleeping.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b><i>Ending on beauty:</i></b><br /><br />I lived suspended between the past and present<br />crucified many times by time and place<br />and yet happy trusting that my sacrifice <br />will not go to waste. <br /><br />~ Zbigniew Herbert<br /></span></span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgrl3poXJUmjcKJ16fGCt9LUotx07-Bm4V2Y3W9M9J7FDt8KBx62Kfcp6W8KAL9pPMgVUbAKz3SsqnqR5tQbdn669LxqNbTXnrDFRGQ0xTJ0rh1bDsZtejJmGwkGBr2F77QmpxeFqYesJ2j80iXZ9965wzjJBxnvc9tMixduzd7y_jOE0VOCSiU7W77A2a/s512/Herbert%20old.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="340" data-original-width="512" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgrl3poXJUmjcKJ16fGCt9LUotx07-Bm4V2Y3W9M9J7FDt8KBx62Kfcp6W8KAL9pPMgVUbAKz3SsqnqR5tQbdn669LxqNbTXnrDFRGQ0xTJ0rh1bDsZtejJmGwkGBr2F77QmpxeFqYesJ2j80iXZ9965wzjJBxnvc9tMixduzd7y_jOE0VOCSiU7W77A2a/w400-h266/Herbert%20old.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /></span><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-32919261115088596242024-01-07T21:15:00.000-08:002024-01-13T15:01:59.586-08:00FLU VACCINE AGAINST DEMENTIA; WHY KURT GÖDEL BELIEVED IN THE AFTERLIFE; JUSTICE FOR NEANDERTHALS; CHILDREN OF LEONARD BERNSTEIN ON “MAESTRO”; WHY SOME PEOPLE CHANGE FASTER THAN OTHERS; BEST DIETS<p></p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibsJCdLJvGaQX7Q0H4ogpdhejz1V1wViO2VkMqEOcqS9Gi1UtIPPIoasus96Hq_bzKJD4CiCal8A_P3ELuHXSWjTWqJE_GH2NhlWzK4w9PSB4duQIvSOefcuUpmRdozq75VrJLuVhcDiKDzshk0d-F4td9_GzAF6N6m3u8fYU7T2coDJ6HWHZN4pIOoDQN/s600/Noah%20dove%20mosaic.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="448" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibsJCdLJvGaQX7Q0H4ogpdhejz1V1wViO2VkMqEOcqS9Gi1UtIPPIoasus96Hq_bzKJD4CiCal8A_P3ELuHXSWjTWqJE_GH2NhlWzK4w9PSB4duQIvSOefcuUpmRdozq75VrJLuVhcDiKDzshk0d-F4td9_GzAF6N6m3u8fYU7T2coDJ6HWHZN4pIOoDQN/w478-h640/Noah%20dove%20mosaic.JPG" width="478" /></a><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">MRS. NOAH<br /><br />It’s still drizzling. Gray religious gloom <br />seeps in through the small window.<br />The oil lamp creaks on its hook.<br />She’s humming to herself, stirring lentil soup. <br />The ark fills with a homey aroma.<br /><br />She preserved the testament of spices, <br />the commandments of barley and beans.<br />Noah said, “We’ll just catch fish.”<br />She smiled. And remembered to take <br />cucumber seeds, to plant, <br />in a new world, a garden.<br /><br />In the pantry sat a sack of almonds, <br />and another with dried figs and dates. <br />After all she was the one<br />who’d asked, “Sweetheart, <br />shouldn’t we be prepared?”<br />And kept him awake with her dream<br /><br />of salvation in a houseboat, plied <br />him with reasons and sulks, <br />his favorite honey cake.<br />And got what she wanted: <br />three stories of gopher wood —<br />a large ark is easier to keep clean.<br /><br />The animals they took on board?<br />Her cow, “Patchy,” and his fancy doves;<br />two donkeys, two little black goats, <br />the family’s cats and dogs,<br />and the grandchildren’s pet turtle.<br /><br />Legends grow. Legends grow into myths.<br />Noah said he’d heard the voice of God. <br />Perhaps. But we know whose voice<br />nagged him and cheered him on <br />through the years of hammering and sawing —<br />and through the dark birth<br />of those forty nights and forty days.<br /><br />~Oriana</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>*</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>SAUL BELLOW AND HIS LAST NOVEL<br /></b><br />~ <b>Saul Bellow’s Ravelstein</b>—included in the Library of America’s final volume of Saul Bellow’s complete novels—<b>is a eulogy in novel form for his friend Allan Bloom</b>. But it <b>also contains a kind of eulogy for Bellow himself</b>. A shift in emphasis occurs</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> about halfway through when Ravelstein, close to death, predicts that Chick (more or less Bellow’s alter ego) will soon follow him to the grave. Before long Ravelstein is dead and Chick is hospitalized for a potentially fatal case of food poisoning. Chick spends much of the latter part of the novel contemplating death and summing up his life. “I…lived to see the phenomena,” he concludes. Life may pass by in a continuous series of “pictures,” yet <b>“in the surface of things you saw the heart of things.”</b><br /><br />Chick, the author of a biography, has made a career of examining the surface of things to understand the inner lives of his subjects. “Ordinary daily particulars,” he writes, “were my specialty.” The same was true of Bellow in his fiction. <b>He was, in his own term, a world-class noticer. </b><br /><br />One of the distinctive thrills of reading Bellow is the exuberant richness of his descriptive prose—in the case of Ravelstein, for instance, we glimpse his “honeydew-melon head,” “legs paler than milk” that emerge from an ill-fitting kimono, and <b>a laugh “like Picasso’s wounded horse in Guernica, rearing back.” </b>But Bellow does not summon <b>these details </b>as many novelists do, merely for the sake of clarity or amusement. They <b>are central to his method. They are the way into the hearts of his characters, and also into his own heart.<br /></b><br /><b>Zachary Leader, Bellow’s newest biographer, has taken Bellow’s fictional biographer at his word. No detail of Bellow’s life has escaped Leader’s dragnet, no matter how superficial</b>, and all have turned up in the pages of The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915–1964. Until now, the most authoritative account has been James Atlas’s Bellow: A Biography (2000), a thorough, engaging account that struck many of Bellow’s acolytes, and the man himself, as <b>excessively critical about his personal life and insufficiently admiring of his genius.</b> John Leonard, in his New York Times review, wrote that “a biographer more scrupulous than Atlas is hard to imagine.” But Leader is that biographer. His book is more than eight hundred closely printed pages, at least a third longer than Atlas’s. And it is just the first of two volumes. ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/06/04/bellow-defiant-irascible-mind/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR%20Gaza%20Bellow%20Roman%20glass&utm_content=NYR%20Gaza%20Bellow%20Roman%20glass+CID_e02dc102f506ef99351cfb298e787b25&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=The%20Defiant%20Irascible%20Mind%20of%20Saul%20Bellow">https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/06/04/bellow-defiant-irascible-mind/?</a>*</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*</span></p><div><div dir="auto"><div class="x1swvt13 x1pi30zi xexx8yu x18d9i69" id=":rh4:"><div class="xzsf02u xngnso2 xo1l8bm x1qb5hxa"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>“All of life is a foreign country.” ~ Jack Kerouac</b></i></span></div></div></div></div></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> *</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>“To accept reality is to accept it in its totality, pleasure and pain, day and night, summer and winter. Reality has an alternative character, which results from the interplay of 'I want' and 'It is thus,' of forces and obstacles.” ~ angel ae</b><br /></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>WOULD THE CREATION OF A PALESTINIAN STATE SOLVE THE CHRONIC ARAB-ISRAELI PROBLEM?</b><br /><br /><b>The creation of a Palestinian state would not solve anything — it would just make people who already are miserable even more miserable, and also kill lots of people.</b> It doesn’t matter if Palestinians received the lace-state in West Bank plus Gaza or all of Palestine, internally fractured and rife with religious extremism of the highest rank they’re <b>ungovernable as a nation. The existence of Israel and intense hatred of Jews are the two things that basically keep them from exploding on the inside.<br /></b><br />The solutions to this are rather unfortunate. The least bad option may be the Assyrian method: forcefully resettle Palestinians across the world in small groups, break their society apart and force them to amalgamate into larger societies. It is culturocide, but any other option is either an outright genocide or <b>a state of war and religious extremism into perpetuity.</b> ~ Tomaž Vargazon, Quora</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">* </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim5rVkZTqW_FMDHJtkrKJbxe8yRxgudiH2ucw-2-hz9q9CR8DIQkNZyKAyalqiGMumU_iA_J8xAnzdKBxDaNJpC1-cTpfXSMipUc5yXvtPu02m9cf1Mz21UHFxsrMYZ9cv7f_tsvrhggDIqk-StSeVU_Bo_rryYzcfxJx4G4JB3ED38En8ENjjWKTRFrai/s767/red%20square%20on%20New%20Year's%20Eve.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="767" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim5rVkZTqW_FMDHJtkrKJbxe8yRxgudiH2ucw-2-hz9q9CR8DIQkNZyKAyalqiGMumU_iA_J8xAnzdKBxDaNJpC1-cTpfXSMipUc5yXvtPu02m9cf1Mz21UHFxsrMYZ9cv7f_tsvrhggDIqk-StSeVU_Bo_rryYzcfxJx4G4JB3ED38En8ENjjWKTRFrai/w314-h400/red%20square%20on%20New%20Year's%20Eve.jpg" width="314" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Red Square on New Year’s Eve</i></span></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Most cleaners, laborers, couriers in large Russian cities are migrants. During Muslim holidays, large cities turn into processions of men (women must stay at home). </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">It is entirely possible that by the end of this century, <b>Russia will become an Islamic republic.<br /></b><br />*<br /><b>RUSSIA IS DYING<br /></b><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEildEYbgOY-DCctnR1q3CpA3Kitcikvs98zPliz-deuYD9MVHBlXQaUtnHQl28rKqJne9z2cL1bEzjf6xzNVzkgF5k5GeuDKJcLW2EGE_SldOsgkfN9BCz6e1cFjtTE6QY98ew4WYB-ZIIHrKaaSaiSmuBjA9ZtNJ8PkRM1S42cZHWVZD2rwhjFrTcASCZq/s760/russia%20collapse.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="760" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEildEYbgOY-DCctnR1q3CpA3Kitcikvs98zPliz-deuYD9MVHBlXQaUtnHQl28rKqJne9z2cL1bEzjf6xzNVzkgF5k5GeuDKJcLW2EGE_SldOsgkfN9BCz6e1cFjtTE6QY98ew4WYB-ZIIHrKaaSaiSmuBjA9ZtNJ8PkRM1S42cZHWVZD2rwhjFrTcASCZq/w316-h400/russia%20collapse.jpg" width="316" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Russia is dying.<br /><br />And it’s not a catch phrase, but a fact.<br /><br /><b>Countries seem eternal, but they are not.</b> Sure, the land on which they are located will still be there, but that’s all. <b>The peoples inhabiting the land, the borders of the countries, and more importantly — the forms of government change.<br /></b><br /><b>Breakaway regions of Kievan Rus, vassal lands of the Golden Horde, the Muscovy principality, the Russian Tsardom, the Russian Empire, the Russian Republic, the USSR and the Russian Federation were all fundamentally different states.<br /></b><br />A change in the government system almost always entails a change in elites, rights, laws, property distribution, image of the future, governance structures, political alliances — and at times, the physical destruction of the population, at least partially.<br /><br />Now, we can take the date of adoption of the state’s constitution as a marker of “the birth of a state”: a state’s constitution is its genetic code, which (more or less) determines everything else.</span></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The world’s oldest state (by the date it’s current Constitution was adopted) is the USA — its Declaration of Independence is 237 years old.<br /></b><br />The United States Constitution was written in 1787 and became effective in 1789. It was based on 1780 Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, drafted by John Adams.<br /><br />The Russian Empire existed for 196 years.<br />The USSR lasted 69 years.<br /><b>The Russian Federation is only 32 years old (like the rest of the post-Soviet states — including Ukraine).<br /><br />But the Russian Federation is already dying.<br /></b><br />What is a state, really?<br /><br /><b>States are systems.</b><br /><br />Any system has several key characteristics that show what stage of the life cycle the system is in.</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The first characteristic is structural complexity, which is determined by the number of elements of the system and the connections between them.<br /></b><br />The structural complexity of a state is determined by the size of the population and the development of <b>subsystems — science, education, health care, industries, services, the finance sector, non-governmental organizations, political movements, law enforcement, and so on.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In a developing state, new structures are constantly emerging: they interact with each other, create new chains of internal and external connections — and this allows the state to implement a greater number of functions.<br /><br /><b>Primitive states had simple functions: protect their territory and collect taxes.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Modern states provide citizens’ security and well-being, protect their rights and freedoms, ensure compliance with laws, give citizens social security — and much more.<br /></b><br />Degrading states as systems become smaller and simpler: existing substructures disappear, connections between the remaining elements are getting destroyed.<br /><br /><b>In Russia, both the size of the population and its quality are quickly declining: the gender and age structure are deteriorating; the most economically active part of the population is fleeing the country — and is being partially replaced by migrants from less developed countries.</b><br /><br />Many substructures of the state (political parties and citizens’ movements, public associations, NGOs, the judicial system, etc.) in Russia are diminished and replaced by dummies that do not fulfill their functions.<br /><br /><b>Russia’s economy as a whole is shrinking.<br /></b><br /><b>High-tech industries — aerospace, shipbuilding, mechanical engineering, microelectronics — had been hit especially hard.<br /></b><br /><i><b>Health care, science and education (especially professional education) are also shrinking.</b></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Since the year 2000 when Vladimir Putin became the president, almost 50% of existing hospitals, 40% of schools, and 30% of kindergartens had been closed down, for the sake of “efficiency”</b></i>.<br /><br />Due to the war with Ukraine unleashed by Russia’s leadership, foreign policy ties and alliances created over centuries had been almost completely destroyed.<br /><br /><b>Russia’s “allies and partners” of today are mostly the outcasts — the likes of North Korea, Iran, and Afghanistan. (China is Russia’s master, not a partner or ally by any means. China still has the eyes on Vladivostok and other Chinese lands occupied by Russia since mid-1800s).</b><br /><br />Russia’s trade, scientific and financial ties with the most developed countries of the world had been severed.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />Domestic policy had regressed to the level of feudalism, and the management system is represented either by gerontocrats or appointees selected for obedience rather than talent, which makes it extremely ineffective.<br /><br /><b>There is no positive image of the future: Western images of the future had been abandoned; communist ones had discredited themselves, and the idea of “staples” such as Orthodoxy and serfdom (in the 21st century) are genuinely embraced by a very few.</b><br /><br />In general, by all indications, the structural complexity of Russia as a state is rapidly declining.<br /><br />Let's have a look at the second characteristic of the system: the efficiency of use of the state’s resources.<br /><br /><b>A developing system creates more resources, and spends more of the resources on consumption, maintenance and development.<br /></b><br />States obtain resources through extraction of minerals, agriculture, industrial production, know-how innovative industries, transportation and tourism.<br /><br />In Russia, things were satisfactory with the extraction of minerals — but not so good with everything else.<br /><br /><b>Russia’s GDP (in dollar equivalent) is now at the level of 2008, so we can’t talk about sustainable growth.</b><br /><br />Russia’s funds from the sale of mineral resources were: partially frozen in the foreign banks, partially burned in (mostly useless) “national projects”, partially stolen by the officials and “The Boss” (you know who).<br /><br /><b>The maintenance and development of the resource industry were grossly neglected for years (“why fix what’s not broken?” logic).<br /></b><br />Over the past 15 years, the level of depreciation of fixed assets has been steadily increasing. In 2022, Rosstat changed its methodology (I reported on that before) — and suddenly, the rosy picture of pre-2014 levels was supplied to the public. But it was a big lie.<br /><br />Russia’s expenses had increased sharply due to the war in Ukraine going wrong (no “Kyiv in 3 days” parade-ready triumph whatsoever) and the ensuing sanctions. <i><b>Oil and gas revenues had dropped by at least 30%.</b></i><br /><br />This means that <b>the level of degradation of Russia’s production capacities and infrastructure is now rapidly accelerating. It is already visible in the aviation industry with Russian planes breaking in the air or unable to take off every other day.</b><br /><br />All these consequences are not due to uncontrollable circumstances (natural disasters, changes in market conditions, etc.), but rather the result of planned actions of the country’s political leadership, which created a crisis entirely of its own volition.<br /><br /><b>The behavior of the system in a crisis is its third important characteristic.<br /></b><br />Developing systems use the crisis as an opportunity to become stronger: to increase their structural complexity and efficiency of the use of resources.<br /><br />Developing countries are emerging from crises with an economy freed from the ballast, an updated legislation, new vectors of development and the skill of solving several problems at once.<br /><br /><b>Degrading states, in an attempt to solve one crisis, generate several new crises. The frequency of crises is increasing, they are are stacked on top of each other; the crises are drawing on the resources faster, threatening the system’s stability.</b><br /><br />We are now exactly at this stage, when the decline in Russia’s leader’s ratings is attempted to be rectified up by a war and internal terror; failure at the war is attempted to be rectified by mobilization of civilian reservists and release of violent offenders from prisons, and the loss of markets is attempted to be resolved by becoming a raw resources appendage to China.<br /><br />But that’s not all.<br /><br /><b>Having exhausted the reserve of stability, states reduce their complexity, returning to archaic forms of social organization and reducing the size of the population.</b></span><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSLn7i9T035qDaBdA2JIRcI2ofRO77cJB84rmkMFsd2QNCIqyLK7qg4WyjYuzbFVgI9ncSWtaNuVXfaQ7-FLi6CY8a9KvLqqvSI3U_x4QsNP6ZxK49uxDPis1G4Cnm9iW5YURmaSLXoJT8BPsYQ_uRQZpg3-semFwbhRW57adinJiTyZLUaX1BNXd1okV9/s1300/Arkady%20Stavrovsky%20Moscow%20Morning%201972.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="904" data-original-width="1300" height="279" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSLn7i9T035qDaBdA2JIRcI2ofRO77cJB84rmkMFsd2QNCIqyLK7qg4WyjYuzbFVgI9ncSWtaNuVXfaQ7-FLi6CY8a9KvLqqvSI3U_x4QsNP6ZxK49uxDPis1G4Cnm9iW5YURmaSLXoJT8BPsYQ_uRQZpg3-semFwbhRW57adinJiTyZLUaX1BNXd1okV9/w400-h279/Arkady%20Stavrovsky%20Moscow%20Morning%201972.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><i><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Arkady Stavrosky: Moscow Morning, 1972</span></i><br /><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">A state can be destroyed by a shock, when a large-scale crisis develops faster than the state can adapt to, a systemic collapse, when several crises merge into one continuous chain, and due to absorption by another state.<br /><br />The absorption of Russia by force with the loss of sovereignty is rather unlikely (due to the possession of a nuclear arsenal), but a major military defeat could provoke a crisis, as has already happened in the case of Prigozhin’s mutiny.<br /><br />The lack of visible success of the Ukrainian counteroffensive reduced the likelihood of such a development of events — but if the West (accidentally or intentionally) floods Ukraine with weapons, thus could possibly happen again in May 2024.<br /><br />Wars are unpredictable things.<br /><br />System collapse caused by critical deterioration of infrastructure, degradation of industry and depletion of reserves, before the start of the war, could happen in Russia by 2036–2040. Or it could happen sooner.<br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>The weakest point of the Russian state at the moment is its management system, which depends on the capacity and health of one elderly man, failing which a large-scale crisis is inevitable</b></i>.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>No one becomes healthier or smarter with age, so a long-awaited obituary (or another brilliant solution) will become the most likely start of a crisis, which can lead to the collapse of the Russian state.</b><br /><br />As you can appreciate, in conditions where all scenarios are probabilistic in nature, it is impossible to accurately predict the final date.<br /><br />But it’s obvious that sooner or later one of these scenarios will inevitably come true.<br /><br />That’s why <b>Russia is now a kind of Schrödinger’s state: it seems to have been on its last legs for a while, but it still hasn’t died.<br /></b><br />But there is no doubt: it will. ~ Elena Gold, Quora</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">More from Elena Gold:</span></p><p><span class="q-box qu-userSelect--text" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></span></p><p class="q-text qu-display--block qu-wordBreak--break-word qu-textAlign--start" style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; margin-bottom: 1em; overflow-wrap: anywhere;"><span style="background: none; color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">Russia
keeps self-destructing economically and politically — and with the
giant scale of the country, this trend is practically impossible to
overturn. <b>The newly acquired regions of Ukraine are useless to Russia,
as they require giant investments to restore them after the destructive
Russian attacks, and are becoming a not-so-secret black hole sucking
life out of Russia’s economy</b> — in addition to the black hole of Russian
military-industrial complex, which is the only industry developing in
the country (and producing false GDP that Putin presents as “economic
growth” — but in reality, all this production immediately burns in
Ukraine).</span></p><div class="q-box" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: -12px; margin-right: -12px;"><div class="CssComponent-sc-1oskqb9-0 QTextImage___StyledCssComponent-sc-1yi3aau-0 cfUEeh"><div class="q-box unzoomed" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em;" tabindex="-1"><img class="q-image qu-display--block" src="https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-ddda5aca87cc6e0f89c7bf623efefde8" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" /><br /></div></div></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">also somewhere on Quora:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>In Russia, who stands by the window, dies by the window.</b><br /></i><br />*<br /><b>LEONARD BERNSTEIN'S CHILDREN ON MAESTRO (THE MOVIE)</b><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_ztS3D05Lyp7GYO-O6t8bIwTPB6SIyeJDYp_2DfV2HRVEpNY8goQwDV_lKlqUnvNd9X0o2uBp2ARlGQkJMm7BGA9VH0AWfYCFu4JhivyvzwL9V5Eq9xXWhcvwVkqkMKIL25eKV9lpdzmEYEJJQNJaAl0N4cC8J_ouB68h9lDD4wlpmmYFxdtvh_4kIisQ/s1296/Bernstein%20children%20Jamie%20Bernstein%20Alexander%20and%20Nina.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="730" data-original-width="1296" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_ztS3D05Lyp7GYO-O6t8bIwTPB6SIyeJDYp_2DfV2HRVEpNY8goQwDV_lKlqUnvNd9X0o2uBp2ARlGQkJMm7BGA9VH0AWfYCFu4JhivyvzwL9V5Eq9xXWhcvwVkqkMKIL25eKV9lpdzmEYEJJQNJaAl0N4cC8J_ouB68h9lDD4wlpmmYFxdtvh_4kIisQ/w400-h225/Bernstein%20children%20Jamie%20Bernstein%20Alexander%20and%20Nina.webp" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">~ <b>The siblings took center stage at the Venice Film Festival this year, leaping up after the film’s screening to jokingly conduct the bombastic standing ovation that greeted the film’s world premiere, imitating their father’s atypical and vibrant conducting style.<br /></b><br />“It was cathartic in a moment when joy and tears, memories and pain were overwhelming,” says Alexander. <b>“We became children again. And of course, we had to fill those seven minutes of applause with something!” Adds Nina: “We just did what used to happen when the ‘Overture of Candide’ was on TV, we watched our father and imitated him in the living room.”<br /></b><br />The trio speak in unison, finishing each other’s sentences, and picking up a word or comment to spin off in another direction. Always, incredibly, in tune. A tiny orchestra. Thousands of miles and two oceans divide them, but they sound like the kids shown in Maestro, chattering on the lawns of the Bernstein family estate in Connecticut.<br /><br />“Do you know, that they actually filmed there?” says Alexander. “It was strange for us, surreal. <b>Nina said it’s like those dreams you have when you’re in your house, but it somehow isn’t your house. My parents were there, but they sort of weren’t my parents. It was like a dream.”<br /></b><br />Adds Nina, “We would see Bradley and Carey there, and they would come already in makeup and stage clothes, to get into character. They would walk around the garden, around the rooms, and to us, it seemed both strange and natural.”</span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7OuQe6nU49-VyC-N9gB00gQcJTEat-ipJ1GQr6fDlILd-Tk3ToVO8wZUDuMTMIG2D9esmxjjBm5BZ08dn3IqY-5C240eYQWHrIGEDMb2dWUf__6CqU-aBI07VXa3bxnKBQqMlMlTsFj8vXKAhD0Up5YggST2KjA43IqyU6IFsBoExPgoBlGxhewC0mPSi/s1000/bernstein%20and%20family%20Fairfield%20CT%20June%201966.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="805" data-original-width="1000" height="323" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7OuQe6nU49-VyC-N9gB00gQcJTEat-ipJ1GQr6fDlILd-Tk3ToVO8wZUDuMTMIG2D9esmxjjBm5BZ08dn3IqY-5C240eYQWHrIGEDMb2dWUf__6CqU-aBI07VXa3bxnKBQqMlMlTsFj8vXKAhD0Up5YggST2KjA43IqyU6IFsBoExPgoBlGxhewC0mPSi/w400-h323/bernstein%20and%20family%20Fairfield%20CT%20June%201966.webp" width="400" /></a></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Leonard</i> <i>Bernstein and family, Fairfield CT, June 1966<br /></i><br />“At a screening the other day, when we were photographed with Bradley and Carey, Jamie and I looked at each other and said, ‘This is a very strange family picture, our parents are younger than us!'” notes Alexander.<br /><br />It’s hard to get a word in edgewise. The three go back and forth, mixing personal nostalgia with their enthusiasm for a film that evokes memories both sweet and painful. They reflect on the long journey to get their family’s story to the screen.<br /><br /><b>“They’ve been trying to make this film for 15 years,” says Alexander.</b> “Originally it was with Martin Scorsese. He kept renewing the option, but no decision was made. Fred Berner and Amy Durning were already attached as producers. We agreed with them, we just asked to be able to read the script, to talk to the writer or the director who would do it.”<br /><br /><b>“At a certain point it had become a joke between us, all this talk of life rights, of options. We had resigned ourselves to the fact that this film would never be made,” says Jamie.<br /></b><br />Alexander picks up: “When everything had stopped moving, when it seemed impossible to bring it to the screen, came the twist: Steven Spielberg. Well before he remade West Side Story, he entered the production team, and it looked like he might go behind the camera as well. The idea of Bradley playing the lead came from him. But the more Bradley got involved in the project, the more he talked to us, the more he felt the story was his.”<br /><br />Jamie was the first among the siblings to see Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut, A Star Is Born.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“She just told us: ‘Go see it.’ We did, and we fell out of our chairs,” says Alexander. “We were really impressed with his work. And when we found him in front of us, he was like we imagined him to be after seeing the film: Focused, attentive, committed and full of generosity.”<br /><br />“And respectful,” adds Nina. “His approach won us over. When Jamie also met him, and they connected, it was a crescendo. <b>He included us in his work, made sure that we got, without saying anything, all the drafts of the script, and then he screened the work in progress for us at various stages of the project. </b>He asked us a lot of questions, and we tried to not ask for too many corrections. Ultimately, it’s his movie and if he wants to take a certain artistic license, that’s up to him. Only if there was a glaring error would we say: Actually, it happened this way.”<br /><br /><b>“There was an atmosphere of mutual trust,” Jamie stresses.<br /></b><br />The trio quickly brushes over the controversy involving the prosthetic nose Cooper wears to play Bernstein, calling the “scandal” absurd and undeserving of further comment. Much more painful, they say, was watching some of the darkest moments of their parents’ lives revealed onscreen.<br /><br /><b>“The most difficult part, of course, was when our mother gets sick and then dies,” says Jamie. “We had read the script, we knew it would be in the film, but seeing it was a real punch in the gut, even though Bradley handled everything with wonderful delicacy.</b> In shooting it, in narrating it, even and especially in pitching it to us: If we had seen it all at once, in a preview, it would have destroyed us, we would have fallen apart. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/leonard-bernstein-children-bradley-cooper-maestro-1235768461/">https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/leonard-bernstein-children-bradley-cooper-maestro-1235768461/<br /></a><br /><b>*</b></span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>HOW TO CHANGE<br /></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6DzmZnS2eqheIRPxF4b-YqSXKhjgZ2Ew28IgBOIMzyIA5DDEu_u2-KVqdlgmQtaJxK_JhHvLAAkzw3gwGj51bTnaK3JAY4yQyEz89zymT5gqzy9j9_9_UJmYnXU-tfuxVfhlIU7ogV04QRrnBNhN5wQQmR1jSEScCTUuMG4ze_X9wnvhcV1ljVY2JieEC/s1800/seedling%20growth.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1012" data-original-width="1800" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6DzmZnS2eqheIRPxF4b-YqSXKhjgZ2Ew28IgBOIMzyIA5DDEu_u2-KVqdlgmQtaJxK_JhHvLAAkzw3gwGj51bTnaK3JAY4yQyEz89zymT5gqzy9j9_9_UJmYnXU-tfuxVfhlIU7ogV04QRrnBNhN5wQQmR1jSEScCTUuMG4ze_X9wnvhcV1ljVY2JieEC/w400-h225/seedling%20growth.webp" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Author and researcher Katy Milkman of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School is out with a new book, How to Change, that's packed with research-backed paths to personal growth. <b>Science has tried-and-tested methods to help us stop procrastinating, save more money and make healthier choices. She says that if we apply these lessons more widely, they have life-lengthening and even lifesaving potential.</b><br /><br />A decade ago, Milkman saw a statistic she calls "completely mind-boggling":<b> </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b><i>40% of premature deaths are due to behaviors that can be changed</i></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>. </b>That's one reason she wanted to share her findings widely, she says.<br /><br />Milkman shared some of the most actionable lessons from her research with Life Kit. This knowledge is for anyone who has a goal and wants to reach it — or the managers and mentors helping employees get there.<br /><br />"Too much rigidity is the enemy of a good habit”<br /><br /><b>If you're trying to develop a habit like working out regularly or writing each day, letting yourself have a little leeway is the way to make that habit stick.</b> In one of Milkman's studies, she and her colleagues tried to motivate Google employees to work out regularly at the company gym and build a lasting workout habit. <br /><br />The conventional wisdom was that those with a consistent routine form the stickiest habits. They tested this out with two groups. Members of both groups told the researchers they had an "ideal" workout time. One group was encouraged to go to the gym at that set time for each visit, while members of the second group got a reminder to go at their "ideal" time but were encouraged to work out whenever they could fit it in.<br /><br />The results? <b>Members of the group that worked out on a strict schedule simply didn't go to the gym if they missed that window, while the more flexible group formed a more lasting workout habit.<br /><br />The lesson here? A key component of habit is having some flexibility.</b><br /><br /><b>One counterintuitive strategy to beat procrastination<br /></b><br /><i><b>Procrastination is such a beastly barrier to behavior change because of something that economists call "present bias" — we value the rewards we can get in this instant above the rewards we'll achieve in the long run. How do we solve it?</b><br /></i><br />"We're really used to it when other people try to set up boundaries for us — <b>set deadlines, set restrictions on us," Milkman says. She suggests a counterintuitive idea: deploying those restrictions on ourselves.</b><br /><br />These restrictions could be deadlines: <b>Research shows that when college students chose deadlines with actual late penalties, it improved their performance in school.<br /></b><br />They could also be financial. If you know when you might procrastinate, impose a fine on your future self and commit to paying if you don't follow through with your goals. These are called "cash commitments," and websites like Beeminder and stickK will sell you commitment devices to let you put money on the line.<br /><br /><b>Remember the power of fresh starts.<br /></b><br />We humans tend to organize time around events or exiting one chapter in life and entering another. "You have ... this extra motivation to pursue change because you feel like, 'That was the old me. <b>This is the new me, and the new me has a clean slate and can do it</b>.' So it's really freeing," Milkman says. Recognizing and highlighting opportunities to create fresh starts, even if they're small, like the start of a new week, can change behavior. Research from Milkman and her colleagues shows that <b>just flagging an upcoming birthday can encourage people to start saving more for retirement.</b><br /><br />Fresh starts occur at a high frequency. <b>Mondays are a strong fresh start in our minds. "When we just look at when people choose to pursue healthy activities or start new goals, Mondays are a big motive," Milkman says.</b><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Making accountability public can be a powerful motivator — for good!<br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />We know the negative emotions associated with feeling like you're being watched by other people. But Milkman writes about ways that public accountability can be used to help us behave more generously. Just as with procrastination, you can use accountability partners as a way to enforce a "penalty" on yourself.<br /><br />"If you tell someone whose opinion you care about that you intend to do thing X — you know, 'I'm going to pass my CPA exam by this date' or 'I'm going to run a marathon on this date'... and then you don't do it? Well, that's basically a penalty, right? Because now you have shame and embarrassment," Milkman explains.<br /><br />Change isn't one and done.<br /><br />Despite all the helpful takeaways from her research, <b>Milkman compares the process of making change or achieving tough goals to treating a chronic disease rather than curing a rash</b>. It's an insight she credits to her colleague Kevin Volpp.<br /><br /><b>There's no quick fix if you want change to last, Milkman says. Quitting smoking or eating right for a month won't magically make you healthy — lasting change requires lasting attention. </b>"The barriers to change — it's not like those things just go away after you work on them for a month," Milkman says. "They're not curable. They're part of the human condition.”<br /><br /><a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/05/14/996939779/a-behavioral-scientists-advice-for-changing-your-life">https://www.npr.org/2021/05/14/996939779/a-behavioral-scientists-advice-for-changing-your-life<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>PERSONALITY CONSISTENCY: WHY SOME PEOPLE CAN CHANGE FASTER THAN OTHERS</b><br /><br />~ <b>Have you ever felt as though someone important to you, such as your best friend, was starting to become a completely different person? At the same time, perhaps you have the opposite problem – no matter what you do or how hard you try, you can never seem to break old habits and you find yourself struggling to change for the better. How can these two realities — some people appearing to completely change who they are, while others find themselves unable to make any changes — coexist?</b><br /><br />When you think about how much you or others can change deep down, what you are really considering is personality – a person’s typical thoughts, feelings and behaviors as they go through their daily life. Your best friend’s personality seems to have changed profoundly, yet your personality seems entirely fixed. This striking contrast echoes a long-running debate in psychology. For a long time, psychologists saw personality as fixed throughout our lives. This has since been disproven – although personality is relatively stable, it’s far from set in stone.<br /><br />Typically, most personality changes occur in young and older adulthood, with middle age appearing to be the period of the greatest stability. Changes in personality can be driven by the natural aging process or the influence of external factors, such as major life events and daily interactions with other people.<br /><br /><b>While </b>t<b>here are average trends of change in each of the so-called Big Five personality traits – such as agreeableness typically increasing with age, whereas neuroticism decreases – people also vary as individuals in the ways that they change</b>. For instance, although the average trend is for most people to increase in agreeableness, others can remain quite stable, and yet others might show decreases. This mixed picture of average trends and individual variability is true for all Big Five traits (alongside agreeableness and neuroticism, that includes extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness).<br /><br />Another way to think about this is to consider how <b>people tend to change in their entire personality across time – ie, their personality profile as reflected across all the Big Five traits. If there are individual differences in how stable single traits are, are there also individual differences in how stable entire personality profiles are?</b> <br /><br />Indeed, in our recent research, my colleague Joshua Jackson and I found that <b>some individuals are simply more stable in their personality profiles than others – suggesting this quality of stability can itself be a dispositional characteristic</b>. That is, whereas you might be relatively steadfast in how you respond to questionnaire items assessing all of the Big Five traits (ie, your Big Five personality profile), thus showing heightened levels of personality stability, your best friend could reliably change more frequently in their scores, thus showing general levels of instability.<br /><br />We made this finding by examining repeated personality test scores for more than 20,000 individuals and seeing how much each individual’s test scores tended to correlate (ie, remain consistent) over time. We found that people varied in their initial levels of profile stability: some had profile correlations such as .30 (indicating low levels of stability, with greater changes occurring across two time points) while others had profile correlations such as .80 (indicating high levels of stability, with fewer changes occurring across two time points). <br /><br /><b>What’s more, as our study progressed, these individual differences in profile stability persisted. We found that, over a duration of more than a decade, people maintained their own typical levels of profile consistency – overall, those with stable personalities tended to remain stable, and those people with unstable personalities tended to remain unstable.</b> The quality of being stable in your personality traits appears to be a trait in and of itself! This could explain the hypothetical story of your friend’s changing personality in contrast to your own apparent rigidity.<br /><br /><b>Why are some people more stable than others in their personalities? Past research has shown three processes that underlie personality stability: developmental constants, such as genetic or biological factors and/or early life experiences, which can establish and maintain one’s level of personality stability; environmental factors such as a long-term career, partner and dwelling, which can increase one’s personality stability by making them more ‘who they are’ and solidifying their qualities across time; and, lastly, stochastic or random factors, such as unexpected life changes or things that lead someone to deviate from the typical status quo of their life, which can reduce their levels of stability.</b><br /><br />As shown by our research, people usually maintain their person-typical levels of stability across time – we think this is due to the developmental constants, which are a strong presence in most individuals’ lives and set their personal level of stability. In the rare cases where an individual’s personality consistency changes, this likely reflects the influence of the environment (which usually increases stability) or stochastic factors (which reduce it). <br /><br />Thus, <b>how stable you are is a byproduct of your own disposition (a quality you carry within yourself), your environment and the life experiences you’ve accumulated thus far. It is likely that all three processes co-exist within each individual’s life – but it is the certain combination of them and their influence on an individual that results in their own unique level of personality stability and the changes in it across time.</b><br /><br />The quality of personality stability has implications for your life and how you think about yourself. If you are someone who has the tendency to remain consistent in your personality, it might suggest that you are less capable of changing who you are. Although this does not preclude the chance that change is possible, your personality is robust against external influences. It is likely you have gone through certain maturational milestones – such as graduating from school, starting a career, and finding a long-term partner – and other life experiences that research shows can often change personality, yet they have not changed you. <br /><br /><b>The positive side of this is that people around you have likely come to expect you to act a certain way, and rely on that feeling of familiarity with who you are</b>. However, it could also suggest that you will have difficulty trying to change or reinvent yourself because your typical pattern of thoughts, feelings and behaviors are enduring and resistant to change.<br /><br />The reverse is true if you have relatively low personality stability – your friends and family might find your apparent fickleness a little disorientating, and it might have implications for your sense of a coherent self, yet optimistically it also suggests that you are capable of change, including for the better.<br /><br />The quality of personality stability also has implications for how you think about and interact with people you know. You can doubtless describe various aspects of their personality pretty well – <b>if a friend is often early or late to something; if they have mood swings or are of a more calm, steady temperament; or if they prefer to be the center of attention or more of an outside observer in social settings. Some of these characteristics you may view as their cardinal, or primary, qualities: the things that define who they are</b>. <br /><br />This ability to describe those close to you in life may come in handy at times. For instance, if you view a close friend as someone who is just habitually late to things, it may make it easier to overlook as it becomes habitual and something you come to expect from them. An implication of our research is that you could take a similar perspective about how stable they are in their personality.<br /><br />Although being highly stable or unstable may not seem the most adaptive, I should add the good news that, like many other psychological characteristics, <b>most people have an average level of consistency that falls somewhere in the middle. Having this relatively stable yet still somewhat open-to-change personality system means that, not only are you able to naturally experience personality change, but you and the people close to you can maintain some stable sense of ‘who you are’</b>. Additionally, you also have some level of malleability to work with if there is some quality about yourself you wish to reinvent.<br /><br />Overall, many ideas and constructs in psychology have found their way into the general population. Personality traits are an exceptional example of this – who isn’t interested in learning more about why they are the way they are and how best to label and describe these qualities? I’m proposing that a sensible addition to the repertoire of public knowledge about personality, beyond the main traits, is the notion of personality consistency. With implications spanning from practical applications to navigating everyday social interactions, <b>personality consistency is one individual difference that may forever change what we know about ourselves and others.</b> ~<br /><br /><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/theres-a-reason-some-of-us-find-it-easier-to-change-than-others?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=87a808fea1-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_01_05&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-a9a3bdf830-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D">https://psyche.co/ideas/theres-a-reason-some-of-us-find-it-easier-to-change-than-others?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=87a808fea1-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_01_05&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-a9a3bdf830-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D<br /><br /></a><br />*<br /><b>WHY KURT GÖDEL BELIEVED IN THE AFTERLIFE</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAqfrWZePH60X77sI4BUJy2fh3JgD_E2di2pnSTVpjTTbm5LE2QKL6JtTYzspnxKk6442aP-620uERwVgfewL5DJHM-hb3dlD3Jd-E52UJ7HLSI7dQZCyu-6d1R0pf0qzxmLI4eEbSqcfP2yDvicXi-EYDdM9Znlh4lTb0EVxuQv0zEWLeUJx_k7yBTswg/s3764/Kurt%20Go%CC%82del.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1682" data-original-width="3764" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAqfrWZePH60X77sI4BUJy2fh3JgD_E2di2pnSTVpjTTbm5LE2QKL6JtTYzspnxKk6442aP-620uERwVgfewL5DJHM-hb3dlD3Jd-E52UJ7HLSI7dQZCyu-6d1R0pf0qzxmLI4eEbSqcfP2yDvicXi-EYDdM9Znlh4lTb0EVxuQv0zEWLeUJx_k7yBTswg/w400-h179/Kurt%20Go%CC%82del.png" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b></b>As the foremost logician of the 20th century, Kurt Gödel is well known for his incompleteness theorems and contributions to set theory, the publications of which changed the course of mathematics, logic and computer science. When he was awarded the Albert Einstein Prize to recognize these achievements<b> in 1951, the mathematician John von Neumann gave a speech in which he described Gödel’s achievements in logic and mathematics as so momentous that they will ‘remain visible far in space and time’</b>. <br /><br />By contrast, his philosophical and religious views remain all but hidden from view. Gödel was private about these, publishing nothing on this subject during his lifetime. And while scholars have grappled with his ontological proof of God’s existence, which he circulated among friends towards the end of his life, other tenets of his belief system have received no significant discussion. One of these is Gödel’s belief that we survive death.<br /><br /><b>Why did he believe in an afterlife? What argument did he find persuasive? It turns out that a relatively full answer to these questions is buried in four lengthy letters written to his mother, Marianne Gödel, in 1961, to whom he makes the case that they are destined to meet again in the hereafter.</b><br /><br />Before exploring Gödel’s views on the afterlife, I want to recognize his mother as the silent heroine of the story. Although most of Gödel’s letters are publicly accessible via the digital archives of the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus (Vienna City Library), none of his mother’s letters are known to have survived. <b>We possess only his side of their conversation, left to infer what she said from his replies.</b> This creates a mystique when reading his letters, as if one were provided a Platonic dialogue with all the lines removed, except for those uttered by Socrates. Although we lack her own words, we owe a debt of gratitude to Marianne Gödel. For, without her curiosity and independence of thought, we would have one less resource in understanding her famous son’s philosophy.<br /><br /><b>Thanks to Marianne’s direct question about Gödel’s belief in an afterlife, we get his mature views on the matter</b>. She asked him for this in 1961, a time when he was in top intellectual form and thinking extensively about philosophical topics at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, where he had been a full professor since 1953 and a permanent member since 1946. The nature of the exchange compelled Gödel to detail his views in a thorough and accessible manner. <br /><br />In a letter dated 23 July 1961, Gödel writes: ‘In your previous letter you pose the challenging question of whether <b>I believe in a Wiedersehen.’ Wiedersehen means ‘to see again’. </b>Rather than the more philosophically formal terms of ‘immortality’ or ‘afterlife’, this term lends the exchange an intimate quality. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>After emigrating from Austria to the United States in 1940, Gödel never returned to Europe, forcing his mother and brother to take the initiative to visit him, which they first did in 1958.</b> As a result, one can intuit here what must have been a deep longing for lasting reunification on his mother’s behalf, wondering if she would ever have a meaningful amount of time with her son again. Gödel’s answer to her question is unwaveringly affirmative. His rationale for belief in an afterlife is this:<br /><br />He deepens the rhetorical question at the end with <b>the metaphor of someone who lays the foundation for a house only to walk away from the project and let it waste away. Gödel thinks such waste is impossible since the world, he insists, gives us good reason to consider it to be shot through with order and meaning. Hence, a human being who can achieve only partial fulfillment in a lifetime must seek </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>rational validation for this deficiency in a future world, one in which our potential manifests.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />Before moving on, it is good to pause and capture Gödel’s argument in a nutshell. <b>Assuming that the world is rationally organized, human life – as embedded in the world – ought to possess the same rational structure. We have grounds for assuming that the world is rationally organized. Yet human life is irrationally structured. <i>It is constituted by a great potential but it never fully expresses this potential in a lifetime. Hence, each of us must realize our full potential in a future world. Reason demands it.</i></b><br /><br />Let’s linger first with a key premise of the argument, namely, the claim that the world and human life, as part of it, display a rational order. While not an uncommon position to hold in the history of philosophy, it can often seem difficult to square with what we observe. <b>Even if we are a rational species, human history often belies this fact. </b><br /><br /><i><b>The first half of 1961 – permeating the background of Gödel’s awareness – was filled with rising Cold War tensions, violence aimed at nonviolent protestors during the civil rights movement, and random suffering such as the loss of the entire US figure-skating team in a plane crash. Folly and unreason in human events seem the historical rule rather than the exception. As Shakespeare’s King Lear tells Gloucester when expounding on ‘how this world goes’, the conclusion seems to be: ‘When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.’</b></i><br /><br />It would be a mistake, however, to think that Gödel was naive in his insistence that the world is rational. At the end of a letter dated 16 January 1956, he asserts that ‘This is a strange world.’ And his discussions in his correspondence with his mother show that he was up to speed on political topics and world events. Throughout his letters, his opinions are informed and critical, albeit imbued with optimism.<br /><br /><b>What is tantalizing, and perhaps unique, about his argument for an afterlife is the fact that it actually depends on the inevitable irrationality of human life in an otherwise reason-imbued world. It is precisely the ubiquity of human suffering and our inevitable failures that gave Gödel his certainty that this world cannot be the end of us. </b>As he neatly summarizes in the fourth letter to his mother:<br /><br />~ What I name a theological Weltanschauung is the view that the world and everything in it has meaning and reason, and indeed a good and indubitable meaning. From this it follows immediately that our earthly existence – since it as such has at most a very doubtful meaning – can be a means to an end for another existence. ~<br /><br /><b>Precisely in virtue of the fact that our lives consist in unfulfilled or spoiled potential makes him confident that this lifetime is but a staging ground for things to come. But, again, that is only if the world is rationally structured.</b><br /><br />If humanity and its history do not display rational order, why believe the world is rational? The reasons that he gives to his mother in the letters display his rationalist proclivities and belief that natural science presupposes that intelligibility is fundamental to reality. As he writes in his letter dated 23 July 1961:<br /><br /><i><b>~ Does one have a reason to assume that the world is rationally organized? I think so. For it is absolutely not chaotic and arbitrary, rather – as natural science demonstrates – there reigns in everything the greatest regularity and order. Order is, indeed, a form of rationality. ~</b><br /></i><br />Gödel thinks that rationality is evident in the world through the deep structure of reality.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Science as a method demonstrates this through its validated assumption that <b>intelligible order is discoverable in the world, facts are verifiable through repeatable experiments, and theories obtain in their respective domains regardless of where and when one tests them.</b><br /><br />In the letter from 6 October 1961, Gödel expounds his position: ‘The idea that everything in the world has meaning is, by the way, the exact analogue of the principle that everything has a cause on which the whole of science is based.’<b> Gödel – just like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, whom he idolized – believed that everything in the world has a reason for its being so and not otherwise (in philosophical jargon: it accords with the principle of sufficient reason). <br /></b><br />As Leibniz puts it poetically in his Principles of Nature and Grace, Based on Reason (1714): ‘[T]he present is pregnant with the future; the future can be read in the past; the distant is expressed in the proximate.’ <b>When seeking meaning, we find that the world is legible to us. And when paying attention, we find patterns of regularity that allow us to predict the future. For Gödel, reason was evident in the world because this order is discoverable.</b><br /><br />Although unmentioned, his belief in an afterlife is also imbricated with the results from his incompleteness theorems and related thoughts on the foundation of mathematics. <b>Gödel believed the world’s deep, rational structure and the soul’s postmortem existence depend on the falsity of materialism, the philosophical view that all truth is necessarily determined by physical facts. </b><br /><br />In an unpublished paper from around 1961, <b><i>Gödel asserts that ‘materialism is inclined to regard the world as an unordered and therefore meaningless heap of atoms.’ It follows too from materialism that anything without grounding in physical facts must be without meaning and reality. Hence, an immaterial soul could not count as possessing any real meaning. </i><br /></b><br />Gödel continues: ‘In addition, death appears to [materialism] to be final and complete annihilation.’ So materialism contradicts both that reality is constituted by an overarching system of meaning, as well as the existence of a soul irreducible to physical matter. <b>Despite living in a materialist age, Gödel was convinced that materialism was false, and thought further that his incompleteness theorems showed it to be highly unlikely.</b><br /><br />The incompleteness theorems proved (in broad strokes) that, for any consistent formal system (for example, mathematical and logical), there will be truths that cannot be demonstrated within the system by its own axioms and rules of inference. Hence any consistent system will inevitably be incomplete. <b>There will always be certain truths in the system that require, as Gödel put it, ‘some methods of proof that transcend the system.’</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Through his proof, he established by mathematically unquestionable standards that <b>mathematics itself is infinite and new discoveries will always be possible. <br /></b><br />It is this result that shook the mathematical community to its core.<br /><br />In one fell swoop, it terminated a central goal of many 20th-century mathematicians inspired by David Hilbert, who sought to establish the consistency of every mathematical truth through a finite system of proof. <b>Gödel showed that no formal mathematical system could ever do so or prove definitively by its own standards that it was free of contradiction. <i>And insights discovered about these systems – for instance, that certain problems are truly non-demonstrable within them – are evident to us through reasoning</i></b><i>.</i> From this, <b>Gödel concluded that the human mind transcends any finite formal system of axioms and rules of inference.<br /></b><br />Regarding the incompleteness theorems’s philosophical implications, Gödel thought the results presented an either/or dilemma (articulated in the Gibbs Lecture of 1951). Either one accepts that the ‘human mind (even within the realm of pure mathematics) infinitely surpasses the powers of any finite machine’, from which it follows that <b>the human mind is irreducible to the brain, which ‘to all appearances is a finite machine with a finite number of parts, namely, the neurons and their connections.’ </b><br /><br />Or one assumes that t<b>here are certain mathematical problems of the sort employed in his theorems, which are ‘absolutely unsolvable’. If this were the case, it would arguably ‘disprove the view that mathematics is only our own creation.’</b> Consequently, mathematical objects would possess an objective reality all its own, independent of the world of physical facts ‘which we cannot create or change, but only perceive and describe.’ <br /><br />This is referred to as <b>Platonism about the reality of mathematical truths</b>. Much to the materialist’s chagrin, therefore, both implications of the dilemma are ‘very decidedly opposed to materialistic philosophy’. Worse yet for the materialist, Gödel notes that the disjuncts are not exclusive. It could be that both implications are true simultaneously.<br /><br />How does this connect with Gödel’s view that the world is rational and the soul survives death? <b>The incompleteness theorems and their philosophical implications do not in any way prove or show that the soul survives death directly. However, Gödel thought the theorem’s results dealt a heavy blow to the materialistic worldview. </b>If the mind is irreducible to the physical parts of the brain, and mathematics reveals a rationally accessible structure beyond physical phenomena, then <b>an alternative worldview should be sought that is more rationalistic and open to truths that cannot be tested by the senses. Such a perspective could endorse a rationally organized world and be open to the possibility of life after death.</b><br /><br />Suppose we – cynics and all – accept that the world, in this deep sense, is rational. Why presume that human beings deserve anything beyond what they receive in this lifetime? We can guess that something similar troubled his mother. Gödel says in his next letter’s theological portion: ‘When you write that you pray to creation, you probably mean that the world is beautiful all over where human beings cannot reach, etc.’ Here, Marianne might have agreed that much in creation appears ordered, but challenged the assumption that all of reality is so ordered, in particular when it comes to human beings. Must the whole world be rational? Or <b>might it be that human beings are irrational aberrations of an otherwise rational order?<br /></b><br />Gödel’s response reveals extra degrees of nuance to his position. In the first letter, Gödel had only loosely referenced <b>a ‘wide field of possibilities’ that go underdeveloped but which demand completion. In his subsequent letters, he details what it is about humanity that requires existence to continue – that is, what is essential to humanity.</b><br /><br />It is first important to explain what Gödel meant by an ‘essential’ property. We have, of course, many properties. I have the property, for example, of standing in a relationship of self-identity (I am not you), of being a US citizen, and of enjoying the horror genre. Although there is no unanimity on exactly how to understand Gödel’s use of ‘essential’, his ontological proof for the existence of God includes a definition of what he means by an essential property. According to that definition, <b>a property is essential of something if it stands in necessary connection with the rest of its properties such that, if one possesses said property, then one necessarily possesses all its other properties. </b>It follows that every individual has an individuated essence, or as Gödel notes in the handwritten draft of the proof: ‘any two essences of x are nec. [sic] equivalent.’ <b>Gödel, like Leibniz, believed that each individual possessed a uniquely determinable essence.</b><br /><br />At the same time, even if essence is defined as individual-specific in the proof, there is evidence that Gödel thought that essences could also be kind-specific. <b>He thought all human beings are destined for an afterlife because they all share a property in virtue of their being human.</b> There are sets of necessary properties that hang together and that are interrelated across individuals such that the possession of this set would entail something being the kind of thing it is. In his ontological proof, for example, <b>he defines a ‘God-like’ being as one that must possess every positive property</b>. As for human beings, I am a human being in virtue of possessing a kind-specific set of properties that all human beings possess necessarily and that at least some of which are completely unique to us (just as only a God-like being can have the property of possessing every positive property).<br /><br />In Gödel’s letter of 12 August 1961, he points out the crucial question, which is too often overlooked: ‘We not only don’t even know whence and why we are here, but also don’t know what we are (namely, in essence and seen from within).’ <b>Gödel then notes that if we were capable of discerning with ‘scientific methods of self-observation’, we would discover that every one of us has ‘completely determined properties’. </b><br /><br />Gödel playfully in the same letter remarks that most individuals believe the opposite: ‘According to the common conception, the question “what am I” would be answered such that I am something that has absolutely no properties in its own right, something along the lines of a coat rack on which one can hang anything one pleases.’ That is,<b> most people assume that there is nothing essential about the human being and that one can ascribe to humanity any trait arbitrarily. </b>For Gödel, however, such a conception presents a distorted picture of reality – for if we have no kind-specific essential properties, on what grounds can categorization and determination of something as something begin?<br /><br />So what essentially human property points towards a destiny beyond this world? Gödel’s answer: <b>the human ability to learn, and specifically the ability to learn from our mistakes in a way that gives life more meaning. For Gödel, this property hangs necessarily together with the property of being rational.</b> While he admits that animals and plants can learn through trial and error to discover better means for achieving an end, there is a qualitative difference between animals and human beings for whom learning can elevate one into a higher plane of meaning. This is the heart of Gödel’s rationale for ascribing immortality to human beings. In the 14 August 1961 letter, Gödel writes:<br /><br />~ Only the human being can come into a better existence through learning, that is, give his life more meaning. One, and often the only, method to learn arises from doing something false the first time. And that occurs of course in this world truly in abundant quantity. ~<br /><br /><b>The folly of human beings mentioned above is perfectly consistent with the belief in the world’s rationality. In fact, the world’s ostensible senselessness provides an ideal set-up to learn and develop our reason through the contemplation of our shortcomings, our moments of suffering, and our all-too-human proclivities to succumb to baser inclinations.</b> To learn in Gödel’s sense is not about our ability to improve the technical means for achieving certain ends. Rather, <b>this distinctive notion of learning is humanity’s capacity to become wiser.</b> I might, for example, learn to be a better friend after losing one because of selfish behavior, and I might learn techniques for thinking creatively about a theoretical approach after multiple experimental setbacks. <br /><br /><i><b>An essential property of being human is, in other words, being prone to develop our reason through learning of the relevant sort. We are not just learning new ways of doing things, but rather acquiring more meaning in our lives at the same time through reflection on deeper lessons discovered through making mistakes.</b><br /></i><br />All this might lead one to infer that Gödel believed in reincarnation. But that would be overhasty, at least according to certain standard conceptions of it. An intriguing feature of Gödel’s theological worldview is his belief that our growth into fully rational beings occurs not as new incarnations in this world, but rather in a distinct future world:<br /><br />~ In particular, one must imagine that the ‘learning’ occurs in great part first in the next world, namely, in that </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>we remember our experiences from this world and come to understand them really for the first time, so that our this-worldly experiences are – so to speak – only the raw material for learning</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">. ~<br /><br />And he elaborates further:<br /><br />Moreover one must of course assume that our understanding there will be substantially better than here, so that we can recognize everything of importance with the same infallible certainty as 2 x 2 = 4, where deception is objectively impossible.<br /><br /><b>The next world, therefore, must be one that liberates us from our current, earthly limitations</b>. Rather than recycling back into another earthly body, we must become beings with the capacity to learn from memories that are latently brought along into our future, higher state of being.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The belief that it is our essence to become something more than we are here explains why Gödel was drawn to a particular passage in St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians</b>, which I discovered when perusing his personal library at the archives of the IAS. In a Latin, pocket-sized edition of the New Testament, Gödel jotted at the top of the title page in faint pencil: ‘p. 374’. Following this reference, one is led to Chapter 15 of St Paul’s letter where Gödel marked verses 33 through 49 with square brackets and drew an arrow to one verse in particular. <br /><br />In the bracketed verses, St Paul describes our bodily resurrection. <b>Employing the metaphor of crops, St Paul notes that sown seeds must be destroyed in order to grow into plants that it is their nature to become. So too, he notes, will it be with us. Our lives and bodies in this lifetime are only seeds, awaiting their destruction, after which we will grow into our ultimate state of being</b>. Gödel drew an arrow pointing at verse 44 to highlight it: <b><i>‘It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.</i></b>’ <br /><br />For Gödel, St Paul had apparently arrived at the correct conclusion, albeit by prophetic vision as opposed to rational argument.<br /><br />We are left largely to wonder about Marianne’s reaction to her son’s views on the hereafter, though it is certain that she was puzzled. In the letter dated 12 September 1961, Gödel assures his mother that her confusion about his position has nothing to do with her age and much more to do with his compact explanations. And in the last letter, from 6 October 1961, Gödel objects against the claim that his views resemble ‘occultism’. <b>He insists, on the contrary, that his views have nothing in common with those who would merely cite St Paul or discern messages directly from angels. </b><br /><br />He admits of course that his views might appear ‘unlikely’ at first glance, but insists that they are quite ‘possible and rational’. Indeed, he arrived at his position through reasoning alone, and thinks that his convictions will eventually be shown to be ‘thoroughly compatible with all known facts’. It is in this context that he further <b>presents a defense of religion, recognizing a rational core to it</b>, which he claims is often maligned by philosophers and undermined by bad religious institutions:<br /><br />~ N.B. the current philosophy curriculum doesn’t help much in understanding such questions since <b><i>90 per cent of contemporary philosophers see their primary objective as knocking religion out of people’s heads, and thereby work the same as bad churches</i></b>. ~<br /><br />Whether this convinced Marianne or not, we can only guess.<br /><br />For us who remain with both feet still in this world, Gödel’s argument presents us with a fascinating take on why we might continue to exist after shuffling off this mortal coil. Indeed, <b>his argument glows with an optimism that our future lives, if reason is to be satisfied, must be ones in which we maximize certain essential human traits that remain in a paltry state here. </b>Our future selves will be more rational, and somehow capable of making sense of the raw material of suffering experienced in this life. Can we assume that Kurt and Marianne are now reunited? Let us hope so.<br /><br /><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/kurt-godel-his-mother-and-the-argument-for-life-after-death?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=edc7551007-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_01_05&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-b43a9ed933-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D">https://aeon.co/essays/kurt-godel-his-mother-and-the-argument-for-life-after-death?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=edc7551007-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_01_05&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-b43a9ed933-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D</a></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqHvO3qyENOqJPgSfxfFsNxzhZGe9zYf0bYuYboDJgZ3eDyrYFX-jNH6Bde1ViOaoag2-e5Xh7orQC6Rn6qrqayKISczAMeSeDR4hQvsT507Nn1y6jC9UBOGYCb4B1FEnQiw0j8W7adzanNqLD4a5h75RAZ9RKJV2LktPV0YMCF5ZnlV2qY13_Bo3fManP/s2878/Kurt%20Goedel%20and%20%20mother,%20Marianne.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2878" data-original-width="2048" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqHvO3qyENOqJPgSfxfFsNxzhZGe9zYf0bYuYboDJgZ3eDyrYFX-jNH6Bde1ViOaoag2-e5Xh7orQC6Rn6qrqayKISczAMeSeDR4hQvsT507Nn1y6jC9UBOGYCb4B1FEnQiw0j8W7adzanNqLD4a5h75RAZ9RKJV2LktPV0YMCF5ZnlV2qY13_Bo3fManP/w285-h400/Kurt%20Goedel%20and%20%20mother,%20Marianne.webp" width="285" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Kurt Gôdel and his mother, Marianne</i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Alexander T Englert, author of the article:<br />I agree that the prospect of an eternity is not very appealing, at least if it is just more of what we experience here with added gradual perfection. <b>One of my favorite short stories is “The Dream” by Julian Barnes in which the protagonist soon learns how terrifying an eternity of self-perfection can be. The individual ends up “opting-out” of eternity, by which is meant choosing complete annihilation.</b> For my money, Barnes does a terrific job of thinking through what an eternity of living by our current standards amounts to.<br /><br />That said, would Gödel’s suggestion that we enter a completely new world (as well as a different form of being to boot) be subject to the same issues? I’m not so sure. At least prima facie it seems to ward off the objection. <b>We simply cannot know in any detail</b> apart from some coarse-grained inferences. We could then be left in an agnostic position from which <b>we could hope that a future life does not turn out to be the sort of dull eternity described by Barnes.<br /></b><br />Tom Horton:<br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Sadly, these arguments of Gödel’s can be dismissed in one word: entropy. </b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I invoke sadness because a great mathematician poured out a large and personal effort without much apparent knowledge of allied scientific fields. He would not be the first great thinker to make such fundamental errors.<br /><br />It is also <b>ironic that in proposing properties of reason, order and meaningfulness for humanity, he leans on emotional arguments. Implied in this series of letters is his mother’s anticipation of death, and his anticipation of his own. Like so many other humans, he invokes myth and ego to escape materialism and </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b><i>construct a bargain with extinction.</i></b><i><br /></i></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Anthony Weir:<br />Forgive me for joining the crowd of unbelievers. <b>Gödel relies on belief, not on argument</b>. The idea of the human soul is just an idea which has become belief. <b>The further belief that humans are the only beings to have souls is unprovable and could be seen as mere religious (anthropocentric) arrogance.</b><br /><br /><b><i>If we don’t have souls, what could constitute an afterlife? <br /></i></b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> Even if we do have souls, more questions are raised: how long would an afterlife last ? Might it simply be the persistence of a quantum of energy…or would it be an expansion like a galaxy? </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Could there be a half-afterlife ? Might there be more than one?</b><br /><br />If so, might they be a series of Russian dolls, or discrete existences ? What constitutes an existence in this context ?<br /><br />Too many questions!<br /><br />Megan Fritts:<br /><b>Another question I have is why Gödel moves from the existence of an afterlife to the assumption that he would see his mother again? After all, an afterlife may be private, temporary, or simply full of too many people to locate particular loved ones!<br /></b><br />Byron Bufort:<br /><b>Gödel may have simply been terrified by nonexistence</b>. Unfortunately, there’s often not more to it than than but hopeful thinking.<br /><br />Andrew P:<br /><b>The very notion of an “immaterial soul” makes no sense whatsoever. If a soul exists, it must be made of something, and that something, whatever it is, must have some kind of interaction with normal atomic matter.</b> It could be made of unknown dark matter particles, neutrino condensates, knotted constructs of massless fields, or something else that we can’t conceive of, but it must be some kind of physical structure that has energy, and stores and processes information.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>There is another, less flattering term for Gödel’s views: Anthropocentrism, including the staggeringly arrogant belief that somehow the human brain was singled out to discover The Real Truth about life, the universe, and everything.<br /></b><br />Finally, while I doubt that it would have cured him, Gödel would have benefited from a strong dose of Nietzsche. In the meantime it is interesting to see the double standard at work: When philosophers or other non-STEM types enter the fray of scientific debate, the gatekeepers of science scream bloody murder. But when equally unqualified scientists stumble into philosophy, no one seems to mind, however blundering their efforts may be. To Gödel’s credit, at least he evidently did not intend to make his views public.<br /><br />Keertan Patel:<br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>“What is tantalizing, and perhaps unique, about his argument for an afterlife is the fact that it actually depends on the inevitable irrationality of human life in an otherwise reason-imbued world. It is precisely the ubiquity of human suffering and our inevitable failures that gave Gödel his certainty that this world cannot be the end of us.”</b></i></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />This very point that Kurt quoted in his letter is somewhat aligned to the philosophy of <b>KARMA</b>, which also states the same wherein, it's due to our past doings or any past unfulfillment of goals or any other things, <b>the death of our physical existence is not the death of us. We continue to live on with another body but with the same soul and thoughts.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">G E:<br />I gather that <b>he thought it reasonable one is reborn in a second world with the latent memory of the first and with improved reasoning so as to learn and develop a deeper insight into the last life and oneself. Furthermore he mentions it reasonable to assume that there are or will be beings in the future without the need to learn anything, presumably because they already know everything.</b> The interpretation that he believed in an immortal soul is in my view not supported by his writings. He was a conceptual realist and therefore the reality of thoughts is important in the interpretation of his writings. <br /><br /><i><b>As Leibniz remarked before, humans can reflect on their existence and evaluate their existence through thinking. Any such life form, be it fungus, plant or bacteria would therefore benefit from latent memory in a next life. Ironically, </b></i></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>this is what happens from one generation to the next</b></i></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>. </b><br /></i><br />Apart from the structural, <b>experiences of the parents are formative also for the offspring, there is therefore in my view no need to invoke persistence of an individual.</b> I did not have to discover the incompleteness theorem; Gödel did it for me and I could learn it and reflect on it. Though I see his perspective, <b>his argument that the human mind seems like a waste of energy unless it can better itself in a future world does not seem to require the persistence of the specific individual, but the evolution of the concepts that individuals discover and the knowledge they acquire. </b><br /><br /><b>Concepts are not dependent on specific individuals as long as they are shared among those that evolve them</b> and gain better insight in my view. If humans fail to do so, may be another form will be able to in this evolving universe.<br /><br />Lauren Dove:<br />Gödels intuitions were correct. We do ‘see again.’<br /><br /><b>“</b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>The mystics of past ages have told of the divided and the undivided universes. The Book of Genesis has told the world that God divided day from night, light from dark, male from female, and the earth from the firmament of heaven</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>, but never has it occurred to layman, churchman or man of science that such a division into pairs of opposites meant electric polarization.”<br /></b><br />D.L.:<br />The only certainty is death. Allen Wheelis, The Seeker himself, summed up what life had taught him: “Life is not to be managed—or shaped, or directed, it is not even to be understood. <b>Life is to be lost. And the only question is whether with grievance or with generosity and grace</b>.”<br /><br />Afterthought:<br /><b>“</b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Hence, each of us must realize our full potential in a future world.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b> Reason demands it” —heh… I refuse to believe that Gödel would have written this.<br /></b><br />Oriana:<br />This article and the discussion reminded me of the movie “Groundhog Day” — where the same “day” keeps happening over and over until the protagonist learns to correct his mistakes and becomes kind to others. It’s a charming and morally appealing idea, and indeed we often say that So-and-so “learned his lesson.” We also speak of "life lessons." <b>Humanity as a whole is learning various lessons — but that has no bearing on individual afterlife. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I also remember my father, a mathematician, saying,<b> "Certain things exist only in mathematics." This may well include Gödel's afterlife. </b> <br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">On a different tangent: <br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsM_VmN6ytk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsM_VmN6ytk</a> </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">"We'll Meet Again" is a lovely song, but it has a dark side as well. When a friend's husband was dying but still lucid, he said, "But don't worry: soon we'll meet again." The marriage happened to be an unhappy one, and to my friend this was a vision of hell, not heaven, something she hoped would never happen.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The gospel of Mathew tries to assure his readers that in heaven there is no marriage. <b>"</b></span><b><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span class="hgKElc">For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven."~ Matt 22:30<br /></span></span></b></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;">Mary:<br />I don't find Gödel's arguments for an afterlife very convincing, mainly because he seems to insist that persistence of the individual is basic to the argument. We die unfinished, without fulfilling our potential, therefore there must be another world after death, allowing for that fulfillment. Why should the universe be concerned about our unfulfilled potential? Certainly nothing depends on our individual fulfillment. The whole frame of his argument takes for granted that human life, our ability to learn, reason and understand the world as legible, discoverable, knowable, is the aim and project of all things...that the human mind, or individual essence, is the pinnacle, the goal, the reason, for everything (and anything) to exist at all.<br /><br />He finds order to be the definition of rationality, but the basis of order is not abstract, it is in the physicality of matter itself. Consider the Periodic table, consider chemistry and biochemistry. Things exist in combinations dictated by the shapes of their essential particles...subatomic particles and electrons...they can connect and form new structures only as the architecture of their atoms allows. The order in nature is a physical order...all its varieties dependent on the possible connections and combinations of material particles.<br /><br />I don't however feel entropy undermines his ideas of progressive development. It seems to me entropy is not the final state, but a stage in a larger process. Living things die and are digested by all the forces of decay...but their substance is neither lost nor destroyed. They are transformed and absorbed into something new. <br /><br />This process happens everywhere around us, visible in, for instance, what goes on between trees and fungi and insects in forests, death and life interlayered and interdependent. But no individual...tree, fungus, beetle, is preserved to continue to its fulfillment as an individual. Its substance is preserved but not as an essential identity.<br /><br />As for meaning, the meaning of things may also be part of a process not only concerned with humanity, but with the evolution of the universe itself, learning through all its possible permutations to become something we can hardly imagine....something we are a part of without being the center. I see Gödel's ideas as basically anthropomorphic, biased to see humanity as central and essential to Everything.<br /><br />I think he mistakes our importance in the universe — which is obviously not all about us.<br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br />Oriana:<br />Religion — or at least monotheistic religions — seem to assume that the universe is about us. One time I asked, “If the universe was created for us, why all the billions of galaxies?” And got the answer: “For the greater glory.” That didn’t satisfy me at all. Is god amusing himself, just creating galaxies and planets at a whim? Is he an artist, enlarging and revising the night sky as a painter might? <br /><br />In the absence of a convincing answer, it’s easier for me to go along with a self-creating and self-transforming universe. <br /><br />Likewise, it’s very hard to believe that the universe and/or deity would be concerned with the fullest development of our potential. In the past centuries, only a tiny fraction of humanity had <br />access to the kind of education that would develop their talents, whether literary or musical, mathematical, linguistic, or anything else. On the other hand, it’s incredibly important that we master the lessons of our ancestors (one of them being not to be so anthropocentric). The ability to pass on accumulated knowledge is one of the defining characteristics of humanity. <br /><br />And the knowledge keeps on accumulating. Galileo leads to Newton, Newton and Copernicus become the foundation for Kepler, eventually we get to Einstein and so on. Yes, there is a personal evolution, and we’re certainly a different individual at 13 than at 33 or 73, but in terms of humanity what is important is the giant currents of collective evolution — from execution by torture being public entertainment in the Middle Ages to a prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment” starting during the Enlightenment. <br /><br />Gödel, alas, seems to have thought in terms of an individual rather than humanity, at least in his wishful meditations on the afterlife. Note, however, that on a certain level he must have realized the weakness of his reasoning, and thus never published the arguments that he stated in his letters to his mother. Those were his private cogitations, based on wishful thinking rather than sound evidence — or, let’s face it, any kind of evidence. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); display: inline; float: none; font-family: georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">In summary, his main mistake is thinking in terms of an individual rather than the collective evolution of humanity. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); display: inline; float: none; font-family: georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">It would be very nice to carry on in order to fulfill one’s potential, but for me it’s like saying, “It would be very nice to continue just because I’m very curious about what happens next. Will the Israeli-Arab conflict ever be resolved? I have such a high need to know that surely I must continue after physical death — such intense curiosity can’t simply end.” Yes it can — and I know better than to try to publish an essay arguing that the universe came into being in order to satisfy my curiosity.</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;">Transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next is a huge thing in itself, and that’s a fabulous phenomenon if we ponder how far we’ve come (in spite of horrors galore, both man-made and natural disasters). So let’s be grateful just for being human, having a certain window into the past and present, and the ability to imagine all sorts of possible collective future. </span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">* *<br />Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Perhaps we should not meditate on the afterlife, but instead enjoy being alive in the present. Here is Robert Bly from the seminal Silence in the Snowy Fields, 1953 (translation of Issa?) <br /><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2LoXBykyLwW41wJU9CanwzZ53M87ha7AXubIdygPZvYO-eMNlb9hqN9Go_XyW6HzkcGQJ9NRqgNjaxTp4_PdGfIDtbNjbhlaspDewR3kuteqT4dgNGLlMkJ9nO3cgsSFv2x5qlXN15A14zhzyPGvlESCbMhBDh6_4jyplPOi3y1uIBIkGvz3Edua9fJyh/s1440/Robert%20Bly%20watering%20the%20horse.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1336" data-original-width="1440" height="371" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2LoXBykyLwW41wJU9CanwzZ53M87ha7AXubIdygPZvYO-eMNlb9hqN9Go_XyW6HzkcGQJ9NRqgNjaxTp4_PdGfIDtbNjbhlaspDewR3kuteqT4dgNGLlMkJ9nO3cgsSFv2x5qlXN15A14zhzyPGvlESCbMhBDh6_4jyplPOi3y1uIBIkGvz3Edua9fJyh/w400-h371/Robert%20Bly%20watering%20the%20horse.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>“JUSTICE FOR NEANDERTHALS!”<br /></b><br />~ <b>Our conjectures about the Neanderthals began in 1856, when workers in a limestone quarry near Düsseldorf discovered a cave full of bones, some of abnormal bulk. A local naturalist, with uncanny intuition, thought the bones had to be from a primitive kind of human.</b> He sent them in a chaperoned wooden box to an anatomist in Bonn, who inspected them and came to the same conclusion. In 1863, Prof William King, delivering a short paper to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, argued forcefully that the bones belonged to a creature for whom we didn’t yet have a name. He went on to propose one: Homo neanderthalensis.<br /><br />Why that name? The valley where the bones were discovered had been a favorite spot for the wanderings of a 17th-century polymath and nature-lover whose family name had originally been Neumann, before his ancestors rechristened themselves, faux-classically, Neander. “Neander” was Greek for “new man”, “Thal” was German for valley. <b>The Valley of the New Man: “Could there be any more fitting moniker for the place where we first discovered another kind of human?”</b> asks Rebecca Wragg Sykes, the author of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art.<br /><br /><b>The discovery of those bones, and their naming in 1863, came at a time when Europe was coming to terms with the implications of the theories of Charles Darwin.</b> On the Origin of Species had been published only four years earlier, and it was becoming <b>harder to deny that the world was older – dramatically older – than we had supposed.</b><br /><br />That name, Homo neanderthalensis, did two things at once. It proposed that we, proud members of Homo sapiens, had not always been the only members of our genus. But the kinship it acknowledged in one breath, it took away from the Neanderthal in the other. <b>Even if they were human, Neanderthals were humans of a distinct type. They were like us; indeed, they were rather more like us than the chimpanzees that we were beginning to acknowledge as our kindred. But they were still other. Perhaps that was the beginning of the denial of the Neanderthals’ dignity against which their 21st-century champions so bridle.</b><br /><br />The fossil record was already beginning to show us how different a place the world of the mid-19th century was from the one that the Neanderthals inhabited. There were animals then that are no longer with us: <b>enormous grazing cattle named aurochs, straight-tusked elephants, woolly rhinoceros, and the great auk, a giant penguin-like bird </b>that died out around the time of the discoveries in the Neander valley.<br /><br />That world, barely a blink of an eye in geological time, was, as Wragg Sykes puts it with sincere excitement, “sparkling with hominins”: <b>Homo antecessor, Homo bodoensis, Homo heidelbergensis, many of which inhabited the Earth during the very same periods.</b> There are at least a half dozen now that are widely recognized, and more seem to be discovered all the time.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The Neanderthals have been joined, much more recently, for instance, by such species as Homo floresiensis, irritatingly referred to as “hobbits” after the discovery of a diminutive skeleton in Indonesia in 2003. <br /></b><br /><b>In 2010, we got decisive proof of the Denisovans, another hominin, in Siberia</b>. In the years since, the hominin ranks have swelled yet further to include <b>Homo naledi (South Africa) and Homo luzonensis (the Philippines)</b>. No one doubts that further archaeological work, particularly in Africa, will yield yet more hominins. <b>But the parade of archaic humans all began with the most popular of our fellow hominins: the Neanderthals</b>.<br /><br /><b>The most recent defense of Neanderthal dignity to appear in English is The Naked Neanderthal by the French paleoanthropologist Ludovic Slimak.</b> He reports encountering an anthropologist at Stanford who joked, while projecting a slide of a Neanderthal skull, that “if I got on a plane and saw that the pilot had a head like that, I’d get off again”. <b>Blunter still was the Russian academic who kept insisting that the Neanderthals were, simply “different”. Different how? “Ludovic,” he said, “they have no soul.”<br /></b><br />What exactly is that supposed to mean? Dragged out of the realm of idle metaphor, the Russian scientist must have been saying that there were psychological capacities that we, Homo sapiens, have – capacities distinctive of our humanity – that Homo neanderthalensis lacked. But what were they? That is a scientific question, to be answered by research, not simply a matter for philosophical speculation.<br /><br />The reconstructed “Flint” and “Nana”, standing proudly erect, looked as he expected: uncannily (as we are tempted to say) human. <b>“The exaggerated features of skull anatomy,” Finlayson writes, “really fade away once you put skin and flesh to the bone.”</b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b> The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote that the best image of the human soul was the human body. <br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><b>Acknowledging the soul – the dignity – of the Neanderthal might well have to start with acknowledging how alike their bodies were to ours.<br /></b><br />*<br />A hypothesis from the 1960s offers a vivid example of the kind of evidence that can be adduced for Neanderthal intelligence. A team led by the Cambridge archaeologist Charles McBurney was excavating at a seaside cliff on the Channel Island of Jersey. An early 20th-century dig had already turned up remnants – in the form of surviving teeth – of Neanderthal occupation. But at the base of the cliff, they found an uncommonly large number of bones belonging to mammoth and rhinoceros. Why were they there?<br /><br />McBurney’s field assistant, Katharine Scott, advanced an intriguing hypothesis. Could the bones be there because the mammoths had tumbled to their deaths from the high cliff that overlooked the graveyard? Scott pointed to evidence, from surviving hunter-gatherer societies, of “drive lanes” used to kill large numbers of bison. The Native American hunters who had been known to practice this kind of hunting used controlled grass fires to send the animals towards the cliff, and carefully positioned hunters to keep the animals moving. Had the Neanderthals used similar hunting techniques?<br /><br /><b>Excavation sites are full of pieces of flint that show evidence of fire-making. Charcoal remains at these sites indicate that they were keenest on using resin-rich pine wood as fuel, suggesting they had decided tastes based on a long history of experimentation.</b> <b>They may even have learned to use bones to prolong the life of a fire, keeping them warm while they slept.<br /></b><br />The Neanderthals, in other words, <b>walked erect, hunted big game and knew how to control fire: hardly the knuckle-draggers of stereotype.<br /></b><br />In 2022, the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine was given to the scientist whose work has put a number to just how human the Neanderthals were. <b>Svante Pääbo, a Swedish geneticist, was a pioneer in the study of “paleogenetics”, which began with the discovery of how DNA might be extracted from a range of sources</b>: old bones and teeth, naturally, but also from cave sediments. The techniques he and his colleagues refined have enabled us to know vastly more about the Neanderthals, their bodies, their habits and their habitats, than their 19th-century discoverers could ever have imagined possible.<br /><br />Perhaps the most entertaining thing about Pääbo’s 2014 book, Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes, is how much of it is dedicated to an account of the palaeogeneticist’s greatest enemy: contamination. Pääbo takes us through the punctilious quest for absolute cleanliness in the laboratory and for methods that will help distinguish real Neanderthal DNA from samples contaminated with, say, the investigator’s own.<br /><br /><b>Having cut his teeth on trying to extract DNA from Egyptian mummies in the late 1970s, Pääbo began to apply his methods to even older bodies. His methods culminated in a series of triumphs. First, he managed to extract mitochondrial DNA from a piece of ancient bone allowing him to publish, in 1997, the first Neanderthal DNA sequences.</b> Thirteen years later came the publication of <b>a full Neanderthal genome, based on DNA extracted from only three individuals.</b><br /><br />The genome offered strong support to what had previously been only a hypothesis: that <b>Homo sapiens and the Neanderthals had had a common ancestor who lived about 600,000 years ago. More significantly, it showed that when early Homo sapiens had walked from their original home in Africa into Eurasia, they had encountered Neanderthals there and interbred with them. </b>The Neanderthals were among the genetic ancestors of modern Europeans and Asians (but not of modern Africans). Eurasians today have between 1.5 and 2.1% of Neanderthal DNA.<br /><br />Some readers of this research have found Pääbo’s conclusions a source of comfort. Those wondering what had happened to the Neanderthals 40,000 years ago had long been tempted by a dark speculation: perhaps we, Homo sapiens, with our superior weapons and new microbes, had killed them off. But Pääbo’s conclusions give an otherwise tragic story something of a silver lining: the Neanderthals are still alive, as alive as the archaic Homo sapiens they interbred with. <br /><br /><b>They live on, to use an apt cliche, in us, their (very) hybrid heirs</b>. The one vital trace they have left behind lies in our genes, in the frustrating susceptibility that modern Eurasians with Neanderthal DNA have to burn in the sun and develop Crohn’s disease. Perhaps that is a surer way to restore them to dignity than any other: to see them not as falling prey to our ancestors but as our ancestors.<br /><br />Not all Neanderthal researchers draw such comfort from the DNA studies. <b>Ludovic Slimak thinks the Neanderthals no more live on “in us” than an extinct wolf lives on in the poodle who shares sections of the archaic wolf genome. In Slimak’s way of thinking about the question, the comforting idea that there was no extinction, only a sort of “dilution”,</b> is tantamount to a failure to see that Neanderthals were a genuinely “other” kind of humanity, neither better nor worse, and certainly not “soulless”. “That humanity”, he writes with a brutal brevity, “is extinct, totally extinct.”</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim5dY2xDGdQXQQ_45ML-89svXk6oyoXq_vcE-j7LrPNEhsgm2lDuhM7htAS0oi97JBtYqGgCq6WVIVH2yM3McllL45-wEnlhg3ofFnGg37YlDpsRpGLROXZrM16scUB8EXK09VWuc390kq2hmN2Z2EGCqCQtXoycYHUs1Z7EK16sps5RiV_AfHU1MZTPzx/s1024/svante%20Paabo%20Nobel%20prize%20in%20physiology%2022.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim5dY2xDGdQXQQ_45ML-89svXk6oyoXq_vcE-j7LrPNEhsgm2lDuhM7htAS0oi97JBtYqGgCq6WVIVH2yM3McllL45-wEnlhg3ofFnGg37YlDpsRpGLROXZrM16scUB8EXK09VWuc390kq2hmN2Z2EGCqCQtXoycYHUs1Z7EK16sps5RiV_AfHU1MZTPzx/w400-h266/svante%20Paabo%20Nobel%20prize%20in%20physiology%2022.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Svante Paabo</i><br />Is it really odder to want justice for extinct Neanderthals than it is to want a wrongly convicted friend to be posthumously exonerated? Thinkers dismissed in their lifetimes as kooks or cranks have been vindicated several centuries after their martyrdom, by those who rejoiced that justice had finally been done. It is, if anything, <b>a part of human nature to resist the idea that our interests die with us: a part of our nature, and a beautiful one at that. And it makes one wonder: when the civilizations of Homo sapiens have been reduced to bones and rubble, <i>will our successors on this planet, digging up our mounds of plastic waste, be as anxious to give us our due?</i></b><i><br /></i><br /><a href="https://getpocket.com/explore/item/justice-for-neanderthals-what-the-debate-about-our-long-dead-cousins-reveals-about-us?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://getpocket.com/explore/item/justice-for-neanderthals-what-the-debate-about-our-long-dead-cousins-reveals-about-us?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>ONE APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM OF EVIL<br /></b><br />~ While I don't believe in a comprehensible or caring or loving or personal God, and don't see a creator God as necessary (though such a God would be sufficient), I do like this answer to the Epicurean paradox:<br /><br />This is one of the most common philosophical attacks on theism, and could be considered to be the original problem of evil. There are many different ways theistic philosophers have attempted to address this issue throughout history, but I wanted to focus on the<b> “Could God have created a universe with free will but without evil?”</b> part.<br /><br />This ultimately comes down to how we define omnipotence. Normally when we hear that term, we think “The ability to do anything.” The term literally means all powerful or holding unlimited power. <b>But what about things that are logically impossible? Could God create a square circle? If he couldn’t, what would that say about him being omnipotent?<br /></b><br />Most philosophers agree that while omnipotence entails power over everything else in existence, it doesn’t entail the ability to do the logically impossible. Thus God could not create a universe with free will and without evil, because evil is a natural result of free will. Free will without evil wouldn’t be free will at all and would be logically incoherent. This doesn’t mean God isn’t omnipotent, it means <b>he can’t do what’s logically impossible.<br /></b><br />This paradox only works for those who define omnipotence as the ability to do anything, even the logically impossible. For those who define omnipotence the way it has been traditionally understood by philosophers there is nothing incoherent about this issue. ~ Sandy McReynolds, Facebook <br /></span><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4jOWkmyZnbVKLgrb4G6GUwkGemTcgtqoamhfgZWo-uAx4C-OuyIVfUvwNeneCP4ZCrcQJVLttNJor82dhUM8phSVwEeniVhOif8dHdrGi_e-og5O94qdk9tr8tIHKyv-UNVJXrjZ2O51P-JIGrBD_flgKOrNQVyPvqKwfxtSizXzvbE9ZwsbWhQOane9U/s578/Tintoretto%20animals%20unicorn%201550%20Creation-Of-The-Animals.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="349" data-original-width="578" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4jOWkmyZnbVKLgrb4G6GUwkGemTcgtqoamhfgZWo-uAx4C-OuyIVfUvwNeneCP4ZCrcQJVLttNJor82dhUM8phSVwEeniVhOif8dHdrGi_e-og5O94qdk9tr8tIHKyv-UNVJXrjZ2O51P-JIGrBD_flgKOrNQVyPvqKwfxtSizXzvbE9ZwsbWhQOane9U/w400-h241/Tintoretto%20animals%20unicorn%201550%20Creation-Of-The-Animals.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Tintoretto: Creation<br /></i><br /> *<br /><b>VACCINES MAY PROTECT THE BRAIN AGAINST DEMENTIA<br /></b><br />There are many good reasons to get a flu shot this fall, but here’s one that might surprise you: It could protect your brain.<br /><br /><b>Recent research suggests that regular vaccinations against influenza and other infectious diseases such as shingles, pneumococcal pneumonia, and tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis (whooping cough) may reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.</b><br /><br />“Vaccines are the great public health success story of our generation,” said Paul E. Schulz, professor of neurology and director of the Neurocognitive Disorders Center at the McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, who led several of the studies. “They keep you safe from any number of infections, many of which can be life-threatening. And now it appears there is another tremendous benefit, this one against a disease that is among the most feared.”<br /><br /><b>A number of studies have found that people receiving vaccinations for flu and several other infectious diseases appear less likely than the unvaccinated to develop dementia, although scientists aren’t sure why</b>. Some believe that infectious agents play a role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease and that vaccinations help by preventing or reducing the likelihood of getting these infections.<br /><br /><b>Alternatively, Schulz speculates that </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>vaccines may curb an immune system reaction to amyloid plaque</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">, a naturally occurring protein found in abnormally high levels in Alzheimer’s. </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>The immune system sees plaque as a foreign invader and attacks it, causing chronic brain inflammation and the death of nearby neurons, which contribute to dementia</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>.</b><br /><br /><b>In quelling the immune response to amyloid, vaccines may save brain cells that the body’s immune system might otherwise kill, he said</b>. </span></p><p><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">It’s also possible that vaccines strengthen the immune system’s ability to get rid of plaque. </span></b></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Less plaque lead to less inflammation and less brain cell loss,” Schulz said, adding: “We aren’t sure yet exactly what the mechanism is, but something is going on with the brain and the immune system that seems to make a big difference.”<br /><br />Schulz led a recent study that found a statistically significant difference in the incidence of Alzheimer’s after following two groups — one vaccinated against flu, the other unvaccinated — for up to eight years.<br /><br />In the flu study, the researchers took participants from a national patient database, two groups of 935,887 each, one group vaccinated, the other not. To avoid the potential influence of various factors that could affect the results, <b>the scientists ensured that each group shared many of the same characteristics, such as age, gender, how frequently they went to the doctor, and certain medical conditions, such as high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol.<br /></b><br /><b>Schulz and his colleagues found that an annual flu vaccination for three consecutive years reduced the dementia risk 20 percent over the next four to eight years, while six shots doubled it to a 40-percent reduction.</b><br /><br />There were 47,889 cases of dementia in the vaccinated group, compared with 79,630 in the unvaccinated participants — a difference of more than 30,000 cases, Schulz said.<br /><br />SIMILAR RESULTS FROM OTHER VACCINES<br /><br />In another study, <b>his team found similar results with vaccines for other infectious diseases, including shingles, pneumococcal pneumonia and the combination of tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis (whooping cough), known as Tdap, or with tetanus and diphtheria without the pertussis component.</b><br /><br />With the shingles vaccines, for example, (Zostavax, the early shingles vaccine, and Shingrix, the most recent one), the researchers compared 198,847 patients who were vaccinated to an equal number who were not, Schulz said. Among the vaccinated, 16,106 patients developed Alzheimer’s during the eight-year follow-up, compared with 21,417 of the unvaccinated — or 5,311 fewer patients in the vaccinated group got dementia.<br /><br /><b>With Tdap and Td vaccines, the researchers compared two groups of 116,400 patients each, one vaccinated, one not. In the vaccinated, 8,370 individuals developed dementia over the eight years, compared with 11,857 in the unvaccinated — 3,487 fewer patients among the vaccinated.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">With the pneumococcal vaccine, they compared two groups of 260,037 each, one group vaccinated, the other unvaccinated, and recorded 20,583 dementia cases among the vaccinated after eight years, compared with 28,558 unvaccinated people — 7,975 fewer patients in the vaccinated group, Schulz said.<br /><br />In two studies conducted in the United Kingdom — still unpublished and under peer review — researchers at Stanford University found similar results. The first, <b>among an older population in Wales, suggests that vaccination with Zostavax prevented an estimated 1 in 5 new dementia cases during a seven-year period</b>, said Pascal Geldsetzer, assistant professor of medicine in the division of primary care and population health at Stanford University, who led the research.<br /><br /><b>The second analyzed mortality data for England and Wales and found a 5 percent difference in the probability of dying from dementia — or 1 in 20 deaths averted — during a nine-year follow-up.<br /></b><br />For both studies, the scientists established two groups for comparison purposes based on the country’s birth date eligibility requirements. Those who turned 80 just before the vaccine program started were not eligible for the vaccine, and remained ineligible, while those who turned 80 just after the program began received the vaccine free over the course of the following year.<br /><br /><b>“It is likely that the only difference between the two comparison groups was a tiny difference in age, but a large difference in the probability of getting the shingles vaccine,” Geldsetzer said. “That makes our study fundamentally different in its approach to studies that simply compare people who get vaccinated with those who don’t. </b>We think that our findings from this unique natural randomization <b>strongly suggest a causal relationship.”<br /></b><br />Experts said more studies were needed to determine the effects of the vaccine on the brain.<br /><br /><b>There may be undetectable factors that distinguish the vaccinated from the unvaccinated</b>, despite researchers’ efforts to control for them, such as prior head injuries, genetics or environmental exposures, said William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University.<br /><br />Regardless, experts agree that people should get their shots.<i><b> “All this requires further studies, but vaccination, along with good diet, exercise, intellectual and emotional stimulation are key factors for healthy aging,” Hotez said.</b></i><br /><br /><b>No one should suffer from preventable diseases, Schaffner said: “Vaccinations are a critical means of staying well and living a healthy life.”<br /></b><br /><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/10/25/flu-shots-alzheimers-dementias-vaccinations-infectious-diseases/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/10/25/flu-shots-alzheimers-dementias-vaccinations-infectious-diseases/<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>BEST DIETS</b><br /><br />It's the season for resolutions — and <b>the annual "Best Diets" rankings from U.S. News & World Report.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>For 2024, the Mediterranean diet once again took the spot for best overall diet.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">With its emphasis on intake of fruits, vegetables, olive oil, and fish as well as on diet quality rather than a single nutrient or food group, the Mediterranean diet has now held that title for seven consecutive years.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">It also placed first in six of 10 other categories: best diet for diabetes, best heart-healthy diet, easiest diet to follow, best diet for bone and joint health, best family-friendly diet, and best diet for healthy eating.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The
Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, which is known for
fighting high blood pressure and preventing or controlling diabetes,
again came in a runner-up for best overall diet</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">. It tied for second place last year with the Flexitarian diet, a semi-vegetarian diet that emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and plant-based protein; this year the Flexitarian diet took first place among the plant-based diets.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">However, rounding out 2024's top three was a contender that didn't make it onto last year's podium: the Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) diet. The diet combines elements of the DASH and Mediterranean diets, with a focus on foods that improve brain health to potentially lower risk of mental decline, U.S. News explained.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Best Overall Diets</b><br />Mediterranean (overall score: 85.1%)<br />DASH (75.4%)<br />MIND (60.7%)<br /><br /><b>Best Weight-Loss Diets</b><br />WeightWatchers<br />Mediterranean<br />Volumetrics<br /><br /><b>Best Fast Weight-Loss Diets</b><br />Keto<br />Atkins<br />HMR program (meal-replacement shakes)<br /><br /><b>Best Diets for Diabetes</b><br />Mediterranean<br />DASH<br />Flexitarian<br /><br /><b>Best Heart-Healthy Diets</b><br />Mediterranean<br />DASH<br />Ornish<br /><br /><b>Easiest Diets to Follow</b><br />Mediterranean<br />Flexitarian<br />DASH<br /><br /><b>Best Diets for Bone and Joint Health</b><br />Mediterranean<br />DASH<br />Flexitarian<br /><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ1h00HyMWFqdmnfrGjMtkr2CJ3e3nJcLry96Q5l28hXnIkBSpF4vLMIetmb5Mp_6LDkljPOFrkWrm4AIV9rbpl9wsxcqMN4YUySKK0_qQmf5o6YPV2tt4nLEyz58ozuwdoLX52lRl6kY0Gl91ze_F_XZditraMdshyphenhyphenbqw6_jU76G-nJXHTPf2REOE5FRt/s2220/vegetarian%20food.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1488" data-original-width="2220" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ1h00HyMWFqdmnfrGjMtkr2CJ3e3nJcLry96Q5l28hXnIkBSpF4vLMIetmb5Mp_6LDkljPOFrkWrm4AIV9rbpl9wsxcqMN4YUySKK0_qQmf5o6YPV2tt4nLEyz58ozuwdoLX52lRl6kY0Gl91ze_F_XZditraMdshyphenhyphenbqw6_jU76G-nJXHTPf2REOE5FRt/w400-h268/vegetarian%20food.png" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><i><b>Ending on beauty:</b><br /></i><br />After trying many years, and then<br />near death, the able man may know<br />an image living in the alpine stone.<br />If at all, the high and new come slowly,<br /><br />and, for us, they do not last so long.<br />Oh my beloved! nature's like that too,<br />who tried for beauty times untold<br />until she triumphed, and made you.<br /><br />Yet by that token she is old<br />and almost at the end of her career.<br />So terror, which is always near<br />to beauty, feeds desire strange food.<br /><br />My mind falls silent and no longer says<br />if joy or pain be more: the sight<br />of you calls forth the End of Days,<br />yet gives me great delight.<br /><br />~ Michelangelo</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXK4EGFGqgkVBJRLhIOYuMJ15qdZvj9EmMuDl4fol0CCT7otKlS5xOYmc9OhKwyqQWcRdLOIhYSXaa-XwG3fQP5dJ8OK1gu84gdkhqP0R8n-3PUGVB6vPXiD2s8VK4iHWnibjWQafRHNg32DvPaOgcLF7iS1Hnqa95jVaeuYVWEjMj93CJviMJRLoMr60O/s438/pieta%20color%20Michelangelo.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="438" data-original-width="422" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXK4EGFGqgkVBJRLhIOYuMJ15qdZvj9EmMuDl4fol0CCT7otKlS5xOYmc9OhKwyqQWcRdLOIhYSXaa-XwG3fQP5dJ8OK1gu84gdkhqP0R8n-3PUGVB6vPXiD2s8VK4iHWnibjWQafRHNg32DvPaOgcLF7iS1Hnqa95jVaeuYVWEjMj93CJviMJRLoMr60O/w385-h400/pieta%20color%20Michelangelo.jpg" width="385" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-32722581714377582092023-12-31T15:57:00.000-08:002024-01-04T20:19:00.039-08:00WHY ISLAM FORBIDS PORK; THE RISE (AGAIN) OF GLOBAL ANTI-SEMITISM; THE PROFOUND EFFECTS OF LIVING LONGER; THE SOVIET UNION AS A NEGATIVE MODEL; ANOTHER GLANCE AT THE JFK ASSASSINATION; LIBERATION THEOLOGY; DOES ISLAM TEACH VIOLENCE? ICE CREAM FOR BREAKFAST: THE NEW SUPERFOOD? <p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR6ibyYpLGcZstgErnYW8wYuCya_Ss3ei6KuAyH4WyeMp833Ojg-Emc6V_kleDq7fJulMyEvoe1KKC0hq19KnUDzQafhlO4SUvgaPnkw2o78ziRTr9YhG97Y70y7QwaOSwsUXaOZ53pFMSfnniIweurZntxOl3cY5qSPSNOoIF3qsUufoQZFzk5mBmTftR/s1024/Urbania%20Italy.jpg" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="1024" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR6ibyYpLGcZstgErnYW8wYuCya_Ss3ei6KuAyH4WyeMp833Ojg-Emc6V_kleDq7fJulMyEvoe1KKC0hq19KnUDzQafhlO4SUvgaPnkw2o78ziRTr9YhG97Y70y7QwaOSwsUXaOZ53pFMSfnniIweurZntxOl3cY5qSPSNOoIF3qsUufoQZFzk5mBmTftR/w400-h209/Urbania%20Italy.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Urbania, Italy</i></span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br />WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS <br /><br />What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?<br /><br /> The barbarians are due here today.<br /><br />Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?<br />Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?<br /><br /> Because the barbarians are coming today.<br /> What’s the point of senators making laws now?<br /> Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.<br /><br />Why did our emperor get up so early,<br />and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,<br />in state, wearing the crown?<br /><br /> Because the barbarians are coming today<br /> and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader.<br /> He’s even got a scroll to give him,<br /> loaded with titles, with imposing names.<br /><br />Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today<br />wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?<br />Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,<br />rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?<br />Why are they carrying elegant canes<br />beautifully worked in silver and gold?<br /><br /> Because the barbarians are coming today<br /> and things like that dazzle the barbarians.<br /><br />Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual<br />to make their speeches, say what they have to say?<br /><br /> Because the barbarians are coming today<br /> and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.<br /><br />Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?<br />(How serious people’s faces have become.)<br />Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,<br />everyone going home lost in thought?<br /><br /> Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come.<br /> And some of our men just in from the border say<br /> there are no barbarians any longer.<br /><br />Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?<br />Those people were a kind of solution.<br /><br />~ C. P. Cavafy; </span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #351c75; display: inline; float: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Russian translation by Nina Kossman, reverse translation by<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Facebook</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDUw92KRIaqEHG2QIPRX3QJSWp2oY0EGNv0w8z9qzTWTfM7OxBiP-9lBrxKNMp1naYlJfz_wfv99rKzrpX5yPyU2U02-kGd5GMdldt_8p-G4YPULQgosmKrKD-RJa7iqBDCPja0m7hyMkq9GSZ9vuwlZv3tyv3RedmNTqsK_4NQLaRBebu9MKOGc11o-HS/s1000/barbarians%20Cesar%20Gaul.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1000" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDUw92KRIaqEHG2QIPRX3QJSWp2oY0EGNv0w8z9qzTWTfM7OxBiP-9lBrxKNMp1naYlJfz_wfv99rKzrpX5yPyU2U02-kGd5GMdldt_8p-G4YPULQgosmKrKD-RJa7iqBDCPja0m7hyMkq9GSZ9vuwlZv3tyv3RedmNTqsK_4NQLaRBebu9MKOGc11o-HS/w400-h266/barbarians%20Cesar%20Gaul.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>"I am here to be mad, not to write.”<br /></b><br />Robert Walser, a brilliant writer deeply relevant to our times, who spent the last twenty-seven years of his life in a mental institution, responding to visiting journalist's question as to why he was not writing anymore.<br /><br />In “The Walk,” his most famous short story, he describes a stroll through a rural landscape in the minutest of fantastic and tragically funny detail. Here he is, on that walk from Herisau to Wil, Austria, in 1939.<br /><br />At seventy-eight, he disappeared from that mental asylum in Herisau and later was found dead in the snow.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYGB3PyJWWy1NMQ7Ue82Y5GxWS-Fk_0OBvvVZj7bzp01Ns-PnNaNLezteuf2gT5OEvskckM5mtZWkSap2nkLAouyiP-VIVuB6p_MdYTWdRJc6VLD9L6ilJ9mWOsyGAa63q2tJikaECTQxGfxrrAhNKhxRWw8yMZNgvlOxFMAz1VjXYMVqYcBmttCyfNjzP/s1200/robert%20Walser%20Austria%201939.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="846" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYGB3PyJWWy1NMQ7Ue82Y5GxWS-Fk_0OBvvVZj7bzp01Ns-PnNaNLezteuf2gT5OEvskckM5mtZWkSap2nkLAouyiP-VIVuB6p_MdYTWdRJc6VLD9L6ilJ9mWOsyGAa63q2tJikaECTQxGfxrrAhNKhxRWw8yMZNgvlOxFMAz1VjXYMVqYcBmttCyfNjzP/w283-h400/robert%20Walser%20Austria%201939.jpg" width="283" /></a></div></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>ONE PERSON’S REACTION TO SEEING THE VIDEO COMPILATION OF OCTOBER 7 ATROCITIES</b><br /><br />~ Truthfully, I did not want to be asked to come. But I also knew that if I were asked, I would have to go. To bear witness. <br /><br />Here are my initial thoughts:<br /><br />1. <b>The joy, the gleeful laughter, the depraved happiness over killing Jews. The exclamations of celebration over death and pain. The callousness, inhuman pleasure and amusement over slaughtering innocent lives. The shameless brutality.</b> These are monsters. They can never be rehabilitated. They can never be forgiven.<br /><br />2. The systematic, organized, methodical approach to killing. Go back and shoot this person in the head. Make sure those girls are dead. <b>The organization of mass killing. We’ve seen this before: organized chains of command, strong communications, uniforms.<br /></b><br />3. The Gazan ‘innocent civilians’ who came over the border in the third wave that morning, to <b>loot, rape, kill, and capture bodies, live and dead, for Hamas rewards. And the joy of the ‘innocent civilians’ who rejoiced in the streets as hostages and bodies were paraded in the streets.</b> <b>The cheering. The spitting and kicking and beating. The hate. The cruelty. The social acceptance of kidnapping and killing Jews in Palestinian society.<br /></b><br />There are images seared into my brain that haunt me now.<br /><br />The two boys seeing their father killed, watching as a terrorist takes a bottle of coke out of their fridge.<br /><br />The tortured and raped young girl with her underwear around her ankles, joints bent backwards.<br /><br />The girls screaming.<br /><br />The burned bodies, wrists tied behind their backs.<br /><br />Mutilated corpses.<br /><br />The first responder trying to find live bodies and realizing that everyone, everyone around him was killed.<br /><br />As I walked out of the screening room <b>there were Israelis in the corridor, just hugging people who were walking out crying</b>. ~ Dov Ben-Shimon, Facebook<br /><br />*<br /><b>DOES ISLAM TEACH MUSLIMS TO BE VIOLENT?</b> <br /><br />(Muslims interpret verses from the Quran relating to committing violence to only be done out of self defense and that Prophet Muhammad pbuh never initiated wars himself.)<br /><br />~ The thing you need to realize is that Islam has messed up definitions for words and phrases we in the West take for granted and Islam means something totally different in their use of these words.<b> Islam is a war cult intent on taking over the world. Islam wouldn’t be where it is if it was a passive movement of non-aggression.</b></span><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Islam believes in</b> <b>self-defense as defense of Islam being able to exist and propagate.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b> If you disrespected Islam in anyway, Muslims will turn violent and attack you and think they are perfectly in the legal and moral right to do so as they were defending the honor of their religion.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">When these gunmen stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo and gunned down 12 people for drawing Mohammed cartoons, you saw news videos of them screaming <b>“We have defended the honor of our prophet” while shooting people dead. Every Muslim afterwards thought they didn’t do a single thing wrong.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Try going to the youtube channels for the news reports of these Charlie Hebdo attacks and read the comments left by Muslims. You will see Muslims in the comments universally all saying<b> “they did nothing wrong that day, Charlie Hebdo deserved to die for disrespecting our prophet.”</b> Same applies to the Samuel Paty incident and the Batley Grammar school and every other issue where a follower of Islam turned violent onto someone for them disrespecting Islam.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Same with the Israel / Palestine conflict. Piers Morgan has been having supposedly respectable <b>Muslim scholars </b>on his show to interview them. <b>Not a single one of them think Hamas did anything wrong on October 7th. They all think it was justified resistance of Jewish oppression against Islam.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">These scholars think legitimate “self-defense” is Muslims flying on paragliders into Israel and mass raping and killing a bunch of teenagers attending peace concert they setup trying to achieve peace with Palestine. And they won’t have it any other way.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">You need to realize what Islam means by "you can only be violent in self-defense." It means self-defense of Islam. It does not mean individual Muslims self-defense.<b> You can be the aggressor and just go and kill people if doing that somehow furthers the goals of Islam.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Islam is an evil violent cult. Anytime in Islam you see something that sounds nice and rosy and pacifist. Keep reading the scriptures and you will see you’ve misunderstood and it means something else completely. ~ Anthony, Quora</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;">Mary:<br />Islam does not teach Muslims to be violent — <b>violence is a requirement. </b>Notice that the violence, the hideous brutality carried out against Jews, cartoonists, anyone who has "disrespected" them, their prophet, their "holy book," is NEVER criticized by any Muslim ever. It's all just fine with them. More than fine, they cheer and grin and celebrate in monstrous and barbaric joy. Make no mistake, "the barbarians are here" wherever there are Muslims.<br /><br />In fact, the only example I can think of, at least equal in its barbarism, is the rites and rituals of the Aztecs, whose altars flowed with human blood and who used human skulls as architectural elements. Islam's horrific depersonalization of women, its psychopatholoy of sexuality cannot be ignored or excused away. Islam admires, and demands grotesqueries like "honor killings," rape as a terrorist weapon, and the mass murders terrorists employ to further their agenda. An agenda set out in their basic tenets — death to all infidels, the whole world transformed into an Islamic state.<br /><br />You cannot negotiate any peace with an enemy who will settle for nothing less than your annihilation, and thinks that would be the holiest of acts, blessed by god.</span><span style="color: #351c75;"> </span></p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Anne Harris Wyckoff: <br />Absolutely none of the violent passages from the Bible are open-ended commands. The Quran and Hadith contain open-ended commands to kill anyone who leaves Islam and anyone deemed an “Infidel.”</span><br /><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">J. Pierre Baspeyre:<br />For Bible interpretation, there is the distinction between descriptive passages and prescriptive passages. The description of what happened is one thing; prescription is another distinction present for the Koran.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Also,<i><b> the Bible contains the Old Testament and the New Testament, the old culminating in the teachings of Jesus, whose teachings can be unequivocally summed up in the Sermon on the Mount and the word ‘’love’’: love your neighbor including your enemies.</b><br /></i><br />Steve Bloxham:<br />You don’t understand.<b> It's gone way beyond logic and common decency</b>. Do you understand what happened on Oct 7? Enough attempts have been made to bring Muslims into the brotherhood of mankind. I lived with Muslims in Michigan. I would give them every benefit of the doubt. I hope they want to be good citizens. <b>Yet too many of them still support killing a cartoonist for making fun of Mohammed. It's perplexing. And sad. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>We want to welcome them. Then they happily kill us</b>. And raise their children to kill for these things. It's just unbelievable until we see it done by those who we thought were our friends. It's beyond ridiculous. It is beyond understanding. There is no gray zone. The time has come for the two cultures to go their separate ways. It's sad and hard to see that this is necessary. God knows we tried.<br /><br />Beth Ann Dvorak:<br /><b>Maybe it’s just the culture of Arab nationalism that tends towards violence and not the religion</b>.<br /><br />Anthony:<br />5:32 effectively instructs Muslims to kill to stop corruption from spreading in the land. <b>Islam classifies doing anything against Islam is corruption in the land. If you doubt that then 5:33 says it more directly to kill anyone who does anything against Islam.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Any book that tells its followers you can kill everyone on earth if you want to is evil.<br /><br />Kladyn Amundsen:<br />“Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and spread mischief in the land is death, crucifixion, cutting off their hands and feet on opposite sides, or exile from the land. This penalty is a disgrace for them in this world, and they will suffer a tremendous punishment in the Hereafter.”<br /><br />Douglas Jacobs:<br />It depends on what is considered evil.<br /><br />It is against Israel’s law to rape, as well as most countries and cultures, but does that make it “evil”?<br /><br /><b>Allah, by way of Muhammad, said it is OK to rape women which you possess, therefore it is not evil.</b><br /><br />The Hamas freedom fighters possessed the women that they raped, therefore it was not “evil". The rapes would be considered wrong by most standards, but not in Islam.<br /><br />By some definitions, rape is considered “evil"; by Islam standards, it is not, if you possess the woman. It all depends on the definition of “evil.” <br /><br />Tim Hardy:<br /><b>Islam is full of rapists</b>. That is a fact, not just what I think. <b>It really is a violent, evil cult, supported by people who have been indoctrinated.</b><br /><br />Anonymous;<br />I'm getting tired of those who are in denial. <b>Not every Muslim is violent..... but let's stop pretending that Islam doesn't have a problem.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfnNxOjRBIO5W0CDBn2UpTJ2NS2bdNXlAONgUnkAvuPUeCKeIh-PyPihxyyvv9O4oflZ4Dswm4EliYOhMtXXj5moFE6J2il6EE6J5LMQZ6giOQ4-6hZW-cOPJninQnDxjRiFcVowpgxG81ipUujJUVu3u8bsC7rgZNGWrrNZBwOTW-9X7sKg4qZYFUhcf5/s550/barbarian%20crush%20media.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="494" data-original-width="550" height="359" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfnNxOjRBIO5W0CDBn2UpTJ2NS2bdNXlAONgUnkAvuPUeCKeIh-PyPihxyyvv9O4oflZ4Dswm4EliYOhMtXXj5moFE6J2il6EE6J5LMQZ6giOQ4-6hZW-cOPJninQnDxjRiFcVowpgxG81ipUujJUVu3u8bsC7rgZNGWrrNZBwOTW-9X7sKg4qZYFUhcf5/w400-h359/barbarian%20crush%20media.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b> </b><br />*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">This child of a Muslim terrorist is holding up a decapitated head.<br /><br />[Oriana: I decided to omit the photo, even though it was partly blacked out already. The obscene thing is that the child is clearly happy and proud.]<br /><br /><b>When are progressives going to start criticizing Islam? They loathe and revile Christianity and Judaism, and yet inexplicably think that any criticism of Islam is racist and intolerant.</b> Laughable for a number of reasons including the fact that Islam is not a freaking race. It's a religion.<br /><br />Kevin Dwyer:<br />Islam has not gone through a Reformation like Christianity, and it has no single voice like the Pope speaking for all Catholics.<br /><br />So... <b>peaceful-minded people pick and choose which parts they follow, and extremist-minded people find what they are looking for as well.<br /></b><br />Some religions are more attractive to extremists than others, but <b>a better predictor of violence seems be societal rather than religious. A peaceful prosperous society tends to breed peaceful prosperous people. A rigidly intolerant society is fertile ground for extremism.<br /></b><br />Gawaine Ross:<br /><b>“Carnage is better than idolatry,” said the angel Gabriel. ("Slay them wherever you find them...Idolatry is worse than carnage...Fight against them until idolatry is no more and God's religion reigns supreme." (Surah 2:190-)<br /></b><br />Nor is that quote taken out of context. The Quran breathes fire against unbelievers and <b>is the most violent scripture ever written.</b><br /><br />Blasphemy, sacrilege and apostasy are capital offenses in Islam. Apostasy means abandoning Islam after conversion. If you convert, you will be in a prison from which there is no escape. Islam is all about becoming a slave of Allah, which is regarded as a holy act, because then you can’t sin any more.<br /><br />George Graham:<br /><b>In 12 Muslim countries atheism is punishable by death. Apostates don't seem to fare much better. Other religions are treated as inferior and their adherents discriminated against</b>. They seem to be incapable of offering their citizens equality in diversity or justice equality under the law.<br /><br />Joshua Kaplan:<br />What we all do know is that while the majority of Muslims are peace-loving people, <b>there is a minority that does seek to cause violence and mayhem to non-Muslims. They may be a small minority but they are obviously large enough to significantly effect the security of the rest of the world.</b><br /><br />Often this violence is obvious and unabashedly self-declared by the perpetrators as Jihad against infidels. In other cases it is masked or excused as politically or self defense motivated. There are conflicts and attacks that are genuinely motivated by secular reasons but the overlap of rhetoric, tactics and groups involved between secular and religious conflicts is significant that it is often difficult to determine objective motivations.<br /><br /><i><b>Being that most of the violence is perpetrated by a relatively small minority, it should not be that difficult for the majority to address the issue and if not put an end to the violence, at least make it clear that it is not something that the vast majority has any agreement with or part in. This begs the question: Why has this not happened?</b><br /></i><br />In my humble opinion, the very first step must be the admission by the general Muslim population that the problem exists.<br /><br />It is much easier to believe in a conspiracy by unknown forces (be it the C.I.A., the Zionists, rich Jewish bankers, Hollywood etc), then to believe that your deeply held religious convictions — of which you are certain have nothing to do with promoting violence — are somehow the motivation behind such evil acts.<br /><br />But it is this, conscious or unconscious, willful blindness that must be dealt with before any hope of Islamic violence disappears.<br /><br />Frank Dauerhauer:<br />This is a naive question. You could just as well ask “Why are humans violent?” <b>You should qualify it in some way, such as, “Why are some Muslims violent, and other Muslims peaceful?”</b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: georgia;"><span>Joe Milosch:</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: georgia;"><span><b></b>After three months of death and destruction, there is no moral or strategic reason for Israel to continue the destruction of the Gaza Strip, and Netanyahu’s strategy of unshackled violence is responsible for Bethlehem’s cancellation of its Christmas celebrations. Maybe the citizens of Christ’s birthplace realized that the term God’s Love is a euphemism for His vengeance. On television, pictures of the rubble of Mosques, churches, hospitals, schools, and houses showed that Netanyahu plans to bomb the Palestinians out of existence. Automatically, the Israeli government labels the above as antisemitic, but today, almost the entire world views the continued bombing of Gaza as overkill.<br /><br />Hamas’ attack was horrendous, but Netanyahu’s refusal to fight within the expected norms of battle is turning the world against his war. Despite this, people continue to look at the Muslim religion as though violence is a doctrine that is either explicitly or implicitly taught in religious schools and mosques. <br /><br />Islam does not teach violence more than any other religion. A study showed that the Mayan civilization started in one village that was very successful in agriculture. After the harvest, other tribes would raid and steal their food. To protect themselves, they formed an army, and to ensure their success, the religious leaders found a god of war to pray to, and he demanded continual human sacrifice. This practice led to a never-ending state of war and an empire. The Mayan empire began the same way as the ancient empires of the Middle East.<br /><br />Today, some religious scholars believe that the deity of war became the God that the Judeo-Christian-Muslim religions believe in. At first, worship required human sacrifices, but animals were less expensive, and eventually, the high priests discovered that prayer was the most economical way of appeasing the gods. <br /><br />Today, every country has a dominant religion, and to keep the religious leaders powerful and wealthy, religion supports hatred of the other. The leaders use the idea of God’s love to con people into joining them, and as a person regularly attends religious services, they become indoctrinated into the army of Christ, The Ark, or The Jihad. The war in the Gaza Strip is proof of the successful implementation of the old axiom priests: God-sanctified hatred is more satisfying than His love. Thus, every war is a religious war, and it is invalid to claim that Islam is a more violent religion than Christianity or Judaism. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: georgia;"><span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I think that Christianity went through its period of violence, aka "Trail of Blood."I'm thinking of the Crusades and the Inquisition. But that was long ago. Islam has never had a Reformation, and seems still stuck in its violent stage. I realize that, as practically always, most Muslim are not violent, but it's the violent ones who get all the publicity. They can quote the Koran on how to treat Jews: "Kill them wherever you find them." </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: georgia;"><span>Joe:</span></span></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #073763; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Yes, you are right. It is the violent minority, but the majority seldom steps in until it is too late.</span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz6UUUxue9h4mhNHCLbC_2sTX7KkZhSmEMNha8P5wyAJQmU8KH5wGdOVyAzOqGpXkkG2JJvr6DG8UDQIOLiC9hRQpeeN08Y61chTgsNxBhO-MynrcLh33ww49aTwd6W9xOGOsPVQdzXzTWVG0bleIkEft10aepZln5_uWXgyPRODmUlwQz71B_EC1uyIV0/s1920/mosque%20in%20Moscow.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="1440" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz6UUUxue9h4mhNHCLbC_2sTX7KkZhSmEMNha8P5wyAJQmU8KH5wGdOVyAzOqGpXkkG2JJvr6DG8UDQIOLiC9hRQpeeN08Y61chTgsNxBhO-MynrcLh33ww49aTwd6W9xOGOsPVQdzXzTWVG0bleIkEft10aepZln5_uWXgyPRODmUlwQz71B_EC1uyIV0/w300-h400/mosque%20in%20Moscow.jpg" width="300" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Mosque in Moscow</i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>“NEVER AGAIN IS NOW”<br /></b><br />“Never again is now" was projected onto the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin for the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht — photo on November 9, 2023<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUSlOSpJUiMLhyphenhyphenBOuk0FLZu0zUjDeoZFoSTs0fem45Z7w-K_FLyhd5Y9v75gpdRO-aEG1_LCwH642KJGV2pRKr-uNKlfr8wXT-BF8ZxIx0asQVx0jG2YKHhYdlari1KmcCNCvPn53f4chcTbCIOLxbwddCwIvI2aMtM72_79InLIqGTmWsMd6ki_ivg24u/s1024/NEVER%20AGAIN%20brandenburg%20gate.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUSlOSpJUiMLhyphenhyphenBOuk0FLZu0zUjDeoZFoSTs0fem45Z7w-K_FLyhd5Y9v75gpdRO-aEG1_LCwH642KJGV2pRKr-uNKlfr8wXT-BF8ZxIx0asQVx0jG2YKHhYdlari1KmcCNCvPn53f4chcTbCIOLxbwddCwIvI2aMtM72_79InLIqGTmWsMd6ki_ivg24u/w400-h266/NEVER%20AGAIN%20brandenburg%20gate.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>THE RISE (AGAIN) OF GLOBAL ANTISEMITISM<br /></b><br />~ Many of us don't understand what is going on, why global antisemitism rears its ugly head with such force. Actually, it's very simple. <b>The Jew is not supposed to fight back. The Jew is supposed to go to his death like a lamb to the slaughter. And he did so, many-many times throughout history. </b>(Please note that when I say " the Jew," I am speaking about the collective rather than an individual Jewish person.) If he does, the world will commiserate with him, light up its Eiffel Towers in the colors of his flag, build museums in his memory with objects plundered from burned synagogues and nostalgic photos of what Jewish life was like in "Jewish places," etcetera. <br /><br />But if he fights back, he becomes, in the subconscious of all nations, the representative of Evil, the concentration of everything they repress in themselves. <b>When the Jew is strong, he is hated. </b>When the Jew is weak (or dead), he is loved (or laughed at, the way one laughs at something that seemed dangerous but proved to be no more than a popped bubble). We've seen it plenty of times. In a nutshell, <b>the Jew is not allowed to be strong, and antisemitism rears its head as soon as he, the Jew, insists on his right to live and to be strong (to crush his very real enemies ) no matter what.</b><br /><br />This changes only when the Jew himself "changes". <b>He is allowed to be strong only if he renounces being a Jew, i.e. if he converts or simply stops identifying as a Jew, although there are exceptions to this rule: the Inquisition tortured converted Jews ("marranos") until they "confessed" to being Jews. </b><br /><br />And in the Soviet Union, as we know, even renouncing one's Jewishness wasn't enough; even when religion was no longer part of "being a Jew," there was that infamous line #5 in Soviet passports, and if you managed to hide under a Russian "nationality," you could still be outed, there was the evidence of your last name and if, say, you managed to hide your Jewishness under a non-Jewish sounding name, there were other signs that gave you away — your "long nose", your "dark hair", etc. <br /><br /><b>As for Nazi Germany, it killed even quarter-Jews, i.e., even those who had one Jewish grandparent and who did not identify as Jews at all.</b> I could go on and on listing exceptions to the rule of "we'll accept you if you stop being a Jew," but Facebook requires brevity. This mystery, the origins of antisemitism, puzzled me for years. I read a lot about it, and even wrote a 300-page novel ("Queen of the Jews"), examining the roots of antisemitism from antiquity to our time, in some detail. ~ Nina Kossman, Facebook <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJvaNU2vbfuxxb3Fg2sQ2Yf9_DjSVJg_oce_VWFJEpzEcgrZ1AwRK4YMxF6ZCa9GWTIsGKUrQSBv5e9wrBpGBRf9V2055pPAAEu-FfmIIFJ0Cq5TleWRO2irMp6Iqc9oM_IIsJ1gtezG4utIo1Gqle-cUPuWOy_Gs8PosxfG4_kZcd7AerFgpS9oTGhoh9/s1024/jerusalem%20wailing%20wall.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJvaNU2vbfuxxb3Fg2sQ2Yf9_DjSVJg_oce_VWFJEpzEcgrZ1AwRK4YMxF6ZCa9GWTIsGKUrQSBv5e9wrBpGBRf9V2055pPAAEu-FfmIIFJ0Cq5TleWRO2irMp6Iqc9oM_IIsJ1gtezG4utIo1Gqle-cUPuWOy_Gs8PosxfG4_kZcd7AerFgpS9oTGhoh9/w400-h266/jerusalem%20wailing%20wall.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Jerusalem, Wailing Wall</i><br /><br />*<br /><b>PUTIN’S CLAIM TO “HISTORICAL JUSTICE” (Dima Vorobiev)<br /></b><br />President Putin started the Ukraine war out of the logic of historical justice.<br /><br /><b>Our story</b><br /><br />In his 2021 treatise “On historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” our beloved ruler says that our nations are basically twins separated almost at birth because of enemies. The attempts of nationalists in Kiev to assert a Ukrainian identity that is separate from and even hostile to Russia must therefore be nothing more than an evil Russophobic plot.<br /><br />One of the last big news in Russia was our head of the Supreme Court bringing to the Kremlin a French map from the 17th century. He dug it up in the archives where no one found it before. The loyalist media widely broadcast the scene of the justice and Putin in the Kremlin sharing the joy of finding no Ukraine in it.<br /><br />If the Europeans knew nothing about this “Ukraine” thing in the era of Imperial France, they’ve got no reason to insist that Ukraine has an agency separate from Russia.<br /><br /><b>Dissident view</b><br /><br />Detractors of Putin often deride his theory with references to the Golden Horde.<br /><br /><b>We were part of the Mongol Empire for more than two centuries. No legally binding document confirms that we indeed became independent from them in the late 15th century.</b><br /><br />Peter the Great’s treaty with the Ottomans that formally ended Russia’s tributary dependence to the Chingizides was signed without the participation of Mongol representatives. In other words, <b>following our President’s legalistic approach, the Mongols have the formal grounds to consider themselves our masters until today.<br /></b><br /><b>The Jewish take<br /></b><br />However, a truly hardcore approach to the issue brings up an even more bizarre view of Russia’s identity. Consider the following:<br /><br /><b>The first written source found on the territory of what we used to call Kievan Rus is in Hebrew.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Our first rulers called themselves Kagans. This is what Jews called their high priests.<br />Several letters of our alphabet have Jewish origins. The Greek Orthodox clergy that invented the Cyrillic alphabet reworked Hebrew letters for Slavic hissing sounds that the Greeks didn’t have. (Did you know our Lord Jesus Christ was a Jew, too?)</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The Russian criminal slang, favored by our political class for sending strong messages to each other and to Russia-haters internationally, comes from the Jewish underworld in the city of Odessa in the 19th century.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br />Below, <b>Marx and Lenin impersonators</b> earning money in the Red Square in Moscow by posing for tourist photos in the company of foreign visitors.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWqW5gLRA7Igtva1Jc4yCJySYmsWXOTwxtYiyfrHI56FJP6CgGtaeKVLD6QN5Z8ZrhvmwXz71RmbiJ0UhrgyT5-uiS5DnJn_txAtgMsohugp1mp6uMZoyTVIny_4GGt9jTxK0aHhcjYZTV3W2dSStkNTLDGKMixZ-1zo7Jw_CZ9ttjoSo7OVEXVoxRmbnB/s602/Lenin%20and%20Marx%20impersonators%20in%20Russia.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="508" data-original-width="602" height="338" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWqW5gLRA7Igtva1Jc4yCJySYmsWXOTwxtYiyfrHI56FJP6CgGtaeKVLD6QN5Z8ZrhvmwXz71RmbiJ0UhrgyT5-uiS5DnJn_txAtgMsohugp1mp6uMZoyTVIny_4GGt9jTxK0aHhcjYZTV3W2dSStkNTLDGKMixZ-1zo7Jw_CZ9ttjoSo7OVEXVoxRmbnB/w400-h338/Lenin%20and%20Marx%20impersonators%20in%20Russia.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Marx was officially a Jew, and Lenin’s mother was allegedly Jewish, too. This makes applied Marxism-Leninism, the official ideology of the USSR, a 75% Jewish thing. It made our country a world superpower, and Soviet rule the pinnacle of our millennial history- <b>Another possible reason for Israel to claim a historical unity of Jews and Russians.</b><br /><br />In the no-nonsense world of historical justice, <b>there’s only one thing that truly stops the Mongolians and Israelis from claiming the Kremlin once President Putin vacates the place. </b>It’s the fact that we are big and have thousands of nukes, and they do not. ~ Quora<br /><br />Oriana:<br /><br />Much as I enjoy the “Jewish take” on Russia’s history, “Kagan” is a word of Turkic origin, meaning "ruler", "King of Kings" (alternatively spelled as Kağan, Khagan or Hakan, meaning "Khan of Khans”). <br /><br />So Turkic, rather than Yiddish. <br /><br />But I’m glad I found out, since various forms of <b>Kagan</b> or Kaganovich are a fairly common last name, and now I have some idea of the meaning of that word, <b>related to “Khan” (as in Genghis Khan).</b><br /><br />I’m also fascinated to have learned that <b>Fenya, the Russian criminal slang, is derived from Yiddish. Now I finally understand why it’s not comprehensible to the average Russian. <br /></b><br />*<br /><b>MISHA IOSSEL COMMENTS ON UKRAINE<br /></b><br />Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, has named his main mistake to NEXTA information agency:<br /><br /><b>"My main mistake is that I thought that such a number of losses as we inflicted would stop anyone. But it did not stop Russia.”<br /></b><br />That's because Putin has zero regard for the value of the human life. Because in the imperial Russian/Soviet culture, the worth of human life is close to zero. That also, in more practical terms, is because <b>Putin's regime isn't recruiting soldiers from political power centers, such as Moscow and SPB, but is conscripting young men from small towns and villages in the far-flung regions of Siberia and the Far East, for instance, as the bulk of his army's cannon fodder.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">And it is precisely this total disregard for the value of the human life which in and of itself is the sufficiently essential reason why the West, if it wants to survive, must help Ukraine to defeat Russia in this unconscionable war. <br /><br />Oriana:<br /><br />Putin’s motto could be summarized as “No lives matter.” </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgumhgyx0TZr1v0Qbp-afM_9GiT54cYXGsBFxXZi_essGsbggCs6RJtKJxQj8WCS0qcMkErah4k4dH0dh8kwIvBg2wpSNDOxDsOEmD12H1TEUeUJx1MhcIQzZ6-C_GKeq3yXjS8LbEAydCeiIG3BUdkXZovWfIPmwWTzr8IaicvFvgIzroVKVT8nDqZ7XDW/s463/Putin%20no%20lives%20matter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="463" data-original-width="459" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgumhgyx0TZr1v0Qbp-afM_9GiT54cYXGsBFxXZi_essGsbggCs6RJtKJxQj8WCS0qcMkErah4k4dH0dh8kwIvBg2wpSNDOxDsOEmD12H1TEUeUJx1MhcIQzZ6-C_GKeq3yXjS8LbEAydCeiIG3BUdkXZovWfIPmwWTzr8IaicvFvgIzroVKVT8nDqZ7XDW/w396-h400/Putin%20no%20lives%20matter.jpg" width="396" /></a></b></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Except his own. He is allegedly paranoid that his enemies will manage to kill him. He's afraid he'll be poisoned, or pushed out the window. "What goes around comes around." <br /><br />*<br /><b>NINA KOSSMAN ON THE ROLE OF THE SOVIET UNION AS A NEGATIVE MODEL</b><br /><br />I think that, <b>while the Soviet Union existed, it gave the American left a vicarious experience of the realization of far-left ideas, i.e. a look at what that realization could be like. The very existence of the USSR was a warning to the world: see? don't be like me! </b></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">It wasn't done intentionally of course, but that was the effect both on the American left and the American right: neither left nor right in those days went to the extremes that we are seeing now. Now we have two generations — Millennials and Gen Z — that grew up in the post-Soviet era, so there's nothing that can serve as a warning to them in the “See? Don't be like me!” way. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">By the way, the American right was also more moderate back then ( during the Cold War), because <b>the fear of a revolution and its consequences were a bit more real when the Soviet Union still existed. </b><br /><br /><b>The Soviet Union was like a scarecrow that said: "Don't go the way of the radical left or you'll end up like me!" </b>The surge in antisemitism we are seeing now is like that proverbial canary in the coal mine showing us where we are heading — and saying "Stop!" </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I am talking about the subconscious of the political left and the political right, not about something that's evident and visible on the surface. The Soviet Union was a boogeyman of the political subconscious of both left and right ( in different ways of course) in those years.NB: Please note that I'm talking about "radical left" — not just “left". ~ Nina Kossman, Facebook<br /><br />*<br />Geoff Manger:<br /><br />While the USSR existed and 'competed' with the USA in areas of, for example, the space race, it drove American technology and industrialization to extents that may not have been achieved had there been no USSR. It was of course inevitable to give context that a USSR eventuated as soon as Hitler invaded Russia. As a reaction to Russian communism and particularly the USSR the McCarthy era brought its own attack on left wing political activists in the USA. So, I think it bit of an urban myth that the political divide is now at its zenith. If anything, <b>political apathy is the bigger danger to democratic society.</b><br /><br />Mark Shvarts:<br />But we have North Korea and a host of other so called “communist” countries today. They don’t serve as examples?<br /><br />Nina Kossman:<br />I think they don't serve as examples because in America they are not perceived as “far left.” Yes, North Korea and Cuba are “Comnunist” countries, but here in the US, North Korea is perceived mostly as a totalitarian country, while Cuba is perceived as a kind of failed state, a poor Latin American country. And <i><b>although China calls itself "Communist," it's actually quite capitalist, and its "Communism" is just a convenient ideology that simply makes it easier for the party to rule ( and fool) the people.</b></i> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">So <b>the Soviet Union was the main scarecrow.<br /></b><br />Andrei Shipunov:<br />Ever since I plunged into the English-language information space, I have watched with anxiety and sometimes horror how the bloody Soviet experience is systematically ignored. However, both neutral and positive aspects are also ignored. And here are the results it leads to (only the brightest examples):<br /><br />The left wrote to me more than once in the comments that Holodomor is a Nazi propaganda;<br /><b>The right-wing believed the Kremlin propaganda and declared with amazing confidence that Ukraine is actually not a real state</b>, and as an argument they cited the unfinished demarcation of the borders between us and the Russian Federation.<br /><br />Against the backdrop of such indecency, it is not so impressive, of course, but also interesting: many do not believe that <b>my dad and mom, being engineers, received the same salary. And here I have to explain that, surprisingly, in the absence of a blatant Pay Gap, women's lives did not become much sweeter, as all the housework fell on them.</b><br /><br />One of my acquaintances had a grandmother who was a chemist, so his American friends didn't want to believe it. "It's the USSR, there couldn't have been anything we consider good" — is that the way it works?<br /><br />It would all be funny and amusing if the KGB hadn't used such illiteracy for its own purposes.<br /><br />Osoba Kaz:<br />You are absolutely right! The Kremlin propaganda is so strong that it beats not only the overseas flock, but also the post-scoop. My blue-eyed nephew was explaining to me how good it was there. Okay, he was born after the Soviet Union, but you can ask his parents what it was like there.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>HEMP COFFEE<br /></b><br />One of Nina Kossman’s memories of Kyiv: hemp coffee. Hemp coffee? In Poland there used to be “grain coffee” — real coffee was expensive. One advantage of grain coffee was that it was OK for children to drink — and the taste, though I remember it vaguely at best, was tolerable, especially with milk. <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9twtaccraOMr8atqT7j0w0YrzM9xgrmNlQTU0024bu7vusz2yRqUXfCp4OWV6mhRZ61yb12XINDr_UoLMiDi2FlwFdx2bvddJvcHgpjVkxyFUUubAyT6nPY-va6eIo9BuAL5PM3ZZ-_zQUkb3yzxk18YHbLFcPfCHfCV_w9dm0iEblgnQ-kdbNMOXFP2t/s2048/hemp%20coffee%20sandwiches%20Kyiv.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9twtaccraOMr8atqT7j0w0YrzM9xgrmNlQTU0024bu7vusz2yRqUXfCp4OWV6mhRZ61yb12XINDr_UoLMiDi2FlwFdx2bvddJvcHgpjVkxyFUUubAyT6nPY-va6eIo9BuAL5PM3ZZ-_zQUkb3yzxk18YHbLFcPfCHfCV_w9dm0iEblgnQ-kdbNMOXFP2t/w400-h300/hemp%20coffee%20sandwiches%20Kyiv.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>Misha on the normalization of Russia’s violence against Ukrainian civilians:<br /></b><br />~ Last night (December 28) Russian missiles struck a maternity hospital and scores of residential buildings all across Ukraine. <b>The goal is to kill as many civilians as possible, with no military objective in mind. The world has come to expect such barbarous conduct from Russia. It no longer is shocking to the world — and that's the shocking part of it. The world continues to tolerate these atrocities.</b> ~<br /><br />Oriana:<br />No one in the West wants to start a war with Russia, which would mean WW3. But the world was also willing to tolerate Hitler’s various preliminary land grabs and depredations — to approve of “appeasement” (“Peace in our time!”)— until it was too late. <br /><br />*<br /><b>LEARNING FROM THE GULAG<br /></b><br />15. I realized that one can live on anger.<br />16. I realized that one can live on indifference.<br />17. I understood why people do not live on hope—there isn’t any hope. Nor can they survive by means of free will—what free will is there? <b>They live by instinct, a feeling of self-preservation, on the same basis as a tree, a stone, an animal.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">~ From "Forty-Five Things I Learned in the Gulag," in "Kolyma Stories," by Varlam Shalamov. Translated by Donald Rayfield.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd2VAAh6pkM4NGnetOja6imULlz82OheJuphimIz1Vuvwwbl4-7k0uHC1eS3qdm2XDQlRJ6KxObGMK-cgOLrmPvhqRHMO0ECJnc7QdybZ-eI9xDYVion7KqgQOTYicoicEoJcfqxtA7275oXUMTtupNOsqCMGx6h43Bb7wTk3JwD-eM7zTQJ0Z-H77LWWG/s704/Varlam%20Shalamov%20best.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="528" data-original-width="704" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd2VAAh6pkM4NGnetOja6imULlz82OheJuphimIz1Vuvwwbl4-7k0uHC1eS3qdm2XDQlRJ6KxObGMK-cgOLrmPvhqRHMO0ECJnc7QdybZ-eI9xDYVion7KqgQOTYicoicEoJcfqxtA7275oXUMTtupNOsqCMGx6h43Bb7wTk3JwD-eM7zTQJ0Z-H77LWWG/w400-h300/Varlam%20Shalamov%20best.jpeg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Varlam Shalamov<br /></i><br />*<br /><b>“WILL POWER” MAKES A COMEBACK<br /></b><br />~ <i><b>Until recently, the prevailing psychological theory proposed that willpower resembled a kind of battery. You might start the day with full strength, but each time you have to control your thoughts, feelings or behavior, you zap that battery’s energy. Without the chance to rest and recharge, those resources run dangerously low, making it far harder to maintain your patience and concentration, and to resist temptation.</b></i><br /><br />Laboratory tests appeared to provide evidence for this process; <b>if participants were asked to resist eating cookies left temptingly on a table, for example, they subsequently showed less persistence when solving a mathematical problem, because their reserves of willpower had been exhausted. Drawing on the Freudian term for the part of the mind that is responsible for reining in our impulses, this process was known as “ego depletion”.</b> People who had high self-control might have bigger reserves of willpower initially, but even they would be worn down when placed under pressure.<br /><br />In 2010, however, the psychologist Veronika Job published a study that questioned the foundations of this theory, with some intriguing evidence that ego depletion depended on people’s underlying beliefs. <br /><br />Job, who is a professor of motivation psychology at the University of Vienna, first designed a questionnaire, which asked participants to rate a series of statements on a scale of 1 (strongly agree) to 6 (strongly disagree). They included: <br /><br /><b>When situations accumulate that challenge you with temptations, it gets more and more difficult to resist temptations.</b></span></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Strenuous mental activity exhausts your resources, which you need to refuel afterwards<br /></b><br />and</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>If you have just resisted a strong temptation, you feel strengthened and you can withstand new temptations.</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><i>Your mental stamina fuels itself. Even after strenuous mental exertion, you can continue doing more of it.</i><br /></b><br /><b>If you agree more with the first two statements, you are considered to have a “limited” view of willpower, and if you agree more with the second two statements, you are considered to have a “non-limited” view of willpower.</b></span></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqRCPx08IpD_8uNPOoHWQyJwGgcg6GOEm6FPI0DjhM8HffO6tWCcU0DP9wfl14SFAVF-ghXPOzfiBfJmWSSk2j9ou4n0ivTBqhzAyIZen2MmYJf2TFVd3PlUkK4r-Q6I1hrvEwFoJaCqD6lMMsu5btEIWgCfe23qGEHB85g31jJh2Pse-73Jmrae74gjTW/s1920/COOKIE%20temptation.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqRCPx08IpD_8uNPOoHWQyJwGgcg6GOEm6FPI0DjhM8HffO6tWCcU0DP9wfl14SFAVF-ghXPOzfiBfJmWSSk2j9ou4n0ivTBqhzAyIZen2MmYJf2TFVd3PlUkK4r-Q6I1hrvEwFoJaCqD6lMMsu5btEIWgCfe23qGEHB85g31jJh2Pse-73Jmrae74gjTW/w400-h225/COOKIE%20temptation.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b> </b> <br />Job next gave the participants some standard laboratory tests examining mental focus, which is considered to depend on our reserves of willpower. Job found that <b>people with the limited mindset tended to perform exactly as ego depletion theory would predict.</b> After performing one task that required intense concentration – such as applying fiddly corrections to a boring text – they found it much harder to pay attention to a subsequent activity than if they had been resting beforehand. <br /><br /><b>The people with the non-limited view, however, did not show any signs of ego depletion, however: they showed no decline in their mental focus after performing a mentally taxing activity.</b><br /><br /><i><b>The participants’ mindsets about willpower, it seemed, were self-fulfilling prophecies.</b></i> <i><b>If they believed that their willpower was easily depleted, then their ability to resist temptation and distraction quickly dissolved; but if they believed that “mental stamina fuels itself”, then that is what occurred.</b><br /></i><br />Job soon replicated these results in other contexts. Working with Krishna Savani at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, for example, she has shown willpower beliefs seem to vary by country. They found that the non-limited mindsets were more common in Indian students than those in the USA – and that this was reflected in tests of their mental stamina. <br /><br />In recent years, some scientists have debated the reliability of the laboratory tests of ego depletion, but Job has also shown that people’s willpower mindsets are linked to many real-life outcomes. She asked university students to complete twice-daily questionnaires about their activities over two non-consecutive weekly periods. <br /><br />As you might expect, some days had much higher demands than others, leading to feelings of exhaustion. <b>Most of the participants recovered to some degree overnight, but those with the non-limited mindsets actually experienced an increase in their productivity the following day, as if they had been energized by the extra pressure.</b> Once again, it seemed that their belief that “mental stamina fuels itself” had become their reality.<br /><br />Further studies showed that the willpower mindsets could predict students’ procrastination levels in the run-up to exams – <b>those with the non-limited views showed less time-wasting</b> – and their ultimate grades. When facing high-pressure from their courses, the students with the non-limited views were also better able to maintain their self-control in other areas of life; they were less likely to eat fast food or go on an impulsive spending spree, for example. Those who believed that their willpower was easily depleted by their work, in contrast, were more likely to indulge in those vices – presumably because they felt that their reserves of self-control had already been depleted by their academic work.<br /><br />The influence of willpower mindsets may also stretch to many domains, such as fitness. For example, Navin Kaushal, an assistant professor in health sciences at Indiana University, US, and colleagues, have shown that they can influence people’s exercise habits; <b>people with non-limited beliefs about willpower find it easier to summon up the motivation to work out.<br /></b><br />A study by Zoë Francis, a professor of psychology at the University of Fraser Valley, found strikingly similar results. Following more than 300 participants over three weeks, she found that <b>people with non-limited mindsets are more likely to exercise, and less likely to snack</b>, than those with the limited mindsets. Tellingly, <b>the differences are especially pronounced in the evenings, when the demands of the day’s tasks have started to take their toll on those who believe that self-control can easily run down.</b><br /><br /><b>Galvanizing your willpower</b><br /><br />If you already have the non-limited mindset about willpower, these findings might be a cause for self-satisfaction. But what can we do if we have been living under the assumption that our reserves of self-control are easily depleted?<br /><br />Job’s studies suggest that simply learning about this cutting-edge science – through short, accessible texts – can help shift people’s beliefs, at least in the short term. Knowledge, it seems, is power; if so, simply reading this article might have already started to galvanize your mental stamina. You might even enhance this by telling others about what you have learnt; the research suggests that <b>sharing information helps to consolidate your own shift in mindset, a phenomenon known as the “saying-is-believing effect”, while also helping to spread the positive attitudes to others. </b><br /><br />Lessons in the non-limited nature of willpower can come at a young age. Researchers at Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania recently designed a storybook to teach pre-schoolers the idea that <b>exercising willpower can be energizing, rather than exhausting, and that self-control can grow the more we practice it. </b>Children who had heard this story showed greater self-control in a test of “delayed gratification”, in which they were given the chance to forgo a small treat to receive a bigger treat later on, compared to their classmates who had heard another tale. <br /><br /><b>One useful strategy to change your mindset may be to remember a time when you worked on a mentally demanding task for the pure enjoyment of the activity.</b> There might be a job at work, for example, that others appear to find difficult but you find satisfying. Or maybe it’s a hobby – such as learning a new piece on the piano – that demands intense concentration, yet feels effortless for you. A recent study found that engaging in this kind of recollection naturally shifts people’s beliefs to the non-limited mindset, as they see proof of their own mental stamina. <br /><br /><b>To provide yourself with further evidence, you might begin with small tests of self-control that will bring about a desired change in your life – such as avoiding snacking for a couple of weeks, disconnecting from social media as you work, or showing greater patience with an irritating loved one. Once you have proved to yourself that your willpower can grow, you may find it easier to then resist other kinds of temptation or distraction.<br /></b><br />You mustn’t expect miracles immediately. But with perseverance, you should see your mindset changing, and with it a greater capacity to master your thoughts, feelings and behavior so that your actions propel you towards your goals. <br /><br /><a href="https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230103-how-to-strengthen-willpower">https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230103-how-to-strengthen-willpower<br /></a></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhqjPktXi1ElHo-i-0JrLepT3CVFlvfc_upzVJjEkAip4Yb2byBirMyYQnXpWgcIG4fCdoSGtfFAYbzZmSuELfHE16wt6wkalRUIbkhLKbxXDS6o_3A56yDV7_mbEu5jxjROOMxjzVdTOLYXTs5seaNwH2ZGWG0KDfnG9wNclCmdcvgJ_0Y0hyphenhyphen2IrgTjTP/s278/willpower.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="278" data-original-width="192" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhqjPktXi1ElHo-i-0JrLepT3CVFlvfc_upzVJjEkAip4Yb2byBirMyYQnXpWgcIG4fCdoSGtfFAYbzZmSuELfHE16wt6wkalRUIbkhLKbxXDS6o_3A56yDV7_mbEu5jxjROOMxjzVdTOLYXTs5seaNwH2ZGWG0KDfnG9wNclCmdcvgJ_0Y0hyphenhyphen2IrgTjTP/w276-h400/willpower.webp" width="276" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>A NEW CLUE IN JFK ASSASSINATION MYSTERIES?<br /></b><br />~ Twenty-three-year-old Paul Landis applied to become a Secret Service agent in 1958. He came from Worthington, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, and had graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University 15 months earlier. A neighborhood boy, Bob Foster, who was friends with Landis’s sister, had joined the Secret Service two years before. After speaking with Foster, Landis thought being in the Secret Service sounded like the “coolest job in the universe.”<br /><br />Landis was intrigued. But because he has always been slight of build, his immediate concern was whether he could meet the minimum height requirement (five feet, eight inches). During the physical exam, he stretched himself like a rubber band and, as he recalls, barely made it.<br /><br />He started work in October 1959, at the time the youngest special agent, at 24. Just over a year later, John Kennedy was elected president; soon the young recruit was assigned the job of guarding the Kennedy children and, eventually, along with Special Agent Clint Hill, Mrs. Kennedy herself. Not all agents were given code names, but as a result of Landis’s new assignment, and because of his youth and boyish looks, he was eventually christened “Debut.”<br /><br /><b>Landis found himself deep in the inner workings of Camelot, coinciding with the apex of Jackie’s popularity.</b> As an international superstar, she was the Princess Di of her era, and Landis was on hand as the media followed her every move. Landis traveled with the first lady and her daughter, Caroline, to Italy in 1962. (John Jr., her young son, remained back home.) Landis was the agent who helped speed and accompany Jackie to the Otis Air Force Base emergency facilities when she went into premature labor with son Patrick, who died two days after his birth in August 1963. That October, at the suggestion of Jackie’s sister, Lee Radziwill, a trip to Greece followed for an excursion aboard the luxury yacht of the shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.<br /><br />Then came November 22, 1963. A month after returning from Greece, <b>Landis stood on the right rear running board of the Secret Service follow-up car,</b> code-named “Halfback,” in the president’s motorcade as the vehicle headed from Dallas’s Love Field airport to a luncheon at the city’s Trade Mart. <b>Landis was approximately 15 feet away when Kennedy was mortally wounded</b>, a close witness to unspeakable horror.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">That horror was compounded when the president’s limo reached Parkland Memorial Hospital, where Landis and Clint Hill tried to coax Jackie to release the president, whom, by that point, she had cradled in her lap. Climbing into the back seat area, which had been spattered with blood and brains and bullet fragments, both agents, according to their subsequent accounts, gently encouraged the first lady to let go.<br /><br />As she did—standing up to follow Hill and another agent, Roy Kellerman, who lifted her husband’s body onto a gurney and raced into the hospital—<b>Landis saw and did something that he has kept secret for six decades, he says now. He claims he spotted a bullet resting on the top of the back of the seat. He says he picked it up, put it in his pocket, and brought it into the hospital. Then, upon entering Trauma Room No. 1 </b>(at that stage, he was the only nonmedical person in the room besides Mrs. Kennedy, and both stayed for only a short period), he insists, <b>he placed the bullet on a white cotton blanket on the president’s stretcher.</b><br /><br />Landis, to this day, attests that i<b>n the first few years following the assassination, he was simply unable to overcome his PTSD from witnessing the murder firsthand. He says that the mental image of the president’s head, exploding, had become a recurring flashback.</b> He maintains that he desperately tried to push down the memories. He also says he felt unable to read anything in detail about the assassination until some 50 years later, starting in 2014, when he began to come to grips with all that he had witnessed, suppressed, and finally processed.<br /><br />Over the decades, there have been endless theories surrounding the assassination, but not one of them considered that a Secret Service agent might have brought a fully intact bullet, found on top of the rear seat of the limousine, into Parkland Memorial Hospital and placed it on the president’s stretcher. Not one.<br /><br /><b>That theory posits that a single bullet caused all of the wounds in Kennedy’s neck as well as all of the serious injuries to Texas governor John Connally—who was sitting in front of the president at the time—including the shattering of four inches of Connolly’s fifth rib and the fracturing of a major bone in his right wrist.</b><br /><br />Yet the bullet that Landis now claims to have discovered that morning emerged largely intact and only moderately damaged, its base having been squeezed in.<br /><br />By possibly placing the “magic bullet” theory in doubt, Landis’s disclosure raises as many questions as it answers. I will try to address some of them here.<br /><br />First, it makes sense to retrace the main tenets of the Warren Commission’s official version of the assassination. According to the panel’s final report, issued in September 1964, three gunshots rang out as the president’s limousine passed by the Texas School Book Depository building in Dallas. Witnesses’ auditory memory differed, their testimony ranging from two to six shots. Most, however, recalled hearing a trio of blasts.<br /><br /><b>Three spent shells, in fact, were found under a window on the sixth floor of the book depository. </b>Nearby, partially hidden by some cartons, a rifle with a scope was discovered, a cheap Mannlicher-Carcano. Lee Harvey Oswald, the man history identifies as the lone assassin, worked in that building. The commission determined that the three shots all came from the sixth floor of the book depository.<br /><br />The commission concluded that two of the three shots had hit the occupants of the limousine: One bullet had transited Kennedy’s neck and then, most probably, hit Governor Connally, and one had fatally wounded Kennedy, striking his head. (Connally survived the attack, later becoming President Richard Nixon’s Treasury secretary.)<br /><br />In the view of the task force, one of the shots had likely missed the limo and, though the conjecture was inconclusive, possibly struck a nearby cement curb, sending a fragment that hit a spectator some distance away, near an overpass, slightly grazing his face.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHKZ447_DWE1fTE38P30bOJg2cGKKFmtBTrFOCe8HprcBbaMrThVJDLovv3rEJNHxAAgK2S8WyT4wc_he4_std6BMSgGXZNqFtV9yB0ltqu5lrpOBfL82PwPk5HDVNwpSRjRJRZJN8HgQWXFYA6Ox34N908-_1VRbexlPIS08J1P5eaivU5ywwkbBjNrhb/s602/jfk%20Dallas.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="458" data-original-width="602" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHKZ447_DWE1fTE38P30bOJg2cGKKFmtBTrFOCe8HprcBbaMrThVJDLovv3rEJNHxAAgK2S8WyT4wc_he4_std6BMSgGXZNqFtV9yB0ltqu5lrpOBfL82PwPk5HDVNwpSRjRJRZJN8HgQWXFYA6Ox34N908-_1VRbexlPIS08J1P5eaivU5ywwkbBjNrhb/w400-h304/jfk%20Dallas.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">But what of the ammunition itself? <b>Two large bullet fragments were found in the front seat of the limo, and slivers of lead fragments were recovered from an area below the jump seat where the governor’s wife, Nellie Connally, had been sitting.<br /></b><br /><b>At Parkland Memorial Hospital, on the day of the assassination, an additional intact bullet was discovered on a stretcher. </b>Through testing, commission investigators determined that the copper-jacketed, 6.5-millimeter bullet matched the rifling of the Mannlicher-Carcano that had been abandoned on the sixth floor of the depository. Testing on the bullet fragments resulted in a similar finding.<br /><br />In his book, Paul Landis now says that when Jackie Kennedy stood up to enter Parkland, he looked over and saw that a bullet was improbably sitting on top of the rear seat of the limo, right around the spot where the limo’s detachable roof, which had been removed that day, would have otherwise been affixed to the trunk. Also, amid the blood and gore, <b>Landis remembers, were two bullet fragments on the back seat, next to where Jackie had been sitting.</b><br /><br />Landis contends that he reached over, picked up the lone bullet nestled in the crevice, and decided to place it in his pocket, mindful that if it were left there, precariously, it might be overlooked, pilfered by an unauthorized passerby, or misplaced once the president’s body was removed. Accompanying the first lady into Parkland, he says, <b>he brought the bullet with him and, without conferring with Mrs. Kennedy, his fellow agents, or hospital staffers, placed it on JFK’s stretcher, thinking it needed to be with the body for the autopsy. </b>As such, <i><b>he contradicts a key linchpin underlying the findings of the Warren Commission. The bullet—as Landis tells it—was not from Connally’s stretcher.</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b></b></i></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlSMFxI9Ms0_bsipG6dgi_pqUcC2bHhss9Ed1nHt03KLJD1SL7luIzlvJQOJpcPdVsTFXt3r1A_j8YJmqzZgbudUiHSasdw2ixI6_NYwL7m0Endwf7f-YFL4ntsQUJKcGSPA8lLqf2ubjcWQJ5Wr9QskDgtl_Cthon49-2dWhyphenhyphenxCCi17nK6o3NzhsZfMXK/s1000/president%20shot.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="662" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlSMFxI9Ms0_bsipG6dgi_pqUcC2bHhss9Ed1nHt03KLJD1SL7luIzlvJQOJpcPdVsTFXt3r1A_j8YJmqzZgbudUiHSasdw2ixI6_NYwL7m0Endwf7f-YFL4ntsQUJKcGSPA8lLqf2ubjcWQJ5Wr9QskDgtl_Cthon49-2dWhyphenhyphenxCCi17nK6o3NzhsZfMXK/w265-h400/president%20shot.jpg" width="265" /></a></b></i></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">A short recap is in order. Initially, President Kennedy was declared dead at Parkland—his body lying face-up on the table after the surgical team had performed a tracheotomy, hoping to provide needed oxygen through a ventilator to keep him breathing (which by that time was described as gasping or agonal respiration). <b>These emergency room doctors used what they believed was an entry bullet wound in the front of the president’s neck to create the tracheotomy. They were apparently unaware of a bullet hole in the president’s back.</b><br /><br />But later that night, <b>an autopsy began at Bethesda Naval Hospital, near Washington, DC. During the procedure, doctors examined the president’s remains, only to discover a small bullet hole in the right shoulder,</b> about five inches down from the top of the collar. This injury had gone unnoticed at Parkland since the president was declared dead before his body could be surveyed in its entirety. The Bethesda pathologists were puzzled when they probed <b>the wound because it clearly was an entrance puncture, but it did not seem to have an exit wound, even though X-rays showed no bullet in the body.</b><br /><br />In fact, the shoulder wound was shallow. Two doctors found that they could not pass more than half a pinky finger into the opening. Metal probes likewise uncovered no path of the bullet through the body.<br /><br />Standing in proximity to the doctors were two FBI agents, Frank O’Neill and Jim Sibert, who had been dispatched by the bureau’s director, J. Edgar Hoover, to witness the autopsy and recover bullets or bullet fragments for the FBI lab. In their written statement, the agents discussed the frustration of <b>the Bethesda doctors </b>when<b> </b>they<b> could not locate a bullet or exit wound for the projectile that had entered the president’s shoulder.</b><br /><br />The next morning, the Bethesda pathologists, as stated in their Warren Commission testimony, were told by Parkland doctors that the wound in the front of Kennedy’s neck was more than just the result of the tracheotomy they had performed. In fact, the Parkland team stated, there had been a bullet hole in the anterior (front) of the neck, and the ER staff had used that wound to create the tracheotomy. No one at the autopsy, according to FBI agents Sibert and O’Neill, had suspected there was a hole in the front of the president’s neck. With this new information, <b>the Bethesda doctors revised their findings and assumed that the front wound was an exit for the bullet that had entered the president’s body from the back.<br /></b><br />Landis’s discovery of the bullet on top of the rear seat, if true, comports with the initial finding: that <b>the bullet had lodged superficially in the president’s back before being dislodged by the final blast to his head. It also explains the “pristine” nature of the bullet.<br /></b><br />*<br />The genesis of the “single bullet” theory was twofold.<br /><br />First, the Zapruder footage showed Kennedy reacting to the bullet that hit him in the back—and then, apparently, exited through the front of his neck (<b>his arms spasmodically began to rise, elbows out, fists shielding his throat</b>)—<b>about a second or so before Connally seemed to react to his own wounding. </b>To the Warren Commission staff, that double reaction on the part of the two men was puzzling. <b>Given the type of weapon Oswald was using, there would have been no way for him to have gotten off two firings in such a short span of time.</b><br /><br />Secondly, when the panel attempted to recreate the shooting in a manner consistent with the Zapruder film, <b>FBI marksmen found that it took about 2.3 seconds to shoot, reload the bolt-action rifle, aim, and shoot again.</b> Given Governor Connally’s reaction time, <b>there did not appear to have been enough time for Oswald to have taken a second shot so quickly, let alone with any accuracy.<br /></b><br />Howard Willens, an assistant counsel to the Warren Commission, and the author of the 2013 book History Will Prove Us Right, wrote about this dilemma:<b> “If the interval between the first and second shots covered a span of less than 2.25 seconds, the time estimated to be necessary for the assassin to fire two shots, it might suggest that a second rifle was involved.”<br /></b><br />The commission’s solution, however, championed by staff attorney Arlen Specter (who would become a US senator from Pennsylvania), was that the same bullet that hit Kennedy must have gone on to hit Connally on his right side. <b>Connally’s second-later response was explained by the commission as a “delayed reaction” to an earlier wounding.<br /></b><br />But, as noted, that theory depended on the single bullet having been found on Connally’s stretcher at Parkland Memorial Hospital, not on Kennedy’s stretcher.<br /><br />Landis’s recollection, as stated above, is that he found the undeformed bullet on top of the back seat of the limousine. “It was resting in a seam where the tufted leather padding ended against the car’s metal body,” he writes. When Jackie Kennedy stood up to follow her husband into the hospital, he saw it. He picked up the bullet, worried that souvenir seekers or others might take it or move it.<br /><br />Upon arriving inside the emergency room, as stated above, he was jammed in with the first lady and a gathering horde of doctors and nurses. <b>Standing near the feet of the president’s body, Landis left the bullet on his stretcher</b>, <b>as he believed it was crucial evidence and needed for the autopsy, which, under Texas law, should have taken place in Dallas.</b><br /><br />That evening, the initial supposition was that the bullet had come from JFK’s stretcher because the autopsy doctors at Bethesda, attempting to understand the whereabouts of the bullet that had entered Kennedy’s back, thought it might have been lodged in his back and then fallen out when rigorous chest massages were performed at Parkland.<br /><br /><i><b>It was only after the autopsy (and after the president’s body had been moved to the White House) that Parkland doctors told the pathologists that they had used a bullet wound in the front of Kennedy’s neck to make a tracheotomy.</b><br /></i><br />Upon hearing this, <b>the autopsy doctors tentatively revised their thesis and surmised that the bullet that entered Kennedy’s back must have exited through the front of his neck.<br /></b><br />*<br />What does all this mean when considering whether Lee Harvey Oswald, as proposed by the Warren Commission, was the lone assassin? <b>It certainly raises the stakes that another shooter might have been involved.</b><br /><br />First, if the “pristine” bullet did not travel through both Kennedy and Connally, somehow ending up on Connally’s stretcher, then it stands to reason that <b>Connally might have actually been hit by a separate bullet, coming from above and to the rear. </b>The FBI recreation suggests that Oswald would not have had enough time to get off two separate shots so quickly as to hit Connally after wounding the president in the back. A second shooter must be considered.<br /><br />But there are other, darker explanations arising from the secrecy surrounding the X-rays and photographs taken at the autopsy and then not made public for decades. Jerrol F. Custer, the principal X-ray technician at the autopsy, testified in 1997 that <b>there were several small metallic fragments in the cervical spine (the spinal region directly below the skull), which were visible in an X-ray, and that this was one of three X-ray exposures he took that night that went missing from the collection in the National Archives.</b><br /><br />This might have contained evidence of a shot from the front of the motorcade—a frangible bullet that disintegrated into tiny pieces after entry into the body. A heavy lift, for sure, but medical staffers who saw the front-of-the-neck wound before the tracheotomy believed it was an entrance wound because of its neatness.<br /><br />In 2013, a week before the 50th anniversary of the assassination, <b>public opinion polls found that more than 60% of Americans believed the president’s murder had not been the work of one man, as the commission contended, but part of some kind of conspiracy.</b><br /><br />*<br />Upon leaving the bullet on Kennedy’s stretcher, Landis explains today, he felt that he had done the right thing, expecting an autopsy and mindful of the need for the bullet to remain with the body. Like all of the Secret Service members on hand that day—and, indeed, the entire nation—he was also racked with grief and loss (to say nothing of PTSD, which was an unrecognized condition at the time). <b>For Landis</b>, however, <b>a man who had been a constant presence in his life had been slain right in front of him</b>—<b>a man whose wife’s safety had been, in part, his own responsibility.</b><br /><br />In May, nearly six months after the assassination, Landis realized that the ordeal had taken its toll; concerned about his own mental health, he decided he couldn’t take it anymore. By August, at age 29, he had left the Secret Service. At the time, the Warren Commission had not issued its report, nor had Landis been interviewed for it; the public had not yet heard of the “single bullet” theory.<br /><br />In the intervening seven years, Landis struggled with his conscience. His guilt, in my estimation, stemmed in part from a creeping concern that others might accuse him of having done something wrong by moving the bullet. Moreover, <b>he must have worried, to some degree, about not having spoken out about finding the bullet in the first place—and not having sought to clarify the record more speedily once it became apparent to him that many historians and the public at large had cast doubt on the findings of the Warren Commission. </b><br /><br />Another factor amplifying his angst, I would imagine, was that the longer he remained silent, the harder it became to speak out.<br /><br /><i><b>The only agent who really had a chance to avert disaster was the driver Bill Greer, who might have taken evasive action with the president’s limo once the shooting started. The agent next to Greer in the front passenger seat of the presidential limo, Roy Kellerman, likewise didn’t react in time. </b></i><br /><br />Landis had an underlying guilt about what he might have done. He had found a bullet—the first piece of evidence logged into the record of the assassination of a US president—and then he went on his way, alone, in private.<br /><br />He was in his late 20s at the time, a man whose values were grounded in those of the 1950s and ’60s. Silence and discretion, to him, had always been virtues. And he didn’t feel that it was appropriate to change his stripes and “go public”—drawing attention to his own behavior—when conspiracy theorists ran rampant, when other agents had been in the press over the years, and when President Kennedy had been killed, in effect, on his watch.<br /><br />All of this, I contend, contributed to his years of silence.<br /><br />But nothing, as I see it—and as Landis himself sees it—should detract from the fact that he has now come forward with his version of what happened on that dreadful day. And history will be the better for it.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCkay3jSxSPKVj3tlbctiQ6_ob1JLsuQD2uwrvPHWZwu4dhhM1VY_ZoI-veFz5e5Qn4BRAIPk_DQp4s6xOsuBvWker9GgSfA0GYLfBhj327n-kD8XHvQz7rKb_cgTJLV2160fm_suAQnQoha-Kz9imefKLJs9TuIBDaxcAN0NlV2Anpj4DUpMUHIaPDnzW/s1000/Paul%20Landis%20JFK%20the%20final%20witness%20cover.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="667" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCkay3jSxSPKVj3tlbctiQ6_ob1JLsuQD2uwrvPHWZwu4dhhM1VY_ZoI-veFz5e5Qn4BRAIPk_DQp4s6xOsuBvWker9GgSfA0GYLfBhj327n-kD8XHvQz7rKb_cgTJLV2160fm_suAQnQoha-Kz9imefKLJs9TuIBDaxcAN0NlV2Anpj4DUpMUHIaPDnzW/w266-h400/Paul%20Landis%20JFK%20the%20final%20witness%20cover.webp" width="266" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/09/new-jfk-assassination-revelation-upend-lone-gunman">https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/09/new-jfk-assassination-revelation-upend-lone-gunman<br /></a><br />Oriana:<br /><br />I admit I severely abridged this article — but I don’t think that I left out anything of critical importance. To me the single piece of evidence that remains fascinating is not so much the bullet on the stretcher as the fact that <b>the neck wound looked more like an entrance wound — meaning that the shot would have to come from the front of the motorcade, not the back</b>. And that implies at least one more shooter. <br /><br />Was the CIA involved? We’ll never know. Who could possibly be in better position to erase all traces of evidence than CIA itself? And what about Ruby's silencing of Oswald, and the mysterious death of a woman journalist who had interviewed Ruby? And the unexplained death of one of JFK's long-term mistresses? And, some say, what about Marylin Monroe </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">—</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> was it really a suicide? </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">There is something very muddy about the sequence of events, and the mud has not settled over the many years — on the contrary, it’s become even more muddy. It’s time to let go of the hope of any clarity. <br /><br />*<br /><b>WHY ISLAM FORBIDS THE EATING OF PORK<br /></b><br /><i><b>Mohammed cribbed much of Islam, including the deity, from the Jews. And he included the Jewish proscription against eating pork.</b><br /></i><br />This is actually ironic since so many of the laws in Leviticus were simply shibboleths that the priest class used to create tribal unity among the Hebrews, making clear distinctions between “us” and “them”. “We don’t eat pig like those Canaanite scum, we don’t wear blended fabrics, and unlike those schmucks on the coast, we’re really picky about our seafood.” <b>They sold it to the people by claiming that the deity said so.<br /><br />So the Muslims bought in to the what, without knowing why.</b><br /><br />EDIT: No, no, no. It had nothing to do with health. <b>Every other tribe in the Middle East ate pig, and were just fine</b>, thank you very much.<b> It seems that they all had kitchens, and knew how to cook. The pork proscription was purely a shibboleth.<br /></b><br /><i><b>*Shibboleth — a custom, principle, or belief distinguishing a particular class or group of people, especially a long-standing one regarded as outmoded or no longer important.</b><br /></i><br />Shibboleth has a long and dark history, beginning with the origin of the term in the Hebrew Bible, where it appears in the account of a battle between the Gileadites and Ephraimites. The Gileadites won the battle and the remaining Ephraimites tried to flee. <b>The Gileadites secured the escape route and stopped each person passing to pronounce Shibboleth, a Hebrew word for the kernel of a grain. Those who could not pronounce the word correctly were slaughtered. <br /></b><br />There are many similar examples in history where the pronunciation of a difficult word has been used to identify nationality, ethnicity, or background. This is often done for some negative reason such as discrimination.<br /><br /><a href="https://simplicable.com/new/shibboleth#">https://simplicable.com/new/shibboleth#</a><br /><br />Oriana:<br /><br />In Polish the word would probably be CHRZĄSZCZ (cricket, the insect, not the sport) — or the entire phrase, <i>W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie.</i> (In Szczebrzeszyn, the cricket sings in the reeds.)<br /><br />But the meaning is beside the point. It’s totally about the sound of all those piled-up consonants.<br /><br />Szczebrzeszyński is an actual last name, which would be fit for a zealous customs employee like Officer Szymański at the US-Canada border, who interrogated me for a good half an hour before letting me return to the US (Canada didn’t even seem to notice my entry, never mind exit). <br /><br />Don Stursma:<br />I subscribe to the theory that that <b>pork was prohibited to prevent cultural contamination through associating — especially eating with other peoples</b>. Originally nomadic pastoralists that pig raising was unsuitable for, <b>the Hebrews did not have any history of eating pork so it would not be missed if they remained culturally apart.</b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0JGOGtsm2Ge9eGJDGAEPhXby0JIBI5M1zLA1V89LRO47KXgIX9Ejerpn7kMtZ5pfosm4JKJWUnAGhENL67AKsLc8iHy7N_32ISdYydSJfBjGYe9fnb5FB6JUYAbjiZsc-II48wyjSYOzdkU4IkwCLBoDxCS-3pjYBPyJimROLsm07GzXyjC-R7Kdv7FsQ/s4256/piglet%20flowers.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2832" data-original-width="4256" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0JGOGtsm2Ge9eGJDGAEPhXby0JIBI5M1zLA1V89LRO47KXgIX9Ejerpn7kMtZ5pfosm4JKJWUnAGhENL67AKsLc8iHy7N_32ISdYydSJfBjGYe9fnb5FB6JUYAbjiZsc-II48wyjSYOzdkU4IkwCLBoDxCS-3pjYBPyJimROLsm07GzXyjC-R7Kdv7FsQ/w400-h266/piglet%20flowers.png" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>SECULAR FAITH AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM<br /></b><br /><i><b>Martin Hägglund argues that only atheists are truly committed to improving our world. But people of faith and socialists have more in common than he thinks.</b><br /></i><br />~ <b>Religious zealots are no longer the only ones to prophesy the apocalypse. Secular scientists and experts regularly warn us that the skies will fall, that plagues will overwhelm us, and that the seas will cover our cities</b>—all of it well-deserved punishment for our sins. We live in an era in which traditionally sacred questions about the nature and end of our world have become political. <b>The old firewall between faith and politics, so lovingly crafted in the eighteenth century to solve problems that are no longer ours, will likely come down whether we like it or not.</b><br /><br />Martin Hägglund, a philosopher and literary critic at Yale, has published a book for this moment. <b>This Life is an audacious, ambitious, and often maddening tour de force that argues that major existential questions—about the world and our place in it—must once again inflame our politics. </b>What’s more, he presumes to answer those questions, providing an ambitious defense of secularism and a provocative attempt to link a secular worldview with a robust politics. <b>To fully abandon God, Hägglund proposes, is to become a democratic socialist.</b><br /><br />Few have tried harder than Hägglund to consider secularism’s political and ethical consequences. In a world in which Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand seem to have a stranglehold on the theme, this is a crucially important case to make, and to a crucially important audience. <b>In the United States, and globally too, the number of religiously unaffiliated people grows by the year.</b> This Life asks secular readers to take their own secularism seriously, reminding them that their worldview can and ought to influence their politics as fully as it might for religious believers. <br /><br />He is not, to be clear, making an empirical claim that secularists are, in fact, the light of the world, but rather a normative argument that, if they understand themselves correctly, they should be. This aspect of Hägglund’s book is convincing, even if his kindred attempt to convince the religious among us to actually become secularists is less successful. Regardless, <b>his project is to be applauded. Its iconoclasm and sweep provide an example of what intellectual activity can and should look like in an era of emergency.<br /></b><br />This Life opens with an attack on religion, but of a novel sort. <b>Hägglund is not much interested in whether or not God exists. He prefers to root out the more persistent belief that it would be a good thing if God existed.</b> In his view, even many secular people are nostalgic for faith, and mourn the absence of a deity to command us and save us. This has kept the secular amongst us from deeply thinking through what it means to be secular—what it means, in other words, to accept that the lives we have here are the only ones we will ever have.<br /><br />In Hägglund’s view, <b>the essence of religion is a flight from finitude. He sees all religions as being basically the same in this regard, in that they all counsel us that the empirical world is essentially unreal. Our salvation, after all, resides in heaven or some kind of afterlife. </b>Given that, t<b>he religious believer has no incentive to grant any independent significance to a particular human being, or even to the natural world.</b> In his reading of Augustine, C. S. Lewis, Søren Kierkegaard, and other religious writers, he argues that they are intellectually committed to a devaluation of our shared, finite life. At the same time, he delights in offering evidence that these religious thinkers—despite themselves, in his view—granted meaning and significance to the finite world and its denizens.<br /><br /><b>His purpose is not merely to root out perceived hypocrisy, but to buttress the claim that devotion to the finite, or what he calls “secular faith,” is intrinsic to what we are as human beings. </b>This anthropology is taken up in the second half of the book, which is devoted to what he calls “spiritual freedom.” In these chapters, Hägglund asks some basic questions: <b>What would be the political and social consequences of true atheism? If we truly are alone in the world, what would it mean for us? </b>These only seem banal because so few writers have the audacity to pose them so baldly.<br /><br />The answers certainly are not banal: starting from first principles, Hägglund seeks to reconstruct what a worthwhile human life might look like, and what institutional arrangement might make it possible. The most interesting feature of his analysis is the great attention he gives to temporality. <b>It is not just that human beings are “rational animals,” as Aristotle put it, but that our rationality expresses itself first and foremost through our decisions about how to use our time (hence the importance of finitude as a category)</b>. <br /><br />This is less an ethical principle than a meta-ethical one. We can debate endlessly over whether we should devote ourselves to art, or love, or political organizing. <b>Hägglund simply wants us to see that these debates hinge on how to spend our time.</b><br /><br /><b>Time, not carbon or land, is the raw material of our humanity. </b>With this insight in hand, Hägglund turns his attention to the state of our shared world now—one that is organized around literally inhuman premises. If our freedom is defined by the rational use of our time, capitalism is defined by its irrational waste. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In an era of what David Graeber calls “bullshit jobs” and increasing awareness of the crushing requirements of modern labor, there is something plausible about this as a sociological observation. Hägglund presents it as a theoretical insight, too. In all of the excitement over the revival of socialism, it can be easy to lose sight of what capitalism actually consists in—or at least, how Marx understood it. <b>Hägglund reminds us that Marx understood capitalism primarily through temporal categories. The historical significance of wage labor, after all, was precisely its linkage between monetary remuneration and the iron progress of the clock.<br /></b><br />This linkage between value and labor-time, codified into the wage, distinguishes capitalism from alternative economic forms. It explains why the explosive technological innovations of the modern era, celebrated by Marx and Hägglund alike, have not shortened our labor time appreciably. And it explains why unemployment is immediately classified as a problem, instead of celebrated as evidence that we can feed and clothe ourselves with less labor than before.</span><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicPVSYcSfpAYB6mqzxoTFqI7FHA7karf_0Aa8KW8NhEVT8Xl36FKJAG4nesAN2Um7ZAlUWcjlJYLW1MCJ5vaGgCOMYapq30MWjfsvWJJPe4nLw9HPa1Gx3pWj1wwskRVG_c8a_9-WQtQ_ERqOw9xvMBr1RX0rd7X90ZMnn3BZOdX48c3hxM1XekwIHxEUP/s445/This%20life%20martin%20hagglund.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="295" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicPVSYcSfpAYB6mqzxoTFqI7FHA7karf_0Aa8KW8NhEVT8Xl36FKJAG4nesAN2Um7ZAlUWcjlJYLW1MCJ5vaGgCOMYapq30MWjfsvWJJPe4nLw9HPa1Gx3pWj1wwskRVG_c8a_9-WQtQ_ERqOw9xvMBr1RX0rd7X90ZMnn3BZOdX48c3hxM1XekwIHxEUP/w265-h400/This%20life%20martin%20hagglund.jpg" width="265" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In short, <b>Hägglund believes that we are defined by the way that we spend our time, but that we are enmeshed in a system that devours our time without our rational input. <br /></b><br />The only solution, therefore, would be to remake our economic system in a way that honors our finite time precisely by disaggregating the equation of time and economic value that is the hallmark of capitalism.<br /><br />The book concludes with a robust vision of democratic socialism in which time, and not just capital, serves as a resource to be cherished and distributed. <i><b>Hägglund is not opposed to the welfarist measures that constitute the horizon of democratic politics today. He does, though, think that they are inadequate given the magnitude of our crisis; they do not arise from a fully articulated philosophy of what man is, and what sort of world would be fit for her flourishing. </b></i>More pointedly, <b>he thinks that we are focusing too much on the mechanisms of redistribution, and not enough on the capitalist, temporal logic that governs the creation of value.<br /></b><br /><b>His form of democratic socialism essentially gives us back our time. The endless hours that are sucked into the maw of production can be ours, once again, if we have the courage to claim them. </b>Partially, this involves the simple exploitation of technology to increase the amount of time we are away from work. It also, though, presumes the revaluation of work and the economy itself. <i><b>He imagines a world in which our work is unalienated because we have freely chosen it, and because we understand how it contributes to a just world that we want to be our own. This is a world, too, in which we are not riveted to a profession forever, but can exercise our talents in diverse ways across our lives because we are not submitting our bodies to the dictates of the market.</b></i><br /><br />This is a utopian vision, to be sure. Hägglund does not do the work to show how it might plausibly be on the horizon, or ask how it might be possible in a globalized economy where the most unsavory and dangerous sorts of labor are often outsourced. That, though, is the great virtue of the book: it provides a regulative ideal, and a reminder of what kind of world we are actually fighting for. <b>However secular he might be, Hägglund’s is ultimately a project of restoring faith. And if the history of religion teaches anything, it is that faith is not created with concrete proposals. We have faith in a story, and in a promise, and this is what Hägglund seeks to restore to his secular audience.</b> ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/james-g-chappel-martin-hagglund/">https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/james-g-chappel-martin-hagglund/</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Mary:<br />Hagglund’s premise that the matter of humanity is how we spend our time is enlightening when considering how capitalism has bound time, labor and value in a knot heavy and fast as leg irons that bind us to an endless chain of hours not our own. The habits of a lifetime in these chains persist past your working years, everything still measured and ordered by the clock, accomplishment judged in terms of production, pleasure something we still feel we must measure, count, and account for. Time becomes a prison, not a gift... something to fill and use rather than enjoy.</span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />*<br /><b>LIBERATION THEOLOGY<br /></b><br /><i><b>Fifty years ago, religion met Marxism in the liberation theology movement.<br /></b></i><br />~ In 1984, in the heat of the Cold War, leading neoconservative theologian and American Enterprise Institute fellow Michael Novak took to the pages of the New York Times Sunday Magazine to denounce the decades-old liberation theology movement. For its advocates, the movement was a method that <b>put social emancipation, not the afterlife, at the center of Christian practice. For Novak, it was an unholy alliance between Marxist ideology and Christianity.</b><br /><br /><b>Novak detailed how idealistic Latin American clergy, nuns, and missionaries had all been duped by its fusion of religion and revolutionary thought.</b> It had swindled U.S. politicians, too. When the likes of Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill challenged Ronald Reagan’s effort to cast the revolutions rocking Central America as existential threats to U.S. security interests, they were relying on liberation theology’s distorted account of reality, Novak contended. The stakes could not be higher. <b>“If Marxism, even of a mild sort, flourishes” in Latin America and the Philippines, he warned, “and if it were to be officially blessed by Catholicism, two powerful symbolic forces would then have joined hands.”<br /></b><br />Novak must have heard how Fidel Castro had discredited a center-right Cuban Catholic hierarchy as “Pharisees” and “white sepulchers” during a fiery August 1960 address. (</span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>“To betray the poor is to betray Christ,” Castro declared. “To serve wealth is to betray Christ. To serve imperialism is to betray Christ.”</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;">)<br /><br />And he had surely seen the global outpouring of sympathy after the 1980 murder of El Salvador’s archbishop Óscar Romero at the hand of militias once supported by a U.S.-backed government. Romero had been a relatively conciliatory bishop before assuming the Church’s top post in El Salvador, where <b>he grew increasingly frustrated with state violence and the government’s broken promises of reform and embraced liberation theology’s practical vision. <br /></b><br />Romero’s political turn must have shown Novak what was dangerous about the movement: that it could radicalize the faithful, from young priests on the ground to members of U.S. Congress.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">For Novak, one book in particular—“electrifying and seminal,” he had to admit—encapsulated the movement: Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez’s A Theology of Liberation, published in 1971 and first translated into English in 1973. (The translation was recently rereleased in a fiftieth-anniversary edition by Orbis Books.) <br /></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPVaUslsUQ0Z0XO_nJDj6CAawGrM34bB4u38g5AhJcLzVWkTQGUI8_qCiPMK8B6SebuWRJj0kJ9840xPGGd8JaVIA2KnaKFHuy21VAd-pAEO1M9F3aMNR0nlh3RQESaFI4HiVxCLnB2kqePqKEr-uwyC_8HTTPbUmRpG69hmIKmgAQlwtD21-pVq3qaWLN/s500/liberation%20theology.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="319" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPVaUslsUQ0Z0XO_nJDj6CAawGrM34bB4u38g5AhJcLzVWkTQGUI8_qCiPMK8B6SebuWRJj0kJ9840xPGGd8JaVIA2KnaKFHuy21VAd-pAEO1M9F3aMNR0nlh3RQESaFI4HiVxCLnB2kqePqKEr-uwyC_8HTTPbUmRpG69hmIKmgAQlwtD21-pVq3qaWLN/w255-h400/liberation%20theology.jpg" width="255" /></a></span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Born in 1928 of mixed Spanish and Indigenous ancestry, Gutiérrez studied in Louvain, Belgium, at the height of Francophone progressive theological influence in the post–World War II period; he counted among his classmates the Colombian priest and revolutionary Camilo Torres. <b>When Gutiérrez returned to Peru, he sensed the excruciating disconnect between high theology and everyday realities. Surrounded by crushing poverty and anticolonial resistance, he grappled with where a traditional institution like the Catholic Church should stand. </b>It was in these conditions that A Theology of Liberation was born, melding rigorous biblical interpretation, social science, and a vision for social justice.<br /><br /><b>In the United States today, organized Christianity is mostly associated with restrictions on reproductive autonomy, countermajoritarian and white nationalist agendas, and an embrace of free enterprise economics (even though it has also played a central role in civil rights and progressive movements throughout U.S. history)</b>. A Theology of Liberation, by contrast, represents <i><b>a tradition that put religious reflection at the heart of the struggle of the global poor</b></i>. By embodying ambition instead of compromise, it also offered an alternative to the schismatic tendencies of multicultural liberalism.<br /><br />The book is a product of the concerns of its time; it was published years before women and minority voices began to shape the terms of broad political debate. Some of the social and economic crises it combatted—military rule and armed revolutions—are thankfully, for now, in Latin America’s past. But others—issues of economic dependence, political and cultural oppression, and glaring inequalities—remain, and so too does its influence.<br /><br /><b>A Theology of Liberation combines multiple publications and talks Gutiérrez gave in the 1960s after the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and in the run-up and aftermath of its Latin American successor, the Second Latin American Episcopal Conference (1968) in Medellín, Colombia. The two conferences, which Gutiérrez attended as a theological consultant, sought to guide the Catholic Church in a comprehensive response to a globalizing and modern world.<br /></b><br />The Church had already started down this road in the 1930s. But the horrors of World War II and the onset of the Cold War and decolonization presented new challenges for a faith growing rapidly in a colonized Latin America and the “mission territories” of Africa and Asia. <b>Places and people that had, until then, been mere afterthoughts in the halls of Rome now held the key to Catholicism’s future in the modern world.</b> In a 1962 radio address on the eve of the second council, </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Pope John XXIII argued for the Church to present itself to the “underdeveloped countries” as “Church of all, and especially the Church of the poor.”</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />Chile’s Manuel Larraín Errazuriz, from Talca, and Brazil’s Dom Hélder Câmara, from Rio, would pick up the Pope’s call. The two bishops helped organize the informal Domus Mariae group, representing a two-thirds voting majority of Latin American bishops, that successfully organized bishops to approve liturgical and interfaith reforms rather than simply rubber-stamp the previous Vatican Council of 1870. At the same time, French theologian Paul Gauthier’s Christ, the Church and the Poor (1963), which <b>argued that a globalizing Church needed to address global poverty, started making the rounds in a subgroup of bishops, led by Gauthier, that called themselves the “Church of the Poor” and sought to put poverty on the agenda of the Council.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXQ8MmMKdlTLAgVdj8mHphSNEtLxAEmXoXcXjZJKXhLlHJbafLJtkWV_bOn5BJ9k4JqUriApsEXEL0H_1VGCBLTyENl6oHrxYVB6bHzb42RYkeFK7uHrOY8bjo6284B5hsmF3ygiKNBq5mVhowSkeXiTgKC9HFm18dZoUjhGWiVEgeF1xRmuIEP2IDDi7G/s445/christ%20the%20church%20and%20the%20poor.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="306" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXQ8MmMKdlTLAgVdj8mHphSNEtLxAEmXoXcXjZJKXhLlHJbafLJtkWV_bOn5BJ9k4JqUriApsEXEL0H_1VGCBLTyENl6oHrxYVB6bHzb42RYkeFK7uHrOY8bjo6284B5hsmF3ygiKNBq5mVhowSkeXiTgKC9HFm18dZoUjhGWiVEgeF1xRmuIEP2IDDi7G/w275-h400/christ%20the%20church%20and%20the%20poor.jpg" width="275" /></a></b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Chief among this second group of bishops was Bologna’s Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro. At the end of the first session of the Second Council in 1962, Lercaro warned that “Our spirit will not be sufficiently responsive to God’s design and man’s expectation unless we place the Mystery of Christ . . . and the preaching of the Gospel to the poor” at the heart of the council’s work. To do so, <b>he proposed that the Church build fewer gilded churches, wear less fine red linen, and take off the multi-jeweled papal tiara</b>, as it were. The liturgical changes sought (and eventually won) at the Council would ideally signal </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>a more profound shift toward massing most of the institution’s vast resources, not just a few individuals who had taken vows of poverty, at the service of the marginalized.</b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />But the agenda of the poor did not drive the discussion at that council, nor at any of the subsequent ones. (In fact, Lercaro retired amid political controversy.) Despite reformers’ best efforts, the economic needs of the global majority were never objects of great concern. Nevertheless, the Church of the Poor reaffirmed its commitment in a “Catacombs Pact,” signed in 1965 primarily by up-and-coming Latin American bishops but also by lesser-known North Atlantic and Asian-stationed prelates, <b>vowing to implement a vision of simplicity and service to the poor upon returning home.</b><br /><br />Taking stock of these developments a decade later, Gutiérrez expressed disillusionment about global institutions’ attempts at economic development in Latin America. T<b>he largesse of the Alliance for Progress, a U.S. development financing program responding to the Cuban Revolution, had not borne fruit, and the Church hierarchy was moving too slowly.</b> Reaching the poor was an urgent matter of faith, Gutiérrez thought, not just politics. <i><b>By 1970, five years after the Second Council closed, 349 million of the world’s 654 million Catholics lived in the Global South, and some 256 million lived in Latin America—where 40 percent of the population lived below the poverty line.</b></i><br /><br />The 1965 Gaudium et Spes [JOY AND HOPE], one of the Council’s main documents, had allowed besieged populations—those “oppressed by a public authority overstepping its competence”—to “defend their own rights and the rights of their fellow citizens against the abuse of this authority.” In “Populorum Progressio” (1966), John’s successor, Pope Paul VI, nodded to the alleged positive benefits of colonialism and condemned revolutionary violence but—perhaps regretting some of those statements—would go on to bless African decolonization in 1967. <b>How could one not have seen revolutionary violence as a legitimate (though certainly not the only) response to glacial progress?</b><br /><br />At that point, Latin American bishops realized that advancing a theology suitable for their countries’ poor was a task they would have to take on themselves. The Second Latin American Episcopal Conference, where Gutiérrez served on various commissions, made significant progress toward this end. Câmara, now in Recife, Brazil, had already <b>argued the need to combat inequality</b> in a 1966 preparatory conference in Argentina. </span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Working with social movements in pursuit of goals such as agrarian reform and labor rights, he argued, would prove that religion was not merely an opiate of the people. The bishops at the Medellín conference laid out what they saw as some of Latin America’s harsh realities—economic and political dependency on the North Atlantic countries, the need for rapid urbanization, high illiteracy, and a weak internal productive capacity and market—and they called on governments to develop policies to address them.<br /><br />It was this context that led Gutiérrez to <b>reject “a spiritual life removed from worldly concerns.” </b>Communion with God, he insisted, should mean addressing the failure of development and the persistence of abject poverty. If, as Antonio Gramsci argued, philosophy was for everyone, so, for Gutiérrez, was theology. Christians could and should become “organic intellectuals” by prophetically denouncing injustice and announcing <b>the Good News of a society to come here on earth. Like Augustine, Gutiérrez argued that Christians should interpret the changing times in light of Scripture’s historical and future-oriented visions to discern where God stood.</b><br /><br />Discerning a path forward from the 1970s realities was even more important given the <b>coexistence of Marxist and Christian worldviews in Latin America, both of which offered egalitarian views of the future.</b> Gutiérrez made clear that Christianity and Marxism had important differences, though these differences, for him, led to “direct and fruitful confrontation” rather than irreconcilable conflict. Through this debate, Christianity would have to search “for its own sources” to better understand both the role of humans in history and how to transform the world.<br /><br />Gutierrez argues that Christian beliefs had liberatory implications in the present. “By his death and resurrection, he redeems us from sin and all its consequences,” he writes. Salvation was not merely “a cure for sin in this life” but rather a “communion of human beings with God and among themselves,” <b>wrestling with “all human reality” and transforming it “to its fullness in Christ.” </b><br /><br />In a break from traditional North Atlantic theologians, Gutierrez suggests that salvation first required denunciation—what Herbert Marcuse called a “great refusal” of current social arrangements. But it could not stay there. A society in the fullness of Christ would achieve utopia, the “city of the future” envisioned by Thomas More where “the common good prevails, where there is no private property, no money or privileges.” <b>Quoting Che Guevara, Gutierrez points out such a society would not simply have “shining factories.” Rather, it was “intended to help the whole person.” “Human beings,” Che thought, “must be transformed.”</b><br /><br />This vision had both social and theological implications. The Kingdom could not be reduced only to “temporal progress,” or the improvement of material conditions—an error Gutiérrez claimed even the Council and Teilhard de Chardin had made. Sin, “the fundamental obstacle to the Kingdom,” was “also the root of all misery and injustice.” The Christian must accept not only personal salvation but <b>“the liberating gift of Christ” embodied in “all struggle against exploitation and alienation.”</b> The Church as an institution also had an obligation to speak out. “Its denunciation must be public,” Gutiérrez concluded, “for its position in Latin American society is public.”<br /><br /><b>The Exodus story is the “paradigmatic” lens through which Gutiérrez reads this salvation history. </b>God desires the liberation of his people, but even they can look back fondly on “the security of slavery” by “beginning to forget” the horrors of enslavement in Egypt, Gutiérrez writes. But the very act of breaking free of Pharaoh’s grip leads to a “desacralization” of the prevailing social order and justifies direct Christian action in history. If there is any “final meaning of history,” such an end gives “value to the present.” God’s promise of salvation in the future should drive Christians to commit to a just social order now.<br /><br /><b>The most controversial section of A Theology of Liberation addresses the universal call of Christian love in a region split into oppressive and oppressed classes.</b> <b>Gutiérrez argues that the God of the Exodus story took sides and that Christians must as well.</b> Quoting the French bishops, he points out that class struggles were a fact, not something one advocated or deplored. More importantly, as Brazilian educator Paulo Freire argued in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), <b>liberating the oppressed would liberate the oppressors as well. <br /></b><br />In the 1990s, beaten down by harsh political repression and socialism’s apparent discrediting after 1989, the liberation theology school seemed, for a moment, to have finally run out of steam. But it never fully died. How could it? <b>Gutiérrez’s simple message—that God is on the side of the poor and marginalized—is one forever waiting to be retooled for shifting times.</b> ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/salvation-now/?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=073dc4830f-newsletter_12_20_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-073dc4830f-40729829&mc_cid=073dc4830f">https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/salvation-now/?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=073dc4830f-newsletter_12_20_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-073dc4830f-40729829&mc_cid=073dc4830f</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Mary:<br />I remember those days of liberation theology — the radical priests, the nuns intent on human rights, the dedication to struggles for justice. It was all the rage — and quite sincere, saw Christ's message as inspiration and challenge to care for the most oppressed, the poorest and most disregarded — to champion their cause. It was the exact opposite of the current evangelical Christofascism. And it felt itself rooted in Christ's words, and in its own science/theologies...like Teilhard de Chardin, for instance. I read him with a teenager's fervid enthusiasm. As to its accomplishments...I'm not sure what was lasting, and what just disappeared.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span>Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Eventually Catholicism itself will disappear, though not within our lifetime. Still, a hundred years from now, will there still be the Catholic church, or just some remnant groups of people meeting in private homes, like the first Christians? Some think that would be better — the true, dedicated Christians “returning to the roots.” Compared with the medieval Christianity, perhaps we are already at that place. <br /><br />As for the poor, I remember that somewhere in the Gospels Christ says, in defense of Mary Magdalene’s having bought an expensive perfumed oil, the Apostles demurring that the money should have been spent on the poor — “The poor, they will always be with you.” Jesus knew that religion is above all about magic and splendor, about being somehow transported beyond the mundane. It’s on that basis that many insist that religion will never die entirely. Some human needs can be fulfilled only through some form of religion. </span><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />*<br /><i><b>“The man who enslaves another enslaves himself. . . . Whites are thus enslaved to their own egos. Therefore, when blacks assert their freedom in self-determination, whites too are liberated.” ~ James H. Cone</b><br /></i><br />*<br /><b>THE PROFOUND EFFECTS OF LIVING LONGER<br /></b><br />Thanks to lifestyle changes and the miracles of modern medicine and science, the number of people living into their 90s and beyond is growing every year, even with a slight dip in life expectancies due to the pandemic. Today, more than one third of all Americans are over 50. Every day 10,000 Americans are turning 65 and by 2030, one in five of us will be 65 or over, including the first Gen Xers. The 50-plus age group has already begun to reject the traditional retirement script of the previous generation, and in doing so are reimagining work and life choices that will pave the way for new kinds of lifecycles.<br /><br />The question is: how will we use this incredible gift of time in a meaningful and productive way?</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDBLHU9arKwXj9XlLhNUttgXbSYhyQJP5qW-s4PsD5ftu5SiIpxLyCUYcknWqOIlfBFzN2XfO1ebC1l_dJBXLz9r765mQp37YSKMdcWFtbZ6WOHC8-nndiFL-31YKKCStW3PJBi9Lm8CqgwUjTpH85zc3WRu19X_obyD5wJMvXO8QrF0IHRa3IUfKVZJRS/s1200/65%20money.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDBLHU9arKwXj9XlLhNUttgXbSYhyQJP5qW-s4PsD5ftu5SiIpxLyCUYcknWqOIlfBFzN2XfO1ebC1l_dJBXLz9r765mQp37YSKMdcWFtbZ6WOHC8-nndiFL-31YKKCStW3PJBi9Lm8CqgwUjTpH85zc3WRu19X_obyD5wJMvXO8QrF0IHRa3IUfKVZJRS/w400-h200/65%20money.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Some of us are opting out of our careers early, as we are seeing with the Great Resignation. </span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The pandemic has led to an uptick in the number of retired Americans, according to a recent Pew study, fueled in part by rising household wealth, a result of strengthening home values and historic stock market gains. Others are staying in their jobs beyond age 65, out of desire or financial need, while demanding changes to accommodate schedules and work rhythms that suit them. </b>They are beginning to understand the leverage they have as companies scramble to fill a resulting talent vacuum from those leaving.<br /><br />Yet, according to a PWC study, only eight percent of corporations include age as a component of their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies, which affects everyone regardless of gender, race, or religious beliefs and needs to change for all of us. <b>A study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that at age 60, most people reach the pinnacle of their potential, and then ride that wave into their 80s.</b><br /><br />Some “Reimagineers,” as I call them, are refiring into second careers, like Randy Boyd, a former businessman who is now the president of the University of Tennessee, a job that he stepped into at 60 (with only a bachelor’s degree) or Stephanie Young, who became a medical doctor in her early 60s after a long career as a book editor. According to a 2016 Kauffman Foundation study,<b> the fast-growing cohort of entrepreneurs are people aged 55 to 64 years old, who account for 25 percent of total entrepreneurs (vs. less than 15 percent in 1996).<br /></b><br />Boomers continue to be fit and active in ways that will push past the boundaries of how our bodies can perform as we live longer. <b>When I ran the Toronto marathon in 2011, I watched in awe as Fauja Singh crossed the finish line at age 100—the oldest person to ever do so.</b> At 68, I’m still running marathons, skiing, and hiking mountains and hope to do so for many more years, as a role model for those who come after me.<br /><br /><b>We are also defying the marketing belief that people over 50 are brand loyal and locked into our younger-years preferences. Just ask any Tesla dealer who their primary customer is.<br /></b><br />Often ignored by marketers, <b>older Americans have $15 trillion in spending power</b>, which represents nearly double digits growth from 2010, according to the Global Coalition on Aging. To disregard this group is to miss out on a generation of vibrant and dynamic spenders who are offended by the outdated images of older consumers walking into the sunset in most advertising and marketing messages. We’ll force a reckoning on this front, too, demanding to be portrayed as active, tech-savvy and curious.<br /><br /><b>Another market we are upending: housing. More of us are choosing to move to inter-generational neighborhoods, as opposed to senior living communities. We don’t want to move to Florida, we want to age at home.</b> We don’t want to stay alive at all costs and will pioneer new ways of living that generations after us will refine, as they have with other trends that we have started.<br /><br />It has been much reported that <b>over the next 20 years, the Boomers will deliver the largest transfer of generational wealth in the history of the world, an estimated $60 to $70 trillion dollars in assets that will either be accessed by them or passed on to the next generations.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Perhaps this is how we can make the biggest statement of our generational legacy.<br /><br /><b>For those of us who are financially fortunate, we can make a massive impact on the philanthropy world, addressing climate change, social justice, mental health, and more. </b>We have the opportunity to create social impact by funding new initiatives that drive meaningful change, bringing us full circle to our earlier days as activists in the 60s and 70s.<br /><br />Yup, we boomers are at it again. This time, however, it will be how we blow up what we are supposed to do as we live longer and <b>construct new ways of living our lives that will lead to more possibilities for us and the next generations</b>. ~ <br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwPIKxC4e1GQPgYcSZpI8kFjALwdyip2WljmqJdWjESxizRnisxd6rxgHAAwjYv-iB1fktyDpBKI89r_Azs7bRUDG0abSGNp1ZvVX6YnyBUmb1lsDkxLXQ9Bi7eqOPHXPx40mI88ezvxe3cZQTRyB7mZUkQju_GtAdqyp8ty59mD6XlcgNQiOo7w7C0On8/s500/roar%20into%20the%20second%20half%20of%20your%20life.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="331" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwPIKxC4e1GQPgYcSZpI8kFjALwdyip2WljmqJdWjESxizRnisxd6rxgHAAwjYv-iB1fktyDpBKI89r_Azs7bRUDG0abSGNp1ZvVX6YnyBUmb1lsDkxLXQ9Bi7eqOPHXPx40mI88ezvxe3cZQTRyB7mZUkQju_GtAdqyp8ty59mD6XlcgNQiOo7w7C0On8/w265-h400/roar%20into%20the%20second%20half%20of%20your%20life.jpg" width="265" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/money/a38859723/the-new-retirement/">https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/money/a38859723/the-new-retirement/<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>ICE CREAM FOR BREAKFAST: THE NEW SUPERFOOD?<br /></b><br />A study from Kyorin University in Tokyo, found that <b>eating ice cream in the morning may improve alertness and mental performance.</b><br /><br />Professor Yoshihiko Koga and his team analyzed the results of multiple clinical trials that measured brain activity after eating various foods in the morning. According to this study, frozen foods, particularly ice cream, had an “awakening” effect on the brain. As a result, study subjects showed higher alertness and quicker response. At the same time, ice cream stimulated high-frequency alpha waves, that serve as connectors between conscious thinking and subconscious mind and responsible for calmness and relaxation. Consequently, study subjects showed less mental irritability.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">According to The Daily Telegraph, this is not the first time scientists researched positive effects of ice cream. <b>In 2005, the Institute of Psychiatry in London used brain imaging technology to prove that eating ice cream activated the same pleasure centers of the brain as winning money or listening to your favorite music.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">These research results don’t come as a surprise, as glucose is the main source of energy for all brain and red blood cells. A high glucose meal, such as a scoop of ice cream, can aid many psychological and physical processes. In addition, when you eat real ice cream, you can be sure that you are getting milk and cream into your system. These ingredients are great sources of calcium, vitamin D, riboflavin, vitamin A, and phosphorus – all essential for your health.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.chapmans.ca/scoop/study-ice-cream-for-breakfast-is-good-for-you/">https://www.chapmans.ca/scoop/study-ice-cream-for-breakfast-is-good-for-you/</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyZ1BlO_Zzzmf74lKaDSQp3rKzvHVllb3eHyeKGvkFKLZYei9K6auR9pSGRnhRAoPu-LR9HUTy16MpNcCd6YUUGR2PlcE7tvYNcrDVC7nPgrV4XjmmUidewn4Y9OP-15BqkYgul5Z4nKmZHinHwhuXojRCK8gonAp1Q4sB61rvn6kptjB1qlVrLGOgNF2R/s1680/ice%20cream%20sundae.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1418" data-original-width="1680" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyZ1BlO_Zzzmf74lKaDSQp3rKzvHVllb3eHyeKGvkFKLZYei9K6auR9pSGRnhRAoPu-LR9HUTy16MpNcCd6YUUGR2PlcE7tvYNcrDVC7nPgrV4XjmmUidewn4Y9OP-15BqkYgul5Z4nKmZHinHwhuXojRCK8gonAp1Q4sB61rvn6kptjB1qlVrLGOgNF2R/s320/ice%20cream%20sundae.png" width="320" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">from another source:<br /><br />~ Andres Ardisson Korat, a then-Harvard doctoral student, suggested that for those with diabetes, consuming half a cup of ice cream every day was linked to a reduced risk of cardiac issues. A recent Atlantic article resurfaced this notion that a dessert laden with sugar and saturated fat would potentially be healthy. The surprise of the results has contributed to the viral news.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The Harvard researchers were perplexed by the discovery, as it was illogical. <b>It was difficult to explain how a sweet dairy dessert could possibly help those with diabetes.</b><br /><br />"There are few plausible biological explanations for these results," writes Ardisson Korat in his thesis. "One possibility is that <b>in dairy products such as milk, cheese, cream and ice cream, the membrane that coats fat globules, called milk-fat globule membrane (MFGM), is intact in contrast to products like butter that are stripped of their MFGM in the manufacturing process.”</b><br /><br />Tests where MFGM components without dairy fat were provided to subjects in the form of buttermilk and compared to a placebo drink showed reductions in cholesterol and triglycerides However, given that other dairy products with higher fat contents than ice cream, such as cheese (35%) and cream (20% to 36%), were not inversely associated with cardiovascular disease risk in the study, <b>the mechanism is unlikely to explain the specific inverse association observed for ice cream.</b><br /><br />The nutrition team at Harvard never stopped looking for solutions, however. Researchers examined earlier research, thought of novel possibilities, and ran hundreds of experiments over the course of many years. Such outcomes were not unique to Ardisson Korat's study.<br /><br />Harvard researchers started gathering "food-frequency questionnaires" and medical information from thousands of healthcare professionals in the 1980s. Based on data gathered between 1986 and 1998, the university's first observational research on Type 2 diabetes and dairy was published in 2005. According to the researchers, <b>consuming more low-fat dairy products was linked to a decreased chance of developing diabetes.<br /></b><br />A Harvard news bulletin explains to The Atlantic: <b>"The risk reduction was almost exclusively associated with low-fat or nonfat dairy foods.”</b><br /><br />The research suggests </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>men who consumed two or more servings of skim or low-fat milk each day had a 22% lower risk of developing diabetes. According to the study, men who had two or more servings of ice cream each week saw the same results.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><br /></b><br />Over a period of around ten years, other investigations reached similar results. <b>The findings continue to baffle researchers, but nothing has challenged the sweet belief that ice cream does contain health benefits.</b> ~ </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/37925665">https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/37925665<br /></a><br />Oriana:<br />People who like ice cream (I find it too sweet, but I know I’m an outlier) experience pleasure, and simply the experience of pleasure could have a variety of health benefits. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>Ending on beauty (and horror):</b></i><br /><br /></span></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I walked an unfamiliar street<br />
And suddenly heard a raven's cry,<br />
And the sound of a lute, and distant thunder,-<br />
In front of me a tram was flying.<br /></span>
<span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />
How I jumped onto its foot board,<br />
Was a mystery to me,<br />
Even in daylight it left behind<br />
A fiery trail in the air.<br /></span>
<span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />
It rushed like a dark, winged storm,<br />
And was lost in the abyss of time...<br />
Tram-driver, stop,<br />
Stop the tram now.<br /></span>
<span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />
Too late. We had already turned the corner,<br />
We tore through a forest of palms,<br />
Over the Neva, the Nile, the Seine<br />
We thundered across three bridges.<span><span> </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">. . . And yet the heart is forever upset,<br />It's hard to breathe, it hurts to live...<br />Darling I never thought<br />One can love and be so sad!<br /><br />~ Nikolai Gumilyov, The Lost Streetcar<br /><br />(Akhmatova’s first husband, Nikolay Gumilyov, was executed by the Soviet secret police, and her son Lev Gumilyov and her common-law husband Nikolay Punin spent many years in the Gulag, where Punin died.)<br /></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh03kpOHuGkPHZLrdPlF6te_eePLEGDDEMPnzCxJc1Hh4KqPukHYF8lq4x8geVw36YNJoxEMTUM0pAQkr_r7P-SuRi1K6zR-uoLgnN0-2ZvUefN33wXkbavPcCwlbCGyREiU88eTkgxnVnQLW7Ohy1sn08VLGktaq2wN4NQy1yjkvPNqd-vAEehTgS4DCeh/s1644/lost%20streetcar.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1094" data-original-width="1644" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh03kpOHuGkPHZLrdPlF6te_eePLEGDDEMPnzCxJc1Hh4KqPukHYF8lq4x8geVw36YNJoxEMTUM0pAQkr_r7P-SuRi1K6zR-uoLgnN0-2ZvUefN33wXkbavPcCwlbCGyREiU88eTkgxnVnQLW7Ohy1sn08VLGktaq2wN4NQy1yjkvPNqd-vAEehTgS4DCeh/w400-h266/lost%20streetcar.png" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /></span><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-63861150746941402222023-12-24T16:20:00.000-08:002023-12-27T17:22:12.369-08:00INSIDE THE MIND OF CHARLES MANSON; ANTI-ISRAEL SENTIMENT ON THE LEFT AND THE RIGHT; MOTHER TERESA’S “FELT NO PRESENCE OF GOD”; VIRGINIA WOOLF’S LITERARY INSULTS; ABORTION IN RUSSIA; HOW RUSSIANS FEEL ABOUT THE CASUALITIES IN UKRAINE; THE DEMISE OF WINTER<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifiHrz2ubblWl3KaC-nSrr3YoEsKLr5x9KlH5lIVkeMNaPCqCzF6kRherlB8GvBKxAmaLHjk6-LxQdq9ABb755v5ybNteZo-GOsm9krqBYH_jrABQGFxmlDFmBUV8m5arbrMOfpp4mcAWIRk8Gazs13HkTkWq1rZfZHcuAvq5qKkjYaMhfCgpmk-ypWe6D/s2048/lupinr%20multi.jpg" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifiHrz2ubblWl3KaC-nSrr3YoEsKLr5x9KlH5lIVkeMNaPCqCzF6kRherlB8GvBKxAmaLHjk6-LxQdq9ABb755v5ybNteZo-GOsm9krqBYH_jrABQGFxmlDFmBUV8m5arbrMOfpp4mcAWIRk8Gazs13HkTkWq1rZfZHcuAvq5qKkjYaMhfCgpmk-ypWe6D/w300-h400/lupinr%20multi.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />LEDA<br /><br />A woman becomes <br />the landscape of her body,<br />deltas and valleys, <br />orchard, fruit. But I was <br /><br />young, I was <br />a meadow and a stream. <br />Then the white beating<br />of heavy wings — <br /><br />or maybe those were clouds<br />wind-torn into swans?<br />The beak pinched my neck,<br />the weight pushed me <br /><br />down, until I lay<br />forgotten as the earth,<br />the water and the sky.<br />I too heard the tale<br /><br />of how the winged god<br />descended, bladed <br />with purple and gold — <br />The sun was scream-bright,<br /><br />a blizzard of swan, a city <br />in flames. Maybe it was <br />the first blood of sunset —<br />I was a girl of thirteen.<br /><br />The ground was hard.<br /><br />~ Oriana</span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHUZNkR-KMRI6Y4qjtRNxQvC3WwJ3WNgLF5klk0FQmEUrs7taR_RpgfPcV_lxLqFUpUYgp1uK_mCjNYMNemA5AdXdX06LLMd_I93-KBAJXXlNwSoRS3XsaUIJlAYYW2EIpzNoxaJz6LZ5YGlw9QaR1EyXdyjTNKP84dYsgeN7Py_DtwVfMqltBZDCUD1gW/s736/Leda%20and%20the%20Swan%20Roman%20mosaic%203rd%20century%20AD.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="674" data-original-width="736" height="366" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHUZNkR-KMRI6Y4qjtRNxQvC3WwJ3WNgLF5klk0FQmEUrs7taR_RpgfPcV_lxLqFUpUYgp1uK_mCjNYMNemA5AdXdX06LLMd_I93-KBAJXXlNwSoRS3XsaUIJlAYYW2EIpzNoxaJz6LZ5YGlw9QaR1EyXdyjTNKP84dYsgeN7Py_DtwVfMqltBZDCUD1gW/w400-h366/Leda%20and%20the%20Swan%20Roman%20mosaic%203rd%20century%20AD.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Leda and the Swan, Greco-Roman mosaic, 3rd century CE<br /></i><br />*<br /><b>THE ART OF THE INSULT: VIRGINIA WOOLF<br /></b><br />Almost 60 years ago, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? premiered. Instead of doing the usual content about Edward Albee, I thought I’d serve up a different (extremely cold) take: a brief and incomplete selection of <b>moments that remind us how certain people really should have been afraid of Virginia Woolf, because she was full of epic—and sometimes kind of horrible and classist—insults.</b> Writers, of course, make the worst enemies. Oh well, at least we can make ourselves feel a little bit better by reading all of the very mean things Woolf wrote in her diary about other people. You don’t even have to feel guilty for gossiping, because everyone in question is dead. Onward, street-walking civet cats:</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju2kG-g0EJEoJs4mE7N3mHu24cI6wGK9h6tQBCSAwhocFZKQEti1TIr1vkQj4CJYI9B8pNB8V9r91agY-zUyV7CJsUJZllEuIRZnR_cFktCkrDb-4O42NdC3k9SbgZv9algy8pnUfIFEKlGwh3H7gPv-E2GbOoFEbyGYwZGVmoC9LR9HdM8T7Y6VMoSU4z/s500/African%20civet%20Civettictis%20civetta.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="333" data-original-width="500" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju2kG-g0EJEoJs4mE7N3mHu24cI6wGK9h6tQBCSAwhocFZKQEti1TIr1vkQj4CJYI9B8pNB8V9r91agY-zUyV7CJsUJZllEuIRZnR_cFktCkrDb-4O42NdC3k9SbgZv9algy8pnUfIFEKlGwh3H7gPv-E2GbOoFEbyGYwZGVmoC9LR9HdM8T7Y6VMoSU4z/w400-h266/African%20civet%20Civettictis%20civetta.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>African civet, Civettictis civetta</i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“Pale, marmoreal [T.S.] Eliot was there last week, like a chapped office boy on a high stool, with a cold in his head, until he warms a little, which he did.” From a diary entry, February 16, 1921<br /><br />On Freud: “A screwed up shrunk very old man: with a monkey’s light eyes, paralyzed spasmodic movements, inarticulate: but alert.” From a diary entry, January 29, 1939<br /><br />“I am reading Point Counter Point [by Aldous Huxley]. Not a good novel. All raw, uncooked, protesting.” From a diary entry, January 23rd, 1935<br /><br />“I have read 200 pages [of Ulysses] so far—not a third; and have been amused, stimulated, charmed, interested, by the first 2 or 3 chapters—to the end of the cemetery scene; and then puzzled, bored, irritated and disillusioned by a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples. <b>And Tom, great Tom, thinks this is on par with War and Peace! </b>An illiterate, underbred book it seems to me; the book of a self taught working man, and we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, and ultimately nauseating. When one can have the cooked flesh, why have the raw? <b>But I think if you are anemic, as Tom is, there is a glory in blood. <i>Being fairly normal myself </i></b>I am soon ready for the classics again.” From a diary entry, August 16th, 1922 [Tom = T.S. Eliot]<br /><br />“Yesterday the Granta said I was now defunct. Orlando, Waves, Flush represent the death of a potentially great writer. This is only a rain drop, I mean the snub some little pimpled undergraduate likes to administer, just as he would put a frog in one’s bed: but then there’s all the letters and the request for pictures—so many that, foolishly perhaps, I wrote a sarcastic letter to the N.S.—thus procuring more rain drops.” From a diary entry, October 29th<br /><br />“Hope (Mirrlees) has been for the weekend—over-dressed, over elaborate, scented, extravagant, yet with thick nose, thick ankles; a little unrefined, I mean.” From a diary entry, November 23, 1920<br /><br /><b>“[F]ate has not been kind to [Elizabeth Barrett] Browning as a writer. Nobody reads her, nobody discusses her, nobody troubles to put her in her place.</b>” From “Aurora Leigh” in The Common Reader<br /><br />On E.M. Forster: “His mother is slowly dispatching him, I think—He is limp and damp and milder than the breath of a cow.” From a May 1926 letter to Vanessa Bell<br /><br />On Katherine Mansfield: “I shall have to accept the fact, I’m afraid, that <b>her mind is a very thin soil, laid an inch or two deep upon very barren rock</b>. For Bliss is long enough to give her a chance of going deeper. Instead she is content with superficial smartness; and the whole conception is poor, cheap, not the vision, however imperfect, of an interesting mind. <b>She writes badly too</b>.” From a diary entry, August 7, 1918<br /><br />“We could both wish that one’s first impression of [Katherine Mansfield] was not that she stinks like a—well civet cat that had taken to street walking. In truth I’m a little shocked by her commonness at first sight; lines so hard & cheap.” From a diary entry, 1917<br /><br />Another version of the civet insult: “A more despicable set of creatures I never saw. They come in furred like seals & scented like civets, condescend to pull a few novels about on the counter, & then demand languidly whether there is anything amusing.” From a diary entry, January 13, 1917</span><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYBGeYvOmmmaY2LfeRy-tYOBvracYZFeLxdEBfrtdSbc9sdl6jURZmGaAVFLJj9LLUUK6dNNt5GHbccAUagqj3p4-au4xU2G4O7zr2oeArdHtWsihybaEF4NA59Yrpmr1eY4q8SRWfgpoY79t5mrW1qqbITH38SOpsV527VZpHQeszSPhJUfYqTxI5BZpj/s1000/civet%20Assam.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="1000" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYBGeYvOmmmaY2LfeRy-tYOBvracYZFeLxdEBfrtdSbc9sdl6jURZmGaAVFLJj9LLUUK6dNNt5GHbccAUagqj3p4-au4xU2G4O7zr2oeArdHtWsihybaEF4NA59Yrpmr1eY4q8SRWfgpoY79t5mrW1qqbITH38SOpsV527VZpHQeszSPhJUfYqTxI5BZpj/w400-h266/civet%20Assam.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://getpocket.com/explore/item/a-selection-of-virginia-woolf-s-most-savage-insults?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://getpocket.com/explore/item/a-selection-of-virginia-woolf-s-most-savage-insults?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us</a><br /><br />*<br />“No mortal lives who is untouched by grief <br />and disease. Many have to bury children <br />and bear new ones; death is ordained for all. <br />And humans feel anxiety for this—in vain: <br />earth must return to earth, and life for all <br />be mowed, like wheat. Necessity insists.” <br /><br />~ Euripides <br /><br />*<br /><b>THE ANTI-ISRAEL SENTIMENT OF THE EXTREME LEFT AND EXTREME RIGHT<br /></b><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8R_TZ6fcFpFCmYwy8oxPoCpS82q4ypu8ckoFw6as_Q95gplDyo_9HHW-0CgjXWbH9Ln3lXo01DYXbzs4P_qrDAH9fpi9TQkl7daRMN3pKxYJhBGlK2NSUrhatwUIJiOsdPjcwmDCI7_Sg6C1CIcFYUx_tO6vbGt85SjAEVIsAm71AnpqRdhfIV1wSZib5/s2774/nativity%20figures%20Bethlehem%202023.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1488" data-original-width="2774" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8R_TZ6fcFpFCmYwy8oxPoCpS82q4ypu8ckoFw6as_Q95gplDyo_9HHW-0CgjXWbH9Ln3lXo01DYXbzs4P_qrDAH9fpi9TQkl7daRMN3pKxYJhBGlK2NSUrhatwUIJiOsdPjcwmDCI7_Sg6C1CIcFYUx_tO6vbGt85SjAEVIsAm71AnpqRdhfIV1wSZib5/w400-h215/nativity%20figures%20Bethlehem%202023.png" width="400" /></a></div>Nativity figures amid an installation of rubble and razor wire, outside the Church of the Nativity in Manger Square in Bethlehem.<br /></i><br />~ This is something that I saw in France from 2000 with the start of the Second Intifada (called Oslo War in Israel):<br /><br /><b>Academia is particularly anti-Israel.</b> It is as if knowledge has led people to be awful or knowledge is itself awful.</span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The left is particularly ready to accept lies from the Islamists.</b> Like during the Oslo War, they believed that Arafat still wanted peace and that actually the Al-Aqsa Brigade was independent of him.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The left was the recipient of the religiosity of the West and would believe any lie about Jews and Israel. Listening to them, the Middle Ages made perfect sense.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Muslims are especially anti-Israel. The fact that they can claim to be a “minority” leads the left to be permissive about it. </b>Or maybe they believe they are a useful tool against the Jews.</span></p><p><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>The alliance of leftism with Islam looks like the Germano-Soviet pact between Hitler and Stalin</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>.</b> It is equally ominous and powerful. We know how that one collapsed, how will this one evolve?<br /><br />23 years later we see exactly the same thing. It is as if nothing happened and the articles, the slogans, and the indignation were already written up and only the date needed to be put on the messages.</span></p><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRVMo6k7CoMb_vZR2WafLgLXdrNTm1YJ9bPOrF0DWj6B260HwteGEYyyCjfONrg3akFvA0j6f8iEXEnMXcwZ5zQpCBIATlJSPZmxUR36n7oegtFXL6fJhOvPHDdTazYcnMDxFgwIAgjtMgUfJJD7Sbnq4GGrzzOMOaJAxooC0_Xd8iA6Nz52cVqyJETvK9/s1280/Dove%20of%20Peace%20flak%20jacket%20Bethlehem.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRVMo6k7CoMb_vZR2WafLgLXdrNTm1YJ9bPOrF0DWj6B260HwteGEYyyCjfONrg3akFvA0j6f8iEXEnMXcwZ5zQpCBIATlJSPZmxUR36n7oegtFXL6fJhOvPHDdTazYcnMDxFgwIAgjtMgUfJJD7Sbnq4GGrzzOMOaJAxooC0_Xd8iA6Nz52cVqyJETvK9/w400-h300/Dove%20of%20Peace%20flak%20jacket%20Bethlehem.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Banksy's Armored Dove of Peace, Bethlehem</i><br /><br /><b>It is tempting to say that antisemitism is in the modern West almost exclusively a phenomenon of the left.</b> There is much truth to it.<br /><br />Still, there are a few things one cannot ignore. <b>Some caricatures of George Soros as a great manipulator behind the scene are Nazi in their art. We did see some avowed supporters of Trump say “Jews will not replace us”</b> (this does not imply that Trump is antisemitic, but that some of his supporters are). <b>So, it is not like the right is free of it.<br /></b><br />So, when one Jew (forget the name, sorry) said that looking forward from 2000 we will see </span><br /><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>both the left and the right being antisemitic and both accusing the other of being antisemitic</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>, </b>he was certainly on to something. ~ Matthieu Dutour Sikiric, Quora<br /><br />A NEW WAVE OF ANTISEMITISM <br /><br /><b>The U.S. is currently experiencing one of the most significant waves of antisemitism that it has ever seen. </b>Jewish communities are shaken and traumatized.<br /><br />Jewish and civil rights organizations both in the U.S. and in other Western countries reported a rise in antisemitic incidents following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent Israeli military response. <b>The Anti-Defamation League reported that in the first week after Hamas’ deadly attack, in which 1,400 Israelis were killed, antisemitic incidents in the U.S. tripled in comparison to the same week last year</b>.<br /><br />Similarly, <b>London police recorded a 1,353% increase in antisemitic crimes compared with the same period a year earlier.<br /></b><br />In addition, antisemitic symbols and rhetoric seem to be part of a growing number of protests that erupted around the globe following the escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.<br /><br />Most scholars agree that the term “antisemitism” describes animosity and discrimination against Jews. Broader definitions, such as the one adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, include <b>the singling out of Israel and the demonization of its character, such as the claim that “the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”<br /></b><br />My team of researchers at UMass Lowell and Development Service Group, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, compiled and analyzed a comprehensive dataset of antisemitic incidents in the U.S. between 1990 and 2021. We wanted to understand what factors led to antisemitism. We covered violent antisemitism as well as incidents of antisemitic intimidation and vandalism. We included any attacks against Jews which were motivated by the religious identity of the victims – even if it was motivated by anger about Israeli policies.<br /><br />Our study, which will be published soon, found a startling new phenomenon:<b> </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>The ideology underlying antisemitism in the U.S. now encompasses both sides of the political spectrum. </b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And it allowed us to develop three other insights regarding the intensifying linkage between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and antisemitism in the U.S.</span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>1. Antisemitism is not exclusive to the far right</b></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><i><b>Traditionally, antisemitism in the United States was promoted by far-right organizations and movements, such as the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi groups and skinheads. Such groups focused on propagating traditional antisemitic narratives alleging Jews’ racial inferiority, their control of the financial sector and their role in global cabals aiming to undermine America and Western civilization.</b><br /></i><br /><b>More recently, progressive and left-leaning movements that are critical of Israel’s policies</b> – especially with regard to the Palestinian population in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 – <b>have become linked to antisemitic practices, too.<br /></b><br />In a survey conducted in 2018 in 12 European Union countries among victims of antisemitism, 21% indicated that they were physically or verbally attacked by what participants called “left-wing” activists.<b> In the U.S., our data shows that 95% of antisemitic incidents motivated by Israel’s policies were perpetrated by far-left or unidentified activists. Just 5% were perpetrated by known far-right activists.</b><br /><br />Further indication that antisemitic violence is no longer the sole domain of far-right extremists can be gleaned from an analysis of our data that looked at the geographic characteristics of antisemitism.<br /><br />We find that antisemitic hate crimes are occurring especially in politically progressive areas of the country. <b><i>The New York metropolitan area and the Northeast in general, and urban centers in Florida, California, the Northwest and the Midwest are experiencing the majority of antisemitic incidents</i></b>.<br /><br />While these regions of the U.S. were usually considered hospitable to minorities, our data reflects that in the past decade they are the most substantial hubs of antisemitic violence.<br /><br /><b>2. US antisemitism is strongly correlated to escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict<br /></b><br />The outbreak of violence between Israel and Palestinians seems to inflame antisemitism in the U.S. and is exploited to amplify long-standing antisemitic tropes.<br /><br /><b>Rigorous analysis of our dataset found conclusive evidence that these escalations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – such as the violent clashes between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip in the past few years – are accompanied by an increase in antisemitic incidents in the U.S.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">For example, in the months leading up to the Israel-Hamas war of May 2021, there was a gradual increase in antisemitic attacks that peaked in May 2021 and gradually declined in the following months.<br /><br /><b>3. Israel’s policies and antisemitism abroad are connected<br /></b><br />The growing connection between Israel’s policies and antisemitic violence abroad, and especially in the U.S., reflects <b>the view among many Americans that American Jews unquestioningly support Israel’s government.</b><br /><br />The Anti-Defamation League’s leader put it bluntly when he stated following the May 2021 Israel-Hamas war that “the violence we witnessed in America during the conflict last May was shocking … <b>it seemed as if the working assumption was that if you were Jewish, you were blameworthy for what was happening half a world away.</b>”<br /><br />Thus, it is not surprising that following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, Jewish organizations on American campuses became the main targets of violent activism by Palestinian rights supporters. Nor was it surprising that the first reaction of U.S. law enforcement agencies in the wake of the Hamas attack was enhancing the protections of Jewish schools and communal facilities.<br /><br /><b>4. Antisemitism today exploits long-standing antisemitic tropes<br /></b><br /><b>American Jewish communities had traditionally strong links to the state of Israel, and many extended their support in various ways. They included contributing money to Israeli cultural, educational and social institutions, as well as advocating for U.S. support. This was explicit acknowledgment of the importance to the Jewish people of having a homeland</b>.<br /><br /><b>In recent years</b>, however,<b> many Jewish communities, especially their younger members, became increasingly critical of Israeli policies and the country’s ongoing military control of the occupied Palestinian territories.</b><br /><br /><i><b>Despite such developments within the Jewish community, efforts by organizations sympathetic to the Palestinian cause to link American Jews as a whole to Israel’s policies seem to have intensified. </b></i>Such linkages reflect an extension of one of the most resilient and long-standing antisemitic tropes, in which <b>American Jews are portrayed as having a dual loyalty and a preference to support Israel’s interests over American ones, especially in times in which they may conflict.</b><br /><br />In the past, sentiments regarding American Jews’ alleged dual loyalty were mainly exploited by extremists on the far right. Lately, it seems also to be manifested in left-wing discourse and actions that support or <b>legitimize marginalization of Jews in the U.S. by blaming them for Israel’s policies.</b><br /><br />Examples of this new manifestation of antisemitism include the exclusion of American Jewish organizations from progressive campaigns and events and the exclusion of Jewish activists from progressive associations.<br /><br /><b>Combating the new antisemitism</b><br /><br />The reactions to the recent escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict illustrate a profound change in the ideological roots of antisemitism in the U.S.<br /><br />The many cases in which <b>professional and student associations as well as political organizations were quick both to legitimize Hamas terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians and direct their animosity toward U.S. Jews showing solidarity and sympathy with Israeli victims </b>are prime examples.<br /><br />That means any effort to combat antisemitism in the U.S. must take into consideration the <b>growing ideological diversity behind contemporary incidents of antisemitism.<br /></b><br />Those efforts will need to understand the nuances that shape American Jews’ relationships with Israel – and recognize that despite the substantial progress U.S. Jews experienced in the U.S. in all aspects of public life, antisemitism is still a part of the American political landscape.<br /><br /><a href="https://theconversation.com/antisemitism-has-moved-from-the-right-to-the-left-in-the-us-and-falls-back-on-long-standing-stereotypes-215760">https://theconversation.com/antisemitism-has-moved-from-the-right-to-the-left-in-the-us-and-falls-back-on-long-standing-stereotypes-215760<br /></a></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWmscCJ6qLxXC6eSgjJQiO8BtFDzim0qSVeE5mxi8LSwX150k45rZeL0YaMsI9VAt7DWSgHttaeVAvcYQoUDTPHdzSXlgme-ZHsj5PETkJDgwmhma83MKoQAb0MK1D5uXLg7FlCOkz1m8c7pVmvicE3wpqhIovfe1B8DOZbmFQjjW6lffcZ0BugPgV0UzT/s602/queers%20for%20Palestine.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="404" data-original-width="602" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWmscCJ6qLxXC6eSgjJQiO8BtFDzim0qSVeE5mxi8LSwX150k45rZeL0YaMsI9VAt7DWSgHttaeVAvcYQoUDTPHdzSXlgme-ZHsj5PETkJDgwmhma83MKoQAb0MK1D5uXLg7FlCOkz1m8c7pVmvicE3wpqhIovfe1B8DOZbmFQjjW6lffcZ0BugPgV0UzT/w400-h269/queers%20for%20Palestine.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;">Mary:</span></p><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="color: #20124d;">I </span><span style="color: #20124d;">was initially startled ro see 'progressive' left leaning groups protesting Israel's actions against Hamas', especially the accusation of their action and intents being genocidal. This seemed to ignore the problem that Hamas stated objective was openly genocidal towards the Jews and the state of Israel, and framed the conflict in terms of colonialist oppression of a native populace.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;">These reactions, I am convinced, are the result of serious lack of historical knowledge..actually a refusal to consider the history of these people, this state, and the roots of hatred and violence codified in Islam and its holy precepts. These 'leftists' have fully bought into Hamas' propaganda...that Israel is deliberately massacring civilians, innocents, and children. The actuality is that Hamas shelters in its underground system while refusing any shelter to the civilians...civilians they are deliberately using as human shields/sacrifices...</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;"> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Hamas can only be attacked where they designed their positions...directly under civilian hubs, schools, hospitals, apartment buildings.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;">The protestors on campus and elsewhere chanting "from the river to the sea" are repeating a genocidal trope, calling for an end to Israel and the elimination of its people. In their attempt at "virtue signaling," they have accomplished its opposite. Like the unvoiced violence of racism that has come screaming into the open in the US with the far Right, <b>the violence of antisemitism rises, dressed in the robes of righteousness, as defense of the "oppressed." They have even said the horrific acts of Oct 7 were 'justified' as response to the weight of years of oppression.</b></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><b><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></b></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;">And all of this ignores the differences both in Israel and in Jews in the US...neither is a single undivided entity. There is much disagreement in both about Netanyahu's government positions and tactics. It is a mistake to paint all with the same brush, and just gives an excuse for further misguided judgement, anger, and violence.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Everyone seems intent on grinding their own axe...endlessly. It is important to see that Hamas rejects any and all peace proposals immediately, without consideration. <b>Peace is not acceptable to them if it allows Israel to exist in any way.</b></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Hard times...that will probably only get harder.</span></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> *<br /><b>FREE SPEECH ON CAMPUS IS BECOMING FASHIONABLE AGAIN<br /></b><br />~ <b>For years, free speech advocates have complained about “safetyism” on campus — shielding students from discomfort at the expense of freedom of expression. Now that the speech is painful to Jews—history’s most convenient scapegoats — university administrators are declaring their commitment to freedom of speech.</b><br /><br />“Safetyism” is a moral culture in which perceived safety (whether real or not) becomes a sacred value, rendering people unwilling to make necessary trade-offs. For a decade or longer, through "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” initiatives, campus administrations have prioritized “feeling safe” over intellectual rigor, viewpoint diversity, freedom of expression, and institutional neutrality.<br /><br />For example,<b> in 2015, 13 college administrators at Yale University sent a message asking students to choose inoffensive costumes that wouldn't make others feel demeaned or alienated.</b> Erika and Nicholas Christakis were hounded out of their residential positions in Yale's Silliman College after hundreds of students said they no longer felt “safe” as a result of an email in which Erika asked whether students, technically adults, could choose their own costumes and talk to one another face to face if they felt offended.<br /><br /><b>At UCLA earlier this year, graduate students objected to psychology professor Yoel Inbar as a potential hire because of his views about institutional neutrality and the requirement that faculty applicants submit DEI statements.</b> They complained that Inbar’s comments “frame diversity statements as a threat to ideological diversity, and reflect a lack of prioritization of the needs and experiences of historically marginalized individuals across the lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability.” <b>He was not hired.</b><br /><br />When the presidents of Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) were called to testify at a Congressional hearing about campus antisemitism, Harvard alumna Elise Stefanik, a representative from New York, <b>asked each of the presidents whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” violated their schools’ codes of conduct. MIT President Sally Kornbluth explained that it could constitute harassment “if targeted at individuals, not making public statements.” </b><br /><br />Harvard President Claudine Gay said “it can be, depending on the context,” adding, “When it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation; that is actionable conduct and we do take action.” Penn President Elizabeth Magill, who was forced to resign four days after testifying, said, “if the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment.”<br /><br /><b>These responses were baffling to most observers—and certainly to an incredulous Stefanik, who questioned whether “conduct” meant committing the act of genocide. She declared all three presidents’ answers “unacceptable… across the board.”</b> Because safetyism has been the standard, it was striking to see how <i><b>Jewish students are expected to face the discomfort of hateful speech when other groups are not.</b></i><br /><br />But free speech advocates understood what the university presidents were clumsily trying to communicate: <b>As legal scholar Ilya Shapiro recently explained, “Sometimes ‘speech’ isn’t speech. Sometimes it rises to the level of conduct that prevents others from being able to live their lives. </b>Right now we need people to discern the difference.” None of the three university presidents seemed capable of doing that.<br /><br />To be fair, they can hardly be blamed. </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>The speech climate at each of their universities is anything but free. Harvard has the distinction of coming in dead last in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s college free-speech rankings—with a rating of “abysmal” and a score that had to be rounded up to zero. Only 30% of Harvard students say it is never acceptable to shout down a speaker. More than half say it can be acceptable to block other students from attending a campus speech. And fully 30% say it can be acceptable to use violence to stop a campus speech.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /><b>Only 11% of Harvard students say it is “extremely clear” that the college administration protects free speech on campus. That number is 6% at both the University of Pennsylvania and MIT. When asked how likely it was that the university would protect a controversial speaker’s right to speak on campus, 6% of students at Harvard said it was extremely likely, 7% at MIT, and 4% at Penn.</b><br /><br />The Ivy League fared poorly over all. Out of 248 colleges and universities surveyed, Penn was ranked second to last. Dartmouth came in at 240; Yale, 234; Columbia, 214; Cornell, 212; Princeton, 187. At number 69, Brown University is the only Ivy in the top half. Ivy League-adjacent MIT ranks in the bottom half.<br /><br />Harvard’s conduct code reads, “Bullying, hostile and abusive behavior, and power-based harassment directly threaten the ability of community members to engage in the free exchange of ideas and pursue their educational and professional goals. Such behaviors, as defined in this Policy, are prohibited.”<br /><br />This policy sounds reasonable. And yet graduate student Laura Simone Lewis was able to bully Carole Hooven, co-director of the undergraduate program in Harvard’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. Lewis's conduct threatened Hooven's ability to engage in the free exchange of ideas and pursue her professional goals. And Lewis did so in her official capacity as director of the Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging task force of Hooven’s department. Why was this permitted?<br /><br />In 2021, Lewis, who refers to herself as a “Blewish feminist mermaid,” complained on social media—using her official title—that the popular lecturer’s science-based assertion that there are two (and only two) sexes was “dangerous,” “transphobic and harmful,” and “directly opposed” Lewis's ability to “create a safe space.”<br /><br />“Even though someone publicly maligning my speech in their official capacity as a representative of the institution is a clear violation of Harvard’s Free Speech Guidelines,” <br /><br /><b>Hooven later wrote in a searing indictment of Harvard’s abysmal record on academic freedom, “the person who maligned me was not sanctioned.”</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Administrators failed to defend Hooven's right to express her views and to communicate biological facts, they made no statement on her behalf, and they never apologized. This created a climate in which even senior faculty members were too afraid to publicly defend Hooven, for fear of reprisals.<br /><br />As a result, Lewis’s campaign led to such a hostile work environment for Hooven that she eventually felt she had no choice but to resign. <b>Lewis’s “safe space” was freed of the “harmful” and “dangerous” claim that there are two sexes.<br /></b><br /><b>How could someone so clearly violate Harvard’s policies and not be sanctioned? </b>A year ago, all Harvard undergraduates were required to participate in an online Title IX training at which they were taught that “cisheterosexism,” “sizeism,” and “fatphobia” perpetuate “violence,” and that using non-preferred pronouns constitutes “abuse.”<br /><br />Remember, “abusive behavior” is not tolerated at Harvard. The problem is that “bullying,” “hostile behavior,” “abusive behavior,” and “power-based harassment” are not clearly defined in Harvard’s policy. This gives DEI administrators license to define as a violation speech it doesn’t like, while protecting speech it likes. As a result, <b>students learn they should avoid things like fat phobia and non-preferred pronouns, while calling for the genocide of Jews isn't on any list.</b><br /><br />In 2019, Harvard law professor and criminal defense attorney Ronald Sullivan, was accused by undergraduates of making them “feel unsafe” because of his willingness to defend the accused rapist Harvey Weinstein. Despite his being among the most accomplished scholars at Harvard, he was terminated as dean of an undergraduate residential college.<br /><br /><b>So far, no one appears to have been fired or expelled for making Jewish students feel unsafe by defending Hamas terrorists who violently gang-raped Jews. (And no protesting students appear to feel unsafe around others who are willing to defend Hamas rapists.)</b><br /><br />in 2020, University of Chicago associate professor of geophysics Dorian Abbot was disinvited from a prestigious lecture he was scheduled to deliver at MIT because students said he made them “feel unsafe.” Why? He had co-written a Newsweek article offering “Merit, Fairness and Equality” as an alternative to DEI.<br /><br /><b>In November, Jewish and Israeli students were “physically prevented from attending class by a hostile group of pro-Hamas and anti-Israel MIT students.”</b> Kornbluth warned disruptive MIT protesters that if they violated school policies, they would be suspended. <b>On the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, they violated school policies. They were not suspended. </b>Some were international students and suspending them, she said, could impact their visas. One professor reported that “MIT admin’s silence makes Jewish and Israeli students feel unsafe.”<br /><br />Harvard offers an anonymous reporting hotline through which students can report “behaviors that make you or those around you feel unsafe or unwelcome.” And Harvard’s Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging page exhorts faculty to “recognize and avoid microaggressions.” In 2018, Harvard’s School of Public Health flagged seven classes for review after those classes each drew three or more student reports of in-class microaggressions.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>What counts as a microaggression? According to the material linked on Harvard’s website, asking an ethnically Asian person “where are you from” communicates “you are not American.”</b> <b>Saying “I believe the most qualified person should get the job” gives the message that “people of color are given extra unfair benefits because of their race.” And a university’s buildings being named for “white, heterosexual upper-class males” is an “environmental microaggression” that communicates to students of color “you don’t belong.”<br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Celebrating the rape, torture, kidnapping, murder, and beheadings of Jews is not on the list of offensive microaggressions. There is no training that explains why it gives the message “you don’t matter.” And none of the three university presidents who testified before Congress could cogently articulate the circumstances under which calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their code of conduct.<br /><br /><i><b>Despite Jewish students saying they feel unsafe as a result of regularly hearing chants like “glory to the martyrs” (who murdered, raped, kidnapped, and tortured Jews), “globalize the intifada” (a violent uprising that targets Jews), and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” (referring to the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel, which exists between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea), so little has been done about it that Congress held a hearing.</b><br /></i><br />Undergraduates at Penn filed a complaint in Philadelphia federal court claiming that Penn committed “egregious” violations of federal civil rights law by selectively enforcing its rules of conduct to “avoid protecting Jewish students from hatred and harassment.”<br /><br /><b>At Harvard, anti-Israel protesting students disrupted classes with chanting, sometimes in large groups, sometimes one person with a bullhorn. </b>Harvard Hillel, a Jewish campus organization, publicly asked the university to hold accountable both the people and organizations involved. “Students were terrified,” the organization said. A Title VI investigation has been requested.<br /><br />Title VI of the Civil Rights Act provides that no person in the United States shall, on the ground of actual or perceived ancestry, ethnicity, religion, or national origin be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. While defending campus freedom of speech is laudable and necessary, given these institutions’ histories of denying freedom of speech to those whose expressions are disfavored, it is unsurprising that <b>lawsuits complaining of antisemitic discrimination through selective enforcement of rules are proliferating.<br /></b><br />“The ideology that grips far too many of the students and faculty, the ideology that works only along axes of oppression and places Jews as oppressors and therefore intrinsically evil, is itself evil,” wrote <b>Rabbi David Wolpe</b>, in his letter of resignation from Harvard’s antisemitism task force days after the Congressional hearing.</span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"> <b>“Ignoring Jewish suffering is evil. Belittling or denying the Jewish experience, including unspeakable atrocities, is a vast and continuing catastrophe. Denying Israel the self-determination as a Jewish nation accorded unthinkingly to others is endemic, and evil.”</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />In order to avoid the selective enforcement of campus policies, administrations have two options: They can censor speech Jewish students find hateful the way they censor all the other forms of speech considered hateful by various identity groups. Or they can stick to policies that protect speech and punish harassment, threats, intimidation, and the creation of a hostile environment.<br /><br />It would be a mistake for universities to enact speech codes designed to censor antisemitic speech. They can address antisemitic harassment, bullying, and discrimination by following existing rules and clarifying definitions. Doing that, however, requires <b>dismantling the poisonous ideology that silences disfavored speech, keeps antisemitism in place, and blinds people to the antisemitism in which they participate.</b> Only then can free speech campus climates flourish.<br /><br /><i><b>When college campuses are places where diverse viewpoints can be shared without fear, they will also be places where students can speak about Israel without fear, </b>and where Jewish students can wear Jewish symbols and religious paraphernalia without fear.<br /></i><br />Meanwhile, <b>if antisemitism on campus has a silver lining, it’s that it has made free speech fashionable again.<br /></b><br /><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-and-the-pursuit-of-leadership/202312/how-antisemitism-is-defeating-safetyism">https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-and-the-pursuit-of-leadership/202312/how-antisemitism-is-defeating-safetyism</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I don't know if "fashionable" is the right word. But the good thing is that free speech is being discussed. </span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5N0A7K5VfEvg2Yhndzzn-MYRKiIrSoJiZnjdmrxlehuwM0NxcwG5oMnjryYpd7hQdZGdc1J84SFgM5MKFX-6qKTKaoawY0DOq0Hbx6nwJDgeHDKAA_BBcwz3RuMn6jA6XdyLp04MnfvvSkm2gdchyj6VFt3FdngB0tAkJPhW9vcUMC2UjSqbLzcy1sb66/s475/Buchenwald%20iconic.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="370" data-original-width="475" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5N0A7K5VfEvg2Yhndzzn-MYRKiIrSoJiZnjdmrxlehuwM0NxcwG5oMnjryYpd7hQdZGdc1J84SFgM5MKFX-6qKTKaoawY0DOq0Hbx6nwJDgeHDKAA_BBcwz3RuMn6jA6XdyLp04MnfvvSkm2gdchyj6VFt3FdngB0tAkJPhW9vcUMC2UjSqbLzcy1sb66/w400-h311/Buchenwald%20iconic.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>HOW RUSSIANS FEEL ABOUT PUTIN’S PIVOT TOWARD ASIA (Misha Firer)<br /></b><br />Don’t believe the hype: Russians are unhappy about Putin’s pivot to China and Asia. I can’t emphasize this point strongly enough.</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Russian education system with all its flaws and rote learning is still Eurocentric</b>: students study European history, culture, and inventions of European scientists and the gravitational pull has always been towards the West.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Hundreds of thousands of Russians in the past two years have immigrated to Europe and America rather than to China and India.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>The vast majority of the population live in the European part of Russia </b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>and despite their love/hate relationship with the neighbors to the west, they rather consider themselves belonging to that culture than to Chinese or Indian; the latter remain unfathomable to them.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Beside sharing common culture, Russians know well enough that their country is not self-sufficient contrary to Putin’s claims of a “separate civilization”</b> to the scope that the Soviet Union used to be, and that they need to trade raw materials for technologies and products.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">They can also see the double standards of the political elites — <b>despite belligerent rhetoric, public officials and their lackeys continue to drive Western cars, own real estate in Western countries, wear Western clothes and watches, and have not given up on Western merchandise.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Putin has surrounded himself with spineless sycophants who do whatever pleases him and cater to his geopolitical games, however now and then you can see a small rebellion.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Russian Football Union officials set an ambitious goal to move participation in club league international competitions from Europe to Asia.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">At some point, due to the echo chamber effect, the board seemed to have been all for the transition to the new football confederation.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>However,</b> <b>the chief of the Russian Football Union Alexander Dyukov announced that “Russia is a European country, not an Asian country” and so they will continue to play matches and participate in championships in Europe.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">UEFA also appears to be all for keeping the ties with Russian football associations.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">RFU continues to receive various grants from UEFA and retains the right to issue coaching licenses with the UEFA category.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The Russian U17 team was brought back to competitions supported by UEFA and FIFA.<br />Several Russian club managers and employees received positions in various European football structures.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Alexander Dyukov remained on the UEFA executive committee and reciprocated by not letting the Russian Football Union cut ties with Europe and drift to Asia.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">As long as Europe keeps sending signals that they do not want to break up with Russia, there will be brave officials to resist pressure from the government to do otherwise.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr0MYdQZhnf1_J-UMLuG7Zk5giRcDjlkxXauBiopAWrMKgr0LeLXyLa0JXx3dJuBs-GuqXVr0itt0Cmk5jyzdLoJYhz8uSnyTQQqGzqZ85dWJ5P3imnpSUTH1UT81a8rLC7NPgbVw_TN4ErwWlDtvvv2vYBA570Qm7pwvUge8hiFF8IMD3fFlznvDEk0tL/s602/electric%20car%20Russia%20door%20fell%20off.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="285" data-original-width="602" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr0MYdQZhnf1_J-UMLuG7Zk5giRcDjlkxXauBiopAWrMKgr0LeLXyLa0JXx3dJuBs-GuqXVr0itt0Cmk5jyzdLoJYhz8uSnyTQQqGzqZ85dWJ5P3imnpSUTH1UT81a8rLC7NPgbVw_TN4ErwWlDtvvv2vYBA570Qm7pwvUge8hiFF8IMD3fFlznvDEk0tL/w400-h189/electric%20car%20Russia%20door%20fell%20off.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Oh no, the passenger door of a Russian electric car prototype fell off during testing! The prototype design looks like a car was mounted on top of a pre-squashed car, welded and painted bright red.</i><br /><br />Students of Moscow Polytechnic University created a prototype of compact electric vehicle on behalf of the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade for the Kaliningrad Automobile plant Avtodor.</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Russian automakers and businessmen were allocated 10 billion dollars to produce electric cars and they outsource design work to university students. I mean they can’t manufacture gasoline cars, so how would they produce electric ones? It’s like failing to invent a wheel and then try to construct a train.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Avtodor used to assemble cars for BMW, KIA, Hyundai, and Ford. It now tries to manufacture an electric car whose door fell off before a test drive.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Russia’s Baltic exclave Kaliningrad Oblast in Europe is famous for extensive deposits of amber, a fossilized tree resin.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Amber is <i>jantar</i> in Russia that originates from the Sanscrit word jantara, a lucky charm, a talisman.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Now that Russia is officially an Asian country would it make more sense to name the new electric car Jantara since Sanscrit is the sacred language of Hinduism?</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And yet, <b>the electric car was named Amber.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbpzjSGu9cnROhwww0bKLLaiHgY7tPewl8qU75viW36YOeWEl7qExKqAbRHh-LMmsDPSMjDDZE0NjyvF2GWrY6spxpSySBSvCjX4qFyb7vOajUO8QLyHOdWprtoahNPdDl5R3dk8T_Oy4a30ELYOAz16D-PZYIYD040HZygkF7i3VyrhYixo7FnCeYPHnN/s1920/Russian%20electric%20car.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbpzjSGu9cnROhwww0bKLLaiHgY7tPewl8qU75viW36YOeWEl7qExKqAbRHh-LMmsDPSMjDDZE0NjyvF2GWrY6spxpSySBSvCjX4qFyb7vOajUO8QLyHOdWprtoahNPdDl5R3dk8T_Oy4a30ELYOAz16D-PZYIYD040HZygkF7i3VyrhYixo7FnCeYPHnN/w400-h225/Russian%20electric%20car.webp" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Why? Because with all due respect to our Indian friends, Russia can’t resist the gravitational pull to the West no matter how much effort Putin and his cronies are exerting to reach escape velocity.</b></span><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Ravil Garfieldulin had a plan so cunning that if he put a tail on it he could call it a weasel.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Ravil mounted a super-light, pointy (because round is not scary) international ballistic miss-ile on his Lada Nineth re-designed as a launcher and drove from his home with half an acre of sodden marshland in Tver Oblast with an empty town hall on it to our tsardom’s shining capital on a hill betrothed to us by our Mongol suzerains.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxMzLMtTw1rO4YL8Ma8pViHOaIyxz8x-ry40miO8k-WUhLRvJpvQjkmS2JN04LqzRBM_qCyzzYb4ZQtxG8_bKkmm-WyVcOtABhASiV1YmVq-rcOlUvKcU1IqYd1GpEO22ptFGpRYSeDGQrRgdp4puVUQ7vUTxoftsrVSwhLXSUHMTjgIXonX38esvv8qcE/s602/Lada%20missile.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="377" data-original-width="602" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxMzLMtTw1rO4YL8Ma8pViHOaIyxz8x-ry40miO8k-WUhLRvJpvQjkmS2JN04LqzRBM_qCyzzYb4ZQtxG8_bKkmm-WyVcOtABhASiV1YmVq-rcOlUvKcU1IqYd1GpEO22ptFGpRYSeDGQrRgdp4puVUQ7vUTxoftsrVSwhLXSUHMTjgIXonX38esvv8qcE/w400-h250/Lada%20missile.webp" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Garfieldulin arranged to plant his cartoonish Sarmatmobile in the parking slot in front of the Americansky embassy to exert psychological pressure on the ambassador to elect Russia-friendly president Mr. Donald Trump.</span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">However, In Vyshny Volochyok, a Renault Logan rammed into the mock-up rocket launcher at an intersection.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The drivers escaped with minor injuries but Lada Nineth was rendered scrap metal and incapable of continuing on its weapons of mass destruction voyage to Washington. ~ Quora<br /><br />Irin Shept:<br />Russia will soon be in for a rude awakening once it finds out that it belongs to the pragmatic, meritocratic Confucian world even less than it belongs to the post-Renaissance, post-Reformation, and post-Enlightenment West.<br /><br />Milojko Ružić:<br /><b>Islamic world is the most similar thing to Russia, especially morally.<br /></b><br />*<br /><b>HOW DO RUSSIANS ACCEPT MILITARY CASUALTIES IN UKRAINE? (Misha Firer)<br /></b><br />I live near the Square of Three Railway stations in Moscow and I regularly see lost soldiers in military fatigues and black sneakers trudging through the snow on leave from special military operation in Ukraine.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I have divided them into three main categories.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Les Mizérables</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">These men of undefined age look the part — totally miserable. It’s hard to tell if the man in front of you absorbed in self-pity and a feeling of total inadequacy is in his twenties or forties.<br />They sign military contract not to get higher wages, like “I earn 40k wouldn’t it be great to make four times more?” but <b>to escape grinding poverty, in which every day is a struggle to get by.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>They absolutely don’t care if they die today, and it’s these men that Putin tapped to die for his geopolitical ambitions rather than from vodka</b>. Although it often happens on the battlefront that <b>they die from both at the same time.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Ztarship Troopers</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Willing young men who spend their wages to buy their own uniforms and gear. They have bespoke shoulder patches featuring an eclectic mix of Soviet cartoons, American superheroes, and Roman letters.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>They treat war like a POV shooter computer game</b>.<b> Raised on military science fiction novels, in which Red Army soldiers in space suits fight Nazis with laser guns and spaceships in the post-apocalyptic future.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In Ukraine, they’re battling meta Nazis. Like augmented reality of spiteful propaganda superimposed on soldiers not very different from them.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>They’re darlings of military bloggers for effective photo shoots and they look good with medals and balaclavas in school classroom conducting “lessons about important.”</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The Jinxed</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>They didn’t want to go to war, but wound up in the trenches more or less accidentally.</b><br /></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Perhaps they got caught at a construction market when local military commissar sent riot police to ambush the disfranchised to get yearly quotas.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Or they went to the military office while drunk and feeling like they must fulfill their duty to the state, or help out their comrades only to have pangs of regrets next day when it’s too late.</b></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>They are the ones who desert or refuse to fight and get thrown into the dungeons to be tortured or killed.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">There’re more categories, in fact as many as there are soldiers. But what most of them have in common is that they have gone to war out of their volition, or were extremely unlucky.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>This is the general perception of the population regarding the soldiers at the special military operation — they wanted to be there or were out of luck.</b></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">People generally support their armed forces because they’re the reason why they can live in peace. Unfortunately, and I wrote that many times before — Russians don’t have much empathy for Ukrainians. On the other hand, there’s no hatred, which one might think is prevalent among Russians having watched blood thirsty clips from Vladimir Soloviev show.<br /><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxf6C5xozkHxjbVLMW5epT90tv6D6hgMALwOtF8Ge2TM7J_s4q1fH1APHpgbHlo6WH_H4LwaZW2YAWJ1_bPffRuhoph9IezPK3jgyslL_bFhQPEgHXid5o07R6K7q4NPpkau5QDdAY6pAYlTGdaYqaFNZ-cfoHq5VXvosnBYddkw7Q4f4LDbFttc5kzioP/s602/dead%20russian%20soldier%20best.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="339" data-original-width="602" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxf6C5xozkHxjbVLMW5epT90tv6D6hgMALwOtF8Ge2TM7J_s4q1fH1APHpgbHlo6WH_H4LwaZW2YAWJ1_bPffRuhoph9IezPK3jgyslL_bFhQPEgHXid5o07R6K7q4NPpkau5QDdAY6pAYlTGdaYqaFNZ-cfoHq5VXvosnBYddkw7Q4f4LDbFttc5kzioP/w400-h225/dead%20russian%20soldier%20best.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The general feeling is indifference. To the Ukrainians and to Russians soldiers.<br /></b><br />And this is the people that Vladimir Putin has raised, groomed and molded in his own image, and <b>he believes quite correctly to be united with them in a perfect harmony of heartlessness.</b> ~ Quora<br /><br />Benzion Inditsky:<br />“harmony of heartlessness” !!! From Misha Dostoevsky. To be inscribed in stone.<br /><br />Tim Froese:<br />These are human beings being sent to kill and die, based on lies and in the service of pointless political ambition. But they are described as soldiers, casualties, as though they were state assets rather than confused or desperate men.<b> Russian indifference to these deaths dehumanizes both the soldiers and citizenry.</b><br /><br />Ivan Danilov:<br />It should be understood that <b>the war itself hasn’t had direct consequences for the majority of Russians. People just keep on pretending that nothing’s happening</b>. It’s not them going to trenches. It’s not them dying there. It’s not them killing off Ukrainian soldiers or bombing civilian apartment buildings. It’s not them suffering from newly imposed tyrannic laws, etc. So shrugging shoulders and going on minding their own business is easy. It’s a survival skill learned during all those years of Soviet rule: just keep minding your own business and don’t get involved, and you’ll be all right. The state propaganda machine is busy reinforcing this state of minds.<br /><br />At the same time <b>Russian society is extremely atomized. </b>We are individualists to the extreme. We distrust each other in every single regard and we seem to be unable to create functional communities or organizations independent from the state. More precisely, the things that were built here over the years — NPOs/NGOs, political parties and funds, self-organized communities, no matter what those communities and organizations really did — were destroyed in a single sweep by the state, what’s left is dying out under the pressure. <b>The state wants for people to feel lonely and deprived of human rights. And we oblige, of course. <br /></b><br />I don’t see how we can overcome any of those issues. It seems that <b>the damage done to the Russian society will define the reality for decades to come. </b>I have no hope to see any substantial changes in my lifetime anymore.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjowHHUYiceWnU8pNKjC6Bj5NM8fjc8VTbXYxf4E5xkBxLimNvYismBIxbGiYZOmGO5IcDLU8xwUh1Jnw1Sapj2kqCMJyaqL6PPO32N8ubDQGf6Ck27fO8zcVxpKCGYEHjcUTqMHrp1sEOP7G1XoqNWqHL17EX21_pGic_P11ggeCzr6eDYQoDvCCiHHov_/s768/tank%20burnt%20out%20orange.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="768" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjowHHUYiceWnU8pNKjC6Bj5NM8fjc8VTbXYxf4E5xkBxLimNvYismBIxbGiYZOmGO5IcDLU8xwUh1Jnw1Sapj2kqCMJyaqL6PPO32N8ubDQGf6Ck27fO8zcVxpKCGYEHjcUTqMHrp1sEOP7G1XoqNWqHL17EX21_pGic_P11ggeCzr6eDYQoDvCCiHHov_/w400-h225/tank%20burnt%20out%20orange.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>ABORTIONS IN THE SOVIET UNION<br /></b><br />~<b> Soviet women had abortions with an absurd frequency; married women — especially so. </b>And I got old enough during that period, that I knew about it. It was an open secret in Soviet society — a dirty secret, the kind of ugliness everyone knows about, but assumes 11-year-old girls don’t understand.</span><br /><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Most people in the Soviet Union were very poor, and there was a perpetual housing crunch. There is no way to force couples to have scads of children when they share tiny rooms in communal apartments.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>I know my mother had at least 6 abortions, and my father was pressuring her to have more. To this day, my father is convinced I don’t know about it, even though I’ve told him explicitly that I do know. (He’s very “pro-life”, you see.)</b></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>My maternal grandmother had upwards of 12, mostly during the period when it was illegal. But her husband was a cop, so no one was going to report them.</b> <b>My grandmother had hers in the kitchen of a communal apartment, without anesthesia and in unsanitary conditions.</b> One such procedure resulted in a devastating pelvic infection which landed her in the hospital for several weeks and left her with extensive scar tissue.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I vividly recall one instance, when my grandmother was in her sixties and doubled-over with abdominal pain, when grandpa called an ambulance and had the following irritated conversation with the person on the other end: “Yeah, she had some kind of stomach thing when she was in her thirties. She was in the hospital for that. Women’s problems. What? How the hell should I know? It’s women's issues, those have nothing to do with me.” ~ Kate Stoneman, Quora</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Catherine Harris:<br />I can verify this. I’m an OB/Gyn and was doing my residency in Baltimore. At the time, there was a large Russian immigrant population and we would see these women with an interpreter. Obviously, in OB we are going to ask your pregnancy history, and it was surprising how many abortions these women had had. It became obvious that they considered this their method of birth control. That was in the early 90’s.<br /><br />Oriana:<br />“<b>Russia was the first country in the world to legalize abortion, in 1920</b>. The procedure was briefly driven underground, when Soviet leader Josef <b>Stalin banned abortion in an attempt to encourage women to have larger families. </b><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>But after Stalin’s death in 1953, the ban was lifted. A decade later, the practice had become so common that the USSR officially registered 5.5 million abortions, compared to just 2 million live births.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />Abortion techniques have come a long way since the Soviet era, when 35-year-old Olga Lipovskaya related her experience in Francine du Plessix Gray’s acclaimed book "Soviet Women Walking the Tightrope." <br /><br />“You stand in line before the door of the operating room, waiting to be taken in,” she says. “Then it's your turn, and you go into a hall splattered with blood, where two doctors are aborting seven or eight women at the same time; they're usually very rough and rude. If you're lucky they give you a little sedative.”<br /><br />According to du Plessix Gray, <b>Olga estimated that she had had about 14 abortions in total, and she knew women who had had as many as 25</b>.” <br /><br /><a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/Abortion_Remains_Top_Birth_Control_Option_Russia/1145849.html">https://www.rferl.org/a/Abortion_Remains_Top_Birth_Control_Option_Russia/1145849.html<br /></a><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXnpknS_5433eQcrPHP0Kh3NbnWX0EsqNwLkzrPytOC9Le7OXHVAATs8UwHLR_zDepsJ1NdzsXHQF1999eKbKumq6jcHOutxVXGt7QM8jZpjF3HBEqEdwZyAYd6kDFDkfzG6hZyW3GUlilXluAOTu79VRcdMnBetknzK4BxFFHfG6PE3oxS7Vh1mKR2OjI/s602/Hitler%20painting%20of%20mother%20and%20child.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="433" data-original-width="602" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXnpknS_5433eQcrPHP0Kh3NbnWX0EsqNwLkzrPytOC9Le7OXHVAATs8UwHLR_zDepsJ1NdzsXHQF1999eKbKumq6jcHOutxVXGt7QM8jZpjF3HBEqEdwZyAYd6kDFDkfzG6hZyW3GUlilXluAOTu79VRcdMnBetknzK4BxFFHfG6PE3oxS7Vh1mKR2OjI/w400-h288/Hitler%20painting%20of%20mother%20and%20child.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Adolf Hitler’s painting of the joys of maternity (Quora)</i></span><br /></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>A GENERATION Z WOMAN EXPLAINS WHY SHE’S NOT PLANNING TO HAVE CHILDREN<br /></b><br /><b>If temperatures weren’t rising, I’d choose the name “Athena” for a girl. If the rivers were safe, I’d choose “William” for a boy.</b> If I could breathe clean air on my morning commute, I’d paint the nursery a warm yellow. If I could see hope for a sustainable future on this planet, I wouldn’t be spending time mourning the children I’ll probably never have.<br /><br /><b>If things were different, I’d be honored to become a parent — indeed, I think there is no greater privilege or responsibility.</b> But each day, the current state of the world dissuades me more and more from having children. Like many folks in Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012), my main concern is climate change. And, as climate catastrophes are already well in motion (coupled with a host of related socioeconomic and equality issues), <b>I feel as if I would be doing an increasingly irreparable injustice to any children I would bring into this world with my inability to offer them a future.<br /></b><br />I am 21, and as I’ve found, my near-certain choice to hold off on parenthood is a commonly shared sentiment among many Gen Z’ers and our millennial older siblings. For instance, in a 2021 NBC article, 39-year-old English teacher Jessica Combes stated: “I refuse to bring children into the burning hellscape we call a planet,” citing climate change and health care as among the reasons she feels her “trepidation was well justified.” Research shows she (and I) are far from alone.<br /><br /><b>Even those in the public spotlight (and with considerably more resources than the average person) have vocalized their discontentment with bringing children into a climate disaster-ridden world. </b>In an interview with ELLE Magazine, Miley Cyrus vowed not to bring children into the world until she could be sure “[her] kid would live on an earth with fish in the water.” Additionally, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York posed the question I’ve been wrestling with to her Instagram followers in a 2019 livestream:<b> “Is it okay to still have children?”</b><br /><br /><b>Climate anxiety is becoming unbearable<br /></b><br />Climate anxiety knows no national borders — according to a study from the University of Bath, nearly 40% of 16- to 25-year-old participants from several countries stated that they were hesitant to have children because of climate change. <b>Other organizations, such as the Canadian “No Future No Children” group, have gained considerable traction among teens, many of whom are pledging not to have children until their government takes climate change more seriously. </b>Among them, then-18-year-old Emma Lim stated in 2019 that she was “giving up [her] dream of having a family” until she could be assured her children “will have something to live for and a healthy family to live on.”<br /><br />As these testimonies illustrate, building a family — and particularly, raising children — isn’t so much a matter of preference, anymore. It’s also a matter of feasibility and, more importantly, ethics. <b>How do we justify bringing children onto a planet where the future feels more indeterminate than ever?<br /></b><br />The enormity of climate change, which often feels hopeless and irreversible, and the anxiety and fear about the future that goes with it, seems to have no exit route. It feels like there’s a weight on my chest — and, in discussions of climate, this weight intensifies. I’ve spent many sleepless nights watching footage of forests ablaze and communities flooded, paranoid that someone I know was among the casualties. <b>I’ve seen my own anxieties leap, like a contagion, to my little sister. My climate anxiety doesn’t just spark feelings of fear or sadness — but anger, frustration and resentment for a future I’ve been denied.</b></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4Ke0tef_y6uiLhVQ_P_l-uBrYJB6Nw8cKsAjZ8cinPLHsZHE36BcBZ8Bsgnk49lKzrF4ODCigkTopxM2imTDuBsydO61OWu1_NhyRjT4DvLzOY6UqMGW2tzegxy_MHOQc5TsPTHxAAcrtgmmW1kAY4c1NgjjBipztpDwFWqQB2npAj5acNrsQUnSWSH0m/s612/flood%20photo.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="408" data-original-width="612" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4Ke0tef_y6uiLhVQ_P_l-uBrYJB6Nw8cKsAjZ8cinPLHsZHE36BcBZ8Bsgnk49lKzrF4ODCigkTopxM2imTDuBsydO61OWu1_NhyRjT4DvLzOY6UqMGW2tzegxy_MHOQc5TsPTHxAAcrtgmmW1kAY4c1NgjjBipztpDwFWqQB2npAj5acNrsQUnSWSH0m/w400-h266/flood%20photo.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I know I am far from the first person, both in Gen Z and in history, to reckon with events of an existential scale when grappling with questions about the future, especially those related to having a family. <b>The past century, alone, is riddled with near-doomsday crises, including WWI and WWII, nuclear threats during the Cold War and frightening economic downturns. In those instances, generations who came before me made different choices — ones that I respect, and which led to the lives my peers and I now enjoy.<br /></b><br />But to me, where climate change and other events diverge is human cooperation and responsibility — while war and financial disasters are always caused by humans, they are also rectified by them. However, unlike wartime conflict and periods of financial uncertainty, <b>I can see no hopeful reference point in history to show how humanity might come together to recover from climate change. People are fighting, but their efforts are falling on too many deaf ears.</b><br /><br />The US, alone, is an increasingly fractured nation — with unrelenting tides of bigotry and racism, political divides, split loyalties on global conflicts and domestic attacks on LGBTQ rights, women and other groups — and to garner the same level of cooperation with other nations seems like an impossible task. <b>As environmental catastrophes reach a caliber we cannot predict or conceive, having children is becoming less of a risk I’m willing to take.<br /></b><br /><b>Why I don’t think I’ll change my mind<br /></b><br />At my age, concrete discussions of family and having children are still far down the line — but <b>this is a decision I’ve held firmly to since I, myself, was a child. </b>Passing on my own climate anxiety would be akin to a generational curse — <b>nor do I think the joys of childhood should be tampered with doomsday clocks, higher risks of disease and health issues and climate change’s ripple effects on the economy, violent conflict and education.</b><br /><br />As a US citizen, I wield enormous privilege by virtue of location, alone. Coupled with the resources and opportunities that the US provides, my hypothetical children likely wouldn’t be among the worst-affected by climate change. However, that shouldn’t immunize me from considering how my decisions and environmental surroundings may not only impact my own children, but others in less fortunate circumstances (both domestically and internationally). Rather, if I do change my mind and choose to have children, the decision will be heavily prefaced by responsible considerations of ethical sustainability, available resources and the future crises at hand (not to mention the more practical questions of financial security, partnership and preparation).<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9uRVR9uo5CIA3_SFQhZwVFoym0ylPj083iL4mG255ZIlD4B1bxpgGaPjupqr4bphGZjVeSUasYH6EDEiRl_Yk45B6xEpxG5MPX162dd48iei4MP4MMSqhQP09aPlSdtLkxrPqOI14P3w_6AlnZbQukJRaWdQvOtWLDzznL6CRkLcFfPr762G3wKTel-wr/s256/forest%20fire%20conifers.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="144" data-original-width="256" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9uRVR9uo5CIA3_SFQhZwVFoym0ylPj083iL4mG255ZIlD4B1bxpgGaPjupqr4bphGZjVeSUasYH6EDEiRl_Yk45B6xEpxG5MPX162dd48iei4MP4MMSqhQP09aPlSdtLkxrPqOI14P3w_6AlnZbQukJRaWdQvOtWLDzznL6CRkLcFfPr762G3wKTel-wr/w400-h225/forest%20fire%20conifers.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">While it’s dramatic to assume that my choice, alone, would be the catalyst for unstoppable climate catastrophe, many of my decisions emerge from a need for control. <b>Like many Gen Z and Millennial individuals, I feel largely powerless within today’s environmental and political climate.</b> As Greta Thunberg and two other young climate activists — Sophia Kianni and Vanessa Nakate — articulated earlier this year, President Joe Biden’s decision to approve the detrimental Alaskan oil venture, known as the Willow Project, was one of many legislative “betrayals” of younger generations.<br /><br />Such demonstrations from political leaders only reinforce my distrust of a legislative and <b>political system that continues to fail younger generations — and will probably continue to fail the ones that follow. Not only do some political officials deny the existence of climate change altogether, but even our more “progressive” leaders fail to follow through on their environment-protection promises.<br /></b><br />With larger policy control out of the picture, I find myself grasping for any miniscule way to assuage my climate anxiety — finding green travel alternatives, reusing plastic bottles until they fall apart, buying locally sourced food and repurposing any clothes or unwanted items. My decision over whether to have children is yet another example of exerting control over events that seem to be, at this rate, uncontrollable. Still, I wouldn’t feel the need to make these life-altering changes if the main contributors to climate change — such as the uber-wealthy elite and huge corporations — would forego their catastrophic practices.<br /><br />Reflecting on my experience isn’t a call to action for all young or middle-aged people to abandon their visions for their families, whether those include children or not. Nor do I wish to shame those who choose to have (or have already had) children. Rather, it should provide some insight into what many young people in the US and across the world are having to reckon with — <b>a future that looks incredibly different and less hopeful from our older counterparts. Under today’s environmental and political climate, I find it is better to regret not having children than regret having them.<br /></b><br />As temperatures rise and climate policy continues to shake public confidence, the vision for my ideal family looks less, well, ideal. Clamoring voices and pattering feet, the opportunities reaped from my family’s generational sacrifice and the lifelong commitment to raising someone to their greatest potential, have been replaced with depressing alternatives. At most, there’s a frustratingly clean, one-bedroom house, with hours to fill and quiet pervading the halls. But, unless there’s drastic change, and soon, Athena and William will only remain names. ~</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimReFuQgRHrYz3b9sJiaH4OKVIr8lo7kOe7NOt9RnJHvPJqon-o2-xJsjSESfVG25GX3PL9W26aUBvSf56MPRr6eGquVRrNc3FQhLU52uzm7nshoE-4j0JlYIq2kiTK_3-CeDWoEr6jYVT5IZsldhi_aDbRsx20u_y2uQL-6wxhokF71OfGCu6fi5Do__u/s2000/woman%20stork.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="2000" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimReFuQgRHrYz3b9sJiaH4OKVIr8lo7kOe7NOt9RnJHvPJqon-o2-xJsjSESfVG25GX3PL9W26aUBvSf56MPRr6eGquVRrNc3FQhLU52uzm7nshoE-4j0JlYIq2kiTK_3-CeDWoEr6jYVT5IZsldhi_aDbRsx20u_y2uQL-6wxhokF71OfGCu6fi5Do__u/w400-h225/woman%20stork.webp" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/11/opinions/not-having-children-lee/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/11/opinions/not-having-children-lee/index.html<br /></a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">It's tempting to think that the young woman who wrote this article has merely found an excuse not to have children. </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Many may suspect</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> that her real reason is the desire for freedom to pursue "adult" interests, including writing opinion columns for good pay, and enjoying travel, sports, fine dining, and other pleasures that having children makes much less attainable. Even if she were rich enough to afford a nanny, this young woman is probably smart enough to realize that she still wouldn't have the freedom available only to women who don't have children.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And now we have social media and vastly <b>more honesty from women, some of whom say, "If I could do it over again, I wouldn't have had kids." </b>The first time I encountered this, I was shocked: no mother would have dared to say it when I was young and pondering my options. It was the ultimate taboo.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Back then, it seemed as if mothers considered it their duty to encourage younger women to have children. If interviewed, even famous career women practically always said that the most important thing in their lives was their family. Even high-achieving men swore up and down that the most important thing was their family (not that men were as likely to be asked that question). </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">That social consensus is no longer in force. As for "Who'll take care of you when you're old?" the answer isn't clear, as we witness adult children moving far away from their parents and unwilling to take up yet another burden: we can't deny that they are now adults and their own lives and needs come first. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Fortunately there is the social safety net: Social Security, Medicare, assisted living (which can be luxuriouos if you are rich), all kinds of discounts and and even free services for the elderly. Imperfect as it is, it seems more reliable than one's offspring, busy with their own lives (as they have every right to be, just as they have the right to move thousands of miles away and rarely visit). <br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But what about the joys of motherhood? It's entirely possible that the author of this opinion column hasn't witnessed any. What she is likely to have witnessed as a child was her mother's levels of stress when dealing with the chores of child-rearing. Parenthood could (and should) be made easier, but it will never be easy. Ask any mother: she'll tell you that having children is the hardest thing in the world. Hardest and most terrifying. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I remember the time I privately asked a famous woman writer what it's like when the nanny has her day off. "It is a nightmare," the woman not so much said as chanted in an eerie way. <br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">That's not to deny the joy and the great adventure of parenthood. But we have a hard-wired bias for remembering the negative more vividly. And the decision for or against can be made as early as in childhood. Or during the teen years, when the girl starts baby-sitting. <br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">That's not to say that Generation Z doesn't have legitimate concerns about the environment and the looming climate disaster. If new heat records keep being reached practically every year, anxiety about humanity's very survival is not misplaced. The irony is that if more and more women "choose freedom" instead of children, the survival of humanity becomes a great deal more questionable. <br /><br />*<br /><b>GLOBAL WARMING AND THE DEMISE OF WINTER<br /></b><br /><b>A snowy winter in New York City brings with it a kind of magic.</b> The air goes crisp, then brittle, and fragile snowflakes sift down in the early dark, silvering the trees and blanketing the sledding hills in the parks. After the first big snow, children and adults alike rush out to make snowmen, creations that delight passersby for the next two frigid months, until the snow finally thaws. When I took my older son, then a toddler, out for his first-ever sledding session, he squealed with awe at the crystalline world before him, shouting, “It looks like Frozen!”</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Today he’s 5, and I doubt he remembers what sledding feels like. <b>It’s been more than 650 days since Central Park, where snow is measured daily, got more than an inch of snowfall at one time; last winter, the park got just 2.3 inches in total, less than one-tenth the normal amount.</b> In early December, Brooklyn saw a few anemic flurries, and my son told me excitedly that <b>his friends had tried to build a snowman during recess. But there was nowhere near enough material to work with.</b> They settled for “a pile of snowflakes.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This sense of winter melting away before our eyes is not unique to New York. While blazing-hot summers and stormy autumns come with their own dangers, <b>scientists say winter is actually the fastest-warming season. </b>Snowfall is decreasing across the Northeast, the flakes slowly replaced by raindrops. <b>The Great Lakes have experienced a 22 percent drop in maximum ice cover since 1973, and are frozen for a shorter percentage of the year.</b> In December 2022, Utqiagvik, the northernmost city in Alaska, posted its warmest winter temperature ever at 40 degrees Fahrenheit, a full 36 degrees above the frigid average for that time of year.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The effects are felt around the world, from the Southern Cone to the Arctic Circle. For some, the loss of cold is already an emergency, as winter warming exacts a devastating environmental and human toll. But for many, it’s a slow drip, something they notice in the small details of daily life.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">These incremental changes alter the way we celebrate holidays, the way we get dressed to go outside, and even, on a deep level, the way we feel. The philosopher Glenn Albrecht has coined the term <b>“solastalgia,” or “the homesickness we feel while still at home,” to describe the disorientation some of us experience as the planet we once knew changes drastically around us.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“There’s this sort of existential offness,” said Heather Hansman, a Colorado-based ski journalist and author of the book Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns, and the Future of Chasing Snow. “My body knows that this isn’t right.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Winter is woven into the fabric of human life</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Like worsening summer heat waves, winter warming is caused by companies and governments burning fossil fuels. The resulting emissions intensify the greenhouse effect, in which the earth’s atmosphere traps heat from the sun, making temperatures on the ground warmer. <b>The greenhouse effect is strongest at the poles, and it’s also most pronounced during winter</b>, said Kenneth Blumenfeld, a senior climatologist with the Minnesota State Climatology Office.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">As a result, the frigid winters many people remember are slowly giving way to something warmer — and weirder. In Minnesota, <b>“It’s not that it never gets cold, because it sure does,” Blumenfeld said. But “it doesn’t get cold as dependably, as frequently, or as severely as it used to.”</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“I have some winter jackets that have been two years in the closet without any use,” Juan Antonio Rivera, a researcher at the Argentine Institute for Snow Research, Glaciology, and Environmental Sciences, said in an email. “Frosts in the winter mornings now are a rare thing to see.” (<b>A winter heat wave earlier this year pushed the temperature to 86 degrees in Buenos Aires, where winter highs are usually in the 60s.</b>)</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Warmer temperatures around the world are bringing <b>more rain and less snow</b>. As I write this, for example, the Christmas trees for sale down the block are being soaked in a very un-Christmassy downpour. But even as overall snowfall declines, <b>extreme snowstorms are increasing in some places, and</b> <b>there’s some evidence that climate change is leading to more intense cold snaps in places like Texas and California, where the infrastructure simply isn’t built for snow and ice.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Winter can be a bleak and unforgiving season, but it’s also one for which different cultures around the world have developed unique coping mechanisms — and even one many people have come to love. In northern Minnesota, where the season can stretch for six long, dark months, “it’s sort of built into how we live,” Blumenfeld said. <b>Residents have made winter pastimes like ice-fishing, skating, and snowshoeing into thriving industries, with specialized gear and dedicated vacation destinations. “From the outside, it looks like it’s a celebration of winter, but it’s really just what people do.”</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">When psychologist Kari Leibowitz conducted research in Tromso and Svalbard, Norway, hundreds of miles north of the Arctic circle, she found residents had what she calls a “positive wintertime mindset”: Rather than approaching the winter with dread, they tended to talk about what they were looking forward to, from sitting in front of a fire to skiing to <b>watching the beautiful four-hour sunsets of the polar night.</b> “The winter is a really special time in Tromso,” said Leibowitz, author of the forthcoming book How to Winter: Harnessing Your Mindset to Embrace All Seasons of Life.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But as winters warm, many of the activities humans have developed to survive and thrive during the colder months are slowly vanishing. <b>Skiing, for example, is becoming more difficult in Norway and around the world as rain replaces snow</b>. Leibowitz said that she fears that climate change will leave Norway with the darkness of polar winter but none of its joys. “<b>We won’t have snow to reflect the light. We won’t have ice to make beautiful patterns</b>. And we won’t have all of the recreational activities that come with snow and ice.” One study estimates that, <b>in a worst-case scenario, the majority of US ski resorts will be unable to continue operating before the century’s end.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The decline of sports like skiing has real economic and social effects, experts say. When the weather isn’t cold, “people don’t book vacations, they don’t buy gear, they don’t think about winter,” Hansman said. In towns that rely on skiing and other outdoor tourism, the entire economy can suffer.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In mountain towns in the US, the loss of a source of connection, meaning — and jobs — can also have psychological effects. “<b>A lot of cold places in the Mountain West have remarkably high suicide rates and poor mental health outcomes</b>,” Hansman said. “If you don’t have that sense of purpose, if you don’t have that sense of community, if you’re not seeing your friends out and about, that can have a negative impact.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The change to winter can also affect people’s sense of who they are. “In Svalbard in the winter, you can snowmobile across the fjord to go camping, you can go ice climbing,” Leibowitz said. “In Tromso, you can ski to work.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“These activities are a part of the fabric and culture of these countries,” she said. Losing them is “really going to change people’s relationship with the places where they live.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Experts sometimes use the terms climate grief and climate anxiety to capture the emotional impact of the current environmental crisis. In a 2005 paper, Albrecht described developing the term solastalgia to capture the pain expressed by residents of Australia’s Hunter Region as they saw their local landscape scarred by open-pit coal mining. He combined the word nostalgia, which originally referred to an actual illness caused by displacement from one’s home, with the concepts of solace and desolation.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Nostalgia for winter could help save it, some experts say</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">While the warming of winter still manifests in some parts of the world as a sneaking sense of something amiss, <b>it has already reached crisis proportions across much of the Arctic and subarctic. In Alaska, for example, the disappearance of sea ice, habitat destruction, and disease caused by warming waters have made it difficult or impossible for indigenous hunters to catch marine mammals, a practice that has been their livelihood for thousands of years. </b>“A relatively small temperature change in sea ice, and also in sea temperatures in the Arctic and subarctic, results in <b>complete ecosystem collapse</b>,” said Joan Naviyuk Kane, an Inupiaq poet and essayist who grew up in Alaska. For many of her friends and community members, “a subsistence lifestyle is no longer within reach.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">People who live and work in cold climates are finding ways to adapt to their new reality. <b>In Alaska, some indigenous communities are learning reindeer herding from Sami practitioners</b>, Kane said. When hunters can no longer rely on the sea, “some of these land-based practices actually may help us continue to survive into the future,” she said.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">For Kane, sorrow isn’t a meaningful frame for thinking about the loss of people’s way of life. “Indigenous people can perform grief and perform our trauma endlessly if that’s what non-Indigenous people want,” she said. But “by doing so we’re taking away time and energy and resources to engage our anger and to meaningfully enact policy change in the Arctic.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Some experts believe that nostalgia for a vanishing winter can be harnessed to fight climate change, reaching people who haven’t yet been personally affected by the crisis in more immediate ways. “For a lot of people, recreation or a family vacation or the places where they’re open to the environment” can provide a much more relatable, concrete example of the unfolding disaster than statistics about global temperature change, Hansman said. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The group Protect Our Winters, for example, founded by pro snowboarder Jeremy Jones, brings together winter sports enthusiasts to reach out to voters and lobby lawmakers on climate issues. It is already making headway influencing legislation on renewable energy infrastructure and more.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Meanwhile, <b>the long, chilly winters of yesteryear — and the way people responded to them — may still have something to teach us. Positive wintertime mindset is about adapting to your circumstances, both realistically and optimistically, Leibowitz said. That same can-do spirit can help us “think about what’s possible” when it comes to fighting climate change</b>, she said.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“Our mindset can help empower us to see opportunities in difficult things,” and it can help us feel “inspired to work towards protecting winter,” Leibowitz said. “Changing our relationship with the darkness might inspire us to say, what else can I envision?”</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAPVOgGVEYsPcXkD4t_tld0FAJm5OofrKYA0S8XhoCgWP5TIdtrMhS8fp-cdQ4VEM677ZXooQdiIUGvvcGf_FPwFjbyNNogmeHFmQVFzxN8HN21VIV8bF8oWRkRzj6E0dZeLKClrpshGD5msr7qL-YfCfAfolVw8DhNg6zliGAwP6h8AQ2QVWsSh_9Et_3/s800/winter%20trees%20snow%20lev.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="800" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAPVOgGVEYsPcXkD4t_tld0FAJm5OofrKYA0S8XhoCgWP5TIdtrMhS8fp-cdQ4VEM677ZXooQdiIUGvvcGf_FPwFjbyNNogmeHFmQVFzxN8HN21VIV8bF8oWRkRzj6E0dZeLKClrpshGD5msr7qL-YfCfAfolVw8DhNg6zliGAwP6h8AQ2QVWsSh_9Et_3/w400-h250/winter%20trees%20snow%20lev.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/24001256/snow-winter-climate-change-solastalgia-warming?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://www.vox.com/culture/24001256/snow-winter-climate-change-solastalgia-warming?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>INSIDE THE MIND OF CHARLES MANSON<br /></b><br /><i><b>~ Manson's ideology is considered an early example of “accelerationism." It's a radical view that seeks to bring about political or social change by accelerating societal collapse. ~</b><br /></i><br />In August 1969, a string of violent murders stunned the entire world. Charles Manson, whose name has since become synonymous with cult-led violence, was the mastermind behind the infamous "Tate-LaBianca" killings. The first killing occurred on the night of August 8–9, and the victims included pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four of her friends who were visiting that night.<br /><br />Manson had apparently chosen the house where Tate lived because he believed a record executive who had rejected his songs was still living there. The following evening, the "family" also murdered supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, at their home in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles.<br /><br />In the trial that followed, <b>Manson and his followers testified that the killings had been intended to precipitate a race war since they intended their crimes to be blamed on black activists. </b>As a result of his involvement in these killings, Manson was sentenced to death in 1971; however, his sentence was eventually reduced to life in prison. Manson would spend decades <b>in jail until his death in November 2017 at the age of 83. <br /><br />Of his surviving followers, four remain in California prisons.<br /></b><br />In August 1997, Manson, who was then 63 years old, was transferred to Pelican Bay State Prison for drug trafficking charges while in prison. Also known as California's "supermax" prison, Pelican Bay housed the most dangerous inmates who were serving long sentences (i.e., 25 to life with the possibility of parole). <b>Due to being previously diagnosed with severe mental illness, Manson was housed in Pelican Bay's psychiatric service unit (PSU).<br /></b><br />Ever the subject of controversy, questions were immediately raised about whether Manson was truly mentally ill or whether he would be better suited for the prison's special handling unit (SHU.). As a result, <b>he underwent a comprehensive psychiatric examination, the full details of which only became publicly available following his 2017 death.<br /></b><br />A recent publication in the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management provides an overview of Manson's assessment, including his formal diagnosis, his criminal history, and why he has become a role model for extreme right-wing terrorist groups over the past decade in the United States. The lead author, Tod A. Roy, a forensic psychologist now practicing in Phoenix, Arizona, conducted the 1997 assessment and secured permission from the California Department of Corrections to publish the previously confidential report.<br /><br /><b>Along with a battery of tests, including the Rorschach Psychodiagnostic Test, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2), and the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), Manson's extensive criminal history, both inside and outside of prison was also examined.</b> At the time of his assessment, he had spent 46 of his 63 years behind bars, including 25 years for the Tate-LaBianca murders.<br /><br />The results, which Roy and his coauthors recently reanalyzed, proved to be as complicated and conflicting as anyone familiar with Manson's case might expect. For instance, the findings of the MMPI-2 and Rorschach tests that Manson took provide evidence that <b>he struggled with significant psychological disorders that couldn't be neatly classified according to existing systems such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).</b><br /><br />As a result, <b>the question of whether Manson could be considered psychotic as well as psychopathic remains as controversial as ever, even after his death.<br /></b><br />The significance of these discoveries lies not only in trying to understand Manson but also in understanding the more far-reaching aspects of his ideology, particularly in the context of contemporary extremist movements related to “accelerationism."<br /><br />What is meant by <b>"accelerationism" is the concept that accelerating the collapse of society would bring about the political or social changes extremists want. The ideology of Manson, which he used to justify the heinous murders he ordered, can be interpreted as an early example of this radical worldview.</b><br /><br />It is helpful to discern and combat similar extremist views in today's world if we have a better understanding of what motivated someone like Manson and those who followed him. In addition, the case of Manson highlights problems regarding the characteristics of psychosis and <b>the degree to which mental illness might have an impact on criminal behavior.<br /></b><br />Certainly, the article by Roy and his coauthor raised troubling questions about the intersections of psychology, criminality, and the effect of society given Manson's life, the crimes he committed, and the later psychiatric tests conducted on him.<br /><br />The life story of Manson is <b>not only a chronicle of a criminal mastermind, but it is also a case study of the terrorist cell he created and the need to remain cautious against the ideologies that motivated his crimes</b>. It is also a reminder of the significance of psychiatric evaluation in the process of comprehending criminal behavior and trying to prevent similar tragedies in the future.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/media-spotlight/202312/exploring-the-mind-of-charles-manson">https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/media-spotlight/202312/exploring-the-mind-of-charles-manson</a></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJRPpbK1rT5M8hkAd0_rXVuI3ts8ceqV_qaHxcn3-uyrVRwbrhjwGECca2uYpp0XtLHzdCER7SSPp9sHHwSO8HObnnJGe8dfWl843_kuZDpMJ9hR-5mAPAvzBGwy8TumDefJ9_BZOFAq67GWg4MdyT7ayfTv61hhZubyqp97ufUs9hTcR2QYaY9KeooFUh/s386/charles%20manson%202014.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="386" data-original-width="320" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJRPpbK1rT5M8hkAd0_rXVuI3ts8ceqV_qaHxcn3-uyrVRwbrhjwGECca2uYpp0XtLHzdCER7SSPp9sHHwSO8HObnnJGe8dfWl843_kuZDpMJ9hR-5mAPAvzBGwy8TumDefJ9_BZOFAq67GWg4MdyT7ayfTv61hhZubyqp97ufUs9hTcR2QYaY9KeooFUh/s320/charles%20manson%202014.jpg" width="265" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Charles Manson in 2014, three years before his death</i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">from another source:<br /><br />Tod Roy, a psychologist who’d just started working at Pelican Bay, was given the job of giving Manson a psychological exam. For more than a week, Roy asked Manson questions from a battery of psychological tests. He also gave Manson the Rorschach test, getting his reactions to the various ink blots on cards.<br /><br /><b>Roy recalls that Manson was “curious,” “gregarious,” “aware of his notoriety” and mostly civil. To this day, Roy refers to Manson as “Charlie.”</b><br /><br />But there were moments when Roy was reminded he was in the room with a cult leader. <b>On their second day of interviews, Manson showed up with a haircut that exposed the swastika tattoo on his forehead. Another day, Manson described the car Roy owned. Through a prison window, Manson had spied Roy in the parking lot.</b><br /><br /><b>“That was kind of intimidating,” Roy says. “But, at the same time, it tells you about his observational capacities.”<br /></b><br />After the evaluation, <b>Roy gave a diagnosis that allowed Manson to get mental health treatment: “I basically said he had an antisocial personality and was a psychopath.”<br /></b><br />Prison officials asked Roy to hand over the materials from his evaluation, but he refused.<br />“They were fearful that I was going to go out and publish it,” he says. “I said, ‘Well, I do because I think there’s some scientific importance here.’ ”<br /><br />So they made a deal. Roy agreed not to publish anything until Manson died. Manson agreed.<br />After Manson died in 2017 at 83, Roy began thinking about that agreement.<br /><br />“I had never written an article for a journal in my life, so I started looking into the requirements to do it, and I knew I was going to need some help,” he says.<br /><br />So Roy contacted California psychologist Reid Meloy, who focuses on extremism and does risk assessments. Meloy consulted for the federal government on the prosecutions of the Oklahoma City bombers and has researched threats to the British royal family.<br /><br /><b>Intrigued by Manson’s anti-government ideology, Meloy agreed to help and started assembling a research team.</b><br /><br />Alan Friedman, a Northwestern University psychologist, and David Nichols, an Oregon psychologist, agreed to look at Manson’s Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, known as the MMPI-2, which is based on 567 true-false questions. Using her own assessment system, psychologist Joni Mihura of the University of Toledo would re-examine Manson’s reactions to ink blots.<br /><br />Now, the team of psychologists has published a paper in the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management that examines Roy’s 1997 diagnosis and finds that Manson’s symptoms were consistent with <b>bipolar illness.<br /></b><br /><b>“There has always been this controversy: Was he schizophrenic?” Friedman says. “We found he was more on the manic end of the spectrum. He was an aggressive guy — antisocial, narcissistic, a psychopath.”</b><br /><br /><b>Manson didn’t demonstrate hallmarks of schizophrenia such as despair and feelings of alienation, according to Friedman.<br /></b><br /><i><b>Manson “was able to attract others, and that would certainly be more consistent with feelings and behaviors suggestive of grandiosity and euphoria, as distinct from the characteristics of schizophrenia, which is more despairing, alienated,” Nichols says.</b></i><br /><br />Mihura studied Manson’s outlandish responses to ink blots. During the 1997 Rorschach test, the cult leader had described one image as “two Rip Van Winkles asleep” and another as “two KKK men with wings.” Many of his descriptions involved sex. <br /><br /><b>Fewer than 1% of people see the things Manson said he saw, according to Mihura, who says he didn’t seem to be faking his answers.<br /></b><br />Mihura also watched a 1993 interview Manson did with ABC-TV’s Diane Sawyer and saw how he tried unsuccessfully to overpower her and control the interview.<br /><br />“He’s very ‘plan-ful,’ ” Mihura says of the interview. “He’s trying to disrupt Diane Sawyer’s interview. <b>His thinking wasn’t disorganized.</b>”<br /><br /><b>Mihura determined that Manson’s Rorschach test and ABC interview showed organized thinking, so she ruled out schizophrenia. </b>Instead, his thinking was “consistent with but not definitive” of bipolar illness, which includes the two poles of mania and depression.<br /><br />She says Manson appeared to display signs of hypomania, a milder version of mania — that he seemed talkative, driven, full of energy and in control.<br /><br />Also, according to Mihura, Manson was a psychopath and had “lower-level personality organization,” with difficulties showing empathy and having intimate relationships.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Manson’s mental illness most likely was triggered by his traumatic childhood, according to the psychologists’ review. During his childhood, he’d repeatedly been abandoned by his teenage mother, who was a sex worker and alcoholic.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b><br />“They say she once abandoned him for a pitcher of beer,” Roy says.<br /><br /><i><b>When Manson was 5, his mother was sent to prison for robbery. At 7, while in foster care, he stole a neighbor’s Christmas presents and set them on fire. He later was arrested for auto theft and robbery. When he was 13 and in juvenile detention, he was raped. He became an aggressor.</b></i></span></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In 1967, two years before the infamous Los Angeles killings, Manson was released from a prison in Washington state. He was so accustomed to living in a state institution that he asked for permission to stay, which was denied.<br /><br />“Manson had this severely adverse background, all of these things that were going on,” Friedman says. “I think today, when people have those kinds of histories, there’s more likely to be interventions done to redirect the person away from violent pathways.”<br /><br />Manson didn’t physically participate in the Aug. 9, 1969, killings but orchestrated his “family” — mostly women — to carry them out. They’d been taking LSD and other drugs, which it’s believed likely lowered their inhibitions about killing.<br /><br /><b>“Manson’s specific fantasy, the ‘Helter Skelter’ fantasy, was that, by committing these atrocities that they did in Los Angeles, it would bring about the collapse of white society but that black individuals, even though they would win the race war, did not have the intelligence to govern themselves,” Meloy says. “And he would come out of the desert with his ‘family’ and rule the new society.”<br /></b><br />Meloy says some extremist groups today are adherents of Manson’s “accelerationist” ideology.<br />“Acceleration is the philosophy that we promote and <b>actually engage in violence as a way to accelerate the collapse of society</b>,” he says.<br /><br />According to Meloy, some Nazi-inspired groups are among those that believe in acceleration.<br />“These kinds of beliefs and patterns of thinking can arise in any mental health setting,” he says. “And we believe that clinicians need to alert themselves to these possibilities.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The Manson study also found that “targeted attackers such as Manson will harbor a personal grievance 80% of the time. Such grievances are typically composed of major loss, humiliation, anger and blame.</b>”<br /><br />Before the killings, Manson was upset that Melcher — the music producer, who was actress-singer Doris Day’s son — refused to record songs Manson had written, according to the study, citing previous research.<br /><br />Manson and his followers partied with Melcher and Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson in the year prior to the killings, which occurred in a Benedict Canyon home in Los Angeles that Melcher was renting until he moved out in January 1969.<br /><br />Tate and her filmmaker husband Roman Polanski began renting the home that February. Polanski wasn’t home during the slaughter six months later.<br /><br />Later, Manson family members said they knew Melcher no longer lived there but that Manson wanted to frighten him.<br /><br /><b>For more than 50 years, researchers have sought answers for how something so horrible could happen.<br /></b><br />“Among terrorists, the personal grievance is usually joined with moral outrage concerning a suffering group, which is then framed by an ideology, but the severity of psychopathy in Manson would preclude any moral rectitude at all,” the study reported. “One is left with <b>the homicidal drivers of personal grievance and his grandiose fantasy of world domination</b>.”<br /><br /><a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/1/20/23559781/charles-manson-sharon-tate-psychological-study-andrew-friedman-northwestern-university">https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/1/20/23559781/charles-manson-sharon-tate-psychological-study-andrew-friedman-northwestern-university<br /></a><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxiPTDF428-E8CiMWkfjgwUHnTIZNPZQpFia-P1ej37cn46JuQxScg_S_eTC_e04jGDSvX5DXwiRMTomA9lbscjXikeXKtRivYJmZcCBfspJlFQfo8nHTjArDkKUcqFaqs-5_B278A_ygD_DwEcIeV7Nqu46taLYNq60n7PEr_EAQCibhy-sV9e8NB1UNd/s599/charles%20manson%20old%20beard.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="403" data-original-width="599" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxiPTDF428-E8CiMWkfjgwUHnTIZNPZQpFia-P1ej37cn46JuQxScg_S_eTC_e04jGDSvX5DXwiRMTomA9lbscjXikeXKtRivYJmZcCBfspJlFQfo8nHTjArDkKUcqFaqs-5_B278A_ygD_DwEcIeV7Nqu46taLYNq60n7PEr_EAQCibhy-sV9e8NB1UNd/w400-h269/charles%20manson%20old%20beard.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>CHILDREN AND SANTA CLAUS — A HARMLESS DECEPTION?<br /></b><br />Towards the end of every year, many parents find themselves fielding difficult questions, such as: how does a man fly across the entire world in a single night to deliver presents? How does he fit down a chimney? <b>Does he really eat cookies at every house?</b><br /><br />Children start to distinguish fantasy from reality around preschool, but a belief in Santa Claus or Father Christmas usually lasts longer, to around seven or eight years old, according to research conducted in the United States in the 1980s and ’90s. This isn’t too surprising: many parents continue to tell their children that Santa is real for as long as possible, and they <b>sometimes enact elaborate schemes to provide evidence of his existence. But, inevitably, there comes a time when cracks in the Santa story start to appear.</b> If you’re a parent, relative or teacher and you’re interacting with children at this stage of their belief in Santa, you might be wondering about the best way to respond – or what the loss of belief might be like for them.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgePcXNmPyACF51hWbZSRM4q3AVRkdE623ReuV8Mn7D_-m9tSUdhJKiiS-I17bZwKi47ZFPsiMYk1whXxDf6srf8zAl10MOsW-NbgyElRKk2RrFweKhnZx94Bs1e9EoiqM_VlMfzpJfMaCLe-iE7QsdPuWKW1no-jlpPQ1ja8vJZxeifXT41K2Vbz7TUr9J/s960/santa%20camel.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgePcXNmPyACF51hWbZSRM4q3AVRkdE623ReuV8Mn7D_-m9tSUdhJKiiS-I17bZwKi47ZFPsiMYk1whXxDf6srf8zAl10MOsW-NbgyElRKk2RrFweKhnZx94Bs1e9EoiqM_VlMfzpJfMaCLe-iE7QsdPuWKW1no-jlpPQ1ja8vJZxeifXT41K2Vbz7TUr9J/w300-h400/santa%20camel.jpg" width="300" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In 2014, a mother wrote in to Slate’s advice column Dear Prudence, written by Emily Yoffe, with concern about how to break it to her child that Santa was made up. The mother thinks that, once her daughter is old enough to ask questions about Santa, she should be told directly. ‘I feel very dishonest about this and worry that our daughter would feel hurt by the extreme steps we took to keep her in the dark just so we could enjoy the innocence and magic for a little while longer,’ she wrote. <b>Yoffe responded that one of the ‘delights’ of childhood was to ‘spread a little fairy dust occasionally’ – but many readers subsequently wrote to the magazine describing how they had been hurt by believing in Santa well into puberty, because of how their parents had kept the myth alive.</b><br /><br />Is it really possible that promoting the Santa myth to your children is a kind of harmful deception? To find out, a pair of psychologists, Candice Mills at the University of Texas at Dallas and Thalia Goldstein at George Mason University in Virginia, recently investigated how children and adults learned the truth about Santa, and how they felt about it.<br /><br />For their paper in Developmental Psychology, <b>they asked children aged six to 15 how they found out Santa wasn’t real, and the emotions they experienced afterwards. Then they asked 383 adults to remember how they came to disbelieve in Santa.<br /></b><br />About a third of children and half of adults said they felt some negative emotions when they learned Santa wasn’t real. It was the child and adult participants whose parents had heavily pushed the Santa story who also tended to have more negative emotions upon learning the truth. The adults who remembered feeling the worst were at an older age when they learned about Santa, they tended to have found out abruptly, and from another person, rather than figuring it out on their own.<br /><br />Yet a similar number of children, and around 13 per cent of adults, recalled experiencing positive emotions upon learning Santa wasn’t real. ‘Some said they were relieved that they finally had resolution to some of their nagging questions,’ Mills and Goldstein wrote in an essay for The New York Times in 2023. ‘Others reported pride, as if they’d solved a complicated puzzle.’<br /><br />As well as the ethical aspects of exploding the Santa myth, <b>understanding how and when children grow out of it offers a way to examine how children develop skepticism.</b> According to Jean Piaget’s influential theory of cognitive development, when children are in a ‘preoperational stage’ and aged around four to eight, they can’t easily tell the difference between reality and fantasy. That ability emerges in the next stage – the ‘concrete operational stage’; in the 1970s, researchers suggested that losing the belief in Santa could mark a transition moment between these cognitive stages.<br /><br />But back to the delicate issue of <b>whether you should encourage or slow children’s understanding of the true nature of Santa Claus.</b> ‘As developmental psychologists, we’ve long been interested in such questions, in part because they raise larger issues about the role of imaginative play in the life of a child and how parents might best engage with it,’ Mills and Goldstein wrote.<br /><br />In their essay, Mills and Goldstein offered advice on how parents should talk about Santa with their children. If your children start asking probing questions, they said there is no need to tell them lies. ‘Consider answering by asking your child what she thinks, talking about what “some people” believe or simply acknowledging that she has asked an interesting question,’ they wrote. Even kids who are upset by suddenly finding out about Santa seem to get over it relatively quickly – usually within a year – and both children and adults said they would still incorporate Santa into their own holiday traditions.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKDiKq5DtCpbnfezSEf-tft4l3vUjHtal354zWvZzqtsoHuXbWQoNZk7DjGRyFc0IGe7DrkjB3ks0RYtkDSQMrd2Zb7xJJBTc-x10kKUHcbQa5MYPTzxcBTx8SIMkvqAIP8KrPrYibBN40j8JSeELrTT0JEA3eHvkXuLMWZ4Ob1Ke-rzIh8xyNn9n3UVLz/s800/santa%20claus%20hasidic%20family-in-Jerusalem.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="800" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKDiKq5DtCpbnfezSEf-tft4l3vUjHtal354zWvZzqtsoHuXbWQoNZk7DjGRyFc0IGe7DrkjB3ks0RYtkDSQMrd2Zb7xJJBTc-x10kKUHcbQa5MYPTzxcBTx8SIMkvqAIP8KrPrYibBN40j8JSeELrTT0JEA3eHvkXuLMWZ4Ob1Ke-rzIh8xyNn9n3UVLz/w400-h250/santa%20claus%20hasidic%20family-in-Jerusalem.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">‘Your child may have imaginary friends and believe in the Tooth Fairy – that’s OK,’ Mills and Goldstein wrote. ‘Blurring the line between fantasy and reality is a normal part of being a young kid.’<br /><br /><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/at-what-point-does-the-santa-myth-become-a-harmful-deception?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=47d2a3631c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_12_22&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-a9a3bdf830-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D">https://psyche.co/ideas/at-what-point-does-the-santa-myth-become-a-harmful-deception?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=47d2a3631c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_12_22&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-a9a3bdf830-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D</a><br /><br /><br />Anita Spinks:<br /><i><b>Apparently I was one of the 15% of children who felt betrayed by my parents when given ‘the talk’ at around 9 years of age. A further 30% are upset when the truth is revealed to them. On reflection, I think my sense of betrayal was exacerbated by a deliberate lie when I stumbled across Mum and Dad wrapping the presents. Instead of using the event as an opportunity for truth telling, I was told that parents performed this task to assist Father Christmas.</b><br /></i><br />In case you’re wondering I played down the magical elements myself though did not eliminate them entirely as there are neighborhood children to consider. I did not stoop so low as to manufacture evidence, I hasten to add.<br /><br />Responses from the group were overwhelmingly in favor of perpetuating the myth with some saying that they never told their children ‘they just found out!’ A couple were more circumspect and thought it was morally wrong to allow children to believe above the age of 5 years, and one member who was ‘freaked out’ by the commercial addition of the ‘Shelf Elf’.<br /><br />My feelings as an adult are that the world itself is full of natural wonders to inspire and delight without the intrusion of commerce, but it’s not wise to go against the grain when culture strongly supports belief. Not for a while…anyway.<br /><br />Ragged Clown:<br />When my son was growing up, my wife thought it was very important that he not be the last one in his friend group to find out about the Santa myth for fear of teasing. So we sat him down one day when he was about 6 and gave him the little preamble speech about how sometimes parents make up stories to explain the world and make childhood more fun.<br /><br />At that point, he interrupted and blurted “There’s no God, is there!? I knew it!!”<br /><br />Oriana:<br /><br />That’s precisely why some people say that the Judeo-Christian god is “Santa Claus for adults.” <br /><br />I’m not sure if I ever knew a child who seriously believed in Santa Claus. <b>We were supposed to believe in Baby Jesus, not Santa. To us, the most real thing was the animals around the manger. </b></span><br /><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>I especially adored the donkey </b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">— those soft ears to longed to stroke, and those soulful eyes. And the little lambs were beyond cuddly. </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />To me Santa was like fairy tales — to be enjoyed as a fiction. So there was never a crisis. never a feeling of betrayal. My parents tried to firmly establish the non-existence of ghosts, witches, good and bad fairies. But mostly I figured out this stuff on my own. The church with its insistence on an invisible deity was a problem, but at least it provided the Nativity scenes.<br /><br />Now, religion classes were something else. I started out with the belief that we are being told another set of fairy tales — but god was mean and punitive, more like a wicked witch, far from a jolly Santa. Still, the nuns who taught catechism classes seemed to believe that such a being exists, and has the power to throw you into hell forever if you dare doubt. <br /><br />In adulthood I wondered if children raised without religion had a much happier childhood, free from the anxiety about going to hell. My mental health would have been better, but I’d be out of step with my peers, not understanding religious references both in daily life and, later, in literature. But apparently there were enough such children for one of my colleges to have a class on “religious and mythological backgrounds in literature.” <br /><br />And it felt like an achievement to work my way out from that labyrinth of stories so they no longer had the power over me they once did. I still had nightmares about hell in my adult years, but I found them interesting. <br /><br />Now, deliberately lying to children does feel wrong, though there might be rare special cases when it’s the best practical solution, hopefully temporary. Pleading ignorance can also be respectable solution. Cherry picking, that is, being very selective about what one takes from the myriad beliefs permeating any culture, is perhaps best. <br /><br />As for the figure of Santa, for me the interesting part has been witnessing how Santa and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer seem to have completely taken over Christmas, leaving Baby Jesus far behind. How did that happen? Follow the money. </span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9xBjjzNe0_-2E34f7wVVq5NphVHG6nXQU9KYLtmmQzNPfh0Er-fyyz7pXB-WMzRJWVwDcrcb-zfIj_NhfRAtHqwbZnav0208Zm5EDuwtH4QxG7J1jLiunNtGj3RA_36gPJSyKxBqlORsjqppi_7PhL2JkHlYZD7kHb5J1VMMxkVrPuf1VcFmTpmzUQHm4/s376/santa%204%20stages%20of%20life.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="284" data-original-width="376" height="303" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9xBjjzNe0_-2E34f7wVVq5NphVHG6nXQU9KYLtmmQzNPfh0Er-fyyz7pXB-WMzRJWVwDcrcb-zfIj_NhfRAtHqwbZnav0208Zm5EDuwtH4QxG7J1jLiunNtGj3RA_36gPJSyKxBqlORsjqppi_7PhL2JkHlYZD7kHb5J1VMMxkVrPuf1VcFmTpmzUQHm4/w400-h303/santa%204%20stages%20of%20life.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>DOES LOW BIRTH RATE MEAN THE END OF THE HUMAN SPECIES?<br /></b><br /><b>The Roman emperor Augustus was already concerned with the dwindling birth rates of Rome’s upper classes. He went as far as to enact a special law for this called the Jus trium liberorum, meaning “the right of three children” under which special privileges were provided for couples who had more than three children. This way he hoped to boost the birth rates.</b><br /><br />Just a week ago, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un made an emotional appeal to his nation’s women to “have more children”. While still almost double the 0.8 child-per-woman birth rate of South Korea, North Korea’s has been dwindling, too… and the Kim Dynasty is concerned.<br /><br /><b>Augustus knew two thousand years ago what Kim knows to be true today — a culture cannot survive if it does not reproduce. Rome’s overall birth rate during Augustus’ reign wasn’t even dramatically low, but the nobles and many of the ‘original Romans’ had few children</b>. As a result, Rome become less and less “Roman” as time went on… because just like today’s world, <b>Rome did import workers and slaves from other places. It didn’t work in the long run. We will find that the same goes for us.<br /></b><br />This is what kills a civilization, in the end. Sometimes it’s rapid, most of the time it’s more of a slow burn. But widespread access to birth control and widely available education for both genders have caused a worldwide decline in birth rates. Historically speaking, that’s what ends civilizations — the people who built the civilization simply die out and with them, so does the civilization itself. ~ Jean-Marie Valheur, Quora<br /><br />Alessandro Cattaneo:<br />It happened other times already in history: civilizations produce many children as long as they are expanding, but when well being, education and peace becomes a given, people tends to entertain themselves with higher purposes.<br /><br />It’s almost a cycle: countries need to go down so that maybe they can rise up again. If they do it and God knows when.<br /><br />Oriana:<br />China’s one-child policy introduced the idea that one or none is OK. China is now urging couples to have three children, but people are not buying it. You could say they got spoiled by child-free, or only one child, life style.<br /><br />Matt Macho:<br /><b>North Korea has outlawed all birth control.</b> The ancients (Roman or otherwise) only had access to the “rhythm method", the least effective means of avoiding pregnancy in existence. So much for blaming access to contraception for the collapse of civilization.<br /><br />And anyway, who other than li'l Kim wants to perpetuate North Korean society? The world (and especially North Koreans) will be better off without it.<br /><br />It's self-evident that we cannot continue sustaining a population that doubles every couple generations. Reduction of population by natural means (reduced birth rates) will mean the population will age and decline. This will produce challenges but it certainly doesn't have to mean societal collapse.<br /><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyiY7H8Dl18HWNuzmvVCE56_mOrJeltCK1cNoGYJqntbE70LRCPYJ4_alx5lOFcNTq71F7DwhQwewAZ8caFyPBeCXxdBUjF2EPI4WSSAP4XKxau3XSkSloFRezNaJZvr3uHT_95X1rJPv3PxBy8C6h_nYsgAOqpz3bGwzBuwZCB6kbmqykzSH39ohmanY7/s179/Kim%20glasses.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="179" height="375" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyiY7H8Dl18HWNuzmvVCE56_mOrJeltCK1cNoGYJqntbE70LRCPYJ4_alx5lOFcNTq71F7DwhQwewAZ8caFyPBeCXxdBUjF2EPI4WSSAP4XKxau3XSkSloFRezNaJZvr3uHT_95X1rJPv3PxBy8C6h_nYsgAOqpz3bGwzBuwZCB6kbmqykzSH39ohmanY7/w400-h375/Kim%20glasses.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Not sure if the world would be better without North Korea, but it most likely would be better without Kim (or Putin, and a few others we could mention).</i><br /><br />*<br /><b>MOTHER TERESA “FELT NO PRESENCE OF GOD” <br /></b><br />~ Mother Teresa’s seemingly unbreakable bond with God was much more complicated than she let on in public. For nearly 50 years, she felt God had abandoned her.<br /><br />Letters made public years after her death in 1997 revealed that Mother Teresa spent nearly half a century without feeling God’s presence, “neither in her heart or in the eucharist,” as TIME reported in 2007:<br /><br />Mother Teresa was aware of the contradiction between her public persona and private feelings. She called her smile “a mask” or “a cloak that covers everything.” Her letters reveal she wrestled with the existence of God. In an undated prayer to Jesus at the suggestion of a confessor, she said she had no faith.<br /><br />Such a lengthy crisis of faith becomes all the more significant as Mother Teresa has been declared a saint. “I’ve never read a saint’s life where the saint has such an intense spiritual darkness,” Rev. James Martin, author of My Life with the Saints, told TIME in 2007. “No one knew she was that tormented.”<br /><br />The revealing letters were published in a book entitled Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, compiled and edited by Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, Mother Teresa’s postulator. In an interview with the New York Times this August, Kolodiejchuk called Mother Teresa’s perseverance “heroic” in the face of the the “darkness” she felt.<br /><br />“She was suffering that loneliness, that sense of being unloved, unwanted in her relationship with Jesus,” he said. “but in solidarity with and identified with others who were in some way living that sense of loneliness and being unloved.”<br /><br /><b>https://time.com/4476076/mother-teresas-faith-history/<br /></b><br />postulator = the person who nominates someone for sainthood or beatification<br /><br />Oriana:<br /><br />She certainly believed that “suffering is good for you”<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirFT7mapUpUbOYwrAJAMJI2_9asVAwwK2HQEkAkbYnD7519v7fjkn9xKaELmiF9L1Sw-fqGqdUiiyd0noS6aG-R4varZ9pgX-Wm9BoabRf4yVj3xAJWoI7xv7RPojvCyHeyXIX8KqPLtOZRBzXjJycKIEfovua4TIG22ou3vAEZZMBx4F3HEk0977Ej0jY/s720/mother%20teresa%20friend%20of%20poverty.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="663" data-original-width="720" height="369" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirFT7mapUpUbOYwrAJAMJI2_9asVAwwK2HQEkAkbYnD7519v7fjkn9xKaELmiF9L1Sw-fqGqdUiiyd0noS6aG-R4varZ9pgX-Wm9BoabRf4yVj3xAJWoI7xv7RPojvCyHeyXIX8KqPLtOZRBzXjJycKIEfovua4TIG22ou3vAEZZMBx4F3HEk0977Ej0jY/w400-h369/mother%20teresa%20friend%20of%20poverty.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:<br /><br />Perhaps it was to cover up that doubt that she was such a zealous servant and propagandist of the church. It seems she cared little or nothing about actual individuals; she equated the poor with Christ in the hope of being rewarded with a mystical vision of Christ like Teresa of Avila. She was bitter that this never happened. (“But it all means nothing because I don’t have Him.”)<br /><br />*<br /><b>TALKING TO THE CEILING</b><br /><br />“Some are atheist at age 5, and some at age 50. For me it was 23, and happened overnight, and was due to a sudden, anti-climactic realization — during a prayer — that I was talking to a ceiling.” ~ a reader’s comment<br /><br />I’ve had the sense of talking to empty air many times before I finally trusted my mind. It took a different realization: “It’s just another mythology.” I knew then that all religions were mythologies, not just the ones designated in that way, e.g. the “the Greek mythology” — as if the Hebrew mythology was not a mythology, but described actual events. Jonah and the Whale — absolutely factual!<br /><br />So it took both two-three years of struggling with increasing doubt, and just an instant. In retrospect, the doubt started during my first religion lesson when god’s invisibility was discussed. I smelled the rat right then. But I had a child’s strange notion that whatever adults said was the truth.<br /><br />The intellectual side of the journey was not complete until I read Jesse Bering’s The Belief Instinct. Until then, I had moments of what I call “Theist Doubt” — but perhaps some unknown deity, the “real god,” exists? Jesse Bering brilliantly showed that this idea is due to a common cognitive error.<br /><br />So the break may be sudden and dramatic, but the journey continues for years. Basically it’s an evolving lifetime experience.<br /><br />At the same time, just as I loved the Greek myths, so I remained fascinated with what was officially classified as religion. My two favorite classes in college were The Bible as Literature and Comparative Religion.<br /><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidpotmMuypvRSpmh-prBNo0VzQYR1mlvEc8lJDpO6XKjBwn0wqT4ojEPKP7YYUJv-_-5zIYjFz-swRQ1n-5N9KeIcR4hpAO1mRHLPM5PRbOR_fHKhdOpaTcl4K7Q_6B6sfqO48hqZ7ITwBJ7tG9_kvoKm3txIMg4H_TnXTb3tR0cX3EVq52GundXNpyhk0/s870/jonah%20and%20the%20whale%20Arabic.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="580" data-original-width="870" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidpotmMuypvRSpmh-prBNo0VzQYR1mlvEc8lJDpO6XKjBwn0wqT4ojEPKP7YYUJv-_-5zIYjFz-swRQ1n-5N9KeIcR4hpAO1mRHLPM5PRbOR_fHKhdOpaTcl4K7Q_6B6sfqO48hqZ7ITwBJ7tG9_kvoKm3txIMg4H_TnXTb3tR0cX3EVq52GundXNpyhk0/w400-h266/jonah%20and%20the%20whale%20Arabic.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i> Jonah and the Whale, Arabic version</i><br /><br />*<br /><b>WHEN GENTLE PARENTING DOESN’T WORK<br /></b><br />A study cited in support of the ineffectiveness of gentle parenting techniques was conducted by Dr. Robert Larzelere; possibly the most outspoken advocate of spanking today. Many parents are surprised to find that Dr. Diana Baumrind, who developed the parenting ‘styles,’ was also a spanking proponent. Drs. Baumrind and Larzelere say, “On average, authoritative parents spanked just as much as the average of all other parents. Undoubtedly, some parents can be authoritative without using spanking, but we have no evidence that all or even most parents can achieve authoritative parenting without an occasional spanking.” </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This runs counter to many parents’ values today since parents’ use of spanking is declining. Other researchers have found that spanking predicts the deterioration of children’s externalizing behavior (which is what researchers call ‘acting out’) over time: the very thing that parents who spank are trying to change.<br /><br />The challenge with citing academic research on effective parenting methods is that <b>an idea can be supported by research, but not fit with our values. </b>We don’t have to look far to find other ideas that fit this description: the racist notions that head size is linked to intelligence and that we can selectively breed humans with desirable traits were both supported by scientific research.<br /><br />I believe that scientific research findings reflect the ideas that are prevalent in society at the time. <b>It isn’t enough to know that an idea is supported by research; we also have to check whether it fits with our values.<br /></b><br />What do writers mean when they say gentle parenting doesn’t work? Because parents transmit their values to their children, when a parenting method ‘doesn’t work,’ we can think of it as failing to transmit important parental and cultural values.<br /><br />According to Dr. Larzelere, in the same study as before, a parenting method that ‘works’ “reduces non-compliance.” Other measures of success in studies cited in these articles include “identifying what parents need to be taught to reduce disruptive child behavior,” a “reduction in their child’s behavioral problems,” and “increased compliance” with parental demands. These terms all point toward obedience as a cultural value.<br /><br /><b>But when we look at what parents in Eurocentric cultures say about their values and desires for their children, obedience is not at the top of the list.<br /></b><br /><i><b>Obedience is far more important among conservative than liberal parents. A 2014 survey found that 38 percent of consistently liberal parents want their children to learn obedience, compared to 82 percent of consistently conservative parents (who are more likely to lack confidence in the scientific community).</b><br /></i><br /><b>The importance of obedience has waned over time.</b> One study found a decline in mothers’ desire for strict obedience in children from 64.4 percent in 1924 to 42.8 percent in 1978, while the desire for children’s independence more than tripled from 15.8 percent to 75.8 percent.<br /><br />Another study found that parents held values related to happiness, learning, and being a good person: “I remember having an interesting conversation with (partner) cos I was saying, ‘Well I want them to be happy.’ And he said, ‘I want them to be good.’ Not good as in well behaved, but good people have a, you know, proper moral sense…”<br /><br /><b>Parents want ease, not obedience<br /></b><br />In a remarkably forward-thinking 1943 paper, Dr. Harold Saxe Tuttle observes that obedience is “a convenience, a very great convenience, and, at certain stages, an indispensable convenience” as it protects children from harm — a great benefit with a young child about to touch a hot stove.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Obedience may be convenient, but it isn’t our ultimate goal. <b>What we parents need most of all is ease. When our need for ease is met, we have time, energy, and capacity to enjoy our children and to take care of ourselves as well.</b> Our children’s obedience may get us a bit of ease in the short term, but it works against us in the long term in two ways.<br /><br />Firstly, <b>an obedient child will continue to rely on our judgment to maintain obedience, because they haven’t learned to exercise their judgment</b>. We’ll continue to be the referee: “Don’t do X;” “Hurry up and do Y;” “Why on earth would you do Z to your sister?”, becoming increasingly frustrated as we go — the exact opposite of meeting our need for ease.<br /><br />Secondly, if our goal is to raise an independent child who cares for others and treats them fairly, requiring obedience is unlikely to help us reach that goal. We can’t tell them to do exactly what we say and expect them to develop and use their moral judgment on their eighteenth birthday.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>How to get more ease<br /></b><br /><b>The first step in making parenting easier is finding out your and your child’s real needs. The needs I most commonly see in parents are for ease, peace, and collaboration with their children.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Our children are people with needs too; some of the most common needs I see among children are connection, play, and autonomy.<br /><br />The ‘what to do when gentle parenting isn’t working’ advice offers obedience-based tools: consequences, selectively rewarding or ignoring specific behaviors and time-outs. When we require obedience, we tell our child: “I don’t care why you’re misbehaving; all that matters is that you do what I tell you to do.” When we instead look to understand the child’s needs, we find ways of meeting their needs that help us to meet our needs as well.<br /><br />Maybe your child is disobeying you because they know that if they do, you’ll pay attention to them as you tell them off (need for connection).</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Maybe they are being accidentally aggressive as they try to start or stop playing with a sibling, and we can show them other ways to convey their needs.<br /><br />Maybe they are resisting you because the thing you’re asking them to do feels deeply wrong for their body, and the most powerful word they know is “No!”<br /><br />Neither I nor anyone else can tell you how to handle each of these issues because we don’t know why your child is doing these things; we don’t know your child’s needs. In my book, Parenting Beyond Power, I offer some conversation starter questions to help you understand their needs which then provides a path to meeting your needs as well. These include:<br /><br />Can you tell me what you were trying to do when…?<br />Can you share why...wasn’t working for you?<br />Can you tell me why you don’t want to…?<br /><br /><b>Once you take a step toward meeting their needs, your needs for ease, peace, and collaboration will be met as well. No obedience required!<br /></b><br /><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-beyond-power/202312/why-people-claim-that-gentle-parenting-doesnt-work">https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-beyond-power/202312/why-people-claim-that-gentle-parenting-doesnt-work<br /></a><br /><br />*<br /><b>CAN AN UNHAPPY PARTNER DRAG DOWN YOUR HAPPINESS?<br /></b><br /><b>Romantic partners tend to be similar in several ways. They have similar attitudes, personality traits, and even similar levels of physical attractiveness. They are also similar in how happy they are.</b> It could be that birds of a feather flock together—happy people are attracted to happy people and misery loves company. <br /><br />However, research has shown that this similarity tends to increase over time. This could be because both couple members experience similar life events that affect their happiness. But another intriguing possibility is that partners could influence each other's level of happiness. Happiness, or unhappiness, could be contagious. If so, which partner is more likely to influence the well-being of the other, the happier partner or the less happy partner? New research by Olga Stavrova and William Chopik, just published in the journal, Social Psychological and Personality Science explores <b>well-being contagion within couples.</b><br /><br /><b>Moods tend to be contagious. Numerous studies on depression show that depressive states can be contagious between people. </b>This is especially likely to occur in couples, whose day-to-day experiences are so intertwined. For example, <b>one study found that on days when one partner reported poor mood, so did the other.</b><br /><br /><b>But which partner has more influence, the happier partner or the less happy partner? Much research in psychology supports the notion that bad is stronger than good.</b> For example, people are more upset about losing $20 than they are happy about gaining $20. In studies of marital conflict, negative behaviors have a bigger influence on satisfaction than positive behaviors, and negative social interactions have a larger influence on health and well-being than positive ones. This suggests that the unhappy partner is more likely to influence the happy partner than vice versa.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Stavrova and Chopik used data from two large long-term studies of couples. The first study included a sample of over 18,000 German couples who completed an annual survey for 37 years. Each year, both partners rated their level of life satisfaction on a 10-point scale. The results showed that the happier partner experienced a decrease in satisfaction over time, whereas the less happy partner held steady. </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>By the end of the 37 years, the initially happier partner experienced, on average, a 2.2-point drop in satisfaction. This change was so profound that by the end of the 37 years, on average, the happier partner had become the less happy partner.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />To test a broader set of variables relating to well-being, the researchers also analyzed data from a Dutch sample of about 3,000 couples who were surveyed annually for 14 years. Respondents completed questionnaires assessing their life satisfaction, positive emotions, negative emotions, and self-esteem. For all four of these outcomes, the happier partner's scores declined over time, and the less happy partner improved somewhat. However, they didn't exactly meet in the middle; </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>the declines experienced by the happier partner were greater than the improvements experienced by the less happy partner.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b><br />A savvy reader may suspect that this occurred because the happiest people just tend to show the biggest declines. When you start high, there is a long way to fall. However, additional analyses revealed that this was not the case in either of these studies. <b>It was the participants who were the least happy to start with who showed the largest declines in well-being.<br /></b><br />These studies both found that well-being is contagious. <b>Romantic partners' happiness levels tended to become more similar over time. However, rather than the two partners meeting somewhere in the middle, the less happy partner had an outsized influence. The less happy partner tends to bring the happier partner down.</b><br /><br /><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/close-encounters/202312/can-an-unhappy-partner-erode-your-happiness-over-time">https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/close-encounters/202312/can-an-unhappy-partner-erode-your-happiness-over-time<br /><br /></a>*</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>WHERE DID THEY ALL GO? HOW HOMO SAPIENS BECAME THE LAST HUMAN SPECIES LEFT<br /></b><br /><b><i>At least nine hominin species once roamed the Earth, so what became of our vanished ancestors?</i><br /></b><br />Just 300,000 years ago – a blink in evolutionary time – at least nine species of humans wandered the planet. <b>Today, only our own, Homo sapiens, remains. And this raises one of the biggest questions in the story of human evolution: where did everyone else go?<br /></b><br />“It’s not a coincidence that several of them disappeared around the time that Homo sapiens started to spread out of Africa and around the rest of the world,” says Prof Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London. “What we don’t know is if that was a direct connection.”<br /><br /><b>There are many theories around the disappearance of our human cousins, and limited evidence to decipher exactly what happened. But recent studies are providing tantalizing clues.<br /></b><br />What we do know is that from about 40,000 years ago, H sapiens was the last human standing out of a large and diverse group of bipedal hominins. <b>Hypotheses range from benign, such as H sapiens having better infant survival rates than other hominins, or climate changes pushing other species to the brink. Others suggest a more active role, such as H sapiens hunting other humans or interbreeding with them and assimilating their genetics.</b><br /><br />About 300,000 years ago, the first H sapiens populations were springing up in Africa. They didn’t look like modern humans, but they are more similar to us than other Homo species. They had tall, rounded skulls with an almost vertical forehead. They didn’t have the glowering brows of Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) or the protruding jaw of archaic-looking species such as Homo naledi. <b>They also had chins; something that no other Homo species has had (although we don’t know why only H sapiens has the protuberance).<br /></b><br />A study published in Nature this year exploded the idea that H sapiens originated from a single place in Africa in one great evolutionary leap. By analyzing the genomes of 290 people, the researchers showed that H sapiens descended from at least two populations that lived in Africa for one million years, before merging in several interactions.<br /><br />Palaeoanthropologists continue to argue (quite vociferously) over who the last ancestor of H Sapiens was, but so far there is no conclusive evidence. Also, there is no single origin for H sapiens. <b>There are ancient remains of early H sapiens in Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, Omo Kibish in Ethiopia and Florisbad in South Africa, suggesting that our species arose from multiple sites.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>When H sapiens moved out of Africa is also the subject of debate. Genetic evidence suggests there was a big foray out of the continent between 80,000 and 60,000 years ago. But it was not the first expedition. A perplexing H sapiens skull in Apidima in Greece has been dated to being at least 210,000 years old.</b><br /></i><br />We know of several other Homo groups that existed alongside H sapiens between 300,000 and 100,000 years ago. Some were quite similar to H sapiens. Stocky Neanderthals endured Europe’s chilly weather and the mysterious Denisovans eked out an existence in the rarefied air of what is now Siberia and Tibet, and possibly further afield.<br /><br /><i><b>Homo erectus, the long-legged “cosmopolitan” species – so called because of the impressive geographical range it spanned – still wandered through parts of Indonesia; Homo longi (also known as the “Dragon man”) lived in China. Homo rhodesiensis (also known as Homo bodoensis or Homo heidelbergensis – scientists continue to debate its name and membership) was alive in central and southern Africa.</b></i><br /><br /><b>Other species were rather distinct from us: H naledi, with its ape-size brain, rambled through the woody grasslands of South Africa, and the diminutive Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis lived, breathed and died on the islands of Flores and Luzon in Indonesia and the Philippines respectively.<br /></b><br />“Hominin species were likely dying out all the time,” says Prof Eleanor Scerri, head of the human palaeosystems group at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany. “It’s probably unusual that we are still around.”<br /><br />From Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes, researchers have inferred that they lived in small groups and frequently interbred. <b>Some population estimates, based on mitochondrial DNA (inherited maternally), suggest that at their most abundant there were about 52,000 Neanderthals in Eurasia before they began to decline. Others suspect that there could have been between 20,000 and 50,000 individuals.</b><br /><br />An important advantage that our direct ancestors appear to have had was population size. “Because of those small population sizes [among Neanderthals and Denisovans], there was a lot more interbreeding and the genetics reflects that,” says Scerri.<b> The lack of genetic diversity would have rendered these populations more susceptible to diseases and thus less likely to survive.</b><br /><br /><b>H sapiens, by comparison, had larger groups and greater genetic diversity</b>. The consequences of this extend beyond fitness against disease. “In H sapiens, we see larger social networks extending across the wider landscape,” says Stringer. “Having wide networks gives you an insurance policy because if you’re related to people a bit further away, if there is an environmental crisis – you’re running out of food or water – you can move into their environments and they’re not enemies, they’re your kin.” <b>Such networks also allow for the exchange of ideas and innovation</b>, Stringer adds.<br /><br />This social resilience could have helped H sapiens survive climatic changes that would have killed off less adaptable individuals and species. A 2022 study in Nature modeled the ancient climates and ecosystems in which H erectus, H heidelbergensis and Neanderthals lived and found that they lost significant portions of their environmental niches before disappearing.<br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>A larger 2023 simulation, which included six Homo species and the climate and vegetation over the past 3m years, found that later Homo species were able to live in a wider range of habitats, particularly H sapiens.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b><br /><b>Prof Axel Timmermann</b>, a co-author of this study and director of the IBS Centre for Climate Physics in Busan, South Korea, <b>believes that H sapiens outcompeted Neanderthals, ultimately leading to the latter’s demise.<br /></b><br />He built a numerical model, outlined in a 2020 paper, that simulated H sapiens’s spread out of Africa and combined it with available food sources. Using this, <b>he tested three hypotheses for the extinction of Neanderthals: that they were assimilated into H sapiens; that there was a huge climate catastrophe; or that H sapiens outcompeted them. “It’s only the last one [competitive exclusion] that is able to contribute to a realistic extinction of Neanderthals,” Timmermann says.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The model didn’t investigate what the specific competitive advantage may have been, although it could have included better tools, better offspring survival rates, or maybe even social hunting, he says.<br /><br /><b>Interbreeding human species</b><br /><br />Stringer believes a number of small advantages allowed H sapiens to outcompete its cousins. “We know now that Neanderthals were very capable, but maybe H sapiens was just slightly more capable,” he says. <b>Seemingly small innovations, such as weaving or sewing needles (both were known in the H sapiens fossil record from 35,000 and 30,000 years ago respectively), could have tipped the scales in H sapiens’s favor, he says.<br /></b><br /><b>“Once you weave, you can make baskets or snare nets… A sewing needle gives you a better seal [on materials], so you have better-insulated tents and you can keep your babies warm, which is of course critical for infant survival.” Larger social networks would also have allowed H sapiens to share such innovations, he adds.<br /></b><br />Another possibility is that H sapiens assimilated its cousins into the gene pool – and there is genetic evidence that this did happen, although whether it is responsible for the disappearance of the other species is still contentious. <b>Some people currently living in Eurasia have up to 2% Neanderthal DNA. In fact, some geneticists claim they can assemble about 40% of the Neanderthal genome from the sequences of living people.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Meanwhile, <b>populations in Oceania, which comprises Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, have between 2% and 4% Denisovan DNA. Some groups have an even higher percentage. There’s also the tantalizing mystery of an unknown human ancestor, who contributed between 2% and 19% of their genetic ancestry to people living in west Africa today.<br /></b><br />In 2020, two researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles obtained the genomes of more than 400 people living in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and the Gambia. They estimated that the ancient humans interbred with H sapiens in the region at some point in the last 124,000 years. “This raises an important philosophical argument,” says Scerri. <b>“Did they really die out, or are they still with us in some way?”</b><br /><br />Some groups – whether a different species or not – definitely fared better than others, with our own direct forebears surviving. This is in large part because of luck and their behavior, agree the experts I spoke to – and is something people living today need to recognize to overcome the challenges on the horizon.<br /><br />“Networking is important, the ability to adapt to change is important, and that’s certainly something we’re all going to face with climate change,” says Stringer. “Humanity will be faced with either cooperating in the face of those crises or competing. And <b>what we see from Neanderthals and H sapiens is that the groups that cooperated better were the ones that got through.”</b> ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/nov/18/where-did-other-human-species-go-vanished-ancestors-homo-sapiens-neanderthals-denisovans?utm_source=pocket_collection_story">https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/nov/18/where-did-other-human-species-go-vanished-ancestors-homo-sapiens-neanderthals-denisovans?utm_source=pocket_collection_story<br /></a></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsRPLQgffl8gEzJ__o7ork2xtGscbZghs8BoWoiSpyy8G-VGRohlzSWMdMfoVFWdj3JbLLnoV0Q7jmPpHwNfypIWCZTKdY9vuNlDX8kj2v75vR8wcSmBIdsq4YPEi04DabX3QwJqF4PkWnwxtEGSULNMn6cUUxTEhJ2StVAyNYmwgIS-5MATRPBuaM1zek/s624/Leda%20and%20Swan%20Tintoretto.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="478" data-original-width="624" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsRPLQgffl8gEzJ__o7ork2xtGscbZghs8BoWoiSpyy8G-VGRohlzSWMdMfoVFWdj3JbLLnoV0Q7jmPpHwNfypIWCZTKdY9vuNlDX8kj2v75vR8wcSmBIdsq4YPEi04DabX3QwJqF4PkWnwxtEGSULNMn6cUUxTEhJ2StVAyNYmwgIS-5MATRPBuaM1zek/w400-h306/Leda%20and%20Swan%20Tintoretto.jpg" width="400" /></a></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span style="color: #351c75;">Leda and Swan, Tintoretto (Oriana: I chose this painting as comic relief)</span></i><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br /><i><b>ending on beauty:</b></i><br /><br />EVERY SNOWFLAKE <br /><br />“Every snowflake tells a story,”<br />the meteorologist explains.<br />Look, he says: is your snowflake simple,<br /> one ride up and down the atmosphere? Or is it luxurious, crystal <br />branches feathering more crystal?<br />The snowflake that’s most exquisite <br />is the one that’s traveled farthest.<br /><br />O silent six-pointed star,<br />what harsh heavens do you know?<br />Winter breath, how far do you go?<br /> Because the voyage must be made, <br />no matter how icy the wind,<br />how dark and heavy the clouds. <br />Let reckless faith<br />swirl us into beauty like a blizzard.<br /><br />~ Oriana<br /><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis9EZk1UFb-XkGq5on5m7eRIQ8mtMOLOQ8QD28WKMTPG2JiZVqB5xBOQG82qKMvScssdyKFzrYf7XHL5xjdlP_KOxKo5vcvuUH5P6advqeLntdu-V_wTbx6Z63yIZbPUTI582_nHjUrMcsVGCVa3T9u_-Wh7xWvbFglXkg8_mtqbDSHSyzjEn77St_MZbJ/s915/snowflake%20alexey-kljatov.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="915" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis9EZk1UFb-XkGq5on5m7eRIQ8mtMOLOQ8QD28WKMTPG2JiZVqB5xBOQG82qKMvScssdyKFzrYf7XHL5xjdlP_KOxKo5vcvuUH5P6advqeLntdu-V_wTbx6Z63yIZbPUTI582_nHjUrMcsVGCVa3T9u_-Wh7xWvbFglXkg8_mtqbDSHSyzjEn77St_MZbJ/w400-h263/snowflake%20alexey-kljatov.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-36702583438817555472023-12-17T18:35:00.000-08:002024-01-14T18:10:59.078-08:00OPTIMAL MEAL FREQUENCY; PRIMAL BELIEFS NOT DETERMINED BY DEMOGRAPHICS; DAYDREAMING MICE; THE PARADOXES OF COMMUNISM; THE CIRCASSIAN GENOCIDE: DOES PUTIN CARE ABOUT THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE? USEFUL IDIOTS<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-LKPJ54UB5xYuQmXorwvYb9y3dKJEuV2-T1EU5hnIWoacJYfS_PKIlaoMBf-g3w8bvaZOoNriKcudoJu1JbUs7pj2paYdT6vLHpsZ-1D4aqjyC3bNlpDL2cMgRv2Qn6Tlghgg-28i5cYdkg8iYtzXPDSlsqWPh_xgb4wEhqu9RvImLfqQDvf3uyBfE5TT/s2048/Road%20Malta%20Piotr%20Ibrahim%20Kalwas.jpg" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1326" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-LKPJ54UB5xYuQmXorwvYb9y3dKJEuV2-T1EU5hnIWoacJYfS_PKIlaoMBf-g3w8bvaZOoNriKcudoJu1JbUs7pj2paYdT6vLHpsZ-1D4aqjyC3bNlpDL2cMgRv2Qn6Tlghgg-28i5cYdkg8iYtzXPDSlsqWPh_xgb4wEhqu9RvImLfqQDvf3uyBfE5TT/w414-h640/Road%20Malta%20Piotr%20Ibrahim%20Kalwas.jpg" width="414" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Road, Malta. Photo: Piotr Ibrahim Kalwas</i></span></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> *<br /></span></p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">THE WOMAN WHO VOWED TO KILL <br />SEVEN GERMANS<br /><i>told to my mother by a stranger on the train, 1945<br /></i><br />Her husband’s broken body thrust<br />against the electric fence.<br />She dressed in black, lit a candle <br />in church, and swore: <br />seven Germans, by her own hand.<br /><br />The days grew. The caw of crows<br />rang in hoarse, nagging echoes.<br />One afternoon, a knock on her door:<br />two German soldiers in retreat, <br />walking without food, without sleep.<br /><br />She let them in.<br />They slumped down in the chairs.<br />Frost lilies shrouded the windows.<br />In the bedroom, a loaded revolver <br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">pressed </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">cold steel into slips and brassieres.<br /><br />She stared at their frost-red, fear-eaten <br />young boys’ faces, flecks of snow <br />on coats and hair — <br />then turned toward <br />the kitchen, and made them tea.<br /><br />They cupped numb fingers<br />around the porcelain<br />and swallowed sips of heat.<br />A salvo of shooting<br />ricocheted far-off in the street —<br /><br />She touched her hand to her mouth.<br />They nodded and hurried out, <br />turning into footsteps, then silence.<br /><br />Sunday, she wanted to light<br />two more candles, two draft-torn<br />hearts of flame, but didn’t dare.</span><br /><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">~ Oriana<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQVFTPXr33XJc9rGhSLRLijsFnwcfLoqLrEfTfuD2fLv3xrnOphWSfRIraHJOhjhl0UPCPRfFI8QQHfCUGswpr4rJfGd4NUptFnrJKptnJzY7pn2lqt30jGiVSCwj6CHjta3moZhEhjxFbY3fdFntXGieVHdnujR5exWFj51fEYA_Jm7r3ZFAbd2TjtY2Q/s852/2%20candles.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="852" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQVFTPXr33XJc9rGhSLRLijsFnwcfLoqLrEfTfuD2fLv3xrnOphWSfRIraHJOhjhl0UPCPRfFI8QQHfCUGswpr4rJfGd4NUptFnrJKptnJzY7pn2lqt30jGiVSCwj6CHjta3moZhEhjxFbY3fdFntXGieVHdnujR5exWFj51fEYA_Jm7r3ZFAbd2TjtY2Q/w400-h225/2%20candles.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>THOMAS HARDY: GREAT CHARACTERS DON’T NEED A BACK STORY<br /></b><br />I loved Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge from page one.<b> The first three paragraphs alone still make me want to applaud with my hands above my head</b>, like I do when my team take to the field. Exactly 40 years since my O-level English literature exam (passed, with a grade A, since you ask), I decided to re-read it. Some passages feel as familiar as my name and address, while others – concerning the plot, mainly – ring no bells at all. Weird.<br /><br />I loved it all over again, although one aspect nagged away throughout: the absence of any explanation as to why characters are as they are. Take Michael Henchard [the protagonist of The Mayor of Casterbridge], who is angry, selfish and cruel, but also capable of great kindness and, tormented by guilt and remorse, isn’t lacking in the self-awareness department. <b>I find that my 21st-century self asks questions my 20th-century self didn’t – answers to which the 19th-century author apparently felt no obligation to supply. Why is Henchard this way? What made him so mad and bad most of the time? What made Donald Farfrae so clever and kind?</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Today, sure as anything, a writer would be bound to offer some kind of explanation. Not to do so might be deemed lazy – a cop out. If no origin story is supplied, the character might even be regarded as one-dimensional. Hence, we see the likes of Tony Soprano (bad guy) and Ted Lasso (good guy) in therapy, laying out their origin stories in some detail. Poor Michael Henchard never got this opportunity. His behavior would be pathologized to hell and back. <b>It must have been nice for Hardy to be able to devote his literary energies to creating complex characters without getting bogged down in backstories.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>There’s a TV series in here somewhere: Great Characters in Fiction – in Therapy.</b> Season one to feature Michael Henchard, Iago, Becky Sharp, Anna Karenina and all of the Famous Five, including Timmy the dog.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Now, in real life and on the page, we are almost impelled to investigate why we are like we are, and why everyone else is like they are. Done something terrible? There must be a reason that goes back a long way</b>. These lines of inquiry probably come from a good place and are generally healthy, but there needs to be a line somewhere. People are often just plain good, plain bad or plain indifferent, in varying degrees of complexity. Just let them be.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>If you’ve got the funds, you can spend a lifetime in therapy looking backwards in an effort to find a way forward. This has its place, but if we’re not careful we’ll be mulling over our pasts to make sense of our futures until the very moment the future stops dead as we’re lowered into our graves.</b></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Sorry to end on such a grim note there. Been reading too much Hardy. ~</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/19/what-did-i-learn-from-thomas-hardy-great-characters-dont-need-a-back-story">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/19/what-did-i-learn-from-thomas-hardy-great-characters-dont-need-a-back-story</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">~ from the opening of The Mayor of Casterbridge, paragraphs 4 and 5</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The chief—almost the only—attraction of the young woman’s face was its mobility. When she looked down sideways to the girl she became pretty, and even handsome, particularly that in the action her features caught slantwise the rays of the strongly coloured sun, which made transparencies of her eyelids and nostrils and set fire on her lips. When she plodded on in the shade of the hedge, silently thinking, she had the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of Time and Chance except, perhaps, fair play. The first phase was the work of Nature, the second probably of civilization.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">That the man and woman were husband and wife, and the parents of the girl in arms there could be little doubt. No other than such relationship would have accounted for the atmosphere of stale familiarity which the trio carried along with them like a nimbus as they moved down the road.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlgXiw15GQhyDmuFnbwmF_0IAorp8vFFie6sPL6Pfh2F_YzfyI-Y3DeJUpccer9G-snhtds27AjeeBTqplGkf7_O4zUFHGM3tynQsJGSfCRC1nhWqmNifHRvNLqQeP2gBh7i1gK5_mjcZrx6KTUfps43-fWsRrEyEMJiVJLldG-gpLf9NGOQIdKTqKjxWF/s700/Mayor%20of%20casterbridge%20cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="468" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlgXiw15GQhyDmuFnbwmF_0IAorp8vFFie6sPL6Pfh2F_YzfyI-Y3DeJUpccer9G-snhtds27AjeeBTqplGkf7_O4zUFHGM3tynQsJGSfCRC1nhWqmNifHRvNLqQeP2gBh7i1gK5_mjcZrx6KTUfps43-fWsRrEyEMJiVJLldG-gpLf9NGOQIdKTqKjxWF/w268-h400/Mayor%20of%20casterbridge%20cover.jpg" width="268" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>WHEN DEMOGRAPHICS AREN’T DESTINY</b></span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Most people falsely believe positive outlooks indicate privileged backgrounds.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Many people today are realizing how demographics—such as sex, income, neighborhood affluence, and crime—can shape success and happiness. This awakening is a positive step. Yet a new study also reveals <b>a major way that demographics are not destiny, contradicting what hundreds of researchers, including my own research team, predicted.<br /></b><br />PRIMAL WORLD BELIEFS<br /><br />People hold beliefs about all sorts of things, from politics to family and more. Since 2019, psychologists have studied a special type that researchers call primal world beliefs, or “primals” for short. <b>Primals describe people’s most basic beliefs about the character of the world as, essentially, one whole, huge place.</b><br /><br />People have lots of different primals. <b>Take a hundred people on the street and you’re bound to find some who view the world as safe and some who see it as a battleground </b>(that's one dimension of primals, called <b>"safe world belief")</b>. Similarly, some will consider it a barren desert and others think the world is overflowing with abundance (that's <b>"abundant world belief"</b>). Researchers know of 26 dimensions. <b>Most boil down to </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>the belief that the world is usually a good, wondrous place or a bad, miserable place.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Primals matter. A 2022 study showed that <b>positive primals are strongly correlated to many positive outcomes, including well-being (which correlated at around .60</b>, the same correlation as that between Earth's surface temperature and distance from the equator). Much existing theory (like that underlying cognitive behavioral therapy) suggests a chunk of this covariation is causal, and research exploring that possibility continues.<br /><br />Yet we wondered: <b>Could living an easy, privileged life drive both positive outcomes and positive primals?</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Maybe positive worldviews are super great for the rich, for men, and for healthy folks living in safe and wealthy neighborhoods and strolling through life trauma-free, but not for the less privileged among us. To paraphrase a study subject:<b> "I wish I could see the world as abundant, but I grew up poor, and that's just not in the cards for folks like me.” </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">If primals are indeed mirrors that reflect our backgrounds then, if I know your primals, I know your background. <b>Maybe people who see the world as abundant, for example, have truly experienced more abundance, and people who see the world as more dangerous have been through more danger, etc.</b><br /><br />So we ran another set of studies, recently published in the Journal of Personality, exploring the connection between primals and privilege.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">We started by asking about 500 professional psychologists and about 500 non-academics to predict the strength of 12 correlational relationships between specific primals and specific indicators of privilege (not including race, unfortunately, due to potential confounds, but that is also being looked into).</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">They predicted substantial relationships. For example, <b>they thought that men should see the world as much safer than women; people in high-crime neighborhoods should see the world as more dangerous; poor people should see the world as more barren; residents of rich neighborhoods should see the world as more abundant; and so forth.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Then, we ran several large studies (involving ~14,500 people) to determine actual relationships.<br /><br />THE RESULTS WERE A BIG SURPRISE<br /><br /><b>Not one prediction was correct or even close. The prediction that was least wrong was 3.5 times bigger than the actual relationship.<br /></b><br />Because we were so surprised, we did another study of ~1,000 more people finding, for instance, that </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>even people suffering from terrible illnesses (cancer and cystic fibrosis) didn't see the world more negatively (bad, dangerous, or unjust) compared to control groups.<br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Just knowing the correlation between primals and privilege is unsatisfactory. A deeper understanding will require longitudinal and experimental research.<br /><br />Yet a reasonable takeaway is that <b>making life more abundant is unlikely to greatly increase abundant world belief, making life safer likely won't greatly increase safe world belief, and so forth.</b> This is consistent with another study that showed that when the pandemic made the world objectively more dangerous, dangerous world belief did not go up.<br /><br />But the much bigger takeaway here is <b>the big and consistent gulf between prediction and reality. When it comes to primals, we thought demographics would be destiny, and we were wrong.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">For me, this study hammered home the point that humans are really bad at guessing people's primals. Past research shows, for instance, that<b> intuitions can be wrong about the primals of successful people and the primals that separate the political left from the right.</b><br /><br />This means <b>if you do learn someone's primals, you can't assume much about their background. For example, if I see the world as more dangerous than you, it'd be reductive and wrong to assume that's because I've experienced more danger than you.<br /></b><br />Many of us are wrong about where our own primals come from. We tell ourselves stories—that we see the world like we do because of our experiences of poverty, etc.— that can't all be true.<br /><br />This means that seeing the world negatively out of a sense of solidarity with those less fortunate might be misguided.<br /><br />THE GOOD NEWS<br /><br /><b>Maybe we aren’t stuck.</b> These findings do not mean primals can’t change. It only means that <b>many experiences outside of our control likely don't shape our primals in an inevitable, reductive way.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">For instance, my research team is exploring possibilities that (a) the things we pay attention to and (b) exposure to people in our lives with very different primals can shape primals. But whatever determines our primals appears to transcend the indicators of privilege and hardship measured in this study.<br /><br />Considering the well-established link between positive primals and well-being, it’s a good thing. <b>For many of us, viewing the world more positively may not be out of reach.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/primal-world-beliefs-unpacked/202312/when-demographics-arent-destiny">https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/primal-world-beliefs-unpacked/202312/when-demographics-arent-destiny<br /></a><br />Oriana:<br />My mother was a die-hard optimist. My father was a devout pessimist. They came from comparable backgrounds, giving me an early hint that you can’t generalize based on gender or income, for instance. <br /><br />*<br /><b>THE PALESTINIANS HAVE A PROBLEM . . .<br /></b><br />They have lousy leaders.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>In the 70’s, Arafat thought that if the PLO launched enough terror attacks, the Israelis would just leave.</b> That was stupid and contained a gross misunderstanding of our nature.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">After the Oslo Accords were signed, the Palestinians launched murderous terror attacks, and Arafat did nothing to stop them, as far as I know. Which derailed the accords and helped get Netanyahu elected.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Abbas, who I think is better than Arafat and tried to attain statehood by nonviolent means, is (allegedly) corrupt and a dictator and the people hate him.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Hamas sent their people to commit horrible atrocities on over a thousand Israelis. As a result much of Gaza is rubble and the Palestinians are nearing real humanitarian disaster.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">~ Judy Kupferman (lives in Tel Aviv), Quora</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Mike Leadsome:<br />If the people of Gaza don’t want to live in a war zone then they shouldn’t attack the strongest military power in the region!<br /><br />Ultra Violet:<br />Thank you Israel! They do the world a service to strike back with deliberate force and decimate the area. I hope the land can usurped, secured, farmed and settled. Gaza should no longer belong to this “country” of drifter Arabs producing gang raping massacres. Israel should get to widen/lengthen their borders by absorbing the rubbled wasteland for their own.<br /><br />Alter Bar:<br />The rapists and murderers should be destroyed. If they don't care about their land it should be reduced to rubble. Since no country wants that wretched people who teach their children hate and violence they will stay in the area and they will be taught lessons until they become civilized. They have no other choice.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:<br />I just watched a youtube when a former Israeli soldier describes how raids are conducted. (In paraphrase) “You don’t enter through the door because it might be booby-trapped. You throw a racket at the wall to make a big hole, and enter. You see stuff like family photos, and that can make you feel weird.” </span></p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0KKHIS9D7I"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0KKHIS9D7I</span></a></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>MALCOLM CALDWELL: AN EXAMPLE OF A USEFUL IDIOT<br /></b><br />Caldwell is one of the finest examples of a “useful idiot” one could ever think of — <b>a man of books, dedicated fiercely to the people’s revolution. This bookish academic professor was one of the staunchest defenders of the Pol Pot regime.</b> He tried to downplay reports of mass executions by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and was widely criticized by his own country and other academics. He would eventually, in 1978, fly to Cambodia to meet with his hero, Pol Pot, in person…</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZzZ_EoaIxUA9gwrKexDfV-573TjdCc690ky_yttI5T_J_vTy2CCAk5Vj6tWkSOUs7b2YpPbF6X5qbFqqh0lawJEOvVJk2dOjCjoII2SqZFHV1rrW1PgQ0nR2rNnnuC8lSZIt9YRoPo1o2rtzTjSMLGQUs-qT24TDCPz71FXJ4QR6cdC4A45ELZ0OtWZnu/s424/Malcolm%20Caldwell%20useful%20idiot.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="356" data-original-width="424" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZzZ_EoaIxUA9gwrKexDfV-573TjdCc690ky_yttI5T_J_vTy2CCAk5Vj6tWkSOUs7b2YpPbF6X5qbFqqh0lawJEOvVJk2dOjCjoII2SqZFHV1rrW1PgQ0nR2rNnnuC8lSZIt9YRoPo1o2rtzTjSMLGQUs-qT24TDCPz71FXJ4QR6cdC4A45ELZ0OtWZnu/w400-h336/Malcolm%20Caldwell%20useful%20idiot.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">On 22 December, 1978, Caldwell had a private audience with Pol Pot. Just a few hours later, one hour past midnight, the Scottish intellectual was shot dead in his room. What did he say to Pol Pot, who did he insult, what terrible faux-pas did the Khmer Rouge’s biggest Western fanboy make? We’ll never know. But it did teach us a lesson — <b>if your hero is a genocidal maniac, don’t meet him.</b><br /><br />Paul Jones:<br /><b>Considering Cambodians were systematically murdered for wearing spectacles because they looked intellectual,</b> <b>I imagine Caldwells bookishness and academic leanings were an automatic death sentence.</b><br /><br />Borat:<br />There are useful idiots in every country . For example <b>here in India we have university professors who call Taliban peace activists, freedom fighters and innocents</b>. I have seen the Taliban very closely in 90s Kashmir and i can assure you they are none of that.<br /><br />Jean-Marie Valheur:<br /><b>It’s always people who have very little exposure to evil beyond what they’ve read on the internet or heard from second-hand sources.</b> I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Caldwell was incredibly shocked, too, when he actually saw Cambodia and met Pol Pot. I wonder if he died a “true believer” or if he grew a spine in his final hours, spoke up and got killed for it…<br /><br />Oreste Papadopol:<br />From what I see, Malcolm Caldwell was from the <b>middle class: intellectual, higher education, enough money to travel to Cambodia… that’s a death sentence in Pol Pot’s Cambodia.</b> So not for what he said he was executed but for which social class he was in. That’s what I immediately thought when half way reading the answer. You can meet your hero if your profile doesn’t fit your hero’s enemy. If you’re a Jew, don’t go meet Hitler either.<br /><br />Cedric Coe:<br />These types still exist in the West in abundance. <b>They were the one's who would open the gates of Troy, despite knowing what was inside the wooden horse; the kind that gave away the secret location of Hereward’s rebel army;<br /> useful idiots everywhere, tying themselves heart and soul to every cause not their own that actively fights against them and their interests.<br /></b><br />[Hereward the Wake: leader of Anglo-Saxon resistance against the invading Normans.]<br /><br />Matt Bricker:<br />Prof. Caldwell and the wokesters recognize that their society could be so much better. They lack the perspective to understand that it could also be so much worse.<br /><br />Diego Velasco de Armas:<br />He went from "useful idiot" to just "idiot" pretty quickly!<br /><br />*<br /><b>RUSSIA TODAY: STANDING IN LINE FOR CHEAPER EGGS</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJNfpCU3QlztYC7Pj_wV6yw6ETqCTqnSVjs1SG22x5cTGROkCHSzJwmPSdzJUZQFGpbVF0HQ-FPbkir96B14IIiSbIFx5XKtx_DEpO3AmEHbkrwkSsj5EJhJF2MVMJ2O6nxOEzJ27DNZ94af4Hi3VVfJOiw1Faap6IwEGdhNRrMEkFpE91LqY-pW2lqTvN/s602/russia%20line%20to%20buy%20eggs.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="451" data-original-width="602" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJNfpCU3QlztYC7Pj_wV6yw6ETqCTqnSVjs1SG22x5cTGROkCHSzJwmPSdzJUZQFGpbVF0HQ-FPbkir96B14IIiSbIFx5XKtx_DEpO3AmEHbkrwkSsj5EJhJF2MVMJ2O6nxOEzJ27DNZ94af4Hi3VVfJOiw1Faap6IwEGdhNRrMEkFpE91LqY-pW2lqTvN/w400-h300/russia%20line%20to%20buy%20eggs.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b> </b><br />The line to buy eggs.<br /><br />~ <b>Russians are queuing to buy eggs — standing in the queues, outside, in freezing winter temperatures.</b><br /><br /><b>In different Russian cities. Sometimes, they queue before the dawn, in the dark.<br /></b><br />Not because there are no eggs in the stores.<br /><br /><b>They are standing for hours in the queues, because they can save $1 on buying the eggs cheaper than in the store.</b><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgak38cktiN6Vgd9C6ySHzx5Xs6KQ7oglg9s6-36xcnIRrXIh3XRrriow-gfK7u-r6dW9EFE2wl1QWCp7qOVMGumuq5PUe5CKcO7G22xaupEs4Z9crZ1LdrelPGy-hWKtXytelNhQ5-HIS5mI6cUMSU3EWBOGa4RMVKGyVSYauhcJsNXG6hgZwo6mGZFQcg/s602/happy%20egg%20buyer.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="339" data-original-width="602" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgak38cktiN6Vgd9C6ySHzx5Xs6KQ7oglg9s6-36xcnIRrXIh3XRrriow-gfK7u-r6dW9EFE2wl1QWCp7qOVMGumuq5PUe5CKcO7G22xaupEs4Z9crZ1LdrelPGy-hWKtXytelNhQ5-HIS5mI6cUMSU3EWBOGa4RMVKGyVSYauhcJsNXG6hgZwo6mGZFQcg/w400-h225/happy%20egg%20buyer.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>The happy faces of those who managed to get cheaper eggs.<br /></i><br />The eggs in the market are sold for under $1 for 10 eggs (in Russia, eggs are sold by tens, not dozens).</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The eggs in the stores cost $2.20-$8 (some brands are more expensive) for 10 eggs.<br /><br />The current queues to buy eggs in Russia are not about shortages and not about sanctions.<br /><br /><b>These queues are about poverty.</b><br /><br />About the fact that the majority of Russians still live in deep and hopeless poverty.<br /><br /><b>What kind of person would freeze in line for hours at dawn just to buy 20 eggs and save $1?<br /></b><br /><b>A poor person.</b><br /><br />People who live reasonably well wouldn’t be torturing themselves for $1.<br /><br /><b>The queues that we see are the queues of misery.<br /></b><br />These are the queues of those for whom 100-200 rubles ($1–2) is a significant amount of money.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And there are tens of millions of these penniless people live in the “great superpower” of Russia.<br /><br />But beside poverty, there is another important point.<br /><br /><b>If you talk to people in those lines, </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>many of them will quite sincerely assure you that Russia is a great country.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b><br /><b>The penniless folk are still sincerely convinced that the greatness of a country is measured by the size of its territory and the amount of deadly weapons.<br /></b><br />Even more, <b>they sincerely believe that </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>for the greatness of the country, their own well-being can and even should be sacrificed.<br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>“The main thing is that the world fears us, and we the people can endure.”</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b><br /><i><b>Over the centuries, these people didn’t understand that the only measure of greatness of a country is the well-being of the ordinary people who live there.</b><br /></i><br />And because they don’t understand it, they resignedly keep standing in queues to buy eggs — for the sake of saving 100 rubles. ~ Elena Gold, Quora<br /><br />Jonathan Rafalski:<br />100 rubles for them is like 100 dollars for you, it’s significant.<br /><br />*<br /><b>DIMA VOROBIEV ON THE PARADOXES OF COMMUNISM<br /></b><br />Communism struggles with the remarkable fact that this collectivist ideology only seems to work for people who believe in individual salvation and personal responsibility.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Communism is basically two things:<br /></b><br /><b><i>No private property. You share with other people the tools, land, trees, ideas, cars, works of art that make your living.</i></b></span></p><p><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>You contribute to the common pot what you can. You get out of the pot what you need.</b><br /></i></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><b>The idea sprang from Christian monasteries. Monks worked in silence and, amid the prayers, had plenty of time to introspect. Many came to ask themselves and everyone around: why can’t the whole of humanity live the same pious, quiet, and spiritual lifestyle as us? There will be no wars, no angry people, no famines, no suffering.<br /></b><br /><b>Scientific Communism<br /></b><br /><b>Then came Marxists with a very practical answer: we can make it work if we mandate everyone to give up their private property. Everyone will work for everyone’s salvation. To top it, no one will need to die to get Communist salvation. It will all happen in this world, not the next one!</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In the 20th century, Communists managed to organize themselves and grab power across much of the world. They met much resistance but ultimately overcame it. The largest and the most populous countries in the world even became a clear and present danger to the most prosperous and strong Capitalist countries. The bourgeois scum got the scare of their lives!<br /><br /><b>Selfishness pays<br /></b><br /><b>One problem kept popping up. Humans are shaped by evolution to be a bunch of lazy, selfish, sneaky predators.</b> It takes the fear of pain, starvation, and death to get us off our idle behinds and make ourselves useful. There is also a tiny minority of people who are driven by curiosity, vanity, and the desire to make a difference. But they are a maddeningly selfish bunch, too. <b>They prefer to do their own stuff and object strongly when other people tell them what to do.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">There’s also a <b>powerful, unselfish thing called love. It can do wonders and prevail over everything. But </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>the unselfishness of love makes it the most dangerous enemy of Communism: people eagerly sacrifice the common good for their kids, their lovers, their family, and their friends.</b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><b>God or perdition</b><br /><br /><b>What on Earth can trump our (1) selfishness, greed, laziness, and (2) our loyalty to our loved ones?</b><br /><br />There's only one thing that seems to be able to do that. <b>It’s the love of God and faith in individual salvation.</b><br /><br />This is what the tale of <b>Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac</b> is about. For us common people, this means: <b>God is willing to give us individual salvation if we are ready to betray our loved ones for Him. (In the USSR, we had a Communist rendition of Abraham’s Test: “Who do you love more, Soviet rule or your Dad?”)<br /></b><br /><b>Enforcement<br /></b><br /><b>The history of Communism shows that Marx's idea of the ideal society requires a degree of individual discipline and self-policing that no totalitarian society can ensure.</b> You need a community of people who are obsessed with individual responsibility in the face of God. If you start mixing these pious creatures with lazybones, creeps, and men/women in love with each other, the latter ones get a ginormous unfair advantage. They will be piggybacking, leeching, and stealing for themselves wherever possible, while the self-sacrificing dimwits will be busting their backs to make everyone’s life better.<br /><br />You may, of course, put the police, worker’s watchers, KGB operatives, and neighbor informants on the task of enforcing Communist morals. What happens next is the lazybones, leeches, and thieves use every trick in the book to become the enforcers. This is exactly what happened everywhere, from Soviet Russia through the Red Khmer’s Kampuchea to the Chavista Venezuela.<br /><br /><b>Conclusion<br /></b><br />The upshot to the story: you may make Communism work, in some places, for some time. To achieve that, you need<br /><br />People who believe in individual responsibility before God or History<br />A wall between them and people who don’t believe in God/History<br />Preferential arrangements from the government in terms of property protection and economic incentives. <b>On even terms, greedy people always outcompete selfless people.<br /></b><br />*<br />Below, a group of Soviet militzionéry (“police”) in Soviet Ukraine in the late 1940s who take a field tour through their precinct. <b>The recurring feature of all Communist projects was the omnipresence of well-armed enforcers</b>. Someone must keep oversight over the poorly disciplined, ideologically wobbly, insufficiently unselfish millions of builders of Communism.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i></i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5IqF5_-rMU-DaVKmnOa17_WdjAZh312VFaJtqCmd1p77mlwfGuzTWJFRtAINpG57YmvHcpfhaV4XZzZEoxn71ZQRmLOwOQsCJF62_iOWNP1vODbxnDJxl6XqSyiaAYC1w5rpdv9S6-HA2IzchBpPCwZS_07oC0_W0aKhch4isHoLOEHG1WGsa0ptKPN4_/s602/Soviet%20law%20enforcers.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="421" data-original-width="602" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5IqF5_-rMU-DaVKmnOa17_WdjAZh312VFaJtqCmd1p77mlwfGuzTWJFRtAINpG57YmvHcpfhaV4XZzZEoxn71ZQRmLOwOQsCJF62_iOWNP1vODbxnDJxl6XqSyiaAYC1w5rpdv9S6-HA2IzchBpPCwZS_07oC0_W0aKhch4isHoLOEHG1WGsa0ptKPN4_/w400-h280/Soviet%20law%20enforcers.jpg" width="400" /></a></i></span></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Soviet enforcers in Ukraine</i></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The history of communism in various countries is strangely similar in that it takes coercion to establish a radically new economic and social order. As for monastic communities, I suspect they also use coercion and mind control of a somewhat different and perhaps more terrifying sort: every minute of your daily schedule is prescribed — as is the way you dress (regardless of whether it's summer or winter), the way you address other sisters and the Mother Superior, what you do, where you sit or stand or kneel, what you eat, and so on. Nuns' headgear was meant to be like blinders on a horse: to prevent these women from glancing about and seeing a bit of the world as they walk. That's called the "discipline of the eyes." <br /></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9ctXN9mknGx48BQiOA0F4820o7j5hxXqx4xJR_bEyC87MI_F_N52foWmunvCey5acStkWYtTYELDWPO2QFTvghDYJER4z9kAmlTzrhoGqlDObZMQxZDyf7wM6gHfFuHTMGSUDY88yGpXkzwhYdO05fXu5o7xfEwxbKy-v7duAFVDrCTaBT03gN2fuyfbD/s485/nun%20in%20a%20wimple.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="303" data-original-width="485" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9ctXN9mknGx48BQiOA0F4820o7j5hxXqx4xJR_bEyC87MI_F_N52foWmunvCey5acStkWYtTYELDWPO2QFTvghDYJER4z9kAmlTzrhoGqlDObZMQxZDyf7wM6gHfFuHTMGSUDY88yGpXkzwhYdO05fXu5o7xfEwxbKy-v7duAFVDrCTaBT03gN2fuyfbD/w400-h250/nun%20in%20a%20wimple.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>ALEXEI NAVALNY WRITES FROM PRISON (allegedly; this appeared on Facebook)<br /></b><br />December 6, 2023<br /><br /><b>Prison is the best place to improve your stamina.</b> <b>Here they are constantly trying to annoy you and piss you off in ways that are both sophisticated and so straightforward and stupid that it's sometimes hard not to get angry.</b></span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I told you that <b>I have been trying to go to the dentist for a year and a half. </b>At the new trial, I told both the judge and the prison officials: "Let's solve this issue humanely, stop torturing me, I just need to see a doctor.”<br /><br />The representatives of the colony, surprisingly to me, said right in the process: "You have already collected so many documents, you just need to write one more application and everything is fine.”<br /><br />Well, okay. I said to the lawyers: "Please write me a statement, and I'll give it to them. "(The statement is large, with lots of attachments, you just can't write it yourself).<br /><br />The lawyer wrote a statement and gave it to me via our administration.<br /><br />And then I was waiting for a while...and nothing. <b>I asked the prison guards:<br /><br />Where is my application for a medical appointment?<br /><br />Withdrawn by the censors as containing signs of a crime.</b><br /><br />And you know, they look at you with such attentive, shining eyes, like a meerkat in all these wildlife TV programs. Let's see: how is he gonna react? Will he yell? Will he get desperate? Will he complain? Will he accept it and begin to be submissive?<br /><br />And every single day they come up with some bullshit like this to piss off the rebellious prisoner and test his strength.<br /><br />Now, by the way, <b>100% of the letters coming from lawyers are withdrawn by the censors as "criminal", so I can't get a single legal document.<br /></b><br />I've been working on my inner zen for three years now to just shrug my shoulders in response to all this. In general, I can say that I have already made good progress along this zen path, but <b>I am still far from perfection. Otherwise, I would not be dragged periodically around the prison zone with my hands twisted behind my back.<br /></b><br />But after all, every person should have a psychological release.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Photos: Navalny with a guard, and Navalny's most recent photo (2023)</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL82eyS42p0CsgwZUw5iWwVmWW4Ash2_-gCYkS0WFInHWXeIDn9h3HtksV7bVQCYplAdrnLYx0KMWToqjCtzhBr-NFz7gsCxM68cWDzjaRXekuPS671f0Zn_MtWUgafH1Bc67B252Jc7wY6lIlWrbTezXjl8AyFbcoEWsUTyqwJBjUghfyzRYt3pCaWgI7/s1024/navalny%20and%20guard.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="697" data-original-width="1024" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL82eyS42p0CsgwZUw5iWwVmWW4Ash2_-gCYkS0WFInHWXeIDn9h3HtksV7bVQCYplAdrnLYx0KMWToqjCtzhBr-NFz7gsCxM68cWDzjaRXekuPS671f0Zn_MtWUgafH1Bc67B252Jc7wY6lIlWrbTezXjl8AyFbcoEWsUTyqwJBjUghfyzRYt3pCaWgI7/w400-h272/navalny%20and%20guard.jpg" width="400" /> </a></p><p> <br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8MK79uHnfpDo_dFHE4ChiRlcaBVG9R9a5Zx9JQvdOapalkFTb8qX_hXwoFrP7z8roNmhFLHcF2olOujX4hJx-enGHzs7p4XvPRrJio4IBwXoZsibyihnfMCL4Lgq76jsWqaW3WmeaYzZUKX2RZ0hThu4_S-WDOAGP3BGApaXq-4Es3fhHy9P8DP04Y97G/s602/NAVALNY%202023.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="602" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8MK79uHnfpDo_dFHE4ChiRlcaBVG9R9a5Zx9JQvdOapalkFTb8qX_hXwoFrP7z8roNmhFLHcF2olOujX4hJx-enGHzs7p4XvPRrJio4IBwXoZsibyihnfMCL4Lgq76jsWqaW3WmeaYzZUKX2RZ0hThu4_S-WDOAGP3BGApaXq-4Es3fhHy9P8DP04Y97G/w400-h210/NAVALNY%202023.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/navalny/posts/pfbid0332ZZurz2RTqNbtSfsB2Ae49JHsc73G9iLv6vFR4uaUorZTZoZP3pNVAHqg1MUspyl">https://www.facebook.com/navalny/posts/pfbid0332ZZurz2RTqNbtSfsB2Ae49JHsc73G9iLv6vFR4uaUorZTZoZP3pNVAHqg1MUspyl</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*</span></p><p><span class="q-box qu-userSelect--text" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></span></p><p class="q-text qu-display--block qu-wordBreak--break-word qu-textAlign--start" style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; margin-bottom: 1em; overflow-wrap: anywhere;"><span style="background: none; color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><b><i>As
a consequence of low fertility rates and low immigration, the
population of Russia is projected to fall to 68 million people by the
end of the century. This equals the population of France. </i></b>~ M.Firer, Quora<br /></span></p> <span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>THE CIRCASSIAN GENOCIDE<br /></b><br />~ <b>In the early 19th century, the Circassian genocide took place. Russian generals killed or expelled virtually all Circassian people from the Caucasus, considering them subhumans unworthy of life. By the end, between 95 to 97 percent of the total Circassian population was killed or expelled forever from the Caucasus.<br /></b></span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizBfY9cb8pjNtFPDLxtF1noRezmnjJvG17c6tfWuOw9qt4xEEXpMCj8bTVWO5VpeapUwhq1_LIcYwo6UhGFno1LNArxzb1MS47OChBuJGac2IalCFHCwcz59L0AU4Zf25FXHE3iXr3jOv9LoJIE2_-ku0fl2CvcYLYyktIPTr0P6n2l4NXBrziZxMYC8JC/s602/CIRCASSSIANS%20in%20wagons%20expelled.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="602" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizBfY9cb8pjNtFPDLxtF1noRezmnjJvG17c6tfWuOw9qt4xEEXpMCj8bTVWO5VpeapUwhq1_LIcYwo6UhGFno1LNArxzb1MS47OChBuJGac2IalCFHCwcz59L0AU4Zf25FXHE3iXr3jOv9LoJIE2_-ku0fl2CvcYLYyktIPTr0P6n2l4NXBrziZxMYC8JC/w400-h296/CIRCASSSIANS%20in%20wagons%20expelled.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Circassians being expelled<br /></i><br /><b>As of 2023, no country in the world recognizes the Circassian Genocide, aside from Georgia. In Russia, it is denied to this very day</b>. The percentage of Circassians eradicated by Russia is higher than that of Jewish or gypsy people during the Holocaust, and the genocide lasted longer too, from the early 1800s until around 1870. <b>It was a complete and utter annihilation of a people. </b>Women, raped systematically. Children, infants, butchered. <b>One of the most thorough exterminations of an entire culture and group of people ever committed in history.</b></span><p></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF3K5CQSR1Zjt2RCrt3SYpVAwXvq798TaBfCKchRFBZJKm1OHEpddz-zS7L4XCVd_maxXMGAHESToQKzNbHuSCygsipVvqe4Cp6Ppq8tedKHU4NDRiIEMDAKcVuE5WN5-fo-POoc51hyphenhyphenrIbgpbpaQvwYpkrWZAKsarOs-6PXZ6-d9Ry0t9OiRDIFg4ulfa/s294/circassian%20genocide%20Gen.%20Grigori%20Zass.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="294" data-original-width="220" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF3K5CQSR1Zjt2RCrt3SYpVAwXvq798TaBfCKchRFBZJKm1OHEpddz-zS7L4XCVd_maxXMGAHESToQKzNbHuSCygsipVvqe4Cp6Ppq8tedKHU4NDRiIEMDAKcVuE5WN5-fo-POoc51hyphenhyphenrIbgpbpaQvwYpkrWZAKsarOs-6PXZ6-d9Ry0t9OiRDIFg4ulfa/w299-h400/circassian%20genocide%20Gen.%20Grigori%20Zass.jpg" width="299" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">A particularly cruel general, Grigori Zass ,pictured above, was more or less Russia’s 19th century equivalent of Hitler. But unlike Hitler, Zass personally participated gleefully in massacres. Taking advantage of the superstitious beliefs of his enemy, he would spread rumors about him turning steel into gold, or being bulletproof… the Circassians believed it. <b>He’d fake his own death, then re-emerge as a phantom from hell, descending down on little towns and butchering everything within sight…<br /></b><br /><b>All tribes were absolutely decimated, and some were destroyed so utterly that their numbers were reduced to zero. </b>It’s hard to wrap the mind around: tribes of up to a hundred thousand souls, and not a single one of them left alive just a few years later.<br /><br />Not only does Russia deny the genocide… some take pride in it. <i><b>Russian nationalists in the Caucasus region continue to celebrate the day when the Circassian deportation was launched, 21 May (O.S), each year as a "Holy Conquest Day". What did the Circassians do to deserve all this cruelty? They were Muslims, and therefore subhuman.</b></i><br /><br />~ Jean-Marie Valheur, Quora<br /><br />Michael Burden:<br />Some of the Circassians ended up in the Levant, and I passed by a Circassian village in Galilee when I visited Israel more than forty years ago now.<br /><br />Alexander Zheleznev:<br />Not all the missing people were massacred but a lot of them were expelled. Nowadays there are about 5m Circassians half of them live in Turkey and about 15% still live in Russia others spread mainly over MENA (Middle East and North Africa).<br /><br />Robert Matthews:<br />Fortunately, the Circassians were not ALL wiped out. <b>Some are still living in Israel and nearby: Jordan, Syria, and Turkey.</b><br /><br />*<br />Dima Vorobiev:<br /><br />In the poster below, Stalin, a Georgian, and a great variety of ethnicities. Yet, Stalin pointedly singles out the European-looking man in front of him who wears distinctly Westernized clothes.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTi7i3DAc78jHzAJevSCKI8bMnV5qIRmYDPl5Ts5j9NyeDsXV-hJFW2IIXJ9HUovvXJjPE_KmO-lbVZDXr21BPnxPA2FOH3W9B1znyvywEUrWRXVk9NFFm24mPVvt6dD6LN7toS7o-6RINcBcHuapOpPiqnwYFDUL1WEc5lxuu9J0J3_j-wvafKdmJbqzV/s602/Stalin%20ethnic%20people.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="381" data-original-width="602" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTi7i3DAc78jHzAJevSCKI8bMnV5qIRmYDPl5Ts5j9NyeDsXV-hJFW2IIXJ9HUovvXJjPE_KmO-lbVZDXr21BPnxPA2FOH3W9B1znyvywEUrWRXVk9NFFm24mPVvt6dD6LN7toS7o-6RINcBcHuapOpPiqnwYFDUL1WEc5lxuu9J0J3_j-wvafKdmJbqzV/w400-h254/Stalin%20ethnic%20people.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Patric O’Leary:<br />This was also reflected by Stalin’s cronies in the Politburo: many were non-Russian: Beria — a Georgian, Ordzhonikidze — a Georgian, Mikoyan — an Armenian, Kaganovich — a Jew, Rudzutak — a Latvian, Kosior — a Pole…<br /><br />*<br /><b>RUSSIAN MILITARY RECRUITMENT CONTINUES<br /></b><br /><b>Russia is awash with recruitment posters enticing young men with huge cash bonuses to sign up as cannon fodder, 2nd class in Ukraine.</b> Recruitment numbers are adequate, but only due to a combination of high bonuses, constant pressure to enlist and often a lack of better options to make your ends meet. It’s no secret <b>recruitment in Moscow and St.Petersburg is rather low and most soldiers come from economically depressed regions across Russia.</b><br /><br />It should be noted Russian culture and way of thinking is a bit different than what you’re used to. <b>In Russia a bully is often the hero to be respected and the poor soul he mauls every so often is not to be pitied. The Kremlin acts as the ultimate bully everyone fears and secretly admires, but no one dares to stand up to.</b><br /><br />Not all Russians function like that, but many do and those who don’t usually leave the country if and when they can. <b>The exodus at the start of the mobilization did inflict serious damage to Russian economy and reduced their pool of recruitable manpower, but it also served to stabilize the regime.</b> Those who stayed behind are less likely to try to change system and more likely to just go along with it, even though they don’t like it one bit.<br /><br />This is also why Russians are exploring the possibility of persecuting those who fled to avoid the draft. It gives them incentive to stay out of Russia, as well as legal means to do so. If you face prosecution in your home country because you didn’t want to be forced into an illegal war you’re certainly eligible for asylum over political persecution and eventual citizenship of a western country. Russia loses talent sure, but it also gets rid of potential troublemakers and this allows the regime to survive for another generation.<br /><br />In any event, Russians who were eager to die for Putin already did so for the most part. The ones fighting now are those more willing to be maimed and/or killed in war than to do anything at home.<br /><br />*<br /><b>DOES PUTIN CARE ABOUT THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE?<br /></b><br />Putin’s “Direct line” this week was a spectacle that was in works for months — actually, years.<br />In 2022, Putin cancelled the “Direct line”, because of defeats suffered by the Russian troops in Ukraine.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisFYLiCovtH-HX65QMLJUjpVzeNqEDKJkCbIQ55LCd86GY5yCel3wT_TqRtFfrPYDrxUgtEdqlBPW3dnSFF482HqZ-IXF2Y9eAi5oFlGZ18j1IAOVxso0vWEdGyqIkizH_CgqqW3CMRtnNkc0EFDPodbnfp17Wl2E34uwO94ZjfzL01ri2C62seZ0sxNzm/s673/PUTIN%20wages.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="673" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisFYLiCovtH-HX65QMLJUjpVzeNqEDKJkCbIQ55LCd86GY5yCel3wT_TqRtFfrPYDrxUgtEdqlBPW3dnSFF482HqZ-IXF2Y9eAi5oFlGZ18j1IAOVxso0vWEdGyqIkizH_CgqqW3CMRtnNkc0EFDPodbnfp17Wl2E34uwO94ZjfzL01ri2C62seZ0sxNzm/w358-h400/PUTIN%20wages.jpg" width="358" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But <b>by now, Putin no longer cares about the defeats in Ukraine — and neither do Russians. Hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed in the war, along with the daily videos of destruction on TV desensitized the population.</b></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The war became part of the daily life. Like the USSR was fighting in Afghanistan for nearly 9 years — but <b>except for some conscripts who died there while “fulfilling their international obligation” (according to the Soviet propaganda), and their families who were affected by the loss of loved ones, the rest of the Soviet people simply lived their lives. Their lives were getting worse, but not hugely, not at once — gradually, slowly. Just like now.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Yes, there are substantially more Russians affected by the war in Ukraine than during the Soviet “international mission” in Afghanistan.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But not caring about hundreds of thousands of their own soldiers killed or maimed, that’s something that no one expected from Russians.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">No one, except Putin and the Russian government.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Even the families of mobilized Russians who are campaigning for demobilization of their husbands and sons, are shocked by the lack of support from other citizens.</b> And the complete disregard of their requests by Putin — the wives sent hundreds (if not thousands) questions for the presidential “Direct line” – some of their questions were even shown on the blue screens during the press-conference.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj87ESQq9TSZoJV7WgZakutz0TZQKJcE_TygV6FlT6VuURl5-Ai0j1e_8aGX9VsMM9E8ptunXTWVyKSHUsNIOuHF7Az2QTNtNALMgD8mj8Uip98YVcC7cMVthCH3i4t8U8MBT1AVxEwsoMJD-jVSPbqA7LK3tIbul0HVvIAEMaAswrgr3EiAhDbdBOzHH0H/s839/putin%20hands%20up.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="551" data-original-width="839" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj87ESQq9TSZoJV7WgZakutz0TZQKJcE_TygV6FlT6VuURl5-Ai0j1e_8aGX9VsMM9E8ptunXTWVyKSHUsNIOuHF7Az2QTNtNALMgD8mj8Uip98YVcC7cMVthCH3i4t8U8MBT1AVxEwsoMJD-jVSPbqA7LK3tIbul0HVvIAEMaAswrgr3EiAhDbdBOzHH0H/w400-h263/putin%20hands%20up.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Putin spent 4 hours at the “Direct line”, pretending that he cares.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">That was, apparently, a strategic decision by the presidential PR spinners — show some “sharp questions” on screens (<b>all questions that were shown had been pre-selected</b>), to demonstrate that the president isn’t afraid of critique. But of course, Putin didn’t answer these questions. They were displayed just for the show.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The Russian government, led by Putin, by now only cares about staying in power. It only cares about keeping the serfs subdued and Putin happy.</b></span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">By now, <b>it’s all about the picture of success, rather than the essence of what is really happening. Everything is for show.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Even the fabled “victory” in the war is about showing off — about proving to the West that Russia can’t be battled against. <b>About proving that Russia is a mighty superpower. How it’s done, at what cost to the Russian people — that’s totally unimportant.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>To show off is more important than the lives of hundreds of thousands of Russians — Putin is ready to lose a million of soldiers in the next 5 years, just to prove his point. </b>He’s ready to make that sacrifice.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And for the Russian government, Putin’s demise will be their demise; they are too deeply involved. There is no way out for them. They have to support Putin till the end.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Their end — or the end of the Russian Federation. Whichever comes first. ~ Elena Gold, Quora<br /><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMkOiQeBMe3HmAYG_rRGOrwl2Mc17H0_TtYtTgufKsZ95v-TXj8PF7Y3Vp5PQ0RIcaz88qy2vv7G_NqRyponStbJDgcc2u8ibfq-0lyyGuMIWdCg6tMabf11dBnztJAX_lwq3MpFzyLAhxA1M4XPwblX8cENVhru2ekMZTt6rTn3rwWUpPxCYxl_UsIKRV/s602/Putin%20women%20and%20chlidren%20first.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="602" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMkOiQeBMe3HmAYG_rRGOrwl2Mc17H0_TtYtTgufKsZ95v-TXj8PF7Y3Vp5PQ0RIcaz88qy2vv7G_NqRyponStbJDgcc2u8ibfq-0lyyGuMIWdCg6tMabf11dBnztJAX_lwq3MpFzyLAhxA1M4XPwblX8cENVhru2ekMZTt6rTn3rwWUpPxCYxl_UsIKRV/w400-h299/Putin%20women%20and%20chlidren%20first.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> <br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Elena Gold:<br />Putin was a thief and a sadist before he became the chief of FSB and then the president of Russia. He was raised to be a thief and sadist by a “thief in law” and criminal authority from St. Petersburg (spent 20 years behind bars), Leonid Usvyatsev, who was his judo trainer and mentor.<br /><br />Awake Energy Warrior:<br />Maybe it's because I had a grandfather that was very interested in history and so heard a lot about the Winter War growing up, but I absolutely expected the Russian government to not care about thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of Russian Federation citizens dying, especially if they’re from the provinces. Their basic tactic is to throw bodies into the firing line until something happens.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>This lack of caring about their own citizens is one of the clearest differences between Europeans and Russians.</b><br /><br />Chris Brisbane:<br />Dictators only care about power. Chinese and Russian citizens are slave labor.<br />In Australia or the USA the wage is 700% higher than China. The CCP is running a sweatshop paying workers nothing,<br /><br />Qeutopia:<br />I'm skeptical that he is that far gone, else he would have used nukes by now. He still cares, a bit, even if only that he would lose his applauding audience.</span></p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:<br />This is no doubt fake, but one question I saw — in Russian, against the blue background — was: “So what do the doctors say? How long before you croak?” <br /><br />Putin is no doubt solidly shielded from this kind of dissent.<br /></span><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>WHY THE 2007-08 FINANCIAL CRISIS LED CHINA TO GO A DIFFERENT DIRECTION THAN THE U.S. WITH ITS ECONOMIC MODEL<br /></b></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzDC-v9skRkifvJON8kWfAKNC94nMyyoojHrlygFYgTh2kJaS6sFc0i7ptjoKhkVeKw1lkF__2WbMlkFq_iUVbraqhplkQLesVELAIwQ_Rp_2gaM47IHoqQMRyUMvXOntOjIzo-1ziNpjicyMB_VfthdoTs2YZOjD-AvpyKc7hTCiuKXVwCqy6nNeUKbuY/s1820/WIND%20POWER%20in%20china.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1213" data-original-width="1820" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzDC-v9skRkifvJON8kWfAKNC94nMyyoojHrlygFYgTh2kJaS6sFc0i7ptjoKhkVeKw1lkF__2WbMlkFq_iUVbraqhplkQLesVELAIwQ_Rp_2gaM47IHoqQMRyUMvXOntOjIzo-1ziNpjicyMB_VfthdoTs2YZOjD-AvpyKc7hTCiuKXVwCqy6nNeUKbuY/w400-h266/WIND%20POWER%20in%20china.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This month, President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) met in San Francisco amid trade wars and even the prospect of a catastrophic hot war over Taiwan. Their meeting took place during a nervous period in the history of China. <b>After decades of spectacular growth, the Chinese economic miracle has sputtered, with huge implications for its own population and the world</b>. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And yet, even as the most dire aspects of the Chinese economy make headlines, it remains the case that <b>China is the foundry of the green energy revolution, making more solar panels and wind turbines and electric vehicles than any other country</b>. To help us understand how China thinks about economics, technology, and America, we welcome back to the show writer Dan Wang.<br /><br />Derek Thompson: So I really wanted to have you on the show to talk about a few themes related to China:<b> what’s gone so wrong with their economy and the purported Chinese Century,</b> <b>but also what’s gone right that the Western media might’ve missed.<br /></b><br />So first, let’s talk about the economy. In 2007, you go back to the financial crisis, and you told the writer Ben Thompson, “<b>After the financial crisis, China decided that it doesn’t have too much to learn from the West anymore</b>.” Tell me about that. Why did China 15, 16 years ago decide it was time to chart a totally different course of economic growth than the West?<br /><br />Dan Wang: I think the global financial crisis in 2007, 2008 was a pretty pivotal moment for the Communist Party in Beijing. I think it would be oversimplifying a bit, but to play up this model, … I think one could have told <b>a story of happy convergence between China and the U.S. prior to 2007, 2008, when there were some green shoots of political liberalism in China. There was a little bit more of a spirit of cooperation between these two countries when George Bush was getting together with Hu Jintao.</b><br /><br />And then after 2007, 2008, I think China, along with quite a few other countries in the world, took a look at the U.S. and said, “Well, maybe not.” This was a pretty devastating financial crisis built off of—<b>the popular explanation at the time was excessive housing construction, excessive speculation, people getting loans for houses</b>. And the Chinese, I think, took a look at this model and said, “Well, maybe we shouldn’t have so much of a financialized economy that is prone to these sorts of financial crises.”<br /><br />So I think they started to take a little bit of a pivot onto the other side, really much more to double down on much greater political authoritarianism, much greater centralization of power, as well as what I think is a little bit more of a retro view of the economy. And if I want to fast-forward to today, <b>the way I’ve described Xi Jinping’s view of a lot of economics would be actually a pretty boring, traditional manufacturing superpower along the lines of Germany today. </b><br /><br /><b>Or maybe you can talk about the United States back in the 1950s, in which you have a very large manufacturing sector employing a lot of workers in these kind of traditional, boring manufacturing/high-capital industries because they don’t create too many political problems,</b> [in] that they are not prone to financial crises, that they are not agitating for a lot of social change on the internet, and that people are pretty happy earning a wage turning wrenches, to put it simply, for a lot of different manufacturing models.<br /><br />And so I think the Chinese government really decided to double down: less financialization, a little bit less of the Silicon Valley disruptive model, and <b>much more of this kind of boring, traditional manufacturing-led growth.</b><br /><br />Thompson: So before the crisis, the story of happy convergence. After the global financial crisis, it’s the story of purposeful divergence. Give me some texture on what that looked like, what that felt like living in China. You no longer live in China; you now live in Connecticut. But what did the kind of political centralization that you’re describing feel like to residents of China?<br /><br />Wang: Well, to residents of China—I wasn’t in China at the time in 2008—there were two, I think, major pieces of divergence that we can think about today. The first is <b>there was a lot more political centralization in the five years after the financial crisis that led to the elevation of Xi Jinping as the general secretary of the Communist Party</b>. So Xi Jinping came to power with a party that felt, and that self-acknowledged in a way, … pretty diffident, that it had a lot of these factions, that it had a security chief that was running his own fiefdoms, that there were a lot of other members of the Chinese elite that were simply not really listening to the leader. <br /><br />And then <b>Xi Jinping arrived with this mandate to really try to clean house, really try to make sure that there is much more centralization of power, which he did with not extreme effectiveness, to the extent that I think it is pretty likely that he will be the ruler of China for life, at least for the next five to 10 years.</b><br /><br />The other manifestation of the economic divergence was—I think back in 2008, I’m sure you were covering, Derek, these <b>debates about the stimulus, how much America should have been investing. I think there is a little bit of an economic consensus now that the administration under President Obama didn’t quite invest enough, that there should have been a much more vigorous fiscal response to the financial crisis. </b><br /><br />And in China, they did not really have anything like this underinvestment response. <b>They had this enormous infrastructure building spree. They built about 20 Japans’ worth of high-speed track in the aftermath of 2008. They built about 140 million housing units.</b> I just saw this estimate from a bank about the population, let’s say half the population of America: They built that over the course of a decade. They built roads and highways. They built enormous bridges. <b>And so there was an enormous infrastructure boom really to build up the country after the financial crisis</b>. ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://www.theringer.com/2023/11/28/23979075/china-economy-technology-green-energy">https://www.theringer.com/2023/11/28/23979075/china-economy-technology-green-energy<br /></a></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioQbtKsx4KsGWdUiqk0iqmkCqD4UPX3xMeKWrcl2W4nKjezUS2YHFT9_Er2QidvAtN_IbNjs1plLEJNWTSf7r33hxcXN2CkRllLGoka32zTba_hhTioIG_5UqGNBKeKjcd75SIwScJooVBZRyCOX-jRVGmkl0B4uN6LTyEfeTYuSqso4ptAwVLUWn-k7Cn/s3500/china%20solar%20panels.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1823" data-original-width="3500" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioQbtKsx4KsGWdUiqk0iqmkCqD4UPX3xMeKWrcl2W4nKjezUS2YHFT9_Er2QidvAtN_IbNjs1plLEJNWTSf7r33hxcXN2CkRllLGoka32zTba_hhTioIG_5UqGNBKeKjcd75SIwScJooVBZRyCOX-jRVGmkl0B4uN6LTyEfeTYuSqso4ptAwVLUWn-k7Cn/w400-h209/china%20solar%20panels.webp" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>MAESTRO: A MUST-SEE MOVIE WHATEVER ITS FLAWS MAY BE<br /></b><br />Let’s start with an even-handed Ebert review: <br /><br />~ With “Maestro,” Bradley Cooper tells the story of a generation-defining artistic innovator in the most traditional way possible: through the familiar tropes and linear narrative of a standard biopic.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Directing and starring as the legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, Cooper has crafted a film that’s technically dazzling but emotionally frustrating. The script he co-wrote with Josh Singer (“Spotlight”) follows a well-trod, episodic path: This happened, then this happened, then this happened. Ultimately, it falls into the same trap as so many biopics, especially prestige pictures with major award aspirations: <b>In covering a huge swath of an extremely famous person’s life, it ends up feeling superficial.</b><br /><br /><b>And yet, you should see it</b>. Yes, this sounds contradictory, but <b>“Maestro” is so consistently spectacular from an aesthetic perspective that it’s worth watching.</b> The cinematography, costumes, and production design are all evocative and precise as they evolve with the times over 40 some-odd years of Bernstein’s life. Behind the camera, Cooper takes a big swing in making you feel as if you’re watching a movie that was made in the ’40s and continues to do so with each era. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Shooting in high-contrast black and white and Academy ratio, Matthew Libatique — an Oscar nominee as director of photography on Cooper’s debut feature, “A Star Is Born”— works wonders with a single light bulb on a barren stage, for example. There’s a shot where Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre, who will become Bernstein’s wife, steps off a bus at night and walks up the street to the party where she’ll meet him for the first time, and it’s breathtaking in its cinematic authenticity. The lush Technicolor of scenes set in the ‘60s and ’70 offers its own vibrant allure. And inspired transitions from editor Michelle Tesoro carry the story across time and place in thrilling fashion.<br /><br />Cooper has clearly taken great care in getting the details right, big and small. That includes spending six years learning how to conduct to perfect a particularly essential scene: <b>a six-plus minute recreation of Bernstein leading the London Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony No. 2 at Ely Cathedral in 1973</b>. (Yannick Nézet-Séguin was Cooper’s crucial conducting consultant.) The camera roams fluidly across the orchestra, choir, and soloists, <b>the music overtaking his entire body and booming throughout this majestic edifice. Bernstein is passionate and rapturous with perspiration; this is the apex of his joy. </b>The whole film is worth seeing in a theater before it begins streaming on Netflix on Dec. 20, but this lengthy, cathartic moment is one you’ll want to experience with the best possible picture and sound.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But while Bernstein’s music is woven throughout — including an amusing use of his “West Side Story” prologue during a period of marital discord — we never truly understand him deeply as a musician or a man. <b>He’s a legend, a larger-than-life cultural force in mid-century America whose persona extends far beyond the rarefied circles of the classical music world. But the necessarily performative nature of Bernstein’s existence, as a closeted gay man, keeps us at a distance as viewers, too. Fully aware of his brilliance and increasing celebrity, he was always “on.” </b>We spy a few glimmers of his intimate happiness with various men, including Matt Bomer as a clarinetist ex-boyfriend, with whom he shares a heartbreaking, tearful farewell on a Manhattan sidewalk. But a tantalizing, unfulfilled quality to the characterization lingers throughout.<br /><br />Lenny’s relationship with Felicia was complicated, yet “Maestro” rarely digs far beyond the surface. The two share a bubbly, infectious chemistry as they meet and fall in love — and Cooper the director wisely lets these scenes, and later the couple’s arguments, play out in long, single takes. The affection between them feels genuine, and Mulligan is frequently magnificent, finding avenues in her portrayal of Felicia that elevate it beyond the mere woman-behind-the-man notion. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And yet, <b>the Costa Rican-Chilean actress is often literally in Bernstein’s shadow; one image finds her standing in the wings as her husband conducts, with the exaggerated shape of him swallowing her up as if he were a monster</b>. (Mulligan is also the beneficiary of costume designer Mark Bridges’ most exquisite fashions throughout the film.) But how does Felicia truly feel about sharing her husband with a series of men, most younger and fawning? She catches him kissing a party guest in the hallway of their apartment in the historic Dakota building and icily scolds him: “Fix your hair. You’re getting sloppy.” That comes close to the real, raw emotion that would have given “Maestro” more heft.<br /><br />Speaking of the skin-deep nature of the movie, much has been made about Cooper’s decision to wear elaborate prosthetics to make his transformation into Bernstein more complete. The prominent nose, in particular, has been a source of consternation, as Cooper is not Jewish. (Bernstein’s children have defended the choice.) Makeup guru Kazu Hiro, who won Academy Awards for turning Gary Oldman into Winston Churchill for “The Darkest Hour” and Charlize Theron into Megyn Kelly for “Bombshell,” does thoroughly convincing work here, especially when Bernstein appears as a 70-year-old man at the very beginning and end of the film.<br /><br />Something does happen toward the film’s conclusion, though, that deserves criticism. It’s the late 1980s, and the frame has expanded to widescreen. Bernstein drives his Jaguar convertible, blaring R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” Just as he zooms into the center of the shot, lead singer Michael Stipe yells the lyric “Leonard Bernstein!” Maybe this is something Bernstein did in real life; he clearly thought quite highly of himself, so maybe he was so tickled to be mentioned in this capacity. But in a movie, this choice was eye-rollingly on the nose. I groaned audibly.<br /><br />Bernstein took chances with his work; that’s what made him great. “Maestro” would have been stronger if it had done the same.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/maestro-movie-review-2023">https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/maestro-movie-review-2023</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Misha Iossel:</span></p><div><div dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r2g:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Bradley Cooper, who is a very good actor but not quite a genius, is sensational in "Maestro," as the unstoppably frenetic Leonard Bernstein, who certainly *was* a genius. The rather dizzying idea of the very possibility of becoming infinitely, immeasurably more talented than yourself, even if only for a little over two hours and as someone else altogether...</span></div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div><div><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic"><div><div><div><div class="x1n2onr6"><div class="x6s0dn4 xi81zsa x78zum5 x6prxxf x13a6bvl xvq8zen xdj266r xktsk01 xat24cr x1d52u69 x889kno x4uap5 x1a8lsjc xkhd6sd xdppsyt"><div class="x6s0dn4 x78zum5 x1iyjqo2 x6ikm8r x10wlt62"><span aria-label="See who reacted to this" class="x1ja2u2z" role="toolbar" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span class="x6s0dn4 x78zum5 x1e558r4" id=":r2j:"><span class="x6zyg47 x1xm1mqw xpn8fn3 xtct9fg x13zp6kq x1mcfq15 xrosliz x1wb7cse x13fuv20 xu3j5b3 x1q0q8m5 x26u7qi xamhcws xol2nv xlxy82 x19p7ews xmix8c7 x139jcc6 x1n2onr6 x1xp8n7a xhtitgo"><span class="x12myldv x1udsgas xrc8dwe xxxhv2y x1rg5ohu xmix8c7 x1xp8n7a"><span class="x4k7w5x x1h91t0o x1h9r5lt x1jfb8zj xv2umb2 x1beo9mf xaigb6o x12ejxvf x3igimt xarpa2k xedcshv x1lytzrv x1t2pt76 x7ja8zs x1qrby5j"></span></span></span></span></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><span aria-label="See who reacted to this" class="x1ja2u2z" role="toolbar" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span class="x6s0dn4 x78zum5 x1e558r4" id=":r2j:"><span class="x6zyg47 x1xm1mqw xpn8fn3 xtct9fg x13zp6kq x1mcfq15 xrosliz x1wb7cse x13fuv20 xu3j5b3 x1q0q8m5 x26u7qi xamhcws xol2nv xlxy82 x19p7ews xmix8c7 x139jcc6 x1n2onr6 x1xp8n7a x1vjfegm"><span class="x12myldv x1udsgas xrc8dwe xxxhv2y x1rg5ohu xmix8c7 x1xp8n7a"><span class="x4k7w5x x1h91t0o x1h9r5lt x1jfb8zj xv2umb2 x1beo9mf xaigb6o x12ejxvf x3igimt xarpa2k xedcshv x1lytzrv x1t2pt76 x7ja8zs x1qrby5j"></span></span></span></span></span><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikElNanagYzGn6W65i4RLzg3bg2GtujhLzqTBVQ1GPKSytdWE9lp8Pxtwh3ZNUM4jf_31ccjaf7XTLzr7HIwB6NgrQo642zvcIAijSi2vd4mP8vUMHqqtVJI7TCxdGGOb-ZBV-ed6kVK18CHVXHAKPQgOiwI_tQrmuLMYimTA-lCl0RUY1wz7SWP4NT_EZ/s822/Maestro%20Lenny%20wife.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="537" data-original-width="822" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikElNanagYzGn6W65i4RLzg3bg2GtujhLzqTBVQ1GPKSytdWE9lp8Pxtwh3ZNUM4jf_31ccjaf7XTLzr7HIwB6NgrQo642zvcIAijSi2vd4mP8vUMHqqtVJI7TCxdGGOb-ZBV-ed6kVK18CHVXHAKPQgOiwI_tQrmuLMYimTA-lCl0RUY1wz7SWP4NT_EZ/w400-h261/Maestro%20Lenny%20wife.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:<br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I enjoyed the movie in spite of the female lead, Carey Mulligan as Felicia Monteallegre, Bernstein’s wife and mother of his three children. Not that hers was a bad performance; she convincingly depicts the strain of being the spouse of a famous person, and there is nothing objective I can fault her for. It was just a personal antipathy at first sight. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I resented her very presence in the movie. I wanted to stay with Lenny and him alone — and of course the music, his real great love. I wanted to watch this particular Lenny so much that she seemed an annoying intruder. I felt profound relief after she’s gone from the movie (she dies of a particularly painful form of metastatic lung cancer) and the screen fills with ecstatic greenery — gone at last, gone at last, thank god she’s gone at last!<br /><br />Let me repeat that of course <b>I understand that it’s very difficult to be a spouse of a famous person. Everyone wants him, not her</b> </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> she's like a piece of furniture obtruding the way. On top of that, Leonard was bisexual and had affairs with men, e.g. his favorite clarinetist with the lush dark hair (I wanted to know more about <i>that</i>). </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Of course the gay affairs must have added to Felicia's stress, for all her protesting about understanding him completely. Her lung cancer may have had something to do with her living in a state of concealed resentment (and the constant smoking that practically saturates this movie; alcohol and cocaine pale next to the incessant cigarettes). </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In fact he left her once and settled with a male lover in California (no, not the clarinetist) — but returned to Felicia when he learned that she had terminal cancer. Hardly a “selfish monster” — artists are so frequently accused of being that. And sometimes they are — Picasso is a perfect example of a famous artist who was a rat with women.)<br /><br />I also badly wanted to see at least a bit of Bernstein’s creative struggle when composing, his moments of despair, the tossing out of a day’s work— any creative person is familiar with that agony. Showing only the ecstasy and the triumphs is too one-sided. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And why is he always shown with other people? I wanted him on the screen alone, just for me.<br /><br />My favorite part of the movie was the opening — young Lenny in bed with a male lover gets a phone call that Bruno Walter is sick, and Bernstein literally jumps out of bed and rushes to conduct in Bruno Walter’s stead — without having had the chance to rehearse. He’s an instant star and the audience’s darling — so handsome and energetic. Add to this that he was American-born (unlike other famous conductors of that era), soulful, charismatic, ageless. </span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcEDRsTZRO1dLiCnPeMlwVJ9gX0osX4pWiW6xh8DMSKfZTBfyOYzkmFjuEnMvAosMf0B11_U3HAuLwhil9bi4ejSeAhKCSSvSfT5GuatD_LLKFv7HxUK3oJS7WOaCsgARxGO92vdMLcAC_AqaQYSonsiTAIyzcsI1diyJuKjILXeEFyN88gdwwDgVBCfHI/s225/Maestro%20young%20Lenny.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcEDRsTZRO1dLiCnPeMlwVJ9gX0osX4pWiW6xh8DMSKfZTBfyOYzkmFjuEnMvAosMf0B11_U3HAuLwhil9bi4ejSeAhKCSSvSfT5GuatD_LLKFv7HxUK3oJS7WOaCsgARxGO92vdMLcAC_AqaQYSonsiTAIyzcsI1diyJuKjILXeEFyN88gdwwDgVBCfHI/w400-h400/Maestro%20young%20Lenny.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Please disregard my idiosyncratic antipathy toward the wife, and do go to see Maestro — a wonderful movie, a mental detox for this time of year.<br /><br />*<br /><b>AN ISOLATED HUNTER-GATHERER COMMUNITY IN AFRICA PROVIDES INSIGHTS ON CHILD CARE<br /></b><br /><i><b>Mothers in the distant past may have had much more support than they do today, according to a study of an isolated community in the Republic of Congo that practices a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.</b></i><br /><br />Researchers found that i<b>nfants in the group, known as the Mbendjele, receive attentive care and physical contact for about nine hours per day from around 14 different caregivers.<br /></b><br /><b>“We lived as hunter-gatherers for 95% of our evolutionary history. It was only 10,000 years ago that we stopped,” said study coauthor Nikhil Chaudhary</b>, a researcher at the Leverhulme Centre of Human Evolutionary Studies at the University of Cambridge.<br /><br />“Contemporary hunter-gatherer societies can offer clues as to whether there are certain child-rearing systems to which infants, and their mothers, may be psychologically adapted,” Chaudhary said.<br /><br />Part of the region’s nomadic BaYaka population that live in the Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic, <b>the Mbendjele are a highly mobile and egalitarian group that live in multifamily camps of 20 to 80 people</b>. The study, which published this week in the journal Developmental Psychology, described them as “immediate-return” hunter-gatherers because they don’t store food for future use.<br /><br /><b>Responses to crying<br /></b><br />They extrapolated their observations for a typical 12-hour stretch when parents might be going about their work. For example, if a child was held for four and a half hours of the nine hours of observation (accounting for researchers’ breaks), the child was assumed to be held for six out of 12 consecutive daylight hours.<br /><br /><b>The team noticed that caregivers responded to crying rapidly, via comforting, soothing, feeding, holding or affection, never scolding. </b>The children had a high degree of physical contact and care for most of time they were observed.<br /><br />The team recorded 220 bouts of crying, and caregivers responded to all but three cases — the vast majority within 25 seconds. Two situations where cries didn’t elicit a response were resolved without input from a caregiver in just a minute, but in one case, a child was left to cry for 13 minutes. <i><b>Infants rarely spent time alone, and for more than nine hours of the observational period they were in close contact with a caregiver, and they were held for more than five hours.</b></i><br /><br /><b>Toddlers — between 1 ½ and 4 years — were alone for 35.7 minutes of the time studied and were in close physical contact with a caregiver for more than half the day.<br /></b><br /><i><b>What was notable, Chaudhary said, wasn’t necessarily the amount of care children received, but that mothers weren’t responsible for all of it. Other caregivers — fathers, older siblings and nonrelatives — were responsible for 38% to 46% of close care, according to the study.</b><br /></i><br />While the mother responded alone to just under half of the crying bouts,<b> more than 40% of crying episodes were resolved without any input from the mother</b>. The mean number of caregivers other than a child’s mother was 14.4, but these weren’t all adults. Often it was an older sibling.<br /><br />The study found that while young children benefited from a wide set of caregivers, they had a smaller number of key caregivers within this network, particularly when it came to responding to crying, which, the researchers said, still allowed strong attachments to form.<br /><br /><b>“The sheer number of people involved in looking after a kid. … It’s so different from the nuclear family system,” Chaudhary said.</b><br /><br /><b>“I think the starkest difference is how young the kids are when they start looking after babies. It is really not uncommon to see a 4- or 5-year-old soothing a (younger) child.”</b><br /><br />WHAT WE CAN LEARN<br /><br />Parenting experts not involved in the study said looking at different cultures offered an opportunity to reexamine assumed norms around parenting.<br /><br />“Historically, parents (and especially mothers) in high-income Western countries have sometimes felt guilty for putting their children in childcare because they felt that they were somehow letting the child down by not being an exclusive caregiver,” said Jennifer Lansford, the S. Malcolm Gillis distinguished research professor of public policy and the director of the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University in North Carolina, via email. <br /><br />“I think the perspective from this paper suggests that children are not necessarily primed to function best with just a single caregiver and that sensitive, responsive caregiving roles can be filled by a number of people in a child’s life,” Lansford said.<br /><br />Carlo Schuengel, a professor specializing in child and family studies at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, found it notable that “<b>even in a hunter-gatherer society in which young children are in the proximity of large numbers of adults, close care is predominantly provided by a low number of selected caregivers.</b>”<br /><br />“This is yet another set of observations that show how attachment — a form of selective proximity seeking in times of stress — develops across a wide range of cultures and societies,” Schuengel said.<br /><br />“The research is fascinating and important because it lets us consider alternative solutions for the conflicting demands placed on parents in other societies such as our own.”<br /><br />However, he emphasized that studies of other cultures “cannot replace careful testing and evaluation of efforts we might make to further improve child care.”<br /><br />Marc Bornstein, editor of the academic journal Parenting: Science and Practice, agreed. He cautioned that it was important not to overreach in interpreting such a study, given that only 18 children — eight girls and 10 boys — were involved. “How representative would a day care center with 18 children in inner-city London be of childhood … anywhere?” he asked.<br />He noted that child mortality was high among hunter-gatherer groups and said that the study painted “a rather rosy picture of life among the hunter-gatherer Mbendjele.”<br /><br /><b>Not living fossils<br /></b><br />The researchers acknowledged in the new paper that sample size is small, and a larger sample would strengthen the reliability of the findings — as would following children over longer periods.<br /><br />They also noted that present-day hunter-gatherers are not “living fossils.” They are still very much modern populations, even if their ways of life might offer clues about ancient parenting techniques.<br /><br />“We need to be very careful when making claims about human evolutionary history based on living hunter-gatherers. We certainly can’t take for granted that we’re adapted to that way of life,” Chaudhary said.<br /><br />Nevertheless, Chaudhary said that studies of child-rearing among groups such as the Mbendjele suggest that for much of human history raising a child involved large numbers of people and that “<b>mothers aren’t meant to manage alone</b>.”<br /><br />“The narrative around motherhood, ironically, often has <br />sort of evolutionary and biological tones to it … women have this maternal instinct and just know how to look after a baby,” he said.</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>“It could not be further from the truth in terms of how much of a cooperative venture child-rearing is (among the Mbendjele) and how much support mothers have.”</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGYYMoW7dfUiKhkPtposx-Ws4i0RVsT2xH9-8LkuOtx-_0it45qGBaqNG1T8ACsjxR5XTPSzAPRVOJnlOX5rB455_WFovK_dBgc4NslCm1s3oH4YvQdJ3887Ab1-efsxXSz7PdTcbvdcdhRWgiu2Yr3d-ziqmaA7NnhtewgzStCA3gTeB_tsS2Tu7uaumy/s1280/hunter%20gatherers%20in%20Africa%20temporary%20camp.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGYYMoW7dfUiKhkPtposx-Ws4i0RVsT2xH9-8LkuOtx-_0it45qGBaqNG1T8ACsjxR5XTPSzAPRVOJnlOX5rB455_WFovK_dBgc4NslCm1s3oH4YvQdJ3887Ab1-efsxXSz7PdTcbvdcdhRWgiu2Yr3d-ziqmaA7NnhtewgzStCA3gTeB_tsS2Tu7uaumy/w400-h225/hunter%20gatherers%20in%20Africa%20temporary%20camp.webp" width="400" /></a></span></div><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b></b><br /><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/17/health/parenting-childcare-hunter-gatherers-wellness-scn/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/17/health/parenting-childcare-hunter-gatherers-wellness-scn/index.html</a><br /><br />*</span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b> THE ENDS OF KNOWLEDGE </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">~ Right now, <b>many forms of knowledge production seem to be facing their end. The crisis of the humanities has reached a tipping point of financial and popular disinvestment, while technological advances such as new artificial intelligence programs may outstrip human ingenuity.</b> As news outlets disappear, extreme political movements question the concept of objectivity and the scientific process. Many of our systems for producing and certifying knowledge have ended or are ending. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">We want to offer a new perspective by arguing that it is salutary – or even desirable – for knowledge projects to confront their ends. With humanities scholars, social scientists and natural scientists all forced to defend their work, from accusations of the ‘hoax’ of climate change to <b>assumptions of the ‘uselessness’ of a humanities degree</b>, knowledge producers within and without academia are challenged to articulate why they do what they do and, we suggest, when they might be done. <b>The prospect of an artificially or externally imposed end can help clarify both the purpose and endpoint of our scholarship. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Some may be quick to point out that past efforts at ending often appear quixotic or ludicrous with the advantage of hindsight. For literary scholars, the paradigmatic examples of this are Jorge Luis Borges’s short story ‘The Library of Babel’ (1941) and the character of Edward Casaubon in George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch (1871-2). <b>Casaubon’s work on his Key to All Mythologies is literally unending</b>; he dies before completing it, leading his young wife Dorothea to worry that he will guilt her into promising to continue the work after his death. <br /><br />Scientists too have sometimes conceived of their ends as providing, as Philip Kitcher wrote in his essay ‘The Ends of the Sciences’ (2004), ‘a complete true account of the universe’, but the idea that such an account could exist, or that, if it did, we could comprehend it, remains very much in doubt. <b>The aspiration for a global end is generally delusive and potentially dystopian.<br /></b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Of course, knowledge production does not take place solely within the ivory tower. It was precisely during the Enlightenment that writers such as Joseph Addison called for philosophy to be brought ‘out of Closets and Libraries, Schools and Colleges, to dwell in Clubs and Assemblies, at Tea-tables, and in Coffee-houses’. The period saw the takeoff of ‘improvement’ societies, which initially focused on agricultural and public infrastructure but soon expanded to include the arts and sciences more broadly. <b>Some of these organizations, such as Britain’s Royal Society (originally the Royal Society for Improving Natural Knowledge), remain important institutions for bridging the continuing gap between universities and the public</b>.<br /><br />But other extra-academic efforts have had the goal of repudiating the university, rather than connecting with it. The Thiel Fellowship, founded by the Right-wing venture capitalist Peter Thiel, provides recipients with a two-year $100,000 grant on the condition that they drop out of or skip university in order to ‘build new things instead of sitting in a classroom’. <b>For many, academic organizations appear moribund and continuing improvement requires new institutional arrangements. Ending one institutional arrangement often happens in the name of starting something new.</b><br /><br />As we noted, our survey found </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>four ideas of the ends of knowledge: telos, terminus, termination and apocalypse</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>.</b> The 19th-century formation of the university established our three primary divisions of the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. Now, we are proposing a thought experiment of a new four-part structure. What might a department or division of unification or conceptualization look like? We are asking how knowledge production might change to fit the present moment if we organize ourselves not by content – English, physics, computer science and so on – but by how we understand our ends.<br /><br />Returning to the Enlightenment shows how concerns over disciplinary divisions have been present since their inception. <b>In 1728, Ephraim Chambers, editor of the Cyclopædia, wondered ‘whether it might not be more for the general Interest of Learning, to have all the Inclosures and Partitions thrown down, and the whole laid in common again, under one undistinguish’d Name’. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">By the end of the century, the redivision of knowledge had been formalized in the proto-disciplinary ‘Treatises and Systems’ of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. <b>In 1818, the rise of specialist groups like the Linnean Society and the Geological Society of London led the eminent naturalist Joseph Banks to write: ‘I see plainly that all these new-fangled Associations will finally dismantle the Royal Society.’ </b>Disciplinarity was seen as ending some kinds of knowledge while not fulfilling their ends.<br /><br /><b>The boundaries established in the mid-19th century and hardened throughout the 20th are now maintained managerially and financially as well as through methods and curricula</b>; they are often reified by architecture and geography, <b>with humanities and STEM departments housed in buildings on opposite ends of campuses.</b> </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">For a long time, these tactics and strategies worked: they gave the new disciplines that emerged from the Enlightenment time and space to grow. <b>Disciplinarity offers an important means to certify knowledge production.</b><br /><br />The strategies that got us this far, however, may not be the ones we need to move forward. Can we escape the discourse of competition and crisis, which tends to keep us focused on the health of individual disciplines or college majors, by reorganizing knowledge production around questions or problems rather than objects of study? What if, instead of endlessly attempting to analyze and remedy the troubles of a particular division, we turn our attention to the system of division itself?<br /><br /><b>Our volume is an initial attempt to see what the advancement of learning could look like if it were to be reoriented around emergent ends rather than inherited structures. </b>The question of ends must continue to be pursued at increasing scales, from the individual researcher, to the office or department, to the discipline, to the university, to academia and to knowledge production as a whole. The shared project of considering the end(s) of knowledge work reveals the rich history and scholarly investments of individual disciplines as well as the larger goal of producing accurate knowledge that is oriented toward a more ethical, informed, just and reflective world. <b>We are, in many ways, only at the beginning of the end.</b><br /><br /><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/should-academic-disciplines-have-both-a-purpose-and-a-finish-date?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=45c8d99023-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_09_29&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-b43a9ed933-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D">https://aeon.co/essays/should-academic-disciplines-have-both-a-purpose-and-a-finish-date?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=45c8d99023-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_09_29&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-b43a9ed933-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D<br /></a><br />*<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhJh0EpbJxeEVctbZZA0HVDPdmzoArAZMh5QiLF4meQ0s2YIYQ4XgyBi3AFrxz7dAyjGoG0PuYp297Gyn5Xk0d7_56El3uFfSYQ217V6UQvFXH8gNYdqVGkC4OC081f-pZUNT-dxoYqnwKsLFYXA2oW3G9coIwm3jXQSI7dJWz-ZyYXbeuFmtnIUhbq7Se/s600/god%20is%20a%20lover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhJh0EpbJxeEVctbZZA0HVDPdmzoArAZMh5QiLF4meQ0s2YIYQ4XgyBi3AFrxz7dAyjGoG0PuYp297Gyn5Xk0d7_56El3uFfSYQ217V6UQvFXH8gNYdqVGkC4OC081f-pZUNT-dxoYqnwKsLFYXA2oW3G9coIwm3jXQSI7dJWz-ZyYXbeuFmtnIUhbq7Se/w400-h400/god%20is%20a%20lover.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This is certainly not the deity I was indoctrinated to worship. Mine was the god of punishment. Sin and punishment were the defining center of the old-time Catholicism.<br /><br />*<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNk8yYOQNgYVV3mvXwuhntJZz4hmxzCeGsEbLBpcgr3z0iy-LNO0QyMuDaliY5Ztqt5FPaXJ5EAYlDonsaZJUAyuQ9poqD58nZa06YrnlRpg4IX1SPTksR8aJJT47dZcauSUKjPzFQsQF5wb-vQxjNR8KIvQdR8SjmH36quW8SmaCG_DqTfFLYPwywpjG2/s1290/go%20easy%20on%20yourself.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1249" data-original-width="1290" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNk8yYOQNgYVV3mvXwuhntJZz4hmxzCeGsEbLBpcgr3z0iy-LNO0QyMuDaliY5Ztqt5FPaXJ5EAYlDonsaZJUAyuQ9poqD58nZa06YrnlRpg4IX1SPTksR8aJJT47dZcauSUKjPzFQsQF5wb-vQxjNR8KIvQdR8SjmH36quW8SmaCG_DqTfFLYPwywpjG2/s320/go%20easy%20on%20yourself.jpg" width="320" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />Solaris (1976) Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, based on a novel by Stanislaw Lem<br /></span><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAS-Y6HrK2I2Kal75SXk7UivKIgjGufGYCsGf9q0kBAD2CCgJa7p_e5AjfHsl5UxWIgmupqOb-SGLMTYRGLheCW5cEayYlNNSQSVhTFyo6xAcrwkby1b85JhxZpgSEbQzLqtYMcsbNn8onBCaVa5gSQY8qAMhE9glZtwMylJA9Z-JT0jnDHP_jJaD6ynhJ/s500/Solaris%20when%20a%20man%20is%20happy.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="447" data-original-width="500" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAS-Y6HrK2I2Kal75SXk7UivKIgjGufGYCsGf9q0kBAD2CCgJa7p_e5AjfHsl5UxWIgmupqOb-SGLMTYRGLheCW5cEayYlNNSQSVhTFyo6xAcrwkby1b85JhxZpgSEbQzLqtYMcsbNn8onBCaVa5gSQY8qAMhE9glZtwMylJA9Z-JT0jnDHP_jJaD6ynhJ/w400-h358/Solaris%20when%20a%20man%20is%20happy.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br /><b>THE DAYDREAMING MICE: WHAT HAPPENS IN THEIR BRAINS<br /></b><br />You are sitting quietly, and suddenly your brain tunes out the world and wanders to something else entirely </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">— </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">perhaps a recent experience, or an old memory. You just had a daydream.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Yet despite the ubiquity of this experience, what is happening in the brain while daydreaming is a question that has largely eluded neuroscientists.<br /></b><br />Now, a study in mice, published Dec. 13 in Nature, has brought a team led by researchers at Harvard Medical School one step closer to figuring it out.<br /><br />The researchers tracked the activity of neurons in the visual cortex of the brains of mice while the animals remained in a quiet waking state. They found that occasionally these neurons fired in a pattern similar to one that occurred when a mouse looked at an actual image, suggesting that the mouse was thinking</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> —</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> or daydreaming </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> about the image. Moreover, the patterns of activity during a mouse's first few daydreams o<br />f the day predicted how the brain's response to the image would change over time.<br /><br />The research provides tantalizing, if preliminary, evidence that <b>daydreams can shape the brain's future response to what it sees.</b> This causal relationship needs to be confirmed in further research, the team cautioned, but the results offer an intriguing clue that <b>daydreams during quiet waking may play a role in brain plasticity — the brain's ability to remodel itself in response to new experiences.</b><br /><br />"We wanted to know how this daydreaming process occurred on a neurobiological level, and whether these moments of quiet reflection could be important for learning and memory," said lead author Nghia Nguyen, a PhD student in neurobiology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS.<br /><br /><b>An overlooked brain region<br /></b><br /><b>Scientists have spent considerable time studying how neurons replay past events to form memories and map the physical environment in the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped brain region that plays a key role in memory and spatial navigation.<br /></b><br />By contrast, <b>there has been little research on the replay of neurons in other brain regions, including the visual cortex.</b> Such efforts would provide valuable insights about how visual memories are formed.<br /><br />"My lab became interested in whether we could record from enough neurons in the visual cortex to understand what exactly the mouse is remembering — and then connect that information to brain plasticity," said senior author Mark Andermann, professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and professor of neurobiology at HMS.<br /><br />In the new study, the researchers repeatedly showed mice one of two images, each consisting of a different checkerboard pattern of gray and dappled black and white squares. Between images, the mice spent a minute looking at a gray screen. <i><b>The team simultaneously recorded activity from around 7,000 neurons in the visual cortex.</b></i><br /><br />The researchers found that <b>when a mouse looked at an image, the neurons fired in a specific pattern, and the patterns were different enough to discern image one from image two</b>. More important,<b> when a mouse looked at the gray screen between images, the neurons sometimes fired in a similar, but not identical, pattern, as when the mouse looked at the image, a sign that it was daydreaming about the image.</b> <b>These daydreams occurred only when mice were relaxed, characterized by calm behavior and small pupils</b>.<br /><br /><b>Unsurprisingly, mice daydreamed more about the most recent image</b> — and they had more daydreams at the beginning of the day than at the end, when they had already seen each image dozens of times.<br /><br />But what the researchers found next was completely unexpected.<br /><br />Throughout the day, and across days, the activity patterns seen when the mice looked at the images changed — what neuroscientists call "representational drift." Yet this drift wasn't random. Over time, the patterns associated with the images became even more different from each other, until each involved an almost entirely separate set of neurons. Notably, <b>the pattern seen during a mouse's first few daydreams about an image predicted what the pattern would become when the mouse looked at the image later.</b><br /><br />"There's drift in how the brain responds to the same image over time, and these early daydreams can predict where the drift is going," Andermann said.<br /><br /><i><b>Finally, the researchers found that the visual cortex daydreams occurred at the same time as replay activity occurred in the hippocampus, suggesting that the two brain regions were communicating during these daydreams.</b></i><br /><br /><b>To sit, perchance to daydream</b><br /><br />Based on the results of the study, the researchers suspect that these <b>daydreams may be actively involved in brain plasticity.</b><br /><br />"When you see two different images many times, it becomes important to discriminate between them. Our findings suggest that daydreaming may guide this process by steering the neural patterns associated with the two images away from each other," Nguyen said, while noting that this relationship needs to be confirmed.<br /><br />Nguyen added that learning to differentiate between the images should help the mouse respond to each image with more specificity in the future.<br /><br /><b>These observations align with a growing body of evidence in rodents and humans that entering a state of quiet wakefulness after an experience can improve learning and memory.</b></span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Next, the researchers plan to use their imaging tools to visualize the connections between individual neurons in the visual cortex and to examine how these connections change when the brain "sees" an image.<br /><br /><b>"We were chasing this 99 percent of unexplored brain activity and discovered that there's so much richness in the visual cortex that nobody knew anything about," Andermann said.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Whether daydreams in people involve similar activity patterns in the visual cortex is an open question, and the answer will require additional experiments. However, there is preliminary evidence that an analogous process occurs in humans when they recall visual imagery.<br /><br />Randy Buckner, the Sosland Family Professor of Psychology and of Neuroscience at Harvard University, has shown that <b>brain activity in the visual cortex increases when people are asked to recall an image in detail. Other studies have recorded flurries of electrical activity in the visual cortex and the hippocampus [brain structure involved in memory] during such recall.</b><br /><br />For the researchers, the results of their study and others suggest that <b>it may be important to make space for moments of quiet waking that lead to daydreams. </b>For a mouse, this may mean taking a pause from looking at a series of images and, for a human, this could mean taking a break from scrolling on a smartphone.<br /><br />"We feel pretty confident that <b>if you never give yourself any awake downtime, you're not going to have as many of these daydream events, which may be important for brain plasticity</b>," Andermann said. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/12/231213112457.htm">https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/12/231213112457.htm<br /></a><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIV_gEzcBuA8D6KX2eW0gYEw3KI3rS8OGDwupyxc7jAW8NG2CHDMYQS76gFFEpSn6s7MMbAlkucqZeRA3Ia4zhzDR-LtoHJkdJ8-1qP-j7ODimubqBgzqYV9SeIAZWGawuc_4dVSR7rmeTCLw88rpkQN_gX6DxwnvUcso2q8snL3aHBrEhIE5LTk3iCmru/s744/mice%20watching%20TV.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="619" data-original-width="744" height="333" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIV_gEzcBuA8D6KX2eW0gYEw3KI3rS8OGDwupyxc7jAW8NG2CHDMYQS76gFFEpSn6s7MMbAlkucqZeRA3Ia4zhzDR-LtoHJkdJ8-1qP-j7ODimubqBgzqYV9SeIAZWGawuc_4dVSR7rmeTCLw88rpkQN_gX6DxwnvUcso2q8snL3aHBrEhIE5LTk3iCmru/w400-h333/mice%20watching%20TV.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>HOW THE IMMUNE SYSTEM FIGHTS TO KEEP THE HERPES VIRUS AT BAY<br /></b><br />Herpes simplex virus (HSV) is extremely common, affecting nearly two-thirds of the world’s population, according to the World Health Organization. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Once inside the body, HSV establishes a latent infection that periodically awakens, causing painful blisters on the skin, typically around the nose and mouth. While a mere nuisance for most people, HSV can also lead to dangerous eye infections and brain inflammation in some people and cause life-threatening infections in newborns.</b></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Researchers have long known that the virus and the host immune system are in a perpetual competition, but why does this battle reach a stasis in most people while causing serious infections in others?</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">More important, precisely <b>how does the battle unfold at the level of cells and molecules?</b> This question has continued to bedevil scientists and hamper the quest for treatments that prevent or cure infections.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">A recent study by researchers at Harvard Medical School, conducted using lab-engineered cells and published in PNAS, unveils the precise maneuvers used by host and pathogen in the fight for dominance of the cell.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Furthermore, <b>the research shows how the immune system keeps the virus at bay in a battle taking place at the control center of the cell — its nucleus.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Immune signaling proteins issue a call to arms</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The research reveals a key role for a group of signaling proteins called interferons, which recruit other protective molecules and block the virus from establishing infection.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Once inside the host, HSV multiplies by making copies of itself inside the nuclei of cells, using the host’s genetic machinery. For that to happen, the virus must outcompete the host’s immune system. But many of the tactics the virus and the immune system use in this contest have remained a mystery, making it challenging to design medicines to help patients defeat the virus.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Interferons</b> — named for their ability to interfere with pathogens’ attempts to infect cells — <b>are signaling molecules released when the immune system detects the presence of microbes, such as viruses. The distress signals sent by interferons activate genes in that cell and other cells that produce proteins, which in turn block viruses from establishing infection in the first place.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Several different mechanisms that interferons use to thwart viruses within the cytoplasm, the gelatinous liquid that fills cells, are well known. But how interferons work against DNA viruses — those launching their attack within the cell nucleus — has remained elusive.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>“We know a lot about how interferon and immune stimulants work against viruses in the cytoplasmic body of the cell, but up until now, we knew very little about how the immune system blocks viral infection in the cell’s nucleus,” </b>said study senior author David Knipe, the Higgins Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS. “Our findings define the mechanisms of action of any treatment that induces interferons and how they can prevent and treat infections from HSV, as well as other herpesviruses and nuclear DNA viruses.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Knipe said the insights from this work could also help researchers understand — and perhaps eventually develop treatments for — other nuclear DNA viruses, including well-known troublemakers like the Epstein-Barr virus, which causes mononucleosis; human papillomavirus; hepatitis B; and smallpox.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">These results define the mechanisms of action of interferon treatments for herpesvirus diseases and other treatments such as toll-like receptor ligands that have been tested for herpes, the researchers said. Other new activators of interferons such as cGAS agonists could also be used to induce herpes resistance through the newly defined mechanisms, the researchers added.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The researchers caution that any new potential therapies for HSV and other DNA viruses are purely conceptual at this point. Any such approaches should be first tested in small animals such as mice, then in larger animals and, finally, in humans.</span></p><p><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Mapping the steps of a viral arms race</span></b></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In the new study, Knipe and co-author Catherine Sodroski, an HMS PhD graduate now at the National Institutes of Health, discovered that<b> a host protein called IFI16 is recruited by interferon to help block the virus from reproducing in several ways.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>One of the strategies used by IFI16 to fend off HSV involves building and maintaining a shell of molecules around the viral DNA genome.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> <b>This molecular “bubble wrap” prevents the virus from unfurling. With the virus wrapped up, it can’t activate its DNA to express its genes and make copies of itself.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">To counter these protective maneuvers, however, the virus produces molecules called VP16 and ICP0 that can remove the wrapping, deactivate the host cell’s protective molecules, and enable the virus to reproduce.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Another mechanism used by IFI16 to fight HSV infection is to neutralize VP16 and ICP016. Under normal circumstances, when the cell is not preparing to repel a viral invader, there is some IFI16 present within the nucleus. But this background level of IFI16 isn’t enough to fight off the viral helper proteins and keep the virus wrapped and restrained.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Without interferon’s call to the cell to send in more IFI16, the virus wins the arms race and infects the cell. However, the experiments showed, <b>when interferon signals recruit higher levels of IFI16, the immune system wins.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This current study echoes similar findings that found elevated levels of IFI16 in clinical samples of tissues where the immune system appeared to be successfully controlling symptoms of the closely related HSV-2 virus, providing crucial insights about the molecular machinery at work in staving off outbreaks of symptoms.</span></p><p><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Using insights from the lab to improve human health</span></b></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Knipe says he became interested in the biology of herpesviruses as an undergraduate while recovering from a bout of mononucleosis. He turned that curiosity into a career.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The Knipe lab studies what happens at the level of molecules and cells when HSV causes symptomatic and dormant infections. He is particularly interested in how the host immune system responds to HSV. <b>Knipe has applied the insights gained by studying HSV to explore the possibilities of using genetic material from HSV to deliver vaccines for HIV, SARS, West Nile, and anthrax.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“Solving the puzzles that underlie the basic biology of how these viruses interact with the host cell nucleus and immune system is endlessly fascinating, and finding new ways to apply that knowledge to fighting diseases is endlessly rewarding,” Knipe said. “The most exciting part is that we’re just scratching the surface of the deep knowledge we can tap into for this fight.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1011306">https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1011306</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>PNAS = Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</i></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> <br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>IS IT BETTER TO EAT SEVERAL SMALL MEALS OR A FEW LARGER ONES?</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Those who advocate for eating small, frequent meals suggest that this eating pattern can:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">improve satiety, or feeling full after a meal<br />increase metabolism and body composition<br />prevent dips in energy<br />stabilize blood sugar<br />prevent overeating<br /><br /><b>While a few studies support these recommendations, others show no significant benefit. In fact, some research suggests it may be more beneficial to stick with three larger meals.</b></span></p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">MEAL FREQUENCY AND CHRONIC DISEASE</span><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Early epidemiological studies suggest that increased meal frequency can improve blood lipid (fats) levels and reduce the risk of heart disease. As a result, many experts advise against eating fewer, larger meals a day.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In particular, one 2019 cross-sectional study that compared eating fewer than three meals per day or more than four meals per day found that consuming more than four meals increases HDL (high-density lipoprotein cholesterol) and lowers fasting triglycerides more effectively. Higher levels of HDL are associated with a reduced risk of heart disease.<br /><br />This study observed no differences in total cholesterol or LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol. It is important to note, however, that this is an observational study, meaning it can only prove association, not causation.<br /><br />Additionally, one review published in the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation concluded that greater eating frequency is associated with a reduced risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease, according to epidemiological studies.<br /><br />MEAL FREQUENCY AND WEIGHT LOSS<br /><br /><b>There is a commonly held notion that more frequent meals can help influence weight loss. However, the research on this remains mixed.<br /></b><br />For example, one study compared eating three meals per day or six smaller, more frequent meals on body fat and perceived hunger. Both groups received adequate calories to maintain their current body weight using the same macronutrient distribution: 30% of energy from fat, 55% carbohydrate, and 15% protein.<br /><br />At the end of the study, researchers observed no difference in energy expenditure and body fat loss between the two groups. Interestingly, </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>those who consumed six smaller meals throughout the day had increased hunger levels and desire to eat compared to those who ate three larger meals per day.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Although calorie intake was controlled in both groups, researchers hypothesized that<b> those who consumed frequent meals would be more likely to consume more daily calories than those who ate less frequently.</b><br /><br />Results of another large observational study suggest that healthy adults may prevent long-term weight gain by:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">eating less frequently<br />eating breakfast and lunch 5 to 6 hours apart<br /><b>avoiding snacking</b><br />consuming the largest meal in the morning<br />fasting for 18-19 hours overnight.<br /><br /><b>Does eating frequent meals boost metabolism?</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Small, frequent meals are often touted as a cure-all for obesity. Many believe that eating every 2 to 3 hours can help boost metabolism.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Digestion of food does require energy. This is known as the thermic effect of food (TEF). </b>However,<b> it does not appear that meal frequency plays a role in boosting metabolism.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In fact,<b> some studies suggest fewer, larger meals may increase TEF more than eating frequent meals.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Based on the presented studies, no substantial evidence supports one eating pattern over the other. Yet many of these studies also have limitations.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">For example, there is no universally accepted definition of what a meal or snack consists of. This can have an impact on study outcomes.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">With that said, both eating patterns can be beneficial as long the primary focus is on healthful eating habits.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Small, frequent meals often come in the form of ultra-processed foods and snacks that fall short in many vital nutrients</b> your body needs. Thus, it is essential to focus on the quality of the foods you consume.<br /><br />Evidence is mixed about the importance of food frequency. While there is no solid evidence to suggest that one eating style is superior to the other, both can offer health and wellness benefits if you follow a healthy eating pattern.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Thus, it ultimately comes down to personal preference and which approach works best for you. Additionally, if you have certain health conditions, one style may benefit you over the other.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/is-it-better-to-eat-several-small-meals-or-fewer-larger-ones#The-bottom-line">https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/is-it-better-to-eat-several-small-meals-or-fewer-larger-ones#The-bottom-line</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />Although major research efforts have focused on how specific components of foodstuffs affect health, relatively little is known about a more fundamental aspect of diet, the frequency and circadian timing of meals, and potential benefits of intermittent periods with no or very low energy intakes. The most common eating pattern in modern societies, three meals plus snacks every day, is abnormal from an evolutionary perspective. Emerging findings from studies of animal models and human subjects suggest that <b>intermittent energy restriction periods of as little as 16 h can improve health indicators and counteract disease processes. The mechanisms involve a metabolic shift to fat metabolism and ketone production, and stimulation of adaptive cellular stress responses that prevent and repair molecular damage.</b> As data on the optimal frequency and timing of meals crystalizes, it will be critical to develop strategies to incorporate those eating patterns into health care policy and practice, and the lifestyles of the population.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1413965111">https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1413965111<br /></a><br />Oriana:<br /><br />This article goes back to 2014, before the benefits of intermittent fasting became more widely known. Nevertheless, I still occasionally stumble on popular articles advocating frequent small meals (in the past, this used to be the absolute gospel of popular magazines, especially those directed at women). If you suffer from certain digestive problems, small meals can be more beneficial. But overall, the current consensus seems to be that fewer large meals seem to yield lower blood sugar and insulin levels, and overall better health results. <br /><br />To me, the main flaw seems to be the lack of acknowledgment that humans eat for many reasons not related to hunger and satiety. Easy access to convenience foods (what used to be called “temptation”) may just be the main factor in the current obesity epidemic. If I had to summarize the most common cause of obesity in two words, I’d choose CONSTANT SNACKING. <br /><br />It’s also worth emphasizing that typical snacks are often unhealthy foods such as cookies, candy bars, potato chips and the like. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdGSXdIm-EiyyZ3T6-9_WNUSkgz9YIwPmb50Mbif_NN86P-Zo0Vg_suX84Wgy7mluPNf3FJZa7QjvtV9JhtxMpRpqW7wElbAOLXzhVltRlEHKwLumXyxb_F5RcUb3SMG3sWJtYkg799jjhIUBByKvbjof4QnTeqO_GVBXnDSa9fJYwTJaBPpqvekewcYW1/s612/invitation%20to%20obesity.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="449" data-original-width="612" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdGSXdIm-EiyyZ3T6-9_WNUSkgz9YIwPmb50Mbif_NN86P-Zo0Vg_suX84Wgy7mluPNf3FJZa7QjvtV9JhtxMpRpqW7wElbAOLXzhVltRlEHKwLumXyxb_F5RcUb3SMG3sWJtYkg799jjhIUBByKvbjof4QnTeqO_GVBXnDSa9fJYwTJaBPpqvekewcYW1/w400-h294/invitation%20to%20obesity.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>invitation to obesity</i></span></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">As for healthy infrequent meals, the usual objection is that people don’t know how to cook or else don’t have the time to cook. There are, however, some frozen meals that meet the standards of good nutrition, especially if you add some fresh greens to them. Extra-virgin olive oil, whether just on the salad, or drizzled over the entire meal, can also be an amazing improvement — it keeps you sated for many hours, making the "infrequent" part easy. It turns out that the oleic acid in olive oil is an effective appetite suppressant, in addition to other health benefits, including smooth, youthful-looking skin. <br /></span><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvv2m8xVA30BZGobcgLO-zAd3g20-g0VngyYEm_HPpyexflspPCtrI-rqcx2aFFBKmMNDqXE9aaEYJLavhG_6awkJk6ORhbdcVmRUDXHy_z-TvNKg4NsagPltjnMrQNxprxYw0p6n_zselh_ZhrrbHaKsvwPWIw8mjGgIspc1mt83QIbV1sTMeVFFhx7cK/s1200/3%20black%20olives%20olive%20oil.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvv2m8xVA30BZGobcgLO-zAd3g20-g0VngyYEm_HPpyexflspPCtrI-rqcx2aFFBKmMNDqXE9aaEYJLavhG_6awkJk6ORhbdcVmRUDXHy_z-TvNKg4NsagPltjnMrQNxprxYw0p6n_zselh_ZhrrbHaKsvwPWIw8mjGgIspc1mt83QIbV1sTMeVFFhx7cK/w400-h225/3%20black%20olives%20olive%20oil.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><i><b>Ending on beauty:</b></i><br /><br />GOOD HOURS<br /><br />I had for my winter evening walk<br />No one at all with whom to talk,<br />But I had the cottages in a row<br />Up to their shining eyes in snow.<br /><br />And I thought I had the folk within:<br />I had the sound of a violin;<br />I had a glimpse through curtain laces<br />Of youthful forms and youthful faces.<br /><br />I had such company outward bound.<br />I went till there were no cottages found.<br />I turned and repented, but coming back<br />I saw no window but that was black.<br /><br />Over the snow my creaking feet<br />Disturbed the slumbering village street<br />Like profanation, by your leave,<br />At ten o’clock of a winter eve.<br /><br />~ Robert Frost<br /><br />photo: Katya Jackson</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieiXH8FUlwxoiwJGR1Ir0p1B5xVYu3CM6QUXmQ3aPvUVh_LSUNPr11IY4PRGyBUeBIeRVOLpCAUY2_jvoT6u3ps6KHSM43Idy_so3VFOYimMMpR_m2dQxxTXEQa_qc6PZ2Syh3meBvDSwLFPPRazh398X7GkPqyZ84PNACkaC2v4J9ifOs2YugIarrsLFq/s1625/snowy%20English%20village.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1625" data-original-width="1300" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieiXH8FUlwxoiwJGR1Ir0p1B5xVYu3CM6QUXmQ3aPvUVh_LSUNPr11IY4PRGyBUeBIeRVOLpCAUY2_jvoT6u3ps6KHSM43Idy_so3VFOYimMMpR_m2dQxxTXEQa_qc6PZ2Syh3meBvDSwLFPPRazh398X7GkPqyZ84PNACkaC2v4J9ifOs2YugIarrsLFq/w512-h640/snowy%20English%20village.jpg" width="512" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-64832553513903233032023-12-09T20:25:00.000-08:002023-12-15T19:10:49.921-08:00THE DOWNSIDE OF CASHLESS SOCIETY; CHARLES DICKENS’S GIFTS TO THE MODERN WORLD; THEORIES OF EVERYTHING; WHY ISLAM IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE MODERN WEST; OCTOBER 7TH HAS NOT CHANGED THE MIDDLE EAST; DR. RUTH AND HENRY KISSINGER; NAVY BEANS MAY PREVENT COLON CANCER<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTwKTHYbPQ3sFdq2iQE4-VemL7rvlzBYn4p-Blf2Q_xhDxMTvP1c958YQx-FnNxdghcqxWRibPqb2KOI9TLHePa4ApNy8lRmvlHTOs85VDD2BIjh6olGVpbYl1LS-WcafrRBBxaqmU21pZuiXii0ST5OapvG6Wsz1j_xvbFHHMHldbpBSfWKNwF2FI-Jl2/s680/little%20head%20stairway%20abbey%20Sainte%20Foy%20Conques%20fraince%2011%20cent%20.jpg" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="680" height="309" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTwKTHYbPQ3sFdq2iQE4-VemL7rvlzBYn4p-Blf2Q_xhDxMTvP1c958YQx-FnNxdghcqxWRibPqb2KOI9TLHePa4ApNy8lRmvlHTOs85VDD2BIjh6olGVpbYl1LS-WcafrRBBxaqmU21pZuiXii0ST5OapvG6Wsz1j_xvbFHHMHldbpBSfWKNwF2FI-Jl2/w400-h309/little%20head%20stairway%20abbey%20Sainte%20Foy%20Conques%20fraince%2011%20cent%20.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>The Abbey Church of Sainte Foy in Conques, France, 11th century. Doorway carving detail.</i></span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br />BRAIDS<br /><br />According to the Talmud, God braided<br />Eve’s hair for her wedding. He served<br />as Adam’s groomsman, too, though I doubt<br />he made any ball & chain jokes—before the Fall<br />at least…. And yes, if they had a garden<br />wedding, there must have been a steamy wedding night—<br /> <br />every position given a made-up name that endless night<br />by Adam, with Eve’s input, of course. He unbraided<br />her hair slowly, as if each strand was a garden<br />snake released, there not to destroy but to serve<br />the cause of love, the abyss they so easily fell<br />into. The Talmud expresses no doubt<br /> <br />about this. Put aside all those doubts<br />about immodesty, decency, lady-of-the night<br />attire and fashion, the judgment that will fall<br />upon you, if you adorn yourself or braid<br />your hair. You do not serve<br />that master, who never halted mid-day in the garden<br /> <br />to note the sunlight dripping through the garden<br />leaves, splashing over, eradicating doubt<br />that this moment is in the service<br />of all others. That this night<br />beginning with two tight French braids<br />which swing in the breeze and fall<br /> <br />effortlessly down her back and will fall<br />along with her to the damp garden<br />floor. And the tips of those braids,<br />curling like question marks of doubt<br />will soon unravel—a way to prolong the night.<br />I remember, when we first met, how undeserving<br /><br />I felt in her presence, how all nature served<br />our cause and how quickly I fell<br />in love, perhaps that very night<br />as we strolled, sloshing through the village gardens,<br />flooded that summer. The one thing I didn’t doubt,<br />as I touched and took in the bound-in scent of her braids.<br /><br />~ Leonard Kress</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjItgNuZbEqTYdG6td0EifWMwVqKRWUzPFQ0mcPInoeJZ7KuL4JdUPpZGIf1XzE3jKyIOm1_ZYsZMWgHFTeixt7tpnJV4EXpQ5LmtoxH4FwolwlW2Zf6WYWzENwqDDssgqY_P6jTzG3nztOhQJh62FTXUnyJueAA10vQbael102_wykCFkpPyHfuvJ7zA_x/s820/braids.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="820" data-original-width="742" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjItgNuZbEqTYdG6td0EifWMwVqKRWUzPFQ0mcPInoeJZ7KuL4JdUPpZGIf1XzE3jKyIOm1_ZYsZMWgHFTeixt7tpnJV4EXpQ5LmtoxH4FwolwlW2Zf6WYWzENwqDDssgqY_P6jTzG3nztOhQJh62FTXUnyJueAA10vQbael102_wykCFkpPyHfuvJ7zA_x/s320/braids.png" width="290" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>CHARLES DICKENS: THE SIX THING HE GAVE TO THE MODERN WORLD<br /></b></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg95Z61K5H0fbJi71EBgXXwvcP4gqZ57iS893V-m2bXVjFYfyM4ANv0UURXOrDpUF59pbX_wMwAfuD1Ntgb2EJztmQAiYls0S_7yDsUIznI6aFwgyJy1IduVkJ94ei_7I6t30DuK3tRuLLeEW_HV0I5YnbEEE_hmMvyasAwuq84oF7KQTxodtlz7EPS9rPi/s768/oliver%20twist%20asks%20for%20more.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="555" data-original-width="768" height="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg95Z61K5H0fbJi71EBgXXwvcP4gqZ57iS893V-m2bXVjFYfyM4ANv0UURXOrDpUF59pbX_wMwAfuD1Ntgb2EJztmQAiYls0S_7yDsUIznI6aFwgyJy1IduVkJ94ei_7I6t30DuK3tRuLLeEW_HV0I5YnbEEE_hmMvyasAwuq84oF7KQTxodtlz7EPS9rPi/w400-h289/oliver%20twist%20asks%20for%20more.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Oliver Twist asks for more</i></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Charles Dickens is one of the most important writers of the 19th Century. But his influence goes far beyond just literature. Many of his phrases, characters and ideas have engrained themselves in modern culture.<br /><br />Two centuries on, what are the things still seen today that Dickens first offered us in his writing?<br /><br /><b>A white Christmas</b><br /><br />Modern commentators have described Dickens as "the man who invented Christmas". Not obviously the religious festival, but the wider popular culture phenomenon that surrounds it.<br /><b>While Prince Albert is often credited with the revival of Christmas and the introduction of the Christmas tree, many believe that Dickens's popular depictions of the festive period became a blueprint for generations to come.</b><br /><br />Specifically, the idea of a white Christmas — which was and still remains a relatively uncommon occurrence in much of the UK — appears in A Christmas Carol as if it happened each and every year.<br /><br />In his biography of Dickens, Peter Ackroyd wrote: "In view of the fact that <b>Dickens can be said to have almost singlehandedly created the modern idea of Christmas</b>, it is interesting to note that in fact during the first eight years of his life there was a white Christmas every year; so sometimes reality does actually exist before the idealized image.”<br /><br /><b>Writer and renowned Dickens expert GK Chesterton perhaps best summed up how the great author's romantic view of Christmas has permeated throughout the world.<br /><br />"Whether the Christmas visions would or would not convert Scrooge, they convert us," he wrote.</b></span><b><br /></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">One of the things Dickens cared about most was those at the bottom. <b>He was one of the first to offer an unflinching look at the underclass and the poverty stricken in Victorian London.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5a_UWidnIWhqOCdkrXtLBDJoijxDlty7F9__55I593mXRPxKBouafWQqGbpjPJjlYbW-npFP-nINblo1sUF3m79L6sKLiZKDMycJXN3hlG85tikoSLh1wgWMeYZXIGCLvqqoCAivi-387eSPlJsMAnFAfCjqUVuZieO_c-NkOIH1dh7bFguJWGiZxBJJz/s686/poorhouses%20were-designed-to-punish-people-for-their-povertys-featured-photo.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="343" data-original-width="686" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5a_UWidnIWhqOCdkrXtLBDJoijxDlty7F9__55I593mXRPxKBouafWQqGbpjPJjlYbW-npFP-nINblo1sUF3m79L6sKLiZKDMycJXN3hlG85tikoSLh1wgWMeYZXIGCLvqqoCAivi-387eSPlJsMAnFAfCjqUVuZieO_c-NkOIH1dh7bFguJWGiZxBJJz/w400-h200/poorhouses%20were-designed-to-punish-people-for-their-povertys-featured-photo.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Poorhouses were designed to punish people for their poverty</i><br /><br />And this was an area in which he had some experience.<br /><br />His father had little skill in financial management and this eventually put him and all of his family in a debtors' prison for six months.<br /><br />The young Dickens worked in a cousin's shop, pasting labels on blacking bottles for six shillings a week.<br /><br />After he became famous, Dickens helped popularize the term "red tape" to describe the bureaucracy in positions of power that particularly hurt the weak and poor.<br /><br /><b>"Dickensian" has now become the easiest word to describe an unacceptable level of poverty.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In 2009, when president of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers wanted to talk about the deprivation in some areas, it was not described as terrible or horrific but as "life mirroring the times of Dickens".<br /><br /><b>This less than perfect England was described by other authors like Benjamin Disraeli and Mrs Gaskell but it is Dickens's view that has really resonated through the ages.<br /></b><br />Dickens's live readings were said to be filled with humor and performance, with Dickens himself taking on the accents and mannerisms of the characters he was portraying.<br /><br />And it is the way the characters speak that often brings a smile from the reader.<br /><br /><b>"Quite a lot of the time, if you were simply to describe the plot situation of one of the set pieces that you find very funny, it's not very funny at all," says Prof John Mullan, of University College London.<br /><br />"But it is very funny. The extraordinary thing he does introduce to the novel is the comic potential of the way people talk.”</b><br /><br />And some in the industry think that Dickens has done even more for the current crop of comedians.<br /><br />"We're put off by this notion we have of Charles Dickens as this great Victorian novelist because it implies that he's serious," says writer and comedian Armando Iannucci.<br /><br />"In fact, I think he's the finest comedian we've ever produced. Much comedy today is conditioned by the way Dickens wrote it in the 19th Century and comedy writers today owe a huge debt to him.<br /><br />"It's that sense of the rhythms, the colloquialisms and the way we speak. In reality, we don't finish our sentences and we all interrupt each other.”<br /><br />While everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow to Miss Piggy has taken a role in a film adaptation of Dickens's work, many argue that he was as instrumental in creating the conventions of cinema as he was for inspiring the content itself.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvpBBfZO4yBTlWbann6hdAo5cOdtzAB0nem_ebYrEbYS-4jv2yBQByfVnC40gwEifIU6I79DfpjU6huZPwulCHWTjwKdQ32aRSWnN6MvziyXz9r5j9n-0Y56lSFlkoxYQZ1vm1UrmtMZDc4JWuBZnSfGSc6gYmZkn9M6k-v2k3qjJpPb4Smx89NN-uuAGS/s2048/Ron%20Moody%20as%20Fagin%20in%20Oliver.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1866" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvpBBfZO4yBTlWbann6hdAo5cOdtzAB0nem_ebYrEbYS-4jv2yBQByfVnC40gwEifIU6I79DfpjU6huZPwulCHWTjwKdQ32aRSWnN6MvziyXz9r5j9n-0Y56lSFlkoxYQZ1vm1UrmtMZDc4JWuBZnSfGSc6gYmZkn9M6k-v2k3qjJpPb4Smx89NN-uuAGS/s320/Ron%20Moody%20as%20Fagin%20in%20Oliver.jpg" width="292" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Ron Moody as Fagin in Oliver Twist</i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Russian film director and theorist Sergei Eisenstein said that important aspects of cinema were created by the influence of Dickens on pioneering film director DW Griffith.<br /><br /><b>He argued that Dickens invented, among other things, the parallel montage </b></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>where two stories run alongside each other — and the close-up.</b><br /><br />"The idea that Dickens invented cinema is obviously nonsensical but he was a key and important influence in its development," says Prof Graeme Smith, who wrote Dickens and the Dream of Cinema.<br /><br /><b>"Once film arrived, his work inspired an extraordinary amount of early cinema.”<br /></b><br /><b>The BFI says that there were around 100 versions of Dickens's work recreated in film in the silent era alone. And those adaptations continue to this day.<br /></b><br />This is in large part because of <b>the visual way Dickens wrote, creating painstaking depictions of places.</b><br /><br />Prof Theodore Hovet, of Western Kentucky University, has argued that Dickens's influence stretches further than just adaptations in modern cinema, actually providing themes and techniques that are still used today.<br /><br />For example, he says, the film Dirty Pretty Things' depiction of London pays "homage to a model established by Dickens's compulsive wanderings of the city”.<br /><br /><b>The development of the characters in Dickens is often heralded as one of his greatest achievements.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Ofgsmy3arRVQsOxq_AOghtClh-C43RZsDId_nJQOrYy3x7B7QWOjtaxxdxTyo5zp5D195pfc3j_aAZcsvqkSCZAA_Pn3vOtpqJIAMl5FUNL7Fyjs-qbpJA75pdCvsJxiDEY9VAsER9iiK54f8qKN5q02MHyH_YOIdfRsNaXyyMqY_FXw0HOEmggf2xC4/s620/scrooge%20Alastair%20Sim%201951.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="388" data-original-width="620" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Ofgsmy3arRVQsOxq_AOghtClh-C43RZsDId_nJQOrYy3x7B7QWOjtaxxdxTyo5zp5D195pfc3j_aAZcsvqkSCZAA_Pn3vOtpqJIAMl5FUNL7Fyjs-qbpJA75pdCvsJxiDEY9VAsER9iiK54f8qKN5q02MHyH_YOIdfRsNaXyyMqY_FXw0HOEmggf2xC4/w400-h250/scrooge%20Alastair%20Sim%201951.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Alastair Sim as Scrooge, 1951</i><br /> <br />The Dictionary of British Literary Characters lists 989 named characters in his work, including everyone from Pickwick Papers' Arabella Allen right through to Our Mutual Friend's Eugene Wrayburn.<br /><br />While characters in many novels before had used symbolic names, what Dickens did differently was refine the practice to suggest character traits and their role.<br /><br />Some are obvious </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">— </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> Mr M'Choakumchild, the teacher in Hard Times, or ambitious lawyer CJ Stryver in The Tale of Two Cities — but others are less so.<br /><br />In Great Expectations, Magwitch has a number of different interpretations — from a magpie representing theft to Magi, a Biblical reference to the wise men.<br /><br />This technique has since been used by everyone from James Joyce and Thomas Pynchon to F Scott Fitzgerald and Martin Amis.<br /><br /><b>A couple of the most famous characters have become so recognizable that they have entered the language as nouns — somebody mean-spirited or lacking generosity being described as a Scrooge, for example.<br /></b><br />But one phrase that does not come from a name is "What the dickens?”<br /><br />Rather than coming from the author, it is believed to be a slang term for the devil and though its actual origins are unknown, it first appeared prominently in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, over 200 years before Dickens was born.<br /><br /><b>Bleak House, taking place as it does in the Court of Chancery before legal reforms in 1870, is a thinly veiled attack on the judicial system of the time</b>. The current view of lawyers </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">—</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> less than a quarter of people in the UK trust them — seems to be at least partly inspired by characters such as the novel's Mr Tulkinghorn.<br /><b><br />"No two books outside the bounds of technical law are more worth reading for law students than Pickwick Papers and Bleak House," Zechariah Chafee Jr once wrote in the Harvard Law Review.</b></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"Even a trained trial lawyer, however, is puzzled by some of the legal points brought up by Dickens, because they have fortunately passed forever out of the realm of living law.”<br /><br /><b>Legal historian Sir William Holdsworth noted the importance of Dickensian record in a lecture given in 1927.<br /><br />"The treatment by Dickens of various aspects of the law and the lawyers of his day is a very valuable addition to our authorities," he said.</b><br /><br />"Not only for that period, but also for earlier periods in our legal history.”<br /><br /><b>But how much do the issues that Dickens highlighted still remain today?<br /><br />"Central to it, actually, is something that remains a problem," says senior barrister Anthony Arlidge QC.<br /><br />"Very often, particularly with small civil claims, the cost of the legal proceedings is bound to exceed the damages that are obtained.”</b> ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16184487">https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16184487</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">To me, one of the most striking things about Dickens is his frank and frequent portrayal of child abuse, though because of Victorian conventions he could not mention the sexual abuse of children. His portrayals of cruelty and greed are heart-breaking, though it's "safer" to see him as specializing in depictions of eccentric spinsters. Who can ever forget Miss Havisham? My favorite, though, is the savior of young David Copperfifeld, Aunt Betsy Trotwood. </span></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Mary: HIS THEATRICAL CHARACTERS<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Dickens readings were theatrical experiences, and so were his novels. His people reveal themselves and inhabit our imaginations through characteristic speech, as noted, and actions that economically reveal character and personality in particular and unforgettable ways. Quote any character's lines and they immediately come to mind, fully imagined, in all their particulars. That his characters are often eccentric only intensifies the effect. What is described as cinematic I would call theatrical, and Dickens was both a great lover of theater and a wonderful performer. As an author he is also a stage master and director with an exact sense for the dramatic or comic moment.<br /><br />While we may find his sentiment at times mawkishly Victorian and a bad fit for modern sensibilities, his comic and dramatic senses are exquisite. And his heart is in the right place...champion of the poor and neglected, critic of societies obstinate self satisfaction and comfort with a status quo that relentlessly grinds the lives of the poor, especially poor children, under its blind and indifferent machinery. He is not afraid to name evils the world feels complacent in ignoring. And his comedy is irresistible.<br /><br />I think in many ways Great Expectations is his masterpiece. Social and class criticism, deep understanding of human passions and how they both direct and distort both understanding and action, the exploration of love, deception, betrayal, and fidelity through many characters and on many levels. What does it mean to be a parent, a friend, a lover ? How do we deceive others, and most crucially, ourselves, about our own actions and desires? All done in telling an absorbing story, full of fascinating characters, that can be deadly serious and hilariously funny in the most seemingly natural way. We don't just enjoy these people, we believe in them, we recognize them.<br /><br />Like a stagemaster, Dickens uses props to great effect. Joe's hat becomes a character in a kind of slapstick comedy that underlines his simple goodness, Pip's false sophistication, and the obstinacy of objects. Think also of Wemmick's castle/home, and, of course, Miss Havisham's grotesque bridal cake, decaying in the darkness of the stage set for her wedding. All of these theatrical abilities are essential to Dickens enchantment of an audience far removed from his place and time. It is his stagecraft that makes his work so suitable for cinema.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span>Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span>Totally agree with you. Dickens is about characters more than anything else. And it's the ability to create unforgettable characters that makes Dickens a great writer. Yes: theatrical characters and theatrical settings. Dickens is forever relevant, forever new -- because his characters, no matters how grotesque or otherwise exaggerated, are indeed irresistible.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I also agree that Great Expectations is Dickens's masterpiece, more complex than Oliver Twist, say, or David Copperfield, his other boyhood-centered novels. What a dark and powerful tale of growing up, of good and evil. </span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />*<br /><b>WHY ISLAM IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE MODERN WEST<br /></b><br />Blasphemy ( Not Compatible )<br />Polygamy ( Not Compatible )<br />Child Marriages ( Not Compatible )<br />Sharia law ( Not Compatible )<br />Female mutilation ( Not Compatible )<br />Forced Conversion ( Not Compatible )<br />Honor killing ( Not Compatible )<br />Sexual Slavery ( Not Compatible )<br />Female Infanticide ( Not Compatible )<br />Forbid female education (Not Compatible)<br />Intolerance to other religion ( Not Compatible)<br />Murder in the name of allah ( Not Compatible )<br />Intolerance to pork, alcohol ( Not Compatible)<br />Intolerance to music ( Not Compatible )<br />Triple talaq ( Not Compatible ) *divorce by a man's saying Talaq (release) three times<br />Nikah halala ( Not Compatible ) * a marriage for the purpose of making something forbidden permissible<br />Barred from dating ( Not Compatible )<br />Turning public places and famous tourist attractions into mosques ( Not Compatible)<br />Hijab, Burqa, Niqabs, abaya ( Not Compatible )<br />Mosque noise ( Not Compatible )<br />Morality police for enforcing hijab laws (Not Compatible)<br /><br />I don't need any reminders that some of these is not practiced or to be more precise “banned”.<br />For if it has to be banned it has to be practiced in the first place.<br /><br />It was banned because it was deemed to be bad and and the people who practiced it don’t deemed it to be bad, hence it was banned.<br /><br />What's worth mentioning is that “ MUSLIMS THEMSELVES SAYS THAT ISLAM IS THE SAME EVER SINCE IT HAS EXISTED” and there has been no change. So whatever inhumane and bad practice mentioned would still be practiced if it wasn't banned.<br /><br />*Talaq — the right of the husband to divorce his wife by saying the word “talaq” (release) three times. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">(Source: Quora)<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCgkhDaZlqgJfYNKZqx9QZjfSNVQHuDWbTtbczRF9-o-oOSXYXoHILWVZxD77CwZkSRvxUECRuzTOPOB7JrWroJMWfZxqXVGzKcrpf4vAXTwPvALWyc0Hu23uE8zvB1Kds5F28OMKVvytoIbyJ8ZaAlIvlM2yJVwbipv75MOYA6GElGiNk0fxz9gCjVM-g/s602/hamas%20dragging%20a%20body%20behnd%20motorcyle.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="301" data-original-width="602" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCgkhDaZlqgJfYNKZqx9QZjfSNVQHuDWbTtbczRF9-o-oOSXYXoHILWVZxD77CwZkSRvxUECRuzTOPOB7JrWroJMWfZxqXVGzKcrpf4vAXTwPvALWyc0Hu23uE8zvB1Kds5F28OMKVvytoIbyJ8ZaAlIvlM2yJVwbipv75MOYA6GElGiNk0fxz9gCjVM-g/w400-h200/hamas%20dragging%20a%20body%20behnd%20motorcyle.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Hamas fighter dragging a dead body behind a motorcycle<br /></i><br />*<br />Champalal Mali:<br /><br />Israeli Morgue Worker:</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“We saw many women with bloody underwear, with broken bones, broken legs, broken pelvises.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">They were all young women. Most in little clothing or shredded clothing and their bodies bloodied, particularly round their underwear, and some women shot many times in the face as if to mutilate them.<br /><br />Their faces were in anguish and often their fingers clenched as they died.”</span></span></p><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mary:</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Islamic fundamentalism is incompatible with the modern world. Much that is central to its practice is simply repugnant if not immediately, recognizably evil. It was a religion of war from its inception, terrorism follows naturally, is not a betrayal or distortion, but actually central. Its relegation of women to confinement, in the house, in the periphery, always property, always veiled, hidden, from totally with only a slit to allow vision, to the hijab...always guilty of being a temptation...condemned to these harsh confinements because men are seen as bestial and unable to control their basest urges. <b>An unveiled woman is guilty of the rape she provokes by her mere visibility. </b>These are repugnant, unjust, barbarian and ugly beliefs. A Muslim theocracy becomes exactly what you would expect from these base tenets. We know what heaven they promise to their martyrs...a rapist's paradise. And what place is there in paradise for all those hidden women?</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I don't know the women's place in Islamic paradise, but I know something about their place in hell. Specifically, women who show their hair to strangers will be hanging by their hair, and burning besides.</span></span><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> Extremism in any religion, whether Catholicism or Islam, creates hell here on earth besides the imaginary posthumous one.<br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYr0hAfNBORVxNsZ3nfY_KTzLvnbs0EVwAzDkaenwmojZwx5SfR3kXixaVuQmG4-EvkQ-VGJe-O8Q5RDTXkQz-xhstJRROHvMRsra-XosalSEmNhsXBnxF0HFLe4I_41Am2vSmm6n7_nqtTe-U7QolLFZ5P9p3i1EAHsLmpp0LWIhh-93M0so02WVnknQn/s504/hell%20islamic%20muhammad%20visits%20hell%20women%20punished%20for%20showing%20their%20hair%20to%20strangers.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="417" data-original-width="504" height="331" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYr0hAfNBORVxNsZ3nfY_KTzLvnbs0EVwAzDkaenwmojZwx5SfR3kXixaVuQmG4-EvkQ-VGJe-O8Q5RDTXkQz-xhstJRROHvMRsra-XosalSEmNhsXBnxF0HFLe4I_41Am2vSmm6n7_nqtTe-U7QolLFZ5P9p3i1EAHsLmpp0LWIhh-93M0so02WVnknQn/w400-h331/hell%20islamic%20muhammad%20visits%20hell%20women%20punished%20for%20showing%20their%20hair%20to%20strangers.jpg" width="400" /></a></div></span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>OCTOBER 7TH HAS NOT CHANGED THE MIDDLE EAST <br /></b><br />~ <i><b>Hamas’ pogrom against Israel on 7 October has not changed the Middle East, nor its fundamental political dynamics. Neither has Israel’s devastating military retaliation in Gaza. Neither has the explosion of anger worldwide.</b><br /></i><br />This apparently is a counter-intuitive point for those who assume events of such deafening noise must contain a signal. Observers claim an historic inflection point is at hand. Allegedly, the upheaval leaves ententes and settlements between Israel and its former adversaries in tatters. The outrage of everyone from Palestinians to the governments of the Middle East, we hear, will change the rules, prevent normalization and wreck America’s plans. <b>Yet despite declarations to the contrary, the evidence of the first fifty days suggests an undercurrent of continuity beneath the tumult. A disaster can be lethal without being transformative.</b><br /><br />True to their repertoire, the regimes of Arab-majority states walk a tightrope. Thus far, Egypt plays a double game. It allows but limits expressions of protest. <b>President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi refuses to open the border with Gaza, brands Hamas as terrorists and stays tight with Washington. In line with tradition, Cairo ruthlessly pursues its independent interests. Saudi Arabia condemns the warring parties, but signals its determination to resume its rapprochement with Israel once the crisis recedes. Other Gulf monarchies follow suit as parties of the Abraham Accords, seeking to build ties with Tel Aviv against Tehran. <br /></b><br /><b>Turkish President Recep Erdogan denounces Israel and praises the ‘mujahideen’. Yet he continues to allow the transport of oil shipments to Israel. </b>In common, t<b>hese regimes choreograph their responses to preserve the status quo, limit their liability and deflect or contain public rage.</b> Israel’s adversary and Iranian proxy over its northern border, <b>Hezbollah, thus far keeps a free hand and limits cross-border skirmishes with its nemesis. Eyeing Lebanon’s economic plight and fearing all-out conflict, a movement infamous for its apocalyptic rhetoric calculates carefully.<br /></b><br />Beyond rulers, there is little sign of bottom-up, paradigm-changing revolt, let alone a revolutionary wave. Close observers speak of populations both incensed yet moderate in their protest, mostly unseduced by Hamas and its ilk, renouncing indiscriminate violence and opting for peaceful mobilization. <b>There seems little appetite for further attempts at toppling their own rulers.</b><br /><br /><b>As for Washington, there is a familiar pattern: embracing Israel but exerting limited leverage.</b> President Joe Biden’s ‘bearhug’ of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu – a leader who boasts of his ability to manipulate America – yields few tangible gains. Even if America embraces Palestinian statehood, that cause is ever more remote. The superpower stays and brings its weight to bear mostly around the margins, to be cajoled and hectored by partners while its garrisons suffer missile attacks from Iranian-backed militias. Does this look like change to you?<br /><br />All this inertia has several sources. Firstly, there is the hollowness of rulers’ pan-Arabism. <b>Despite their rhetoric, the powers of the neighborhood don’t care enough about Palestinians to bleed for them. This is an old political reality. Most practitioners of politics in the area regard the Palestinians as expendable</b>. Governments in this volatile neighborhood will not obey the dictates of blood, kinship or ‘civilizational’ unity, any more than many Europeans are minded to fight a war of cultural solidarity for Ukraine.<br /><br />Israel’s neighboring regimes did not gain power and survive upheavals by following a cultural script that dictates who to align with, or fight against. When it suited Egypt, it betrayed its allies and Palestinians to agree the Camp David Accords with Israel in 1978. Pan-Arabism, like the call to pan-Islamic mobilization, has continually disappointed. <br /><br /><b>When Syrian president Hafez al-Assad massacred perhaps twenty thousand people in the town of Hama in 1982, potentates and clerics of nearby lands replied with silence</b>. In 1990, <b>Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, trying to rally the region as the new Saladin against ‘crusader’ Americans. The Gulf rulers demurred and joined the US-led coalition. </b>Against stereotypes of Arabs as cultural dupes, there is a rich history of cold Realpolitik.<br /><br />Just as governments have fine-tuned their techniques to hold mass discontent in check and divert it in safe directions, their subjects seem not to want a clash with their states in the first place. Many remember the violent destabilization that followed the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ over a decade ago. <b>They are aware that replacing despots with either anarchy or Islamist theocracy is a cure worse than the disease. This pattern holds despite the mounting deaths, maimings and displacement in Gaza.</b> Such a measured response also favors the status quo.<br /><br />The most consequential recent development in the region remains not the catastrophes in Israel and Palestine, but Iran’s power-projection via its own hand and proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, its growing nuclear program and its cold war with the Saudi bloc. <b>Iran’s adversaries are anxious to make detente with Israel to contain Iran</b>, even as they try to ease tensions with it. They refuse to hold everything hostage to the agony of Gaza.<br /><br />Second, <b>Washington’s posture in the Gulf may be strained, but has not altered</b>. The United States values other things too much and is too frightened of alienating so-called friends, to stake everything on resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict. Wisely or not, t<b>he superpower stands sentry in the region because of things it is not willing to sacrifice for the sake of Palestine, including oil, counter-terrorism, countering Iran, and </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>a habitual faith that it must not leave.</b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />The Biden administration preaches rules-based order and human rights, but the US also values alliances and partnerships with authoritarian regimes that violate these values as ends as well as means. <b>Across presidencies, the world’s leading superpower fears eviction from the Middle East more than its client-states fear American abandonment. Indeed, they exploit America’s fear of being seen to abandon their friends, and being supplanted by other powers.<br /></b><br />The former Director for Egypt and Israeli Military Issues at the US National Security Council put it this way: ‘<b>Egypt is ultimately too important to US interests to antagonize by withholding military aid</b>, coupled with skepticism regarding American ability to pressure Egypt. If Egypt is critical to the United States and coercion is unlikely to change those Egyptian policies with which Washington disagrees, the thinking goes, the only logical policy is to provide Egypt with unquestioning support.’ So ‘any deviation’ from providing annual military assistance ‘entails an unnecessary and unacceptable risk to US interests’.<br /><br />As long as Washington is reluctant to coerce, the tail-wagging-dog dynamic will endure. A second Trump presidency, judging by the last one in most of its dealings with states from Saudi Arabia to Israel, will be more indulgent. <b>Too scared to leave, too scared to coerce partners, the superpower loiters like a pitiful giant, its aid, diplomatic support and arms earning it complicity with little influence.</b><br /><br />Finally, fundamental change is a long way off because <b>there are no two willing parties committed to breaking the Israel-Palestine deadlock. This is the heart of the problem</b>. The difficulty lies not in the lack of a workable formula or the need for a strong outside broker. Rather, <b>the politics of both parties will not carry any compromise resolution of the conflict.</b> This continues the tradition of Madrid, Oslo, Camp David and Annapolis. <br /><br /><b>Hamas has now forced its captive population into collective, permanent jihad.</b> Israeli ultra-nationalists wield enough power domestically to spoil dreams of a compromise settlement, and <b>some Israeli officials’ overt ambition for ethnic cleansing further poisons the well.</b> Arguments that Gaza proves the West must try harder to solve the Israel-Palestine impasse overlook this reality. Efforts to reheat the old, hubristic line that the west must ‘sort out’ the issue echoes one of the oldest traditions of all, a Whiggish naivety better left behind. <br /><br /><a href="https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/7-october-has-not-changed-the-middle-east/">https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/7-october-has-not-changed-the-middle-east/</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiluAFjxvXhfxrAlVYlQBqnwNyGLyMxWvhDMLEknx1GkF4QPt_Tv1UJmlpVPSSgbYVRAWCCN3mW7HQdR2jXFlBc46YEMwJdkK6kb2TtNAhyphenhyphenwkWw_vcsB41zLNCUjcPUjvlw8ZxcE2JtdvgELHhALdZoLet9QhmF8uozT3JN-IxUn6AyE0RRzyD3Q25X_4Ay/s450/behead%20those%20who%20say%20Islam%20is%20violent.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="450" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiluAFjxvXhfxrAlVYlQBqnwNyGLyMxWvhDMLEknx1GkF4QPt_Tv1UJmlpVPSSgbYVRAWCCN3mW7HQdR2jXFlBc46YEMwJdkK6kb2TtNAhyphenhyphenwkWw_vcsB41zLNCUjcPUjvlw8ZxcE2JtdvgELHhALdZoLet9QhmF8uozT3JN-IxUn6AyE0RRzyD3Q25X_4Ay/w400-h400/behead%20those%20who%20say%20Islam%20is%20violent.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />*<br /><b>WHY IS IT NECESSARY TO DESTROY HAMAS?<br /></b><br />To end WWII, the Americans dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. I have no idea how many Japanese babies, children, women, old folk that died in those attacks. The allies bombed the hell out of Germany, almost leveling Dresden. Estimates were that 80,000 civilians died in those bombing runs. That doesn’t count the other German cities that were bombed.<br /><br />The Americans and the Allies did not start those wars and the intent was not to wipe out Germans and Japanese, but to cease their war efforts.<br /><br />War is not a nice thing.<br /><br /><b>Hamas began a war. Hamas needs to be destroyed. You cannot negotiate with militant muslims. They are driven by a perverted sense of toxic religious doctrine.<br /></b><br />If you feel that what Israel is doing is evil, then you should put on your fatigues and travel to Gaza and you take out Hamas. You show Israel how to win this war. You do it. You go in and kill Hamas members only. We will stand back and watch you.<br /><br /><b>Hamas and the Palestinians are so toxic that the other Arab countries will not let them cross their borders</b>. Egypt will not let them into Egypt. Jordon will not allow them into Jordon. Saudia Arabia will not let them into Saudia Arabia. ~ Jamie Daney, Quora<br /></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmS0ekLdPGYiKLEB7_GvoEmITkVUhVIKeaU_rTFm-AyTf01jMM2Xip3iAntOIgb8gF5G42F28cnRoKNikZlTJHgWG69-zJJrLcVoZ2RxnvevWIy3PoDoI3HbE0XVjPTEMSiDPqIHWam_aLC-y1aYuiiDicBbWA2696XBZz7fGUM2H_RHABGna9QeL8-uoR/s709/Hamas%20civilians%20burned%20alive.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="709" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmS0ekLdPGYiKLEB7_GvoEmITkVUhVIKeaU_rTFm-AyTf01jMM2Xip3iAntOIgb8gF5G42F28cnRoKNikZlTJHgWG69-zJJrLcVoZ2RxnvevWIy3PoDoI3HbE0XVjPTEMSiDPqIHWam_aLC-y1aYuiiDicBbWA2696XBZz7fGUM2H_RHABGna9QeL8-uoR/w340-h400/Hamas%20civilians%20burned%20alive.jpg" width="340" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Civilians burned alive by Hamas</i><br /><br />*<br /><b>THEORIES OF EVERYTHING </b><br /><br />~ Ten years ago, French economist Thomas Piketty wrote a book trying to explain the fundamental economic forces that shape the world. Capital in the Twenty-First Century became an unlikely bestseller, introducing to the book-buying masses such themes as the capital-income ratio, modifications to the Kuznets curve and the elasticity of substitution of labour. For a while, this unassuming Frenchman became a rock star akin to Jean-Paul Sartre (the mood of whose 1945 lecture Time magazine’s caption writer captured thus: “Philosopher Sartre. Women swoon”).</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIpLQPmTRT2ySuSeuivLCOK1lMiMZSo7fC1s3g7XQ1f7kYTJEob8lYRXNpEsTEfBpgfCHHCxzXdQ_cphhBYz5b3g3foqyzBAd96wv_1MSzMmcEl60wMLB-m3R2XcN4ypjW8tTJfxuBA8G0dLPHNg4JbluJBkl3GTCBfK-pyArKSCBCuOjNF-6sNcNVUoXK/s445/piketty%20capital.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="288" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIpLQPmTRT2ySuSeuivLCOK1lMiMZSo7fC1s3g7XQ1f7kYTJEob8lYRXNpEsTEfBpgfCHHCxzXdQ_cphhBYz5b3g3foqyzBAd96wv_1MSzMmcEl60wMLB-m3R2XcN4ypjW8tTJfxuBA8G0dLPHNg4JbluJBkl3GTCBfK-pyArKSCBCuOjNF-6sNcNVUoXK/w259-h400/piketty%20capital.jpg" width="259" /></a></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Nobody swooned at London’s Peacock theatre when Piketty gave a lecture there one summer’s evening nine years ago, but there were queues around the block. Piketty had a message people wanted to hear: economics should be used for good rather than evil, to effectively redistribute wealth.<br /><br />Piketty sought to convince readers that the 20th century had been unusual: rapid, unrepeatable population increases that helped accelerate growth, combined with shocks (two world wars, the Great Depression) that reduced the value of capital and so kept inequalities low. These are exceptions in human history rather than the rules. The 21st century, he argued, won’t be like the 20th. If we don’t act, the accumulation of capital in the hands of the very few will resemble the norms in the early 19th or 18th centuries.<br /><br />It seems clear, as we live through a new cost of living crisis presided over by a millionaire prime minister, that Piketty’s message didn’t get through. But one thing that did take hold in the wake of Capital’s unexpected success was the phenomenon of the “theory of everything” book.<br /><br />**<br /> “Though an heir to Tocqueville’s tradition of analytic history, Thomas Piketty has a message that could not be more different: <b>Unless we act, inequality will grow much worse, eventually making a mockery of our democratic institutions. </b>With wealth more and more concentrated, countries racing to cut taxes on capital, and inheritance coming to rival entrepreneurship as a source of riches, a new patrimonial elite may prove as inevitable as Tocqueville once believed democratic equality was…Perhaps with this magisterial book, the troubling realities Piketty unearths will become more visible and the rationalizations of the privileged that sustain them less dominant. Like Tocqueville, Piketty has given us a new image of ourselves. This time, it’s one we should resist, not welcome.” ~ Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, American Prospect<br /><br />**<br /><b>“One of my favorite literary genres is what I like to refer to as The One Thing That Explains Everything or Tottee” says economist Michael Muthukrishna</b>. Examples of the genre, which has mushroomed since Capital was published in 2013 (and translated into English in 2014), include the 704-page The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow (2021), Peter Frankopan’s 636-page The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (2015) and the Oxford professor of global history’s latest The Earth Transformed: An Untold History (published this year, at 736 pages), Sarah Bakewell’s 464-page Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist, Freethinking, Enquiry and Hope, and every book Yuval Noah Harari has ever written, but especially his 512-page Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind, which was published in English in 2015.<br /><br />Now add to these <b>Muthukrishna’s A Theory of Everyone: Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going</b>, published in September. His book begins with a story told by the late American novelist David Foster Wallace about two fish swimming along happily when they meet an older fish. “Morning, boys,” says the latter. “How’s the water?” The two young fish swim on and then one asks the other: “What the hell is water?” That’s one of the purposes of Tottee for Muthukrishna –<b> to show us something that is so fundamental to our lives that we don’t see it.</b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheJ7G5cRODNCAyf1arXeBsiwzaFm19INSRVib27b15pesJJgM_5jaOsJLqnJUDvkBGH9sFr1UJgO4grX2qpTam-1hg9kSEpdlOzprkX-uulH_9UhudBpNdLRK0HeiDcsj3D4wL31vaCyRq2bepvffW3wy_EcvCrDbchwf3iPMzMNnA9punp1NwDC2xH07J/s1500/a%20theory%20of%20everyone.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="994" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheJ7G5cRODNCAyf1arXeBsiwzaFm19INSRVib27b15pesJJgM_5jaOsJLqnJUDvkBGH9sFr1UJgO4grX2qpTam-1hg9kSEpdlOzprkX-uulH_9UhudBpNdLRK0HeiDcsj3D4wL31vaCyRq2bepvffW3wy_EcvCrDbchwf3iPMzMNnA9punp1NwDC2xH07J/w265-h400/a%20theory%20of%20everyone.jpg" width="265" /></a><br /></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">For the fish it is water; for us, Muthukrishna argues, it is energy. We flip a switch and on comes a light. We power up the microwave, not thinking about where the juice comes from to fire up our leftovers, or the foodstuffs themselves, originated. His theory connects energy with evolution: “It’s about the way in which <b>energy breakthroughs across the grand timescale of our species have led to periods of abundance that have in turn led to increases in the number of people, which in turn have led to scarcity and conflict.</b>”<br /><br />Such books often have grand ambitions to turn our complacent worldviews upside down. In The Silk Roads, Frankopan attempts nothing less than a major reassessment of world history, in which the usual occidental characters are not center stage. So too do Graeber and Wingrow in The Dawn of Everything, in which they effectively mobilize <b>Gandhi’s remark about western civilization (“It would be a good idea”)</b> in a takedown of the purportedly rational Enlightenment west.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The synoptic book is not a new invention, of course. George Eliot skewered its pretensions in her 1871 novel Middlemarch, describing the dry Rev Casaubon’s unending research for a tome called A Key to All Mythologies. </b>His less deluded wife Dorothea comprehended what he did not: that recent German scholarship made his life’s work a waste of time. More recent examples have had different problems. One of the bestselling nonfiction volumes of the last millennium, Stephen Hawking’s 1988 A Brief History of Time, was once dubbed the most unread book of all time. In 2014, mathematician Jordan Ellenberg even devised the “Hawking Index”, to measure how far people will, on average, read through a book before giving up. Brief History averaged 6.6%, while Donna Tartt’s epic novel The Goldfinch averaged 98.5%.<br /><br />The publishers’ dream then is to marry the profundity of Hawking with the readability of Tartt, to create the book that everybody with two brain cells to rub together wants to find in their Christmas stocking.<br /><br />For Casiana Ionita, publishing director at Penguin, the appeal of these books is that academic experts can give us something we don’t otherwise get in our post-truth era of self serving, inegalitarian mendacious politicians. “After decades of our main narratives being defined by traditional economics and neoliberalism, people feel the need for alternatives. There’s something very encouraging about this interest in experts after years of politicians saying we don’t need them.”<br /><br />But Ionita would say that: she’s the editor responsible for some of the best recent nonfiction by academics supplying big ideas to mass audiences – Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli, Albanian political scientist Lea Ypi, Russian-American complexity scientist Peter Turchin and Canadian sociologist Michèle Lamont. “I think there is significant reader appetite for books that offer a new lens to understand the upheaval of the last few years – Brexit and Trump, the pandemic, climate change, war,” she says.<br /><br />So who reads these books? Turchin’s End Times: Elites, Counter Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration might give us a clue. One of his key ideas is that of the surplus elites produced by neoliberal capitalism. <b>Turchin argues that there is a large class of disgruntled wannabes, often educated and highly capable, who feel shut out</b>. Essentially the western world seethes with humanities graduates with low status, working in the kind of professions the late anthropologist David Graeber called “bullshit jobs”.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFfx_FeYB0E-0h60_wG95rAi11A-bvOgvTgU_0D51TqbsWq_zzrLE7t7_pTCEEGpt3vnSF1WrB-1jzRiQrYnXE2b6K1v06qIU-t3uSV7Hf7FCOeo1imZP-xP-jeOHfuCBAJ_w-_eYpkmNkIIWAAdfFIstp1fJ98KENPBSXiga6xMuGY1Qqt44IuFg4CF96/s1500/end%20times%20Peter%20Turchin.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="987" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFfx_FeYB0E-0h60_wG95rAi11A-bvOgvTgU_0D51TqbsWq_zzrLE7t7_pTCEEGpt3vnSF1WrB-1jzRiQrYnXE2b6K1v06qIU-t3uSV7Hf7FCOeo1imZP-xP-jeOHfuCBAJ_w-_eYpkmNkIIWAAdfFIstp1fJ98KENPBSXiga6xMuGY1Qqt44IuFg4CF96/w264-h400/end%20times%20Peter%20Turchin.jpg" width="264" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">**<br />The lessons of world history are clear, Turchin argues: <b>When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable.</b> As income inequality surges and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites, the common people suffer, and society-wide efforts to become an elite grow ever more frenzied. <b>He calls this process the wealth pump; it’s a world of the damned and the saved. And since the number of such positions remains relatively fixed, the overproduction of elites inevitably leads to frustrated elite aspirants, who harness popular resentment to turn against the established order.</b> Turchin’s models show that when this state has been reached, societies become locked in a death spiral it's very hard to exit.<br /><br /><b>In America, the wealth pump has been operating full blast for two generations. As cliodynamics shows us, our current cycle of elite overproduction and popular immiseration is far along the path to violent political rupture</b>. That is only one possible end time, and the choice is up to us, but the hour grows late. ~ Amazon </span><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqBi4pL6Vd5IrzDPtQsCQl8NmFMPXZ2tti2eGknZ0LAT5CSssOrOeqb8hVYRgmo-OZvscuYu2M0pE8AaYnLG16rX0JgbhPkXEaSsNrsDYjmsrzvpUA8Jb7GSK9FyVRt1gcwmcdR5MFTsY3HoKAn_K-_RjUHpPWw36S9YwcYAy9OCgZDiH7TtQry6Axwnfg/s2560/cliodynamics%20elite%20overproduction.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="2560" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqBi4pL6Vd5IrzDPtQsCQl8NmFMPXZ2tti2eGknZ0LAT5CSssOrOeqb8hVYRgmo-OZvscuYu2M0pE8AaYnLG16rX0JgbhPkXEaSsNrsDYjmsrzvpUA8Jb7GSK9FyVRt1gcwmcdR5MFTsY3HoKAn_K-_RjUHpPWw36S9YwcYAy9OCgZDiH7TtQry6Axwnfg/w400-h225/cliodynamics%20elite%20overproduction.png" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">**<br />Surely these frustrated elites are the perfect target for books that purport to explain how the world works? But, as Muthukrishna argues, these books rest on an imposture. <b>“You and I know – and so too do the authors of these books – that the world is complicated. Arrows of causality point in multiple directions, and even feed back on each other. No one thing explains everything.”</b><br /><br /><b>This is a truth that Hawking, who literally wrote a book called The Theory of Everything, realized after appreciating the full ramifications of Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, whereby in any reasonable mathematical system there will always be true statements that cannot be proved. </b>And yet we carry on regardless. </span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Finding a theory of everything – explaining all the forces and particles in the universe – remains the holy grail for some physicists. Though you’d think the fact that so many professors have their own theories of everything suggests that there isn’t just one, but many contenders, all jostling in the marketplace of ideas. ~</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/02/from-pikettys-capital-to-hawkings-the-theory-of-everything-can-one-book-explain-it-all?utm_term=657457ef3a5f54b6edc2082d372a712d&utm_campaign=InsideSaturday&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=insidesaturday_email">https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/02/from-pikettys-capital-to-hawkings-the-theory-of-everything-can-one-book-explain-it-all?utm_term=657457ef3a5f54b6edc2082d372a712d&utm_campaign=InsideSaturday&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=insidesaturday_email<br /></a><br />**</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIvTSPf3y_7EI_HyluYToT66GfxQXk8lkydn-mJPHwifOkCViY2eC9Qph6l_ad_VQl5ZdNKbW9V_6K-3FrjT8DeTRVUUzxBN5neovonJFYMZPuKpBd9stKK9VDB6l2d7dciyIKfsCHSjV-POsU5a-G5lZ8291TUMh-ptxUJdmAfOEcncbv0jbrU3ykVhnx/s1484/billion%20definition%20cartoon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1171" data-original-width="1484" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIvTSPf3y_7EI_HyluYToT66GfxQXk8lkydn-mJPHwifOkCViY2eC9Qph6l_ad_VQl5ZdNKbW9V_6K-3FrjT8DeTRVUUzxBN5neovonJFYMZPuKpBd9stKK9VDB6l2d7dciyIKfsCHSjV-POsU5a-G5lZ8291TUMh-ptxUJdmAfOEcncbv0jbrU3ykVhnx/w400-h316/billion%20definition%20cartoon.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">And here’s one additional book whose description I found seductive:<br /><br />~ In the West, the ultra-rich control almost everything. They fund politicians and exert strong influence on government spending. Mastodont private companies completely dominate our way of life, what we eat, drink, watch on TV, what we wear and who we vote for. They are the owners of social media, the mainstream media and the entertainment business.<br /><br />Yet, it would be impossible for the billionaire class to amass this wealth into their own hands, without the active use of socialist repression. The Marxist attack on historic Western values has weakened the very core of our culture, destroyed social stability, quenched free speech and silenced the people - and thereby removed the obstacles for the billionaire class to gain centralized control.<br /><br />Marxism has been the perfect tool to destroy the traditional system of trust, personal responsibility and equality regardless of race, class, or gender. Read the story of how Marxism <br />was used to curb freedom. <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />“Hanne Nabintu Herland has written another important book in which she explains the consequences of the control exercised over the entire Western World by a handful of giant American investment companies who have no commitment to freedom and morality.” Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, leading American political economist.<br /><br />"A keen observer of current trends, Herland connects the many global dots to expose the war of subversion the Marxist Left is waging against civilization in her latest must-read book.” ~ Best-selling author, Middle East expert, Raymond Ibrahim.<br /></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBRN4ic5Oz0LnGw4ms3C6VGAXplQbf_8k0v84jXCyBk3Fh757OTrBp2Y5ATxOUvXcBYPMQXcCy5Fkeam73MJjW8Xlb7WavMa_jla_ZJUZ7ddsmckUMPNrPlYeaVunh4P-FIcxDoY5o7dryHQFtmWI-oPHye2JjRNi1QUkxlMxNOHqX19K60h9d_vpb1J1s/s1500/billionaire%20world%20Hanne%20Nabintu%20Herland.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="969" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBRN4ic5Oz0LnGw4ms3C6VGAXplQbf_8k0v84jXCyBk3Fh757OTrBp2Y5ATxOUvXcBYPMQXcCy5Fkeam73MJjW8Xlb7WavMa_jla_ZJUZ7ddsmckUMPNrPlYeaVunh4P-FIcxDoY5o7dryHQFtmWI-oPHye2JjRNi1QUkxlMxNOHqX19K60h9d_vpb1J1s/w259-h400/billionaire%20world%20Hanne%20Nabintu%20Herland.jpg" width="259" /></a></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>LENIN AMONG THE MOST OVERRATED HISTORICAL PERSONAGES<br /></b><br />Lenin would rank quite high on the Most-Overrated list.<br /><br />It’s true that he had an extraordinary energy level and IQ that made him a star among revolutionaries. He was instrumental in swaying events his way at many critical forks. <b>He had a powerful vision—mostly delusional—that made him a towering figure among millions of confused, disillusioned Russians when Imperial Russia collapsed in 1917.</b><br /><br />However, an extraordinary revolutionary turned out to be a lousy statesman. On his watch, in a matter of a couple of years, Russia was reduced to a smoldering ruin, with millions who fled the country, and possibly as many as 10–12 millions dead in the Civil War. Add to his body count the catastrophic famine at the end of his rule.<br /><br /><b>He implemented the entire Ten-Point Action Plan of the Communist Manifesto, but rolled it back in the early 1920s. He introduced a slipshod version of State Capitalism that ran aground a few years later, and Stalin had to dismantle it altogether.</b><br /><br />Lenin’s contribution to Marxism was modest. If you look into the collection of his publications, it’s rarely more than another eloquent explanation of how whatever he was doing is entirely in line with the Marxist theory. <b>The teachings in Lenin’s works of how to take and hold power are profound but not particularly Communist. They are up for grabs by anyone dead-bent on becoming a ruler, no matter left-wing or right.<br /></b><br />Nothing came out of Lenin’s attempts to establish a Communist grassroots oversight over the Soviet bureaucracy. <b>Almost everything we associate with Bolshevism and the USSR was the product of others (mainly Stalin, but also much of Trotsky)</b>.<br /><br />The man left no apparent ideological successors and no kids. <b>The revolution he started ran out of steam even before he died. The state he founded collapsed after a mere 74 years of existence.</b><br /><br />He wanted to be buried in St. Petersburg beside his mother. His comrades ignored him and his wife. They gave his dead body to taxidermists and then laid it out for public display at the foot of the Kremlin wall. Where it still is, primarily because of a fear of public disturbance if it were moved.<br /><br />*<br />Below, the Lenin statue at the Finland railway station in St Petersburg, vandalized by anonymous performance artists in 2009.<br /></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiUb6dFX_76Ur6jNCajBA8uSEjwPv_DZyP6PCYYSXmbFnEo9XkIPZX8yomNgYXyhQJnuVfj3PN8PtP8aH-U-RIgaCETdlkN8ZW5M_Vk3sUqx3VI5TaTCFTKt18odFxmUDAdEqOsf26NGCeQj16eq6pRvPTwH5IkOInxD02PxEnZeQf7DYBV5O3NOv2-1bH/s861/LENIN%20vandalized%20SPB.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="861" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiUb6dFX_76Ur6jNCajBA8uSEjwPv_DZyP6PCYYSXmbFnEo9XkIPZX8yomNgYXyhQJnuVfj3PN8PtP8aH-U-RIgaCETdlkN8ZW5M_Vk3sUqx3VI5TaTCFTKt18odFxmUDAdEqOsf26NGCeQj16eq6pRvPTwH5IkOInxD02PxEnZeQf7DYBV5O3NOv2-1bH/w280-h400/LENIN%20vandalized%20SPB.jpg" width="280" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> Lenin had some concentration camps but not Gulag.<br /><br />Gulag was a colonization and modernization project. Lenin didn't have the capacity for that. Soviet rule under Lenin was all about keeping the head above water.<br /><br />Andy Wiskonsky:<br />Lenin’s policy of korenizatsia (emphasis on the languages and cultures of the ethnic republics within the soyuz) might have solved the ethnic issues within the Soviet Union and lea to some level of decentralization of economic and political power from the Moscow Kremlin.<br /><br />Stalin reversed those policies and eventually embraced Great Russian imperialism over the entire Soviet Union. The rapidity of the Soviet collapse was well illustrated during the Belovezha Accords where Russia, Ukraine and Belarus dissolved the Soviet Union with no inputs from the lame duck Gorbachov.<br /><br />Paul Reinke:<br />Without a doubt the most accurate homage to the man’s character and impact.<br /><br />Simon Henrik:<br />Not to mention he was a homicidal terror maniac.<br /><br />Chris Kerhovjac:<br /><b>To be fair to Lenin, he led the FIRST successful Marxist revolution. And thus he was the FIRST to learn that it was all bullshit. None of that shit actually works when you try to implement it in the real world.<br /></b></span><br /><span style="color: #800180;"><b>And from then on, for Lenin and his successors, it was just trial and error to figure out how best to move forward and hold onto power, without anyone admitting that they were wrong (and that Marx was wrong)</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;">. <b>74 years of painting lipstick on a pig and pretending everything was great, killing or imprisoning anyone who disagreed, until it finally rotted out from under them and collapsed.<br /></b><br />Ion Muraru:<br />Never underestimate the political leaders’ love for their people!<br /><br />PS And the opposite, looks like somebody raped the ass of that statue.<br /><br />Mike Mike:<br />Just a bad case of gas.<br /><br />Mike Sisley:<br />He did warn them about the next guy [Stalin].<br /><br />Alexander Angel:<br />Lenin’s ‘Collected Works’ we’re the Soviet bloc Bible. Lenin was considered a Christ-like Messiah. Marx wasn’t mentioned that much. His portrait was only prominent in East Germany and North Viêt Nam. Nikita Khrushchyëv could be overrated. Fídel Castro Ruz (somewhat more Marx than Lenin) and Nicolas Čeaušescu could be quite overrated by the late 1960s.<br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;">Oriana:<br />Lenin’s portrait was very prominent in “socialist” Poland. It hung in every classroom. Giant portraits of him were carried in every May First parade. Part of our education was to make us adore Lenin and, at least marginally his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya. I didn’t learn that Lenin had a mistress, Inessa Armand, until my adult years. </span></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Saint Lenin having an affair! It would be like learning that the Pope had a very active sex life.<br /></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy0tkDK-w5qPGOOHkNAvwKuuhrBHOPpM5OEhx-Bo9cWLztzVwcDz5IRAYWYKd7xvQHcYiC3aLn4yeKe-ChazZ4a1odMV7xr4nm8pxDWnxCHCUeMijjgD62Oo0Q7W0vgWt5Da3yfW7byCzo16ltCu0mQLfCZw1sKKcrM1U4WBZiWP6sMh6KSPuXxy9DnA_6/s676/Krupskaya%20Nadiezhda%20in%20her%20twenties.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="676" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy0tkDK-w5qPGOOHkNAvwKuuhrBHOPpM5OEhx-Bo9cWLztzVwcDz5IRAYWYKd7xvQHcYiC3aLn4yeKe-ChazZ4a1odMV7xr4nm8pxDWnxCHCUeMijjgD62Oo0Q7W0vgWt5Da3yfW7byCzo16ltCu0mQLfCZw1sKKcrM1U4WBZiWP6sMh6KSPuXxy9DnA_6/w356-h400/Krupskaya%20Nadiezhda%20in%20her%20twenties.webp" width="356" /></a><i><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Krupskaya in her twenties.</span></i></div><p>*</p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbA7zeq5wscySp9LpHcn6c9ZJ2HmCQ-rEQLddYgtdTJYcj1kmftHeuMmOSVhJ9HIHZQYpPnIMoEJW943LW4oFdnkTD1gIA74loJ7rh3Zr4N-cmHXmxSoLF1IYKTO8pq70gVHpdOIdz_mDgYdOrkgEvZDgEFEKu3YnHYLnaCljU2pLyJdoYCwtAc751dN28/s280/inessa%20armand%201890s.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="280" data-original-width="187" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbA7zeq5wscySp9LpHcn6c9ZJ2HmCQ-rEQLddYgtdTJYcj1kmftHeuMmOSVhJ9HIHZQYpPnIMoEJW943LW4oFdnkTD1gIA74loJ7rh3Zr4N-cmHXmxSoLF1IYKTO8pq70gVHpdOIdz_mDgYdOrkgEvZDgEFEKu3YnHYLnaCljU2pLyJdoYCwtAc751dN28/w267-h400/inessa%20armand%201890s.jpg" width="267" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span style="color: #351c75;">Inessa Armand. The only time Lenin was seen crying was at her funeral. </span><br /></i></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>TEACHING ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST </b><br /><br />Here's an interesting viewpoint. The following is a copy of an article written by Spanish writer Sebastian Vilar Rodriguez and published in a Spanish newspaper. It doesn't take much imagination to extrapolate the message to the rest of Europe, and possibly to the rest of the world.<br /><br />~ "I walked down the streets in Barcelona and suddenly discovered a terrible truth: Europe died in Auschwitz. We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a group of people who represented culture, thought, creativity, talent.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNxI0Qq4shyH6dAlZgJ0QVn5KSFcIn7S9c2G-H-xMhcEWHKwX-eh5DzwUsoTndPKD2BFyBSMlyq7NSsfnj7Y2OaglY5cahEOzVG6JkeRfzIZYLkqgPIKaakRl64Ad_7ImRrOJdHsPl7QkpHd82nFO-Su_tT0Ldg8t_-4cArbe-GKqk_6ePDNuqklUKWkbW/s602/arbeit%20macht%20frei%20sign.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="339" data-original-width="602" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNxI0Qq4shyH6dAlZgJ0QVn5KSFcIn7S9c2G-H-xMhcEWHKwX-eh5DzwUsoTndPKD2BFyBSMlyq7NSsfnj7Y2OaglY5cahEOzVG6JkeRfzIZYLkqgPIKaakRl64Ad_7ImRrOJdHsPl7QkpHd82nFO-Su_tT0Ldg8t_-4cArbe-GKqk_6ePDNuqklUKWkbW/s320/arbeit%20macht%20frei%20sign.jpg" width="320" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who made great contributions to the world, and thus changed the world.<br /><br />It is now approximately seventy years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This post is meant to serve as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, twenty million Russians, ten million Christians, including nineteen-hundred Catholic priests, who were murdered, raped, burned, starved, beaten, experimented on and humiliated. Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming The Holocaust to be “a myth,” it is imperative to make sure the world "never forgets.”<br /><br />We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.<br /><br />What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe.<br /><br /><b>Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it “offends” the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet. <br /></b><br />However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving in to it.<br /><br />And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the diseases of racism and bigotry, Europe opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty, due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.<br /><br />They have blown up our trains and turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime. Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts. And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition.<br /><br />It is now approximately seventy years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This email is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, twenty million Russians, ten million Christians, and nineteen-hundred Catholic priests who were murdered, raped, burned, starved, beaten, experimented on and humiliated. Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming The Holocaust to be “a myth,” it is imperative to make sure the world "never forgets.”<br /></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_qjaTJmk8hgijAuu_aKttdEj_g50Dp3HW8SGoSJ9AM7KKPs46nS_tKy-SC_NKA14HJJIorl2G7q2Y5GdwgPU7403VxI4ByTyAjtpCbDgyyOgoQ7P_-YDCO19oRJHuJK9vc5Nq4lR-etFtyyBKsn2w9bNYh4opoEZI-zBN1EEhK8iXudr12tIwmJexbApZ/s268/holocaust%20boxcar.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="193" data-original-width="268" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_qjaTJmk8hgijAuu_aKttdEj_g50Dp3HW8SGoSJ9AM7KKPs46nS_tKy-SC_NKA14HJJIorl2G7q2Y5GdwgPU7403VxI4ByTyAjtpCbDgyyOgoQ7P_-YDCO19oRJHuJK9vc5Nq4lR-etFtyyBKsn2w9bNYh4opoEZI-zBN1EEhK8iXudr12tIwmJexbApZ/w400-h288/holocaust%20boxcar.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center “NEVER HAPPENED” because it offends some Muslim in the United States?<br /><br />If our Judeo-Christian heritage is offensive to Muslims, they should pack up and move to Iran, Iraq or some other shithole Muslim country. Please do not just delete this message; it will take only a minute to pass this along. We must wake up America, England, Australia and Europe before it's too late.<br /><br />**<br /><i><b>"If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.” ~ David Thomas, Quora</b><br /></i><br />*<br /><b>MISHA FIRER ON THE LACK OF LOGIC IN RUSSIA</b><br /><br />~ Westerners are looking for logic in Putin’s actions, but he’s Russian and he ain’t got none.<br />What are the consequences of this war and the record number of sanctions two years after the invasion ? <b>All the residual things that simmered below in Russia have bubbled up to the surface — bigotry, rage, superstitions, backwardness, militarism.<br /></b><br />The most viewed TV series today is about youth gangs “Word of the Pal” that proliferated in Russia in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.<br /><br />Yesterday, I wrote that instead of manufacturing cars, Russia produces kamikaze drones. I thought it was a turn of speech but it’s literally so!<br /><br />Vladimir Putin meets with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in the Kremlin and makes an agreement with him about <b>a new Russian production of Iranian Shahed drones: they’ll be assembled from ready-made Iranian parts in the Samara SEZ Zhigulevskaya Valley instead of Zhiguli cars.</b><br /><br />There’s a growing number of incidents involving malfunctioning passenger planes that had to make emergency landings. It is a direct result of lack of maintenance and original parts (sanctions, again).<br /><br /><b>A passenger plane made an emergency landing at Novosibirsk Tolmachevo Airport due to a fire in the engines. This is such a common occurrence now that it has its own term “to land with a spark.”<br /></b><br />There were 176 people on board the Boeing 737. <b>While ascending, sparks and flames suddenly flew from both engines. </b></span><br /><b><br /></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Engine. The most sophisticated part of the plane that Russians cannot understand how to make nor maintain. <b>It’s always the engine that goes up in sparks and flames.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The crew requested a landing from the dispatcher, after which they were able to successfully land the airplane.<br /><br />Russian men have a tendency to wait till the last moment to fill the gas tanks of their cars. Meter says the tank is empty but the driver observes flippantly, “Oh, there’s still enough gas for at least three miles. Don’t worry about it. I’m sure there’s a gas station just around the corner.”<br /><br />Airbus A320 after emergency landing in the wheat field in Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia. Pilot Sergey Belov: “We ran out of fuel because we flew to another city by mistake.” <b>They calculated fuel to Omsk but flew to Novosibirsk.</b><br /><br />In September, 2023 Ural Airlines pilots had to make an emergency landing in the wheat field of the same Novosibirsk region because they incorrectly calculated the amount of fuel.<br />PILOT: “Eduard, we’re out of fuel. I thought we are flying to Omsk and had to change the course. We need some fuel otherwise we gonna stall. Do you see any gas station below where we can fill in the tank?”<br /><br />CO-PILOT: “Sergey, there’s one by the wheat field.”<br /><br />PILOT: “Great. I’m gonna park our plane in the field and you run to the gas station with a canister. Charge it to the Ural Airlines.”<br /><br />The investigation concluded that <b>like any self-respecting brutalsky men the two pilots waited till the last moment to fill in the tanks. They also first flew to the wrong city</b>. It’s the air hostess’s fault — she served them too much vodka.<br /><br />“You had to think about whether you had enough gasoline when you decided to fly to another airport,” the investigator castigated hapless pilots.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">You don’t say. Calculate? Not in Russia. Nobody does any calculations. EVER. You wing it and let the chips fall where they are.<br /><br />Do you think Eduard and Sergey feel any remorse for putting their passengers through this terrible ordeal?<br /><br /><b>Pilots refused to write letters of resignation. They believe they did nothing wrong!<br /></b><br />The mother (!) of one of the pilots, Sergei Belov, complained about Ural Airlines to the Kremlin because the airline was “confused” and <b>her son always drives with empty tank and manages to make it to a gas station.</b><br /><br />And besides he’s a hero because he landed the plane safely and nobody died.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9pTXF79nzc6H0s-rrGynq20K0hb-msnbXm_7NbhY5f2_8u2MOZ3NSWPf8LbKxIKb2iUySEB_Dhek2fO3qdnjBq0j6AzvzHHVCxAgkJl2BGPt-eQKZ3cBZ75-azeQFRiGTQXl1Eniqig9sTfsQm5TS9il4czU5RNBlAiprCfejVnwLsbZnlwjcTg0pdB__/s602/Ural%20Airways%20airbus%20in%20field.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="382" data-original-width="602" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9pTXF79nzc6H0s-rrGynq20K0hb-msnbXm_7NbhY5f2_8u2MOZ3NSWPf8LbKxIKb2iUySEB_Dhek2fO3qdnjBq0j6AzvzHHVCxAgkJl2BGPt-eQKZ3cBZ75-azeQFRiGTQXl1Eniqig9sTfsQm5TS9il4czU5RNBlAiprCfejVnwLsbZnlwjcTg0pdB__/w400-h254/Ural%20Airways%20airbus%20in%20field.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The Ural Airways was in no rush to get the plane out of the field. They built a fence around it so nobody would steal any parts which had been smuggled through Dubai from Iran.<br /><br />The field around the plane was plowed — it was harvest time, and there’s a runaway, but the plane could not take off.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0E7tHZlD5wYWo3X6iJxSE77fu6rf5PSmV0Nv5YX5podFQo-Y8DaQl6_SM6-goyk9sZDvJCAe4MvdMdCMJHiMGenVEI2DU5UJYxhIFS_30VNwW-27lKd9dev5INpdfoFFQuwjqFrjWaUCqNDm5tSkrSTfZktA71Emv8f-MGwgfh3pGYYc5Y7n013GaoD16/s602/airbus%20dismantled.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="338" data-original-width="602" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0E7tHZlD5wYWo3X6iJxSE77fu6rf5PSmV0Nv5YX5podFQo-Y8DaQl6_SM6-goyk9sZDvJCAe4MvdMdCMJHiMGenVEI2DU5UJYxhIFS_30VNwW-27lKd9dev5INpdfoFFQuwjqFrjWaUCqNDm5tSkrSTfZktA71Emv8f-MGwgfh3pGYYc5Y7n013GaoD16/w400-h225/airbus%20dismantled.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><b>In the end, the Airbus plane was dismantled for parts and written off as scrap.</b> Oh charge it to Sergey Belov. He’ll pay it off after 4,600 years of work. ~ Misha Firer, Quora<br /><br />James Urie:<br /><i><b>Having no replacement brake parts has forced some Russian carriers to land without brakes and using thrust reverse to slow the aircraft down. Flying in Russia a new version of Russian roulette.</b></i><br /><br />Pericles Bacchus:<br /><b>I recall when the USSR collapsed, way back in the late 80’s. There was such a palpable sense of exhilaration. It was all over the media of the times. In music etc. Then I read a piece by a journalist, I forget the name, but the thrust of it was this: </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>what is going to replace the Soviet regime in Russia? That there was a very real danger of mob rule. Organized crime would likely fill the vacuum of the country that has no leader, nor workable system to keep it functioning. It would seem there was more truth in these words than most thought at the time.</b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />Hamsini Sitini:<br />What happened to the Soviet aviation products like Tupolev etc? I saw one in Fat Kim’s DPRK, still functional.<br /><br />*<br /><b>KUDA, RUS'? WHERE IS RUSSIA HEADING? (Dima Vorobiev)</b><br /><br /><b>Russian future defies linear predictions. Any answer based on past experience most likely would point in the wrong direction.<br /></b><br />Consider the following:<br /><br />At the start of the 17th century, it appeared like Muscovy was on track to become an aristocratic democracy based on the laws of the Zemsky Sobor, modeled after Poland, and possibly even with a Polish/Swedish dynasty on the throne.<br /><br /><b>At the start of the 18th century, it looked like Russia was poised to conquer the Ottoman Empire and become the dominant power in the Eastern Mediterranean, with its capital city in Azov or even in Constantinople.</b><br /><br />At the start of the 19th century, it appeared like Russia was destined to become a playground for a Francophone Russian-speaking Prussian aristocracy, forever allied with Britain as the main market for its colonial goods.<br /><br /><b>As late as the 1880s, it looked like Russia was set to partition Central Europe and, in the longer term, even the Balkans all the way down to the Straits, in partnership with its new powerful ally, the united German empire.<br /></b><br />Right before WW1, Russia appeared poised to become a constitutional monarchy after the British model, potentially pioneering what later became known as Fascism (and possibly even Nazism). <br /><br /><b>After the 1917 revolution and the civil war, the Soviet Union appeared to be headed for a long period of internal conflict. A state-controlled oligarchy was about to form, similar to modern-day China</b>. <br /><br />Following World War II, the USSR emerged as a powerful force, expanding into the African and Asian territories of colonial powers France, Britain, and Portugal. <br /><br />By the 1970s, the USSR had achieved strategic parity with NATO, thanks to its newly acquired petroleum wealth from West Siberia. We had all the money in the world. We used it to amass giant tank armadas, ready to roll on Western Europe, which was demoralized, suffering from oil shortages, plagued by stagflation, and torn by social tensions and peace movements.”<br /><br /><b>As recently as the mid-1980s, when some prescient souls predicted that the USSR would not survive into the 1990s, people just rolled their eyes. <br /></b><br /><b>At the start of the 1990s, anyone who predicted that Russia would buy entire political parties and business lobbies in the West and even influence Western elections would have been met with ridicule.</b><br /><br />Nothing of that came true.<br /><br />*<br />The picture below depicts a futurist projection from 1960, based on extrapolation of current trends. The artwork is called "Cosmonauts on the Moon" and was created by artist Vyacheslav Khovayev. The statue in the image represents Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union."</span><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">As we know now, <b>if someone sometime were to construct a massive statue on the moon, it would not be of Lenin.</b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji-fvjhOJ5YgBQRiqeun4eDu2ZPe3PltmdXD_HNVlfR4WLsR0eWsD6X9X_Xe_6_SaYh64_1G-JjJ0UF3o79i6PG5TKuJwcq0gy52D0LZga-Af0KA08adVnXwZn1zqpP-wgYLJVJzgew2nUmjWonu9iJLkmUmXVAq33YoCMnUAFbN9aNQTpzLcPOiChO1G9/s728/Lenin%20on%20the%20Moon%201960.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="728" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji-fvjhOJ5YgBQRiqeun4eDu2ZPe3PltmdXD_HNVlfR4WLsR0eWsD6X9X_Xe_6_SaYh64_1G-JjJ0UF3o79i6PG5TKuJwcq0gy52D0LZga-Af0KA08adVnXwZn1zqpP-wgYLJVJzgew2nUmjWonu9iJLkmUmXVAq33YoCMnUAFbN9aNQTpzLcPOiChO1G9/w331-h400/Lenin%20on%20the%20Moon%201960.jpg" width="331" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Misha Firer:<br /><b>11 planes of Russian airlines made emergency landing within 8 days of December 2023. There’re still 23 days left till new year…<br /></b><br />Tim Orum:<br />Russia is the perfect example of a nation owned and operated by social engineers serving their own interests in their own lifespan rather than the long-term interests of the Russian people and the nation. We should all learn the lessons of Russia before it’s too late.<br /><br />Dima Vorobiev:<br /><b>Post-Soviet Russia isn’t a project of social engineering. It’s a purely commercial enterprise by President Putin and his trusty oligarchs, through and through.</b><br />In many ways, the same can be said about Imperial Russia. The major difference might be that the House of Romanov didn’t have our President’s business acumen and his grasp of political technologies.<br /><br />Tony Jazdec:<br /><b>Any attempts at predicting Russia’s future seem futile given how it is impossible to predict even its past.<br /></b><br />Well, technically, <b>Russia’s past is, in defiance of causality, dependent on its future, so the two problems are in fact just one.</b></span></span></p><div class="q-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span class="CssComponent__CssInlineComponent-sc-1oskqb9-1 UserSelectableText___StyledCssInlineComponent-lsmoq4-0"><span class="q-box qu-userSelect--text" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p class="q-text qu-display--block qu-wordBreak--break-word qu-textAlign--start" style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; margin-bottom: 1em; overflow-wrap: anywhere;"><span style="background: none; color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">*</span></p><p class="q-text qu-display--block qu-wordBreak--break-word qu-textAlign--start" style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; margin-bottom: 1em; overflow-wrap: anywhere;"><span style="background: none; color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">Neil
Armstrong was once asked, if the Lunar Module engine wouldn’t work,
they were stranded on the moon, and they only had 2 hours of oxygen
left, what would he do with those last 2 hours of his life?</span></p> <p class="q-text qu-display--block qu-wordBreak--break-word qu-textAlign--start" style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; margin-bottom: 0px; overflow-wrap: anywhere;"><span style="background: none; color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">Armstrong answered “I’d try to get the engine fixed.”</span></p></span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*</span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><b>REMEMBERING HENRY KISSINGER AND DOCTOR RUTH WESTHEIMER<br /></b><br /><i><b>George Packer recounts an exchange he witnessed between Henry Kissinger and Dr. Ruth Westheimer at a dinner with Angela Merkel.</b></i><br /><br />Derek Thompson: In a new article in The Atlantic, you write, <b>“[Henry] Kissinger is a problem to be solved: the problem of a very human inhumanity. Because he was, undoubtedly, human—brilliant, insecure, funny, gossipy, curious, devious, self-deprecating, cruel.” </b>Before we dive into Kissinger’s complex legacy, I want to start with a very personal anecdote from your piece that reflects on this very human inhumanity, as you call it. You’ve met Kissinger several times, including one dinner in 2015 with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the sex columnist Dr. Ruth [Westheimer]. Tell me about that dinner and the surprising showdown between Henry Kissinger and Dr. Ruth.<br /><br />George Packer: I was surprised to see Dr. Ruth there. I didn’t know why she had been invited. It turned out that she and Merkel were friends. I was not surprised to see Henry Kissinger there. Henry Kissinger had a way of showing up at all sorts of high-flying, elite events, including dinners at the German consul’s residence for the German chancellor.<b> This was in the middle of the migrant crisis, when Germany was announcing that it would admit a million or more Syrian, Afghan, and Iraqi and other refugees from war, to sort of the shock of the rest of the continent, because the other countries were in varying degrees of resistance to letting them in.</b><br /><br />Henry Kissinger, over dinner, sitting on the other side of Merkel from Dr. Ruth, began criticizing this decision and speaking in rather apocalyptic terms in that baritone of his and saying, <b>“This will alter German civilization.” He didn’t say “destroy,” but it seemed to be something close to that. “I can understand letting in a few refugees, you know, as a humanitarian gesture, but a million is like the Romans opening the gates of the city to the barbarians.” </b>And we were all listening to this, and Merkel was quietly taking it in, and to my right and Merkel’s left was this tiny figure, Dr. Ruth, who—both of them, Dr. Ruth and Dr. Kissinger, were in their [late 80s to] 90s.<br /><br />Dr. Ruth was so small that I had to push in her chair a little bit so that she could eat her soup. She began to tell us that when she was 10 years old, she lived in Frankfurt. It was 1938, and the gestapo came to her house shortly after Kristallnacht and took her father away. And the last she saw of him was waving to her as she stood looking out the window as he was bundled into a police van. <b>Shortly after that, she was put on a train to Switzerland in what was called the Kindertransport, which [was] a rescue of some German Jewish children just before the start of the war. And she spent the war in Switzerland. She never saw her father or her mother again. Both of them died in the camps.<br /></b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif2m37mbBgW6C9Eqy2cmfSjkZ6p1cYchvNCpVj440mXxHJIyFeucc89yEOcd0a3q8rtKYKDBn9-l-nsHHLC3-mWs4zKYPSYNNWkSu71xL9aNsSSZc8mBd5oFMRyL3IcvncAkOmAyNzjI-tForPJtKjzmKFP7FMM7vYlL-NBkyOkEVEaM4n1sivPhFILpJB/s1905/dr%20ruth%20as%20child.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1905" data-original-width="1435" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif2m37mbBgW6C9Eqy2cmfSjkZ6p1cYchvNCpVj440mXxHJIyFeucc89yEOcd0a3q8rtKYKDBn9-l-nsHHLC3-mWs4zKYPSYNNWkSu71xL9aNsSSZc8mBd5oFMRyL3IcvncAkOmAyNzjI-tForPJtKjzmKFP7FMM7vYlL-NBkyOkEVEaM4n1sivPhFILpJB/s320/dr%20ruth%20as%20child.jpg" width="241" /></a></span><br /><i><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Dr. Ruth as a child</span></i></p><p><i><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">And she told us that ... just before Kristallnacht, there had been a conference in Geneva, or near Geneva, called the Évian Conference, where the world’s countries debated what to do about Jewish refugees. And, essentially, <b>no countries, including ours, expressed any willingness to take in Jewish refugees except the Dominican Republic. </b>And she said, “So nothing came of that conference. I hope more will come from this dinner, where it concerns the Syrian and other refugees, than came from Évian when I was a little girl.” And she said, <b>“If it had not been for the Kindertransport, I would not be here today to talk to you.”<br /></b><br />I was looking at Kissinger while she was finishing this story, and I was realizing, “Uh-huh, now I know why Dr. Ruth is here,” and this seems to be a way of telling a man who was very close to her age and who also was a German Jew in the ’30s and who also escaped and came to this country, <b>“You don’t seem to remember what it means to be a refugee, but I still remember.” </b>And that was it. She didn’t even say that much. But you didn’t need to hear it. It was pretty stark and dramatic, and there was this silence, and then the topic moved on. And she had hardly spoken before, and she hardly spoke after. That was what she was there to say. </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKpdQgeVyrMumQui0q5lejYZwHg7Lsvbs0LVdP8tniO2-qyghcsXacD9HbTPbIrPxX2WKwLdR0e6w-ez68gfHDrWOw0fkqIBipYosPTacDx50NoIBqwRdU0EARwZ1wCc_nRgTAKNFnMdK8ALQFcRI5PJQquUY2lVF1Ioj2CPewe1YZGg-Zk6IXujUj63to/s600/dr%20ruth.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="517" data-original-width="600" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKpdQgeVyrMumQui0q5lejYZwHg7Lsvbs0LVdP8tniO2-qyghcsXacD9HbTPbIrPxX2WKwLdR0e6w-ez68gfHDrWOw0fkqIBipYosPTacDx50NoIBqwRdU0EARwZ1wCc_nRgTAKNFnMdK8ALQFcRI5PJQquUY2lVF1Ioj2CPewe1YZGg-Zk6IXujUj63to/s320/dr%20ruth.webp" width="320" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.theringer.com/2023/12/5/23988735/henry-kissinger-legacy-catastrophes-triumphs-changed-the-world">https://www.theringer.com/2023/12/5/23988735/henry-kissinger-legacy-catastrophes-triumphs-changed-the-world<br /></a><br />* </span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>THE DOWNSIDE OF A CASHLESS SOCIETY</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> Four centuries ago, a woman named Else Knutsdatter was executed in Vardø, a small coastal town in Norway. She was accused of having used witchcraft to raise an ocean storm that claimed the lives of 40 men. She wasn’t the only one to fall victim to 17th-century folk who – in the absence of other explanations – could be convinced that disasters were conjured by malevolent sorcerers. <b>Ninety others were executed for conspiring to produce the same storm. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Today, we know that physics and atmospheric pressures produced those storms. So, <b>in the realm of weather, we’ve moved to systemic thinking, where bad things don’t need to be explained with reference to bad actors. When it comes to descriptions of politics and economics, the progress is not so unequivocal</b>. Do bad things like climate change, conflict and corporate greed happen because powerful politicians and CEOs construct it like that, or do they emerge in the vacuum of human agency, in the fact that nobody’s actually in control? This is a question that confronts me in <b>the campaign to protect the physical cash system against the digital takeover by Big Finance and Big Tech.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> For more than eight years, I’ve advocated for the protection and promotion of physical notes and coins. I wrote a book called <b>Cloudmoney: Why the War on Cash Endangers Our Freedom</b> (2023). In that book, I point out that the public has swallowed a false just-so story that says we are pining for a cashless society. <b>All over the world, public and private sector leaders claim that ‘our’ desire for speed, convenience, scale and interconnection drives an inevitable digital transition.</b> This is supposed to bring a ‘frictionless’ world of digital payment-fueled commerce, done at the click of a button or scan of the iris. The message is: keep up or else face being left behind.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> The fact that so many leaders recite this script triggers some folks into thinking ulterior motives are guiding them, and it is true that the finance and tech sectors, for example, gain massively from the digitization hype. Over the past few decades, they’ve launched various top-down attacks against the cash system, something I chronicle in my book. <b>Physical cash is issued by governments (via central banks), whereas the units in your bank account are basically ‘digital casino chips’ issued by the likes of Barclays, HSBC and Santander.</b> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b> ‘Cashless society’ is a privatization, in which power over payments is transferred to the banking sector.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"> Every tap of a contactless card or Apple Pay triggers banks into moving these digital casino chips around for you. It gives them enormous power, revenue and data. They can share that data with governments but, more often than not, they’re using it for their own purposes (such as passing it through AI models to decide whether you get access to things or not).</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> By rejecting the story that cashless society is driven primarily from the bottom up, I sometimes get accused of being a conspiracy theorist. It’s not hard to imagine the outlines of a ‘conspiracy’ when you look at who benefits most from payments privatization. <b>Not only are Visa, Mastercard and the banking sector big beneficiaries, the fixation on digitization also extends the power of Amazon and other corporate behemoths that are moving beyond the internet into the physical world via smart devices and automated stores that plug into digital finance systems.</b> It’s a small jump to imagine how governments can piggyback on this digital enclosure to spy on us, or manipulate us.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>For centuries, the capitalist system has been underpinned by nation-states that have fostered the growth of large firms</b>. For a long time, cash helped that system to expand and accelerate. In the 1950s, corporations were more than happy to have adverts featuring people using cash to buy their products, but in the contemporary moment firms are turning against it. <b>Cash is hard to automate. It cannot be plugged into globe-spanning digital infrastructures. It operates at human scale and speed within a system that increasingly demands inhuman scale and speed.</b> It’s creating ‘friction’ at a systemic level, so even if you like cash at a local level, you’ll gradually find yourself coerced away from it. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> When it comes to money, though, the battle lines get more confusing, because <b>the monetary system is a public-private hybrid. Physical cash is government money, but it has properties – like anonymity – that appeal to some anti-government libertarians.</b> Privacy-invading card-payment systems, by contrast, have historically been run by the private sector, so those pro-business libertarians who are concerned by surveillance are forced to accuse banks of being phony ‘crony capitalists’ collaborating with controlling governments.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> This collaboration can be seen in the case of the 2022 anti-vax ‘Freedom Convoy’ truckers, whose bank accounts were frozen by a Canadian government order. Libertarians rallied in support of the truckers, but there’s many variations of these alliances between states and payments firms. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">For example, the US government agency USAID has funded programs like Catalyst: Inclusive Cashless Payment Partnership, <b>pushing Visa as a tool of empowerment in India</b>. In its 2017 annual report, Visa talks about doubling its market penetration into India after it ‘worked closely’ with Narendra Modi’s government in its ‘demonetization’ efforts in 2016, during which time certain banknotes were outlawed. The Indian prime minister’s open attacks on the public cash system also drew fawning praise from Indian digital-payments firms.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> Because at scale it’s cheaper to push billions of people through a handful of centralized players, almost every industry in the world is dominated by oligopolies of large firms. Those firms will inevitably build political connections, while smaller firms get relegated to the periphery. <b>Oligopolistic firms fluctuate between collaboration and competition, but the evolutionary logic of our economic system is always towards greater automation</b>. Corporate executives benefit if they nudge everyone in this direction, and they have a niggling insecurity that, if they don’t, competitors will leave them behind. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The problem is that many people don’t love digital acceleration, and it takes a considerable effort over time to erode their resistance. This is why big retailers like Tesco start by tentatively testing cashless stores in certain locations to set a precedent. It took years for the airline industry to make it feel ‘normal’ to refuse cash, but that norm is still not universal. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Even last year, <b>I found myself seated next to a man on a flight who was humiliated and flustered when the attendants refused his banknote</b>. The man wasn’t a frequent flyer and came from a working-class background, pointing toward an important fact: <b><i>when a capitalist system is resetting to a state of higher speed and automation, it often does so first through social elites. In London, a hipster barber targeting yuppies may very well refuse cash, but a hair salon targeting working-class immigrants will almost certainly ‘still’ take it.</i></b> Words like ‘still’ are loaded, because they imply that whoever is still doing the thing has yet to go through some evolutionary upgrade.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> <b>Digital payments giants like Visa invest heavily in presenting ‘going cashless’ as a grassroots triumph for the small entrepreneur who wants to cut costs. In reality, this alliance between Big Finance/Big Tech and small and medium-sized enterprises applies only to businesses with middle-class customers.</b> A decade ago, many of those customers didn’t even perceive cash as particularly inconvenient. Even now, they would prefer choice (the fact that I sometimes use my card doesn’t mean I asked a shop to remove its cash till). </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> It’s businesses that remove our payments choice, but they rely on the fact that most middle-class people simply adapt their expectations and edit their memories to forget those old days when cash felt totally normal. Once new cultural norms are established, it compels compliance. <b>Eventually, you get discriminated against if you insist on being that guy who complains that the London bar won’t accept your coins.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> The fact that people fall into line and begin displaying a preference for card payments is read by politicians as a signal to support the transition. They too are worried about being ‘left behind’. This pressure to go along with the transnational automation drive means that the average UK Labour Party politician doesn’t challenge cashless society. Rather, <b>they call for a slight slowdown in the imagined ‘race’ towards it, to give cash-dependent communities a chance to ‘catch up’. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">So, <b>capitalism has inherent trends, but it also has inherent contradictions</b>. Here’s one of them. Our cashless card payments rely upon ‘digital casino chips’ issued to us by banks, but – as anyone who has been to a casino knows – such chips have power only because you believe they can be redeemed for cash. In the total absence of cash, there could be a collapse in the public’s belief in bank-issued digital money. <i><b>Banks and corporations make private decisions that erode our cash infrastructure, but in doing so they are undermining the public basis of confidence in their private systems.</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> <b>This was accelerated by the outbreak of COVID-19, which gave companies a convenient cover to fast-track their automation plans.</b> It’s easier for a retailer to announce they don’t accept cash because of COVID-19 than to admit that they’re trying to shave a percent off their costs. For example, Visa entered a deal with the US National Football League to promote cashless Super Bowls. Signed in 2019 and piloted in 2020, it went public in 2021 during the pandemic, with attendant media coverage <b>presenting it as a measure of public hygiene.</b> <b><i>Cashless pubs in London allow hundreds of unmasked people in their establishments while claiming to refuse cash to protect their employees from any coronavirus that may be stuck to the notes (a contention that is scientifically inaccurate).</i></b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> <b>In 2020, such scaremongering, along with the fact that so many of us were forced into online shopping during the pandemic, caused a precipitous drop in transactional cash use. </b>This raised the possibility of a financial stability problem, because cash psychologically (and legally) backs our cashless digital casino chips. This puts central banks in a bind. <b>They know that the trajectory leads to a crisis-prone bank-dominated version of cashless society.</b> So they think about how to maintain public access to government money without upsetting the transnational automation agenda. One way they are trying to resolve this is with a new form of ‘digital cash’ – central bank digital currency (CBDC).</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> * </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In May 2020, my mother was sent a video by her friend on Facebook. It claimed that Bill Gates had orchestrated COVID-19 to microchip us via vaccines and to usher in a cashless society where our every economic move could be monitored. Her friend was very excited to announce that ‘Your son is in this! You must be so proud.’ Sure enough, there was a clip of me (used without my permission), in which I was describing how financial institutions engage in a war on cash. It was followed by a clip of an evangelical pastor warning that ‘the Bible clearly links the mark of the beast with the emergence of a cashless society’.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> How is it that I end up in a video like this? Conspiracy theorists happily take my work out of context in order to push their version of events. Rather than analyzing the logic of capitalism, many of them have decided that behind digital innovation-speak lie satanic overlords, pedophiles, Marxists, Jews or caricatured banksters smoking cigars.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> Ironically, it’s central banks’ response to the corporate attack on cash that has really spurred the new wave of pro-cash activism. The possibility of a state-controlled digital pound or digital euro replacing the battered cash system has galvanized the imagination of libertarian activists. <b>Libertarians have always faced a tension when complaining about the surveillance that accompanies cashless society. </b>This is because digital payment systems are pushed by private sector fintech entrepreneurs, and libertarians are supposed to be pro-entrepreneurialism. CBDC has enabled them to escape this bind. It allows them to rework the story of cashless society as being driven by an oppressive digital state.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> The cashless system is run by transnational corporations, and the actually existing examples of payments control often concern welfare recipients: for instance, the Australian ‘cashless welfare card’ was a Visa card system that blocked Indigenous Australians on benefits from buying non-approved goods in non-approved stores. These systems not only limit choice, but can be used to push people’s business to big retailers, rather than small ones. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Farage and his contemporaries don’t focus on the payments censorship of Indigenous welfare recipients. They fixate on conservative fears, like the hypothetical blocking of transactions for guns and meat. This is causing me problems, because moderate progressives – who previously would have expressed some concern about corporate power – have started associating a pro-cash stance with reactionaries, and to a broader suite of ideas that they espouse. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In Germany, I’ve even been accused of being aligned with the neo-Nazi Reichsbürger movement, purely on the basis that they too are pro-cash. I’ve seen digital payments promoters use this disorientation to their advantage. They can suggest that critiques of their industry are the realm of crackpot antisemites. If conspiracy theorists are the ones leading the charge against digitization, surely it must show the concern is built from the wild fantasies of paranoid Flat-Earthers. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Rather than fight cashless society, then, they suggest we should promote corporate financial inclusion: give a helping hand to all those people who have yet to be absorbed into Big Finance. Get them accounts. Help them become corporate consumers. cashless society.jpg An anti-cashless society propaganda leaflet .</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLbL_GnHMefUtchS1WTEqx1QPSow2-ouv4MSuoxh1yVH8L99DpYef8_BLH5Pb1ckbO8pftMo9xQdaDi3mVZ7cZVVho1Z5eFQfgb5ydp6Rzx-hkG4LNKKsytQGRVWW46ASw6lF-pannq5mSOt9YttDtxlQheeIT22FBY7ZGJE9Q5fEBpl7-nzY1sUZbM7fw/s5112/cashless%20society.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5112" data-original-width="3840" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLbL_GnHMefUtchS1WTEqx1QPSow2-ouv4MSuoxh1yVH8L99DpYef8_BLH5Pb1ckbO8pftMo9xQdaDi3mVZ7cZVVho1Z5eFQfgb5ydp6Rzx-hkG4LNKKsytQGRVWW46ASw6lF-pannq5mSOt9YttDtxlQheeIT22FBY7ZGJE9Q5fEBpl7-nzY1sUZbM7fw/w300-h400/cashless%20society.webp" width="300" /></a></span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Cashless society authentically sucks. It’s a world where your kid cannot sell lemonade on the side of the road without paying Mastercard executives in New York. <b>It’s an attack on privacy, autonomy, local independence and casual informal interactions in favor of surveillance, dependence and centralization of power in large institutions.</b> I frequently interact with people who have very real concerns about it, but who – like our 17th-century folk who lost loved ones to a storm – have been steered into reactionary ideas about it.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b> Our struggle to see large-scale systemic processes gives oxygen to conspiracy theorists. I frequently get asked to go on Right-wing media channels, such as GB News, to be interviewed by anti-woke libertarians or Christian evangelists. Many of them imagine capitalism to be the realm of the small individual, and present elites as being malevolent actors who attack the system from above</b>. It’s an easy story to tell. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">But the reality is that elites are a by-product of our system. The invisible hand likes tapping the contactless card, regardless of whether you as an individual do, and the role of the elites in the war on cash is to simply unblock resistance to that. More often than not, they’re examples of Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil. They’re just people ‘doing their job’, serving a system that wants to commodify any aspect of our lives that remains un-commodified and un-automated. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The dominant tendencies in capitalism pull upon all of us but it’s possible to demand space for other values. It’s been done before. <b>There was a time when the automobile industry seemed ascendant, and bikes were pushed off the roads, but we built a cultural movement to demand bicycle lanes. That’s why we should see cash as being like the public bicycle of payments, and support efforts across the political spectrum to protect and promote i</b>t. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Digital bank systems are the private Uber of payments: they may appear convenient, but total Uberization unleashes demons that cash historically kept in check – surveillance, censorship, digital exclusion, and serious resilience and financial stability problems</b>. The point isn’t to argue that everyone must always use the ‘bicycle’. It’s to ensure that we don’t get totally ‘Uberized’ in private and public life. We need to promote a healthy balance of power between different forms of money in the system, and that’s within our collective political abilities. ~ </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/going-cashless-is-a-bad-idea-but-its-not-a-conspiracy?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=42287f9abd-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_11_24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-b43a9ed933-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D">https://aeon.co/essays/going-cashless-is-a-bad-idea-but-its-not-a-conspiracy?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=42287f9abd-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_11_24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-b43a9ed933-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> * </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>The car has become a secular sanctuary for the individual, his shrine to the self, his mobile Walden Pond. ~ Edward McDonagh</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>A GLANCE AT THE JFK ENIGMA </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> Now that 35 years have passed [this article goes back to 1993], <b>Robert Block can occasionally chuckle when recalling the short Orange County tour of duty of 19-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Block was only 29 himself when, as a Marine Corps captain, he supervised the young Oswald and about 35 to 40 other enlistees as part of Air Control Squadron Nine at the Tustin air base. After more than a year on duty in the Far East, Oswald arrived back in Orange County late in 1958 and stayed until the following September, when <b>he made up a story about needing a dependency discharge to take care of his mother. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Block said he was surprised later to discover that Oswald lied about the reason for wanting a discharge and that he had moved to Russia almost immediately afterward. “It was just that, being a Marine, you think that, ‘Once a Marine, always a Marine,’ ” Block said</b>. “You’re a very patriotic person, and for him to essentially lie that he had a hardship at home to get out of the Marine Corps and then to appear in Moscow . . . I was quite surprised.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> That all happened in the fall of 1959. Four years later, on that November afternoon in 1963, Oswald would write himself into the history books as the accused assassin of John F. Kennedy. It was his Marxist leanings that the public heard most about, and it was Oswald’s left-leaning tendencies that Block remembers, some of which bordered on the near-comic.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> Block, who retired from the Marines in 1966 and now owns an insurance agency in Garden Grove, said the FBI interviewed him three days after President Kennedy’s assassination but that he hasn’t been interviewed since. He said he has a clear memory of Oswald, although his Tustin performance was only adequate and not marked by any particular trouble.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> “I can recall one time when we had a locker inspection. It was a surprise, you might even call it a search. Those were pulled quite frequently. When we opened his locker, we found copies of the Daily Worker (a communist newspaper) in there. Everybody was kind of surprised, and yet it was blown over because at the time the Marine Corps was trying to indoctrinate Marines as to what communism was and who their adversary was. They were actually holding classes on communism.” <b>Oswald used that rationale when confronted with the newspapers, although his barracks mates already had been teasing him about his Marxist sympathies.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> Several examples of that have reappeared in a new book entitled “Case Closed.” Written by Gerald Posner, the book focuses on Oswald and Jack Ruby and concludes that Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy and that Ruby acted alone in killing Oswald. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Block, now 64, chuckled as I read passages from the book in which Oswald’s fellow enlistees joked about his communist leanings. <b>One Tustin air base acquaintance said Oswald often answered with “da” and “nyet,” used red pieces when playing chess to represent the Red Army and greeted fellow Marines with “Hello, comrade.” Block said he hadn’t heard some of those stories, but he laughed when recalling that Oswald was often called “Oswaldskovich” by other Marines. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“Oswald was an introvert,” Block said. “He would never have won any popularity contests and I think he had one or two close associates and that was only because he lived close to them” in the barracks. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Block was in a barber’s chair when he heard about the assassination. “Shortly thereafter they said they had captured the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, and I damn near fell out of the chair,” Block said. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Block went back to his unit headquarters. “Everybody was talking about Oswald. Everybody’s first thought was, ‘No way,’ ” Block said. “It was a disbelief that he would have been able to accomplish something like that and even further disbelief when the mechanics of it were broadcast. I don’t care what kind of rifle he had. I don’t think it would have been within his capability.” </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oswald’s marksmanship has been a key part of the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination. His Marine rating was “sharpshooter,” and while that is the middle range of three levels of expertise, Block said, “Really, you see a sharpshooter badge on a Marine — I’d be ashamed to have it on my chest.” </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Many argue the fatal shots were well within Oswald’s capabilities, but Block disagrees. <b>“You’ve got a moving target there, and when you’re talking about hitting somebody in the head from that distance and that angle, it just boggles my mind that he would even have that capability. I don’t know where he could have practiced, whether in the woods or remote areas or in Russia, but you’ve got to come up with some pretty good marksmanship to carry off something like that.</b>”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> The issue, however, has not haunted Block over the years. “I can recall many times when this would come up about President Kennedy, at social events or whatever, and I would mention that I knew Oswald. People would say, ‘What? You really did?’ I said, yeah, I was his officer-in-charge for about a year.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">It seemed to Block that people wanted to talk to him about Oswald, as if that would put them closer to the historic event. “I don’t tell people about Oswald unless it’s brought up, unless they talk about the assassination and blame Oswald,” he says. “Then I say, ‘Hey, I don’t think Oswald did it.’ They ask why I think that, and I say, ‘Well, because, because and because.’ Then they’re in doubt. Immediately I place them in doubt that he had the ability to do it.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-11-21-me-59498-story.html">https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-11-21-me-59498-story.html</a> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">It seems that the story only gets more muddy as time goes on. It’s also strangely addictive — you start reading and keep on reading the opposing opinions. The car was moving very slowly. Some claim that for an ex-Marine sharp-shooter, the shot did not present much challenge. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> Strangely enough, back in 1963 I wasn’t all that shaken by the news of JFK’s death. What DID shake me up was Ruby’s killing of Oswald. I instantly saw that the point was to silence Oswald, and I was frightened that it was so easy for Ruby to shoot at point blank in the presence of all the police on the scene. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Everyone in Poland (well, most likely everyone) thought it was the dirty work of the Soviet Union, the masters at eliminating people they didn’t like. My mother thought it was revenge for the Cuban missile crisis humiliation. And later what stayed in my mind was this: “In 1967, <b>CBS hired 11 professional marksmen to replicate Oswald’s marksmanship [using the rifle he used] – again, NOBODY NOBODY could replicate what Oswald supposedly did on 22 November 1963</b>.” </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">And Dorothy Kilgallen, the brilliant woman reporter who had interviewed Jack Ruby, also died a mysterious death. Did she find out too much? Ruby remarked that the truth could not be allowed to be known to the public because it involved individuals at the highest levels of power.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> Who in a position of power hated JFK? Possibly the director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover. <br />Allegedly Hoover was afraid that JFK would fire him. And the former CIA director Allen Dulles likewise supposedly despised JFK. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-yKMM-Aq2EEBNTL_uQ9ZcuIjavQw38tzP2Ls2L2gUeUhJQpgjtvIkY1kXZdRirvJEXWlUuH3r5Yl9SBEugFIJyhM2G6HvMZatvMx29LBDuXl-iU5LUKr3UvvyJZzIC68XRdm6OCVCDWJu_47uO18OchOhynUibJTi63gSQR72MiQssbdYyYN8kmGmnoZj/s1200/allen%20Dulles%20JFK.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-yKMM-Aq2EEBNTL_uQ9ZcuIjavQw38tzP2Ls2L2gUeUhJQpgjtvIkY1kXZdRirvJEXWlUuH3r5Yl9SBEugFIJyhM2G6HvMZatvMx29LBDuXl-iU5LUKr3UvvyJZzIC68XRdm6OCVCDWJu_47uO18OchOhynUibJTi63gSQR72MiQssbdYyYN8kmGmnoZj/w400-h225/allen%20Dulles%20JFK.jpg" width="400" /></a><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Allen Dulles and JFK </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> <br /></span></span></i></span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">At least one of JFK’s mistresses also died mysterious deaths. Mary Pinchot Meyer was shot twice at close range in Georgetown. The case remains unsolved. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmE1PnOU7VZOt4l05xupcEwnPbe6BPAT9QOxho8ShWyo48j7f4pM8FEA-tEbi2L1WLRk0UpFKOptz4dL0QdhIFo-MRKirMBajDVz6BslpqmDfly5D1kac5xE2B7ArMQB5UThDJdd-W-p4oiyRIeQsco7-W3IGbb87IWuDlEfqf0xxzk1wZw5tkIN4PS-qD/s980/MM%20and%20the%20Kennedy%20brothers%20on%20May%2019,%201962.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="410" data-original-width="980" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmE1PnOU7VZOt4l05xupcEwnPbe6BPAT9QOxho8ShWyo48j7f4pM8FEA-tEbi2L1WLRk0UpFKOptz4dL0QdhIFo-MRKirMBajDVz6BslpqmDfly5D1kac5xE2B7ArMQB5UThDJdd-W-p4oiyRIeQsco7-W3IGbb87IWuDlEfqf0xxzk1wZw5tkIN4PS-qD/w400-h168/MM%20and%20the%20Kennedy%20brothers%20on%20May%2019,%201962.png" width="400" /></a></span></span></div><p></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">M and the Kennedy brothers in the only known picture of all three on May 19, 1962, after Monroe sang Happy Birthday to JFK at Madison Square Garden. Less than three months later, she would be dead.” </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The death of Marilyn Monroe was declared to be a “probable suicide.” There are questions to which we may never have answers. </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnos-yKJoFbLmMtgLhbxw1UGacEeyBDWTuewm11UNe63slDtxdoIkUDHN-1_iTSExTl8vEM1MMbjKDDf_erW79Pape84elWZHuy8VjLkfclgEkulzDHBKvclWDJpg3yu_Z34YY1I22YayJcl8sVMeUXLAT2omlM2Qbtw2LawA51CtWnZlKu7Q3kH7BHK-a/s499/dulles%20brother%20book%20cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="331" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnos-yKJoFbLmMtgLhbxw1UGacEeyBDWTuewm11UNe63slDtxdoIkUDHN-1_iTSExTl8vEM1MMbjKDDf_erW79Pape84elWZHuy8VjLkfclgEkulzDHBKvclWDJpg3yu_Z34YY1I22YayJcl8sVMeUXLAT2omlM2Qbtw2LawA51CtWnZlKu7Q3kH7BHK-a/w265-h400/dulles%20brother%20book%20cover.jpg" width="265" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">* </span></span><p></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR IS CONVINCED IT WAS THE CIA </b></span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">~ <b>Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy, is blaming the CIA for his uncle's assassination in 1963</b>. The controversial Democratic presidential candidate made the bold remarks during an interview Sunday with John Catsimatidis on his WABC 770 AM show Cats Roundtable. </span></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"I think there is overwhelming evidence that the CIA was involved in his murder," Kennedy, 69, said of the Dallas, Texas, assassination of JFK. "I think it's beyond a reasonable doubt at this point." "The evidence is overwhelming that the CIA was involved in the murder and in the cover-up," he told Catsimatidis, 74.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> On Nov. 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, then 46, <b>was struck by two bullets — one in the head and one in the neck</b> — while riding through the streets of Dallas in an open-topped motorcade with wife Jackie Kennedy by his side. Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine, was charged with the murder, and the Warren Commission later found that the gunman had acted alone. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Despite the official conclusion, JFK's assassination has fueled conspiracy theories for decades — a prominent one being that the CIA was involved. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Kennedy has previously expressed doubts about JFK's assassination, suggesting in the past that he was unconvinced Oswald acted alone. Prior to his recent, more direct comments on Cats Roundtable, he was already known for courting controversy, particularly for promoting dangerous anti-vaccine conspiracies. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Ahead of the document release, Kennedy spoke with PEOPLE, expressing his frustration. <b>"They should just release the records. It's been 58 years," he said at the time. "Are they trying to seriously tell us they haven't had time to read them? </b>... And the White House is saying they haven't had time to read them in three generations. It just makes people think that government lies, and it makes Joe Biden look like a liar. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>He's doing the same thing Trump did: He promised to release them and now he's saying no, the same as Trump." </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In April the former environmental lawyer and son of late U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run as a Democratic candidate for president in 2024. His father was assassinated in the same position, seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://people.com/politics/robert-kennedy-jr-cia-involved-jfk-assassination">https://people.com/politics/robert-kennedy-jr-cia-involved-jfk-assassination</a>/ <br /><br />*<br /><b>MICROPLASTICS CAN AFFECT CLOUD FORMATION<br /></b><br />~ Microplastics are turning up in unusual places increasingly often as they filter into nearly every facet of life on Earth. <b>They’ve been discovered in drinking water, food, air and even in blood. Now, scientists have found that these tiny particles might even be able to influence the weather.</b><br /><br /><b>Recently researchers reported they detected microplastics in a majority of cloud samples taken from a mountaintop in China</b>, in a study published in the American Chemical Society’s Environmental Science & Technology Letters.<br /><br />The study traced how the microplastics ended up at their final location and discovered that they could play a role in cloud formation.<br /><br /><b>The authors of new study found microplastics affect cloud formation, and clouds are of huge importance to the weather we experience.<br /></b><br />Clouds produce precipitation in the form of rain, snow and everything in between. They also block sunlight, and less solar radiation means cooler temperatures.<br /><br />In order for a cloud to form, water vapor – a gas – needs to turn into water droplets – a liquid. Then, many water droplets need to come together to become a cloud.<br /><br /><b>Water droplets form when water vapor interacts with tiny solid particles in the atmosphere, like dust, ash or salt from the ocean. According to the study, microplastics can now be added to that list.<br /></b><br /><b>These particles are hydrophilic, which means they are attracted to water. Once the first water droplets cling to microplastics and other tiny particles, more water droplets are pulled together and clouds form.<br /></b><br />The process is akin to how a single spark can eventually set an entire field ablaze: One tiny particle in the atmosphere can set into motion a process that becomes something much bigger.<br />According to the study’s authors, further research must be completed to fully understand the extent to which microplastics influence cloud formation.<br /><br />Could a greater concentration of microplastics lead to more clouds? Will an increase in clouds lead to more precipitation or larger swaths of cooler conditions? These questions remain unanswered.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcb11HOo7g70iICUyIJZdFxBxxkbgJSwQ_8FMfijBBjzpemGy0Qlg3Z7SKJ86z2X6DCR2EIEwNJLzAOiksRsyIFjbHD0jd1A5iGFmO8bqNHzL_3fhb23k2KRp11tZTdrzOzEOlTG7mX7sG-I5P4Qc8B0RLI1hxTB6L3nD47c8A7wobyLpPNvxizV-KpJaG/s350/clouds%20at%20the%20top%20of%20Mount%20Tai.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="233" data-original-width="350" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcb11HOo7g70iICUyIJZdFxBxxkbgJSwQ_8FMfijBBjzpemGy0Qlg3Z7SKJ86z2X6DCR2EIEwNJLzAOiksRsyIFjbHD0jd1A5iGFmO8bqNHzL_3fhb23k2KRp11tZTdrzOzEOlTG7mX7sG-I5P4Qc8B0RLI1hxTB6L3nD47c8A7wobyLpPNvxizV-KpJaG/w400-h266/clouds%20at%20the%20top%20of%20Mount%20Tai.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.acs.org/pressroom/presspacs/2023/november/microplastics-found-in-clouds-could-affect-the-weather.html">https://www.acs.org/pressroom/presspacs/2023/november/microplastics-found-in-clouds-could-affect-the-weather.html</a></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>FLEXIBLE VERSUS INFLEXIBLE BELIEF SYSTEMS<br /></b><br /><b>Evolution applies not just to organisms, but also to belief systems. The key to survival is adaptation to changing conditions;</b> the “trash panda”, aka the raccoon, is omnivorous, and can adapt to a wide variety of diets and environments, whereas the actual panda is very sensitive to changes in its environment and diet, and at one point, came very close to extinction, whilst the trash panda has become a successful invasive species in Germany, to which it is not native.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeqjidwtwyMeRfFK7awq3ntwkp_1QEEYzCVDqTrDPKz3hKhlj3ZIg8Oy4OeAU-zX9rIiOY82Nsr0uy7QRHwCgFlvUHJKgdy81a9j9IMWOP2DOBxOKLhShe1ZMYzZtekFyMHMI4xFwESACz2tDeoz9gGbGdghA4o7pDi_R8FU8mcnyIzlYb_USY3YH1aKDF/s600/RACCOON%20fat.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeqjidwtwyMeRfFK7awq3ntwkp_1QEEYzCVDqTrDPKz3hKhlj3ZIg8Oy4OeAU-zX9rIiOY82Nsr0uy7QRHwCgFlvUHJKgdy81a9j9IMWOP2DOBxOKLhShe1ZMYzZtekFyMHMI4xFwESACz2tDeoz9gGbGdghA4o7pDi_R8FU8mcnyIzlYb_USY3YH1aKDF/w334-h400/RACCOON%20fat.jpg" width="334" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />As with organisms, belief systems are in competition with each other, and those which are excessively rigid, and lack the ability to adapt in a manner conducive to survival, will tend to be less successful. <b>A relevant comparison might be the respective attitudes of the Japanese and the Islamic world: the Japanese cherry picked Western ideas that they believed would be of benefit to them, and as a consequence, became a world power in the 20th century; they took it too far by adopting the Western model of imperial expansion, and when this failed, they adapted and became a huge economic power. </b><br /><br /><b>By contrast, the Islamic world, in general, briefly flirted with Western style modernity, then rejected it, and decided that returning to the fundamentals of Islam was the solution to their problems. The consequence of this attitude is that the Islamic world is currently a civilizational backwater; the only wealthy Islamic countries are those with important natural resources which were discovered and exploited with Western technology.<br /></b><br /><b><i>The poorest states in the US are in the “Bible Belt”, whilst the richest state in the union is the “Sodom by the Sea” known as California.</i></b> There are religious people here, but religion has almost no influence on public life, and California is a refuge for “deviants” who are attracted to the same sex, enjoy recreational drug use, and value the right to an abortion. It’s not that California lacks problems, however, its laissez faire attitude towards religion and “alternative” lifestyles means that <b>it attracts the most intelligent and creative people in the world to live and work in the state</b>, with the consequence that if it were a sovereign nation, its nominal GDP would be higher than that of India.<br /><br />Religious fundamentalism is an evolutionary dead end; fundamentalists may have more children in general, but due to the closed mindedness most of these children inherit, they will be less productive and influential than their non-fundamentalist peers, and <b>a society in which religious or ideological fundamentalism prevails cannot compete with those societies in which open debate is valued</b>. By analogy, imagine a bout between two boxers: one has voluntarily confined himself to a straitjacket for a year, and the other has been sparring and pumping iron for the same length of time: who wins?<br /><br />America is resented worldwide for its outsized influence and power, but<b> America’s puissance is a consequence of the victory of the enlightenment values of the Founding Fathers over the fundamentalist values of the Pilgrim Fathers.</b> The authors of the US Constitution made some difficult, and even heinous compromises to ensure the survival of the Republic, but in the end, their gamble paid off. The ultimate victory went to the trash pandas. ~ Philip Husband, Quora</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The U.S. remains a fascinating battleground between enlightenment and fundamentalism. The country was founded equally by the religious nuts on Mayflower and various other exotic Christian sects, and the radical (for the times) liberals (think of the genius of Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson). Then came the American brand of Catholicism. The country has always been a giant social experiment. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx1K3MEu9wFVyRYIgYF6Zk28Arn8F8n4V_arCQx-KOdZMcz0HjZurwxbuWkywxqqSQfKVoQOiao0Y6U2ydJkOKyFbi5dz-OM6neT-xSLA9cOmdvMHSMXWrbHc64Z718AOmygIteWSo2FZqL2I-_fzqUTpJwco-_1KXVGm1Wo6jT48Cb67GoTffNVMipmCM/s3888/San%20Miguel%20Chapel.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3888" data-original-width="2592" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx1K3MEu9wFVyRYIgYF6Zk28Arn8F8n4V_arCQx-KOdZMcz0HjZurwxbuWkywxqqSQfKVoQOiao0Y6U2ydJkOKyFbi5dz-OM6neT-xSLA9cOmdvMHSMXWrbHc64Z718AOmygIteWSo2FZqL2I-_fzqUTpJwco-_1KXVGm1Wo6jT48Cb67GoTffNVMipmCM/w266-h400/San%20Miguel%20Chapel.jpg" width="266" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>San Miguel Chapel in New Mexico goes back to 1610.</i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>BLOOD TEST MAY BE ABLE TO TELL WHICH ORGANS SHOW ACCELERATED AGING</b></span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b></b></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFePBdvTgieeP8MmarRdaM5vVCzhdLy_x-F_Idu5isTVTxDtBBY1EvSLWr10WGh0xStKgNZIvlN_HKOsOazgOhd1qbFB6ECGuvwivbjH5r4i0eJ3N6Nz3yXeWtb1na_m-Lpw0eyvM1NlVI4ynt2sB3sVKs1Pp1Vh5FEky3oSb5WrWg2tJ0YnZgirEk7QPx/s1280/see%20%20thru%20body.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFePBdvTgieeP8MmarRdaM5vVCzhdLy_x-F_Idu5isTVTxDtBBY1EvSLWr10WGh0xStKgNZIvlN_HKOsOazgOhd1qbFB6ECGuvwivbjH5r4i0eJ3N6Nz3yXeWtb1na_m-Lpw0eyvM1NlVI4ynt2sB3sVKs1Pp1Vh5FEky3oSb5WrWg2tJ0YnZgirEk7QPx/w400-h225/see%20%20thru%20body.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">About one in five healthy people ages 50 and older had an organ that was aging at an accelerated rate, which may increase mortality and signal organ-specific disease, a study of nearly 5,700 people suggested.<br /><br />In an analysis of blood samples for proteins originating from specific organs, <b>18.4% of people 50 and older had one organ with accelerated aging and 1.7% had aging in multiple organs</b>, reported Tony Wyss-Coray, PhD, of Stanford University in California, and co-authors.<br /><br /><b>When the biological age of an organ was much greater than the chronological age of the person, there was a 20% to 50% higher risk of mortality and organ-specific diseases</b>, they noted in the journal Nature.<br /><br /><i><b>For instance, people with accelerated heart aging had a 250% increased risk of heart failure, while accelerated brain and vascular aging predicted Alzheimer's disease progression as accurately as plasma phosphorylated tau 181 (p-tau181), a high-performing Alzheimer's biomarker.</b></i> <i><b>Accelerated aging in kidneys was associated with diabetes, obesity, hypercholesterolaemia, and hypertension, and accelerated aging in muscles was linked with gait impairment.</b></i><br /><br />Notably, </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>heart attack and Alzheimer's disease, among other diseases, were associated with accelerated aging in "virtually all organs," while others were only associated with aging of one organ or a subset of organs.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br /><b>Particularly significant at the population level were aged kidneys. Hypertensive individuals had kidneys that were, on average, a year older than their same-age peers, while people with diabetes had kidneys that were about 1.3 years older. People with atrial fibrillation had hearts 2.8 years older, and those who had a heart attack had hearts that were 2.6 years older.<br /></b><br />"If we can reproduce this finding in 50,000 or 100,000 individuals, it will mean that by monitoring the health of individual organs in apparently healthy people, we might be able to find organs that are undergoing accelerated aging in people's bodies, and we might be able to treat people before they get sick," Wyss-Coray said in a press release.<br /><br />The researchers measured 4,979 proteins from participants' blood samples. They then mapped the putative organ-specific plasma proteome and used that to train machine learning models to guess people's age based on those protein levels. Eleven key organs, organ systems, or tissues were assessed: heart, fat, lung, immune system, kidney, liver, muscle, pancreas, brain, vasculature, and intestine.<br /><br />After finding that 15% of the proteins could be attributed to a specific organ, "we basically had now a list of proteins that, in a way, gave us organ-specific information in the blood and then we used this for each organ to make a biological clock," Wyss-Coray told MedPage Today, adding that <b>"we don't age in synchrony across our whole body.”</b><br /><br />The study included data from the Covance, LonGenity, Stanford Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, Stanford Aging Memory Study, and Knight Alzheimer's Disease Research Center cohorts. The researchers used SomaLogic SomaScan to quantify proteins in plasma and the Gene Tissue Expression Atlas human tissue bulk RNA-seq database to identify which genes and plasma proteins were organ-enriched, defined as being expressed at least four times higher in a particular organ; the highest number was in the brain.<br /><br />Using machine learning, they estimated biological age using the plasma proteome and then calculated the organ age gap. The researchers also developed the feature importance for biological aging (FIBA) algorithm, "which uses feature permutation to generate a per-protein importance score for both chronological and biological age," to investigate how proteins contributed to brain aging.<br /><br />Because the study focused on a subset of organs, it is unknown if these findings apply to all organs. Wyss-Coray and team also noted that they observed "many instances of nonlinear dynamics in the plasma proteome and in aging phenotypes," urging caution in extrapolating the results to people younger than 50. They also suggested that the research be conducted among more ethnically and geographically diverse populations, since the participants were majority white and entirely American.<br /><br />Wyss-Coray added that he hopes future studies will assess multiple blood samples from patients across time to see how organ aging changes. "We may gain new insight into the biological mechanisms that lead to that heart aging," he said. <br /><br /><a href="https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/features/107709?xid=nl_mpt_Cardiology_update_2023-12-08&mh=788a5203e5c46eefe40bc9dd2371f76b?xid%3Dnl_mpt_Cardiology_update_2023-12-08&mh=788a5203e5c46eefe40bc9dd2371f76b&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Automated%20Specialty%20Update%20Cardiology%20BiWeekly%20FRIDAY%202023-12-08&utm_term=NL_Spec_Cardiology_Update_Active">https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/features/107709?xid=nl_mpt_Cardiology_update_2023-12-08&mh=788a5203e5c46eefe40bc9dd2371f76b?xid%3Dnl_mpt_Cardiology_update_2023-12-08&mh=788a5203e5c46eefe40bc9dd2371f76b&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Automated%20Specialty%20Update%20Cardiology%20BiWeekly%20FRIDAY%202023-12-08&utm_term=NL_Spec_Cardiology_Update_Active<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>NAVY BEANS HELP PREVENT COLON CANCER<br /></b><br />While colorectal cancer is highly treatable at its earliest stage, most cases are found when it is more advanced.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Between 7% and 29% of people who receive treatment for colorectal cancer experience recurrence within five years.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Certain lifestyle changes, such as a healthy diet, can help prevent colorectal cancer.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Researchers recently found that adding navy beans, also known as haricot beans, to the diet of colorectal cancer survivors helped improve their gut microbiome, which could aid in both cancer prevention and treatment.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br /><i><b>Colorectal cancer — which affects the large intestine, including the colon and the rectum — is the third most common cancer in the world.</b><br /></i><br />Colorectal cancer is highly treatable — and in some cases even curable — when caught early enough.<br /><br />However, colorectal cancer does not always show symptoms at an early stage. <b>Only about three to four out of 10 </b>are diagnosed at its earliest stage, where the disease is localized.<br /><br />If treatment is successful for colorectal cancer, recent research shows that despite improvements in treatment between 7% and 29% of people may have a recurrence of the condition within five years of treatment, depending on site and stage.<br /><br />Although it is not possible to fully prevent colorectal cancer, past studies show regular physical activity, keeping a healthy weight, and making certain nutritional choices can help.<br /><br />Now, <b>researchers from The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center has found that adding navy beans, also known as haricot beans, to the diet of colorectal cancer survivors helps improve their gut microbiome, which could potentially aid in both cancer prevention and treatment.</b><br /><br /><b>Why choose navy beans? <br /></b><br />While other dry beans, peas, and lentils have nutritional profiles that are also likely to stimulate the gut microbiome, Dr. Carrie Daniel-MacDougall, associate professor of epidemiology at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and lead author of this study told Medical News Today she was particularly inspired by promising findings in early preclinical or mouse model studies specifically <b>testing the effect of navy beans on the combination of obesity, inflammation, and colorectal cancer.</b><br /><br />“These studies, including my own, were also inspired by the Polyp Prevention Trial (PPT),” Dr. Daniel-MacDougall said.<br /><br />“This large study showed that the participants with the biggest increase in bean consumption — daily or close to it — had a lower risk of advanced colorectal adenoma recurrence — a type of precancerous and high-risk polyp that is very likely to progress to colorectal cancer if not caught promptly upon colonoscopy and completely removed,” she continued.<br /><br />“At the time of the PPT, pinto, navy, and black beans were the most commonly consumed beans and varied in popularity by U.S. region. Here in Texas, I knew navy beans would also be ‘new’ to participants and have a mild/adaptable taste, making them well-suited to test in a controlled and consistent manner over eight weeks,” she added.<br /><br /><b>How gut health is tied to colorectal cancer<br /></b><br /><b>Dr. Daniel-MacDougall said it is important for colorectal cancer survivors to have a balanced gut microbiome because it directly interacts with the colon epithelium where colorectal cancer develops.<br /><br />“This ‘cross-talk’ between human cells and microbes is tightly linked to the immune system that can either prevent or drive inflammation, as well as the development and progression of cancer,”</b> she continued.<br /><br />“Having made it through the difficult journey of cancer, survivors certainly want to avoid other major and debilitating health issues,” Dr. Daniel-MacDougall added.<br /><br />Previous research has also shown the gut microbiome’s important role in colorectal cancer. A study published in July 2023 suggested the gut microbiome may be a target for microbial therapeutics against colorectal cancer.<br /><br />A study published in June 2020 found that personal modulation of a person’s gut microbiome through diet may help prevent the development and progression of CRC and improve the efficacy of antitumoral therapy.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/eating-more-navy-haricot-beans-may-help-colorectal-cancer-prevention-treatment#How-gut-health-is-tied-to-colorectal-cancer-">https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/eating-more-navy-haricot-beans-may-help-colorectal-cancer-prevention-treatment#How-gut-health-is-tied-to-colorectal-cancer-</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibH1hnwmgNNXLKnXAn9uOEm1t6ZxxWtacikGH1uGcgIsSR4dQAt_k6ENXU6QXMUlMXZzViC6OwYsV3UxE68IxK84tMQ0Nbqar0YTWqIHtYIqg3JDYLy84QNMQKKo2YTJ_coU_eiMsGDgJSYWhDKumUryuYod-25ByfFthp6GwnlVVRzxC5evfoYZAn8XHU/s1920/navy%20beans%20cooked.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibH1hnwmgNNXLKnXAn9uOEm1t6ZxxWtacikGH1uGcgIsSR4dQAt_k6ENXU6QXMUlMXZzViC6OwYsV3UxE68IxK84tMQ0Nbqar0YTWqIHtYIqg3JDYLy84QNMQKKo2YTJ_coU_eiMsGDgJSYWhDKumUryuYod-25ByfFthp6GwnlVVRzxC5evfoYZAn8XHU/w400-h225/navy%20beans%20cooked.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><i>ending on beauty:</i></b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">THE NOSTALGIA OF PIGEONS<br /></span></span></p><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In the morning I liked to greet</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> a pigeon on my windowsill —<br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">not the pale poetic </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">messenger of dawn, </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">but a red-rimmed </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">round of an eye </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">that stared into mine, </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">then closed again</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> into sleep. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Here there are no windowsills.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />Here I console myself</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> with a hummingbird </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">jeweling the air; </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">winter’s fog-cowled beaches, </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">lizard flickering </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">between noon and dream. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I ought to be utterly</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> consoled. What beauty </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">was there in a gray, </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">sleep-ruffled pigeon dawning </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">on my Warsaw windowsill — </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />But it wasn’t the beauty —</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">it was<br />his coming, </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">unasked, home.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">~ Oriana</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPy1TZN5gm17ha-URDZ1c6E1gS9MjEHavIKSsmV7fjova4P38FyuW0XjOAQzTGbH1mvoUtUpfE1Fl893jX2ba9AIpfaa0OfhsnTHlm5fNMzSBucy9DhLp0MyLI81Wp-LhQOChMiUxzgEBlprU3CPpMSZjFtxhdZca3-1kpt1yL2cNnCwKxRM8lIY1uXB-d/s1600/pigeon%20adult.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPy1TZN5gm17ha-URDZ1c6E1gS9MjEHavIKSsmV7fjova4P38FyuW0XjOAQzTGbH1mvoUtUpfE1Fl893jX2ba9AIpfaa0OfhsnTHlm5fNMzSBucy9DhLp0MyLI81Wp-LhQOChMiUxzgEBlprU3CPpMSZjFtxhdZca3-1kpt1yL2cNnCwKxRM8lIY1uXB-d/w400-h225/pigeon%20adult.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /></span><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-59589427120055071552023-12-02T22:18:00.000-08:002023-12-06T19:21:15.911-08:00ONE LAND, TWO ETHNIC GROUPS: HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS; TROTSKY’S PROPHECY; HOMAGE TO JACKSON POLLOCK; OCTOBER 7 “JUST A REHEARSAL”; NAPOLEON (THE MOVIE); PUTIN DESPERATE FOR LARGE FAMILIES; MENTAL ILLNESS AND SUFI SHRINES; CHILDREN NEED ALLOPARENTS; DEMENTIA AND INFLAMMATION<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTLoaCWM8w2DUs4478RTvyzVWLv8bJwQ9M7XOLnEaQPIx1O-nsh6hBRUR9nn0iuqOeZlqniiJYIL_1bJZUBRYyYuN7oDR-lAt-QSoMLzjNeP3XWV2n53Te6S3tjDVrPrWIEXXWx7ZON8cXeq9Zcu8IzgSSpDGsDdeWXW2Zxm2DVnP4DXY_eKlJeThysdRy/s991/Pollock%201948.jpg" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="991" data-original-width="720" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTLoaCWM8w2DUs4478RTvyzVWLv8bJwQ9M7XOLnEaQPIx1O-nsh6hBRUR9nn0iuqOeZlqniiJYIL_1bJZUBRYyYuN7oDR-lAt-QSoMLzjNeP3XWV2n53Te6S3tjDVrPrWIEXXWx7ZON8cXeq9Zcu8IzgSSpDGsDdeWXW2Zxm2DVnP4DXY_eKlJeThysdRy/w290-h400/Pollock%201948.jpg" width="290" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />TO JACKSON POLLOCK<br /></span><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Last night somebody murdered a young tree on Seventh Avenue</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> between 18th and 19th—only two in that block, </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">and just days ago we'd taken refreshment in the crisp and particular shade</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">of that young ginkgo's tight leaves, its beauty and optimism, </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">though I didn't think of that word until the snapped trunk this morning, </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">a broken broomstick discarded, and tell me what pleasure</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">could you take from that? Maybe I understand it, </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">the sudden surge of rage and the requirement of a gesture, </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">but this hour I place myself firmly on the side of thirst,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />the sapling's ambition to draw from the secret streams </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">beneath this city, to lift up our subterranean waters. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Power in a pointless scrawl now on the pavement.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Pollock, when he swung his wild arcs in the barn-air by </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Accabonac, stripped away incident and detail till all</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> that was left was swing and fall and return,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />austere rhythm deep down things, beautiful </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">because he's subtracted the specific stub and pith,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> this wreck on the too-hot pavement where scavengers</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />spread their secondhand books in the scalding sunlight. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Or maybe he didn't. Erase it I mean: look into the fierce ellipse</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> of his preserved gesture, and hasn't he swept up every bit,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />all the busted and incomplete, half-finished and lost? </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Alone in the grand rooms of last century's heroic painters —</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">granted entrance, on an off day, to a museum</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />with nobody, thank you, this once nobody talking— </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">and for the first time I understood his huge canvases </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">were prayers. No matter to what. And silent as hell;</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />he rode the huge engine of his attention toward silence, </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">and silence emanated from them, and they would not take no</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> for an answer, though there is no other. Forget supplication,</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />beseechment, praise. Look down into it, the smash-up swirl, </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">oil and pigment and tree-shatter: </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">tumult in equilibrium.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">~ Mark Doty<br /><br />*<br /><b>JACKSON POLLOCK CONTROLLED HIS “DRIPS”</b></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsb-UfkBptDG8AeefGd6x-Bb5N_l25EmBYVHuwMiTvGJ5kIMAfXH50RxKiHtvpRhWy_J5BbwGECK0ukxcM3BQJJaye6uGzIjxQ29PUdBmltAm7-YH1ZNPgqdHKf-GbP29_TCJaMUPQ5U_5ihxvuhhgr12HNFbw7dTdd4iMuP3HhAqj6K5GZhrhFIQNhXqG/s500/Pollock%20at%20work%20best.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="486" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsb-UfkBptDG8AeefGd6x-Bb5N_l25EmBYVHuwMiTvGJ5kIMAfXH50RxKiHtvpRhWy_J5BbwGECK0ukxcM3BQJJaye6uGzIjxQ29PUdBmltAm7-YH1ZNPgqdHKf-GbP29_TCJaMUPQ5U_5ihxvuhhgr12HNFbw7dTdd4iMuP3HhAqj6K5GZhrhFIQNhXqG/w389-h400/Pollock%20at%20work%20best.jpg" width="389" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b></b><i>Pollock at work</i><br /><br />~ Seventy-five years ago, in his studio in a Long Island barn, Jackson Pollock made the first of the works that would come to define him. These were (and are) known as ‘drip paintings’, although dripping was hardly to the point. As Hans Namuth was to record in his film of the artist at work in 1950, the artist flicked and spilled and flung diluted enamel paint at least as often as he dripped it. But ‘drip’ was the word that stuck to works such as Full Fathom Five (1947), thanks perhaps to the subeditor at <b>Time magazine who, in the year of his death, bestowed upon Pollock the undying nickname ‘Jack the Dripper’. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Pollock had long since been anointed the crown prince of American painting by that critical kingmaker Clement Greenberg. In November 1943, in The Nation, Greenberg had rhapsodized the work in his first solo show, at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery, as ‘among the strongest abstract paintings I have yet seen by an American’. In a taste of what was to come, he breezily noted that <b>Pollock had ‘gone through the influences of Miró, Picasso and what not, and has come out on the other side’. He had, that is to say, taken what he wanted from Europe, and moved on. </b>‘He is liable to relapse into an influence,’ Greenberg added, darkly, ‘but if the times are propitious, it won’t be for long.’ It was he more than anyone who would see in Pollock’s work of the late 1940s an art that was essentially American.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Yet whether Pollock dripped (or flung or spilled) his paint was an irrelevance lent weight by Greenberg himself. <b>Pollock’s paintings, he said, ‘eliminated the factor of manual skill and seemed to eliminate the factor of control along with it […] excluding anything that resembles control and order, not to mention skill’</b>. <b>If this misreading was that of what Greenberg sniffily called ‘the uninitiated eye’, it was nonetheless to become the standard line on Pollock</b>. In trying to defend his hero’s rejection of skill, Greenberg turned him into raw instinct, tout court. This was what Hans Namuth also saw. His filming, he recalled, had lasted ‘perhaps half an hour’. In all that time, Pollock did not stop. How could one keep up this level of activity? Finally he said, ‘This is it.’ In fact, as Pollock later admitted, he had already finished the work he appeared to paint from new in Namuth’s film, reworking it for the camera. <b>He was an altogether more knowing artist than the film-maker allowed, and a very much more sophisticated one.</b></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMs0YCJ50LjS6iAgqZoeCDOZ1x-KKsy2SCru50eKH8XA9gnUi1SK9nL1GfCfF7TAqJcH4WXtNvzu41FPmtR4sbrqgcBIV_RImrVtuwKwO8fxh9n-7-YSjsmehRt93W6uywlC_KVcRA-bdBtAsVp0yCiZDoYiwsyatNvLOUIhY__6FLVIGlRqmG5l44SjGD/s1108/Pollock%20and%20canvas.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1108" data-original-width="790" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMs0YCJ50LjS6iAgqZoeCDOZ1x-KKsy2SCru50eKH8XA9gnUi1SK9nL1GfCfF7TAqJcH4WXtNvzu41FPmtR4sbrqgcBIV_RImrVtuwKwO8fxh9n-7-YSjsmehRt93W6uywlC_KVcRA-bdBtAsVp0yCiZDoYiwsyatNvLOUIhY__6FLVIGlRqmG5l44SjGD/w285-h400/Pollock%20and%20canvas.webp" width="285" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In 1998, the conservators of the Museum of Modern Art in New York undertook an exhaustive survey of the post-war Pollocks in their collection. This revealed a number of surprises. <b>‘The level of intentionality was the biggest,’ said MoMA’s chief conservator, James Coddington. ‘It just flew in the face of everything people have generally thought.’ He went on: ‘There’s a level of consciousness, intention, about [Pollock’s method] that liberates him to paint as unconsciously as he does […] a great deal of consciousness, balance, use of materials, and craft.’ </b>He and a colleague had tried to make their own Pollock. Studying Namuth’s film, they pinned a primed canvas to the studio floor and poured paint on to it from a tin. ‘What this allows you to do is make an infinite line,’ Coddington recalled. ‘You can just go on and on and on. <b>So these thin lines give one great control.’</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Pollock himself would have agreed, had he been asked. In 1950, the year Namuth filmed him, Time magazine had run a piece on his art quoting the young Italian critic Bruno Alfieri, who had referred to the ‘chaos’ detectable in it. ‘It is easy to describe a [Pollock],’ Alfieri had said. ‘Think of a canvas surface on which the following have been poured: the contents of several tubes of paint of the best quality; sand, glass, various powders, pastels, gouache, charcoal […] It is important to state immediately that these “colors” have not been distributed according to a logical plan (whether naturalistic, abstract or otherwise). This is essential. Jackson Pollock’s paintings represent absolutely nothing: no facts, no ideas, no geometrical forms.’ <b>Pollock’s response had been an enraged telegram to Time – ‘NO CHAOS DAMN IT’ – from which MoMA’s conservators took the name for their survey.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijyxeqin97FlXCd9N1NnJNjDPa_ei1NC99qUmK0qeTQBUTjOPKE9uXH0Eu51QEA2soAVrTeO0gspPqapk_UM3HVFvFnuEZzxIk6hqoG9lIYIIgbpYC07dV3VvnpBWNnbuAxuF8xDWbybWeAZ6F5g9PTOeiN5VnYTI-R1VRVC5kFrvgGJWpfLLNHH_RrtXx/s512/lavender%20mist%20green.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="378" data-original-width="512" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijyxeqin97FlXCd9N1NnJNjDPa_ei1NC99qUmK0qeTQBUTjOPKE9uXH0Eu51QEA2soAVrTeO0gspPqapk_UM3HVFvFnuEZzxIk6hqoG9lIYIIgbpYC07dV3VvnpBWNnbuAxuF8xDWbybWeAZ6F5g9PTOeiN5VnYTI-R1VRVC5kFrvgGJWpfLLNHH_RrtXx/w400-h295/lavender%20mist%20green.webp" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Pollock: Lavender Mist, 1950</i><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The story of Pollock’s drips, as he himself saw it, was thus one not of disorder but order. The various claimants to the title of his chief influencer – Max Ernst, William Baziotes, David Alfaro Siqueiros – had all eschewed control of their paint, splashing it from lazy Susans or dripping it from dangling tins with holes punched in them. The point of this was to relinquish intention, that snare of the conscious mind. Pollock’s approach to paint was quite different. His dripping might appear primal, at least to Greenberg, Namuth and Time magazine, but it was an appearance that he went about cultivating in an entirely methodical way. How methodical it was had also come as a surprise to MoMA’s conservators. ‘When you look at the surface of a Pollock, it is very abstracted,’ mused James Coddington, pondering X-rays of the drip paintings. ‘But when we can peer beneath the surface to see the underlying construction of the work, there you begin to see that the final surface organization is actually pretty much laid down earlier on.’ The question, then, is not where Pollock had learned to drip, but where he had learned to give the impression of doing so. The answer to that, surprisingly, was in a studio run by an English printer.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir4Su-VCw9LrgL4s0b8LKFW6f6SSZ_k_6B88Xk6fqoAMdjLlWUS2QLQABh2f_2XBwVDAZNkWu0qBxSxr25OxqbPl19iRNOddnouJ4_0C8yoDURXIP9m4VuTwE1HHzdXVha9Jzymsy86RRBprWBRzwvaS9L4uVAiIHO3xry2aR1DHLpMXib_FgKm0Ri_Ezl/s1024/Pollock%20full-fathom-five%201947.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="585" data-original-width="1024" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir4Su-VCw9LrgL4s0b8LKFW6f6SSZ_k_6B88Xk6fqoAMdjLlWUS2QLQABh2f_2XBwVDAZNkWu0qBxSxr25OxqbPl19iRNOddnouJ4_0C8yoDURXIP9m4VuTwE1HHzdXVha9Jzymsy86RRBprWBRzwvaS9L4uVAiIHO3xry2aR1DHLpMXib_FgKm0Ri_Ezl/w400-h229/Pollock%20full-fathom-five%201947.jpg" width="400" /></a></i></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> <br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Full Fathom Five, 1947</i></span></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Stanley William Hayter’s name is very well known in printmaking circles, rather less so outside of them. Born into a family of London artists in 1901, he had taken up science instead, setting off to what is now Iran as a geologist with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. He had his first exhibition in 1926, of work produced in Abadan, while recovering in London from malaria. This did well enough for him to throw in his job, buy himself a motorcycle and head for Paris and the Académie Julian. </span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">It was a meeting there with the Polish printmaker Józef Hecht that would set Hayter on the road he was to follow until his death 60 years later. For reasons that remain unclear, he decided to dedicate himself to rescuing intaglio printing from the desuetude into which it had fallen. In the 19th century, as artistic genius had come to be ever more closely equated with speed and spontaneity, engraving, that slowest and least spontaneous of art forms, had fallen out of favour. By 1926, it had been relegated to commercial studios, used in the reproduction of paintings or printing of books. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Hayter’s campaign to promote engraving as a modernist technique – in particular, to champion the use of the burin, an unwieldy instrument requiring not just skill but strength – seemed less quixotic than perverse. And yet it succeeded. <b>By the mid 1930s, he had acquired a Montparnasse studio patronized by Picasso, Giacometti and Miró, not simply producing prints for these artists but teaching them to engrave for themselves. When war came, he moved this to New York, retaining the French name taken from its street number in rue Campagne-Première: Atelier 17. It would find a home on the top floor of the New School for Social Research – the University in Exile – a few blocks from Pollock’s flat.</b><br /><br />Pollock was not the only future New York School artist to make work at the atelier, at the New School or its later iteration across the road from his flat in East Eighth Street. <b>Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning all did so, too, each producing there the only engravings they are known to have made</b>. In 1947 at the Eighth Street atelier, Louise Bourgeois would make her breakthrough work, He Disappeared into Complete Silence, a suite of burin prints that prompted her move into sculpture. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But it was Pollock who was most affected by his time at Atelier 17. Introduced to it by his printmaker friend Reuben Kadish, he worked there at night, furiously and alone, from the early autumn of 1944 to late spring 1945. ‘He didn’t work much with a lot of people in the print shop,’ Hayter recalled in the distant 1970s. ‘He’d come in at odd hours and at night when nobody else was there.’ Kadish said, ‘I inveigled Jackson into trying it because I thought his work had a kinship to Hayter’s prints.’ It was a likeness that had already been spotted by the Art News critic James Lane, who in 1942 compared the two men’s ‘general whirling figures’ – Pollock being then so little known that his name had been misspelled ‘Pollack’.<br /><br />Pollock may have worked alone at Atelier 17, but he spent long hours with Hayter in the latter’s house on Waverly Place, visits that would continue until the older man returned to Paris in 1950. ‘When half drunk, Jack could talk intelligently about the source of inspiration and about the limits of working from the unconscious,’ Hayter said. He also understood what Pollock had been up to in his nights at Atelier 17. <b>‘A lot of our people, at this time, said. “This is nonsense. Anyone can do [what Pollock] is doing,”’ Hayter recalled. ‘And this infuriated me. So I said, “All right. Go to it. And I bet you not one of you can make one square inch of anything that can be mistaken for what Pollock’s done.” And they tried it… You can’t be fooled. It’s more than handwriting.’</b><br /><br />Three decades after the death of his protégé, Hayter said, ‘Jack always claimed that he had two masters: Benton and me.’ The American Regionalist Thomas Hart Benton, Pollock’s professor at art school, had taught him the rules of painting; Hayter encouraged him to break them. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">That this has been largely forgotten is easy enough to understand: Hayter is known as a printmaker, although he saw himself primarily as a painter; Pollock’s plates remain little known; Hayter was European in a day when the writing of American art history was chauvinistic. But it does need to be remembered. ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://www.apollo-magazine.com/jackson-pollock-atelier-17/">https://www.apollo-magazine.com/jackson-pollock-atelier-17/<br /></a><br />*<br /><i><b>“On the canvas was not a picture, but an event.” ~ Harold Rosenberg, “The American Action Painters,” Art News (December 1952)</b><br /></i><br />*<br /><b>ONE LAND, TWO ETHNIC GROUPS — SOME HISTORICAL EXAMPLES<br /></b><br />~ There really is just one solution: use the same standards as for any other conflict in the same time period.<br /><br />The most perverse myth about the issue of Israel and Palestine is the situation is somehow unique, strange, different, unequaled and without parallel in word history. The only example usually cited is the exodus of Israelites from Palestine by the Romans and Palestinians drew from that to create their own version of exodus, so they would have the same claim to sympathy as the Jews did.<br /><br />Back in the real world, when the “catastrophe”[Nakba] happened (Palestinians fled or were forced out of Palestine), <b>they weren’t called Palestinians yet. They called themselves Syrians for the most part; a smaller but still significant portion called themselves Egyptians</b>. Syria and Egypt were two of the states that attacked Israel, lost the war and consequently the territory the people now called Palestinians lived on. In retaliation the Arab stated expelled Jewish population from their territory by force or threat of force, leaving these people with nowhere but Israel to settle in.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Now the conflict is who this land really belongs to and by what right does Israel claim the land.<br /><br />Here’s how it was done in some of the other cases in the 1910–1950 period:<br /><br /><b>Greeks were expelled from Turkey and resettled in Greece proper. Turks were expelled from Greece and resettled in Turkey proper.</b></span></p><p><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Poland took territory from Germany. Germans were forcefully resettled into Germany proper. </span></b></p><p><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">USSR took territory from Poland. Poles were forcefully resettled into Poland proper, as a nice thank you for being the first people to oppose Hitler.</span></b></p><p><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Czechoslovakia was liberated from German occupation and expelled ethnic Germans of Sudetenland. Germans were resettled into Germany proper.</span></b></p><p><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Yugoslavia liberated itself from German and Italian occupation and expelled ethnic Italians and Germans. Italians were resettled in Italy proper, Germans went to the USA for the most part, although some also resettled in Germany proper.</span></b></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>India expelled some 8 million Muslims who were resettled in Pakistan. Pakistan expelled approximately 7 million Hindus, who were resettled in India.<br /></b><br /><b>None of these led to long-term conflict or war.</b> No one created a new national identity for the dispossessed people so that they wouldn’t have a land to settle in and would be forced into suffering for generations. It was only in Israel and Palestine that a different solution was attempted, with horrific results.<br /><br />Maybe we should try the same approach as was attempted everywhere else instead? The results are manifestly less bad than in the case of Israel and Palestine. <b>Arab states who expelled Jews take in a number of Palestinians proportional to the number of Jews they forced out, give them citizenship, compensate them for land lost in the war and call it a day. That’s the only solution one can consider “fair”.</b><br /><br />The problem of Israel and Palestine can be solved by forcing Arab states to take care of the mess they created for their own gain. The problem of Palestinians can be solved by applying the same solution that was applied to any other people in their situation. ~ Tomaž Vargazon, Quora</span></p><p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: georgia;">Joe: LANGUAGE AND VIOLENCE<br /><br />When we discuss the war between Palestine and Israel, we need to pay special attention to our language because its misuse leads to violence. This war is between two religiously ultra-conservative governments, Hamas and the Benjamin Netanyahu coalition, not between Palestinians and Jews. The Hamas organization advocates the extermination of all Jews in Israel. The Netanyahu government promotes the removal by forced migration or murder of the Palestinians living along Israel’s borders.<br /><br />The South African government calls the Jewish war plan genocide. To them, killing and, or removal of any group of people from their land is a form of extermination. At the same time, they defend Hamas’s war crimes. On the other hand, Netanyahu supports the Jewish settlers’ brutal behavior toward the citizens of Gaza. Both Hamas and Netanyahu’s behavior is a carbon copy of the Chinese Government’s treatment of the Chinese Muslim community, the Uyghurs. Xi Jinping’s government confiscated their land and forced them to work in “rehabilitation” camps, which is a euphemism for hard labor, beatings, and starvation.<br /><br />In India, the conservative government continues to allow Hindu Nationalists to beat Indian Muslims and vandalize their homes. The Russian Orthodox Church supports the Ukraine-Russian war, and the Russian army continues bombing hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings. The Israeli military employs the same strategy against the Palestinians, and Hamas used the identical tactic during their October 7th attack. Both sides kidnap, rape, torture, and murder innocent Palestinians and Israelites. The actions of these two governments are not justifiable by their religion or any historically unjust treatment.<br /><br />These immoral régimes tell the world that it must choose sides and be either anti-Muslim or antisemitic. <br /><br />If stealing land and murder is inexcusable for India, Russia, and China, it is wrong for Hamas and the Netanyahu coalition. In America, hate crimes against African-Americans, Jewish Americans, Muslim Americans, and others are on the rise. Science reveals the connection between the use of ethnically tinged language and violence. <b>When we criticize "Palestinians" instead of Hamas or "Jews" in place of Netanyahu’s government, we risk sliding into a denial of the Palestinians’ and the Jews’ right to live in their own country.</b><br /><br />When the language of our criticisms includes the innocent victims of Palestine and Israel, we risk validating the ultra-conservative calls to destroy Gaza or Israel. I believe no one country is superior to another, and it is malicious to discriminate against anyone. The world learned from WWII that ignoring such immorality led to fascism and World War. Therefore, when we criticize the war in the Middle East, we must choose our words wisely because the consequences of our language can be lethal.<br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Oriana:<br />Language is indeed especially important in this war. Of course it was important in all modern wars, because at least on the surface these are not the wars motivated by greed — or at least the participants would never admit they are. No, in modern times there has to be justification by ideology. <br /><br />Thus the Nazis claimed to be a superior race, the Űbermensch, naturally (or divinely) destined to rule over or exterminate the subhuman races — Jews, Slavs, the Roma people — the Untermensch. And now, according to the Orthodox, we have the Chosen People who have come to claim the Promised Land — promised to them alone, and not to the Arabs. “inhabitants of the desert,” who were, nevertheless, also promised to be a “Great Nation.” Both claim to be the sons of Abraham — perhaps the only claim to which all agree. From the religious/mythological point of view, this is sibling rivalry bar none. <br /><br />So the primary requirement is to remove religious mythology from this conflict, and the first step is to be precise with language. As Joe wisely advises, let us speak about Hamas — rather than Palestinians. Not all Palestinians approve of Hamas, much less belong to it. And not all Israelis — a term much more specific than “Jews” — are right-wing Zionists who dream of somehow expelling all Palestinians. The moderates in both ethnic groups advocate peaceful coexistence, with each side acknowledging the historical claims to the land by the other side, and both sides enjoying full human rights. <br /><br />As Joe wisely points out, if we use extreme language, we “risk validating the ultra-conservative calls to destroy Gaza or Israel.” WW2 indeed showed us that the way we talk is not innocent. In fact, it can have lethal consequences. It is one thing to say that "Netanyahu must go," and quite another to say that Israel has no right to exist. It is one thing is advocate the extermination of Hamas, a terrorist organization, and another to advocate the "removal" of all Palestinians from the territories of "Greater Israel." </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Mary:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The glee of Hamas as they commit horrific crimes is demonic. I cannot think anything other than their religion itself supports evil, naming it virtue. It is aggressive, intolerant, unmerciful and repugnant. I can't separate their acts from their doctrine...it's all one piece. The treatment of women is in itself repugnant — they must cover themselves, partially, or, worse, completely, so as not to incite male lust. Are these men so unregulated and bestial they cannot see an unveiled woman without sexually assaulting her?? That is the message. And is there any room for women in their Islamic heaven?? The reward for males in that heaven, all those rape-able virgins, is simply disgusting. The whole seems as primitive as the tribal nature of their states, as extreme and irrational, foreign to any modern society.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">With the possible exception of Buddhim, which is more philosophy than religion, all major religions are in serious conflict with modernity. All supernaturalism is an oxymoron, since in nature there is nothing supernatural — although there are questions to which we don't have answers. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">When we delve into history, there is hardly any religion that does not have a long trail of blood. I hope to live long enough to see all religions discussed as mythologies. There are some wonderful stories that religions have given us — Noah and his Ark, Jesus forgiving the woman taken in adultery, various Sufi and Hindu tales — all these are part of the human cultural heritage, which they enrich. But taking these fairy tales literally and being willing to kill in their name is monstrous and also ridiculous — who would be willing to die for Santa Claus?</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Alas, any religion carries the danger of producing a blood-thirsty fundamentalism, which is indeed a joyful dream of the horrible tortures and much awaited defeat of the "infidel." At this point Orthodox Judaism and fundamentalist Christianity do not present a danger. Their adherents are regarded as the lunatic fringe, the merely annoying religious nuts. In Islam, however, we face a murderous, radical fundamentalism totally at odds with modernity. How many more generations before this poison loses its potency? Will it be a gradual decay or a sudden collapse? </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Here is what I found online (Reddit):<br /></span></p><h1 class="font-semibold text-neutral-content-strong m-0 text-18 xs:text-24 mb-xs px-md xs:px-0 xs:mb-md " id="post-title-t3_oskfjt"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Islam collapsed a long time ago. It is in terminal decline. </span></span>
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<div class="text-neutral-content md max-h-[253px] overflow-hidden s:max-h-[318px] m:max-h-[337px] l:max-h-[352px] xl:max-h-[452px] text-14" id="t3_oskfjt-post-rtjson-content" style="--emote-size: 20px;">
<p>
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: georgia;">There was a time when Islam looked like it would take over the world. That was a long time ago.
</span></p><p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: georgia;">
Then it failed and completely collapsed especially after the abolition of the </span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: georgia;">caliphate</span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: georgia;">. The caliphate gave Islam a central authority but all that
is now gone.
</span></p><p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: georgia;">
Now you have Muslims in the same house celebrating eid and doing
namaaz at different times. It is over. Average Muslim doesn't even
pray anymore or care about Islam more than he has to in order to fit in.
Actual effort is minimal.
</span></p><p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: georgia;">
There will be no recovery or revival. It is over. Especially with
the end of the oil era fast approaching, Islam is in terminal decline.
It just looks scary because of the media and radical Muslims desperately
trying anything they can to keep Islam relevant.
</span></p><p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: georgia;">
Goodbye Islam. Enjoy it while it lasts. ~ r/exmuslim<br /></span></p></div></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Janos:<br /><b>A strong contender is the myth that the suffering, pain and death Palestinians suffered in the decades since picking the “we’ll never accept Israel” option will somehow be worth it. That the Jews will one day disappear, from the river to the sea, all that. Wunderwaffe all over again.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Many nations shared this belief while fighting a lost war. The lucky ones were offered some kind of peace.<br /></b><br />Brian Quinney:<br />Right now, because they are all Muslim theocracies, they could never justify siding militarily with Jews over Muslims. They wouldn't survive it politically, and the extremist factions that are always waiting to overthrow their governments would gain power. But by sitting back and saying/doing nothing while the IDF wipes the floor with them, and refusing to take in their refugees, they're essentially siding with Israel.<br /><br />James:<br />None of the Arab states are insane enough to want anything to do with Palestine or it’s populace. They’ve learned from Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt that their beneficence will only bring the violence to them, instead of being “safely” directed at Israel.<br /><br />Robert Caccomo:<br /><b>Jordan, Egypt and Syrian have no interest in having Palestinians resettle in their countries, forcefully or voluntarily. They tried that already and wound up with The Arab Spring and Black September.</b> In recent years ferment has seemed to follow Palestinians around like an ugly shadow, whether or not their combativeness is an understandable reaction to constantly being treated poorly I will let others debate. As we have seen in many places around the world in recent years there is less and less tolerance for anyone who will not live peacefully within their society and until Palestinians show themselves as a peace loving people they will have great difficulty finding anywhere they can call home.<br /><br />Tim Chiswell:<br />In a different world, I'd agree with you. Problem is, this isn't the 1940s any more. Times have changed, and what was politically acceptable to the international community in the wake of a long war with casualties running into 9 figures, simply wouldn't fly today.<br /><br />Not to mention that Syria, Egypt and (especially) Jordan and Lebanon have had very bad experiences with accepting large numbers of Palestinians into their countries. <b>While neighboring Arab nations may be happy to cheer for the Palestinians, none of them actually want a million+ of them turning up and forming a nation-within-a-nation on their home soil.<br /></b><br />I don't know what the solution is, but every conceivable approach (including just leaving things as they are) is deeply, fundamentally unacceptable to very considerable numbers of people, and powerful interests… and, again, this isn't the 1940s, when, after years of having to think the unthinkable, simply moving a few million people around didn't seem so extreme…<br /><br />Dano Latimer:<br />“The bad experiences of Arab states with Palestinians.” ~ The reason for the bad (violent) experience is not because they accepted Palestinians as such. Rather it is because <b>when the Arab states accepted Palestinians, they did so conditionally that they would remain separate from the rest of the population, with a distinct leadership (PLO) and with a separate military-police force separate from the accepting country — all in order to keep the Arab-Israeli conflict going perpetually. </b><br /><br />Had the Arab states accepted the Arabs from Mandatory Palestine, like Israel accepted Jews from the Arab states, Greeks originally living in Turkey, Germans in Eastern Europe, Hindus in Pakistan…. the conflict would have ended right there and there. This clear explanation is never talked about in the Western press, and the plight of Palestinians is used to justify the continuation of the conflict and pressure only the Israeli side to make concessions, despite winning a defensive wars they did not start in 1948 and in 1967 (after Straits of Tiran was closed, Egypt and Syria mobilized for war and the Arab league openly called for military destruction of Israel).<br /><br />*Straits of Tiran: The Straits of Tiran are the narrow sea passages between the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas that connect the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea.<br /><br />Matteo Quitus:<br />Basically, the Muslim / Arab world doesn’t want Jews in their countries.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">BUT it also doesn’t want Jews to be in Israel?!</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">So what do they want? <b>They want them disappeared is what they want, let’s be real.<br /></b><br />Tomaž Vargazon:<br /><br /><b>But the population transfer already happened. Palestinians should get their own state in West Bank and Gaza, or have the option to resettle in one of Arab states that already expelled their Jewish inhabitants.</b><br /><br />Beth Ann Dvorak:<br />Are you arguing that Israel should’ve annexed all of the land and let Palestinians become its citizens? Do you believe that is what Israel should do now? Many Israelis and Palestinians have been advocating for such a situation. And in fact many so do Palestinians (they identify as Israeli Arabs) who live in Israel not in occupied territory or the West Bank.<br /><br />But <b>since 1947, Palestinian leadership has consistently resisted any solution that would recognize Israel as a state. And in fact now, the worldwide Palestinian movement denies Israel has a right to exist</b>. They deny that there were ever any non-Muslims living in Palestine before 1947. They claim all the Jews living in Israel are refugees from Europe.<br /><br />I agree that it is tragic that 710,000 or so Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their ancestral homelands. But that fact needs to be considered in context. <b>Immediately prior to the Nakba, the neighboring Arab countries began a campaign to cleanse approx. 850,000 Jewish Palestinians from their ancestral homelands throughout Palestine. They and fled to Israel where they were accepted.</b> The burning question remains, why couldn’t the surrounding nations accept a number of Arab Palestinians that equaled the number of Jewish Palestinians they just ejected? <br /><br />If they had, there’d be no fighting today. That’s what other nations did around the world.<br />The surrounding Arab nations wanted to use the displaced Palestinians as weapons against Israel, which is ghastly. Arab nations simply did not want a non-Islamic country in the Middle East. They were willing to sacrifice generations of Palestinians to do that.<br /><br />And what would happen to the descendants of the Jewish Palestinians if Palestinians’ goals were accomplished? Israel would cease to exist. There are 6 million Jews inside of Israel who would be exterminated. And then what would happen to the 15 million Jews worldwide? Jews only have one state. And Jews — not entirely irrationally — believe that having a state is the only way they can protect their religion from annihilation.<br /><br />Claus Appel:<br /><b>Arab states don’t want Palestinians because historically too many of them have been violent extremists who caused trouble for the countries they moved to.<br /></b><br />Joseph Ekstrand:<br /><i><b>The population transfer should have happened seventy years ago. It’s too late now.<br /></b><br /><b>At this point, the 'Palestinians' have been calling themselves that for three generations. That's long enough to create and imprint a new identity.<br /></b></i><br />J. a Brinson:<br /><b>It is a war of religion, not ethnicity.</b> Remove religion and you cannot distinguish one from the other, physically or through DNA. They are Semites and the Canaanites of old. Then the Exodus myth came along and it was followed by the Muslim dominance. There was a place we’re all three major religions and people lived and prospered. They kept their faith and identity and lived side by side during the caliphate of Cordoba in Spain I the earlier Middle Ages. At the time, Cordoba was the largest and most prosperous city in the world and the culture, arts, medicine and engineering in Spain was without equals. Unfortunately, it did not last.<br /><br />Khul ja Sim Sim:<br /><b>The problem is ISLAM…<br /><br />Islam wants to keep reminding it's adherents “how we stamped Al Aqsa on top of the Jewish temple”!!<br /></b><br />While the Jews have cultural and historical tied with the land, Palestinians are just ARAB MUSLIMS STAYING IN ISRAEL.<br /><br />Palestine represents the “CONQUEST OF MOST IMPORTANT JEWISH SYMBOL, DEAR TO JEWISH HERETICS, BY ALLAH’S FORCES”!<br /><br />It's lame to think that this 1400 year old death cult started by that pedophile would settle amicably, for anything!!<br /><br />Muslims rebranded:<br />the most important Eastern Orthodox Church, Hagia Sofia, as a mosque,<br />the most pivotal of Hindu temples in India — Ram mandir at Ayodhya, Krishna temple at Mathura and Shiva temple at Varanasi. Hindus have reclaimed Ram temple by force — KUDOS to them.<br /><br />Al Aqsa falls in the same category!!<br /><br />Demolish the goddamn thing — it is the symbol of Mohammad’s tyranny on the two actual Abrahamic faiths.<br /><br />Eric Lund:<br />Fine. Take the Palestinians’ land. But pay for it. Because we won’t. We don’t have to, and we have better uses for our money than relocating a nation that is fine where it is.<br /><br />And to be perfectly cynical about it, I expect the idealistic program of a “Jewish homeland” to vanish like dew in the morning sun of Galilee when the free real estate and subject race of agricultural laborers (and reliable voters under ethnogenesis as “Haredi”) are off the table.<br /><br />*<br /><b>UNFORGIVABLE</b><br /><br /><i><b>~ The youngest hostage, at most three years old. Her dark eyes are full of mistrust. They will never smile again. They have seen too much and will never forget, though they don’t know and won’t say what they saw. The same as the eyes of the other children with her, who will never be childlike again. Deprived of childlike trust, which they will never regain. This damage can’t be repaired, these crimes can’t be forgiven. ~ Henryk Grynberg, translated by Oriana Ivy</b><br /></i><br />This partly explains how Jewish children living in hiding during WW2 must have felt. ~ Leon Rozenbaum<br /><br />*<br /><b>SABRINA MADDEAUX: I WATCHED HAMAS HACK INNOCENTS TO DEATH. THE WORST PART WAS THEIR GLEE<br /></b><br />Over the span of 43 minutes, I watched 138 humans be murdered or witnessed their corpses, many brutalized beyond recognition and others clearly tortured, in the direct aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel.<br /><br />That’s 3.2 bodies per minute— and less than 10 per cent of the more than 1,400 people killed that day.<br /><br /><b>The Consulate of Israel in Toronto screened the footage, taken from a mix of body cameras, dashboard cams, CCTV tapes, and victims’ cell phones, some used by Hamas to record and livestream their sadism, for a small group of media on Monday. Not everyone made it through the full 43 minutes</b>, with others moved to tears and outbursts of emotion.<br /><br />There were babies. Toddlers. So many children of all ages. Young men and women dressed for a music festival, not the wanton slaughter that saw their bloodied bodies piled atop one another in scenes reminiscent of some of the Holocaust’s worst images.<br /><br />Parents. The elderly. <b>A dad who, attempting to hide from Hamas attackers with his sons, all three of them still in their underwear, was blown up by a grenade in front of his children. The two young boys, covered in blood, crying, throwing themselves on the ground in grief, as a Hamas gunman raids the family’s fridge and takes a swig of soda. One of the sons’ panicked voice as he realizes he can no longer see out of one eye.<br /></b><br />The man’s wife as kibbutz security bring her to identify her husband’s remains. The moment she literally collapses and has to be dragged away from the scene, thrashing wildly, her legs folding under her like every bone had simply vanished from her body.<br /><br />A family attempting to decipher whether the burned remains in front of them, skirt hiked up above bare genitals, is the loved one they’re looking for.<br /><br />The literal streams of blood, the hacked off arms and legs, the infant missing part of its skull, brain leaking out. The dog shot over and over again as its limbs splay in every direction until they don’t anymore. Mickey mouse pyjamas on a young corpse, skull fragments on floors, victims shot point blank. So much blood.<br /><br /><b>But none of what I’ve detailed so far was the worst part of those 43 minutes. The worst part was the glee.<br /></b><br /><b>The pure jubilation of Hamas terrorists as they filmed themselves killing and torturing; their excited voices bragging about their atrocities. The videos of them playing with victims’ heads with their feet, and excitedly shooting out the tires of a kibbutz’s ambulance before massacring its residents.</b><br /><br /><b><i>I’ll never forget the gore, but it’s the look of euphoria and pride in the terrorists’ eyes, cheering for the cameras as if they were the ones partying at a music festival that day, that will haunt me.</i></b><br /><br />In the videos, Hamas attackers did not behave as soldiers or freedom fighters. They hunted their victims in their homes like serial killers in a horror film, peering through blinds, slashing through screen doors with knives, following families wherever they tried to run or hide. If they couldn’t find them, they’d use lighters to make sure fire did. They toyed with their victims’ lifeless bodies. They kept trophies, both physical and digital.<br /><br />It’s unimaginable that anyone could watch this and still equate what happened on Oct. 7 to resistance or war. I’ve seen war footage; this was not that. <b>These were terrorist attacks targeted at civilians and mass shootings of innocents. Hamas was indiscriminate in their cruelty, killing not for cause, but for pleasure.</b><br /><br />I don’t know if the full footage will ever be made public, but if it ever is, every single Canadian should watch it to understand how far beyond any conceivable rules of engagement Hamas went, why this time was different, and why it must never, ever happen again.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQgTPbdXpfSBk4khbELsxXWrHunhZEbsQXMwOSlBzomxacWcDDXA_XWDR8mNCdlJJ1pdx80B9pbqWAWBkAacAYMiOWJNjbYkCBJBTtgWKYUrlrax5lWQD5ZtNfMF4Z8tJ_IpNPFAkbSNS3baflfPd9ZJbLYFSyh1Kj2zrbo96VTWqX7hPrjvzXFb0URV1u/s1128/Israeli%20mother%20weeping.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="846" data-original-width="1128" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQgTPbdXpfSBk4khbELsxXWrHunhZEbsQXMwOSlBzomxacWcDDXA_XWDR8mNCdlJJ1pdx80B9pbqWAWBkAacAYMiOWJNjbYkCBJBTtgWKYUrlrax5lWQD5ZtNfMF4Z8tJ_IpNPFAkbSNS3baflfPd9ZJbLYFSyh1Kj2zrbo96VTWqX7hPrjvzXFb0URV1u/w400-h300/Israeli%20mother%20weeping.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://nationalpost.com/opinion/sabrina-maddeaux-i-watched-hamas-hack-innocents-to-death-the-worst-part-was-their-glee">https://nationalpost.com/opinion/sabrina-maddeaux-i-watched-hamas-hack-innocents-to-death-the-worst-part-was-their-glee<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>OCTOBER 7 MASSACRE WAS JUST A REHEARSAL, SAYS HAMAS LEADER <br /></b><br /><i><b>Hamas’s Oct. 7 slaughter was “just a rehearsal,” the Islamist group’s leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar threatened on Thursday, in his first public statement since the terrorist organization massacred more than a thousand people in Israel.</b><br /></i><br />“The leaders of the occupation [Israel] should know, Oct. 7 was just a rehearsal,” stated Sinwar, according to the Maariv newspaper.<br /><br />At least 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border. Another 240 men, women, children and soldiers were taken back to Gaza as hostages.<br /><br />On Monday, Israeli media reported that Sinwar paid a visit to several of the hostages held in an underground tunnel in the Strip. One of the hostages released over the weekend said the terror mastermind spoke to them in Hebrew without an accent.<br /><br />As Israel and Hamas agreed to extend their ceasefire-for-hostages agreement on Monday, Egypt reportedly put heavy pressure on Sinwar.<br /><br /><b>“Twice during the ceasefire the parties got into a crisis when Yahya Sinwar tried to violate the agreements, the first time last Saturday night,” said an Egyptian source with access to official circles in Cairo.<br /><br />“Egyptian intelligence officers arrived at the Rafah Crossing [to Gaza] and conveyed to Sinwar extremely difficult messages and threats peppered with juicy curses. A short hour later … the Israeli hostages were released,” the source added.<br /></b><br />On Oct. 14, Israel Defense Forces International Spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht told journalists that Sinwar and his entire command team “are in our sights.”<br /><br />“Yahya Sinwar is the face of evil. He is the mastermind behind this, like [Osama] bin Laden was. He built his career on murdering Palestinians when he understood they were collaborators. That’s how he became known as the butcher of Khan Yunis [in southern Gaza],” said Hecht.<br /><br /><i><b>Sinwar was convicted on multiple murder counts by an Israeli court and sentenced to five life sentences, which he was supposed to serve until his death, but in October 2011 he was released from prison—having served only 22 years—as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange.</b><br /></i><br />After his release, Sinwar gained power and popularity within Hamas, becoming its Gaza leader in February 2017 by defeating Ismail Haniyeh in an internal vote.<br /><br /><a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/world/israel-middle-east/oct-7-massacre-was-just-a-rehearsal-says-hamas-leader-in-first-public-address-since-attack-on-israel">https://nationalpost.com/news/world/israel-middle-east/oct-7-massacre-was-just-a-rehearsal-says-hamas-leader-in-first-public-address-since-attack-on-israel<br /></a><br />Ti Maigre:<br />This will never end until one side completely destroys the other. My fear is if that happens will they go after another group?<br /><br />Joey Sidonar:<br />This is the face of tolerance that the woke progressive crowd associate with diversity and inclusion. They support and encourage this behavior in their misguided attempt to rebuild the Western World.</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO-irgPDS17rfvKvHvyEfa2wLlpoYAWJZaWxQzjGfktudk8uf_DZS-x0DFVdyHzLUtZbh_EohnF8DmVcJC20xEnVQeEfOa8GIAJmrAg7dVCZRyaPykUUoU-rOjjkPJU2g8yC61_pbdgPnWFkGGxo0HInm1yXYJZXxwtD_G_i0WRGmUh2Z7lpLB8IWjTR06/s680/Muslim%20family%20on%20vacation.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="680" data-original-width="454" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO-irgPDS17rfvKvHvyEfa2wLlpoYAWJZaWxQzjGfktudk8uf_DZS-x0DFVdyHzLUtZbh_EohnF8DmVcJC20xEnVQeEfOa8GIAJmrAg7dVCZRyaPykUUoU-rOjjkPJU2g8yC61_pbdgPnWFkGGxo0HInm1yXYJZXxwtD_G_i0WRGmUh2Z7lpLB8IWjTR06/w268-h400/Muslim%20family%20on%20vacation.webp" width="268" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Muslim family on vacation<br /></i><br />*<br /><b>PUTIN DESPERATE FOR LARGE FAMILIES<br /></b><br />~ “Having large families should become the norm of life for all nations of Russia,” announced Vladimir Putin recently.<br /><br />Looks like the losses by the Russian army are so bad that without every family having 8 kids (yes, seriously!), Russia won’t be able to get out of the demographic pit that Putin plunged it into.<br /><br />Of course, it’s not only the losses at war, but also the desperate situation that families with kids in Russia are facing: Russians simply stopped procreating.<br /><br />According to forecast by Russia’s federal statistics service Rosstat, <b>in 2024-26,</b> t<b>he birth rate in Russia will fall to its lowest level since the beginning of the 19th century.</b><br /><br /><b>It will be worse than during the WWII and WWI.<br /></b><br /><b>“Having many children should become the norm and a way of life,” Putin insisted at the Christian Orthodox forum in Moscow.</b><br /><br />Watching the Congress, one couldn’t help the feeling of deja vu.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTR6jarWjzEMtcjNGWdDLc2HBZDew8rvTIJYJcbc7YU1_H1o4SLsWRfCbm_HzOZjJtY_G7U_4Ki5Aeas0VcAkgYejV8gKieJbeBj0m8oU7fyLAj7GCn_fbI7b0zXC6esBi06ryLMR_PQ9k0Sq7XftCfZzTrTknljUTQWAqXfCuD-lED_kJv5t5xRYzYYv4/s1020/state%20kremlin%20palace.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1020" data-original-width="1019" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTR6jarWjzEMtcjNGWdDLc2HBZDew8rvTIJYJcbc7YU1_H1o4SLsWRfCbm_HzOZjJtY_G7U_4Ki5Aeas0VcAkgYejV8gKieJbeBj0m8oU7fyLAj7GCn_fbI7b0zXC6esBi06ryLMR_PQ9k0Sq7XftCfZzTrTknljUTQWAqXfCuD-lED_kJv5t5xRYzYYv4/w400-h400/state%20kremlin%20palace.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>The Kremlin Palace of Congresses.</i></span></span></div><p></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>There is probably no shortage of former members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the audience.</b><br /><br />If this isn't a time loop, then what is?<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKgByDfPjyEkzqKHaXiwNRc7nZQ9ybglf_fnTcfYgasPYQgQwIB5V_HgHL5HhD2nHAGf4Aj07Oy4rAuaxiqC2jI4fRGHrmSuPoRYDvs8CJJUwvfOviZXlU-NVT-hhQD7ZC77N_NbTwUC6RFePf0fb3Ko8tCcOVl6i5jUNluoLDJoQdmCvHnn6TLCvWbo8o/s602/soviet%20party%20congress.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="338" data-original-width="602" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKgByDfPjyEkzqKHaXiwNRc7nZQ9ybglf_fnTcfYgasPYQgQwIB5V_HgHL5HhD2nHAGf4Aj07Oy4rAuaxiqC2jI4fRGHrmSuPoRYDvs8CJJUwvfOviZXlU-NVT-hhQD7ZC77N_NbTwUC6RFePf0fb3Ko8tCcOVl6i5jUNluoLDJoQdmCvHnn6TLCvWbo8o/w400-h225/soviet%20party%20congress.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>25th Soviet party congress<br /></i><br />Only this time, the image of Lenin is replaced with posters of Jesus.<br /><br />Putin himself was too scared to arrive to such an important event in person: he spoke via a broadcast (likely, it was a recording). <b>Putin has plenty of reasons to fear for his life, now even more than before. The movement of the wives of the mobilized soldiers just issued a message that instantly went viral, directly mentioning Putin</b>.<br /><br />Once again, Putin was bragging about some special “family values” that only Russia possesses, and how important they are, and how Russia is a God-chosen country to save the world.<br /><br />Putin, who is:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Divorced;</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Has multiple kids with women he’s never acknowledged as partners;</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Never shows up with his children;</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Brought the birth rate in Russia down to the World War II levels;</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Destroyed hundreds of thousands of Russian families by taking men and sending them to the war;</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians (who he says are “Russians who were simply misled”), causing family tragedies;</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Deliberately separated Ukrainian children from their families.<br /><br /><b>That very same man is preaching to Russians at a church Congress about “family values”.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">It’s not even cynicism anymore. Cynicism itself is sickened by the words of this shameless creature.<br /><br /><b>Putin doesn’t have a family, like all normal people. He has a Family — and not just one.<br /></b><br />First, there are his buddies from the cooperative “Ozero” (“Lake”) — a dacha community of 12 Putin’s close associates whom he made oligarchs.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Then, there are his colleagues from KGB/FSB — the Family that Putin keeps increasing in size and giving them more power, more money, more rights and more privileges.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">So, <b>Putin knows everything about the Family in the spirit of the Godfather. But, alas, nothing about the normal, wholesome family.<br /><br />In the spirit of this peculiar kind of “family values”, Putin’s daughter was made a co-owner of the largest drone manufacturer in Russia.<br /></b><br />The drones produced at the factory, co-owned by Putin’s daughter, are used in the war with Ukraine, to kill Ukrainians.<br /><br /><b>Keeping the lucrative military contracts in the family, that’s the type of family values that Putin lives — not just proclaims.<br /></b><br />Meanwhile, in the Orenburg region, 27 district maternity hospitals were closed as part of “modernization”. Now, women in labor from smaller towns have to be transported to cities that are 100-150 km away by bad roads. As a result, infant mortality increased.<br /><br /><i><b>In 2024, Moscow will spend 106 billion rubles on the “Safe City” program (video surveillance, enforcers, equipment for suppressing protests). Compare it with the entire budget of the city of Omsk, where 1.2 million people live, which is only 35 billion rubles (including social services, roads, housing and communal services, healthcare, schools, etc.).</b><br /></i><br />A dedicated defender of “family values”, 70-year-old Sergei Mironov, leader of the party “A Just Russia — For Truth”, with his 5th wife (the more wives, the more family values), snatched a 10-month-old girl out of Ukraine.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">10-month-old Ukrainian girl Margarita Prokopenko was in an orphanage in Kherson during the occupation of the city. She was taken to Russia, where she was given Russian citizenship, her name was changed, and now she is officially Mironov’s daughter. The little girl has 2 grandmothers in Ukraine.<br /><br />Reportedly, Mironov’s wife personally went to Ukraine to pick a baby to her liking.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsycNhWR7_hYGwcUBh3Xky03mPxqOf0jDJzlslaDyyJpkRVO4gfwjOw1OxHxoDHIdLAIsP3y0nFdfX6DWGMUWY4LVIbTWLCUbTEuM6EGoLWjbpvIQDSsrjEiK1DVY2eAusfJrJnklKuYCd2O_-VLXQVSWoMwEBTB_0-KIA47FHRYQOrpbhZ7z5n4cKXn_s/s602/Mironov%20sledge%20hammer.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="602" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsycNhWR7_hYGwcUBh3Xky03mPxqOf0jDJzlslaDyyJpkRVO4gfwjOw1OxHxoDHIdLAIsP3y0nFdfX6DWGMUWY4LVIbTWLCUbTEuM6EGoLWjbpvIQDSsrjEiK1DVY2eAusfJrJnklKuYCd2O_-VLXQVSWoMwEBTB_0-KIA47FHRYQOrpbhZ7z5n4cKXn_s/w400-h266/Mironov%20sledge%20hammer.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Mironov with a sledge hammer</i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Not long ago, in January 2023, Mironov proudly posed with a sledge hammer, personally given to him by the chief of ‘Wagner’ Yevgeny Prigozhin.<br /><br />Those are the true, unabridged Russian family values.<br /></b><br />Mihai C:<br /><b>8 kids each, and don’t worry about their future, Putin has it all planned. It will be short and glorious.<br /></b><br />Alexi Lebrun:<br />Leo Tolstoy wrote words that explain not only the fall of Czardom and the Soviet Union, but Putin’s Russia as well:<br /><br /><i>"...The bells will ring and the Russian people will dress in gold clothes and begin to pray for the murders. And the old, long-known terrible thing will begin.<br /><br />People will fuss under the guise of patriotism, all kinds of officials will fuss, anticipating the opportunity to steal more money, the military will fuss, receiving double wages for killing people. They will receive ribbons, crosses, braids and stars.<br /><br />They will drown their souls with debauchery, vulgarity and vodka. They will be cut off from peaceful labor, from their wives, mothers, children. They will be cold, hungry, sick, will die from diseases on the battlefields, killing people whom they had never seen and did not know, who had done nothing bad to them.<br /><br />And when thousands of Russians — sick, wounded and killed — accumulate, and there will be no one to collect them from the fields, when even the air gets infected with the pus of cannon fodder, they will casually dump the wounded in droves. They will bury the dead with no regard where...</i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>And again, they will lead the crowd of savages further... And they will turn frenzied and completely brutalized.<br /><br />Because of the actions of the barbarians, love will move away for tens and hundreds of years. And again, they will say that the war was necessary and will instill this thought into the future generations, corrupting their souls and hearts…"<br /></i><br />~ Leo Tolstoy, ”Christianity and Patriotism", 1894.<br /><br />Robe Garnet:<br /><b>This is another well researched and well written document of the psychosis known as Russia!<br /></b><br />Tom Long:<br /><b>When Putin decriminalized domestic violence to relieve the overloaded “justice” system who could’ve predicted lowered fecundity</b>? Sure the FSB is freed up to prosecute political enemies, but at what cost to Russia?<br /><br />Oriana:<br />The parallel with the Nazi attempts to induce German women to produce more children is inescapable. More children means, eventually, more young men and a larger army. Even single women were urged to bear children (e.g. the Lebensborn [“fount of life”] [program). No need for a family: a woman should have children for Germany! Right now, while she is fertile! </span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Authoritarian regimes are indeed all alike when it comes to their view of the role of women. There is no need to educate women beyond the basics. That would only delay their duty to bear children, particularly sons who can serve in "meat wave" attacks, winning by sheer numerical superiority.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="hgKElc" style="color: #351c75;"><b>Russia has become increasingly reliant on immigration to maintain its population</b>;
2021 had the highest net immigration since 1994, despite which there
was a small overall decline from 146.1 million to 145.4 million in 2021,
the largest decline in over a decade.</span></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> (~ Wikipedia)</span></p><p><span style="color: #800180; font-size: small;"><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="hgKElc"><b>Over the past
three years the country has lost around 2m more people than it would
ordinarily have done, as a result of war, disease and exodus</b>. <b>The life expectancy of Russian males aged 15 fell by almost five years, to the same level as in Haiti.</b></span></span></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br /><b>WHEN THE PARDONED CONVICTS RETURN FROM UKRAINE<br /></b><br />~ In the Russian town of Sol-Iletsk, Orenburg region, <b>a criminal, pardoned by Putin after the 6-month stunt at the front in Ukraine, raped an 11-year-old girl. </b>The girl's mother allowed her to visit his home to collect a loudspeaker.<br /><br /><b>The 33-year-old rapist is a well-known to locals drug addict and criminal, who was released (pardoned by Putin) because he agreed to go to Ukraine to kill Ukrainians.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The girl, who is a school student in the fifth year, went to visit the 33-year-old neighbor in order to pick a loudspeaker from him. Her mother was aware and allowed it, since the family had known the man for a long time.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">When the girl did not return after a short time, the mother got worried and went to check the situation. She knocked on the door of the man’s apartment, but heard only silence in response.<br />The mother decided that her daughter had already collected the speaker, after which the girl and the man left the apartment, and on the way home the girl probably just got distracted.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But the girl all this time was inside the man’s apartment and all this time the bastard was raping the 11-year-old child. And then he threatened her not to tell anyone and let her go.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The bastard didn't take into account the girl's appearance — she was all disheveled and covered in scratches. When her mother saw her in the street, she realized what happened and immediately called the police. The “SMO veteran” was arrested the same evening.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn3yzzjYDzAawLb6Z4FC_O7W4fioFMuS6Un29-ajAjBuLFV1TpZbeVa7YoCAkDNltdwuJcO62vk_Uu82-833h02NMD4MqNQtid-QIiOuZTlIYRbhiujsoU2umtLnwwrE3UElulwMhCak-jtaJbDZbQx3PIFsK1J-BHOQs39Bgdz2oLAfCKy-_80-Q6qTx2/s602/Sol-Iletsk%20Orenburg%20region%20Russia%20apt%20lobby.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="334" data-original-width="602" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn3yzzjYDzAawLb6Z4FC_O7W4fioFMuS6Un29-ajAjBuLFV1TpZbeVa7YoCAkDNltdwuJcO62vk_Uu82-833h02NMD4MqNQtid-QIiOuZTlIYRbhiujsoU2umtLnwwrE3UElulwMhCak-jtaJbDZbQx3PIFsK1J-BHOQs39Bgdz2oLAfCKy-_80-Q6qTx2/w400-h223/Sol-Iletsk%20Orenburg%20region%20Russia%20apt%20lobby.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Sol-Iletsk, apartment building lobby<br /></i></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The town of Sol-Iletsk is known for its prison. It is there the most notorious criminals — serial murderers, rapists, cannibals, who were sentenced to life imprisonment, were sent.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The crime level went up in Russia already in the first months of Putin’s “special Ukrainian operation”: <b>Russian soldiers, returning from the spree of killing, looting and raping on the occupied Ukrainian territories, were behaving the same way in the locations within Russia where they were sent to rest while on rotation.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Many of the soldiers coming from the front on vacations at home also committed violent crimes.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>After tens of thousands of violent criminals were released from Russian prisons and sent to fight in Ukraine, in exchange for presidential pardon, the situation got worse.</b></i></span></p><p><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Statistically, 93% of criminals released from Russian prisons, re-offend.</span></b></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">If a criminal also got a chance to commit unthinkable crimes for months — without any threat of repercussions, this definitely doesn’t increase the chances of him staying on straight and narrow after returning to civilian life.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But <b>for Putin, it’s just another hiccup not worth worrying about. Serfs killing each other isn’t a big deal — the most important is that they don’t protest against the war</b>. ~ Elena Gold, Quora<br /><br /><br />*<br /><b>TROTSKY’S PROPHECY<br /></b><br />(Trotsky tried to warn against the creeping “bourgeois rot” — meaning that once the children of the original Bolshevik revolutionaries get used to a comfortable, elite life style, they will become the new bourgeoisie, with no interest in revolutionary struggle and ideals.)<br /><br />Watch out for bourgeois rot!</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Soviet rule was going to change, warned Trotsky. Bureaucrats would fall in love with the power and comfort. The Party would succumb to the spells of a bourgeois lifestyle.</b></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Deep down inside, Stalin knew Trotsky was right. Hence, he did everything in the spirit of Trotsky: the build-up of the military machine, the bloody purges of the elites, the collectivization, the revolutionary expansion. And then he killed the man, to get rid of a witness.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>With Stalin’s death, this spirit of proletarian vigilance expired. (Or moved to China, some insist.)</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Socialist consumerism</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Without Stalin, we saw the most rapid rise in living standards among the Soviet commoners. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The use of fertilizers and herbicides in agriculture made the food situation more stable. On Stalin’s watch, we had three catastrophic famines and two wars. After him, none.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Post-Stalin, we had a large program of residential construction. More and more families moved to apartments they didn’t have to share with strangers. </b>(Mine was one of them.) <b>Fridges and TV sets became ubiquitous, food got better and more varied.</b> We even surpassed the Americans in calorie consumption and life expectancy: 68.4 years vs. 68.0 years in 1960.<br /><br /><b>The 2nd superpower</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The old exploitative classes were long gone. The USSR was now a nuclear power. The British and French colonial rule was crumbling. The Soviet space program seemed to be a decade ahead of the Americans. The Soviet economy rose by an annual rate of 5-7%, at least, for many years in a row, with no sign of easing.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The country was teeming with baby boomers. A few top men lost their chairs every now and then. But there were no new purges, not even indictments.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>A new, unusual sense of safety and contentment was taking hold on all levels of state administration.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Tired of the heat</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This is when Brezhnev came to power in the mid-1960s.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">He was surrounded by non-bureaucrats and technocrats who had made good careers in the era of Stalin. They had a first-hand memory of hunger and poverty. Soviet rule was a harsh mother. Another shared memory was the ever-present promise of a swift fall and death at the hands of Stalin’s executioners to anyone deemed incompetent, too free-thinking, or overly ambitious.</span></p><p><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">These men had gone through hell. Now, they wanted their reward—for themselves and their families.</span></b></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This is how the Communist cause in the USSR was doomed.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The sense of contentment and self-indulgence set in at the top and cascaded downward. Gulag was closed. On average, about a thousand people were still executed in our prisons every year. But they weren’t convicted for being a slacker, a negligent moron, a saboteur, or an enemy of people like during the Great Purge</b>.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">If you were loyal, did your work—kind of did, at least—and didn’t steal too much, you were safe. Such a blessed time.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And then, it took just one generation before hundreds of thousands of middle- and lower-level state servants and Party functionaries decided that they would be much better off under Capitalism. In the early 1990s, they picked apart Soviet rule and became the new class of Russian state oligarchs and minigarchs.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Below are some visuals for you to illustrate how this happened.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">First, a poster that shows what Soviet rule taught the kids in 1930. “Pioneer, teach yourself to fight for the cause of the working class.” You see two parts of that learning: good Communist reading and sharpshooting. The Communists were preparing the nation for war.<br />Pioneer learn jpg<br /><br />Below, Soviet toddlers, as our rulers saw them. That angry bunch is not big and strong enough for an Antifa-style muscle action as yet. But they already have a long and very insistent list of requirements for the world. Their battle cries are: “We require! Midwives, not healers. Healthy parents. Fresh water and light. Breast-feeding. Dry, clean diapers. Protection from flies”.<br /><br />Soviet poster babies<br />Toward the end of Stalin’s rule, the Communists indeed delivered quite a lot of what they promised. Many people died in the process, but the survivors took care of their kids much better than their parents. Look how contented kids have become. The text reads, “Hail the heroic mother!” Don’t forget, this is 1944, and WW2 is still going on:<br /><br />heroic Soviet mother<br />However, already under Stalin, you can trace an unforgivable bourgeois cuteness creeping in. The motif below is a shameless Hallmark knockoff. The schoolgirl is wearing a Young Pioneer’s red necktie, but both kids are as if from a Capitalist advertisement piece.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcPv4mCz9L2kpiRU1JxsDWu3-ZU3at2VIS9zntsBI7uZiD1EPC8OKRCksUbS5zctcwWffqQSRIbaSMOzbfTO6vtzF8HXoW_ssCPYWMZyDuLoPbvz9MsQq60UVGYQaRqiaUaX5kanAT_8M2mcM99ca6FIQKOYAa9TNfGV_dGl_WVypnhVi27_qZCpw6O-Hh/s699/soviet%20poster%20girl%20and%20boy.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="699" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcPv4mCz9L2kpiRU1JxsDWu3-ZU3at2VIS9zntsBI7uZiD1EPC8OKRCksUbS5zctcwWffqQSRIbaSMOzbfTO6vtzF8HXoW_ssCPYWMZyDuLoPbvz9MsQq60UVGYQaRqiaUaX5kanAT_8M2mcM99ca6FIQKOYAa9TNfGV_dGl_WVypnhVi27_qZCpw6O-Hh/w345-h400/soviet%20poster%20girl%20and%20boy.jpg" width="345" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The new generation of Soviet citizens started to feel a certain entitlement. True Stalinists saw the rot and tried to warn the nation. Below, you see one of the grave warnings: “Don’t raise spoiled brats!”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">(Oriana: It’s interesting that the rug the “spoiled brat is lying on says, above his head, Certificate of Maturity — meaning a high school diploma.)<br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8fIq5QLZUyVjCXDpUt-ZFWB5igfwivPg__032XWPOQ9CKyKM9y1tabP5qnPya3gC8YlksY3rytb_dS9vfKbNH1mHKzW-0prHOy2tVi6XkUthxnKh-fKsGEdfkbZwDvSVErHEx62MrgOjJS0nQBOe4UdTBFwMIzav_YAWxs8aujmNwwUrB7jLxc9FD0MIh/s895/soviet%20poster%20spoiled%20brat.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="895" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8fIq5QLZUyVjCXDpUt-ZFWB5igfwivPg__032XWPOQ9CKyKM9y1tabP5qnPya3gC8YlksY3rytb_dS9vfKbNH1mHKzW-0prHOy2tVi6XkUthxnKh-fKsGEdfkbZwDvSVErHEx62MrgOjJS0nQBOe4UdTBFwMIzav_YAWxs8aujmNwwUrB7jLxc9FD0MIh/w269-h400/soviet%20poster%20spoiled%20brat.jpg" width="269" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But the nation wasn’t listening.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Below, a poster titled: “Be good citizens from the outset! The Soviet land will bequeath you in time everything that it brought about”.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgWnw_4SPMsvNRzyk7BfUfLAYi3jCnT_SlA4PtHXG1rqS8o-oQW_LOzuqCAwtIqeJPbJWtuC_rwYduIqEkr_rw517kh-SN5Rx0qZbxfyP4tNVSemaNdIPVsceSZ0HLaIlDNhOx0WQdni7gm60xLd50jz5vM9NpRKdjIcrneEDc4-e7jy7AaGtkQArB-c9I/s745/Soviet%20poster%20be%20citizens.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="745" data-original-width="480" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgWnw_4SPMsvNRzyk7BfUfLAYi3jCnT_SlA4PtHXG1rqS8o-oQW_LOzuqCAwtIqeJPbJWtuC_rwYduIqEkr_rw517kh-SN5Rx0qZbxfyP4tNVSemaNdIPVsceSZ0HLaIlDNhOx0WQdni7gm60xLd50jz5vM9NpRKdjIcrneEDc4-e7jy7AaGtkQArB-c9I/w258-h400/Soviet%20poster%20be%20citizens.jpg" width="258" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The silver-haired veteran with the star of Hero of the Soviet Union on his lapel and the blond teenagers look like a good old European bourgeois family. No wonder quite a lot of these young citizens, just in a few decades, would dismember the country.<br /><br />Bryan J Maloney:<br />Marxist-Leninism in all its variants is doomed to always betray itself. It offers no goal but permanently deferred prosperity. The vanguard inherently has the right to present-day comfort, since it is the revolutionary vanguard. <b>Who can succeed the vanguard? Only the children of the vanguard, who inherit their rank like the nobility they have become. For the nobodies, it is posters and deferred comfort, forever deferred for a communist paradise that is always around the next corner. Eventually, that will collapse.</b><br /><br />Dima Vorobiev:<br />To me, the Chinese thing is what the 20th century promised to bring as a mainstream, if not for the big Black Swan that was our October Revolution.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Bismarck’s Staatsocialismus, the epic rise of the Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries, the original Fascism, Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Scandinavian “class reconciliation” between the world wars all pointed in this direction.<br /><br />Paul Delinger:<br />There are many similarities and copying in the Western and Soviet propaganda of the time: belief in science and a brighter future for humanity which could only be achieved through socialism or capitalism.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Western mass media and consumerism eventually won that messaging war, while the USSR was undercut by shortages, which made the west more attractive to many Soviet citizens.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Then, enter Gorbachev.</b><br /><br />*<br /><b>HIDING THEIR FACES: RUSSIAN SOLDIERS WEARING “BURKAS”<br /></b><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNB9eOoQRSY0kLm5zovsr3SDSOh9p4TpIpc5v2MCsE8gHJgoZ6fv7Wf5YROmgKpAOqVCqFnQa8mFNz-HgpIP4NxteQM7j9YE6jOGe_v3IEHtL_Ntpm1rs8h51_qlpLSKF5dGquEWiP8UwoMBNg-2Cz1dJBSJ537kBYtS18sWZ_PbwhBkLtpS21QRMuZgoj/s602/russian%20soldiers%20hiding%20faces.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="371" data-original-width="602" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNB9eOoQRSY0kLm5zovsr3SDSOh9p4TpIpc5v2MCsE8gHJgoZ6fv7Wf5YROmgKpAOqVCqFnQa8mFNz-HgpIP4NxteQM7j9YE6jOGe_v3IEHtL_Ntpm1rs8h51_qlpLSKF5dGquEWiP8UwoMBNg-2Cz1dJBSJ537kBYtS18sWZ_PbwhBkLtpS21QRMuZgoj/w400-h246/russian%20soldiers%20hiding%20faces.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Look at the faces of Russian war heroes! Oh, you can’t see their faces. They wear burkas out of modesty. Perhaps they’re Hamas or Hizbollah fighters bringing peace to the Middle East?</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Why do you hide yourself: you are ridding Ukraine of evil Nazis! You should feel proud. Open up to your people who cheer your heroic acts. <b>The state has put you up on the pedestal with “our grandfathers who fought in WW2.” Our grandfathers, however, never hid their faces.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The owner of the Russian Media Group, Vladimir Kiselev, and singer Irina Dubtsova presented two Russian bounty hunters with certificates for a million rubles for destroying Leopard tank in the war. It’s wild wild east. With Nazis.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The bounty hunters wore masks during presentation and didn’t say their names. Are you ashamed of your heroic acts or you’re terrified that the next bounty will be placed on your head?</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The shenanigans took place at the music awards ceremony Golden Gramophone (if it sounds like Grammy to you, it’s not a coincidence) and sums on the certificates have been raised by famous Russian singers and musicians who wanted to motivate soldiers to destroy more German tanks.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Dear reader, I want you to picture this. Grammy awards ceremony broadcast live. On stage, two American soldiers wearing ski masks. Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber hold certificates for $10,000 each.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“We raised this money at a charity event in Los Angeles. Madonna donated 2,000 dollars. Ed Sheeran pitched five bucks. Dua Lipa paid in pounds because she’s from the other side of the pond. Real Slim Shady provided the rest for his homies as so many soldiers fighting Nazis in Mexico are from poor Michigan towns paid $2,000 a month to fight this sacred war.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Taylor chimes in, “I encourage all of you to join. I’m talking about you, Bruce Springsteen, Snoop can donate some of his weed to our fighters, Jon Bon Jovi , why haven’t you yet performed in Monterrey, Mexico that we’ve liberated from Mexican Nazis? And you hip hop artists but only after you delete all the curses from your lyrics, add more gratuitous violence, and comply with new anti-eastern laws. You’re all worthy artists. I hope that you will not only declare that you are citizens of Americo-Mexican confederation, but will join our people on the bright side of life who are busy annihilating Mexico with the pyramids and flooding Cancun by blown up dam because they wanted to have a democracy.”</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Sounds dystopian to you? I’ve just used a quote from the Russian mainstream media and changed all the names to the ones that you can recognize but analogous in popularity in Russia.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd91dpKtg-_-geNspzWlaJSsLLt2DtguW1NLiiCsdR3WKbtBbyCnn8IfkXVnZrsxjQNZimtzQfg-Sna_BqicrQRWuYQ6Cn-mbgBIv3ARVT5qwgXjhAPnycjvK8cEcgrRxeVo8KxLZtGrs7CaZiMI4WZVB7mS9zQhrtxJgApDHkaraj11lHUeQIXQ6xz5v7/s602/Yekaterina%20Soloviev's%20daughter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="592" data-original-width="602" height="394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd91dpKtg-_-geNspzWlaJSsLLt2DtguW1NLiiCsdR3WKbtBbyCnn8IfkXVnZrsxjQNZimtzQfg-Sna_BqicrQRWuYQ6Cn-mbgBIv3ARVT5qwgXjhAPnycjvK8cEcgrRxeVo8KxLZtGrs7CaZiMI4WZVB7mS9zQhrtxJgApDHkaraj11lHUeQIXQ6xz5v7/w400-h394/Yekaterina%20Soloviev's%20daughter.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Ekaterina Solovyevna</i></span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This is Ekaterina, <b>daughter of the Russian propagandist and TV presenter Vladimir Solovyev</b> who’s under Western sanctions for inciting hatred against Ukrainians in his shows.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Ekaterina is on the bright side of life. <b>She regularly speaks against actions of the Russian government and Vladimir Putin. She opposes war with Ukraine. She openly helps out Russians who want to avoid mobilization. And she also absolutely freely stages feminist plays. Yesterday, she spoke in defense of LGBT that was branded as an extremist organization.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Ekaterina continues to live in Moscow, Russia, and doesn’t have to face any arrests or detentions.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>What’s the catch ? What about censorship and authoritarianism?</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Ekaterina’s father is in Putin’s inner circle and he’s also a FSB officer. The old maxim holds true: “for my friends everything, for my enemies the law.”</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> ~ Misha Firer, Quora<br /><br />*<br /><b>WHY COMMUNISM DOESN’T WORK WHILE REGULATED CAPITALISM DOES<br /></b><br />~ A functional socioeconomic system has to be grounded upon a functional model of decision making, which has to include accountability for the results of decisions that are made. <b>Communism tends towards a lack of accountability, due to the way in which power hierarchies are formed: </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>ruthlessness, rather than competence, is rewarded, which is why all Communist countries were economically marginal dictatorships</b>.</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Business decisions made by entrenched bureaucrats, rather than businesspeople, tend to be awful, since as part of the power hierarchy of a command economy,</b> t<b>hey are not held accountable to market forces;</b> nobody in West Germany would have chosen to drive East Germany’s main model of vehicle, the Trabant; a two stroke piece of crap that East Germans had to join a long waiting list in order to acquire.</span></p><p><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkFVXQU8djmGkI6VX8M-NprJt7uRcKmAwxaKr6L0KK2gdtNcbh_WyoqMY0HGWc2QzUfer0TrxOEoueSnfmnzdqvte7UeQzlvIeI3SdRu6-d31BV__2nn-xDFAvkLlsgmvNPUdWZLY89kBSnY-N-sAwnRz9VQ1VVa553pnRrhEtMeFtFxVQWCsfO1oBrih5/s275/TRABANT%20east%20german%20car.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkFVXQU8djmGkI6VX8M-NprJt7uRcKmAwxaKr6L0KK2gdtNcbh_WyoqMY0HGWc2QzUfer0TrxOEoueSnfmnzdqvte7UeQzlvIeI3SdRu6-d31BV__2nn-xDFAvkLlsgmvNPUdWZLY89kBSnY-N-sAwnRz9VQ1VVa553pnRrhEtMeFtFxVQWCsfO1oBrih5/w400-h266/TRABANT%20east%20german%20car.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Trabant</i></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">There is nothing inherently wrong with the “enough for everyone” philosophy of Communism, but sub-optimal decision making and poor incentives tend to mean that “enough” tends to mean very little in practice. <b>In a Capitalist economy, people tend to work for their own benefit, and incentives include higher social status, a better home, a nicer car, and so on, and such things are actually available; such incentives are rather more effective than winning a medal for “Hero of Socialist Labor”, a week at a dingy and rundown resort on the Baltic, and finally owning a crappy car after waiting for ten years</b>. Other than running a black market business, the only real way to get ahead in Communist societies was to become a member of the Nomenklatura, the political elite, and even then, there was always the danger of being betrayed and denounced by someone who’s after your position.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Capitalism is a far from perfect system, but it can and does deliver greater general prosperity when tempered by laws, and a system of accountable government that can partially ameliorate the vast income disparities that capitalism generates according to phenomena like the Pareto Principle (the 80/20 rule) and the Matthew Effect ("the rich get richer").</b> To my mind, free market fundamentalists are just as naive as Communists with regards to their insistence on ideological purity, and their misplaced faith in the absolute supremacy of their respective socioeconomic systems. </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Pragmatists will tend to recognize that regulated Capitalism, in combination with government provision of services like education, welfare, and healthcare, tends to lead to better outcomes</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">, compared with the implementation of simplistic socioeconomic models upon complex societies.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Capitalism can operate under both an authoritarian or democratic system of government, whereas <b>Communism requires a strong and coercive government in order to prevent people from bettering themselves through their own private enterprise</b>. It is this severe limitation of individual freedoms by an authoritarian and unaccountable state which makes Communism “bad” in most people’s eyes, and why my Slovak neighbors fled their country in the Eighties to seek and find a better life in the West. ~ Philip Husband, Quora</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>NAPOLEON, THE MOVIE BY RIDLEY SCOTT<br /></b><br />Let’s start with a negative review from The Observer:<br /><br />Another in a long list of flawed and boring movies about the Emperor of France, I could hardly sit through Ridley Scott’s Napoleon with my eyes open. I prefer both the classic 1927 silent film by Abel Gance and the 1954 flop Desiree with Marlon Brando as a miscast but memorable Bonaparte and rapturous Jean Simmons as Desiree Clary, the fiancee he should have married, who became Queen of Sweden, instead of the trashy, adulterous Josephine, who broke his heart and allegedly died of a nasty combination of diphtheria and syphilis. None of this, nor anything else that threatens to take Napoleon off the battlefield long enough to tell a moving or human story, is detailed enough to concern producer-director <b>Ridley Scott, who is more interested in overloaded and overpopulated war scenes than illuminating history.</b> The result is a colossal bore that is never passionate, exciting, sexy or entertaining, with <b>an ill-fated titled performance by Joaquin Phoenix that borders on catatonic.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The tedium begins in 1794 when Robespierre’s reign of terror, symbolized by gambling and guillotines, ignited the French Revolution and war hero Napoleon Bonaparte was promoted to brigadier general of the French Republic. There is no mention of Desiree, but when he meets Josephine, she spreads her legs and says, “If you look down, you’ll see a surprise. Once you see it, you’ll always want it.” Whatever it is, I guess he likes it because he marries the trollop in Corsica, liberates Egypt, declaring, <b>“I’m a brute that is nothing without you,”</b> and by 1799, seizes power and divides the government with Josephine at his side.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Thus begins a dull history lesson, from the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805 to the disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812, a defeat with 28,000 French losses. If this movie has any basis in fact, Napoleon’s conquests and failures were the most boring in history. <b>Louis the 18th demanded his arrest, but French troops embraced him with loyalty. One battle after another, and he declared himself Emperor of France, leading up to the eventual Battle of Waterloo and yet another arsenal of cannons, swords and exploding horses with their guts blown all over the landscape.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Screen titles inform you what battle you’re watching, but the armies all look alike, so you never know who Napoleon is fighting or why. </b>The longer it goes on, the more exasperated and emotionally uninvolved Joaquin Phoenix becomes, and the more I look at my watch. The only impressive thing about Ridley Scott’s direction is the masses of extras he employed—thousands of them. Even if they were paid as little as $10 an hour, the budget must have been astronomical. One battle scene follows the next, and we are forced to live through every one of them.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Through it all, the acting remains muted and forgettable, except for the eye-rolling over-emoting of Vanessa Kirby, a Josephine who is always on the verge of hysterics. The screenplay by David Scarpa is dreary and turgid, hopping around episodically <b>without any character development and evoking only a sketchy picture of Napoleon’s historic rise and fall</b> and his nasty, violent marriage to Josephine. There is nothing here to engage the heart, nothing to explain or demonstrate the qualities that made him charismatic enough to captivate France. A Napoleon without a valid Napoleon is a Fourth of July without a firecracker.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://observer.com/2023/11/napoleon-movie-review-a-dull-history-lesson-with-exploding-horses/">https://observer.com/2023/11/napoleon-movie-review-a-dull-history-lesson-with-exploding-horses/</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I found plenty to engage my heart. I agree that this Napoleon isn't charismatic enough to explain why his soldiers loved him, or how he became a heroic legend. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />“NAPOLEON STANDS ALONE IN HISTORY”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I never thought I’d say this about a film, but<b> I can’t wait for Ridley Scott’s four-plus hour director’s cut of Napoleon.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">It’s such an expansive subject, and Scott’s cinematic coverage is so intriguing, that <b>with Napoleon’s 2.5 hour runtime, I couldn’t get enough.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Authenticity was clearly not the goal. Surprisingly, the film doesn’t suffer from that. <b>Napoleon stands alone in history, and Phoenix’s interpretation of him stands alone in film.</b><br /><br /><i><b>What Napoleon achieved in France, rising from relative Corsican obscurity to become an all-powerful commander and Emperor of France, then facing exile on a barren island only to escape and return to power again, is a quite the mercurial feat.</b></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Punctuate that with his outrageously volatile relationship with Joséphine (played masterfully by Vanessa Kirby), and you have an epic tale to tell. If the editing leaves audiences a bit confounded, it’s understandable—there’s just so much juicy material to pack into one film</b>.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I would suggest viewers read up on Napoleon, even if it only involves skimming the Wikipedia notes, before settling in for this riveting cinematic event—it will decrease your confusion and increase your awareness of the utter havoc one audacious man can wreak on the world.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Scott has always been both revered and skewered for his graphic and unforgettable battle scenes, and Napoleon could be the apex of them all.</b> <b>More than gore (although make no mistake, there’s plenty of that) they rivet attention with insights into military strategy and personal dynamics, giving them unique and fascinating dimension.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But at the core of Napoleon is his manic fascination with his lover, wife and ex Josephine. Kirby is sublimely layered, while Phoenix is creepily unhinged. <b>It’s a portrayal of a relationship unlike any you’ve ever seen.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://athomeinhollywood.com/2023/11/24/napoleon-review-ridley-scott/">https://athomeinhollywood.com/2023/11/24/napoleon-review-ridley-scott/</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3dZ_M4WgR3fIQcvlCQL6iWMn0ZwyGGMY7p4p8suUjroWtT9MO0uqesvOrT8PUVr9Vvazap1y3aQV7Md3Tr8PC9YKL8nmRmm4WSfFpeQ0FLmaOH2pL6e5yJbhIPDDjiSRr5Kc5bo4WMNtAR6IRlCKz-IY8dHDWKJ49OJakG1gHkMDxV2TVQ6_rjN98-S2r/s2464/napoleon%20movie%20Egypt.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1587" data-original-width="2464" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3dZ_M4WgR3fIQcvlCQL6iWMn0ZwyGGMY7p4p8suUjroWtT9MO0uqesvOrT8PUVr9Vvazap1y3aQV7Md3Tr8PC9YKL8nmRmm4WSfFpeQ0FLmaOH2pL6e5yJbhIPDDjiSRr5Kc5bo4WMNtAR6IRlCKz-IY8dHDWKJ49OJakG1gHkMDxV2TVQ6_rjN98-S2r/w400-h258/napoleon%20movie%20Egypt.webp" width="400" /></a></span></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Here’s another mostly positive review:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>EPIC BATTLES, AWKWARD SEX</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Scott’s Napoleon is a rousing, red-blooded experience, an old-fashioned—and emotionally relatively uncomplicated—historical epic outfitted with modern production techniques </b>and filled to overflowing with battles, intrigues and the scandalous relationship between former artillery officer Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix) and his restless wife, Joséphine (Vanessa Kirby). <br /><br />In Scott’s film, with a screenplay by frequent collaborator David Scarpa (All the Money in the World, The Man in the High Castle), <b>Napoleon works his way up from an army captain in league with the French Revolution</b>, luridly depicted in the film’s opening scene, <b>to the rank of brigadier general—and eventually, Emperor of France—thanks to his seemingly unquenchable thirst for bloody warfare. </b>Toulon, the corridors of Paris during the Reign of Terror, Egypt, Italy, the Austrian Empire, Russia—Napoleon and his troops subjugate the population everywhere they march, up until that nasty business in Waterloo. CGI soldiers’ heads and horses’ necks explode under mortar fire, and regimes go up in flames.<br /><br />Meanwhile, <b>the conqueror falls in love with Joséphine de Beauharnais (Kirby), the young widow of a guillotined aristocrat. She’s a post-revolutionary party girl not entirely smitten by the coarse Corsican and his battering-ram style of sexual intercourse, but willing to overlook some matters while living in some of the continent’s most lavish houses.</b> Director Scott digs down deep into his bag of extravagant European settings here. Even in the wake of House of Gucci, All the Money in the World, Hannibal and The Duellists, he apparently hasn’t yet exhausted the supply. Despite centuries of destruction, Europe is still remarkably well equipped with fancy real estate. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Phoenix may not be every moviegoer’s first choice for the title role</b>, especially for those who winced at his performance as the cruel Roman emperor, Commodus, in Gladiator. <b>And yet the actor who starred in Joker and Two Lovers arguably deserves the role of a violent megalomaniac, so all is forgiven</b>. Never mind that a few of his line readings are stiff, and that Napoleon’s childish friskiness in one or two scenes seems odd. Let’s just say that <b>Phoenix cuts a fine figure in the saddle</b>, waving a saber, and let it go at that.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Kirby’s impersonation of Joséphine is another matter entirely. From the very first glimpse of her as the merry widow at a cocktail party, she’s a beguiling combination of the bewildered coquette and the poule de luxe [trophy wife] every time Darusz Wolski’s camera swings her way. <b>Joséphine looks as authentic in her empire-waist gowns as Phoenix does in his cockade-bedecked uniforms. Kudos likewise to Paul Rhys, as diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, and Edouard Philipponat, as Alexander, Tsar of Russia, a pair of dealmakers in the Age of Enlightenment.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Volumes have been written about Scott and the lasting effect his visual sense has had on contemporary big-screen entertainment. Napoleon belongs in the front rank of his creations, alongside such landmarks as Blade Runner, Alien and Black Hawk Down. <b>For its thrilling battle scenes, its ironic characterizations of the revolutionaries who became their own special brand of aristocracy and for the essential European-ness of the project itself, this glittering, sweaty panorama of antique world history should be essential viewing. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvpRwtOC-2RB01pc-tTCD3ghme0oqrtKnhyJCLyEn6byQHdrI_5XTEDaBsweI_-5Ndd0FZpfH9fI6JKAmuyMFwwfBzztJdD9qygBvcad-N92SGKe58_UTJYu6G-FqPuy8a1voLGQiFoTh-mKOXqgbRTWvklyqbd-f_dSmwKZ-2iTxvvxJ26e4KviFPTyHV/s1200/Napoleon%20white%20horse.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="1200" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvpRwtOC-2RB01pc-tTCD3ghme0oqrtKnhyJCLyEn6byQHdrI_5XTEDaBsweI_-5Ndd0FZpfH9fI6JKAmuyMFwwfBzztJdD9qygBvcad-N92SGKe58_UTJYu6G-FqPuy8a1voLGQiFoTh-mKOXqgbRTWvklyqbd-f_dSmwKZ-2iTxvvxJ26e4KviFPTyHV/w400-h166/Napoleon%20white%20horse.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b></b><a href="https://eastbayexpress.com/napoleon-epic-battles-awkward-sex/">https://eastbayexpress.com/napoleon-epic-battles-awkward-sex/<br /></a><br /><b>*</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>THE LEGEND MADE HUMAN</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">From a historical perspective, ‘Napoleon’ is a commendable attempt at capturing the essence of the enigmatic French military leader and emperor. Scott's attention to detail in the film's set design, costume, and overall atmosphere authentically recreates the early 19th-century European milieu. <b>The film's portrayal of key battles, political intrigues, and the societal landscape of the era are visually impressive,</b> with some artistic liberties taken for cinematic effect. The most prominent one is the lack of a French accent, featuring Joaquin Phoenix sounding pretty much like himself in the lead role.<br /><br />Barring that, performance-wise, <b>Phoenix delivers a compelling portrayal of Napoleon. </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>He nimbly switches from Napoleon’s ruthless ambition to moments of vulnerability and introspection</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>, especially when paired with Vanessa Kirby as Josephine. This humanization of Napoleon is one of the film's strengths, as it allows the audience to connect with a figure often reduced to historical myth</b>. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Kirby is particularly impressive as Josephine, who cuts Napoleon down to size outside his successful conquests around the world. Intimate character moments featuring the lead pair amidst large-scale and gritty battlefield scenes create an interesting dynamic in the film, even leading to humorous moments in unexpected ways.<br /><br />However, t<b>he broad scope of Napoleon’s political and military career undercut the emotional depth of most of the proceedings</b>. While the cinematography features sweeping shots of landscapes and battlefields, the screenplay often ends up glossing over critical moments. <b>At times, the narrative feels rushed, trying to cover too many aspects of Napoleon's life</b>, and since Scott aims to cover pivotal moments of Napoleon’s life and career, the pacing of the film is also affected. <b>This leads to specific historical events being superficially explored,</b> which could have been alleviated with a more focused narrative, perhaps in a different format. Still, despite falling short in critical areas of maintaining a compelling pace and gripping storytelling, ‘<b>Napoleon’ is a noteworthy addition to the genre of historical epics, with engaging performances from Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby.<br /></b><br /><b><i>My favorite review:</i></b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Joaquin Phoenix indelibly plays Napoleon Bonaparte with an elusiveness that befits the film’s treatment. Phoenix’s enigmatic, playful and <b>casually authoritarian Napoleon saunters rather than strides into the hallways and battlegrounds that will earn him a place in history books.</b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b> He’s a man of his time but also already beyond time</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> – as aspect that is vividly brought out in the scene when he arrives in Egypt and witnesses the fate of its pharaohs.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">First encountered during the anarchy of the French Revolution in 1789, Napoleon makes a play for total power, swatting away royalists and opponents while proving his military genius through a series of wars. One conquest bedevils Napoleon.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Out of the chaos of the French Revolution emerges Josephine. Played by Vanessa Kirby with becoming hauteur laced with animalistic survival instincts, Josephine provides Napoleon with an emotional anchor. <b>She marries Napoleon but stays just out of his reach in the same way that the movie itself stops short of an unambiguous portrayal.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Helpful title cards chart the years and locations of Napoleon’s rise. He marches on uninterrupted until a campaign in Russia, where his eventual Waterloo is foreshadowed.<br />If the Russia segment references Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein’s 1938 classic Alexander Nevsky, Scott’s film has resounding echoes of Stanley Kubrick’s equally elusive Barry Lyndon (1975) – <b>among Kubrick’s unrealized projects was a Napoleon biopic. Scott’s own directorial debut The Duellists (1977), set during the Napoleonic Wars, haunts his latest account of the folly of narcissistic power-mongers.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Renowned cinematographer <b>Dariusz Wolski’s soft lighting and painterly compositions reflect a pre-photography era.</b> Scott’s reputation for <b>brutal and yet poetic battle sequences punctuate a narrative filled with conversations and arguments</b>. In the quietest, and most compelling, moments, Napoleon and Josephine sit at either ends of a couch, <b>he uninhibited in his ardour and she implacable in her reserve.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The mildly satirical tone in David Scarpa’s screenplay is a nifty way to avoid an explicit critique of Napoleons reign, while also providing a fresh way to drag the moth-balled historical drama into the revisionist present. <b>The movie isn’t quite history as farce, but it’s nearly there.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">There is startling guts-and-gore detailing in the violence wrought by Napoleon, but also a studious distance from the man whose overweening ambition reshaped France, and much of the world. “I see nothing but success in my future,” Napoleon declares in one of his many missives to Josephine. Surely he’s joking?</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>If Napoleon appears to be parodying himself at times, there’s never any danger of taking Tahar Rahim, as French courtier Paul Barrass, or Rupert Everett as British duke Arthur Wellesley, too seriously either.</b></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The light touch carries over for the most part. Hypnotic in its own way but also slippery at times, the 160-minute movie is kept on course by Scott’s masterly staging – magisterial without the bombast, delicate where it could have been heavy-handed –</b> <b>vividly filmed battle scenes, and the two perfectly judged central performances.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The general is most electric in his grown-up dynamic with his consort, which is tempered with an understanding of how transactional such relationships could be. <b>If Phoenix is quietly mesmerizing, Kirby is combustible.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Napoleon is never more petulant when he demands absolute fidelity from Josephine, or credible in his yearning for her even after the relationship has ended.</b> Inscrutable for the most part, Phoenix’s Napoleon gives himself away when he first sets eyes on Josephine. Of all his conquests, she proves to be the most challenging – and the most elusive. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://scroll.in/reel/1059411/napoleon-review-an-anti-biopic-powered-by-spectacle-and-laced-with-humour">https://scroll.in/reel/1059411/napoleon-review-an-anti-biopic-powered-by-spectacle-and-laced-with-humour</a><br /><br />And this I think is one paragraph that best encompasses the movie:<br /><br />~ This feels like a movie they simply don't make anymore, playing out as<b> both a jaw-dropping spectacle and deeper character drama</b>. It's expertly shot by Dariusz Wolski, edited by Sam Restivo and scored by Martin Phipps; Scott clearly knows how to assemble a first-rate cast and crew, and this is also one of his most emotionally complex films, making some important observations about the nature of war, ambition and loyalty. ~ <br /><br /><a href="http://www.shadowsonthewall.co.uk/23/napoleon.htm">http://www.shadowsonthewall.co.uk/23/napoleon.htm</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I loved the movie. I admit that my first thought at seeing Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon was “too old.” Napoleon was only twenty four during the siege of Toulon — not that I knew that at the time of watching the movie. Rather, I’d seen the various paintings of Napoleon, in which he’s always youthful, vigorous, and . . . for lack of a better word, Napoleonic </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">— </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">even when quite young. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But that "too old" thought was soon forgotten as I fell under the spell of Joaquin Phoenix’s unforgettable performance. What struck me most — and I was new to this perception — was Napoleon’s emotional vulnerability and his need to be loved, the pathos of his passion for the cold-hearted (at least at first) Josephine. In this movie, it was Josephine that was his real Waterloo. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">He comes across as soulful; she comes across as a bitch. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">His last word, on his deathbed, was “Josephine.” </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">She didn’t deserve it, but that’s life. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbHaYtCwb_ukIVqFIbHkxd5KMFuCsReSec8qwGiYrGkPUtsCpYRuhmk6HP3QQkjZP7nErvWP9EvQrgwITrSmzFrOFgN57mp3dejWXDO6asbY-fiDlGMYvaHXhc2nDP2MjkXxQ5mE9UysB04dEeJCRbkdMPIg98pZrpl7jTR3ovV-3mBbJdKGiCLLbFRBHH/s742/napoleon%20and%20Josephine.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="564" data-original-width="742" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbHaYtCwb_ukIVqFIbHkxd5KMFuCsReSec8qwGiYrGkPUtsCpYRuhmk6HP3QQkjZP7nErvWP9EvQrgwITrSmzFrOFgN57mp3dejWXDO6asbY-fiDlGMYvaHXhc2nDP2MjkXxQ5mE9UysB04dEeJCRbkdMPIg98pZrpl7jTR3ovV-3mBbJdKGiCLLbFRBHH/w400-h304/napoleon%20and%20Josephine.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>His soulfulness came as a surprise to me.</b> This is probably due to my high school history lessons, where he was turned into a long list of dates of battles we were required to memorize. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This brings back the memory of my brief but emotionally significant summer romance with a green-eyed motorcycle rider who suddenly turned to me and asked, “1803?” ~ “Jena,” I replied, a sheer guess. I was wrong (the Battle of Jena took place in 1806), but the young man gallantly didn’t correct me. Maybe it counted simply because I realized that his out-of-the-blue question was about Napoleon. My brave motorcycle rider would not have been inspired by a less valiant figure. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">AND FINALLY, HERE IS <b>THE NEW YORKER REVIEW OF NAPOLEON</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>~ The whole point and rationale—the raison d’être, as we say in English—of the theatrical arts is to extend our circles of compassion through acts of creative empathy: we want people who are unlike the characters they play to inhabit them so that in acts of sympathetic resonance we too expand ourselves. It’s why we love Laurence Olivier’s Shylock, or, for that matter, Russell Crowe’s gladiator.</b><br /><br />Almost all French commentators italicize the ambiguities of Napoleon’s historical role—<b>was he the reincarnation of Alexander the Great or the sinister precursor of Hitler?</b> Perhaps the sole exception is the far-right polemicist and onetime Presidential candidate Éric Zemmour, who contributed a laudatory story to the far-right magazine Valeurs Actuelles with the cover line “L’empereur anti-woke.”<br /><br />It’s the fiendishly hidden English prejudices of the movie, though, that the French find most pernicious. “This film was made by an Englishman” was the historian Patrice Gueniffey’s blunt verdict in the magazine Le Point, “and openly anti-French.” (Gueniffey has written two mostly admiring books about the Emperor.) The many historical anomalies in the movie—which are bound to be there—are viewed with his suspicious eye as part of a pattern of anti-French sentiment. <b>Napoleon was not anywhere near the execution of Marie Antoinette, as he is shown to be at the start of the movie, and this makes it seem as if Napoleon’s authoritarianism was the reaction to the Reign of Terror, true only in a very general sense that Hitler’s rise was tied to the previous Weimar inflation</b>—there are many missing steps in the sequence. <b>But this is, as in both Edmund Burke and “A Tale of Two Cities,” the traditional British way of imagining the revolution: the bloody-minded French need a boss, or they go mad.</b><br /><br /><b>Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, meanwhile, is represented as a kind of creepy mix of loot-taking and pyramid-destroying, though in fact Bonaparte and his men never aimed cannons at the peaks of pyramids, as they do here, and the expedition came complete with an earnest set of scholars, including the great Vivant Denon, and led eventually to Champollion’s decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics.</b> The Rosetta stone, taken from Egypt by Napoleon, was in turn taken from him by the Brits—it still lives in the British Museum—and so Napoleon’s sagacious purpose in Egypt is presumably deliberately left out of the “British” movie.<br /><br />Worse still, from the French view, <b>the Emperor is portrayed as a clumsy lover.</b> One of the current Bonapartist pretenders—there are two, with different lineage—the Prince Murat, a descendant of Napoleon’s brother-in-law, was so offended by this that he was moved to write indignantly in Le Figaro on behalf of the Emperor’s erotic equipoise. (There are two ungainly scenes of Napoleon having sex with Joséphine, fully dressed and from behind.) <b>The Emperor, the Prince protested, was shown making love “like a clumsy, awkward and frightened little boy,” but then he added, no wonder, since he was throughout portrayed as “clumsy, infantile, cruel, indecisive and weak.”</b><br /><br />Yet what truly offends French opinion about the film is a very French thing: <b>the failure to sufficiently dramatize administrative excellence. Napoleon, a reasonable counterintuitive case can be made, was a mediocre general but an excellent national manager</b>—he lost key battles and made doomed decisions to try to invade England by sea and then Russia by land, but </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>the civil code he midwifed into existence remains today, and his ideas of meritocratic advancement, of careers “open to the talents,” were genuinely new and enduring. </b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">One thing the film doesn’t make clear—in some part at least because that play of accents won’t allow class divides to be appropriately marked—is that <b>the people surrounding Napoleon had risen from the ranks, and his generals and marshals were as likely to be Corsican riffraff as Bourbon aristocrats. Napoleon was a hands-on manager and promoter of men</b>—he once even wrote sympathetically about a lowly corporal with a drinking problem.<br /><br />Gueniffey also insists that the casualty numbers that run in the credits at the end of “Napoleon,” intended to make one aware of the horror inflicted by the man whom the film has just spent the past two and a half hours heroizing, are greatly inflated. In any case, <b>the perpetual choice between the two Napoleons—the revived Alexander or the premature Hitler—will not be settled here.</b> The actor Albert Dieudonné, who played Bonaparte in Abel Gance’s legendary five-and-a-half-hour silent version, was buried in his Napoleonic costume. Phoenix seems likelier to go to his grave as Johnny Cash.<br /><br />Still, the cult of the Emperor won’t end, and even an often awkward film can’t end it. In several scenes, <b>Napoleon is shown being sketched by artists even as he acts as Emperor, and that part is true: charismatic tyrants attracted a better class of artists then. David, Géricault, and Ingres were all in his immediate train—a score that no contemporary dictator could equal</b>, although perhaps only because there was a better class of artists around. After all, Napoleon was able to fool many men of genius into thinking that he might be the bringer of republican ideals, as with Beethoven and the “Eroica,” written in Napoleon’s honor until Beethoven figured out who he really was. (“Now, too, he will tread under foot all the rights of Man, indulge only his ambition; now he will think himself superior to all men, become a tyrant!”)<br /><br /><b>When Napoleon fell and the French painters sighed and went to work for the mediocre royals who followed him, they did not do good work—until Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People,” made for the revolution of 1830, restored the nobility of revolutionary painting</b>, which retains its own peculiar and glamorous aura to this day. But, then, the romantic glory of revolution is perhaps the most distinct cultural accent left to us by the era and its Emperor. It explains why Napoleon movies, never made well, will never stop being made, in whatever language lies at hand. ~</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-french-are-not-happy-about-napoleon">https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-french-are-not-happy-about-napoleon</a><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4o3z8SF-9VVrndmM_o56vbHZrGdniXAeoe_O2-s5k6mC2gSthCr0cvUl4EIIg3fncIzm44orcyZG9tgrKYhgXJ80M2_0CWmEKBbUkWtpTE5Yv4DnlrjOVOE5_MQxIHpUkXEEnNQ8fVonXeM1bdGSg_dL36D_kxBH_wut3YUMXSVYcQwhwK9eJuow9fTOe/s1600/Napoleon%20Crossing%20AlpsJacques%20Louis%20David%201800.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1352" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4o3z8SF-9VVrndmM_o56vbHZrGdniXAeoe_O2-s5k6mC2gSthCr0cvUl4EIIg3fncIzm44orcyZG9tgrKYhgXJ80M2_0CWmEKBbUkWtpTE5Yv4DnlrjOVOE5_MQxIHpUkXEEnNQ8fVonXeM1bdGSg_dL36D_kxBH_wut3YUMXSVYcQwhwK9eJuow9fTOe/w338-h400/Napoleon%20Crossing%20AlpsJacques%20Louis%20David%201800.webp" width="338" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Napoleon crossing the Alps, by Jacques-Louis David</i><br /><br />*<br /><b>IN SUFI SHRINES, RITUALS OFFER SUFFERERS A PATH BEYOND THE FEAR AND ISOLATION OF THEIR MENTAL DISTRESS</b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUUBu6FevJZmRqzC-AktqfitROTvxNnUxaf5eKqf0n6Ib5WBfw7k9GQ4xR0GPpslrgHohAkcDpQS-_aAU6RK5zscupz27HNqoIy8IdA7zFqn9MaXkfIbp3Qh8IFnjNzxZM3oXAt787v8npuC0M8vmEYz5PRIQCcyPqaUMpBpy-oNr8yPUHVClbM7JaggC_/s2552/sufi%20shrine%20mental%20illness.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1442" data-original-width="2552" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUUBu6FevJZmRqzC-AktqfitROTvxNnUxaf5eKqf0n6Ib5WBfw7k9GQ4xR0GPpslrgHohAkcDpQS-_aAU6RK5zscupz27HNqoIy8IdA7zFqn9MaXkfIbp3Qh8IFnjNzxZM3oXAt787v8npuC0M8vmEYz5PRIQCcyPqaUMpBpy-oNr8yPUHVClbM7JaggC_/w400-h226/sufi%20shrine%20mental%20illness.png" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">‘It began 12 years ago,’ Madhavi* told me. ‘My face, hands and feet would get contorted; I would get very angry.’ From her purse, she took out tablets of clonazepam and lithium prescribed for anxiety and mood disorders by psychiatrists at one of India’s leading psychiatric facilities. ‘I took these medicines regularly,’ she said. ‘But it made no difference. The psychiatrists helped as much as they could. They even asked about all kinds of things from my childhood. But then they said there was nothing wrong with me.’</span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This is why <b>Madhavi and her husband Raj, both devout middle-class Hindus, had driven six hours from Delhi to a Sufi shrine called Badaun in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Through a neighbor, they had learned that the shrine was renowned for the treatment of pagalpan (madness)</b>. And it was here, through rituals of Sufi healing, that Madhavi finally began to feel better. At Badaun, her husband said, ‘the thing revealed itself fully, who did it, what it was.’ Over the next few years, the couple from Delhi would become regular visitors to the shrine.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">It may be contentious to affirm a Sufi cult of saints as a treatment for mental illness in this day and age. But as I spent time with mareez (patients) like Madhavi, I began to understand why, <b>even in the 21st century, Sufi conceptions of illness and healing have remained helpful for many people suffering from forms of schizophrenia, anxiety, depression and other maladies. </b>What these experiences of Sufi healing reveal are the complexities of a global mental health puzzle that has remained stubbornly unresolved for the past 50 years.<br /><br />Beginning in the late 1960s, <b>a series of studies by the World Health Organization found that long-term outcomes for severe mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, were better in so-called developing countries that lacked psychiatric support systems.</b> How could this be? In the years since, the ‘outcomes paradox’ (also known as the ‘better prognosis hypothesis’) has been debated but never fully disproved or resolved.<br /><br /><b>One explanation for the paradox is that the symptoms of severe mental illness are more common in non-Western ‘spirit-infused cultures’ and therefore perceived as less threatening. </b>And without fear, so the argument goes, people who are hearing voices or suffering from other afflictions do not need professional psychiatric help like patients in Western contexts. </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>But as most anthropologists who have worked in so-called spirit-infused cultures will tell you, myself included, hallucinations, disembodied voices and unexplained variations of mood do evoke fear and uncertainty.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Another possible explanation is that people in these ‘spirit-infused cultures’ are experiencing forms of mental illness unlike those listed in the diagnostic manuals of mainstream psychiatry.</b> On the surface, this may seem to be true. What afflicted treatment-seekers at Badaun is often called an asrat. In Hindi-Urdu, this word translates as ‘effect’, and at Hindu temples similar afflictions are called sankat, meaning ‘crisis’. <b><i>An asrat is a Sufi concept of illness describing a relational disorder that can spread, like a contagion, between members of a household or between kin. Rather than being located only in an individual body or brain, an asrat is conceived as transferrable between close friends or family members.</i></b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The idea of mental contagion may sound unsettling or absurd, but even the most hardened rationalists would accept that relationships and households can have a profound impact on a person’s mental health – research has shown that <b>caregivers will sometimes ‘take on’ the afflictions of those they are caring for. </b>An asrat begins either with a harm done by an intimate other through ‘sorcery’, or more ordinary antagonisms such as a court case or a dispute between spouses, siblings, neighbors, kin or business associates. <b>According to Madhavi, her asrat began because of a property dispute with her brother-in-law’s family.</b> As her husband, Raj, put it: ‘It is always someone from home, never an outsider. The nearer they are, the more dangerous they are.’</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The concept of an asrat may appear to be a purely spiritual ‘belief’, entirely irreconcilable with biomedical ideas of psychiatric illness. However, while the maladies of asrat are not described in any edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, even as ‘culture-bound syndromes’, the symptoms are relatively recognisable within biomedical idioms of mental illness. Consider some of the Hindi-Urdu words used to identify its symptoms: pagalpan (madness), shaq (suspicion), vehem (unfounded doubt), chinta (worry), udasi (sadness), tenshun (a Hindi-Urdu version of the English word ‘tension’). So why is it that Madhavi found healing in a Sufi shrine, and not in a psychiatric ward? The answer was more complicated than I expected.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Like many other parts of the ‘developing’ world, psychiatric systems appear to be severely lacking in India. According to 2021 data, there are only around 9,000 psychiatrists for India ’s population of 1.4 billion (and neighboring Pakistan has fewer than 500 psychiatrists for its population of 230 million). In comparison, consider that the United States, with a population of 330 million, has more than 38,000 registered psychiatrists, and even this is considered a ‘shortage’. <b>What, then, explains the better outcomes experienced by people in places without robust psychiatric systems?</b><br /><br />One possible explanation for this apparent paradox, at least in South Asia, may be the continuing significance of Sufi shrine-based healing for mental illnesses. Sufism is sometimes described as a mystical form of Islam, and its shrines are organized around the graves of saints (pirs). Badaun, for instance, is the shrine of two brothers, displaced kings said to have come from Yemen in the 12th century: Sultan Arifin (known as Bade Sarkar) and Badruddin (Chote Sarkar).</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Such shrines, when they appear in international media, are often depicted as archaic and barbaric. In contrast, a first-time visitor to a shrine like Badaun may be simultaneously intrigued and disoriented. <b>Unlike India’s often dismal and claustrophobic state-run asylums, Sufi shrines are sprawling, colorful, incense-infused complexes. Most shrines typically have rooms that can be rented by long-term treatment-seekers, and communal spaces for those with no income. They are homes for the homeless. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">First-time visitors might also find some aspects of the shrine disorienting or troubling. <b>Debates continue about controversial methods used to ‘pacify’ a small minority of violent patients without sedatives or straitjackets, such as chaining them to trees. It may also be disorienting to see patients circumambulating saintly graves by day and, at sunset, ritually self-flagellating while whirling to the hypnotic devotional sounds of qawwali.</b> Among the crowds, patients seeking treatment pay for the services of neighborhood healers (who are sometimes labelled as charlatans by displeased customers, rivals or shrine-keepers). And whirling patients often express themselves through unsettling screams and wailing. It can all seem hopelessly arcane and superstitious, which make the effectiveness of these spaces even more baffling to outsiders.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />I write not as a believer, but as an anthropologist. I arrived at Badaun by a secular route. In 2015, I began an ethnographic project studying mental illness at one of India’s largest public hospitals, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi. As I followed patients moving between different forms of treatment, I found myself journeying with Hindu and Muslim patients from the hospital to neighborhood healers and shrines. <b>In India, as in many other parts of the world, receiving medical help does not stop someone from also seeking other forms of healing.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Neighborhood-based Sufi healers need not be charismatic or have large followings. They can be ordinary men and women, living in poor neighborhoods or villages. One such healer with whom I have worked closely for the past eight years, popularly known as Sufi-ji, lives in a one-room dwelling in a lower-income neighborhood in East Delhi. Sufi-ji, who claims to draw his healing powers from Badaun, sometimes meets patients at his home, which is arranged like a miniature version of a Sufi shrine with icons and incense. At other times, he ferries patients back and forth between Delhi and Badaun.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">As I followed some of these patients, I was in for a few surprises. The first was the sheer number of shrine visitors, especially at a time when the Hindu Right is on the rise in India. As Sufi-ji put it when I first visited Badaun with him in 2016:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Imagine if all the asylums and psychiatry wards in India were full. How many patients do you think could be accommodated? 30,000 at most? Badaun has more visitors than that on a single day. And then think of how many dargahs [Sufi shrines] there are all over India.</b></i><br /><br />Whether or not these numbers are an exaggeration, there are undeniably more patients visiting Sufi shrines than psychiatrists in India and elsewhere in South Asia. My second surprise was that, without any holy book or theological formula, treatment practices are replicated in both Sufi shrines and Hindu temples across India. Shared treatments include the use of ‘cooling’ water, amulets, sacred ash, daily circumambulations, forms of trance and the ‘expulsion’ of harmful spirits, and also more ordinary social interactions between visiting families and healers.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>One further surprise was that psychiatrists were not necessarily against shrine- or temple-based healing. In fact, in 2000, a team of psychiatrists from one of India’s leading institutions for mental health research followed a cohort of treatment-seekers over a three-month period at a temple in Tamil Nadu. The results of their study, published in 2002 in the British Medical Journal, showed significant improvements as measured by psychiatric rating scales.<br /></b><br />So how do Sufi shrines like Badaun heal an asrat? A ‘rational’ explanation is that, within the relapsing-remitting tempos of mental illnesses, shrines work as a space of refuge and supportive sociality during the phase when symptoms are, in psychiatric terms, ‘florid’. Once symptoms recede, patients and caregivers return home (or, if they have nowhere else to go, they might find a safe haven in the space of the shrine). This may indeed be the tempo of illness for some people, but it is an explanation that misses out on what is most important about the healing that takes place in Sufi shrines.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Understanding this form of healing requires a clearer conception of what animates an asrat. <b>This form of mental illness often begins with a shaq (a suspicion) about intimate others, which may turn into forms of suspicion and rumination that are not entirely foreign to Western ideas of mental illness. </b>How are these suspicions or anxieties put to rest? According to the philosopher Stanley Cavell, the antidote to self-negating doubt or relational toxicity is not necessarily truth or certainty – finding out what is really going on – but<b> finding forms of resonance with oneself or with others. Cavell calls this attunement.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">For those with either serious mental illnesses or more common disorders like depression and anxiety, Badaun and other Sufi shrines offer different forms of attunement. As the psychiatrist Pratap Sharan and I followed patients journeying between hospitals, homes and shrines, we found <b>two forms of attunement that helped us understand the better outcomes paradox</b>: <b>one is subjective, relating to how a person attunes with their own feelings and thought processes; the other is inter-subjective, relating to how close friends and families attune with each other in damaging or healing ways.</b><br /><br /><b>Ritual objects such as amulets or incense and repetitive actions such as circumambulations may at times be aiming for similar ends to those of biomedicine and psychiatry, such as containing the tempo of a rumination to prevent it from spiraling into more dangerous or self-negating forms. Restorative ritual actions can be as ordinary as an amulet worn to ‘cool’ an anxious spiral, or an incense said to be charged with keeping voices (‘auditory hallucinations’ in psychiatric terms) at bay</b>. <b>In other cases, the transfer of symptoms between people can serve as a binding force for an injured family unit. </b>These methods are not infallible, and dissatisfied patients may seek out other shrines or psychiatrists for treatment. But for patients such as Madhavi and her husband Raj, <b>the mood-shifting techniques and protection offered by Badaun and its healers allowed them to strengthen their subjective and inter-subjective attunement.</b><br /><br />Analysts have often called these forms of spiritual healing ‘folk’ psychotherapy. Last year, the Badaun shrine celebrated its 812th Urs, an annual event commemorating the death of its saints, which suggests that <b>the shrine has been in operation as a healing space for more than 800 years.</b> Viewed from Badaun, we might say that psychotherapy and psychiatry have a relatively emergent and folk understanding of how to treat an asrat. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/why-a-sufi-approach-to-healing-mental-illness-is-so-powerful?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=7ab8860ec2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_12_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-a9a3bdf830-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D">https://psyche.co/ideas/why-a-sufi-approach-to-healing-mental-illness-is-so-powerful?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=7ab8860ec2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_12_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-a9a3bdf830-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D</a></span></p><p><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span class="hgKElc"><b>~ Sufi meditation not only improves mental concentration and memory but also helps in the treatment of depression and anxiety</b> It play an important role in lowering high blood pressure (hypertension) and also psychosomatic illnesse</span></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">s. ~ <a href="https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA676838602&sid">https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA676838602&sid</a>=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=10160604&p=HRCA&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7Ef36f769a&aty=open-web-entry</span><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span class="hgKElc"> </span></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Mary:</span></p><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Better outcomes for people with psychiatric illnesses in a place without available psychiatrists and their prescription pads. Don't think it outrageous if I say that's exactly the reason for those better outcomes. I've been ordered more than my share of psychiatric drugs, ranging across the spectrum from tranquilizers to mood elevators, to antipsychotics both old and new. They all carry pretty dreadful side effects, from mildly irritating to crippling to lethal. I've only met one doctor who agreed to treatment without drugs — and that was actually more effective for me, allowed significant normalization of mood, absence of symptoms, ability to pursue study and practice a demanding profession.</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">But in my life long history of struggle with mental illness this was a rarity. When symptoms recurred, as they are wont to do, all treatment offered, or should I say, insisted on, involved medication, (a lot of medication) — and when things got worse, hospitalization, and the use of ECT as a last resort. They admitted they didn't know how it worked, but was worth a try. After many years, and the development of some new 'atypical' medications, I found two that work for me, without much downside. In that I am more lucky than most...the selection of meds, like the finding of a good doctor, is always a crapshoot.</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">There's not much real science in psychiatric practice, certainly not a good track record of cures, or even significant relief. So why not the Sufi way? It sounds like attention is paid not solely to one suffering individual, but to the relationships, intimate and familial, that involve the affected individual. Amulets and ritual may be as effective...or at least less harmful...than powerful psychiatric drugs. I found one doctor who simply listened, and accepted, kindly and reasonably, offering simple strategies for safe behavior. He was enormously helpful. Another recent type of treatment, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, trains you to recognize your own maladaptive responses, and gives you the distance you need to change them. It is empowering rather than diminishing and coercive. You become your own therapist, hopefully, in this process.</span></span></div><p><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I strongly believe that as we grow older and hopefully wiser, we become our own best therapists. There is that voice of sanity, of a detached witness, that can win against deluded thoughts. Buddhism has much to offer here, but each person needs to find their path to healing. Life itself, i.e. consequences of our thoughts and actions, will guide. Love yourself, totally accept yourself, and ultimately the voice of sanity will prevail. The voice of deep caring. The wise self that knows how to hope, not the immature self that secretly prefers to take refuge in mental illness rather than cope with whatever life throws at us. Us the Magnificent! Us the Special! Us the Superior! No wonder group therapy works so well. Religion, too, can be a form of group therapy, since the first idea it destroys is that we are separate, </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">different, </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">and superior. <br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>CHILDREN NEED ALLOPARENTS</b><br /><br />~ A squishy, slippery blob that cries often. Sometimes very often. That's how you – and everyone of us – began our lives.</span></p><p><i><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Homo sapien babies are born incredibly needy. They have little to no motor coordination. They can't cling to their mothers. And many of them even have trouble breastfeeding. They require an enormous amount of attention, care and nurturing.</b></span></i></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>"Even the most adorable, sweet, easy babies are a ton of work," says psychologist Kathryn Humphreys</b> at Vanderbilt University.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In Western societies, much of the responsibility often falls to one person. In many instances, that's the mother, who must muster the patience and sensitivity to care for an infant. And a lot of time she's working in isolation, says evolutionary anthropologist Gul Deniz Salali, who's at the University College London. <b>"I just had a baby 9 months ago, and it's been really lonely." <br /></b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">"There are these narratives [in Western society], that mothers should just know how to look after children and be able to do it [alone]," says Chaudhary, who's at Cambridge University.<br />But human parents probably aren't psychologically adapted for this isolation, a new study with a group of hunter-gatherers in the Congo suggests. <b>A "mismatch" likely exists between the conditions in which humans evolved to care for babies and the situation many parents find themselves in today</b>, says Salali, who contributed to the study.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Together with a handful of previous studies, this new one suggests that <b>for the vast majority of human history, mothers had a huge amount of help caring for infants – and even a lot of support with toddlers as well.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">We're not talking about just an extra hand on the weekends. <b>We're talking about more than a dozen people for daily help with all sorts of tasks – cleaning a child, holding them, keeping an eye on them and soothing them when they cry. Scientists call these helpers "alloparents." </b>The prefix "allo" derives from the Greek word for "other." So these helpers are literally "other parents."</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The study, published in Developmental Psychology, took place among a group of people called Mbendjele. They live in the northern rainforests of the Republic of Congo and acquire their food primarily by foraging, hunting and fishing. "Sometimes they also make campsites along logging roads because they trade with farmers. They exchange products from the forest for agricultural products, alcohol and cigarettes," Salali says.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In the study, <b>evolutionary anthropologist Nikhil Chaudhary closely followed 18 young children from birth to age 4.</b> He observed each child separately for a total of 12 hours. Every 20 seconds, he wrote down a description of who was taking care of the child and what they were doing. Were they feeding, carrying or soothing the child? He also noted the state of the child. Were they sleeping or crying?</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">"So you're just writing down all that information constantly," he says.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Chaudhary and Salali analyzed all the data and found striking patterns. "The numbers were really quite amazing," Chaudhary says. <b>"Each child had about 15 to 20 caregivers, but in terms of people providing hands-on care, the number was lower."</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>On average, the children had eight people, other than their mothers, giving regular hands-on care, such as bathing, feeding and loving them with kisses, hugs and stroking. The youngsters had two to three other people responding to their crying.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And these alloparents responded quickly. Chaudhary documented a total of about 220 bouts of crying that didn't resolve quickly. Half the time, these caregivers responded within 10 seconds. And <b>for 90% of the crying bouts help arrived within 25 seconds.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Altogether, <b>the alloparents provided about 36% of the close care for babies. Fathers provided another 6% and mothers provided the rest — about 60%.</b> "The moms just have so much support," says UCL's Gul Deniz Salali. "When I became a mom, I had to pay somebody to teach me how to breastfeed. It was so difficult at the beginning, and I was on the verge of depression, really. So I do think that this allocare is really helpful.”<br /><br />The study was quite small, with only 18 children, Kathryn Humphreys at Vanderbilt notes. So it's hard to draw generalizations for the full community in Congo.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">"However, they studied the children in a way that allowed them to really understand what the children's day-to-day life is like, which is important," she adds. "That's also quite different from most research on early caregiving relationships, in which researchers usually study a child with one caregiver – typically mom – in the lab for ten minutes of free play time."<br /><br />The findings also support a handful of similar studies with hunter-gatherer communities, looking at how much support new moms receive from members of the community. For example, one study, published in 2021, quantified alloparenting for Agta children from birth to age 6. <b>Agta live in the northeastern part of the Philippines</b> and obtain their food primarily by spearfishing in rivers and oceans, along with foraging and hunting. The researchers found that, on average, <b>alloparents provided nearly three-quarters of the care for babies under age 2, and nearly 80% of care for children ages 2 to 6.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Hunter-gatherer communities are not the only ones to rely on – and value – alloparents. Studies on a variety of cultures worldwide show that new mothers almost always have a system of care around them, says Emily Emmott, who's also at the University College London but wasn't involved in the study. <i><b>"And it's often a system of complex care that includes people beyond the partner and the family members. The whole community is helping."</b></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Altogether the research across cultures suggests that <b>human parents are psychologically adapted to raise children cooperatively, not in isolation.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Yet in Western culture, many times the mother alone is expected – or even required – to provide this incredibly intensive parenting</b>, Emmott says. "There's this idea that mothering is so important. And there's lots and lots of research on sensitive parenting by the mother."</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">So, as the paper puts it, there's a "mismatch" between how parents are primed evolutionarily to take care of babies and how they're expected to do it, or even how they end up doing a portion of it. This mismatch and isolation may be a key reason for high rates of postpartum depression in the U.S. and Europe, several of the researchers point out.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">"It's almost certainly true that <b>we weren't really adapted to raise children as a single parent or just as two-parent families,</b>" says developmental psychologist Pasco Fearon at the University of Cambridge, who wasn't involved with the study. "There's clear evidence that social support is really important for preventing depression.”</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQye68_rjh0RTp4tELu24rR9CIr0t_nmmuyWADc5-GkcOoBxf4rhG3kR_JNEaTL-cVBWYhqEtTf_M8sRySghYVeI414vmiPc4b2XxDJqYBLNI1DBCNWNaoqGLBO2VfShfVJuRXAogLNhdgQOFOl9g-U1XUa9v71D45TU0HyE6EmcExm5uTypKnNinye9vt/s1800/a%20child%20mbendjele.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1195" data-original-width="1800" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQye68_rjh0RTp4tELu24rR9CIr0t_nmmuyWADc5-GkcOoBxf4rhG3kR_JNEaTL-cVBWYhqEtTf_M8sRySghYVeI414vmiPc4b2XxDJqYBLNI1DBCNWNaoqGLBO2VfShfVJuRXAogLNhdgQOFOl9g-U1XUa9v71D45TU0HyE6EmcExm5uTypKnNinye9vt/w400-h265/a%20child%20mbendjele.webp" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And thus, the research points to a clear way of reducing postpartum depression, Fearon says: "Let's try to build a society and enact policies that provide parents with more social support," he says. "It's sort of obvious, but it's not so easy to do."</span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">So we end up with a second mismatch, beyond the evolutionary one, says UCL's Emily Emmott. "There's a kind of societal mismatch," she says, between how our society is set up to raise young children and what caretakers actually need to do."</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">"<b>You need a lot of support when you have a baby, but the laws don't reflect that, and the child-care system available doesn't reflect that</b>," Emmott says.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">So many primary caregivers end up relying largely on one other person: their partner.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD8eta-guX7e9c48f2lPWgLFUBB5r-IU47YrTHO3qonzg9Dnb3AhWr-Xx-FGXuN_UN8s-1ua_9BlJgCcMGJMC6GTjkF2IbIdpYY2jv3HFruFwu8hyrWS5dEsIHTX0P8tU06-te5c1gxfLov1D-KI0De9lcUUiWSjRoCgIeaq67MA8TVKSEuV-SfLdLOc3w/s1800/Congo%20hunters%20and%20gatherers.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1195" data-original-width="1800" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD8eta-guX7e9c48f2lPWgLFUBB5r-IU47YrTHO3qonzg9Dnb3AhWr-Xx-FGXuN_UN8s-1ua_9BlJgCcMGJMC6GTjkF2IbIdpYY2jv3HFruFwu8hyrWS5dEsIHTX0P8tU06-te5c1gxfLov1D-KI0De9lcUUiWSjRoCgIeaq67MA8TVKSEuV-SfLdLOc3w/w400-h265/Congo%20hunters%20and%20gatherers.webp" width="400" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Congo hunter-gatherers</i></span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">"Some women don't have a partner," she adds. "And what do you do when your partner needs to go to work? What are you supposed to do? So I think many women are put in this impossible situation. They're set up to fail."</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And so, she says, it's not surprising that many new parents feel depressed. "Because, a lot of the time, you are in a quite depressing situation."</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>There's no shame in getting help with a baby, the researchers interviewed for this article point out. "We need to cooperate," Emmott adds. "It's just the way we've evolved.”</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/12/01/1216043849/bringing-up-a-baby-can-be-a-tough-and-lonely-job-heres-a-solution-alloparents">https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/12/01/1216043849/bringing-up-a-baby-can-be-a-tough-and-lonely-job-heres-a-solution-alloparents</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Oriana:<br />I’ve always strongly favored lots of help with raising children. But childcare workers need to remember that what a child needs most is affection. Looking back on my own early years, with much of the time in preschool care, the greatest and least-met need was for the hunger for affection. <br /><br />*<br /><b>CHRISTIANITY’S PROBLEM WITH BLOOD SACRIFICE<br /></b><br />Anglyn Hays:<br />What kind of twisted god requires the torture and death of his own offspring to forgive his other creation — mankind? Christianity is designed to thwart rational thinking altogether through sheer cruelty and barbarism.<br /><br />Tom Margolis:<br />The Old Testament Christian god, among others, does.<br /><br />But <b>there’s nothing more irrational about a mean god than there is about a nice god. It’s not the meanness of the Christian god that undercuts Christianity —it’s the entirety of the belief in magic and the supernatural.<br /></b><br />Rejecting Christianity because God is mean is like rejecting Santa Claus because how would he fit down the chimney?<br /><br />There are much greater, more fundamental reasons for rejecting supernatural beliefs.<br /><br />Anglyn Hays:<br />Santa Claus fits down the chimney through magic. Are you saying Christian cruelty is magical? I think it serves Christian goals. The fact the Old Testament god returns in Revelation to destroy the world once again more or less proves the Jesus-love stuff was nonsense. There are so many holes in the religion that a hole to crawl into must be what its adherents are looking for — total forgiveness for themselves no matter what they do.<b> Christians are amoral actors who have no social contract with the rest of humanity.</b> They have proven that much over centuries of torture, murder and genocide.<br /><br />Jamer 169:<br />I’m an atheist, I asked a priest that once and he said only a fool believes anyone is really in hell. He believed in a loving god who would not give his enemy (satan) any additional soldiers at the cost of human suffering. Of course this negates the whole threat of hell as a punishment, but the priest didn't seem bothered by that particular loop hole.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9kDP7nN0Q_lVSNNIbeuILwwiES-H6hsnvL5B60-3QcY1JzjvnONgD5JixMsPrBNb0ANADjPAP9SsABOahVmNUflMFo0F7Oj9JrkT287rdPJamyYu1yS65_5TQ275SCzvBKE1LuVlzPZDcODwnNoN8i2bcId0rvFqH0wivOuK7vNoeS3uBRzEh1l_0ihDX/s1473/devil%20codex%20gigas%2013th%20cent.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1473" data-original-width="872" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9kDP7nN0Q_lVSNNIbeuILwwiES-H6hsnvL5B60-3QcY1JzjvnONgD5JixMsPrBNb0ANADjPAP9SsABOahVmNUflMFo0F7Oj9JrkT287rdPJamyYu1yS65_5TQ275SCzvBKE1LuVlzPZDcODwnNoN8i2bcId0rvFqH0wivOuK7vNoeS3uBRzEh1l_0ihDX/w236-h400/devil%20codex%20gigas%2013th%20cent.jpg" width="236" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Devil, Codex Gigas, 13th century</i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>MONTH OF BIRTH AND LIFE EXPECTANCY</b><br /><br />~ Month of birth influences adult life expectancy at ages 50+. Why? In two countries of the Northern Hemisphere–Austria and Denmark–people <b>born in autumn (October–December) live longer than those born in spring (April–June).</b> <b>Data for Australia show that, in the Southern Hemisphere, the pattern is shifted by half a year. </b>The lifespan pattern of British immigrants to Australia is similar to that of Austrians and Danes and significantly different from that of Australians. These findings are based on population data with more than a million observations and little or no selectivity. <b>The differences in lifespan are independent of the seasonal distribution of deaths and the social differences in the seasonal distribution of births. </b><br /><br />In the Northern Hemisphere, the excess mortality in the first year of life of infants born in spring does not support the explanation of selective infant survival. Instead,<b> remaining life expectancy at age 50 appears to depend on factors that arise in utero or early in infancy and that increase susceptibility to diseases later in life. </b>This result is consistent with the finding that,</span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"> <b>at the turn of the last century, infants born in autumn had higher birth weights than those born in other seasons.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b> Furthermore, differences in adult lifespan by month of birth decrease over time and are significantly smaller in more recent cohorts, which benefited from substantial improvements in maternal and infant health. <br /></b><br />The environment early in life affects the susceptibility of adults to infectious as well as chronic diseases. These findings are congruent with our result that <b>significant differences in mean age at death by month of birth exist for chronic diseases related to the cardiovascular, respiratory, and digestive systems, as well as for infectious diseases such as pneumonia and influenza.</b> <br /><br />Significant differences exist for violent deaths, which at old age mainly consist of traffic accidents, accidental deaths other than traffic accidents, and suicides. <b>At old age, accidental deaths and suicides are related to the health status of the individual, mainly to cardiovascular and other chronic diseases. Thus, it seems plausible that the increased susceptibility of the spring-born to chronic diseases also affects their overall risk to die from violent deaths.</b><br /><br />Our findings are also consistent with ecological studies that found a significant positive correlation between arteriosclerotic heart disease and lung cancer at adult ages 40 to 69, and the infant mortality in the early years of the same cohorts. These studies, which were published a quarter century ago, stimulated extensive research on <b>how conditions early in life might influence health later in life. </b>As reviewed below,<b> much of this research focuses on birth weight or adult height.</b><br /><br />A study of weight at birth in Vienna, Austria, for infants born between 1865 and 1930 (35) shows that <b>infants born between September and November have a significantly higher weight at birth (plus 47.3 g) than those born in the other months of the year. The author explains the higher birth weight by the better nutritional status of the mothers during pregnancy.</b> This explanation is supported by the finding that birth weight differs less over the year in social groups that were less exposed to annual cycles in food commodities.<br /><br /><b>Seasonal differences in gestational age and weight at birth have also been attributed to the seasonal incidence of infectious diseases of the uro-genital tract of the mother during the third trimester of pregnancy.</b><br /><br />The relationship, however, between birth weight and adult susceptibility to diseases may be complex. Recent studies find a strong inverse relation between cardiovascular mortality of the mother and birth weight of her offspring, which suggests the existence of genetic and epigenetic intergenerational factors. Intergenerational factors affecting the seasonal distribution of births are found in a Japanese study. The findings suggest that <b>the birth month of the mother significantly influences the seasonal distribution of births of her offspring. <br /></b><br />In our study, the month of birth is therefore not merely a proxy for birth weight. It is a complex indicator for the nutritional status and the disease environment during the prenatal and early postnatal period of an infant, and for the intergenerational factors that may operate through birth weight. <b>But not all effects of month of birth must necessarily operate through birth weight as the correlation in the seasonal distribution of births of mothers and their offspring shows.<br /></b><br />Seasonal differences in nutrition and disease environment early in life could explain the relationship between month of birth and adult lifespan. In past decades, the food supplies in general, and the availability of fresh fruit and vegetables in particular, differed from season to season. <b>Mothers who gave birth in autumn and early winter had access to plentiful food and fresh fruit and vegetables throughout most of their pregnancy; those who gave birth in spring and early summer experienced longer periods of inadequate nutrition.</b><br /><br />It is important to point out that the mothers of the birth cohorts in our study were not exposed to severe seasonally occurring malnutrition. They rather suffered from seasonally inadequate nutrition. Over time, nutrition in winter and early spring has improved considerably, which is consistent with the result in our study that <b>the relationship between month of birth and lifespan seems to be stronger among the older birth cohorts than among the more recently born.</b><br /><br /><a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.041431898#sec-3">https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.041431898#sec-3<br /></a><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieGjt9xgnwml0HeVrvRz_ZywmmKbqnvW-un1V9Giv2aLJ1yy9vYfriTwj-NE2HLXAQiGaaooAtMbfjgnW1X2hRg1rdwXcs4FuHW6xL6i2QQCgo-UwB2yMP0uB3AMTPjFxicwi1qj__U95AS9Sm9UQw6n5lgidt157tGfb-_aUCkw3o-3LWexuI9_b43j1x/s740/veggies%20assorted.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="416" data-original-width="740" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieGjt9xgnwml0HeVrvRz_ZywmmKbqnvW-un1V9Giv2aLJ1yy9vYfriTwj-NE2HLXAQiGaaooAtMbfjgnW1X2hRg1rdwXcs4FuHW6xL6i2QQCgo-UwB2yMP0uB3AMTPjFxicwi1qj__U95AS9Sm9UQw6n5lgidt157tGfb-_aUCkw3o-3LWexuI9_b43j1x/w400-h225/veggies%20assorted.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br /><b>ALZHEIMER’S, INFLAMMATION, AND THE IMMUNE SYSTEM<br /></b><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjntu0qpdYEG6H6fm5SezHNAH8DohWMsczNb8tsgFverkFl5sDsmY24maXzgPZhmMlQ_4cHF7vWVbdK1Cg_u1Y7HrRjF2CrF6Y3anN9S8qLOgP-J3WCoPcPHZo2OuUdv7myta9eulybcpCn-JkrXyPwx6_o9rPQodbH864uuj1McetLrbAsVnU_71hOhu-C/s2000/BRAIN%20slices.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="2000" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjntu0qpdYEG6H6fm5SezHNAH8DohWMsczNb8tsgFverkFl5sDsmY24maXzgPZhmMlQ_4cHF7vWVbdK1Cg_u1Y7HrRjF2CrF6Y3anN9S8qLOgP-J3WCoPcPHZo2OuUdv7myta9eulybcpCn-JkrXyPwx6_o9rPQodbH864uuj1McetLrbAsVnU_71hOhu-C/w400-h300/BRAIN%20slices.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">For decades researchers have focused their attacks against Alzheimer’s on <b>two proteins, amyloid beta and tau. Their buildup in the brain often serves as a defining indicator of the disease. Get rid of the amyloid and tau, and patients should do better, the thinking goes.<br /></b><br />But drug trial after drug trial has failed to improve patients’ memory, agitation and anxiety. <b>One trial of a drug that removes amyloid even seemed to make some patients worse. </b>The failures suggest researchers were missing something. A series of observations and recently published research findings have hinted at a somewhat different path for progression of Alzheimer’s, offering new ways to attack a disease that robs memories and devastates the lives of 5.7 million Americans and their families.<br /><br />One clue hinting at the need to look further afield was a close inspection of <b>the 1918 worldwide flu pandemic, which left survivors with a higher chance of later developing Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. A second inkling came from the discovery that the amyloid of Alzheimer’s and the alpha-synuclein protein that characterizes Parkinson’s are antimicrobials, which help the immune system fight off invaders. The third piece of evidence was the finding in recent years, as more genes involved in Alzheimer’s have been identified, that traces nearly all of them to the immune system. Finally, neuroscientists have paid attention to cells that had been seen as ancillary—“helper” or “nursemaid” cells. They have come to recognize these brain cells, called microglia and astrocytes, play a central role in brain function—and one intimately related to the immune system.</b><br /><br />All of these hints are pointing toward the conclusion that both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s may be the results of neuroinflammation—in which the brain’s immune system has gotten out of whack. <b>“The accumulating evidence that inflammation is a driver of this disease is enormous,” says Paul Morgan, a professor of immunology and a member of the Systems Immunity Research Institute at Cardiff University in Wales. “It makes very good biological sense.”<br /></b><br />The exact process remains unclear. In some cases the spark that starts the disease process might be some kind of insult—perhaps a passing virus, gut microbe or long-dormant infection. Or maybe in some people, simply getting older—adding some pounds or suffering too much stress could trigger inflammation that starts a cascade of harmful events.<br /><br />This theory also would explain <b><i>one of the biggest mysteries about Alzheimer’s: why some people can have brains clogged with amyloid plaques and tau tangles and still think and behave perfectly normally. “What made those people resilient was lack of neuroinflammation,” says Rudolph Tanzi, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and one of the leaders behind this new view of Alzheimer’s. Their immune systems kept functioning normally, so although the spark was lit, the forest fire never took off, he says. </i></b><br /><br />In Tanzi’s fire analogy, the infection or insult sparks the amyloid match, triggering a brush fire. As amyloid and tau accumulate, they start interfering with the brain’s activities and killing neurons, leading to a raging inflammatory state that impairs memory and other cognitive capacities. The implication, he says, is that it is not enough to just treat the amyloid plaques, as most previous drug trials have done. “If you try to just treat plaques in those people, it’s like trying to put out forest fire by blowing out a match.”<br /><br /><b>Lighting the Fire</b><br /><br />One study published earlier this year found gum disease might be the match that triggers this neuroinflammatory conflagration—but Tanzi is not yet convinced. The study was too small to be conclusive, he says. Plus, he has tried to find a link himself and found nothing. Other research has suggested <b>the herpes virus could start this downward spiral, and he is currently investigating whether air pollution might as well.</b> He used to think amyloid took years to develop, but he co-authored a companion paper to the herpes one last year, showing <b>amyloid plaques can literally appear overnight.<br /></b><br /><b>It is not clear whether the microbes—say for herpes or gum disease—enter the brain or whether inflammation elsewhere in the body triggers the pathology</b>, says Jessica Teeling, a professor of experimental neuroimmunology at the University of Southampton in England. <b>If microbes can have an impact without entering the brain or spinal cord—staying in what’s called the peripheral nervous system—it may be possible to treat Alzheimer’s without having to cross the blood–brain barrier</b>, Teeling says.<br /><br />Genetics clearly play a role in Alzheimer’s, too. R<b>are cases of Alzheimer’s occurring at a relatively young age result from inheriting a single dominant gene. Another variant of a gene that transports fats in brain cells, APOE4, increases risk for more typical, later-onset disease. </b>Over the last five years or so large studies of tens of thousands of people have looked across the human genome for other genetic risk factors. <b>About 30 genes</b> have jumped out, according to Alison Goate, a professor of neurogenetics and director of the Loeb Center for Alzheimer’s Disease at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. <br /><br />Goate, who has been involved in some of those studies, says <b>those genes are all involved in how the body responds to tissue debris—clearing out the gunk left behind after infections, cell death and similar insults. So, perhaps people with high genetic risk cannot cope as well with the debris that builds up in the brain after an infection or other insult, leading to a quicker spiral into Alzheimer’s. </b>“Whatever the trigger is, the tissue-level response to that trigger is genetically regulated and seems to be at the heart of genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease,” she says. When microglia—immune cells in the brain—are activated in response to tissue damage, these genes and APOE get activated. “<b>How microglia respond to this tissue damage—that is at the heart of the genetic regulation of risk for Alzheimer’s,</b>” she says.<br /><br />But APOE4 and other genes are part of the genome for life, so <b>why do Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s mainly strike older people?</b> says Joel Dudley, a professor of genetics and genomics, also at Mount Sinai. He thinks the answer is likely to be inflammation, not from a single cause for everyone but from different immune triggers in different individuals.<br /><br />Newer technologies that allow researchers to examine a person’s aggregate immune activity should help provide some of those answers, he says. Cardiff’s Morgan is developing a panel of inflammatory markers found in the blood to predict the onset of Alzheimer’s before much damage is done in the brain, a possible diagnostic that could point to <b>the need for anti-inflammatory therapy.</b><br /><br /><b>Like Threads</b><br /><br /><b>A similar inflammatory process is probably also at play in Parkinson’s disease</b>, says Ole Isacson, a professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. Isacson points to another early clue about the role of inflammation in Parkinson’s: <b>people who regularly took anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen developed the disease one to two years later than average. Whereas other researchers focused exclusively on genetics, Isacson found the evidence suggested the environment had a substantial impact on who got Parkinson’s.<br /></b><br />In 2008–09, Isacson worked with a postdoctoral student on an experiment trying to figure out which comes first in the disease process: inflammation or the death of dopamine-producing neurons, which make the brain chemical involved in transmitting signals among nerve cells. The student first triggered inflammation in the brains of some rodents with molecules from gram-negative bacteria and then damaged the neurons that produce dopamine. In another group of rodents, he damaged the neurons first and then introduced inflammation. <b>When inflammation came first, the cells died en masse, just as they do in Parkinson’s disease. Blocking inflammation prevented their demise</b>, they reported in The Journal of Neuroscience.<br /><br /><b>Other neurodegenerative diseases also have immune connections. In multiple sclerosis, which usually strikes young people, the body’s immune system attacks the insulation around nerve cells</b>, slowing the transmission of signals in the body and brain.<br /><br />The spinal fluid of people with MS include antibodies and high levels of white blood cells, indicating the immune system is revved up—although it is not clear whether that immune system activation is the cause or result of MS, says Mitchell Wallin, who directs the Veterans Affairs Multiple Sclerosis Centers of Excellence. <b>People with antibodies to the Epstein-Barr virus in their systems, especially if they caught the virus in late adolescence or early adulthood run a higher risk of developing MS—supporting the idea that an infection plays a role in MS.</b><br /><br />Thanks to newer medications and improvements in fighting infections, people with MS are now living longer. This increased longevity puts them at risk for neurological diseases of aging, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, Wallin says. Lack of data has left it unclear whether people with MS are at the same, higher or lower risk for these diseases than the general population. “How common it is, we’re just starting to explore right now,” Wallin says.<br /><br />COMING SOON?<br /><br />It will be years before the concept of a neuroinflammatory can be fully tested, but there are already some relevant drugs in development. One start-up, California-based INmune Bio, recently received a $1-million grant from the Alzheimer’s Association to advance <b>XPro1595, a drug that targets neuroinflammation. The company is beginning its first clinical trial this spring, treating 18 patients with mild to moderate-stage Alzheimer’s who also show signs of inflammation. </b><br /><br />The company plans to test blood, breath by-products and cerebral spinal fluid as well as conduct brain scans to look for changes in inflammatory markers. That first trial will just explore if XPro1595 can safely bring down inflammation and change behaviors such as depression and sleep disorders. Company CEO and co-founder Raymond Tesi says he expects to see those indicators improve, even in a short, three-month trial.<br /><br />The best way to avoid Alzheimer’s is to prevent it from ever starting, which might require keeping brain inflammation to a minimum, particularly in later life. Preventative measures are already well known: eat healthy foods, sleep well, exercise regularly, minimize stress and avoid smoking and heavy drinking.<br /><br />You can’t do anything about your genetics but living a healthy lifestyle will help control your inheritance, says Tanzi, who, along with Deepak Chopra, wrote a book on the topic, The Healing Self: A Revolutionary New Plan to Supercharge Your Immunity and Stay Well for Life. “It’s important to get that set point as high as possible.”<br /><br /><a href="https://getpocket.com/explore/item/for-alzheimer-s-sufferers-brain-inflammation-ignites-a-neuron-killing-forest-fire?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://getpocket.com/explore/item/for-alzheimer-s-sufferers-brain-inflammation-ignites-a-neuron-killing-forest-fire?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us</a></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi354HP1i0T2jevIQpX1mIdNspNFM8cpGZn7KgONf727N8lv0IIMVhBiWAJvOJ5GgdvQwdW-A3nXJ8d2QBu9EzVu0NM-nPfAafIKlCkvZQsF3dWf-gr2gsuD6jQQpvLZhYM6IuOuveet_uSKD19TKURy5ZnF7PhXGmdng3hugpJO_b3Z6QR5j7QpDfCVVan/s770/dementia-symptoms.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="670" data-original-width="770" height="348" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi354HP1i0T2jevIQpX1mIdNspNFM8cpGZn7KgONf727N8lv0IIMVhBiWAJvOJ5GgdvQwdW-A3nXJ8d2QBu9EzVu0NM-nPfAafIKlCkvZQsF3dWf-gr2gsuD6jQQpvLZhYM6IuOuveet_uSKD19TKURy5ZnF7PhXGmdng3hugpJO_b3Z6QR5j7QpDfCVVan/w400-h348/dementia-symptoms.webp" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:<br /><br />Coffee (caffeinated, both brewed and instant) has been found to help prevent brain diseases. And so does nicotine — in the form of nicotine patch, so the lungs remain uninjured. <b>Old-type tricyclic antidepressants also seem to lower the risk of neurogenerative disease. </b><br /><br /><b>Note that these are stimulants; they increase energy production by the mitochondria. The role of mitochondria and energy production in the brain remains a an active research topic. <br /></b><br />“The dementia patients were more likely to have diabetes, hypertension, stroke, and head injury. The adjusted OR for dementia was 0.24 (95% CI, 0.22-0.27) in patients using tricyclics.”<br /><br /><a href="https://www.psychiatrist.com/jcp/antidepressants-and-dementia-risk/">https://www.psychiatrist.com/jcp/antidepressants-and-dementia-risk/<br /></a><br /><b>By contrast, the newer serotonin-increasing antidepressants, “such as Prozac, Paxil, Lexapro, Zoloft, etc., are associated with a twofold increase in the odds of developing some form of cognitive impairment, such as dementia, including Alzheimer’s.”<br /></b><br /><i><b>Overall, dopamine and its agonists appear to decrease the risk of neurodegenerative disease, while drugs designed to increase serotonin raise the risk. </b><br /></i><br />I don’t know if this is directly relevant, but dopamine and dopamine mimics tend to be cause minor weight loss or at least to preserve leanness, while serotonin mimics lead to weight gain. <br /><br /><a href="https://www.anxietycentre.com/research/antidepressants-linked-to-dementia-including-alzheimers/">https://www.anxietycentre.com/research/antidepressants-linked-to-dementia-including-alzheimers/</a></span><br /><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>ending on beauty:</b></i><br /><br />According to the Talmud, God braided<br />Eve’s hair for her wedding. He served<br />as Adam’s groomsman, too, though I doubt<br />he made any ball & chain jokes—before the Fall<br />at least…. And yes, if they had a garden<br />wedding, there must have been a steamy wedding night—<br /><br />~ from “Braids” by Leonard Kress</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqVdhbkx-tH08BMxjr9sd0soZSzBl9-t7SNmZ19FVKb1vJfMVPGW_CE0YDNKd8AX0Kkcf7r8ozS1O0Fji3yufsK16hUeL_UV_7G2KBF8OiTuEZK5LkWk9yDypZ6rkey8RFLmLXhBOadBPDjnb7L6N34RU90aURa-0I-kUhCSvSMIfhre9aZFsJdcly-xur/s820/braids.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="820" data-original-width="742" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqVdhbkx-tH08BMxjr9sd0soZSzBl9-t7SNmZ19FVKb1vJfMVPGW_CE0YDNKd8AX0Kkcf7r8ozS1O0Fji3yufsK16hUeL_UV_7G2KBF8OiTuEZK5LkWk9yDypZ6rkey8RFLmLXhBOadBPDjnb7L6N34RU90aURa-0I-kUhCSvSMIfhre9aZFsJdcly-xur/w363-h400/braids.png" width="363" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> <br /><br /><br /><br /></span><br /><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-60050905815005917012023-11-25T17:07:00.000-08:002023-11-28T20:51:24.622-08:00EXERCISE USELESS FOR WEIGHT LOSS; DO WE REALLY LIVE LONGER THAN OUR ANCESTORS? JEWS AND ARABS NOT AS CLOSE GENETICALLY AS PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT; STILL TRYING TO CLEAN UP AFTER WW1; UKRAINIAN MECHANICS RESURRECT TOTALED TESLAS; MICROBIOME AND BLOOD PRESSURE<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0WKKDGwJ6OvNDiQPvYWtLFVidSEjG2eF4s8ihQx2Yy8AVSzeZ3wrk8ZCXTAqFVywI0h04IUU9JXAlZJ7bCnEeCqd6Ro3Yv3yl7aQTFNHb5t49W3p30bGTuku6nYeXZfTd41Lmk-cztWTFw3Zbm7ygwybc4muNkp-OqSCSz1ppWXpqOv20wN832ip51ycm/s885/Fernando%20Botero%20Dog%20Turning%20a%20Corner%201980.jpg" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="885" data-original-width="720" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0WKKDGwJ6OvNDiQPvYWtLFVidSEjG2eF4s8ihQx2Yy8AVSzeZ3wrk8ZCXTAqFVywI0h04IUU9JXAlZJ7bCnEeCqd6Ro3Yv3yl7aQTFNHb5t49W3p30bGTuku6nYeXZfTd41Lmk-cztWTFw3Zbm7ygwybc4muNkp-OqSCSz1ppWXpqOv20wN832ip51ycm/w325-h400/Fernando%20Botero%20Dog%20Turning%20a%20Corner%201980.jpg" width="325" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Fernando Botero: Dog Turning a Corner, 1980</i></span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br />We will not drink from the same glass,<br />Neither water nor sweet wine.<br />We will not kiss in early morning, nor look out<br />From the same window at night.<br />I breathe by the moon, you breathe by the sun, <br />But the same love keeps us alive.<br /><br />My tender, my true friend is always with me,<br />And your merry friend is always with you.<br />But I understand the fear in your gray eyes<br />And you are the cause of my pain.<br />We don’t make our short meetings more frequent.<br />Thus our fate looks after our peace of mind.<br /><br />At least your voice sings in my verses,<br />And in your verses my breath beats.<br />Oh, there’s a fire beyond the reach<br />Of oblivion or fear . . .<br />If only you knew how dear to me now<br />Are your dry, rosy lips.<br /><br />~ Anna Akhmatova, 1913</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />*<br /><b>PAUL AUSTER: THIS MIGHT BE THE LAST THING I EVER WRITE<br /></b><br />~ Early in Paul Auster’s latest novel, Baumgartner, his eponymous lead character is speaking to a grief counselor in the immediate aftermath of losing his wife in a freakishly violent swimming accident. “Anything can happen to us at any moment,” he tells her. “You know that, I know that, everyone knows that – and if they don’t, well, they haven’t been paying attention.”<br /><br />When we meet Sy Baumgartner, it is 10 years after Anna’s death. Now 70 and a retired Princeton philosophy professor, we find him enduring a darkly comedic and somewhat lower stakes set of unexpectedly escalating domestic vicissitudes. <b>In rapid succession he is frustrated in the simple task of calling his sister, scalds himself on a hot pan and tumbles down the stairs during an unnecessary visit to his basement.</b><br /><br />“I’d wanted to try my hand at a short story,” explains Auster, 76, speaking from his home in Brooklyn, New York. “Something I have done almost none of in my career. I’d always written modestly sized books and then with 4321 and Burning Boy” – his 2017 Booker-shortlisted novel of close to 1,000 pages and his 2021 800-page biography of Stephen Crane – “I’d written two door-stoppers. It really wasn’t intentional. If you dropped those books you could break both feet, so I wanted something shorter and this older man came to me, sitting in his house and looking out the window at robins pulling up worms. I wrote a story called Worms, but then didn’t want to drop him. There was more there and so I started up again, knowing that underneath this almost Buster Keaton opening was something darker lurking.”<br /><br /><b>The bleak humor, if not the slapstick, persists through the book as Auster explores the darker material of Baumgartner’s decade-long relationship with loss and grief</b>. Sy has an ultimately ridiculous relationship, complete with awkwardly botched marriage proposal, with a woman he imagines might be a replacement for Anna; he delves into Anna’s journals; he publishes and promotes her previously unpublished poetry and recalls incidents from his own childhood, life and family history, which, in a very Auster-ish way, imperfectly coincide with incidents in Auster’s own childhood, life and family history. But mostly Sy returns to that day on Cape Cod when Anna “encountered the fierce monster wave that broke her back and killed her, and since that afternoon, since that afternoon – ”.<br /><br /><b>In the last two years, Auster has himself been subject to two traumatic events. Firstly, an appalling family tragedy, with widespread press coverage, saw the death of his baby granddaughter, while in the care of his son. His son, from his first marriage to the short story writer Lydia Davis, died subsequently from a drug overdose.</b> <i><b>Then in March this year Auster’s wife, the writer Siri Hustvedt, alerted the world on Instagram to the fact that Auster was being “bombed with chemotherapy and immunotherapy” and the couple were now living in what she dubbed “Cancerland”.</b><br /></i><br />It was around the end of last year, when Auster was finishing Baumgartner, that he began to encounter “mysterious fevers which would hit me in the afternoon”. He was first diagnosed as having pneumonia before going down some “blind alleys’’ about long Covid and eventually receiving a cancer diagnosis. “And since then the treatment has been unrelenting and I really haven’t worked. I’ve been through the rigors that have produced miracles and also great difficulties.” <br /><br /><b>As for Cancerland, he says there are no maps and no idea if your passport is valid to exit. </b></span><b><br /></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“There is, however, a guide who gets in touch right at the beginning. He checks if he’s got the name right and then says, ‘I’m from the cancer police. You’ve got to follow me.’ So what do you do? You say, ‘All right.’ You have no real choice in the matter, as he says if you refuse to follow he’ll kill you. I said, ‘I prefer to live. Take me where you will.’ And I’ve been following that road ever since.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLukZAXiUXqnXi4zofdbgjR6GN4Lzvndi8pz2SfcTRW3sqHOL_ZAA_dsFiQurqwObjEdYzt0USHr9od7fgPUYwydufUmrAqGqkxP8mtqWte8184SGhxzl01P38DXkIOjow_TJ8W3UlYs3JR1RUb8s81j8iAfmH0Kb_wuUw_vLf1wlsN58H9BTSLeCv9We8/s602/Paul%20auster%20bookshelf.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="480" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLukZAXiUXqnXi4zofdbgjR6GN4Lzvndi8pz2SfcTRW3sqHOL_ZAA_dsFiQurqwObjEdYzt0USHr9od7fgPUYwydufUmrAqGqkxP8mtqWte8184SGhxzl01P38DXkIOjow_TJ8W3UlYs3JR1RUb8s81j8iAfmH0Kb_wuUw_vLf1wlsN58H9BTSLeCv9We8/w319-h400/Paul%20auster%20bookshelf.jpg" width="319" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Auster says his fascination with the notion of a life-changing moment came from a childhood incident that provided the starting point for 4321. At a summer camp, a boy standing next to him was killed by a lightning strike. “It was the seminal experience of my life. At 14 everything you go through is deep. You are a work-in-progress. But being right next to a boy who was essentially murdered by the gods changed my whole view of the world. </b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br /><i><b>I had assumed that the little bourgeois comforts of my life in postwar suburban New Jersey had a kind of order. And then I realized that nothing had that sort of order. I’ve lived with that thought ever since. It’s chilling, but also liberating.</b></i> It keeps you on your toes. And if you can learn that lesson then certain things in the world are more bearable than they would have been otherwise. I guess the impulse to write and tell stories is different for each writer. But I think this is the essence of what I’ve been up to all these many years.”<br /><br />In a recent interview, Auster described the American obsession with “closure” as being “the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard of. When someone who is central to your life dies, a part of you dies as well. It’s not simple, you never get over it. You learn to live with it, I suppose. But something is ripped out of you and I wanted to explore all that.” <b>In Baumgartner, Sy reflects for a long time on phantom limb syndrome, describing himself as “a human stump” and yet the “missing limbs are still there, and they still hurt, hurt so much that he sometimes feels his body is about to catch fire and consume him on the spot”</b>.<br /><br /><b>“I nearly called the book Phantom Limb,” Auster says. “It’s such a powerful idea. That connection we have with other people and how vital they are to our lives. The importance of love. It can be hard for us to talk about it the way it deserves to be talked about. Long-term, ongoing, lifelong love and all the possible twists and turns it will take.”</b> He believes “the brilliant Siri” puts it best when she says people make the mistake of using a machine model to think about love and attempting to maintain the machine in its original state. <br /><br /><b><i>“You have to think of love as a kind of tree or a plant,” Auster says. “And that parts are going to wither and you might have to cut off a branch to sustain the overall growth of the organism. If you get fixated on keeping it exactly as it was, one day it will die in front of your eyes. For a love to be sustained it has to be organic. You have to keep developing as it goes along so everything is all intertwined, even the sheer strangeness of it all.” </i></b> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The fact is, he says, that we never really know our partners completely. “There are mysteries we will never be able to answer. But I think this applies also to ourselves.</b> There are so many things about my own life that I don’t understand. My actions over the years. Why did I do that? Why that impulse? People spend years in analysis trying to figure out the answers. I’ve never done that so I’ve been more or less on my own, trying to figure things out, and I honestly have to report that I don’t think I’ve made a lot of progress.”<br /><br /><b>Baumgartner is Auster’s second book to be published this year. In January he tackled a national, as opposed to personal, trauma in the form of American gun control. Auster wrote the text for a photographic book by his son-in-law, Spencer Ostrander. Bloodbath Nation captures the locations of mass shootings in the US. </b>“I took a year to write those 80 pages. I wanted to be as concise and precise as I could and for it to have the feel of an old-fashioned political pamphlet. No other so-called advanced country in the world is anywhere close to America in terms of numbers. But Americans, as time goes on, look less and less to countries abroad for inspiration about how to act. <b>We are so smug. We have such feelings of superiority to the rest of the world. Even the stupidest things we do are considered good because they’re American, underlined six times.”</b><br /><br />He says the book was well received but provoked little action. “Of course it’s depressing, as it’s one of the biggest failings in our culture and also one that is emblematic of the kinds of erroneous thinking that have been driving us in recent decades. But maybe people are just sick of the subject. <b>The debate is just not happening. No one beyond a very few politicians dares to pick it up. And that will surely continue into an election year.</b>” <br /><br />Baumgartner is set between 2016 and 2018, and there is allusion to “the deranged Ubu in the White House”. “I didn’t want to wrestle with Trump directly but of course he was lurking in the background of American life, an everyday presence.” As for the next election, Auster says he understood many Democrats’ initial lack of enthusiasm for <b>Joe Biden</b>. “He was certainly not my first thought for 2020. But he has surprised me immensely. <b>I think he’s been quite extraordinary. And maybe in these few years, he’s been one of the best presidents that I can remember in my lifetime. He understands that government has an important role to play in our mental, moral and economic health. That the programs he has proposed are an advance over what we’ve been getting from the last 40 or 50 years.</b>”<br /><br />While the right wing attempts to paint Biden as a “kind of doddering old, incompetent man, it’s far from the truth”, says Auster. “He is perfectly capable and knows more about government than just about anybody in Washington. He’s made his blunders, we all know that, but he’s not a bad choice at the moment and I can’t think of anyone better than him today. So <b>I’m praying that he manages to squeak through next year because this is going to be a very, very close and incomprehensibly weird election.</b> And we can’t even begin to predict how the other side is going to be if they don’t get the votes.”<br /><br />As for himself, Auster is not looking much beyond his treatment and recovery, but he has been gratified by the initial responses to Baumgartner. “I do things in a very old-fashioned way,” he says. “I write my novels on a typewriter and my assistant then has to put it on a computer to send to the publisher. She’s been with me for a good 15 years and has rarely said much about the manuscripts beyond something bland like ‘good job’. <b>But this time she told me to ‘march on’ as she couldn’t wait to read the next chapter. </b>Siri, for over 40 years my first reader, also had no comments beyond ‘keep going’. <b>Even my agent of 40 years, who again rarely comments, was so encouraging.</b>”<br /><br />Auster says he still can’t quite explain where this book came from. “There was just this guy growing inside me who became more comprehensible as the book advanced. So in the face of these responses, I simply smile and offer thanks. I feel that my health is precarious enough that this might be the last thing I ever write. And <b>if this is the end, then going out with this kind of human kindness surrounding me as a writer in my intimate circles of friends, well, it’s worth it already</b>.” ~ </span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKLLbptYe2HdC1_z5_d7QQqQLG6B4aXyM_PXoF4jod2iUsIJdZtPqYG7guCMdkcLxtwQ3QCva3TBpOItH0wPdsQTIR440q0-E46Y4AEMT6rNd581Onr0ilJoshdLayJ-f5i1symLtmUaUblyLYkG6ZTC5G5KaDZsAY6yO6nwwPMA8o4pWhbILoulFmaKEK/s668/paul%20auster%20chance%20intersections.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="668" data-original-width="613" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKLLbptYe2HdC1_z5_d7QQqQLG6B4aXyM_PXoF4jod2iUsIJdZtPqYG7guCMdkcLxtwQ3QCva3TBpOItH0wPdsQTIR440q0-E46Y4AEMT6rNd581Onr0ilJoshdLayJ-f5i1symLtmUaUblyLYkG6ZTC5G5KaDZsAY6yO6nwwPMA8o4pWhbILoulFmaKEK/w368-h400/paul%20auster%20chance%20intersections.jpg" width="368" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/18/paul-auster-on-cancer-connection-and-the-fallacy-of-closure?CMP=share_btn_fb">https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/18/paul-auster-on-cancer-connection-and-the-fallacy-of-closure?CMP=share_btn_fb<br /></a><br />Oriana:<br /><br />I’m not familiar with Paul Auster’s work, but reading about him I was struck by the title of one of his novels: <b>The Music of Chance (1990)</b>. I’ve long pondering the influence of chance and circumstances on the course of our lives, and wondered about “free will.” The closer you look, the more you are likely to see the force of circumstances. For me that was very liberating, since from early on I was used to blaming myself for everything that went wrong, even the weather — of course it <i><b>would</b></i> rain on my parade. <br /><br />And yes, my life experiences confirmed that “Anything can happen to us at any moment. You know that, I know that, everyone knows that.” Your life can change in a fraction of a second — and not because you haven’t been working hard enough, or been a sufficiently loving mother — but because a stranger runs a red light, say. A fraction of a second can change the rest of your life </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">— like the fraction of a second when I slipped down a stairway and shattered my left knee.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />But <b>somehow we carry on, not because we are brave and virtuous, but because carrying on is actually the easiest, compared with other options</b>. That’s not to say that heroism is always accidental — in fact it’s determined by both our genes and everything that has happened to us. But disasters can happen in such a random fashion that it’s very hard to hold on to the Jungian belief that “there are no accidents; everything happens for a reason.” I’d modify that to “</span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>everything happens for many reasons over which we have no control</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;">.” The more we accept it, the more we gain the resistance to blaming ourselves — or feeling unmerited pride in our achievements. <br /><br />The Taoist attitude of “going with the flow” seems to be the best policy — in most cases. I loved learning about Taoism — for the first time, the whip of self-blame ceased its relentless blows. <br /><br />Mary:<br /><br />That kind of realization [that anything can happen] can feel like a tremendous blow... Nothing can be assumed even about the next hour, let alone the next month or year. Sudden death is the best teacher of this particularly hard lesson. It can happen just exactly like that, lightning — out of the blue. Yes, it keeps you on your toes!!<br />*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>“NOTHING WILL BE THE SAME AGAIN” — DIFFERENCES ON ISRAEL, GAZA CAN DESTROY FRIENDSHIPS AND FAMILY BONDS<br /></b><br /><b>Worried about My Daughter<br /></b><br />I’m a Jew living in New York with a daughter at a liberal-arts college outside the city. She has a friend in school she’s known for three years. <b>Before the conflict, he and I had a great relationship. He used to visit our home.</b><br /><br />My daughter and I don’t think what the Netanyahu government is doing is okay, but after the October 7 attacks, I was shocked by what her friend was posting on social media, insinuating that <b>what happened was Israeli propaganda. The general sentiment of it was Israel deserved it.<br /></b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">After seeing the posts, I called him. We had a conversation, during which he showed little compassion for the victims. He told me there were no babies beheaded; he’d seen a video of a Hamas attacker being interviewed and told me, “I see a brown person being interrogated and oppressed.” I explained to him there are brown Jews. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>It’s hard when people find it impossible to even say, “It’s horrible what happened,” or they’re saying it didn’t happen</b>. I brought up to him that Hamas had raped women. He said, “Maybe there was rape.” I was dumbfounded. These are liberal-arts students who are supposed to be supporting women’s rights and minority rights.<br /><br />When I brought up my offense at what he said, he basically made me feel like an old lady who doesn’t know what the hell I’m talking about, that I don’t understand propaganda, that I don’t understand how I’m being brainwashed. We ended the phone call on a cordial note but had a last text exchange that was quite terse, where <b>he again stated no babies were beheaded. Nothing will ever be the same again.</b><br /><br />I’d reached out to him because I was scared for my daughter. These are kids she goes to school with. She tries to tell me everything’s fine, but she’s been coming home on the weekends. I don’t know how she found out about our phone call, but she was mortified when she did. She said I’d crossed a boundary and that I could not discuss this with her friend. I told her I was sorry.<br /><br />*<br /><b>Armed With Hair Spray</b><br /><br /><b>I am a Palestinian with family in the West Bank. They’re scared. They don’t leave the house. </b>I’ve lived in the U.S. for 37 years. I’m one of very few Palestinians and women who wear a hijab in my place of work. <b>People whom I work with on a daily basis now barely look at me. It has felt like I cannot speak, and if I do, I have to be very careful what I say and whom I say it to.</b> The leadership at my work has publicly villainized the protesters. <b>They’ve said anyone who goes to a protest is celebrating the deaths of Israelis.</b><br /><br />There are some colleagues whom I worry about if I have to go to a meeting or be on any calls with them and they try to corner me and say, “Hey, do you support what happened on October 7? Do you support Hamas?” I remember what it was like after 9/11, when I was constantly having to prove myself. I had to be more American than anyone else. Even something as simple as posting “Free Gaza” is seen as hate. <b>You have to stand with Israel or you’re a terrorist. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Either we have to bite our tongues and not mourn the people who are dying in our families, or we have to criticize our own people for being killed in order for Americans and New Yorkers not to attack us. <b>People are so scared to mourn</b>. I will not put on headphones when I’m going home. I have to be super-vigilant. I started carrying a mini hair spray in my purse because pepper spray is illegal in New York. Hair spray allows us to get away from a situation that can potentially put us in danger.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>Abandoned by Colleagues<br /></b><br /><b>I’m Jewish and have worked with human-rights groups in different countries and lived in Hong Kong. I’m very involved in the pro-democracy movement there.</b> The day after the October 7 massacre, before Israel had even done anything, one of my pro-democracy acquaintances posted about Palestinian freedom fighters. It got to a point where, after so many posts, I told him to fuck off. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I’m not one to quickly jump down the “Oh my God, that’s antisemitism” line, but <b>some of the posts from people I’ve worked with have been pretty damn disgusting — that Israel planned and provoked the whole operation and set up a sacrificial group of its population.</b> I’m horrified. I’ve stood by so many different people and their causes, and ever since this happened, people aren’t applying those same considerations to me. They don’t stand by me or understand if I say I feel vulnerable or existentially threatened.<br /><br /><b>I stood on the Palestinian side at the Israeli and Palestinian protest the Monday after the massacre. </b>At the time, we thought my cousin was a hostage, but he was murdered at the music festival. I stood there and said, “My cousin’s name is Jake Marlowe, and he’s a hostage in Gaza. Please tell that to your friends.” </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I was removed by the police twice and came back to the same spot because all these people had rushed into the demonstration, a lot of them with no skin in the game, for an opportunity to vent. People were telling me to fuck off. They were giving me the middle finger.<b> The abuse I got for standing there was revolting. I said to my husband, “I feel so contaminated by the hatred around me.” </b>I spent two days walking around feeling triggered, which is a word I hate, but now I know what it means. I’m not a Netanyahu flag-waving nationalist, but I don’t know if I believe in peace anymore. I don’t know what I believe.<br /><br /><b>*</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Lifelong Friends No Longer</b><br /><br /><b>I lost my very good friend of over 20 years over differences around the conflict. On October 7, I was so shocked by what I was seeing on TV, and because she’s my dearest friend, she’s the first person I reach out to when I’m upset. She had gone to Israel a few months prior, and I texted her and said, “See? This is why I didn’t want you to go.” I said, “They’re murdering children,” and she responded, “Bibi turned a blind eye to this.”</b> She was worried about people she knew in the West Bank and talking about Israel building settlements there. I pressed her: “But they’re murdering children. Put aside your bias and just feel for these people.” <b>She said children get murdered every day.</b> <b>She said, “I have empathy for everyone who’s a victim of violence.” I got angry with her. I believe in a two-state solution, but that was a slaughter. To gloss over it was too much for me.</b><br /><br /><i><b>For the first time in our friendship, we got nasty with each other. I sent her a photograph of a person in Times Square at the protest on October 9. They were flashing a swastika, and I said, “These are the people you agree with.” And she said, “Okay, I’m done. You called me a Nazi.” And I said, “Well, actually, I was done on Saturday when you showed no empathy toward children that were put in ovens.”</b></i><br /><br />I haven’t spoken to her since.<b> I’ve always known she was pro-Palestine. But I didn’t think my views were that different from hers.</b> We have mutual friends, but they don’t know what happened between us. It would be strange if I wasn’t at Thanksgiving, but all she’d have to say is “Oh, she has other plans.”<br /></span></span></p><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>*</b></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b> </b></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Uninvited From the Wedding</b></span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">My dad’s from Malawi, and my mom’s from Tanzania. We were the only Black family in town in the ’90s, and there was a lot of ostracism. Some of my first instances of community were being invited to bar and bat mitzvahs. <b>I grew up going to summer camps at the Jewish Community Center and eventually became a camp counselor there. There was such a warmth around Judaism and the community, which I envied.</b> Now, some of my lifelong friends whose mitzvahs I went to are the people I don’t see myself speaking to anymore, at least for the foreseeable future.<br /><br /><b>I spoke pretty sharply on October 7 on social media, where I said something along the lines of “Hamas wouldn’t exist if Israel gave Palestine the land it deserved,” which in retrospect was pretty harsh, considering Hamas massacred people at a music festival. </b>But my heart was in the right place. I did a lot of protesting in New York around 2020, and one of the most lasting feelings was coming home from a long day of protesting and seeing Palestinians painting George Floyd murals on the barbed cement wall that Israel put up. For the first time, I was like, Wow, Palestine is fighting with us. Hell yeah. Ever since then, I’ve been studying more, learning more about the conflict, unlearning propaganda, and shaping my perspective as a Black man.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">After my post, I got a few DMs from people I’ve known since elementary school, a few texts, some calls — “How could you say this? Hamas is a terrorist organization.”<b> One of my oldest friends said, “I think you’re subconsciously antisemitic,”</b> which hurt so much because I was like, “My friend, I was at your mitzvah. I’ve been to temple with you. I’ve been to JCC camp with you. Has there ever been any antisemitic bone in my body?”<br /><br />There have been a lot of tough nights this past month. I’d go to sleep like, Wow, <b>this situation is ruining lifelong friendships. </b>My good friend recently got engaged. I used to play Super Smash Bros. in his basement. We hosted high-school parties together and saw each other through tough things in adulthood. When I had COVID, he drove over and put edibles and a doughnut on my doorstep. I was like, “Bro, I love you so much. Thank you.” </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>I’m not sure if I’m going to be invited to his wedding anymore. Conversations with him about this have been some of the toughest I’ve had to endure</b></i>. But I’ve learned a lot from him. He told me, “First and foremost, look out for Jews. I know we’re disagreeing, but never succumb to antisemitism.” The last thing I texted him was a basketball video of Nikola Joki making an absurd play. He went, “That’s ridiculous.” And <b>we haven’t talked since. And I’m like, Man, maybe this is all we’re going to talk about if we do talk going forward: just sports. I hate that this lifelong friendship has been diluted to an occasional sports video every month, if that.<br /></b><br /><b>Fact-checking Your Friends<br /></b><br /><b>Even before October 7, I knew I wasn’t aligned with my friends and family, who are mostly pro-Israel, but we didn’t talk about it. These past few weeks, there was pressure from Jewish friends and family to post and say something, so I did. I reposted from Jewish Voice for Peace, an organization I’ve followed for a long time that’s against the occupation in Gaza</b>. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I immediately got substantial backlash from a lot of people in my network. I’ve had people in my life ask not to directly discuss the conflict because they know I have different views. <b>My friends have posted explicitly calling people with my views antisemitic, which is incredibly hard to see as a Jew.</b> My friend of 12 years — I was at her wedding — responded with a DM <b>accusing me of endorsing another Kristallnacht or another Holocaust because I did not support Israel’s attack on Gaza</b>.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">She replied to my post asking, “What about the babies being murdered?” I told her I was saddened that she didn’t think I had empathy for the horrors happening, that I didn’t need to be convinced of the disregard for human life going on, but that <b>I also held empathy for Palestinian babies;</b> <b>I don’t value the Jewish lives or the Palestinian lives more. We went back and forth for weeks. She and others send me endless videos of violence or news snippets, and I do the emotional and actual labor of actually fact-checking them.</b> We have different understandings of what is going on because we do not agree on what is the source of a trustworthy fact: Do you trust what comes out of the Israeli government and the IDF? What is our definition of propaganda, and who is producing it? <br /><br />She asked me if I knew the IDF warns civilians before bombing them or that Hamas uses civilians as shields; I said I was aware. <b>To me, she was pivoting from one set of horrors to justify another. </b>I kept telling her I understood where she was coming from, but at some point she was just sending me her random thoughts. I told her I didn’t know what to say anymore, and that’s where we left off the conversation. Recently she posted something saying, <b>“Some things are worth losing friends for. Antisemitism is one of them.” It’s hard to not interpret posts like that as personal. We haven’t talked since.<br /></b><br /><b>Arguing in Posts</b><br /><br /><i><b>Over the past few weeks, my Palestinian friends and I have been keeping a careful distance. </b></i>One told me she’s going to block me on social media for the time because it’s too painful. I have a lot of empathy about that; it’s a very trying time.<br /><br /><b>The people with whom I’m feeling a more complicated tension are actually Americans who aren’t closely connected to this conflict in any kind of way. I’m seeing people I consider colleagues posting things online that I find problematic at best. A friend made a post attributing the bombing of the hospital in Gaza to Israel even after the New York Times confirmed it was not their doing. </b>Another friend approached me after I posted online trying to call people’s attention to some of the language they were using. <b>I have no problem with anyone posting anything in support of Palestinian liberty. But I run into trouble when people post things about Israel in general, about its right to exist or lack thereof; when people post slogans such as “From the river to the sea” that imply that Jews in Israel need to be removed.</b><br /><br />Yet another friend was alarmed by how upset and emotional I’ve been online. She told me, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in this much pain.” I told her I’ve never been in this much pain. That was the moment it hit home for her, how big this moment is for so many Israelis and Jews, both in terms of the tragedy that hit us and in the way that <b>a big part of the world seemed to choose this moment, our moment of greatest weakness, to start feeling real comfortable with hating Jews, or at the very least with discounting Jewish life</b>. The crazy thing is that I know that so many Palestinians are actually feeling the same way right now. And so a lot of times it sort of feels like this is<b> a big conflict between those of us who are actually involved in this, who are feeling the pain, and a big audience of people who are kind of just cheering on, picking teams, and stirring shit up, basically</b>.<br /><br />I come from the literary world of writers, artists, and academics; it’s a left-wing, liberal, progressive circle in which I’ve always felt that I fit in well, but<b> all these misunderstandings with friends make me question whether I fit in this liberal literary world</b>. I’ve had the privilege of being a Jewish Israeli born in the ’80s to a world that I thought was not entirely post–antisemitic, but <b>I definitely didn’t see it coming at me from people who claim to be humanists.</b><br /><br /><b>Questioning Who Is Really an Ally<br /></b><br />I’ve been feeling a lot of whiplash, the initial real horror of October 7 and having to process that and feeling, Hi, here’s all of your epigenetic trauma, it’s back. You see this giant black hole opening up at your feet. Are my kids safe? Are we safe in our synagogue? I was very not okay, <b>having a hard time sleeping, going into my kids’ room at night and praying over them and crying. Are we safe? And what about all the families that aren’t safe?<br /></b><br />I work in the media industry. I’ve been working for ten years in this company for diversity, working with a lot of colleagues that I really like, who are primarily people of color. I’ve always considered myself an ally with them. And then I’m seeing these colleagues posting “FREE PALESTINE.” <b>There’s a particular view by the far left and particularly among some people of color that Jews are the white violent institutional state. And they identify with Palestinians because they have been oppressed by the institutions in our own culture. </b><br /><br /><b>A good college friend of mine who’s Black comes from a Black Power, Black liberation background that has a lot of antisemitic elements. They perceive Palestinians as disenfranchised people of color </b>— blah-blah-blah. I’ve been walking her through why Israelis are not these white colonists you’re comparing to the Boers in South Africa. I do feel like she’s engaging in good faith, and we’re able to give each other some grace.<br /><br /><b>What I take away from a lot of that is, yes, these Jews were killed, but … There’s a real aspect of “They had it coming.”</b> I see all of these things that really, on the surface, sound like validations for what Hamas did and justifications.<b> That tells me you don’t care if that happens to me. I’m sure if I did say it to their face, they would be taken aback: “Of course we don’t mean that your children deserve to die!”</b> But that is kind of what it sounds like. <b>One of my Jewish friends said, “You always wonder who’s going to hide you in the attic.” I realize not as many of my allies in those communities would hide me in the attic.<br /></b><br /><b>Ignored at Work</b><br /><br />I was raised in Kentucky and converted to Judaism four years ago. I met my husband at a party. He was raised Hasidic but wasn’t a practicing Jew. I wanted to convert so our children would be considered Jewish. We became part of the Hasidic community here in Crown Heights. <b>I’ve become very connected to the Jewish community, and then </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Israel, because if anything were to be really bad here, it’s the only place a Jew could safely go and be protected.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><br /></b><br />When I went back to work after October 7, I could barely hold myself together. I was crying and on my phone too much, seeing these horrific photos and videos. I don’t have close friendships at work, but a couple co-workers have met my daughter and some have always asked me for the inside scoop on Orthodox life. That day, a few of them were like, “Oh, my gosh, are you okay? What happened? And <b>I said, “I’m very upset by what’s happening in Israel. People are being slaughtered.” Everyone’s just silent and doesn’t say anything. There’s never been any direct, “I’m sorry about what’s going on.”</b><br /><br />Only two out of my seven closest girlfriends have said anything, but I know they see my Instagram Stories. It makes me question things. A parent at my daughter’s school came up to me recently and said they’ve been thinking about us and were really sorry, and it meant a lot. An acquaintance we just met seems more supportive than some of my closest friends. They’re friends I made when I first moved to the city. Now I have to reevaluate. <b>I feel even more isolated knowing people can’t muster up a bit of sympathy. When someone’s dog died at work, there was a card written. It was a big to-do. Not to downplay that, but this is a war.<br /></b><br /><b>Shunned by Siblings<br /></b><br />Since the attacks, my sister and I got into a big argument and my brother is actively not speaking to me. I was arrested at Grand Central in one of the cease-fire protests, and I texted both of them to let them know because I didn’t want them to learn about it on the news. My brother did not respond.<br /><br />My sister and I get along very well. She’s eight years older. I‘ve always considered her to be a good role model for me. When I came out, she went to bat for me. Outside of this, I respect how she approaches conflict. She’s usually willing to have difficult conversations.<br /><br /><b>I was a little surprised at how passionately she felt. After the attacks, she was raising money for Israeli aid — IDF soldiers included in that.</b> <b>And I was going the total opposite way.</b> I posted on Facebook — purposely, because it’s less of an echo chamber; it’s more people I grew up with — that I didn’t want this done in my name, that I grieved the people in Israel who had been killed, and I didn’t want that grief and that outrage to be fueling genocide. </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>My sister told me her very strongly that I had broken her heart. She thinks even having this conversation about Palestinian rights means Hamas is winning because that’s what they want.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />My mom just ignores whatever I say about it. My dad made a joke about the fact that I got arrested, something along the lines of, if I wasn’t in prison anymore, I was welcome to join them the next weekend. It’s a very Jewish thing to joke about this. ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/israel-palestine-gaza-war-hard-feelings-confessions.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://www.thecut.com/article/israel-palestine-gaza-war-hard-feelings-confessions.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us</a></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><span>Mary: THE INSISTENCE ON DENIAL<br /></span></span></p><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In those who want to champion the Palestinian cause and see Hamas as Freedom Fighters, there is <b>a refusal to admit the gross barbarity of Hamas' Oct. 7 attack</b>. They focus on denying any babies were beheaded, as though absent that, all the other atrocities were somehow "allowable," including rape, as just something that happens in war. It's as though that's the one sticking point they have to deny, the unforgiveable act that can't be admitted to, or your "champion justice fighters" become barbarians beyond the reach of forgiveness and negotiation.</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The problem is, it did happen, and was both recorded and celebrated with fiendish glee, by both Hamas and their Palestinian supporters. I cannot empathize or give creedence to this barbarism. It goes way beyond tolerance for acts of war. I think that's why these particular acts are so firmly denied or called manufactured propaganda. They are, no matter what the circumstances, indefensible. The insistence on denial is so fervent I can't help but see it as evidence of hate, of the still very much alive and venemous antisemitism that fueled the Holocaust.</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I am especially horrified by acts such as tying a mother and child together and setting them on fire. It shows a sadistic imagination. </span></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /></span></span></p><div dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1l90r2v x1swvt13" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r80:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">What exactly— or even approximately — defacing the Midtown NY Public Library and the Jewish name on that library has to do with Palestinian rights?</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This, I would suggest, has a lot less to do with Palestine and a lot more with your old garden-variety anti-Semitism. ~ Misha Iossel<br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRBK2DMTWRT1O_JoBWANny6LF-JRKpCLeoHWKH8cy7bvYPHCHvckzeUfV3qGVEM2UK_YcISuu6fhphT49Z72Gw7qQnjDNdWy8kZdYqsyR6HX7yUfF-ZJx7dXpiUi3f-EkO503-rKSzR_X4V7ZdKrjm2DFm8PCiXxTRPhPXhzQ3Z6ST49ZUwsx572wm-ydp/s1500/defacing%20Public%20library%20Midtown%20ny.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="783" data-original-width="1500" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRBK2DMTWRT1O_JoBWANny6LF-JRKpCLeoHWKH8cy7bvYPHCHvckzeUfV3qGVEM2UK_YcISuu6fhphT49Z72Gw7qQnjDNdWy8kZdYqsyR6HX7yUfF-ZJx7dXpiUi3f-EkO503-rKSzR_X4V7ZdKrjm2DFm8PCiXxTRPhPXhzQ3Z6ST49ZUwsx572wm-ydp/w400-h209/defacing%20Public%20library%20Midtown%20ny.jpg" width="400" /></a></div></span></div></div></span></div></div></div></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>SAVED BY MUD<br /></b><br /><i><b>The single major factor that prevented the capture of Moscow in October 1941 was the sudden disappearance of roads when rains started in early September. At the time, there were almost no roads with hard surfaces. Rain made them impassable for anything on wheels in a matter of a few days.</b></i><br /><br />As a Soviet joke went, “our major line of defense is our roads.” </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>~ </i>Dima Vorobiev, Quora</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlm748UxQ7kaUUsuQmHKijPwe_MVM8i3Qo-JGNvT_QYM2hyphenhyphene-XIOJT5MkHGkuj_Wk9M6M0Rff41N1lTBA0-KSSDq5DEvPT91mslb9GrhDDEnvwuG8i6Y3iNqIn0zOlDWv4RPjdmVkjgyTn1FFYtvowDQCt3xX4d-VMfd4RLJaE00L_Y4z_U5pqJo4yQl49/s602/Germans%20stuck%20in%20the%20mud%20ww2%20Russia.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="434" data-original-width="602" height="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlm748UxQ7kaUUsuQmHKijPwe_MVM8i3Qo-JGNvT_QYM2hyphenhyphene-XIOJT5MkHGkuj_Wk9M6M0Rff41N1lTBA0-KSSDq5DEvPT91mslb9GrhDDEnvwuG8i6Y3iNqIn0zOlDWv4RPjdmVkjgyTn1FFYtvowDQCt3xX4d-VMfd4RLJaE00L_Y4z_U5pqJo4yQl49/w400-h289/Germans%20stuck%20in%20the%20mud%20ww2%20Russia.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Germans stuck in the mud.</i></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlcZUP7Ufk3pMf-EH-L1Pvr_PRSBwnImJXkLI6XK2IvAu-tzv5cGpoV-eIlZBHWztxmH9s_gGmsOfTfpWQNx7y-Y_FaR2J_2TtgYxLMgsJsk51igm5XPx8RgdTDdWHNWJ9hyphenhyphenwdaRzIMCgtAm6Fn1l5rY9wiiC0XTyzxsb201kf7Xjdzp2RtX9Db5f7IVP1/s600/Russian%20roads%20ww2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="600" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlcZUP7Ufk3pMf-EH-L1Pvr_PRSBwnImJXkLI6XK2IvAu-tzv5cGpoV-eIlZBHWztxmH9s_gGmsOfTfpWQNx7y-Y_FaR2J_2TtgYxLMgsJsk51igm5XPx8RgdTDdWHNWJ9hyphenhyphenwdaRzIMCgtAm6Fn1l5rY9wiiC0XTyzxsb201kf7Xjdzp2RtX9Db5f7IVP1/w400-h268/Russian%20roads%20ww2.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i> </i><br /><b>*</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>WHY WAS SOVIET PROPAGANDA SO UPBEAT?</b><br /><br />~ Soviet propaganda was inspired by Marxist teachings.<br /><br />Communism, as a progressivist ideology, is filled with bright, optimistic expectations of the future. <b>For the Communists, history is an often arduous and winding yet unstoppable march from the dark past to the increasingly perfect future.<br /></b><br />Somewhere down the road, people are going to learn to live in peace and harmony with each other, at long last. That’s what Karl Marx promised, like the rest of the great progressive prophets.<br /><br />The Communist propaganda posited that, deep down inside, we’re all inherently good creatures. What held us back were many “deficiencies,” “imperfections,” and “setbacks” inflicted on us by our miserable pre-Soviet past. We also had to fight against the permanent mischief-making of the foreign Imperialists and their few but very wicked agents inside the USSR.<br /><br />The Party had to get rid of all the parasites and vermin left to us by the past. Everyone was expected to help the Party. <b>We were required to banish detrimental bourgeois influences from our minds. Once everyone achieved that, life in the USSR would radically and irreversibly improve.</b><br /><br />*<br />Below, <b>a Soviet poster from 1962, titled “We sing a song about the Motherland!”</b> A boy with the red necktie of the “Young Pioneers” (the Communist organization for schoolchildren in their early teenage) teaches a group of Little Octobrists to sing.<br /><br />Remarkably, the artist managed to smuggle under the upbeat Communist motif her dark, reactionary view on the nature of human interactions.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKExsGB3PZYYhe4rjKS5CYRdEbl-Ooy-JCjP6fFPWiSqxL7HtGEKn5urZRMrptSR008jCsyL1RdGFPhX4sCT9BY-LanFaiLsCVIylLgT_FJAqIr_xF2PoI-PaV8qew94dpxmyT0xTUPOqT8frId9fya0nNE1wOjr6-39m9M0L1KmmZ-JUI8u-r-T4cvcPx/s602/Soviet%20poster%20we%20sing%20a%20song.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="403" data-original-width="602" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKExsGB3PZYYhe4rjKS5CYRdEbl-Ooy-JCjP6fFPWiSqxL7HtGEKn5urZRMrptSR008jCsyL1RdGFPhX4sCT9BY-LanFaiLsCVIylLgT_FJAqIr_xF2PoI-PaV8qew94dpxmyT0xTUPOqT8frId9fya0nNE1wOjr6-39m9M0L1KmmZ-JUI8u-r-T4cvcPx/w400-h268/Soviet%20poster%20we%20sing%20a%20song.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">What we see is an alpha male bossing around two submissive boys. The conductor's baton is the visible attribute of his authority. Two girls assist him. One of them looks at his baton with fascination, while the other volunteers as a drill sergeant. One of the younger boys strives to oblige. The one to the right, with the small star of “little Octobrists” weirdly pinned to his shoulder, watches the top guy’s left hand with fear and doesn’t seem to enjoy the scene at all. ~ Dima Vorobiev, Quora<br /><br />Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I immediately thought of Norman Rockwell. There is sometimes a stunning similarity between those Soviet posters and Rockwell's depictions of Middle America. "That's because both countries are populist," a friend once explained. While most of Europe started with the aristocratic ideal, both the Soviet Union and the US tried to elevate "the people." </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"Who exactly are 'the people'?" I asked some of my UCLA classmates. They were confused at first. Then someone said with a shrug, "Well, you know, the people ... the oppressed." For the sake of polite friendliness, I dropped the subject. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;"><span>Mary:</span></span></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #20124d; display: inline; float: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Neither Russia nor China was industrialized, had an industrial working class or a large middle class. Instead, there were serfs, or peasants. Not really the capitalist ground for Marx' revolutionary transformation...but both places where such societal change was attempted on a grand scale. Both undergoing terrible decimation and suffering in the process. Russia becoming a Mafia state, China evolving its own successful take on capitalism...neither truly what Marx envisioned, but the world, and history, are both much messier and unpredictable than theory.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;"><span> </span><span></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span>Oriana: MARXISM JUST NOT VIABLE<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span>What Marx envisioned had zero chance no matter where it would be tried. The only successful and lasting systems that might be called truly communist exist on a small scale in monastic communities. But even those communities are often subsidized by the church. Marxism just isn't viable. </span></span></p><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Marxism is such a futile mental exercise at this point. By now, everyone should know that trying to implement this utopian fiction only leads to tragedy — but we know that “should” is not the right statement. If an adult persists in believing in Santa Claus, we suspect mental illness (or some form of brain malfunction). If an adult tries to defend Marxism in any form, even merely hinting that it would have been successful in developed countries like England and France, it’s like a fundamentalist saying that Jesus died for our sins. Nonsense is nonsense and must be called out. I grew up under a dictatorship (no way was it a “dictatorship of the proletariat” — unless we insist that the ruling clique was rather poorly educated, and that makes them proletarians), and of course the portraits of Marx were everywhere, in every classroom (together with portraits of Engels and Lenin; occasionally, instead of Lenin, the First Secretary of the Polish Workers’ Party, entirely controlled by Moscow). But to really implement the Utopian system required terror — Lenin and especially Stalin proved very good at that. </span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">And Marx lived long enough to see that England was going in a different direction: trade unions. According to what I’ve read in several sources, this made Marx quite angry. He wanted the workers to become more and more impoverished and oppressed so that they would rise up in revolution, and abundance for everyone would follow. That's both deluded and morally distasteful.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #351c75; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small;">(By the way, I love the Quora comment below about the lack of castles in Russia. When you consider the abundance of old castles in Europe, some as ruins, some still intact, that is indeed pretty spectacular — and picturesque — evidence against monolithic state power.)</span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><span>*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>NO OLD CASTLES IN RUSSIA</b><br /><br />~
<b>If you ever travel in Russia, there is one striking feature: there are
no castles</b>. <b>Europe is full of castles — they are means of area denial in
warfare and powerbases in the civilian life</b>. There are none in Russia.
<b>Russian mode of warfare</b> has never based on forming a network of
powerbases and area denial, but on <b>scorched earth</b> </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">
—</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> <b>burn everything
behind, retreat hundreds of kilometers, stretch the enemy supply lines
and then counterattack. This is the steppe mode of warfare. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Russians
themselves assume their country is indefensible by its terrain (the
lesson which Walther Model gave them on defensive warfare in the Rzhev
Meat Grinder went unlearned) and they must always attack before they
themselves are attacked. But </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>prohibition of local lords building castles
also served the Czar so that there could not rise a private power or
rival to his power.</b></span></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Russian
state apparatus attained its form what it is today in the rule of Ivan
IV the Terrible </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">
—</span></span></b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b> he concentrated all the power to himself, slaughtered
the old nobility, founded a standing army loyal only to himself and
stated laws of serfdom, and founded the secret police and spy
organization. </b>The Russian state apparatus was perfected by Peter I the
Great by making the Orthodox Church as one of the offices of the State</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">
—</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">
thus eliminating the last private force which could rival with his
power.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">There
has never been Feudalism in Russia. <b>There has never been Renaissance in
Russia. There has never been Enlightment in Russia.</b> The two forces
competing in the Russian soul have been crass superstition and fatalism,
and almost slavish dedication to Orthodox religion </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">—</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> which the
Communists crushed.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Russian
state apparatus and society is perfect as it is. It has attained its
evolutionary climax. It will not evolve any further except in detail.
And no force in the Universe can reform, renew or alter it — <b>it is
completely immune to any attempts to reform it. After any reforms, it
will inevitably return into what it was before.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Slavery
was abolished in Russia during the rule of Peter the Great </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">—</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> almost
1000 years after what it was elsewhere in the Christian world </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">
— </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">and
serfdom only in 1863, after the disaster of the Crimean war. But
remember when I said <b>the nobles were not feudal lords but ruler’s
stooges and dependent on his mercy and whim</b>? The only really free person
in Russia has always been the Czar (Premier, President) and everyone
else was his chew toy.<br /><br />Such society can never evolve the rule of
law. Such society can never produce justice state, civil rights,
judicial safety, safety of ownership, untouchability </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">
—</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> nothing. <b>There
has never been true Capitalism in Russia, but only crony capitalism.
There never will be true Capitalism in Russia, because any assets and
property can be seized by the ruler, by the ruler’s stooges, or by the
Mafia at any moment.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Russia
is a low trust society</b>, since the Czars and the Communists simply did
everything to sow distrust, suspicion and corruption within the populace
to prevent any mutinies. Russians do not trust their government, their
rulers, their family members — nobody. This effectively prevents any
rise of a strong and independent middle class, the mainstay of the
Western society. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #800180;"><b>The only organized thing in Russia is the government —
and the crime.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"> Russia simply cannot get along without state terror and
coercive regime. <b>Each time a regime collapses, Russia itself collapses
into <i>svoboda</i> (freedom), then into <i>bespredel</i> (anarchy) and then into <i>smuta</i> (trouble). Sooner or later, a new strongman emerges, and the cycle starts anew.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Belgium
survived three years without a government — its organizations and civil
servants took care of everything. Russia will not survive three weeks
without a strongman rule.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>The
consequence is that Russians live in this moment, here and now;
they do not plan for their future</b>. If they ever amass money or wealth,
they squander it immediately on conspicuous consumption. It is the
wisest thing to do — remember that ownership has no protection. Poor
yesterday, rich today, poor tomorrow — a vot. [so what] There is no
private entrepreneurship, no private industry, no private financing, no
private media. All industries in Russia are controlled by the state or
the ruler’s stooges. This is known as the vertical of power.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>But
since this kind of system is horribly inefficient, horribly top-heavy
and horribly unreliable, the Russians have long since found a lubricant —
corruption. Russia is thoroughly corrupt. </b>Since Russia is a low-trust
society, and Communism managed to crush the little of human decency and
honesty there were after the Orthodox church, <b>the only way to run the
system smoothly are private “special gifts”, “protektsiya”, “na chayu”
[“for tea”] and bribes.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">This
explains why Russia is and has always been so poor, despite having the
biggest amounts of natural resources in the world and capable population.
It is the system they have </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">—</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> and they like it that way. Russian society
has always been technologically backwards and lousy by its
infrastructure, and the ordinary Russian has always been poor as a
church mouse. But the State has always been rich, the ruler has always
been rich and the ruler’s stooges have always been rich. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Just like the
Americans, who never admit there is anything wrong in their society and
hope they too will one day be millionaires, the Russians like their
society just as it is; they identify not as individuals but as the State
— and they too hope they can one day be the stooges of the ruler and
tap the wealth. To be at the receiving end of the corruption cash flow.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Cultural
evolution is the great enabler. The Western cultural sphere is so
wealthy and so neat because it managed somehow to discover and assemble
the right memes and memeplexes and evolve into what it is today.
Likewise, the Eastern cultural sphere has managed to evolve in its own
direction.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>There
is no coming back into what was before 1237. Belarus and Ukraine have
irreversibly slid off the Greater Rus, and into the Western cultural
sphere. </b>The border opens as a rift, and the border of the cultural
spheres go along with it. Let the Russians enjoy their society as it is —
it is the way they want to be. Likewise, let us Westerners enjoy our
societies as they are, and not live up false hopes that Russia will one
day be like us. It won’t — neither will be China, North Korea, Iran or
Saudi-Arabia.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO1rWNkNL6-bv7NAKVauhCzRu0B5fXFRBdvZK_jgsXZnPueUWBadRj9jfIT5As5SYPk2YFAkFR1Tp4T-tb0T2cWrVAQaB0VaiOrYVNmhOmb_0GmGKZ1-XWu0oa2hSAZTnw0E30012UQfvfx7dcAYqf-C25PcuT8beuFkCft4giF8lmCK0U9J83eIdjph_1/s900/mongols%20russia.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="900" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO1rWNkNL6-bv7NAKVauhCzRu0B5fXFRBdvZK_jgsXZnPueUWBadRj9jfIT5As5SYPk2YFAkFR1Tp4T-tb0T2cWrVAQaB0VaiOrYVNmhOmb_0GmGKZ1-XWu0oa2hSAZTnw0E30012UQfvfx7dcAYqf-C25PcuT8beuFkCft4giF8lmCK0U9J83eIdjph_1/w400-h245/mongols%20russia.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">~ Susanna Viljanen, Quora<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Mary:</span></span></p><p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #20124d; display: inline; float: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Neither
Russia nor China was industrialized, had an industrial working class or
a large middle class. Instead, there were serfs, or peasants. Not
really the capitalist ground for Marx' revolutionary
transformation...but both places where such societal change was
attempted on a grand scale. Both undergoing terrible decimation and
suffering in the process. Russia becoming a Mafia state, China evolving
its own successful take on capitalism...neither truly what Marx
envisioned, but the world, and history, are both much messier and
unpredictable than theory.</span><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;"><span> </span><span><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana: MARXISM SIMPLY NOT VIABLE<br /><br />It’s
dangerous to generalize, but there seems to be a kernel of truth in
Susanna’s emphasis on the disaster of the Mongol conquest and the long
Mongol rule on Russia’s history and national character (if such a thing
indeed exists as more than just a stereotype). I was stunned by the wide
range of cultural changes that happened in Poland after the fall of
Communism. Besides, the Polish form of "communism" wasn’t anywhere as vile as the
Russian kind, especially after the death of Stalin. For instance, in Poland agriculture was in private hands, so at least we didn't go hungry. (And the food was organic! Not that the concept existed back then.)<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Still, blatant corruption and the illegitimacy of an imposed
government do have a demoralizing effect that interferes with the work ethic and even with respectful, polite everyday manners. </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In Poland, </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I was astonished to see how much ordinary social manners improved after the fall of communism — along with the standard of living, of course. But let me emphasize one thing: even when the standard of living was low, in the first post-communist years, just the absence of the daily effluvium of propaganda, i.e. lies, seemed to have had that interesting side effect of greatly improved social discourse. <br /></span></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>RUSSIA LOOTING UKRAINIAN GRAIN<br /></b><br />~ <i><b>It’s no secret that Russian troops have looted homes, businesses and museums, taking truckloads of treasures from Ukraine since Vladimir Putin’s invasion began almost two years ago.</b></i><br /><br />But a more insidious war-time theft has been kept under wraps, until now.<br /><br /><b>Farmers in occupied Zaporizhzhia reported Russian military confiscating their crops just five days after the invasion on February 24, 2022.<br /></b><br />Evidence unveiled today shows that since then <b>the Kremlin has pillaged more than £1 billion worth of grain to fund the occupation – and fuel global food insecurity.<br /></b><br />A new report by Global Rights Compliance focuses on the occupied Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions, where <b>the first mass extraction of grain was documented in mid-March last year.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Maps and locations exclusively shared with Metro.co.uk point to how <b>disused railways in the two regions were refurbished to transport the stolen goods.<br /></b><br />Russian agricultural companies like Kalmichanka, which carried out works on the old infrastructure, have been named in the ‘Agriculture Weaponized’ report.<br /><br /><b>Images shared on Telegram and verified by investigators show officials from the Russia-aligned Luhansk People’s Republic boasting about the thousands of tons that would be loaded onto wagons at the seized Starobilsky facility.<br /></b><br />They would then be transported via the refurbished Luhansk Railway to export ports controlled by Russia.<br /><br />These include locations in Berdiansk (Ukraine), Sevastopol and Kerch (Crimea), and Rostov-on-Don (Russia).<br /><br />Analysis based on satellite images show that two companies in Russian-controlled areas, Starobilsky Elevator and State Grain Operator, extracted Ukrainian grain for international export.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>The speed at which Russia targeted and took over Ukraine’s grain infrastructure in these regions speaks to a highly coordinated level of pre-planning, investigators warned.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><br /></b><br />Russia’s withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative in July 2023 means that vital grain exports from Ukraine – often hailed as ‘the breadbasket of the world’ – are now blocked to some of the most food insecure nations.<br /><br />The deal was negotiated in July 2022 between Turkey, the United Nations and Russia, but not renewed this year.<br /><br />Since then, <b>Russia has been carrying out targeted attacks against Black Sea port infrastructure, destroying some 60,000 tons of grain.<br /></b><br />The report highlights <b>multiple convoys of vehicles seen carrying grain towards the Crimean Peninsula in the weeks following the invasion.<br /></b><br />GPS trackers on farmers’ stolen trucks show them driving through Crimea and into Russia.<br />Trains carrying grain along the railways from June 2022 were decorated in the liveries and the logo of state-owned freight service provider, Russian Railway.<br /><br /><b>Job adverts posted on Telegram by Russian logistics companies, and analyzed by investigators, also show </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>they could not hire enough drivers in time to transport the vast quantities of stolen Ukrainian grain.<br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />Russia’s State Grain Operator, under which multiple private Ukrainian companies were forcibly incorporated after the invasion, claims to have the capacity to export 12,000 tons of grain per day, equivalent to four million tons a year.<br /><br />Partner at Global Rights Compliance, Catriona Murdoch, stressed that the report reveals ‘an insidious backdrop’ through which <b>Russia has sought to dismantle Ukraine’s agricultural outputs, ruin livelihoods, and create a global food crisis.<br /></b><br />She said: ‘Russia does this through systematic extraction of grain; transporting it to occupied areas inside Ukraine or cross-border into Russia; and then relentlessly attacking and destroying grain infrastructure and Ukrainian ports.’<br /><br /><b>In addition to looting grain and transporting it by land, extractions via the Black Sea were also identified.</b><br /><br />In December 2021 and February 2022, three 170-meter grain carrier ships were purchased by Crane Marine Contractors, a subsidiary of a Russian state-owned defense contractor, the report said.<br /><br /><b>Russia’s crimes have restricted supply to multiple food insecure regions like Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Yemen, and Afghanistan.<br /></b><br /><b>In the UK, this has resulted in rising prices across supermarkets, felt by millions in the last year and a half.<br /></b><br />Naomi Prodeau, one of the authors of the report, told Metro.co.uk: ‘The facts speak for themselves – as they progressed in their invasion of Ukrainian territory, <b>Russian and affiliated forces systematically seized grain elevators, equipment, and transportation infrastructure on road, rail, and sea.</b><br /><br />‘This logistical takeover was strategic and <b>is thieving thousands of tons of Ukrainian grain each day, the yearly loss reaching one billion dollars.</b><br /><br />‘Such direct targeting of the most essential necessity holds hostage to Russian volition not only Ukrainian civilians, but people around the world who rely on this grain for tomorrow’s meal.<br />‘This cannot escape the attention of the UK’s Summit on Global Food Security.’</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge8rQ5r-ziSQait3CzaJKzIt0sIhBGg5NMV8iYmOwAfhAqshZOlEvezBAx-ymFAu6sNhBDngz7gP-6W88gi-MRZjOkqK2KjV0Eab3B7ndpe9S82sfT-4q5yAOeTpzgk80ShyZMaX0Se51T45pYRVSq4YQVAA0JQest6KXiNsrZulo-88LE75dflSFy76ND/s8108/grain%20anti-tank%20%20hedgehogs%20%20Ukraine.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5499" data-original-width="8108" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge8rQ5r-ziSQait3CzaJKzIt0sIhBGg5NMV8iYmOwAfhAqshZOlEvezBAx-ymFAu6sNhBDngz7gP-6W88gi-MRZjOkqK2KjV0Eab3B7ndpe9S82sfT-4q5yAOeTpzgk80ShyZMaX0Se51T45pYRVSq4YQVAA0JQest6KXiNsrZulo-88LE75dflSFy76ND/w400-h271/grain%20anti-tank%20%20hedgehogs%20%20Ukraine.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Ukrainian grain and anti-tank "hedgehogs"</i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://metro.co.uk/2023/11/16/vladimir-putin-funding-russias-war-ukraine-finally-revealed-19827646/?ico=trending-module_category_news_item-0">https://metro.co.uk/2023/11/16/vladimir-putin-funding-russias-war-ukraine-finally-revealed-19827646/?ico=trending-module_category_news_item-0<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>UKRAINIAN MECHANICS RESURRECT TOTALED TESLAS<br /></b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmpTg6GQr9sp3Tt-Y6_lAEslCcZibJNdaKd0bqTNMeaZ1QFcwvDFEAZxNBXndm8tOD9PnyqjX3SIt8Si9pDgCWGR382GhyphenhyphenlH2XkcIzCjPDa5bWbGKX-wcRzLsZNLSH1A0I6FHuHG8llX3PLNGG_V_VLqpelm2gZcGmPhY6uzQzdpkSA7edsc36fVXM43rc/s2240/betty%20white%20flattened.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1260" data-original-width="2240" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmpTg6GQr9sp3Tt-Y6_lAEslCcZibJNdaKd0bqTNMeaZ1QFcwvDFEAZxNBXndm8tOD9PnyqjX3SIt8Si9pDgCWGR382GhyphenhyphenlH2XkcIzCjPDa5bWbGKX-wcRzLsZNLSH1A0I6FHuHG8llX3PLNGG_V_VLqpelm2gZcGmPhY6uzQzdpkSA7edsc36fVXM43rc/w400-h225/betty%20white%20flattened.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">~ This summer, a Vancouver car mechanic named Max got a perplexing ping on his phone: Betty White was in Ukraine and needed his help. This was surprising because she had died on a Canadian highway back in January.<br /><br /><b>When Max last saw Betty White, his nickname for his Tesla Model Y Performance, they were both in rough shape after getting sideswiped on the highway. Max’s rotator cuff was torn in several places. The small SUV had bounced off multiple concrete barriers at high speed and was bashed in on all four corners, its wheels ripped to pieces. Coolant appeared to be leaking into the battery chamber. From his own work on EVs in the garage, Max knew that Betty was done for. </b><br /><br />“No auto shop would put a repair person at risk with that kind of damage,” says Max, whose last name isn’t being used out of doxing concerns. A damaged EV battery can become dangerous due to the risk of shocks, fire, and toxic fumes. His insurer agreed, and <b>Betty was written off and sent to a salvage yard.</b><br /><br />Months after he had last seen the car, Max’s Tesla app was now telling him that Betty needed a software update. <b>It showed the car with an extra 200 kilometers on the odometer, fully charged, and parked in Uman, a town in Ukraine’s Cherkasy Oblast, midway between Kyiv and the front line with Russia’s invasion force. Minutes after that first ping, the app showed the car in service mode, suggesting Betty was undergoing repairs. “I thought it must be a mistake,” Max says.<br /></b><br />There was no mistake. WIRED tracked Betty down to a Ukrainian auto auction website, looking good as new, maybe even better, with newly tinted windows and rearview mirrors wrapped in black. <b>Betty 2.0 was being sold by “Mikhailo,” who wrote that the car had suffered “a small blow” in Canada and been repaired with original Tesla parts. The price, $55,000, was roughly the same as a new Model Y Performance costs in the US.</b><br /><br />Betty White’s intercontinental resurrection was impressive but not unusual. <b>For a long time, cars written off in North America have found their way to Eastern European repair shops willing to take on damage that US and Canadian mechanics won’t touch.</b> In 2021, the most recent data available, Ukraine was a top-three destination for used US passenger vehicles sent overseas, close behind Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates. And <b>Ukraine’s wreck importers and repairers are particularly known for their ingenuity. Some have made fixing EVs written off across the Atlantic into a specialty, helping to drive a surge in the number of electric vehicles on the country’s roads, even as the war with Russia rages.</b><br /><br />Though few automakers sell new EVs in Ukraine, <b>the share of newly registered vehicles that are fully electric, 9 percent, is about the same as in the US and nearly double that of neighboring Poland and the Czech Republic. Most of Ukraine’s refurbished EVs come from North America, and many arrive with major damage.</b><br /><br />There’s a ready supply of crashed North American EVs in part because electrics are becoming more common, and also because in recent years, relatively new EVs with low mileage have been written off at a higher rate than their gas-powered equivalents, according to data from insurers. US and Canadian repair shops and insurers see them as more dangerous and difficult to fix. <b>Scrapyards find it hard to make money from their parts and instead ship them abroad.<br /></b><br />Ivan Malakhovsky is not afraid to work on cases like Betty White. His five-year-old repair business in Dnipro, in eastern Ukraine, fixes about 100 Teslas a month, roughly a fifth of them from overseas, and employs a staff that varies between six to 10 people. He’s currently away from home, serving with the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but <b>he manages his workers, and sometimes makes software-mediated repairs, remotely. “We have problems in our lives and can fix them, whether a battery or a full-scale invasion,” says Malakhovsky. “Electric cars, electric car batteries—it’s no problem.”</b><br /><br /><b>An electric vehicle battery is made up of thousands of individual cells, which store and release energy. Sometimes, Malakhovsky says, he and his coworkers will break up large EV batteries damaged beyond repair and repurpose the cells to power electric scooters or even drones for the war effort. He says the vast majority of Teslas on Ukrainian roads were once involved in wrecks in North America.</b><br /><br /><b><i>The war has even boosted Ukraine’s EV resurrection business at times, by driving up gas prices and making electrics more attractive to drivers. Ukraine has a public charging network of some 11,000 chargers, according to Volodymyr Ivanov, the head of communications at Nissan Motor Ukraine—that’s more than the state of New York, and double the number in neighboring Poland. </i></b><br /><br /><b>Since 2018, Ukraine’s government has removed most taxes and customs duties on used EV imports. </b>In the US, electric vehicles tend to be expensive, and the average EV driver is still a high-income male homeowner. North American wrecks, Ukraine’s EV incentives, and its relatively low electricity prices have created a different picture.<br /><br /><b>“There is a joke here that all poor people are driving electric cars, and all the rich people are driving petrol cars,” says Malakhovsky. “Tesla is a common-people, popular car because it’s very cheap in maintenance.”<br /></b><br />That’s a relatively recent development, says Hans Eric Melin, head of Circular Energy Storage, a UK-based consultancy that tracks the international flows of used EVs and batteries. He began watching the Ukraine market in particular a few years ago, after he noticed more ads for Nissan Leafs on auction sites listed in Ukrainian than in English. At the time, the Leaf, a pioneer among EVs, was essentially the only one that had been around long enough to develop a healthy used market. Over time, Ukraine’s electric fleet grew to encompass the full range of EVs sold around the world, including Teslas, as more cars hit the roads and aged or got into crashes.<br /><br /><b>Melin had suspected Ukraine’s EV boom would end with the war. “I was completely wrong,” he says. By this summer, Ukraine’s EV fleet had doubled since July 2021</b>, to 64,312, according to data compiled by the Automotive Market Research Institute, a Ukrainian research and advocacy group.<br /><br />*<br />Roman Tyschenko, a 25-year-old IT worker who lives in Kyiv, decided last September that he was sick of his Jeep’s $400-a-month gas bill. Friends had purchased used, damaged electric cars on an online auction website called Copart, a <b>US-based public auto reseller with 200 locations around the world. He logged on and spent $24,000 on a gray 2021 Tesla Model Y that had taken a solid blow to its passenger side in Dallas, Texas</b>. Its bumper was almost fully detached; its hood was tented; some of its airbags had deployed.<br /><br />That Texan Model Y was likely declared totaled by an insurer. From there, it probably moved to a salvage auction in the US, where licensed exporters, salvage shops, and repairers tried to figure out how much value they could squeeze out of the wreck. The winner, or perhaps the insurer itself, listed the car on Copart, which made it available to anyone around the world who wanted a smashed-up Tesla and was willing to pay for shipping.<br /><br />If Tyschenko hadn’t brought the Texan Tesla to Ukraine himself, it had a good chance of being shipped there anyway by someone who professionally flips cars to countries like Ukraine. These exporters look for wrecks potentially worth more than their scrap value, but little enough that an expensive US repair and resale wouldn’t make sense. Some ship vehicles directly to Ukrainian repairers and pay for the fix, while <b>others import damaged cars and relist them for sale to Ukrainian buyers who can figure it out for themselves</b>.<br /><br />It takes a damaged North American car between one and five months to reach a nearby port. Before the war, wrecked cars headed to Ukraine’s Port of Odessa on the Black Sea. Since Russia invaded in 2022, <b>they come through Klaipėda in Lithuania on the Baltic Sea, or Koper in Slovenia on the Adriatic, and are brought to Ukraine by truck</b>. A shop like Malakhovsky’s can fix a Tesla in somewhere between one week and one year, depending on the damage.<br /><br />Tyschenko arranged for his Model Y to be shipped to a local repair shop in Kyiv, where it arrived in February 2023, five months after he hit the Buy button online. The technician sent him videos of the EV’s ongoing revamp every few weeks, and Tyschenko stopped by to visit a handful of times. By May, he had paid the technician some $25,000 for his work and was driving the Model Y around Kyiv.<br /><br /><b>Two months later, the battery died and Tyschenko spent another $4,000 to replace it—a demonstration of the risks of electric vehicle rescues.</b> Still, he’s happy with how things worked out, and <b>now pays just $10 to $100 a month to refuel his car, depending on whether he charges at home or at public stations.<br /></b><br />Finding parts to repair Teslas and other EVs can be a challenge. On Facebook and Telegram, groups like “Renault Zoe Club Ukraine” host thousands of EV owners who barter with each other for spare parts. Oleksandr Perepelitsa, a 25-year-old electric vehicle repairer in Kyiv, says that when he first began his work three years ago, <b>he and his business partners would buy two wrecked Teslas from overseas to create a single working vehicle to sell to local Ukranians. “Even that was profitable for us,” he says. Now, business connections can send Tesla parts from the US or Europe, or repairers buy cheaper Chinese reproductions.<br /></b><br />*<br /><i><b>The success of Ukraine’s EV resurrection industry is the flip side of the failure of insurers and manufacturers in North America to figure out what to do when a shiny new EV becomes roadkill</b></i>.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Industry-wide data is hard to come by, but numerous sources suggest that EVs are more likely to be written off than gas-powered cars, and can be declared unfixable after even minor crashes. A Reuters analysis this year found that a “large portion” of damaged EVs sold for scrap were low-mileage, nearly-new vehicles. While one in 10 new cars sold in the US and Canada this year are forecasted to be electric, the infrastructure and expertise needed to assess and fix damaged EVs can be patchy.</b> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The North American scrap industry is also somewhat leery of EVs, says Megan Slattery, a researcher at UC Davis who studies what happens to damaged EV batteries. Scrap businesses generally make money by taking cars apart to extract the most valuable widgets to resell. But dismantling a battery takes dedicated workers, equipment, and—most important of all—space, due to the fire risks of storing lithium-ion cells. Many mom-and-pop dismantlers don’t have any of that.<br /></b><br />Plus, EVs tend to have simpler drivetrains, with more plastic and large, prefabricated body components that can’t be easily pulled apart. In some electric vehicles, the battery is built directly into the car’s structure, making it especially difficult to dismantle or repair. All of that means that exporters looking to sell to eager buyers abroad have less competition when bidding on totaled cars.<br /><br />In the US, there’s increasing pressure to keep broken EVs from heading overseas. Regulators are concerned about safety, hoping to better track broken batteries through shipping channels as fears rise of fires sparked by used EVs, including on cargo ships. Another is to avoid dumping e-waste on countries without the means to recycle or repurpose, and instead keep the valuable minerals inside batteries local. <b>Battery recycling startups have received vast amounts of private and public investment—both in Western Europe and the US, with funds from the Inflation Reduction Act—with a promise to help shore up raw material supply chains. But so far, they have received only a trickle of used batteries.</b><br /><br />Policies that wind up choking off the export of EV wrecks would in some ways be a shame, Slattery says. <b>More stringent European Union export rules for used cars and EV batteries in particular are one reason why the supply of Teslas to Eastern Europe is so dependent on North American wrecks. Without them, the electric revolution would be much less advanced in places like Ukraine,</b> where US and Canadian write-offs have helped support the emergence of charger networks, trained repair specialists, and a wide familiarity and acceptance that electric propulsion is not just green but also practical.<br /><br />For Max in Vancouver, Betty White’s reappearance overseas did cause some headaches. The car was still logged into his Google, Netflix, and Spotify accounts, potentially allowing the new owners to access his personal data. When he asked Tesla support, he was advised to change his passwords, Max says. (Tesla did not respond to WIRED’s questions.)<br /><br /><b>But looking back on the crash, and now driving a new Model Y—named Black Betty—Max says his old car’s resurrection is the best possible outcome. “I’m happy to see that Betty White has lived to see another day,” he says</b>. ~ <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEc2xEk4tIl2CulJWyGHzjZEvEDvAqstxooj7piGVIq2_CKCfEbJiOFT5fb2U_98puXGtAKUGCnxBTruX9-sFZu7tCNrW_WcsL6jODC_buSVc4nC2SbqbngNR5qmtxhi5-TSHXU1xbRg2slRRxQoQuWxhDpf9UrX4EB8pZ1yGkCcpiS-L3ELfXDDY4upR_/s1600/betty%20white%20repaired.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEc2xEk4tIl2CulJWyGHzjZEvEDvAqstxooj7piGVIq2_CKCfEbJiOFT5fb2U_98puXGtAKUGCnxBTruX9-sFZu7tCNrW_WcsL6jODC_buSVc4nC2SbqbngNR5qmtxhi5-TSHXU1xbRg2slRRxQoQuWxhDpf9UrX4EB8pZ1yGkCcpiS-L3ELfXDDY4upR_/w400-h300/betty%20white%20repaired.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.wired.com/story/why-teslas-totaled-in-the-us-are-mysteriously-reincarnated-in-ukraine/">https://www.wired.com/story/why-teslas-totaled-in-the-us-are-mysteriously-reincarnated-in-ukraine/<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>JEWS AND ARABS NOT AS CLOSE GENETICALLY AS PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT<br /></b><br />~ </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>The Arabians have deeper roots in Africa, while the Levantines’ roots lie in Europe and Anatolia in today’s Turkey. They differ in their amount of Neanderthal DNA as well.<br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><b>Anatomically modern humans have been leaving Africa for almost a quarter million years, but they all went extinct until an exit around 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. A new study of genomes in the Middle East shores up this hypothesis, finding no trace of the early humans in any of the genomes tested.</b><br /><br /><b>One of the routes out of Africa for hominins going back 2 million years, and later, for humans too, was the Levant, Iraq and Arabia. Indeed, researchers have found evidence of human and hominin exits in various places, including Israel and Saudi Arabia: stuff like the odd bone or a batch of stone tools.<br /></b><br />The prevailing belief is that the groups taking part in the earliest migrations went extinct (though not before encountering other hominins in Eurasia). Then about 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, anatomical humans left Africa – and survived. They met and mixed with Neanderthals and heavens knows who else, and begat modern humanity.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The belief that the early exiters did not survive is now bolstered by an international team led by Mohamed Almarri of the Wellcome Genome Campus in Britain. In their study, published in Cell, they looked at the genomic history of the Middle East and concluded that present-day populations in Arabia, the Levant including Israel, and Iraq have no signals from those early modern humans.</b><br /><br />“We used a new whole genome sequencing technology to study human populations from the Levant [Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and the West Bank], Iraq and Arabia, and we reconstruct the population history of the region from over 125,000 years ago up to the last millennium,” Almarri says. “We show how changes in lifestyle and climate have affected the demography of human populations in the region.”<br /><br /><b>How does one test latter-day DNA for signals older than 60,000 years? By the density of mutations, he explains:</b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b> “The more mutations there are, the older the segments will be.”</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><br /></b><br />That’s a generalization; some genetic sequences are more evolutionarily conserved than others. If you check the sequence for the protein ubiquitin, it will be the same from a human to a tree frog and obviously, for earlier humans. But <b>if a given segment has a ton of mutations (that didn’t kill the bearer), we may assume it’s old.<br /></b><br />Also, obviously modern humans didn’t descend from newly-created beings who sprang up some 60,000 years ago; we will have some very, very ancient DNA. But, Almarri explains, when a population expands, the migrants are a tiny percent of the original population. The same would have applied to the African exit.<br /><br />And indeed, <b>genomic studies of today’s non-African populations show a genetic bottleneck around that time, Almarri says. Non-Africans all descend from exiters around 50,000 to 60,000 years ago and are much less genetically diverse than sub-Saharan Africans, who suffered no bottleneck.</b><br /><br /><b>The Neanderthals and the Levantines<br /></b><br />Moving on, </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Levantines and Iraqis share the same Neanderthal signals as Eurasians, the team found. Arabians on the other hand have less Neanderthal DNA.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><br /></b><br />The reason apparently lies in origins. <b>Levantines have more ancestry (than Arabians) from Europe and Anatolia. The Arabians have more ancestry (than Levantines) from Africans, who didn’t mix with Neanderthals, and from Natufians, who were the prehistoric inhabitants of the Levant, including Israel.</b><br /><br /><b>The Natufians were prehistoric peoples living about 11,000 to 16,000 years ago in what is today Israel, Jordan and Lebanon. </b>It’s possible that they also reached Arabia, but their remains haven’t been found.<br /><br />Also, present-day Africans are believed to have a contribution from Neanderthals after all, a very small one, conferred by early humans who trekked in reverse – from Europe back to Africa – after mixing with Neanderthals.<br /><br />Anyway, <b>the Arabians of today apparently didn’t arise from early Levantine farmers but from Natufian hunter-gatherers who preceded these farmers and Africans, the study shows. Nor do the findings support the theory that Levantine farmers later replaced the indigenous Arabian population.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLVoO7I5aQ5-5Vhgdu-vjauQ1CWBgaYx2czxGi87JCJmROsofMm5GlQP6faPkxVFlxyTwG542oxL8oOujPSxJnFZj-eDuxVpkK-wrIUsU0kgNhjbP5Cl3YMu7BpjXyUaf127OTP7PqtfVxii0pgOzztIXV68XAtLkYoEJHvsPfboxVp5CRe-P765v1R7Jo/s1200/Natufian%20burial%20Rakefet%20Cave%20Israel.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="923" data-original-width="1200" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLVoO7I5aQ5-5Vhgdu-vjauQ1CWBgaYx2czxGi87JCJmROsofMm5GlQP6faPkxVFlxyTwG542oxL8oOujPSxJnFZj-eDuxVpkK-wrIUsU0kgNhjbP5Cl3YMu7BpjXyUaf127OTP7PqtfVxii0pgOzztIXV68XAtLkYoEJHvsPfboxVp5CRe-P765v1R7Jo/w400-h308/Natufian%20burial%20Rakefet%20Cave%20Israel.webp" width="400" /></a></b></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>A Natufian burial, Rakefet Cave, Israel.<br /></i><br />It bears stressing that human fossil remains are incredibly rare; from the deep prehistoric past Saudi Arabia has so far produced one finger bone from 85,000 years ago, but it has also produced tools that may have been special to humans (as opposed to other hominins) from 125,000 years ago. <b>In Israel there are a lot more very ancient human remains, starting with the 200,000-year-old jawbone found in Misliya, and there are more when you get to the Natufian period but they’re still very rare.</b><br /><br /><b>Desertification and population collapse</b><br /><br />Another difference the genomic analysis indicated relates to the Neolithic Revolution – the “invention” of agriculture.<br /><br />But here it bears stressing that <b>the Middle East, Arabia and North Africa weren’t always baking-hot deserts. Sometimes, depending on planetary orbital cycles, they “greened.” Hippos and crocodiles cavorted in lakes and rivers, and hominins – and later, modern humans – could comfortably roam.</b><br /><br /><b>When the Neolithic Revolution – the gradual transition from a life of hunting and gathering to agriculture and animal husbandry – began over 10,000 years ago, Arabia and the Sahara were in such a lush period. </b>The Arabian Desert as we know it today, the biggest sand desert in the world, didn’t exist. It began to form sometime between 6,000 to 8,000 years ago. (That might help explain the paucity of prehistoric human remains.)<br /><br /><b>The Neolithic Revolution drove a massive population increase in the Levant and Iraq, but not in Arabia.</b> The team even postulates that the small population groups of ancient Arabians may have perpetuated or descended from the local epipaleolithic hunting-gathering groups.<br /><br /><b>But as the Arabian Desert was forming, about 6,000 years ago its population imploded. The same would happen in the Levant about 4,200 years ago, commensurate with an intense aridification event.<br /></b><br />“We find that prehistorical aridification and desertification events have resulted in population crashes a few thousands of years ago,” the team says – a warning for today, with all due respect to desalination technology.<br /><br /><b>Say it in Semitic</b><br /><br />Current-day peoples the team studied in the Levant, Arabia and Iraq turned out to form distinct core clusters: <b>Populations from the Levant and Iraq (Lebanese, Syrians, Jordanians, Israeli Druze, and Iraqi Arabs) clustered together.</b> The Iraqi Kurds clustered with central Iranians.<br /><br /><b>The Arabians (Emiratis, Saudis, Yemenis and Omanis) clustered with Bedouin – who are from Israel, too.</b> “These samples were collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project and were sequenced by us,” Almarri notes.<br /><br /><b>Fascinatingly, both the Iraqi Kurds and Iranians, who clustered together, speak Indo-Iranian languages – Kurdish isn’t Arabic or Semitic, it’s Indo-Iranian.</b> All the other people sampled in the study speak Arabic, a Semitic language.<br /><br />“The clustering patterns we find reflect the historical ancestries present in modern-day populations. In the Levant [and Iraqi Arabs], all the populations we tested have higher Anatolian-like ancestry, which is much rarer in Arabia. <b>Arabian populations in contrast have higher Natufian-like ancestry,” Almarri says.<br /></b><br />Apropos language, the team also suggests that a Bronze Age population in the Levant (meaning from about 5,000 years ago) plausibly was responsible for spreading Semitic languages to Arabia and East Africa.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1TQrfhbwqEUNrKQ_WjDAPoJXxzN_abvYLSsY8XSoPZBzezLxA9v7fPKDAHzD2NXxq56sChEUvzAv2BdcdIl6XXW2qq3cebxQ1cRsDow5287I-UH0JowVvIpyE4Cfiu1VdD1Mzo7Jz19apxcNNxF6sRjO9bZmw5AqUNbvSKmffLCG1nwmIiGuyJeKTwAOB/s1920/EARLY%20writing.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1116" data-original-width="1920" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1TQrfhbwqEUNrKQ_WjDAPoJXxzN_abvYLSsY8XSoPZBzezLxA9v7fPKDAHzD2NXxq56sChEUvzAv2BdcdIl6XXW2qq3cebxQ1cRsDow5287I-UH0JowVvIpyE4Cfiu1VdD1Mzo7Jz19apxcNNxF6sRjO9bZmw5AqUNbvSKmffLCG1nwmIiGuyJeKTwAOB/w400-h233/EARLY%20writing.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>A glass of milk and thou<br /></b><br />Marc Haber of the University of Birmingham notes that the study detected positive selection for lactose digestion – the ability to drink and eat dairy products without experiencing socially repulsive and painful consequences.<br /><br />“<b>In the last 8,000 years this variant increased to a frequency of 50 percent in Arabians, coinciding with the transition from a hunter-gatherer to herder-gatherer lifestyle. This variant is much rarer in the Levant, and almost absent outside the region</b>,” Haber says.<br /><br />It bears adding that apparently<i><b> the domestication of the sheep, goats and cows wasn’t driven by a desire to exploit their milk but to eat the whole animal, instead of hunting for toothsome herbivores.</b></i><br /><br /><b>What have we learned? That we thrived after the advent of agriculture but were brought low by climate change. That we did not thrive in the Arabian Desert but did when it was wetter and greener. Did we do that?</b><br /><br /><b>We did not – the greening and aridification of North Africa and Arabia were due to planetary cycles, not human impact.</b> Today Arabia contains the largest sand desert in the world (though not the largest desert), but by the next time the cycle swings and the area should, theoretically, turn green again, it may not happen, and that’s on us.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2021-08-04/ty-article/genomic-study-levantines-and-arabians-have-different-origins/0000017f-e96d-df2c-a1ff-ff7d275c0000">https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2021-08-04/ty-article/genomic-study-levantines-and-arabians-have-different-origins/0000017f-e96d-df2c-a1ff-ff7d275c0000</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b><i>There is a large graveyard filled with my enemies. I do not wish to add to it, but will given no choice. Those who pick fights with me do so at their own peril, but maybe this is their lucky day.</i><br /></b></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpK2nWBAyZyLqPncyY5Ulwv6Uvfvc5GNTLPVarRD5Zejsg4_WSBf3tSf5GaRePCeHli2KDKmH1hLSR3mCdc3EIu0xS2w7iaYJl83qhyphenhyphen3HJjrbteltJHsBZaHuOQBXEfz5JkZDCABkl4-2SpHNjJNAEFWV-1pM1TbwWkVT7dC3TEXDS5N8T6ekspUlHTELr/s1185/2%20cats%20Misha%20after%20Elon%20Musk.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1185" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpK2nWBAyZyLqPncyY5Ulwv6Uvfvc5GNTLPVarRD5Zejsg4_WSBf3tSf5GaRePCeHli2KDKmH1hLSR3mCdc3EIu0xS2w7iaYJl83qhyphenhyphen3HJjrbteltJHsBZaHuOQBXEfz5JkZDCABkl4-2SpHNjJNAEFWV-1pM1TbwWkVT7dC3TEXDS5N8T6ekspUlHTELr/s320/2%20cats%20Misha%20after%20Elon%20Musk.jpg" width="292" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">~ <i>Misha Iossel’s take on Elon Musk’s statement, Facebook <br /></i><br />*<br /><b>STILL TRYING TO CLEAN UP AFTER WW1</b><br /><br />~ They are still slowly trying to clean it up. The areas that were too dangerous are called Red Zones. Restrictions within the Zone Rouge still exist today. <b>After the war, the French government declared a 460-square-mile area unfit for human habitation or development. It stretches roughly from Nancy through Verdun and onto Lille, with various non-contiguous zones so riddled with unexploded shells (many of them gas shells), grenades, ammunition, and human and animal remains that it was simply too dangerous to enter</b>.</span><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsysz2e6T_Wk04Tlzhih2Gsh9ZT_-mVa2i4bE1saFIi0JLvrYx6DYp3EF1nwFJ14OxNg92eoJYUghzpSTI2WlH2whuA3HVM61u7MPCGSHuVUF5i81TIKNQMEMo1at2AAvPOQoxFE0nZLgSWJ6C8rwdzxpEtJBDLA34FUOhXiX_b9yCF77SBA9OapjaOSIS/s602/Verdun%20no-go%20zone.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="602" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsysz2e6T_Wk04Tlzhih2Gsh9ZT_-mVa2i4bE1saFIi0JLvrYx6DYp3EF1nwFJ14OxNg92eoJYUghzpSTI2WlH2whuA3HVM61u7MPCGSHuVUF5i81TIKNQMEMo1at2AAvPOQoxFE0nZLgSWJ6C8rwdzxpEtJBDLA34FUOhXiX_b9yCF77SBA9OapjaOSIS/w400-h266/Verdun%20no-go%20zone.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />In the 1920s and ’30s, the government oversaw the planting of 36 million trees, mostly pine and spruce, in part of the Zone Rouge. This the Verdun forest.<br /><br />The Department du Deminage, was created after the war. Over the decades, it has helped to reduce the extent of the Zone Rouge, destroying hundreds of thousands of munitions and chemical shells, and has returned some land to civilian and agricultural use. They calculate that they have 300 years work ahead of them before they have cleared the whole battlefield. French farmers collect a huge amount of unexploded ordnance, barbed wire, shrapnel, and bullets every year. It is called the “Iron Harvest.”<br /><br />Some areas remain entirely off-limits, the soil so full of arsenic that 99 percent of all plants die. There is still the ever-present threat of unexploded shells. There are many ghost villages that were left abandoned after the war, deemed beyond repair. The bodies of roughly 80,000 soldiers whose bodies were never recovered are still there. The bomb depressions are still there. ~<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqVVBf30t8gA_Io8du4Ecfg-jqRYDHANJEYLT5Niy7rl59_wRnSZWZ18PjglMZWRxTCx4ElkX39lYeFOxyjI3LGlvJnQqouKJg7W4S_0MqA_0G0_yVhhLgClfVea2jyYsWxTd0ySU7bLWTypfu3KcJ-lApgAYilUq5bOnbbnvpefIT2BCE9fcMw0ALIfFR/s1072/verdun%20battlefield%20scars%20of%20explosions%20100%20years%20later.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="715" data-original-width="1072" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqVVBf30t8gA_Io8du4Ecfg-jqRYDHANJEYLT5Niy7rl59_wRnSZWZ18PjglMZWRxTCx4ElkX39lYeFOxyjI3LGlvJnQqouKJg7W4S_0MqA_0G0_yVhhLgClfVea2jyYsWxTd0ySU7bLWTypfu3KcJ-lApgAYilUq5bOnbbnvpefIT2BCE9fcMw0ALIfFR/w400-h266/verdun%20battlefield%20scars%20of%20explosions%20100%20years%20later.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Verdun today: battlefield scars. Some portions of Ukraine may end up looking like that for the next hundred years.<br /></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>THE CALORIE COUNTER: EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGIST HERMAN PONTZER BUSTS MYTHS ABOUT HOW HUMANS BURN CALORIES—AND WHY<br /></b><br />~ On a warm Wednesday morning in October, Herman Pontzer puts on a wrinkled lab coat, adjusts his mask, and heads into his lab at Duke University, hoping to stress out a student. An undergraduate named Christina is resting on a lab table with her head in a clear plastic hood. Pontzer greets her formally and launches into a time-honored method to boost her blood pressure: He gives her an oral math test.<br /><br />“Start off with number 1022 and subtract 13 until you get to zero,” he says, speaking at full volume to be heard over a clanking air conditioner. “If you make a mistake, we’ll start over again. You ready to go?”<br /><br />“1009, 997,” Christina says.<br /><br />“Start over,” Pontzer barks.<br /><br />Christina, who has signed up for a “stress test,” laughs nervously. She tries again and gets to 889, only to have Pontzer stop her. This happens again and again. Then Pontzer asks her to multiply 505 by 117, out loud. By this point, she is clenching her sock-clad toes.<br /><br />Postdoc Zane Swanson and undergrad Gabrielle Butler monitor her heart rate and how much carbon dioxide (CO2) she exhales into the hood. Then Pontzer asks a set of questions designed to boost a student’s stress levels: What’s her dream job, and what exactly is she going to do after graduation?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhntwIOugMBpLbKJANDVeelCMoYELfVcR_G5QYMU4SGsCwLYsXFB_ipoa8XBbTWwePSsUr2CfjO2exPg5iGKQwnw39hbPWNaP8ySTfh1l4K_52CyohEoQUqU3L8khPpNNr0PRKOh-bs-E6aX_KT3bd4tqzmXgCuoT3UD-NcqLmeD574gjP0BgsYpVBorl5O/s480/WOMAN%20IN%20A%20HOOD%20CALORIES.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="480" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhntwIOugMBpLbKJANDVeelCMoYELfVcR_G5QYMU4SGsCwLYsXFB_ipoa8XBbTWwePSsUr2CfjO2exPg5iGKQwnw39hbPWNaP8ySTfh1l4K_52CyohEoQUqU3L8khPpNNr0PRKOh-bs-E6aX_KT3bd4tqzmXgCuoT3UD-NcqLmeD574gjP0BgsYpVBorl5O/w400-h225/WOMAN%20IN%20A%20HOOD%20CALORIES.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">It’s another day in the Pontzer lab, where he and his students measure how much energy people expend when they are stressed, exercising, or mounting an immune response to a vaccine, among other states. <b>By measuring the CO2 in Christina’s breath, he is finding out how much energy she has burned while coping with math anxiety.<br /></b><br />At 44, Pontzer’s life’s work as a biological anthropologist is counting calories. It’s not to lose weight—at 1.85 meters tall and about 75 kilograms (6 feet 1 inch and 165 pounds), with a passion for running and rock climbing, he is “a skinny to normal size dude,” in the words of an online reviewer of <b>Pontzer’s 2021 book Burn: New Research Blows the Lid Off How We Really Burn Calories, Lose Weight, and Stay Healthy.<br /></b><br />Pontzer is happy to expound on weight loss on The Dr. Oz Show and NPR, but <i><b>his real mission is to understand how, alone among great apes, humans manage to have it all, energetically speaking: We have big brains, lengthy childhoods, many children, and long lives. The energy budget needed to support those traits involves trade-offs he’s trying to unravel, between energy spent on exercise, reproduction, stress, illness, and vital functions.</b></i><br /><br />By borrowing a method developed by physiologists studying obesity, Pontzer and colleagues systematically measure the total energy used per day by animals and people in various walks of life. The answers coming from their data are often surprising: </span><span style="color: #800180;"><i><b>Exercise doesn’t help you burn more energy on average; active hunter-gatherers in Africa don’t expend more energy daily than sedentary office workers in Illinois; pregnant women don’t burn more calories per day than other adults, after adjusting for body mass.</b></i></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br /><b>Metabolism over the life span</b><br /><br /><b>Adjusted for body mass, toddlers burn the most calories per day.</b> <b>Total energy expenditure declines after age 60, although individuals show some variation.</b><br /><br />Pontzer’s skill as a popularizer can rankle some of his colleagues. His message that exercise won’t help you lose weight “lacks nuance,” says exercise physiologist John Thyfault of the University of Kansas Medical Center, who says it may nudge dieters into less healthy habits.<br />But others say besides busting myths about human energy expenditure, Pontzer’s work offers a new lens for understanding human physiology and evolution. As he wrote in Burn, “In the economics of life, calories are the currency.”<br /><br /><b>“His work is revolutionary,” says paleoanthropologist Leslie Aiello</b>, past president of the Wenner-Gren Foundation, which has funded Pontzer’s work. “We now have data … that has given us a completely new framework for how we think about how humans adapted to energetic limits.”<br /><br />THE SON OF TWO high school English teachers, Pontzer grew up on 40 hectares of woods in the Appalachian hills near the small town of Kersey, Pennsylvania. His dad, who helped build their house, taught Pontzer to be curious about how things worked and to fix them. “No one ever called plumbers or electricians,” Pontzer recalls.<br /><br />Those lessons in self-sufficiency and an outgoing nature helped him cope when his dad died when Pontzer was just 15. An older cousin also took him climbing, which taught him to be both brave and organized—skills he says later helped him take intellectual risks and challenge established ideas. “When you have a bad experience and life plucks you off your track, it’s scary,” Pontzer says. “You have to move forward, though, and that teaches you not to be scared of new things.”<br /><br />Pontzer applied to a single college—Pennsylvania State University, whose football games were a highlight of his childhood. “I assumed I’d be my dad—go to Penn State, get my teaching degree, and stay in Kersey,” he says. But once at Penn State, he worked with the late, renowned paleoanthropologist Alan Walker and found himself considering grad school in biological anthropology.<br /><br />After learning his promising student was choosing schools based on their proximity to mountains, Walker was blunt: He told Pontzer he was an idiot if he didn’t apply to Harvard University—and, once Pontzer was accepted, he’d be an idiot if he didn’t go.<br /><br />Pontzer went. In the early 2000s, scientists knew little about humans’ total energy expenditure (TEE)—the number of kilocalories (the “calories” on food labels) a person’s 37 trillion cells burn in 24 hours. <b>Researchers had measured the rate at which our bodies burn energy while at rest—the basal metabolic rate (BMR), which includes energy used for breathing, circulation, and other vital functions. They knew BMR was roughly the same among larger mammals, when adjusted for body size. So although BMR only captures 50% to 70% of total energy use, researchers figured that, kilo for kilo, humans burn energy at roughly the same rate as other apes.</b><br /><br /><b>But humans have an added energy expense: our big brains, which account for 20% of our energy use per day.</b> Aiello had proposed that our ancestors had compensated for those expensive brains by evolving smaller guts and other organs. Others thought humans had saved energy by evolving to walk and run more efficiently.<br /><br />At Harvard, Pontzer wanted to test those ideas. But he realized there weren’t enough data to do so: No one knew how much total energy primates use when they move, much less how differences in anatomy or trade-offs in organ size impact energy use. “We talked about locomotor adaptations in hominins, we talked about efficiency, power, and strength, but it [was] all sort of made up,” Pontzer says.<br /><br />He realized he had to go back to basics, measuring the calories expended by humans and animals walking and running on treadmills. Mammals use oxygen to convert sugars from food into energy, with CO2 as a byproduct. <b>The more CO2 a mammal exhales, the more oxygen—and calories—it has burned.</b><br /><br />For his Ph.D. thesis, Pontzer measured how much CO2 dogs and goats exhaled while running and walking. He found, for example, that <b>dogs with long legs used less energy to run than corgis,</b> as he reported in 2007, soon after he got his first job at Washington University in St. Louis. Over time, he says, “What started as an innocent project measuring the cost of walking and running in humans, dogs, and goats grew into a sort of professional obsession with measuring energy expenditures.”</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Pontzer still measures exhaled CO2 to get at calories burned in a particular activity, as he did with Christina’s stress test. But <b>he found that physiologists had developed a better way to measure TEE over a day: the doubly labeled water method, which measures TEE without asking a subject to breathe into a hood all day.</b><br /><br />Physiologist Dale Schoeller, now at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, had adapted the method, first used in mice, to humans. People drink a harmless cocktail of labeled water, in which distinct isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen replace the common forms. Then researchers sample their urine several times over one week. The labeled hydrogen passes through the body into urine, sweat, and other fluids, but as a person burns calories, some of the labeled oxygen is exhaled as CO2. <b>The ratio of labeled oxygen to labeled hydrogen in the urine thus serves as a measure of how much oxygen a person’s cells used on average in a day and therefore how many calories were burned.</b> The method is the gold standard for total energy use, but it costs $600 per test and was out of reach for most evolutionary biologists.<br /><br /><i><b>Pontzer’s first of many breakthroughs with the method came in 2008 when, with $20,000 from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, he got the chance to collect urine samples at what was then the Great Ape Trust, a sanctuary and research center in Iowa. There, primatologist Rob Shumaker poured isotope-laced sugar-free iced tea into the mouths of four orangutans. Pontzer worried about collecting the urine from a full-grown ape, but Shumaker reassured him the orangs were trained to pee in a cup.</b><br /></i><br /><b>Later that fall, when Pontzer got the urine results, he didn’t believe them: The orangutans burned one-third of the energy expected for a mammal their size. A retest returned the same results: Azy, a 113-kilogram adult male, for example, burned 2050 kilocalories per day, much less than the 3300 a 113-kilogram man typically burns.</b> “I was in total disbelief,” Pontzer says. Orangs were perhaps the “sloths in the ape family tree,” he thought, because they suffered prolonged food scarcity in their past and had evolved to survive on fewer calories per day.<br /><br />Subsequent doubly labeled water studies of apes in captivity and in sanctuaries shattered the consensus view that mammals all have similar metabolic rates when adjusted for body mass. </span><span style="color: #800180;"><i><b>Among great apes, humans are the outlier. When adjusted for body mass, we burn 20% more energy per day than chimps and bonobos, 40% more than gorillas, and 60% more than orangutans,</b></i></span><span style="color: #351c75;"> Pontzer and colleagues reported in Nature in 2016.<br /><br /><b>The high-energy ape<br /></b><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Humans burn far more energy daily—and also store much more energy as fat—than other apes.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"> Our total energy expenditure (TEE) includes our basal metabolic rate (BMR) plus other activities including exercise.<br /><br /><b>Pontzer says the difference in body fat is just as shocking: </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Male humans pack on twice as much fat as other male apes and women three times as much as other female apes.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b> He thinks our hefty body fat evolved in tandem with our faster metabolic rate: Fat burns less energy than lean tissue and provides a fuel reserve.</b> “Our metabolic engines were not crafted by millions of years of evolution to guarantee a beach-ready bikini body,” Pontzer writes in Burn.<br /><br />Our ability to convert food and fat stores into energy faster than other apes has important payoffs, however: It gives us more energy every day so we can fuel our big brains as well as feed and protect offspring with long, energetically costly childhoods.<br /><br /><b>Pontzer thinks characteristically human traits in behavior and anatomy help us maintain amped-up metabolisms. For example, humans routinely share more food with other adults than do other apes. Sharing food is more efficient for the group, and would have given early humans an energy safety net. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">And our big brains created a positive feedback loop. They demanded more energy but also gave early humans the smarts to invent better tools, control fire, cook, and adapt in other ways to get or save more energy.<br /><br />PONTZER GOT A LESSON in the value of food sharing in 2010, when he traveled to Tanzania to study the energy budgets of the Hadza hunter-gatherers. One of the first things he noticed was how often the Hadza used the word “za,” which means “to give.” It’s the magic word all Hadza learn as children to get someone to share berries, honey, or other foods with them. <br /><br />Such sharing helps all the Hadza be active: as they hunt and forage, <b>Hadza women walk about 8 kilometers [5 miles] daily; men, 14 kilometers [8.7 miles]—more than a typical American walks in one week.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">To learn about their energy expenditure, Pontzer asked the Hadza whether they’d drink his tasteless water cocktail and give urine samples. They agreed. He almost couldn’t get funding for the study, because other researchers assumed the answer was obvious. “Everyone knew the Hadza had exceptionally high energy expenditures because they were so physically active,” he recalls. “Except they didn’t.”<br /><br /><b>Individual Hadza had days of more and less activity, and some burned 10% more or less calories than average. But when adjusted for nonfat body mass, </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Hadza men and women burned the same amount of energy per day on average as men and women in the United States, as well as those in Europe, Russia, and Japan</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>, he reported in PLOS ONE in 2012. “It’s surprising when you consider the differences in physical activity,” Schoeller says.<br /></b><br />One person who wasn’t surprised was epidemiologist Amy Luke at Loyola University Chicago. She’d already gotten a similar result with doubly labeled water studies, showing <b>female farmers in western Africa used the same amount of energy daily when adjusted for fat-free body mass as women in Chicago — about 2400 kilocalories for a 75-kilogram [165 lbs] woman.</b> Luke says her work was not well known—until Pontzer’s paper made a splash. The two have collaborated ever since.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">* </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCeDqJqVRMFrJJz2WgYAeqwCQV71wovfmt1ibAHlkemYUoGfibo0WAQaKaRqagtXSPcYnEOFwL3ogOQJlZDvZGEp3LA2s6tmnM2gPxGCx12_oqd7C3vr7gM05FsGzKz3xplcg9Hq1Re2CE4kWYyysbD69RNPsnC7QrPYjZ3fdxEqho6M9cBD_oRp3nC5N4/s445/burn%20Herman%20Pontzer.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="295" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCeDqJqVRMFrJJz2WgYAeqwCQV71wovfmt1ibAHlkemYUoGfibo0WAQaKaRqagtXSPcYnEOFwL3ogOQJlZDvZGEp3LA2s6tmnM2gPxGCx12_oqd7C3vr7gM05FsGzKz3xplcg9Hq1Re2CE4kWYyysbD69RNPsnC7QrPYjZ3fdxEqho6M9cBD_oRp3nC5N4/w265-h400/burn%20Herman%20Pontzer.jpg" width="265" /></a></div><i style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span>Pontzer's groundbreaking studies with hunter-gatherer tribes show
how exercise doesn't increase our metabolism. Instead, we burn calories
within a very narrow range: nearly 3,000 calories per day, <b>no matter our
activity level.</b></span></i><p></p><p><span>* </span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Studies of other hunter-gatherer and forager groups have confirmed the Hadza are not an anomaly. Pontzer thinks hunter-gatherers’ bodies adjust for more activity by spending fewer calories on other unseen tasks, such as infl</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">ammation and stress responses. <b>“Instead of increasing the calories burned per day, the Hadza’s physical activity was changing the way they spend their calories,” he says.</b><br /><br /><b>He backed this up with a new analysis of data from another team’s study of sedentary women trained to run half marathons: After weeks of training, they barely burned more energy per day when they were running 40 kilometers per week than before they started to train. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In another study of marathoners who ran 42.6 kilometers daily 6 days per week for 140 days in the Race Across the USA, Pontzer and his colleagues found the runners burned gradually less energy over time — 4900 calories per day at the end of the race compared with 6200 calories at the start.<br /><br /><b><i>As the athletes’ ran more and more over weeks or months, their metabolic engines cut back elsewhere to make room for the extra exercise costs, Pontzer says. Conversely, if you’re a couch potato, you might still spend almost as many calories daily, leaving more energy for your body to spend on internal processes such as a stress response.</i></b><br /><br />This is Pontzer’s “most controversial and interesting idea,” says Harvard paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman, who was Pontzer’s thesis adviser. “This morning I ran about 5 miles; I spent about 500 calories running. In a very simplistic model that would mean my TEE would be 500 calories higher. … According to Herman, humans who are more active don’t have that much higher TEE as you’d predict … but we still don’t know why or how that occurs.”<br /><br /><b>Pontzer’s findings have a discouraging implication for people wanting to lose weight. “You can’t exercise your way out of obesity,”</b> says evolutionary physiologist John Speakman of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. <b>“It’s one of those zombie ideas that refuses to die.” Already the research is influencing dietary guidelines for nutrition and weight loss. </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>The U.K. National Food Strategy, for example, notes that “you can’t outrun a bad diet.”</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><br /></b><br />But Thyfault warns that message may do more harm than good. <b>People who exercise are less likely to gain weight in the first place, and those who exercise while they diet tend to keep weight off better</b>, he says. <b>Exercise also can impact where fat is stored on the body and the risk of diabetes and heart disease</b>, he says.<br /><br /><b>Pontzer agrees that exercise is essential for good health: The Hadza, who are active and fit into their 70s and 80s, don’t get diabetes and heart disease.</b> And, he adds, “If exercise is tamping down the stress response, that compensation is a good thing.” But he says it’s not fair to mislead dieters: <b>“Exercise prevents you from getting sick, but diet is your best tool for weight management.”</b><br /><br />Meanwhile, Pontzer was laying the groundwork for other surprises. Last year, he and Speakman co-led an effort to assemble a remarkable new resource, the International Atomic Energy Agency Doubly Labelled Water Database. This includes existing doubly labeled water studies of almost 6800 people between the ages of 8 days and 95 years.<br /><br />They used the database to do <b>the first comprehensive study of human energy use over the life span.</b> Again a popular assumption was at stake: that teenagers and pregnant women have higher metabolisms. But <b>Pontzer found it was toddlers who are the dynamos. Newborns have the same metabolic rate as their pregnant mothers, which is no different from other women when adjusted for body size</b>. <b>But between the ages of 9 and 15 months, babies expend 50% more energy in a day than do adults, when adjusted for body size and fat.</b> That’s likely to fuel their growing brain and, perhaps, developing immune systems. The findings, reported in Science, help explain why malnourished infants may show stunted growth.<br /><br /><b>Children’s metabolisms stay high, when adjusted for body size, until about age 5, when they begin a slow decline until age 20, and stabilize in adulthood. Humans begin to use less energy at age 60, and by age 90, elders use 26% less than middle-aged adults.</b><br /><br />Pontzer is now probing a mystery that emerged from his studies of athletes: There seems to be a hard limit on how many calories our bodies can burn per day, set by how fast we can digest food and turn it into energy. He calculates that the ceiling for an 85-kilogram man would be about 4650 calories per day.<br /><br />Speakman thinks that limit is too low, noting that cyclists in the Tour de France in the 1980s and ’90s exceeded it. But they were injecting fat and glucose directly into their bloodstreams, a practice Pontzer thinks might have helped them bypass the physiological limits on converting food into energy. <b>Elite athletes can push the limits for several months, as the study of marathoners showed, but can’t sustain it indefinitely, Pontzer says.<br /></b><br /><b>To understand how the body can fuel intense exercise or fight off disease without busting energy limits, Pontzer and his students are exploring how the body tamps down other activities. “I think we’re going to find these adjustments lower inflammation, lower our stress reaction. We do it to make the energy books balance.”<br /></b><br />That’s why he wanted to know how much energy Christina burned while he grilled her in the lab. After the test, Christina said she “definitely was stressed.” As it went on her heart rate rose from 75 to 80 beats per minute to 115. And her energy use rose from 1.2 kilocalories per minute to as much as 1.7 kilocalories per minute.<br /><br />“She burned 40% more energy per minute in the math test and 30% in the interview,” Pontzer says. “Think about any other process that boosts your energy by about 40%.”<br /><br /></span></span>*<br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Pontzer's groundbreaking studies with hunter-gatherer tribes show how exercise doesn't increase our metabolism. Instead, <b>we burn calories within a very narrow range: nearly 3,000 calories per day, no matter our activity level. <br /></b><br /><b>This was a brilliant evolutionary strategy to survive in times of famine. Now it seems to doom us to obesity.</b> The good news is we can lose weight, but we need to cut calories. Refuting such weight-loss hype as paleo, keto, anti-gluten, anti-grain, and even vegan, Pontzer discusses how all diets succeed or fail: For shedding pounds, a calorie is a calorie.<br /><br />At the same time, <b>we must exercise to keep our body systems and signals functioning optimally, even if it won't make us thinner. Hunter-gatherers like the Hadza move about five hours a day and remain remarkably healthy into old age</b>. <b>But elite athletes can push the body too far</b>, burning calories faster than their bodies can take them in. It may be that the most spectacular athletic feats are the result not just of great training, but of an astonishingly efficient digestive system.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Humans have "constrained energy expenditure", meaning that you only burn so many calories a day no matter what you do</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;">. Our extremely effective "metabolic compensation" simply shifts calories around so we break even at the end of the day no matter how much we move.<br /><br />For practical purposes, this means that you basically can't lose weight through exercise. Reducing caloric intake is the only way. Nevertheless, the manifold health benefits of exercise still make it the single most healthful activity we can do, as Prof Pontzer takes pains to emphasize.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://dupri.duke.edu/news-events/news/calorie-counter-evolutionary-anthropologist-herman-pontzer-busts-myths-about-how">https://dupri.duke.edu/news-events/news/calorie-counter-evolutionary-anthropologist-herman-pontzer-busts-myths-about-how</a></span></span></p><p><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span class="hgKElc">*</span></span></p><p><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span class="hgKElc">Studies overall show that doing <b>moderate-intensity
aerobic exercise such as walking for 30 minutes a day, five days a
week—the amount recommended for good health—typically produces little or
no weight loss by itself</b>. When moderate exercise is added to diet, the results are equally unimpressive. </span></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Pooling <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212267214010557" target="_blank">data from six trials</a>,
researchers found that a combination of diet and exercise generated no
greater weight loss than diet alone after six months. At 12 months, the
diet-and-exercise combo showed an advantage, but it was slight—about 4
pounds on average. In another <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-789X.2008.00547.x" target="_blank">review of studies</a>, the difference was less than 3 pounds.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">While it’s not very helpful for melting away pounds, exercise can <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/187071" target="_blank">prevent weight gain</a> and improve your appearance by increasing muscle mass and <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/obr.12406" target="_blank">reducing visceral fat</a>, the type indicated by a large waist that’s linked to heart disease and diabetes. </span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span class="hgKElc"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgizPxtEg25lNUO7yNvgqksftg5lLLJCQNNYQWHQAUChkjj4Dl6B8Nk2S5wDBAESCHMOiGgKH4rY58p6zh_GRokI6XOd-mjf3iaZOkY9kOSWNapT7vtOFs6LtgqL9yZRNd_jnVTPulsiZzgk_qYM9XNDqewq9gcjyz_swFxXqDfwmOLc-6abwvR13E4gLMf/s2400/runner%20on%20Brooklyn%20Bridge.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="2400" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgizPxtEg25lNUO7yNvgqksftg5lLLJCQNNYQWHQAUChkjj4Dl6B8Nk2S5wDBAESCHMOiGgKH4rY58p6zh_GRokI6XOd-mjf3iaZOkY9kOSWNapT7vtOFs6LtgqL9yZRNd_jnVTPulsiZzgk_qYM9XNDqewq9gcjyz_swFxXqDfwmOLc-6abwvR13E4gLMf/w400-h266/runner%20on%20Brooklyn%20Bridge.webp" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://time.com/6138809/should-you-exercise-to-lose-weight/">https://time.com/6138809/should-you-exercise-to-lose-weight/<br /></a><br />*<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOVckrFXlBTHb415HhStt7XAFyhHOSYiym3MoW-6Rbmb4SdH7ihzirukpCOZVtLjaIHmL0DgyYbLlkv1EvHssiGmjPgS22aEzEWiZdZysxNoY-nSGBNTuDYihGOgcnHJ-lSYnR_tItmhj1HODqTiNufduPlxah6n-1Wio_wnUMc6jxANcnXicp5EERFPiw/s582/denmark%20bans%20teh%20burka.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="582" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOVckrFXlBTHb415HhStt7XAFyhHOSYiym3MoW-6Rbmb4SdH7ihzirukpCOZVtLjaIHmL0DgyYbLlkv1EvHssiGmjPgS22aEzEWiZdZysxNoY-nSGBNTuDYihGOgcnHJ-lSYnR_tItmhj1HODqTiNufduPlxah6n-1Wio_wnUMc6jxANcnXicp5EERFPiw/w344-h400/denmark%20bans%20teh%20burka.jpg" width="344" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br />Islamic preacher Zakir Naik got into a taxi in London and said aloud to the taxi driver: “Brother, please turn off the radio, because as the Holy Qur'an commands, I am not allowed to listen to music, because in the time of the Prophet there was no music, especially western music, which is the music of the disbelievers.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The taxi driver politely turned off the radio, stopped the taxi and opened the door.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Zakir asked him: “What are you doing bro...”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The taxi driver answered politely: “In the era of the Prophet:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">There were no taxis.<br />There were no bombs.<br />There were no shortcuts.<br />There were no loudspeakers in the mosques to wake up newborns, the elderly and the sick at eerie hours.<br />There were no suicide bombings.<br />There was no AK 47.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Now get out and wait for your camel.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNBcnxr8wZ9fGMKxAklVqFEr9LAOsmaHOhLn6ZURoQCCzQiejCDWGkcJdd2KxS3pCP8UdwLRexPoOhAYRh2nS5ueBbkuA0AD5AE_mcdYbuhTyGu3G8vpdXUsJ7LdV3IDsg_siWdr-F_hNfGvYWRFq4q90hkm10Cr4lirrBgyao5xFK3W7OpWXNJD9ECzZE/s602/Islamic%20preacher.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="602" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNBcnxr8wZ9fGMKxAklVqFEr9LAOsmaHOhLn6ZURoQCCzQiejCDWGkcJdd2KxS3pCP8UdwLRexPoOhAYRh2nS5ueBbkuA0AD5AE_mcdYbuhTyGu3G8vpdXUsJ7LdV3IDsg_siWdr-F_hNfGvYWRFq4q90hkm10Cr4lirrBgyao5xFK3W7OpWXNJD9ECzZE/w400-h266/Islamic%20preacher.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>HOW BACTERIA HELP REGULATE BLOOD PRESSURE<br /></b></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfOie7I8LzcZP-rRhoAf3zt9BpyYQt7jEIsaa1-sproABSdIp1TVRGR2Ig0nn_fWuezG110-JFW5GOTkAYM3IDD_9_1D7-hmIMmw0r_JMsMalvNEDyvwFe7NNRlxDHhhERsFu9q3qTQdnJxK3FeX-J2e1Qg2XRJTA2xZfsKpYx3QV0OX69CtriYnrnpaeu/s540/microbiome%20graphics.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="540" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfOie7I8LzcZP-rRhoAf3zt9BpyYQt7jEIsaa1-sproABSdIp1TVRGR2Ig0nn_fWuezG110-JFW5GOTkAYM3IDD_9_1D7-hmIMmw0r_JMsMalvNEDyvwFe7NNRlxDHhhERsFu9q3qTQdnJxK3FeX-J2e1Qg2XRJTA2xZfsKpYx3QV0OX69CtriYnrnpaeu/s320/microbiome%20graphics.jpg" width="320" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>Researchers found that the bacteria in our guts send signals to the kidneys and blood vessels that help to balance our vital signs.<br /></b></i><br />Some years ago, when Jennifer Pluznick was nearing the end of her training in physiology and sensory systems,<b> she was startled to discover something in the kidneys that seemed weirdly out of place. It was a smell receptor, a protein that would have looked more at home in the nose. </b>Given that the kidneys filter waste into urine and maintain the right salt content in the blood, it was hard to see how a smell receptor could be useful there. Yet <b>as she delved deeper into what the smell receptor was doing, Pluznick came to a surprising conclusion:</b> <b>The kidney receives messages from the gut microbiome, the symbiotic bacteria that live in the intestines.<br /></b><br />In the past few years, Pluznick, who is now an associate professor of physiology at Johns Hopkins University, and a small band of like-minded researchers have put together a picture of what the denizens of the gut are telling the kidney. They have found that these communiqués affect blood pressure, such that if the microbes are destroyed, the host suffers. <b>The researchers have uncovered a direct, molecular-level explanation of how the microbiome conspires with the kidneys and the blood vessels to manipulate the flow of blood.<br /></b><br />The smell receptor, called Olfr78, was an orphan at first: it had previously been noticed in the sensory tissues of the nose, but no one knew what specific scent or chemical messenger it responded to. <b>Pluznick began by testing various chemical possibilities and eventually narrowed down the candidates to acetate and propionate. These short-chain fatty acid molecules come from the fermentation breakdown of long chains of carbohydrates — what nutritionists call dietary fiber. Humans, mice, rats and other animals cannot digest fiber, but the bacteria that live in their guts can.</b><br /><br /><b>As a result, more than 99 percent of the acetate and propionate that floats through the bloodstream is released by bacteria as they feed. </b>“Any host contribution is really minimal,” Pluznick said. <b>Bacteria are therefore the only meaningful source of what activates Olfr78 — which, further experiments showed, is involved in the regulation of blood pressure.</b><br /><br /><b>Our bodies must maintain a delicate balance with blood pressure, as with electricity surging through a wire, where too much means an explosion and too little means a power outage. If blood pressure is too low, an organism loses consciousness; if it’s too high, the strain on the heart and blood vessels can be deadly. </b> </span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Because creatures are constantly flooding their blood with nutrients and chemical signals that alter the balance, the control must be dynamic. <b>One of the ways the body exerts this control is with a hormone called renin, which makes blood vessels narrower when the pressure needs to be kept up. Olfr78, Pluznick and her colleagues discovered, helps drive the production of renin.</b><br /><br />How did a smell receptor inherit this job? <b>The genes for smell receptors are present in almost every cell of the body. If in the course of evolution these chemical sensors hooked up to the machinery for manufacturing a hormone rather than to a smell neuron, and if that connection proved useful, evolution would have preserved the arrangement, even in parts of the body as far from the nose as the kidneys are.</b><br /><br />Olfr78 wasn’t the end of the story, however. While the team was performing these experiments, they realized that <b>another receptor called Gpr41 was getting signals from the gut microbiome as well. </b>In a paper last year, Pluznick’s first graduate student, Niranjana Natarajan, now a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, revealed t<b>he role of Gpr41, which she found on the inner walls of blood vessels. Like Olfr78, Gpr41 is known to respond to acetate and propionate — but it lowers blood pressure rather than raising it. </b><i><b>Moreover, Gpr41 starts to respond at low levels of acetate and propionate, while Olfr78 kicks in only at higher levels.</b><br /></i><br />Here’s how the pieces fit together: When you — or a mouse, or any other host organism whose organs and microbes talk this way — have a meal and dietary fiber hits the gut, bacteria feed and release their fatty-acid signal. This activates Gpr41, which ratchets down the blood pressure as all the consumed nutrients flood the circulation.<br /><br /><b>If you keep eating — a slice of pie at Thanksgiving dinner, another helping of mashed potatoes — Gpr41, left to itself, might bring the pressure down to dangerous levels. “We think that is where Olfr78 comes in,” Pluznick said. That receptor, triggered as the next surge of fatty acids arrives, keeps blood pressure from bottoming out by calling for renin to constrict the blood vessels.</b><br /><br /><b>The new understanding of how symbiotic bacteria manipulate blood pressure is emblematic of wider progress in linking the microbiome to our vital statistics and health. </b>While vague statements about the microbiome’s effect on health have become commonplace in recent years, the field has moved beyond simply making associations, said Jack Gilbert, a microbiome researcher at the University of Chicago.<br /><br />“Everybody goes on about the promise,” he said. But in fact, studies full of mechanistic details, like the ones Pluznick, her collaborators and other researchers have published, have been growing more and more numerous.<br /><br />In June of last year, the National Institutes of Health convened a working group on the microbiome’s control of blood pressure. Researchers met in Maryland to thrash out what important questions still need to be answered, including what role the host’s genetic background plays — whether, for instance, the microbiome matters more for some hosts than for others.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Understanding those details is key to knowing whether transplanting a certain set of microbes into someone can reshape the recipient’s biology enough to cure a health problem, as some proponents of personalized medicine hope</b>. One famous early study showed that giving lean mice <b>the microbiome of an obese human made them obese too, while the microbiome of lean humans kept the mice lean.</b> “There’s one paper that came out earlier this year … that showed that <b>maybe this can happen with blood pressure as well</b>,” Pluznick said, though she cautioned that the study was small and needed follow-up. But theoretically, <b>even if swapping in new bacteria could only slightly lower the blood pressure of those with a genetic tendency toward hypertension, it could make a difference over the course of a lifetime.</b><br /><br />“It might be something that’s easier to manipulate than your genes, or my genes. Those are much harder to change,” she said.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-bacteria-help-regulate-blood-pressure-20171130/">https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-bacteria-help-regulate-blood-pressure-20171130/<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>DO WE REALLY LIVE LONGER THAN OUR ANCESTORS?</b><br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUSq5Rhv-kZ4DnU6eWpZmQmaE_K8JFG9IghzijXHMs4RUCtS_oVn3C8K9KXnsDQFi6EkoGh_ZSnXXs0nE4EDQuMxRGOoZTlcovuzTDscwwXb72h-tGq21mN94npTRazAsDGrlrEFJisf7lQHcSDAYF6cNXpUY18GcrKFhl0rrkfR9eN4L-4PlhdLGwr1H-/s976/ancestors%20longevity.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="976" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUSq5Rhv-kZ4DnU6eWpZmQmaE_K8JFG9IghzijXHMs4RUCtS_oVn3C8K9KXnsDQFi6EkoGh_ZSnXXs0nE4EDQuMxRGOoZTlcovuzTDscwwXb72h-tGq21mN94npTRazAsDGrlrEFJisf7lQHcSDAYF6cNXpUY18GcrKFhl0rrkfR9eN4L-4PlhdLGwr1H-/w400-h225/ancestors%20longevity.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">~ Do we really live longer than ever before?<br /><br />The wonders of modern medicine and nutrition make it easy to believe we enjoy longer lives than at any time in human history, but we may not be that special after all.<br /><br /><b>Over the last few decades, life expectancy has increased dramatically around the globe. The average person born in 1960, the earliest year the United Nations began keeping global data, could expect to live to 52.5 years of age. Today, the average is 72. In the UK, where records have been kept longer, this trend is even greater. In 1841, a baby girl was expected to live to just 42 years of age, a boy to 40. In 2016, a baby girl could expect to reach 83; a boy, 79.<br /></b><br />The natural conclusion is that both the miracles of modern medicine and public health initiatives have helped us live longer than ever before – so much so that <b>we may, in fact, be running out of innovations to extend life further. In September 2018, the Office for National Statistics confirmed that, in the UK at least, life expectancy has stopped increasing. Beyond the UK, these gains are slowing worldwide.</b><br /><br /><b><i>This belief that our species may have reached the peak of longevity is also reinforced by some myths about our ancestors: it’s common belief that ancient Greeks or Romans would have been flabbergasted to see anyone above the age of 50 or 60, for example.</i></b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirQTMif3HdXcph4igmNZWOVLM5Ft8euVQOUxG6QvsmNtPLrvOSfeYF0rbgY16GA7myT4rrh5cwcVf1BSMxVv6stH5cZHTvqMKHeMEkZqbAMA8Tbqk8pYr4-Ug0qW6H9pUgUG5lV9wFaQ_snm31-eaG22ohlnUG-U9SZhkI50Lhg3BAFrlRbCbjfnM-gi0Z/s976/Augustus%20died%20at%2075.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="976" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirQTMif3HdXcph4igmNZWOVLM5Ft8euVQOUxG6QvsmNtPLrvOSfeYF0rbgY16GA7myT4rrh5cwcVf1BSMxVv6stH5cZHTvqMKHeMEkZqbAMA8Tbqk8pYr4-Ug0qW6H9pUgUG5lV9wFaQ_snm31-eaG22ohlnUG-U9SZhkI50Lhg3BAFrlRbCbjfnM-gi0Z/w400-h225/Augustus%20died%20at%2075.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, died at 75 – underscoring the distinction between our ancestors' average life expectancy versus their life span.<br /></i><br />In fact, while medical advancements have improved many aspects of healthcare, </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>the assumption that human life span has increased dramatically over centuries or millennia is misleading.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Overall life expectancy, which is the statistic reflected in reports like those above, hasn’t increased so much because we’re living far longer than we used to as a species. It’s increased because more of us, as individuals, are making it that far.</b><br /><br />“There is a basic distinction between life expectancy and life span,” says Stanford University historian Walter Scheidel, a leading scholar of ancient Roman demography. <b>“The life span of humans – opposed to life expectancy, which is a statistical construct – hasn’t really changed much at all</b>, as far as I can tell.”<br /><br />Life expectancy is an average. If you have two children, and one dies before their first birthday but the other lives to the age of 70, their average life expectancy is 35.<br /><br />That’s mathematically correct – and it certainly tells us something about the circumstances in which the children were raised. But it doesn’t give us the full picture. It also becomes especially problematic when looking at eras, or in regions, where there are high levels of infant mortality. <b>Most of human history has been blighted by poor survival rates among children</b>, and that continues in various countries today.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf4SjJipjA6auBEFkashZ8I8fkHZCGRltQI8y-v7pIV-CPky1C3HhUVdaJ2zQk1qj8fGmOWfHYBnTHEOagGcadEbSrNPwCbiIoF1jZL5xDUiS3n8hIQLCPn7FXh3iQNxZHIbc8zzUC8hJEX0ORYR0L6bLWOfSOMG-eORfVEG79rLVGSf41id2o9LeyM1xu/s976/empress%20suiko%20died%20at%2074.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="976" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf4SjJipjA6auBEFkashZ8I8fkHZCGRltQI8y-v7pIV-CPky1C3HhUVdaJ2zQk1qj8fGmOWfHYBnTHEOagGcadEbSrNPwCbiIoF1jZL5xDUiS3n8hIQLCPn7FXh3iQNxZHIbc8zzUC8hJEX0ORYR0L6bLWOfSOMG-eORfVEG79rLVGSf41id2o9LeyM1xu/w400-h225/empress%20suiko%20died%20at%2074.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>The 6th-Century ruler Empress Suiko, who was Japan’s first reigning empress in recorded history, died at 74.<br /></i><br />This averaging-out, however, is why it’s commonly said that ancient Greeks and Romans, for example, lived to just 30 or 35. But was that really the case for people who survived the fragile period of childhood, and <b>did it mean that a 35-year-old was truly considered ‘old’?<br /></b><br />If one’s thirties were a decrepit old age, ancient writers and politicians don’t seem to have got the message. </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>In the early 7th Century BC, the Greek poet Hesiod wrote that a man should marry “when you are not much less than 30, and not much more”.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b> Meanwhile, ancient Rome’s ‘cursus honorum’ – the sequence of political offices that an ambitious young man would undertake – didn’t even allow a young man to stand for his first office, that of quaestor, until the age of 30 (under Emperor Augustus, this was later lowered to 25; Augustus himself died at 75). To be consul, you had to be 43 – eight years older than the US’s minimum age limit of 35 to hold a presidency.</b><br /><br /><b>In the 1st Century, Pliny devoted an entire chapter of The Natural History to people who lived longest. Among them he lists the consul M Valerius Corvinos (100 years), Cicero’s wife Terentia (103), a woman named Clodia (115 – and who had 15 children along the way), and the actress Lucceia who performed on stage at 100 years old.<br /></b><br />Then there are tombstone inscriptions and grave epigrams, such as this one for <b>a woman who died in Alexandria in the 3rd Century BC. “She was 80 years old, but able to weave a delicate weft with the shrill shuttle”, the epigram reads admiringly.</b><br /><br />Not, however, that aging was any easier then than it is now. “Nature has, in reality, bestowed no greater blessing on man than the shortness of life,” Pliny remarks. “The senses become dull, the limbs torpid, the sight, the hearing, the legs, the teeth, and the organs of digestion, all of them die before us…” <b>He can think of only one person, a musician who lived to 105, who had a pleasantly healthy old age</b>. (Pliny himself reached barely half that; he’s thought to have died from volcanic gases during the eruption of Mt Vesuvius, aged 56).<br /><br />In the ancient world, at least, it seems people certainly were able to live just as long as we do today. But just how common was it?<br /><br /><b>Age of empires<br /></b><br />Back in 1994 a study looked at every man entered into the Oxford Classical Dictionary who lived in ancient Greece or Rome. Their ages of death were compared to men listed in the more recent Chambers Biographical Dictionary.<br /><br /><b>Of 397 ancients in total, 99 died violently by murder, suicide or in battle. Of the remaining 298, those born before 100BC lived to a median age of 72 years. Those born after 100BC lived to a median age of 66. (The authors speculate that the prevalence of dangerous lead plumbing may have led to this apparent shortening of life).</b><br /><br /><b>The median of those who died between 1850 and 1949? Seventy-one years old – just one year less than their pre-100BC cohort.<br /></b><br />Of course, there were some obvious problems with this sample. One is that it was men-only. Another is that all of the men were illustrious enough to be remembered. <b>All we can really take away from this is that privileged, accomplished men have, on average, lived to about the same age throughout history – as long as they weren’t killed first, that is.</b><br /><br />Still, says Scheidel, that’s not to be dismissed. “It implies there must have been non-famous people, who were much more numerous, who lived even longer,” he says.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhftxDgiSlJig0_eF9IZbKZAFwk-GMQZx8b5CqHCqFrB4S2-nnPMv5nN7Of_WRK-btAHEeotoBrEcfuV6IidRO56geKxYzW-D8wmZzD0ZLycjE1zDDq78iZeEP9etcm-dGCPaTxg6l8uPQ2sTlbiAMnaH0phUSWndee9mx7vUVIIvMx3xxrQC22oH4kB_re/s976/Tiberius%20died%20at%2077.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="976" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhftxDgiSlJig0_eF9IZbKZAFwk-GMQZx8b5CqHCqFrB4S2-nnPMv5nN7Of_WRK-btAHEeotoBrEcfuV6IidRO56geKxYzW-D8wmZzD0ZLycjE1zDDq78iZeEP9etcm-dGCPaTxg6l8uPQ2sTlbiAMnaH0phUSWndee9mx7vUVIIvMx3xxrQC22oH4kB_re/w400-h225/Tiberius%20died%20at%2077.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>The Roman emperor Tiberius died at the age of 77 – some accounts say by murder.<br /></i><br /><b>Not everyone agrees. “There was an enormous difference between the lifestyle of a poor versus an elite Roman,” says Valentina Gazzaniga, a medical historian at Rome’s La Sapienza University. “The conditions of life, access to medical therapies, even just hygiene – these were all certainly better among the elites.”</b><br /><br />In 2016, Gazzaniga published her research on more than <b>2,000 ancient Roman skeletons, all working-class people who were buried in common graves. The average age of death was 30</b>, and that wasn’t a mere statistical quirk: a high number of the skeletons were around that age. <b>Many showed the effects of trauma from hard labor, as well as diseases we would associate with later ages, like arthritis.<br /></b><br />Men might have borne numerous injuries from manual labor or military service. But women – who, it's worth noting, also did hard labor such as working in the fields – hardly got off easy. <b>Throughout history, childbirth, often in poor hygienic conditions, is just one reason why women were at particular risk during their fertile years. Even pregnancy itself was a danger.<br /></b><br />“We know, for example, that being pregnant adversely affects your immune system, because you’ve basically got another person growing inside you,” says Jane Humphries, a historian at the University of Oxford. “Then you tend to be susceptible to other diseases. So, for example, <b>tuberculosis interacts with pregnancy in a very threatening way. And tuberculosis was a disease that had higher female than male mortality.</b>”<b><br /></b><br />Childbirth was worsened by other factors too. <b>“Women often were fed less than men,” Gazzaniga says. That malnutrition means that young girls often had incomplete development of pelvic bones, which then increased the risk of difficult childbirth.</b></span><b><br /></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“The life expectancy of Roman women actually increased with the decline of fertility,” Gazzaniga says. <b>“The more fertile the population is, the lower the female life expectancy.”<br /></b><br /><b>Missing people</b><br /><br />The difficulty in knowing for sure just how long our average predecessor lived, whether ancient or pre-historic, is the lack of data. When trying to determine average ages of death for ancient Romans, for example, anthropologists often rely on census returns from Roman Egypt. But because these papyri were used to collect taxes, they often under-reported men – as well as left out many babies and women.<br /><br />Tombstone inscriptions, left behind in their thousands by the Romans, are another obvious source. But infants were rarely placed in tombs. Poor people couldn’t afford them and families who died simultaneously, such as during an epidemic, also were left out.<br /><br />And even if that weren’t the case, there is another problem with relying on inscriptions.<br /><i><b>“You need to live in a world where you have a certain amount of documentation where it can even be possible to tell if someone lived to 105 or 110, and that only started quite recently,” Scheidel points out. “If someone actually lived to be 111, that person might not have known.”</b><br /></i><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgftrWpYKWpB1xhwMOO3-MWdG7J6IPMZO5JoepB2xpLfu3zO3bWnTOl0M9TGLi-DVGnKVPw4U7TQBRKjn1H6iHktETQEzwKumb7Rl0ykL0KHLzkB7vqsnlc3fovG-LD2tFgEr9wnQygxX2RPIetMnstdxmsekZssN3ikgHoTTi6EkibnPr8pboOIs0b-L2A/s976/Livia%20wife%20of%20Augustus.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="976" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgftrWpYKWpB1xhwMOO3-MWdG7J6IPMZO5JoepB2xpLfu3zO3bWnTOl0M9TGLi-DVGnKVPw4U7TQBRKjn1H6iHktETQEzwKumb7Rl0ykL0KHLzkB7vqsnlc3fovG-LD2tFgEr9wnQygxX2RPIetMnstdxmsekZssN3ikgHoTTi6EkibnPr8pboOIs0b-L2A/w400-h225/Livia%20wife%20of%20Augustus.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>The Roman empress Livia, wife of Augustus, lived until she was 86 or 87 years old.<br /></i><br />As a result, much of what we think we know about ancient Rome’s statistical life expectancy comes from life expectancies in comparable societies. Those tell us that as many as <b>one-third of infants died before the age of one, and half of children before age 10. After that age your chances got significantly better. If you made it to 60, you’d probably live to be 70. </b>[Oriana: the biblical "three score and ten"]<br /><br />Taken altogether, life span in ancient Rome probably wasn’t much different from today. It may have been slightly less “because you don’t have this invasive medicine at end of life that prolongs life a little bit, but not dramatically different”, Scheidel says. “<b>You can have extremely low average life expectancy, because of, say, pregnant women, and children who die, and still have people to live to 80 and 90 at the same time. They are just less numerous at the end of the day because all of this attrition kicks in.</b>”<br /><br />Of course, that attrition is not to be sniffed at. Particularly if you were an infant, a woman of childbearing years or a hard laborer, you’d be far better off choosing to live in year 2018 than 18. But that still doesn’t mean our life span is actually getting significantly longer as a species.<br /><br /><b>On the record<br /></b><br />The data gets better later in human history once governments begin to keep careful records of births, marriages and deaths – at first, particularly of nobles.<br /><br />Those records show that child mortality remained high. But <b>if a man got to the age of 21 and didn’t die by accident, violence or poison, he could be expected to live </b></span><br /><span style="color: #800180;"><b>almost</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b> as long as men today: from 1200 to 1745, 21-year-olds would reach an average age of anywhere between 62 and 70 years – except for the 14th Century, when the bubonic plague cut life expectancy to a paltry 45.</b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy1n78QDCnMEKwgmC9yLmceGOFCiDLAvePmmZcZhZAX8KVpNUIS8v9yBALYNLZEVoeQD2Nni8yF6nNF15hwM1btW9JX2E5YUy7uX8XhHwR0Nbnh_QFPBmBP8_ffHhyQUyz4_Jqt6dwDD1ee2zbAakfFFQ7MLHeySXUV9rzIZcywUlPG4DBAECuYHYsK5sK/s976/queen%20elizabeth%20I%20died%20at%2070.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="976" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy1n78QDCnMEKwgmC9yLmceGOFCiDLAvePmmZcZhZAX8KVpNUIS8v9yBALYNLZEVoeQD2Nni8yF6nNF15hwM1btW9JX2E5YUy7uX8XhHwR0Nbnh_QFPBmBP8_ffHhyQUyz4_Jqt6dwDD1ee2zbAakfFFQ7MLHeySXUV9rzIZcywUlPG4DBAECuYHYsK5sK/w400-h225/queen%20elizabeth%20I%20died%20at%2070.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Did having money or power help? Not always. One analysis of some 115,000 European nobles found that <b>kings lived about six years less than lesser nobles, like knights.</b> Demographic historians have found by looking at county parish registers that<b> in 17th-Century England, life expectancy was longer for villagers than nobles.</b><br /><br />“Aristocratic families in England possessed the means to secure all manner of material benefits and personal services but expectation of life at birth among the aristocracy appears to have lagged behind that of the population as a whole until well into the eighteenth century,” he writes. This was likely because <b>royals tended to prefer to live for most of the year in cities, where they were exposed to more diseases.</b><br /><br />But interestingly, <b>when the revolution came in medicine and public health, it helped elites before the rest of the population.</b> <b>By the late 17th Century, English nobles who made it to 25 went on to live longer than their non-noble counterparts – even as they continued to live in the more risk-ridden cities.</b><br /><br />Surely, by the soot-ridden era of Charles Dickens, life was unhealthy and short for nearly everyone? Still no. As researchers Judith Rowbotham, now at the University of Plymouth, and Paul Clayton, of Oxford Brookes University, write, “<b>once the dangerous childhood years were passed… life expectancy in the mid-Victorian period was not markedly different from what it is today</b>”. <i><b>A five-year-old girl would live to 73; a boy, to 75.</b><br /></i><br />Not only are these numbers comparable to our own, they may be even better. Members of today’s working-class (a more accurate comparison) live to around 72 years for men and 76 years for women.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8IFUjqDyjN09Rvbxv9YWWZEG59R54xgQB1xktyNoNbo2qE_eFCo6AiY08MT1wphyg3A4fpYSf37Q6XzCwnkVXOZbgOQoWveiG-3j6xCQOwcGDfOUoaLBIQuj67YNxoOTaYDmh4D1r6nT8uZn5kHq281fgo_cHBkWQn1cAaKhL7-knxgEb5fDyLe1F0Waq/s888/queen%20victoria%20and%20royal%20family.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="888" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8IFUjqDyjN09Rvbxv9YWWZEG59R54xgQB1xktyNoNbo2qE_eFCo6AiY08MT1wphyg3A4fpYSf37Q6XzCwnkVXOZbgOQoWveiG-3j6xCQOwcGDfOUoaLBIQuj67YNxoOTaYDmh4D1r6nT8uZn5kHq281fgo_cHBkWQn1cAaKhL7-knxgEb5fDyLe1F0Waq/w400-h240/queen%20victoria%20and%20royal%20family.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Queen Victoria died in 1901 at the age of 81. During her reign, a girl could expect to live to about 73 years of age, a boy to 75.</i><br /><br />“This relative lack of progress is striking, especially given the many environmental disadvantages during the mid-Victorian era and the state of medical care in an age when modern drugs, screening systems and surgical techniques were self-evidently unavailable,” Rowbotham and Clayton write.<br /><br />They argue that if we think we’re living longer than ever today, this is because our records go back to around 1900 – which they call a “misleading baseline”, as <b>it was at a time when nutrition had decreased and when many men started to smoke.</b><br /><br /><b>Pre-historic people</b><br /><br />What about if we look in the other direction in time – before any records at all were kept?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Although it is obviously difficult to collect this kind of data, anthropologists have tried to substitute by looking at today's hunter-gatherer groups, such as<b> the</b> <b>Ache of Paraguay and Hadza of Tanzania</b>. They found that while the probability of a newborn’s survival to age 15 ranged between 55% for a Hadza boy up to 71% for an Ache boy, <b>once someone survived to that point, they could expect to live until they were between 51 and 58 years old.</b> <b>Data from modern-day foragers, who have no access to medicine or modern food</b>, write Michael Gurven and Cristina Gomes, finds that “while at birth mean life expectancies range from 30 to 37 years of life, <b>women who survive to age 45 can expect to live an additional 20 to 22 years” – in other words, from 65 to 67 years old.</b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhtvYjUPey0bSjFdNJMiifGaYjGRrbhM9UtihQhSkdsSjvbZ0vc_DmwLVvmW0pJPZ-1ghwHLIo9tdcg-TmgZuCTjGh41hudsYoG5xkIsSoa5czx5xu3dqVDqf5tLL_bhBqhAWZg6krelp9UxiiSgRpvZY3Xxqc1bcscj208eDVpzF0A9ceNctnfCnYtpIi/s976/domitia%20died%20at%2077.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="976" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhtvYjUPey0bSjFdNJMiifGaYjGRrbhM9UtihQhSkdsSjvbZ0vc_DmwLVvmW0pJPZ-1ghwHLIo9tdcg-TmgZuCTjGh41hudsYoG5xkIsSoa5czx5xu3dqVDqf5tLL_bhBqhAWZg6krelp9UxiiSgRpvZY3Xxqc1bcscj208eDVpzF0A9ceNctnfCnYtpIi/w400-h225/domitia%20died%20at%2077.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>The Roman empress Domitia died in 130 at the age of 77.<br /></i><br />Archaeologists Christine Cave and Marc Oxenham of Australian National University have recently found the same. <b>Looking at dental wear on the skeletons of Anglo-Saxons buried about 1,500 years ago</b>,<b> they found that</b> <b>of 174 skeletons, the majority belonged to people who were under 65 – but there also were </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>16 people who died between 65 and 74 years old and nine who reached at least 75 years of age.</b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><i><b>Our maximum lifespan may not have changed much, if at all. But that’s not to delegitimize the extraordinary advances of the last few decades which have helped so many more people reach that maximum lifespan, and live healthier lives overall.</b><br /></i><br />Perhaps that’s why, when asked what past era, if any, she’d prefer to live in, Oxford’s Humphries doesn’t hesitate.<br /><br />“Definitely today,” she says. “I think women’s lives in the past were pretty nasty and brutish – if not so short.”<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibBhK51dYZNgTQhRCxayVToZRIdMiYZodz-ZM9_Cj-ROvxg1WLSHDsuL6kNSLgUtKmjxHzGBVggh-cxjJvR3MhDdoyzX0rKO2KTYOROc05HK9nRw3XB_5hDfVa5hMx8rriUH6PY9x6nUA5ek8KI8qdZw0WZuaWGPzjrsu5PH0aX7a3nMXczOH1I4My7qDE/s482/Portrait%20of%20an%20Old%20Woman%20(1749)%20Balthasar%20Denner.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="482" data-original-width="422" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibBhK51dYZNgTQhRCxayVToZRIdMiYZodz-ZM9_Cj-ROvxg1WLSHDsuL6kNSLgUtKmjxHzGBVggh-cxjJvR3MhDdoyzX0rKO2KTYOROc05HK9nRw3XB_5hDfVa5hMx8rriUH6PY9x6nUA5ek8KI8qdZw0WZuaWGPzjrsu5PH0aX7a3nMXczOH1I4My7qDE/w350-h400/Portrait%20of%20an%20Old%20Woman%20(1749)%20Balthasar%20Denner.jpg" width="350" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Portrait of an Old Woman (1749) by Balthasar Denner<br /></i><br /><a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-long-did-ancient-people-live-life-span-versus-longevity">https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-long-did-ancient-people-live-life-span-versus-longevity</a><br /><br /><b><i>*</i></b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><i>ending on wisdom and beauty:</i></b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">And remember: you must never,<br />under any circumstances, despair.<br />To hope and to act,<br />these are our duties in misfortune.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">~ </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> </span></span></p><p></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcD-lCycyeLuSqdkQHb2eUMfPlEzda4GLjxu8WI37VWj7mtRovdiEij2tGmqX5GbSs1XFolhsCs2b5JYlnmRS6NxsIHMnGo3KbDPfhyMaY4vs4ycxovYTVC1v4Hst6WRkN1KuDvk-yDfVbYH9qyFYsj1PYRBpI7H7czFq1FsDJLGwgaJHVvDe9M_ar8Qw4/s705/Dr.%20Zhivago%20ice%20palace%20interior.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="470" data-original-width="705" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcD-lCycyeLuSqdkQHb2eUMfPlEzda4GLjxu8WI37VWj7mtRovdiEij2tGmqX5GbSs1XFolhsCs2b5JYlnmRS6NxsIHMnGo3KbDPfhyMaY4vs4ycxovYTVC1v4Hst6WRkN1KuDvk-yDfVbYH9qyFYsj1PYRBpI7H7czFq1FsDJLGwgaJHVvDe9M_ar8Qw4/w640-h426/Dr.%20Zhivago%20ice%20palace%20interior.jpg" width="640" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">~ </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i> </i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><br /><br /></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-59322175724268286722023-11-18T13:55:00.000-08:002023-11-18T14:15:47.391-08:00THE PALESTINIAN PROBLEM IS A RELIGIOUS PROBLEM; BENEFITS OF WALKING BACKWARDS; VEGETABLES THAT ARE BETTER FOR YOU COOKED; AUTONOMY: KEY TO HAPPINESS; PUTIN’S PLAN FOR RUSSIAN WOMEN: CHILDREN, KITCHEN, CHURCH; THE POLITICS OF THE FAMILY<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxpAJRSsN2h2QMEj3EdxbZlKalCfJdCxlIRSv9gSZW9Hpnh3-RQUbERTdhgJlnJPPlHjB7JsXo1U5UBcdGeplGXFY8P4kpgwt8hPUOXogIsiGAA9YPB7FewR5qNBfVJ99nsZ1FuD_TM9AZYKadiENuWTOB-ozTyATd-5dbq_bkjdNtE8DzUbJ2T5GXBdm_/s1024/Bosch%20Garden%20into%20the%20egg.jpg" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="1024" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxpAJRSsN2h2QMEj3EdxbZlKalCfJdCxlIRSv9gSZW9Hpnh3-RQUbERTdhgJlnJPPlHjB7JsXo1U5UBcdGeplGXFY8P4kpgwt8hPUOXogIsiGAA9YPB7FewR5qNBfVJ99nsZ1FuD_TM9AZYKadiENuWTOB-ozTyATd-5dbq_bkjdNtE8DzUbJ2T5GXBdm_/w400-h225/Bosch%20Garden%20into%20the%20egg.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Hieronymous Bosch: detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights </i></span></span><br /></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">BACKSTITCH<br /><br />In this pine village time’s so slow<br />that I permit myself to sew —<br />a patient stitch that imitates <br />the over-and-over <br />of a sewing machine.<br /><br />What luxury, my hand my own<br />sewing machine, dipping back <br />before moving forward —<br />stitching the moment that has passed <br />to the moment that is passing now.<br /><br />It’s backstitch, a friend explains. <br />Thirty years I’ve worked that stitch<br />without knowing its name.<br />I learned to sew long ago, <br />in a faraway language —<br /><br />I and silence in a slow race<br />to see who’ll say it first:<br />in sun-flood of a California summer<br />stitching to where the past and now<br />fall together in seamless snow.<br /><br />~ Oriana<br /><br />*<br /><b>“THE PALESTINIAN PROBLEM IS A RELIGIOUS PROBLEM”<br /></b><br />~ Hamas’s massacre of Jews on October 7 stands out not only in its scale — the deadliest and most comprehensive act of mass violence against Jews since the Holocaust — but also its depravity. <b>Words such as “barbaric,” “perverse,” “gruesome,” and “savage” only hint at the nature of the atrocities inflicted on the kibbutzim, towns, and villages near the Gaza Strip.</b> Those who stormed into southern Israel murdered some 1,400 Jews and raped, tortured, slashed, burned, beheaded, and mutilated their victims. They shot parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents. They live-streamed many of their acts, so all the world could witness the spectacle of Jews hunted down and slaughtered or abducted.<br /><br /><b>“Terrorism,” although accurate in its application to what took place, doesn’t fully capture the nature of the cruelty inflicted on Jewish babies burned alive and elderly grandparents wrenched from their homes and hauled off to Gaza.</b> President Biden came closer to the truth when he called such acts “pure evil.” But <b>this evil has a particular source — a religious one. I suggested this to a knowledgeable Muslim friend. I also asked him what could be done. This is what I got back:</b><br /><br />What motivates Hamas is the Koran, primarily. But the Koran is not everything. There is the Sunnah (the prophet’s life, what he said and did). <b>One of the major battles the prophet of Islam fought was Khaybar, which was against the Jews.</b> So the Koran said it and the Prophet did it. In other words, there is no way to “twist” history or “reinterpret” it. You just cannot say that the Jews of Khaybar were not the Jews of today. <br /><br /><b>Islamists believe that the Koran and Sunnah are suitable for every place and time.</b> And that history (loaded with ideology) continues to play over and over — but not only Islamic history: For example, <b>Iraqis are still proud of what Nebuchadnezzar did when he exiled the Jews to Babylon. Ismail Haniyeh gave a speech on October 7. He did not talk about the two-state solution, the border line of 4 June 1967, or East Jerusalem. He was clear in saying that the Jews “must leave Palestine.” </b>This is war until death. If the IDF collapses (God forbid), the Holocaust will be like a picnic. Islamists will kill every man, rape every woman, enslave every child, and destroy every building.<br /><br />The orgiastic Jew-killing was accompanied by shouts of “Allahu Akbar” — “Allah is the greatest” — a victory cry of defiance and determination. <b>Hamas is and always has been a jihadist organization that sees the existence of the State of Israel as an intolerable intrusion into the Domain of Islam (“Dar al-Islam”) and is committed to removing it by whatever means it takes</b>. As the Hamas Charter records, “Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.”<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, does not represent all Palestinians, let alone all of Islam. But its success on October 7 has incited the passions of many in the broader Arab and Muslim world and has greatly strengthened the Islamist reading of the Arab–Israeli conflict as a Muslim–Jewish one.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />This reading, far from new, differs from most mainstream attempts to understand and resolve the conflict. The West sees the problem as political and territorial in nature. It is that. But for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and their sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran, it is primarily religious, and at its heart is the annihilationist fantasy of ending the Jewish state by killing as many Jews as possible. The goal is not a two-state solution but the Final Solution. October 7 was an extravagant rehearsal of a larger, genocidal drama.<br /><br />All this is spelled out in Hamas’s 1988 Charter. Its preamble and 36 articles are all formulated in religious terms, and it frequently validates its points by reference to the Koran and other sacred Islamic texts. <b>Israel, we read, “exists and will continue to exist until Islam obliterates it, just as it obliterated others before it.”</b> <i><b></b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>The “Palestinian problem,” it affirms, “is a religious problem” and is not amenable to a negotiated political settlement. The only way to “raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine” is through “jihad,” a holy war that is a “duty for every Muslim wherever he may be.”</b></i><br /><br />The Charter is openly antisemitic — “our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious” — and extends beyond the borders of the Holy Land. The Jews must be vanquished “until Allah’s victory is realized.” The charter cites the fraudulent, antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion as proof of malign Jewish influence everywhere in the world: “There is no war going on anywhere without their having a finger in it.” Further conspiratorial thinking follows: <br /><br />“With their money, [the Jews] took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein.” For these and other reasons, <b>the faithful are called upon to join “the struggle against the Jews,” liquidate the Jewish state, and “raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.”</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">To achieve this goal, Hamas named its operation against Israel “Al-Aqsa Flood,” justifying its murderous assault of October 7 as a response to the alleged Jewish desecration of Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest shrine in Islam.<br /><br />*<br /><b>One of the most influential portrayals of the conflict is the explicitly religious “Our Struggle with the Jews,” by Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian writer sometimes referred to as the godfather of Islamic fundamentalism. </b>First published in the early 1950s, Qutb’s essay was reprinted in Saudi Arabia in 1970 and widely disseminated throughout the Muslim world. It has had an enormous influence on the development of an Islamist view of the Arab–Israeli conflict as a centuries-old Muslim–Jewish conflict.<br /><br /><b>For Qutb, the Jews are a decadent, dangerously influential, and eternal enemy of Islam.</b> “The Jews have confronted Islam with enmity from the moment that the Islamic state was established in Medina….[They] will be satisfied only with the destruction of this religion [Islam].” This war of the Jews against the faithful has “not been extinguished even for one moment, for close on fourteen centuries.” Whenever the Jews return to their “evil-doing” by trying to take possession of the land, writes Qutb, <b>“Allah sends against them others of his servants,” including, in more recent times, “Hitler to rule over them.”</b> So it is to this very day: “If you return, then We return,” and what awaits you will be “the worst kind of punishment.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The war in Gaza continues and is becoming more intense, but politicians, diplomats, and commentators are already looking beyond the fighting for solutions to the Arab–Israeli conflict. <br /><br />But there can be<b> no easy solution to an eliminationist ideology inspired by religion.<br /></b><br /><b>On multiple occasions in the past, a two-state solution has been proposed by diplomats, endorsed by Israel, and rejected by its Arab adversaries. Especially in the aftermath of October 7, however, it is unlikely that Israel would agree to one.</b> The same is true for the fantasy of <b>a one-state solution; in this scenario, the fate of the Jews may be easily gauged by the tragic fate of Arab Christians in the lands of Islam.<br /></b><br /><b>Progressives in the West are the inheritors of a secular conviction that all humanity’s problems are solvable</b>. They typically look at the Arab–Israeli dispute only as a clash of national, political, and territorial claims. Problems of that kind can be solved. <b>But</b> <b>the absolutist tenets of fundamentalist Islam cannot be compromised with. And nothing is gained by pretending these founding principles don’t exist.</b><br /><br />October 7 put the lie to all this all over again. Whatever its other aims on that day, Hamas was looking to win a “Victory for Allah.” Fueled by religiously inspired hatred of Jews, they will keep at it unless and until they are decisively defeated. That must include defeating their ideology, which is shared by others in the region and well beyond. It will be a task for the generations. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://sapirjournal.org/war-in-israel/2023/11/the-palestinian-problem-is-a-religious-problem/">https://sapirjournal.org/war-in-israel/2023/11/the-palestinian-problem-is-a-religious-problem/<br /></a></span></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>NICHOLAS KRISTOF: WHAT WE GET WRONG ABOUT ISRAEL AND GAZA<br /></b><br />~ <b>The tragedy of the Middle East is that this is a clash of right versus right. That does not excuse Hamas’s massacre and savagery or Israel’s leveling of entire neighborhoods in Gaza, but underlying the conflict are certain legitimate aspirations that deserve to be fulfilled.<br /></b><br /><i><b>Israelis deserve their country, forged by refugees in the shadow of the Holocaust, and they have built a high-tech economy that largely empowers women and respects gay people, while giving its Palestinian citizens more rights than most Arab nations give their citizens. Israel’s courts, media freedom and civil society are models for the region, and there is something of a double standard: Critics pounce on Israeli abuses while often ignoring prolonged brutality against Muslims from Yemen to Syria, Western Sahara to Xinjiang.</b><br /></i><br /><b>“We are normal people, trying to live,” an engineer in Gaza told me by phone. He despises Hamas and would like to see it removed from power, but he says that Hamas fighters are safe in tunnels while he and his children are the ones most at risk: “We’re the civilians paying the price.”<br /></b><br />Whichever side you are more inclined toward, remember that the other includes desperate human beings merely hoping that their children can live freely and thrive in their own nation.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The second myth is that Palestinians can be put off indefinitely, strung along by Israel, the United States and other countries. That was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy, his way of avoiding a Palestinian state, and it worked for a time — the way a pressure cooker works, until it explodes.</b><br /><br />It’s difficult to know the counterfactual, whether a Palestinian state would have been better for Israeli security. But <b>Palestinian statelessness in retrospect has not made Israel safe, and risks may increase if the Palestinian Authority collapses from corruption, ineffectiveness and lack of legitimacy.</b><br /><br /><i><b>Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, said that one of the Hamas attackers on October 7 was carrying instructions for releasing chemical weapons, and that’s a reminder of the risk that terrorism experts have worried about for years of extremist groups turning to biological and chemical agents.</b></i><br /><br />Israel has a right to feel anxious in any case, but <b>I suspect that the best way to ensure its security may be not to defer Palestinian aspirations but to honor them with a two-state solution. This is not just a concession to Arabs but a pragmatic acknowledgment of Israel’s own interests — and the world’s.<br /></b><br /><i><b>The third myth is found on both sides of the conflict and is approximately: It’s too bad we have to engage in this bloodshed, but the people on the other side understand only violence.</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b><br />I hear that from friends who support the war in Gaza and regard me as well-meaning but misguided, as a naif who fails to comprehend the sad reality that the only way to keep Israel safe is to pulverize Gaza and uproot Hamas at whatever human cost.</b><br /></i><br />Hamas indeed understands only violence, and it has been brutal to Israelis and Palestinians alike — but Hamas and Palestinians are not the same, just as violent settlers in the West Bank do not represent all Israelis.<b> I’m all for surgical strikes against Hamas and I would be delighted if Israel managed to end extremism in Gaza. But so far, I’m afraid that the ferocity and lack of precision in Israel’s attack has fulfilled Hamas’s goal of escalating the Palestinian issue and changing the Middle East dynamic (and Hamas is indifferent to Palestinian casualties).</b><br /><br /><b>In that sense, Hamas may be winning.<br /></b><br />Five weeks into this war, I don’t see evidence that Israel’s military has degraded Hamas in a significant way, but it has killed vast numbers of civilians, put the Palestinian struggle on top of the global agenda, dissipated the initial torrent of sympathy for Israel, prompted people around the globe to march for Palestine, distracted attention from kidnapped Israelis and ruptured any possibility soon of Israel’s normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia.<br /><br />My friend Roy Grow, an international relations specialist at Carleton College who died in 2013, used to say that </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>a crucial goal of terror organizations was getting the adversary to overreact. He compared this to jujitsu, with terrorist organizations using their opponents’ weight against them — and that is what Hamas has done.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />Each side has dehumanized the other, but people are complex and neither side is monolithic — and remember that wars are not about populations but about people. These are people like Mohammed Alshannat, a doctoral student in Gaza, who has been sending desperate messages to friends who shared them with me; he agreed to allow me to publish them as a glimpse into Gazan life.<br /><br />“There was heavy bombing in our area,” he wrote in English in one message. “We run for our lives and I lost two of my children in the dark. Me and my wife stayed all night searching for them amidst hundreds of airstrikes. We miraculously survived an airstrike and found them fainted in the morning. Please pray for us. The situation is beyond description.”<br /><br /><b>“I see death a hundred times a day,” he wrote another time. “We defecate in the open and my children defecate on themselves and there is no water to clean them.”<br /></b><br />If he survives the war, what will we Americans say to him and his children? How will we explain that we supplied bombs for this war, that we were complicit in his family’s terror and degradation?<br /><br /><b>If there is a path forward toward peace — whether in two states or one state — it will begin with all of us moving beyond stereotypes. Israelis are not the same as Netanyahu, and Palestinians are not the same as Hamas.<br /></b><br /><i><b>Seeking humanity in each side means demanding the release of Israeli hostages and calling out the dehumanization that leads people to pull down posters for kidnapped Israelis. It also means renouncing what Netanyahu called “mighty vengeance” that transforms entire neighborhoods of Gaza into rubble, with bodies buried underneath.</b><br /></i><br />I’m exasperated by people whose hearts bleed for only one side, or who say about the toll on the other: “It’s tragic, but ….” No “buts.” Unless you believe in human rights for Jews AND for Palestinians, you don’t actually believe in human rights.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Fixing this crisis starts with acknowledging a principle so basic that it shouldn’t need mentioning: All children’s lives have equal value, and good people come in all nationalities. ~ </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMtloRDqxF9j3o44Du8OlSSp_D3zl2ups_VrjMfTFwZVAEDx0XbUnrYjmBp23j7ZCmRnJYpQlDCMpgweYwizDsAbsE941Jmzd7gq8-hgnCBVK5ZHZGLjy_9OkeN0f5cHrrtD7nT6R8B8WREoHdwoEZTx0gdm00n8mCmnt1VL3S0TGIEcDZKUwelYoh6iF5/s1600/gaza%20rocket%20Tel%20Aviv.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMtloRDqxF9j3o44Du8OlSSp_D3zl2ups_VrjMfTFwZVAEDx0XbUnrYjmBp23j7ZCmRnJYpQlDCMpgweYwizDsAbsE941Jmzd7gq8-hgnCBVK5ZHZGLjy_9OkeN0f5cHrrtD7nT6R8B8WREoHdwoEZTx0gdm00n8mCmnt1VL3S0TGIEcDZKUwelYoh6iF5/w400-h266/gaza%20rocket%20Tel%20Aviv.png" width="400" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>First published in The New York Times. </i></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Image: After a Gaza rocket hit in Tel Aviv</i> <i> </i></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Below: Aftermath of a Hamas raid </i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqdUEuI3ZD8xOzI-LOyIgJY4n7NAh_rKzYadg_xOgaE6NBlZYHQcs8FzDSC5_bwxvrcMADS-TiP7Xv4TLyXSGCtGCijndh8juytTyymUiJXBcMZyFiOHgfkT5AOqDNjlzn-sm0BEQ0TO4qX9i5N789JbxCJXsgamEuOB4JsYkV2TdFrPfnwv6DC97Iwpoo/s602/Hamas%20raid%20blood%20floor.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="402" data-original-width="602" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqdUEuI3ZD8xOzI-LOyIgJY4n7NAh_rKzYadg_xOgaE6NBlZYHQcs8FzDSC5_bwxvrcMADS-TiP7Xv4TLyXSGCtGCijndh8juytTyymUiJXBcMZyFiOHgfkT5AOqDNjlzn-sm0BEQ0TO4qX9i5N789JbxCJXsgamEuOB4JsYkV2TdFrPfnwv6DC97Iwpoo/w400-h268/Hamas%20raid%20blood%20floor.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>THE HAMAS FIGHTERS SEEMED ELATED WHEN COMMITTING ATROCITIES<br /></b><br />Recently I’ve read something related: that the German soldiers did not look thrilled when shooting women and children. They had dreamed of being heroes, and instead their task turned out to be the opposite of heroic. They’d return to their base and start drinking to forget. Their commanders wrote desperate letters to Berlin, warning of growing alcoholism among the troops.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmivUM0tlwc">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmivUM0tlwc</a> <br /><br />Oriana:<br /><br />It occurred to me that if the goal of Hamas were the highest possible body count, they wouldn’t have engaged in more time-intensive activities like decapitating, burning, mutilating, and other atrocities. Then I realized that <b>the point of terrorism isn’t a quick death, but a horrible death.</b><br /><br />Cruelty and degradation— that was more important than mere body count.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbEj6ZqvzCzdJb4lDKIfte2k43EWCVX_gLveJBTd48nglZChN5Kw6Nx4vJuJxluwMr-b6X8lt8xiOvSwzxPAJ-g9KzSBHtfkg5jnpX5OKR5hAb0ry9evzbgiqm0ClHLbgGWW77XNj1iNd-AFev0VVoaRfyEc0bMHclxUecqdCi-4gxZkeEIZn3jnxtFJ5B/s709/Hamas%20civilians%20burned%20alive.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="709" data-original-width="602" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbEj6ZqvzCzdJb4lDKIfte2k43EWCVX_gLveJBTd48nglZChN5Kw6Nx4vJuJxluwMr-b6X8lt8xiOvSwzxPAJ-g9KzSBHtfkg5jnpX5OKR5hAb0ry9evzbgiqm0ClHLbgGWW77XNj1iNd-AFev0VVoaRfyEc0bMHclxUecqdCi-4gxZkeEIZn3jnxtFJ5B/s320/Hamas%20civilians%20burned%20alive.jpg" width="272" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Charles:<br /><br />Another element of terrorism is that the terrorists want terror to go on forever. Timelessness of terror.<br /><br />*<br /><b>RUSSIAN WOMEN URGED TO FOREGO EDUCATION IN FAVOR OF REPRODUCTION<br /></b><br />Member of the Federation Council Margarita Pavlova announced the direction in which Putin’s regime intends to take Russia: <b>it’s time to stop focusing girls on going to college — girls should give birth.</b><br /><br />“The system of values should be reconsidered,” stated the 44-year-old senator from Chelyabinsk region.<br /><br />“It should be reconsidered from the point of view of, we should stop orienting girls to obtain higher education!” explained Pavlova.<br /><br />Because, according to her, young people spend time on getting education and “trying to find themselves” — which gives them nothing and a total waste of time, while what the young women should be doing is reproducing.<br /><br />(Pavlova herself, however, first went to university and got a degree, before giving birth at 27. Then she got a second degree.)<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXPf01-lfD0RUXQViZniph_URprgEoZkqoIQwyf2pXo9FOEphyphenhyphentHAwtMoFt26keOkJaxgqT4IouT3mBfz03ckMmoS7nJff4YHO1MO-QjUIVWPq85Y5LVf_8Jzb0D9w3wq2du3i5-R_-5TvAitJEbtIYMYZQUPRmix8Fx1vTrYrSaXpOfKl3me61Bi0PCVD/s602/Margarita%20Pavlova%20urges%20women%20to%20have%20children.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="476" data-original-width="602" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXPf01-lfD0RUXQViZniph_URprgEoZkqoIQwyf2pXo9FOEphyphenhyphentHAwtMoFt26keOkJaxgqT4IouT3mBfz03ckMmoS7nJff4YHO1MO-QjUIVWPq85Y5LVf_8Jzb0D9w3wq2du3i5-R_-5TvAitJEbtIYMYZQUPRmix8Fx1vTrYrSaXpOfKl3me61Bi0PCVD/w400-h316/Margarita%20Pavlova%20urges%20women%20to%20have%20children.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Margarita Pavlova, advocate of early reproduction to combat Russian "underpopulation"<br /></i><br /><b>The ban on abortions seems to be next on the list</b>, as private medical clinics in Russia are hard-pressed to “voluntarily” stop offering abortions. (I suppose, if the clinic didn’t “stop voluntarily”, it wouldn’t be operating for long.)<br /><br />One private clinic after the other had been announcing they will no longer offer the service. In the occupied Crimea, Chelyabinsk and Kursk regions and Tatarstan, private clinics are stopping to offer abortions.<br /><br />The head physician of ‘Atlant’ medical center in Kursk, Vladimir Pavlovsky, announced that “every saved child is the asset of the state.”<br /><br /><b>Patriarch Kirill proclaimed that the birth rate in Russia “could be increased by a wave of a magic wand”, if “we learn how to talk women out of having abortions”.<br /></b><br /><b>”Giant country and the population is totally insufficient,” angrily stated Kirill. “We need more people! It’s an obvious fact, everybody admits it — politicians, sociologists.”<br /></b><br />The Chairman of the Patriarchal Commission on Family Issues, Priest Fyodor Lukyanov, called for a complete ban on abortions in Russia.<br /><br /><b>“Abortions are national suicide. We need to follow the example of African countries where abortions are prohibited!”, proclaimed Lukyanov.<br /></b><br />18-year-old boys — drafted by the military, trained to kill, sent to Ukraine to kill Ukrainians.<br />18-year-old girls — no need to study in a college, must be reproducing without delay.<br /><br />The future of young people in Russia is bright and clear!<br /><br /><b>It’s clear that Putin’s state doesn’t intend to stop “protecting Russians from the evil West” in another two decades.<br /></b><br />Right now, the Russian army is protecting Mother Russia — and Russian mothers — in Ukraine.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">There is still a lot of protection that needs to be done — propaganda TV names the targets all the time: Baltics, Poland, Germany, UK and America, and all the “Russophobic” countries where Russia isn’t loved.<br /><br />Putin’s state is already preparing.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhit3XhdE-LG-QFlsCVaWG-y3mbTzD3d2Vae35Z20bSSx_6rxu-7HlEvqcPyWZUao0ar1E7ZASgAv2l2W8jHxSAkoxZ61I8Kyt_NtBJZvMPxfcTD7DtbqQKLe-MXhLEVvJzkwyhiZ5QZ6oVAPCijJ90A1edUBisaZLU-knYZ740-Tq9ECgu08lYqrO8xQXv/s602/Soviet%20billboard%20anti%20abortion.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="406" data-original-width="602" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhit3XhdE-LG-QFlsCVaWG-y3mbTzD3d2Vae35Z20bSSx_6rxu-7HlEvqcPyWZUao0ar1E7ZASgAv2l2W8jHxSAkoxZ61I8Kyt_NtBJZvMPxfcTD7DtbqQKLe-MXhLEVvJzkwyhiZ5QZ6oVAPCijJ90A1edUBisaZLU-knYZ740-Tq9ECgu08lYqrO8xQXv/s320/Soviet%20billboard%20anti%20abortion.jpg" width="320" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Protect me today, and I’ll be there to protect you tomorrow</i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Billboards
saying “protect me now — I will protect you later” (with a photo of a
pregnant woman and then a child soldier) are popping up next to
billboards advertising army contract service, in the streets of Russian
cities.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />Does the West take notice? ~ Elena Gold, Quora<br /><br />Farmall Empta:<br />That “oh, here’s the problem. It’s THIS one thing right here!” type of analysis is always a fool’s garden. Abortion is not THE problem. It’s everything about Russia that leads to the abortion decisions. Meaning it’s incredibly multifaceted and starts right at the top and the completely f*cked up mess that Russia and Russian culture and Russian society have been since the days of the Mongol Horde.<br /><br />Russell Wim:<br />A totalitarian dystopia.<br /><br />Karl Hui:<br />Oookay, I'm totally expecting Putin to just go all in on the 1984 vibe at this point, and just straight out decree that women will only be breeding stock from now on to give Mother Russia another wave of meat to throw into the grinder.<br /><br />Mogens Møllen:<br />There are two problems with the concept. First, when all the young men are being send off to be slaughtered in senseless wars, who shall support women and children, when they have no education, and second, what kind of women will give birth to sons just to see them being slaughtered in senseless meat attacks in Ukraine — or wherever Russias next war will be.<br />As the nazis said about women: Kinder, Küche, Kirche.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDhZx1EHx5MW_mmQZxEfG1TR3AiyInzcejen8h4HppH6C7RUyIqyJiw9JF-U9ZwZHGlZLCvtHzeSMIez6koXvlf_aQ5Dm7nca3w-b3b019GQbifxg3bglXXr3o85nR1zL1ntvZmODBH-_vn-GGfrTchBTSsg-ac5OsxeDpiRT1SkzN78GyI_nabZrFDiel/s782/Kinder%20Kuche,%20Kirche.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="514" data-original-width="782" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDhZx1EHx5MW_mmQZxEfG1TR3AiyInzcejen8h4HppH6C7RUyIqyJiw9JF-U9ZwZHGlZLCvtHzeSMIez6koXvlf_aQ5Dm7nca3w-b3b019GQbifxg3bglXXr3o85nR1zL1ntvZmODBH-_vn-GGfrTchBTSsg-ac5OsxeDpiRT1SkzN78GyI_nabZrFDiel/w400-h263/Kinder%20Kuche,%20Kirche.webp" width="400" /></a></b></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Joseph L DiSano:<br />Right out of the Nazi playbook.<br /><br />Dan Waage:<br />They need more killers.<br /><br />*<br /><b>CAN THE RUSSIAN COMMUNIST PARTY WIN AN ELECTION IN RUSSIA?<br /></b><br /><b>Yes, it’s possible—in post-Putin Russia.<br /></b><br /><i><b>The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) is a populist nationalist party that uses Stalinist vocabulary to promote ideas of Russia’s imperial greatness.</b><br /></i><br />It homesteads our political scene under the terms dictated by President Putin. This means never challenging him or his policies. It also includes voicing an anti-oligarchical clamor without doing anything real against our Stoligarchy (“state” + “oligarchy”). <b>They have a loyal power base among nostalgic seniors. What’s more important, they have a good presence in the provinces.</b><br /><br /><b>Post-Putin, the most likely direction Russia’s politics are going to take is radical nationalism and the re-distribution of oligarchical assets. The Communist Party seems to be the best positioned to give it all an ideological shine.<br /></b><br />Without Putin, our ruling party, United Russia, will most probably get shattered by infighting between powerful players in Putin’s circle. <b>The Communists’ appeal to the older generation—the group that most dutifully participates in every vote—will also give them a big electoral advantage. </b>Also, they enjoy the support of some oligarchical clans on the national and local levels, which secures funding for their political campaigns.<br /><br />Below, <i><b>Communist teenagers hold the banner “I want to live in the USSR.”</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsIldpHcvQGFxCHEP9vQYYIM7LJWH6qmUaziRXZnJR9K5-fZdj_H119iWcFPkZYg2phjAPPtR6BuVPiXev2WQHBsabjic0lCbccQDe8ymxZT6liK8OQoZfspH2D1S9QoAjDufZReZzo6TdCFnlaFJRfUBRZ8jQNM7I9dJp47RMNIgO2-sCvuiXu5gpMEoA/s600/russian%20youth%20ya%20hochy%20zhit'%20b%20CCCP.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="412" data-original-width="600" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsIldpHcvQGFxCHEP9vQYYIM7LJWH6qmUaziRXZnJR9K5-fZdj_H119iWcFPkZYg2phjAPPtR6BuVPiXev2WQHBsabjic0lCbccQDe8ymxZT6liK8OQoZfspH2D1S9QoAjDufZReZzo6TdCFnlaFJRfUBRZ8jQNM7I9dJp47RMNIgO2-sCvuiXu5gpMEoA/w400-h275/russian%20youth%20ya%20hochy%20zhit'%20b%20CCCP.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">~ Dima Vorobiev, Quora<br /><br />*<br /><b>WHY THE US STILL HAS DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME<br /></b><br />The current March to November system that the US follows began in 2007, but the concept of “saving daylight” is much older. Daylight Saving Time has its roots in train schedules, but it was put into practice in Europe and the United States to save fuel and power during World War I, according to the US Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics.<br /><br /><b>The US kept Daylight Saving Time permanent during most of World War II. The idea was put in place to conserve fuel and keep things standard. As the war came to a close in 1945, Gallup asked respondents how we should tell time. </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Only 17% wanted to keep what was then called “war time” all year.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />During the energy crisis of the 1970s, we tried permanent Daylight Saving Time again in the winter of 1973-1974. The idea again was to conserve fuel. It was a popular move at the time when President Richard Nixon signed the law in January 1974. But by the end of the month, <i><b>Florida’s governor had called for the law’s repeal after eight schoolchildren were hit by cars in the dark. Schools across the country delayed start times until the sun came up.</b><br /></i><br /><b>By summer, public approval had plummeted, and in early October Congress voted to switch back to standard time.<br /></b><br /><b>In the US, states are not required by law to “fall back” or “spring forward.” Hawaii, most of Arizona and some territories in the Pacific and Caribbean do not observe Daylight Saving Time. The twice-yearly switcheroo is irritating enough to lawmakers of all political stripes that the US Senate passed legislation in March 2022 to make Daylight Saving Time permanent. The bill passed by unanimous consent.</b> It would need to pass the House of Representatives and be signed by President Joe Biden to become law.<br /><br />House lawmakers failed to vote on the bill in 2022. However, on March 2, a dozen senators forming a bipartisan group reintroduced the legislation that would end clock switching in favor of permanent Daylight Saving Time. Companion legislation to the Sunshine Protection Act was introduced by Rep. Vern Buchanan, a Republican from Florida, in the House.<br /><br />DO WE NEED DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME?<br /><br />Studies over the last 25 years have shown the one-hour change disrupts body rhythms tuned to Earth’s rotation, adding fuel to the debate over whether having Daylight Saving Time in any form is a good idea.<br /><br /><b>The issue is that for every argument there is a counterargument. There are studies, for example, that show we have more car accidents when people lose an extra hour of sleep. There are also studies that show robberies decline when there is an extra hour of sunlight at the end of the day. We also know that people suffer more heart attacks at the start of Daylight Saving Time. But what about our mental health? People seem to be happier when there is an extra hour of daylight.</b></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Of course, there’s the economy, which pays for all that outdoor fun in the sun. </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Although saving energy was often put out as a reason to have Daylight Saving Time, the energy saved isn’t much — if anything at all.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />Instead, the lobbying effort for Daylight Saving Time came mostly from different sectors of the economy. In the mid-20th century, lobby groups for the recreational sports industry (think driving ranges) wanted more customers to come out after a day at the office. It’s easier to do so when there is more light at the end of the day.<br /><br />But the movie industry didn’t like Daylight Saving Time. You’re less likely to go to a movie when it’s bright outside. Despite the myth, farmers didn’t like it either because it made it difficult to get their food to the market in the morning.<br /><br />The bottom line: It’s not clear whether having that extra hour of sunlight at the end of the day versus the beginning is helpful. It just depends on who you are and what you want. And <b>it doesn’t look like Daylight Saving Time in the US is going away anytime soon.</b> ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/05/health/daylight-saving-time-explainer-wellness/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/05/health/daylight-saving-time-explainer-wellness/index.html<br /></a></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggBM5jgFEt8l5pbh_GSFaS0dg4p6VEEXXSXn_JrmqytDbgaEpjqXhPvKPEeq5RjMyYx0DBq5Xbh0SYOkGwR3EVAEvyo0bP0GIBxwSXbuZ3L6KTV9JdUE6fAPu5vdlImWWq468ERm_hFoKWmqUq1sJgajmXEyaeIxWgx3T4TWwkRNA2YqGlYu1FfNbN5D4m/s800/daylily%20maestro%20Puccini%20Mim.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggBM5jgFEt8l5pbh_GSFaS0dg4p6VEEXXSXn_JrmqytDbgaEpjqXhPvKPEeq5RjMyYx0DBq5Xbh0SYOkGwR3EVAEvyo0bP0GIBxwSXbuZ3L6KTV9JdUE6fAPu5vdlImWWq468ERm_hFoKWmqUq1sJgajmXEyaeIxWgx3T4TWwkRNA2YqGlYu1FfNbN5D4m/w400-h400/daylily%20maestro%20Puccini%20Mim.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Daylily</i><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />*<br /><b>WHEN WILL THE US POPULATION WILL START DECLINING?<br /></b><br />~ <b>The US population is projected to peak in 2080, then start declining, according to a new analysis by the US Census Bureau.<br /></b><br /><b>Projections released Thursday predict the country’s population will reach nearly 370 million in 2080, and by 2100 will have declined to 366 million.<br /></b><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>It’s the first time Census projections have indicated the US population will decline</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;">, according to William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.<br /><br />But as the US population ages and the birth rate declines, these latest Census projections reveal how the number of newcomers arriving in the US could significantly change this picture going forward.<br /><br /><b>In the zero-immigration scenario, the US population would peak next year at 333.4 million. In the lower-immigration scenario, it would peak at 345.9 million in 2043. If immigration increases, then the population is projected to continue climbing through th<br />e end of the century.</b><br /><br />“These (projections) emphasize that immigration is an even a bigger contributor long-term to our demographic growth and stability than perhaps it was in the past,” Frey says.<br /><br />The Census analysis also predicts a slower rate of population growth than previous projections, due to new data reflecting recent trends, Census demographer Sandra Johnson said in a news release.<br /><br />“The U.S. has experienced notable shifts in the components of population change over the last five years,” Johnson said. “Some of these, like the increases in mortality caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, are expected to be short-term while others, including <b>the declines in fertility that have persisted for decades, are likely to continue into the future</b>.”<br /><br />WHY FOCUS ON IMMIGRATION?<br /><br /><b>Experts look at three major factors when predicting population growth: births, deaths and immigration.<br /></b><br /><b>For years, demographers have pointed out that the US population growth rate is slowing as birth rates decline. When that’s happened in the past, immigration has made up the difference.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>But how many people come to the US can change based on policies and politics here and around the world</b>. A document explaining Thursday’s Census projections says <b>immigration is “arguably the most uncertain of the population change components” used in projections.<br /></b><br /><b>But despite its uncertainty, immigration is vitally important, Frey says.<br /></b><br />“We’re a country that’s getting older. It’s growing more slowly. Immigration is able to put some of the brakes on that so that we’re not in the situation of Japan or Germany or Italy, which have much more difficulty in terms of the already slowing labor force or declining population.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Overall, the world’s population is rising and could peak at a record 10.4 billion in the mid-2080s</b>, according to the United Nations. And <b><i>this year, India overtook China to become the world’s most populous country.</i></b><br /><br />Meanwhile, <b>China and many European nations have started to see birth rates dropping. Many demographers and economists see cause for concern. But some environmental activists are less worried, describing potential population declines as a trend that could help the planet.</b></span></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Still, Frey says, something about the latest Census projections stands out.<br />The low rate of population growth, and the projections of a decline, are something “we’ve really not seen for most of our lifetimes, until now.” ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/09/us/us-population-decline-census-projections-cec/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/09/us/us-population-decline-census-projections-cec/index.html<br /></a><br /><br />*<br /><b>THE END OF RETIREMENT?<br /></b><br />~ <b>Every generation lives longer than the one that came before—nothing new there. But a fifty-year span between the end of work and the end of life is a long way from the original purpose of paid retirement, which was a very short bridge of financial support. Or no bridge at all.</b> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Otto von Bismarck has been trotted out and smacked down many times for his invention of paid retirement: in 1881, <b>Bismarck proposed that all Germans had the right to government support after a life of work, with payments kicking in at age seventy. Except that life expectancy in the 1880s was about forty years. When Canada created its own pension plan, in 1965, to address the growing poverty of retired Canadians sixty-five and older—thank you, Lester B. Pearson, for my monthly CPP cheque—the life expectancy of men, who made up the bulk of the workforce, was sixty-eight.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><i>“There’s not enough gold in my golden years,” I told Klein a few months into my retirement.</i></b> I could feel him smiling sympathetically across the phone line. “You’re not alone,” he assured me. Rents, mortgages, groceries—Canadians are suffering. I described the little house graphic on my gas bill: the house keeps getting smaller, thanks to my ferocious vigilance. But the bill keeps getting bigger, thanks to the cost of gas. And that’s just standard housekeeping. Throw in the unexpected, like a family wedding or grown kids moving back home, and many retired people land “somewhere on the spectrum of panic,” Klein said.<br /><br /><b>It’s not only the retired who need to worry about supporting themselves in the long stretch of their future. Working generations coming up behind them will also shoulder this burden. A metric called the dependency ratio calculates the proportion of the people not in the workforce who are “dependent” on those of working age.</b> According to Statistics Canada, dependents are aged zero to nineteen and sixty-five and over. Productives are twenty to sixty-four. The international tool is often cited by government and business and has been a driver of pension-reform debates around the world.<br /><br /><i><b>A low dependency ratio—in Mexico, for example—means that there are enough people working to support the dependent population. A high ratio—Japan and South Korea are at the top—indicates more financial stress on workers. Across all OECD countries right now, there are about thirty people sixty-five and over for every 100 people of working age. In 1950, that ratio was fourteen to 100; by 2075, it is predicted to increase to fifty-five non-working adults for every 100 working.</b></i><br /><br />In Canada, we’re at the lower end, with dependency expected to hit about thirty-five by 2025, according to 2015 data from the OECD, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. But <b>by 2075, our dependency ratio is projected to be 49.9—one dependent for every two working-age Canadians. That’s a big burden for Xs, Ms, and Zs. “The shrinking percentage of young people means that in the future, the number of workers may be insufficient to finance the pensions of retirees,” according to StatCan.</b><br /><br />The original meaning of the word “retire,” from the French “retirer,” is the act of retreating, falling back, withdrawing into seclusion. Except the retirees I spoke to for this story had go-go schedules that I was worn out just hearing about. Many had taken on dramatically different types of paid employment after leaving their careers; others had unleashed their inner rebels to become tireless advocates for social justice and climate change; still others were full-time caregivers.<br /><br /><b>Samir Sinha called the dependency ratio outdated and misguided. The director of geriatrics at Sinai Health and University Health Network in Toronto and a passionate defender of the rights of older Canadians argued that such concepts hold us back. “They don’t recognize the new reality that at sixty-five you’re likely to have twenty years” of good and productive life ahead.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>The retired are among the country’s biggest contributors to child care and volunteer work</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;">, Sinha said. “Think about the amount governments save for the unpaid care that mostly older people are providing. When we’ve priced out the unpaid caregiver, we’re valuing that in the billions and billions of dollars every year.”<br /><br />Mieko Ise might be called a “silent retiree”: someone who quietly leaves the workforce to look after family members in need. For years, she juggled looking after her own and her husband’s parents while working full time for a Toronto nonprofit. “I started to have issues with being a caregiver and a full-time employee,” said Ise, now in her sixties. “I would take vacation days. I would book time off. My boss was not particularly sympathetic. I get it. I don’t believe employers should carry the load of your life burden.” When it became too overwhelming to have two jobs, Ise quit the one we count as work.<br /><br />Sinha pointed me to <b>a Japanese movie called Plan 75, directed by Chie Hayakawa and released in 2022. In a dystopian future, Japan—which in real life is the demographically oldest OECD country, with a projected dependency ratio of seventy-seven to 100 by 2075—offers $1,000 to the elderly to terminate their own lives and relieve society of the burden of supporting them. </b> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The movie, which I watched with my seventy-six-year-old sister (a lawyer who retired at seventy-two), opened with a violent murder off camera. We heard the blast of gunshot and saw a wheelchair toppled on its side. “Cheery beginning,” said Laura. (It turned out—spoiler—the real Plan 75 was to sell the older generations’ ashes for profit to a recycling company. The message of the sweetly weird movie was it’s better not to kill our elders.)<br /><br /><i><b>The year before Plan 75 came out, Yusuke Narita, an assistant professor of economics at Yale University, suggested mass suicide and disembowelment for Japan’s aged. “I feel like the only solution is pretty clear,” he said in a 2021 video. Narita later softened his comments in response to questions from the New York Times, saying they were an “abstract metaphor” (disembowelment seems pretty visceral to me). But he did win a big audience: he now has more than 600,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter).</b></i><br /><br />It’s true that the number of people over sixty-five is growing faster in countries across Asia than anywhere else in the world at the same time that the size of their younger generations shrinks. That means as many as half of Japan’s employers report shortages of full-time workers, according to New York Times reporting from earlier this year on ageing in Asia. <b>Workers in their seventies and even eighties are stepping up to fill the gap, taking lower-paying jobs as delivery drivers, office cleaners, and store clerks—jobs that the younger generations don’t want. </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>A quarter of people sixty-five and over in Japan are currently working.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><br /></b><br />The number is the same in Canada and increasing: 24 percent of Canadians aged sixty-five to seventy still work in jobs that can be measured, up from 11 percent in 2000. But the dependency ratio reinforces the belief that those sixty-five and over are not working. Workers are not counted as workers because they’ve aged out of the way that we count them.<br /><br />“The Greys” is what the older generation working for Succession’s Waystar RoyCo were called. They were often shot bunched together like an endangered species. They put on compression socks before flying. They plotted for their golden parachutes. Or maybe “one last rodeo,” as Karl, Waystar’s CFO, suggested to Frank, former vice chairman, in the final minutes of the hit series. Cut to Tom, the brand new CEO: “Frank, dead. Karl, dead. I really don’t need those two old cunts on my shoulder.”<br /><br />I thought it was funny as hell. Or I did before my conversation with <b>Lisa Taylor, president of Challenge Factory and co-author of The Talent Revolution: Longevity and the Future of Work. Taylor described ageism as “the last socially acceptable form of prejudice.” She and her company have set 2030—the year the last of the boomers reach sixty-five—as the target for solving what she described as the far-reaching and urgent issue of this country’s age-biased workforce.</b><br /><br />I was skeptical. Surely, there are more important workplace issues to solve, like equity and fairness for people of every race and gender. But after a couple of hours on the phone with Taylor, I came to believe that treating retirement as a default outcome of aging is a workplace bias that will affect the life expectancy, financial dependency, and long-term care costs for a generation retiring earlier than it needs or wants to. Not to mention the impact on the economy. Taylor said if we want to take advantage of our full workforce—<b>in 2022, Canada had nearly a million job vacancies—we need to get to a point where we “recognize and call out agism with the same level of comfort as we do other prejudices in our workplaces.</b>”<br /><br />Systemic ageism was meant to have been legislated out of the workplace in 2006, when the Ontario Human Rights Commission won the argument that Canadian workers don’t come with a best-before date stamped on their foreheads. (I was a manager at the Globe and Mail at the time, I was fifty-one, and there was a lot of backroom worry about carrying the Greys on our backs—and a lot of wisecracks about a superannuated newsroom.) But <b>even though sixty-five hasn’t been the legal age for retirement for seventeen years, “we’re constantly looking for ways to push them out the door,” said Sinha—with retirement packages, buyouts, and pension contributions capped at sixty-five.<br /></b><br />Taylor’s company did a workplace survey of the financial services industry in 2015, and it showed that <b>as early as age forty-nine, workers were no longer sent for training or high-performance programs and future-focused career conversations had slowed down. By the time someone hit fifty-five, “the conversation about leaving had been going on for years, except no one was actually saying it.”</b><br /><br />My own conversations with retired Canadians, particularly men in finance, bore this out. Raymond Betts worked most of his life in the frenetic world of institutional equity in New York, Boston, and Toronto. (Betts asked that his name be changed for this article.) <b>When he turned fifty-three, the company hired a younger employee to do the same job as his, without discussing it with him.</b> <b>“My desk was originally thirty-six inches long; they kept moving me to a smaller desk until I ended up sitting at one that was twenty-four inches long.” Betts left that world at sixty, taking his skills and work ethic to his second career as a real estate agent.<br /></b><br />Many people buy into the company storyline that their best years are behind them—the proverbial coasting into retirement. <b>“People start to say, ‘Susan’s checked out. Susan retired a few years ago, she just hasn’t told us,’” said Taylor. “It’s attributed to age instead of the company’s mismanagement of talent.</b>”<br /><br />It’s not a big step from there to <b>the accepted myths about older workers: they’re slower and less productive. They’re over the hill, so training them is a cost instead of an investment. Ditto spending any time performance-managing them. The stickiest myth is that the long-time employee is too expensive.</b> “Get this senior person off the books and hire two younger people to replace them,” is how Sinha put it. I’ve been part of those conversations myself about retirement-age people; likely my bosses also had them about me.<b> But seeing the older worker as a financial burden is a failure of math.<br /></b><br />“Calculations of how much employees cost a company generally include salary and benefits packages,” said Taylor. However, <b>their not having to learn on the job, be trained, or engage the resources of a mentor, let alone the asset of being used as a mentor for younger staff—all of this also saves costs. “I have the experience, the relationships, the contacts. I work incredibly hard,” said Betts. He still does: he’s sold 132 houses in the seven years since he turned sixty.<br /></b><br />I mentioned to Taylor that some of the Greys at CBC News seemed to struggle with technology during COVID. She stopped me. “We give a pass to the twenty-three-year-old with cats walking back and forth on camera,” she said. But we snicker when someone over sixty leaves their mike off. I blamed imminent senility, especially when the person on mute was myself.<br /><br /><b>Working longer because you’re likely to live longer is not everyone’s idea of how best to reform retirement. It’s an anathema in France, to give the most widely reported example. President Emmanuel Macron finally pushed through his pension reforms this past spring, increasing the retirement age from sixty-two to sixty-four over a seven-year period.</b> In the often-violent street battles that fed headlines everywhere, protesters lost a thumb, an eye, and even, to one officer’s club in Paris, a testicle. <b>One of the many slogans from the protests stood out for me: “Leave us time to live before we die.”<br /></b><br />*<br /><br /><b>But here’s a more existential problem with retirement: it could kill you. People who stop working too soon may not have much time to live before they die. “You hear about the doctors whose entire life and identity was at the hospital,” said Sinha. Then they retire and “they’re dead a few months later.” </b>Similar sudden-death stories circulate about a certain type of driven, lifelong journalist, and I always assumed they were apocryphal. Or that the victim had been ignoring long-standing health issues.<br /><br /><b>Shortened life expectancy can be predicted by a lack of purpose</b>, Sinha said. He referred to a “meta-analysis” project from 2010 that combined research from 148 studies involving 308,849 people to show that social connection and purpose increased survival by 50 percent. A lack of social relationships created the same risk of death as well-established factors such as smoking, drinking, and obesity. <b>It was a gobsmacking discovery thirteen years ago; a lot of subsequent research has since supported the finding that early retirement can mean less time to enjoy it.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> The Blue Zones research into the world’s longest-lived people, much publicized by National Geographic and now a Netflix docu-series called Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zone, also <b>links longevity with purpose</b>. “In the island community of Okinawa”—in Japan, where very long-lived women thrive on a diet of sweet potatoes, mugwort, and goya—“everybody can tell you what their sense of purpose is,” said Sinha. “They have a word for it: ikigai, which means ‘reason for being.’”<br /><br />Every society uses markers as shorthand for people to understand each other. “In some societies, it’s your last name or who your parents were,” said Taylor. “Americans use job titles, but they’re equally likely to identify each other by the city they grew up in, or what university they went to, or what sports team they’re a fan of.”<b> In Canada, she said, “we almost exclusively use our job titles to define who we are.” Sometimes we go so far as to use our previous job to describe ourselves after we retire, in what Taylor calls a “backwards-looking identity.”</b> <b>Even when we’re not working, “we reinforce work as a critical piece of our own identity.”<br /></b><br /><b>Don O’Connor put the perils of not having purpose more starkly. He was in wealth management and real estate at TD Bank, in Toronto, for thirty-six years, so his financial literacy was better than the average Canadian’s. COVID made him realize how much he hated the three-hour commute, and so he retired last year, at sixty-two.</b> Now he works part time at a funeral home in Burlington and loves everything about it—two-minute drive, flexible hours, every day is different—and puts up with the mild astonishment of his friends about his new job, because, as he told me on our call, <b>“if you don’t do anything, you’re on an express route to death.”</b><br /><br />Here’s a bleak prospect for many retiring Canadians: they will leave or be pushed out of the workforce too soon and without enough money. They’re financially prepared for the short and medium haul of life after work, but not the long one. <b>They will go on to live too long, in too poor health (increased life expectancy has also increased the number of years people spend being sick), with a dwindling ability to support themselves or live independently.</b> Ultimately, they’ll become wards of the state, housed in long-term care at great cost to the government and society. Sinha said: “This is where our destitute end up, in these government-run facilities.” According to a 2019 report by the National Institute on Aging at Toronto Metropolitan University, <b>long-term care costs are expected to triple from $22 billion to $71 billion by 2050. </b>“It will be </span><span style="color: #800180;"><i><b>the equivalent of the modern-day Victorian poor house for our old,</b></i></span><span style="color: #351c75;">” Sinha said.<br /><br />“We know this for a fact: the human brain is not equipped to make long-term decisions,” said Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald, director of financial security research at the National Institute on Aging. “<b>The human brain is very optimistic, which is great, but it can’t process the bad things that will happen in the future.</b>” Decisions made now are not just for yourself in five years but for you in thirty years. “And that’s going to be a much more vulnerable person than you are right now, health wise.”<br /><br />The National Institute on Aging report says that, <b>by 2050, care in one’s own home will cost up to $25,000 a month; care in a retirement home or residence could be as much as $10,000 a month. Those options will be unaffordable for most Canadians. Meanwhile, the number of people caring for family members at home will decrease sharply.</b> Between now and 2050, Canada is expected to have 30 percent fewer voluntary caregivers, according to Sinha. Paid health care workers will not fill the gap: Canada’s universal health care system “was never designed to cover the provision of long-term care services,” including home and community care nursing, Sinha said. <br /><br /><b>Long-term care insurance (LTCI) is now mandatory in Germany, South Korea, and Japan. </b>Here in Canada, home-based care doesn’t even cover prescription medications. According to that 2019 Canadian Financial Capability Survey, a third of Canadians also worry they won’t be able to afford health care costs as they age, and rightly so.<br /><br /><b>“We spend the majority of our life savings paying for care in the last ten years of our life,” said Klein, the financial manager who put my life expectancy at ninety-four, which is sounding less and less like good news.<br /></b><br />The way I think about my own retirement has changed significantly since I started working on this article. I’m part of a generation that will live the longest in history and also work the longest, if the big thinkers—and the workers themselves—succeed in moving Canadians from a forty-year career path to a sixty-year one. It’s new terrain, and the best way through is to be alert, adaptable, open to failure, and ready to act fast on success.<br /><br /><b>I don’t see retiring when I did as a failure—I had my second career as a writer I wanted to focus on and that grandson I’m gaga to spend time with. But I wonder why I didn’t have the conversation about a staged [gradual] departure into a different kind of role, or why no one else had it with me</b>.<br /><br />For now, I’m following Benjamin Klein’s simple financial advice: more input, less output. “Those are the only two things we can control,” he said. Which could mean getting a job—and not in management or journalism but something completely different. I’ve been an admirer of people who dedicate their retirement to volunteer work but felt pity when I saw someone my own age shelving groceries or working as a greeter. Now I think, “Long life headed your way, my friend!” <br /><br />I’ve stopped “backwards identifying” myself by the work I used to do, after Lisa Taylor asked me to “please be bold and to introduce yourself as you are now.” In my case, that’s as a writer. Now and then I even try to picture my future self, thirty years from now, but Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald is right. It’s unfathomable. I accept that older Cathrin will be more fragile. Hopefully not in the poor house but perhaps a modest room or two, with a few things to remind me of the people I love—and also with the people I love. Likely I won’t be working. We can but hope. ~<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjppKuOYoy6aoBrQ9i6v4nbb9dLLYx6rQXhhso5oRIUeP9xdK0PWOawqeUKTzTJRlS2xL_u0fCybq0L1hJ31txDVS1b9WiMjn6l-TTHbARYTkM5mhQcI9LKGmlqXKIPj1_bJXr3gtoHn8kJ-0Cd737B2UxcNBf7TpzahJzV3e-ix0M-aslIn0DLU32o1sW9/s1320/hourglass%20retirement.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1320" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjppKuOYoy6aoBrQ9i6v4nbb9dLLYx6rQXhhso5oRIUeP9xdK0PWOawqeUKTzTJRlS2xL_u0fCybq0L1hJ31txDVS1b9WiMjn6l-TTHbARYTkM5mhQcI9LKGmlqXKIPj1_bJXr3gtoHn8kJ-0Cd737B2UxcNBf7TpzahJzV3e-ix0M-aslIn0DLU32o1sW9/s320/hourglass%20retirement.jpeg" width="291" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://thewalrus.ca/the-end-of-retirement/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://thewalrus.ca/the-end-of-retirement/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us</a><br /><br />*<br /><b>WHAT FAMILIES ARE FOR: THE POLITICS OF THE FAMILY</b><br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSc2SAeK-kg6SWgmIlDm9Qwf9U14074T5xLM8EofGaabKnktMCWBTDymWcEZBysuXOjsfOoqxz0KAWiv66IqL_iDekXWRe29GOrT0iA9L7PoxaC8-rUM1EWejdF0oAOgTNiUK3uaBpk_wcO4EF36nvuIQAaVDfftlbaw520g3l7f9r4qEGXtLgWzTn-wdc/s1800/family%20shadows.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1800" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSc2SAeK-kg6SWgmIlDm9Qwf9U14074T5xLM8EofGaabKnktMCWBTDymWcEZBysuXOjsfOoqxz0KAWiv66IqL_iDekXWRe29GOrT0iA9L7PoxaC8-rUM1EWejdF0oAOgTNiUK3uaBpk_wcO4EF36nvuIQAaVDfftlbaw520g3l7f9r4qEGXtLgWzTn-wdc/w400-h266/family%20shadows.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Two recent books — <b>The Two-Parent Privilege by economist Melissa Kearney and Family Abolition by social theorist M. E. O’Brien</b>—take up these deep inquiries but wind up in opposite places, one lauding the family as a sociolegal structure and the other calling to abolish it. While these authors employ very different methods and have clearly incommensurate politics, they converge in recognizing the structural economic forces that cause families to form and collapse. By situating the family within the tectonic processes of political economy, each offers a necessary corrective to the neoliberal conceit that treats families as little more than bundles of personal obligations and preferences. Where they disagree is on whether the family form—however unrepresentative or inaccessible it has become—ought to remain the horizon of social policy.<br /><br />At first blush, Melissa Kearney’s The Two-Parent Privilege might seem like a rehash of the work of her late twentieth-century forebears; indeed, the book features laudatory blurbs from some of them. A professor at the University of Maryland, Kearney also holds posts at some of the premier institutions of technocratic centrism, including the Aspen Economic Strategy Group, MIT’s Poverty Action Lab, and the Brookings Institution (the last of which was a key booster of research on family structure in the 1980s and ’90s). Kearney even traces her own interest in the subject back to an undergraduate course at Princeton taught by <b>McLanahan, a sociologist who spent much of her influential career decrying the difficulties and consequences of single motherhood.</b><br /><br />There are certainly resemblances between Kearney’s work and her predecessors’. The central claim of The Two-Parent Privilege—that, all else equal, <b>children raised in the United States by single parents fare significantly worse economically than those raised by married parents—has been conventional wisdom in establishment social thought for so long that few have bothered to try to prove it.</b> (There is a difference between “two-parent” and “married” households, of course, but for Kearney they collapse in practice: “In addition to the fairly low rate of unmarried parental cohabitation in the United States, it is also the case that cohabitation in the United States is a rather fragile arrangement relative to cohabitation elsewhere. . . . the practical truth is that, <b>to date, there has been no alternative institution to marriage that is characterized by the same long-term partnership and commitment in the United States.”</b>) </span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Like earlier work in this vein, the book repeatedly appeals to “upward mobility”—what it clearly sees as the essence of social equality—while ignoring its relationship to downward mobility. And <b>like other post-Moynihan scholars wary of detailing racial disparities in family formation, Kearney intends to steer clear of culturalist explanations or judgments.</b> “I am not blaming single mothers,” she insists. “I am not diminishing the pernicious effects of racism in the United States.”<br /><br />What sets Kearney’s vision apart from her forebears’ is that <b>she lacks their faith that social policy can reverse the trend to single parenthood. Although Kearney thinks it would be a good thing if more children experienced the “two-parent privilege,” she argues that government has proven unable to guarantee it — especially since the economic restructurings of the 1970s, and especially for poor children. </b>As the book points out,<b><i> the rate of children living with married parents in the United States has fallen from 77 percent in 1980 to 63 percent in 2019; most of the drop is among working-class Americans. </i><br /></b><br />While it should not entirely give up on promoting dual parenthood, Kearney concludes, the state should focus more on mitigating the economic effects of the parenting gap through a sort of Pigouvian subsidy: <b>expanding welfare benefits and child tax credits for both one- and two-parent poor families, as well as investing in early-childhood public education</b>. (</span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Universal child care is notably absent from Kearney’s vision</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;">, perhaps reflecting a belief in the irreplaceable value of parental care.) If these provisions end up allowing more families to form or stay together, Kearney thinks, so much the better.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Kearney defines the “two-parent privilege” in terms of economic outcomes.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b> On the basis of longitudinal studies (conducted by her and others), she argues that children in two-parent homes receive more care, attention, and intellectual stimulation than those raised by single parents</b> — and that <b>this difference affects their later educational performance, job prospects, earnings</b>, and so on. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The reason is not that single parents are bad parents, Kearney argues, but simply that they tend to have less time</b>, emotional bandwidth, and flexibility in organizing caregiving duties than two-parent families. (She thus concedes, <b>“to the extent that the beneficial effects of marriage for children are derived from the resource advantage of that arrangement, the actual marriage is irrelevant.”</b>) Furthermore, she maintains, given that the vast majority of single parents are single mothers, <b>the absence of men in families has a negative impact on the emotional development of boys in particular</b>. <b>A crucial data point for Kearney is the fact that unequal economic and educational outcomes are not reducible to income disparities between single-parent and two-parent homes. </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>The physical, rather than simply financial, presence of an extra parent makes a key difference.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDQhC1hDqk-A99dBTtGCUXRtRcrAAuX5aM5l-Tg-0k2k0OG2AjuwFd7Thipii7rFnkAAwwSN9DVKv1VjJuAQqrnNsvk73JJBTzbTuukYsekqvUMVWQJxdzddivraArj6g-hIqx5cMhJyWoviGHPyUwvw2I-ar9v6oWiJ4p9rh1a8oHPqQpjPUuI1mvdaUS/s187/2%20parent%20privilege.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="157" data-original-width="187" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDQhC1hDqk-A99dBTtGCUXRtRcrAAuX5aM5l-Tg-0k2k0OG2AjuwFd7Thipii7rFnkAAwwSN9DVKv1VjJuAQqrnNsvk73JJBTzbTuukYsekqvUMVWQJxdzddivraArj6g-hIqx5cMhJyWoviGHPyUwvw2I-ar9v6oWiJ4p9rh1a8oHPqQpjPUuI1mvdaUS/w400-h336/2%20parent%20privilege.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><b>Kearney’s skepticism about the state’s ability to promote dual parenthood arises from her diagnosis of declining marriage rates, which she attributes to the declining economic position of non-college-educated men over the past several decades. Deindustrialization, the pay-productivity gap, union decline, and mass incarceration have all contributed to a general decrease in what Kearney, following sociologist William Julius Wilson, calls the “marriageability” of working-class men. </b>Since 1980, she writes, “among workers without a four-year college degree, the gap between men’s earnings and women’s earnings shrank considerably (on account of both increasing earnings among women and stagnant earnings among men), which </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>lessened the economic incentive (and imperative) for some women to marry</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;">.”<br /><br />Other authors, it should be noted, have long pursued this line of reasoning into deeply antifeminist territory, <b>arguing variously that women’s efforts to gain an equal wage with men and expand their vocational options have upset a natural hierarchy of gender relations</b> and helped normalize low-waged and precarious jobs. <i><b>Kearney tries to assure readers that her causal models of marriage and child-rearing simply reflect rather than endorse a heteronormative division of labor. But these gestures are somewhat too perfunctory to carry much force.</b><br /></i><br />Indeed, <b>The Two-Parent Privilege views the prospect of restoring marriage rates by reinstalling the male breadwinner less as an ideological or ethical nonstarter than as a practical impossibility.</b> In one of the book’s most revealing sections, Kearney discusses a recent study of hers which finds that “improvements in the economic prospects of less educated men have not been shown . . . to usher in an increase in marriage and married-parent families.” <br /><br />In a Moynihanian move, <b>Kearney concludes that growing rates of single parenthood over the past few decades have gradually produced a “new social paradigm” that is mysteriously resistant to economic incentives to marry. </b>Socially conservative scholars have interpreted this study as support for their broader claims that “hookup culture,” accessible contraception, and online pornography have encouraged the cultural decline of marriage. <b>Kearney does not follow them into blaming sexual liberalization, but she admits that “reversing recent trends in family structure will likely require both economic and social changes.”</b> However shrewdly, <b>she does not speculate about what social changes would do the trick.</b><br /><br />It is to the book’s credit that it has very little patience for the “new paternalist” contrivances embraced by late twentieth-century welfare reformers. <b>There just isn’t any evidence, Kearney notes, to support the idea that cutting single parents’ benefits and hunting down absent ones has meaningfully encouraged the formation and maintenance of two-parent homes — here she is very much right.</b> Nor does the book call for or lend any direct support to recent conservative calls to rescind no-fault divorce laws and promote covenant marriages. <i><b>Kearney sees some room for growth in local programs encouraging involved fatherhood</b></i>, but she treats them as more likely to improve outcomes for children than to promote marriage stability. <b>What scholar Gilbert Steiner bemoaned over forty years ago as the “futility of family policy” in solving the problems of American families re-emerges here as a central takeaway of Kearney’s book.</b><br /><br />Critics of The Two-Parent Privilege might take one of two broad tacks. One is methodological: asking whether Kearney’s model is really an accurate depiction of socioeconomic reality when it comes to marriage and child-rearing. There are plenty of analytical moves and omissions one might object to. For example, <i><b>Kearney admits that “it is possible that mothers who raise children on their own are able to compensate for the lack of another adult in the home, perhaps with their own resources or the help of a network of family and friends,” but she doesn’t discuss the possibility further, nor does she devote much attention to the actual lives and decisions of single parents, which might have enriched her causal models.</b><br /></i><br />Others might doubt that the number crunching means what Kearney says it does. Matt Bruenig, for example, notes that comparing married and unmarried couples—even when controlling for race and class—cannot be used to estimate the causal effect of marriage on children’s outcomes for any particular set of parents, because <b>nonmarital status is closely correlated with relationship dysfunction </b>(which isn’t measured in Kearney’s dataset). For this reason,<b> it does not follow that every pair of working-class parents could boost their children’s economic fortunes simply by getting married.</b> Though Kearney acknowledges that there are situations in which marriage would not be beneficial or would even be harmful for parents and their children, she does not address the broader implications of this methodological critique for her findings.<br /><br />But regardless of these concerns, there is a more fundamental objection:<b> it is possible to agree that “two-parent privilege” exists and drives intergenerational inequality under our current economic system without sharing Kearney’s presumption that its institutions and organization must more or less be taken for granted. </b>Looking at her statistical picture, one could easily conclude not that too few adults are getting married, or that too few kids are being raised in two-parent homes, but that people who adopt other models of care and commitment are systematically disadvantaged by our socioeconomic system. <br /><br />In this sense, <b>the book’s pessimism about putting the family back together again reveals the limits of Kearney’s political imagination.</b> Where she holds the system constant and asks how to make the best of it, others would reverse the moral: if our economic system cannot be made to sustain the very structures of social reproduction it makes essential to human flourishing, then we need new structures, or a new system.<br /><br />Or both, M. E. O’Brien argues in Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care. A sharp and timely synthesis of past and present anticapitalist critiques of the family, the book builds on O’Brien’s earlier speculative fiction by imagining the future of care in a communist society. We need to envision such alternatives, she argues, because the private household is the stalking-horse of class society, white supremacy, and patriarchy.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7QkXzaMVPC3r6E_1-TbPfnoBM2nDOBVpwhEhqZ7I6zHXT_ylmpyC8yf_8aOBk3LXXP71Vi5LjRo2VSD_aASSLTJNi0wKTz1FTE6vBlzTh86U2LXplZmgMa0Eib_ScISrEPAwNcJoOhmJXWup72qjYpWrUgo5M7Ysj7wKRP7ID8Ll3TipxTaoSE79IJozZ/s648/family%20abolition.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="406" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7QkXzaMVPC3r6E_1-TbPfnoBM2nDOBVpwhEhqZ7I6zHXT_ylmpyC8yf_8aOBk3LXXP71Vi5LjRo2VSD_aASSLTJNi0wKTz1FTE6vBlzTh86U2LXplZmgMa0Eib_ScISrEPAwNcJoOhmJXWup72qjYpWrUgo5M7Ysj7wKRP7ID8Ll3TipxTaoSE79IJozZ/w250-h400/family%20abolition.jpg" width="250" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">One of the many admirable qualities of O’Brien’s book is its reconstruction of the long history of family abolitionist thought. Although anti-family theory and practice certainly extend beyond the self-identified political left — within religious communes, for example — <b>O’Brien focuses on those who have seen it as a key element in the overthrow of capitalism.</b> <b>Tracing family abolitionism from early nineteenth-century calls to dismantle the bourgeois family </b>(which Marx and Engels sportively dubbed the “infamous proposal of the Communists”), through the revolutionary moments of the Paris Commune and the early Soviet Union, and then into the “Red Decade” of radical feminism and gay liberation between the mid-1960s and ’70s, <b>the book’s middle section carefully charts how condemnations of the family form and socialist thought evolved alongside each other</b>—even if not always harmoniously, as evident in conflicts between leftist family abolitionists and the industrial workers’ movement over the breadwinner family form.<br /><br /><b>O’Brien’s overriding focus on dismantling the private household</b> — the legal-economic form of the family as a “unit of privatized care”— sets her book slightly apart from the work of other contemporary family abolitionists. <b>Family violence is totally missing from Kearney’s book, but it is a central concern of O’Brien’s</b>. Much of it, she argues, is enabled and obscured by the fact that <b>its victims feel — often correctly — that leaving families would sacrifice their primary source of care and economic security, or even expose them to further violence. </b><br /><br /><b>“The family as a social form joins together care and coercion, dependency and love, abuse and affection,” she writes, and our society’s laws and lack of a meaningful welfare state encourage people not only to accept but to idealize this compromise.</b> Queer youth whose parents don’t accept them know all too well what they stand to lose if they are cut off from the “privilege” Kearney identifies—<b>as do the many people who remain in abusive or unhappy marriages for the sake of the children</b>.<br /><br /><b>Unlike Kearney, O’Brien views the decline in marriage and rise in single parenthood as a “huge improvement in human freedom,”</b> but she cautions against being too sanguine about these shifts. For many working-class women, she notes, financial domination by a husband has simply been exchanged for the “impersonal domination” of wage labor, liberation from certain forms of violence coming at the cost of new forms of exploitation and risk. Meanwhile, she notes, <b>this decline has not undermined the ideological force and seductiveness of the family for both conservatives and social democrats: it still serves as the basis for assaults on reproductive rights and public education</b>, as well as the spread of the “family policing system” of child protective services and state bans on gender-affirming care for minors.<br /><br />What should be done? In recent years, legal scholars such as Nancy Polikoff and John Culhane have argued that <b>declining marriage rates, along with the expanding state recognition of non-heterosexual relationships, show it is long past time to decouple state-provided rights, benefits, and obligations from marital status.</b> O’Brien takes such ideas seriously, devoting an entire chapter to “progressive anti-family reforms” such as universal welfare benefits and aligning law with the social reality of familial relationships. <br /><br /><b>To the extent that state policy can reduce the advantages gained by forming a private household and the burdens incurred by leaving one, she argues, it is worth pursuing.</b> But O’Brien also sees real dangers in pursuing family abolition through the state, pointing to welfare’s “dehumanizing” and invasive past, as well as the risk that an overweening government wields its power to delegitimize nontraditional kinship and “chosen family” relationships among historically marginalized groups.<br /><br />It is here that O’Brien departs most clearly from prior left-feminist critiques of the family. <b>Earlier thinkers such as Soviet feminist Alexandra Kollontai and radical feminist Shulamith Firestone thought that women’s oppression would never end without disrupting the mother-child bond. For Kollontai, this meant the socialist state’s near-total assumption of child-rearing duties; for Firestone, the erosion of gendered labor through mass cybernation and reliance on artificial reproduction</b>. <br /><br />O’Brien’s vision is instead voluntaristic, unfolding through individual choices and collective experiments freed from the primarily economic compulsions of the family. As she puts it, <b>family abolition means “the destruction of private households as systems of accumulating power and property at the cost of others’ well-being” but “not the destruction of kinship ties that currently serve as protection against white supremacy, poverty, and state violence.”</b><br /><br />On this point, O’Brien is clearly echoing critiques of family abolitionist thought by feminists of color. As Hazel Carby and others have argued, attacks on the family have tended to ignore — or even pathologize — <b>family and kinship ties among marginalized groups as a source of resistance, solidarity, and pleasure. </b>Toward the outset of her book, O’Brien tries to square this circle by arguing that the social relations called “families” in oppressed groups often “do not quite constitute a private household as a unit of privatized care.” They are therefore not recognized as families by “dominant social institutions,” and for that reason they are not the target of her critique.<br /><br />But this distinction misses some of the radical edge of other anti-family arguments.<b> Despite her background as a psychoanalyst, O’Brien has relatively little to say about what familial child-rearing does to children’s identities and attitudes (or to parents’ for that matter)</b>, beyond a few passages highlighting the family as the primary enforcer of “alienated gender expectations” and heteronormativity. (<b>This family-cultivated alienation might not be limited to gender identity, some midcentury Freudo-Marxists argued, but it could extend to complexes of deference and docility that “operate to maintain the stability of class society,” as Erich Fromm put it</b>.) <br /><br />Nor does she reflect more than passingly on earlier left-feminists’ charge that <b>the family is inherently “anti-social” because it unjustly privileges kinship over other forms of social connection.</b> This marks a divergence between Family Abolition and another recent communist manifesto, Sophie Lewis’s Abolish the Family (2022), which takes aim at not just the economic coercion of the capitalist family but the “uncomradely hierarchy” baked into even the most radical manifestations of kinship such as the “chosen family.”<br /><br />O’Brien’s vision takes firmer shape in her book’s closing chapters, which speculate on communal life in the aftermath of anti-capitalist revolution. Blending the utopian socialism of Charles Fourier with the left-communist—some would say anarcho-communist—ideas associated with Endnotes and The Invisible Committee, <b>O’Brien envisions a stateless landscape populated by self-governing communes of a few hundred people.</b> Within these communes, she suggests that forms of care and parenting would be intentionally heterogeneous, fluid, and voluntary: people could choose to raise their biological children in “family-like arrangements,” or turn them over to the care of crèches, or something in between, with no expectation of permanence. <b>Children would be empowered to leave or join living situations according to their desires.</b><br /><br />It is worth dwelling on O’Brien’s reasons for making these associations voluntary:<br />It does not require a romantic idealization of the mother-child bond to recognize that the experience of conception and gestation can often lead to an emotional tie, and that universally severing this tie could be a form of injustice. . . . a scenario of the socialist state literally and directly replacing the family is rightfully terrifying to many. . . . <b>Within the commune, kinship ties could persist in many forms but would be integrated with a broader, interdependent community.</b> . . . Research into psychological development suggests that children do benefit from the consistent attention of a small number of adults early in life.<br /><br /><b>The question lurking behind all of this is whether there is something like a “natural” basis for the nuclear family as an arrangement of care</b>—as its defenders have so often claimed—and, if so, whether it justifies sharp limits on coercing people out of families in the name of the social good (or even individual well-being).<br /><br />Consider a child whose biological parents are members of a religious sect that emphasizes the divine quality of patriarchal domination and practices self-imposed exclusion from society writ large. Should a society with feminist commitments respect this family arrangement, even if being raised by these parents makes it overwhelmingly likely that the child will not “choose” to leave and will opt to become a member of the sect—thereby reproducing patriarchy? In the interests of not “reproducing the imperialist violence of a white liberalism that seeks to ‘save’ anyone against their will,” O’Brien says yes, “conditioned on . . .<b> allowing outside contact for all residents, giving women, queers, or others experiencing oppression a chance to encounter and choose the outside world.</b>”<br /><br />One challenge for this view—as O’Brien acknowledges—is that oppression is often not subjectively experienced or recognized as such, particularly in the context of the family. As Lauren Berlant put it in Cruel Optimism (2011), for many people “the promise of familial love is the conveyance for the incitement to misrecognize the bad life as a good one.” <b>O’Brien is compelled by the idea that eliminating the family’s economic function will tend to demystify these relations and allow people to choose the kind of care — the kind of life — that is in some sense best for them.</b> Readers more suspicious of the affective hold of the family will want a more direct or even aggressive strategy to dismantle the injustice they see in the present. Regardless of what side one comes down on, <b>Family Abolition offers a compelling provocation to think about the possibilities of human freedom in a post-family world, and how we might achieve them.</b><br /><br />Although their political lexicons, goals, and likely audiences could not be more different, <b>both The Two-Parent Privilege and Family Abolition acknowledge that the family is not fulfilling the tasks of social reproduction that have been delegated to it, that protracted shifts in political economy are the culprit, and that nudges or tweaks to incentives can’t help. </b>Together they offer a strong tonic for the fantasy that the two-parent family can be put back together through top-down welfare and tax policy, which is once again a cause célèbre of the more technocratic tendencies within contemporary social conservatism.<br /><br />At the same time, <b>the decline of marriage and the two-parent family does not necessarily mean that society is becoming less familial. The family form has survived and adapted in response to previous crises of capitalism, assuming different shapes while continuing to facilitate the privatized distribution of wealth and care.</b> This does not demand a set number of biological parents in the home; it only requires that people channel their energy, resources, identities, and commitments in the service of economic units bound by kinship.<br /><br />“Families tend to hide the very existence of common interests by training people to consider that their worries are personal and private, when in fact they are social,” historian Linda Gordon wrote in 1970. A half-century of jeremiads about family breakdown from Moynihan and his successors notwithstanding, they still do. Even if more children are now growing up with fewer parents than Kearney deems ideal—or are living in arrangements that don’t constitute a private household as O’Brien understands it—<b>they still learn to invest in kinship </b>in a way that may deepen the more essentially it serves to protect them against precariousness.<br /><br />All of this goes to a point made forcefully by Kathi Weeks in an indispensable 2021 essay: <b>“To affirm family abolitionism is to be willing to play the long game.”</b> As a theoretical tradition, anti-family critique can and should point out how the family currently reproduces an unjust economic system and oppresses those who cannot access its idealized form. At the same time, it should not shy away from demystifying and contesting the psychic claims of kinship — that is, from sustaining and refining its own rich history of condemning the family’s more transhistorical harms and repressions. </span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">To be clear, <b>this does not mean shaming or stigmatizing those who love their families. But it does mean showing why familial love comes with burdens that we need not be collectively doomed to bear</b>. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/what-are-families-for/?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=8b419c17fd-roundup_Nov_03_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-8b419c17fd-40729829&mc_cid=8b419c17fd">https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/what-are-families-for/?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=8b419c17fd-roundup_Nov_03_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-8b419c17fd-40729829&mc_cid=8b419c17fd</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Like almost everything, the institution of the family is both good and bad. And as with so many things, we have to cope with the bad and rejoice in the good. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifE4b60uzzBY_tO2g1_rKe6hUM_DTOx2uwde8hnZCJUeRlLjlWSdRdlDJAQpTWq9YrnvN10qbT4CRs5-WVnrRcDn7mDEHcIbD4SfpYhVHyB55_tsOEPH6YlmETohsFMn-RO76mnZS7Fia4sJuIOUWiluWzdRszlu8g67JI-kIckooZXm6PWFEMwCHv4E8E/s3265/Ferdinand%20Hodler%20The%20Disappointed%20Souls%201892.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1284" data-original-width="3265" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifE4b60uzzBY_tO2g1_rKe6hUM_DTOx2uwde8hnZCJUeRlLjlWSdRdlDJAQpTWq9YrnvN10qbT4CRs5-WVnrRcDn7mDEHcIbD4SfpYhVHyB55_tsOEPH6YlmETohsFMn-RO76mnZS7Fia4sJuIOUWiluWzdRszlu8g67JI-kIckooZXm6PWFEMwCHv4E8E/w400-h158/Ferdinand%20Hodler%20The%20Disappointed%20Souls%201892.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Ferdinand Hodler: The Disappointed Souls, 1892</i></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><br /></i></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>THE FALL</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">~ There was a man who found two leaves and came indoors holding them out saying to his parents that he was a tree.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">To which they said then go into the yard and do not grow in the living room as your roots may ruin the carpet.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">He said I was fooling I am not a tree and he dropped his leaves.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">But his parents said look it is fall. ~ <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">~ </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Russell Edson</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjph1Ir2gcQOjTsqfLv7W3ko30LYZ5qlxlG2OxW3M2nvZcSWgJ0W8v3chlsu-016WMphk31yw4dgD37hZtONw4RaA3AfzPAXEcweNzgDijNvX-hahA-BzCGoF4IRa3HKs3z2fQL5DSuAwj6zl2s3Ij3d2yRe5bPC0rRFN2h_vhH8L53segkaos6z-trA88L/s777/autumn%202%20lane%20highway.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="406" data-original-width="777" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjph1Ir2gcQOjTsqfLv7W3ko30LYZ5qlxlG2OxW3M2nvZcSWgJ0W8v3chlsu-016WMphk31yw4dgD37hZtONw4RaA3AfzPAXEcweNzgDijNvX-hahA-BzCGoF4IRa3HKs3z2fQL5DSuAwj6zl2s3Ij3d2yRe5bPC0rRFN2h_vhH8L53segkaos6z-trA88L/w400-h209/autumn%202%20lane%20highway.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>*</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>AUTONOMY: KEY TO HAPPINESS<br /></b><br /><i><b>~ It’s important to pursue the things we find interesting and satisfying, rather than things that offer a large external reward. ~</b><br /></i><br />We all want to be happy – but achieving such an abstract goal has its challenges. No matter how much effort you put into thinking positively and ‘focusing on the good bits’, you can’t force happiness, and doing so can actually have a negative impact on your emotions.<br /><br />However, just because you can’t control how you feel all the time, doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to boost your happiness and overall wellbeing – and that’s where a study published in The Journal Of Positive Psychology in 2022 comes in.<br /><br />Before we get into it, it’s important to note that <b>psychologists see wellbeing and happiness as having three key components: affect (emotion or mood), engagement and meaning.<br /></b><br />According to the new article, there could be an ingredient that boosts all three of these factors (and therefore makes a big difference to overall health and wellbeing): autonomy. <br /><br />As defined by the psychologists Richard Ryan and Edward Deci, <b>autonomy refers to volition, ie “having the experience of choice… [and] endorsing one’s actions at the highest level of reflection”. </b><br /><br />It essentially means being able to make decisions that are intrinsically motivated (eg doing something because you enjoy it or find it satisfying) rather than extrinsically motivated (eg motivated by social pressure or reward).<br /><br /><b>To find out whether autonomy has a significant impact on a person’s happiness and wellbeing, the authors of the new study asked 68 participants to answer questions about what they were doing at various times of the day. <br /></b><br />The questions the participants asked covered areas such as the kind of activity being informed, whether or not the person had chosen to or had to do the activity (aka autonomy), and the effect it had on their mood. The questionnaire also assessed their level of engagement in the activity and how meaningful the activity was.<br /><br />When they’d completed these questions six times a day for a week, participants were asked to answer questions about their life satisfaction, too.<br /><br />The results were conclusive: <b>the level of autonomy the participants had had a significant impact on engagement, meaningfulness, positive affect and mood. <br /></b><br />However, while affect and mood continued to increase with autonomy, the benefits of autonomy on engagement and meaningfulness only occurred up to a moderate level, which suggests that, as long as people find the activity they’re doing interesting and satisfying, a bit of extrinsic motivation (such as making money at work) doesn’t matter too much.<br /><br />In short, <b><i>autonomy can have a big impact on our overall happiness and wellbeing – but in cases where we have to do something (like work), having a moderate degree of intrinsic motivation (eg, enjoying what you do) will have the desired effect.</i><br /></b><br />If anything, this study is a reminder of how important it is to pursue the things we find interesting and satisfying, rather than things that offer a large external reward. <b>You don’t need to be in love with your job to be happy, but feeling engaged and interested to learn more can make a real difference to your overall wellbeing.</b> ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-to-be-happy-why-autonomy-is-a-key-ingredient-for-happiness-and-wellbeing?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-to-be-happy-why-autonomy-is-a-key-ingredient-for-happiness-and-wellbeing?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>TEACH YOURSELF TO BE HAPPIER<br /></b><br />In the depths of dark winter nights and dreary days, fascinating new research suggests that it’s psychologically <b>possible to train yourself to be happier.<br /></b><br />Human emotions are complex, but we’re often guilty of oversimplifying them. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a well-meaning but misguided “Don’t worry, be happy” or “Try not to worry”, you’ll understand.<br /><br />Because when we talk and think about happiness as a general outlook, we tend to sort people into two camps: “glass half full” and “glass half empty”. For a long time, even psychologists have considered personalities as one or the other, but as new research has found, this may not be the case.<br /><br />According to University of California Berkeley researchers, <b>it’s actually possible to actually learn new ways to activate your feelings of engagement in a positive experience.<br /></b><br />Put simply: it’s technically <b>possible to teach yourself to be happier.<br /></b><br />According to the researchers, <b>people’s ability to get the most out of positive experiences can indeed be strengthened through training.</b> This means learning to savor positive experiences in order to experience them in a heightened way.<br /><br />As Psychology Today explains, the idea behind the model is that by learning to engage in a positive experience, you develop a greater sense of resilience and self-worth. “These feelings help to create an “upward spiral” in which good times build on themselves, further enhancing your happiness,” it explains.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“Even when ‘external supports and familiar activities are less available’, such as those restrictions in effect during the Covid-19 pandemic, you ‘are left internally with whatever psychological resources’ you’ve managed to acquire.”<br /><br />Good news indeed for anyone currently self-isolating or dealing with the continued uncertainty of the Omicron variant.<br /><br />HOW THE ‘HEAL’ MODEL WORKS<br /><br />There are four distinct steps.<br /><br /><b>1. Have the enjoyable experience.<br /></b><br />This can be done physically, by doing it, or mentally, by conjuring it up, such as thinking about someone who cares about you.<br /><br /><b>2. Enrich the experience through these sub-steps<br /></b><br />Then, the research suggests, the key is to enrich the experience by making it as long-lasting as possible, and keeping it active in your consciousness.<br /><br />“Focus on multiple aspects of the experience, including its meaning, your perceptions and sensations, the way it feels and taking action. Increase the novelty of the experience so that it sticks out more in your mind and heighten the personal relevance of the experience by delving into your feelings about it.”<br /><br />Then, <b><i>the experience can be intensified through “up-regulating” your emotions, or reliving the parts that feel good.</i></b><br /><br /><b>3. Absorb the experience<br /></b><br />This involves making a deliberate effort to internalize it so that it feels like a part of you.<br />“Turn attention inward to your emotional state and highlight the reward value of the experience.” For example, after a night out with friends, spend some time reflecting on how socializing made you feel, what particular parts you enjoyed and what you gained from the experience.<br /><br /><b>4. Link positive and negative material</b><br /><br />Of course, <b>there are plenty of experiences in our lives that we might struggle to attach positive meaning to, from a parking ticket to experiencing grief and loss.<br /></b><br /><b>“Focus on something positive even while you’re aware of negative material in the background,” suggest the researchers.</b> “For example, become more involved in the film you’re watching while still noticing that your dread of the coming work day continues to persist. The positive should ultimately drown out the negative in this step.”<br /><br />It goes without saying that no research, this included, is a magic bullet to improving wellbeing, tackling depression and helping balance our emotions in such difficult times. But it does offer the possibility of being able to learn new ways of experiencing the good times in your life.<br /><br />“<b>Fulfillment may not come naturally to you, but by letting the enjoyable experiences change you at a deeper level, those good times can become both more frequent and more long-lasting</b>,” Psychology Today explains.<br /><br />So whether you’re practicing some much-needed self-care or planning some time off from the chaos of the world, maybe one thing we can all resolve to do is to stop and smell the roses from time to time? ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.stylist.co.uk/health/mental-health/how-to-be-happier-psychology/606726">https://www.stylist.co.uk/health/mental-health/how-to-be-happier-psychology/606726</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">* <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ39XeSj-BxwCVmLVdnxABjKawrDhiQGGdRlva4r8u01HCvm16rbRnhVEegdKjpCfumRRbtXW_odI75pVTNBxFE36eL7YMuCZAQit0VheqImfmZv61KW65tVwfnbGI8ipTio7dlNLDuLm2Tl476V9UnCAbVRi8pt-Gs3jAbfQax2UfJ7eKKHWXURpNdwdl/s310/You%20are%20here%20cosimic.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="163" data-original-width="310" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ39XeSj-BxwCVmLVdnxABjKawrDhiQGGdRlva4r8u01HCvm16rbRnhVEegdKjpCfumRRbtXW_odI75pVTNBxFE36eL7YMuCZAQit0VheqImfmZv61KW65tVwfnbGI8ipTio7dlNLDuLm2Tl476V9UnCAbVRi8pt-Gs3jAbfQax2UfJ7eKKHWXURpNdwdl/w400-h210/You%20are%20here%20cosimic.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />The anthropic principle:<br /><br /><i><b>To say “the laws of physics are fine tuned for life” is like saying “the snow is white because a white wolf lives in it” ~ Diogo Pinheiro, Aeon</b><br /></i></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0FtEZrRb_CFXqEEgh5PwLJ6J98ldFlcK-0qStyrkCLJ66yryCcQPqJS2jnHY3fs4UTmBDWeRIC5zf9qFzR-_WjS4b8GGLPtmfEgPq8jrIwt6y3A11JoPX7q813Jer3QfVuKFpJsorxrSn72qnzUshAW3iPgstbj77_EfVd4zq-ZewqO9jSWzUpsjvgDai/s1300/white%20wolf%20snow.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1179" data-original-width="1300" height="363" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0FtEZrRb_CFXqEEgh5PwLJ6J98ldFlcK-0qStyrkCLJ66yryCcQPqJS2jnHY3fs4UTmBDWeRIC5zf9qFzR-_WjS4b8GGLPtmfEgPq8jrIwt6y3A11JoPX7q813Jer3QfVuKFpJsorxrSn72qnzUshAW3iPgstbj77_EfVd4zq-ZewqO9jSWzUpsjvgDai/w400-h363/white%20wolf%20snow.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />*<br />A classic argument against crude forms of utilitarianism imagines a doctor who could save the lives of five patients by killing one patient and harvesting their organs. Even if the doctor could increase wellbeing in this way, he would not have the right to kill and use the healthy patient, at least not without their consent. Likewise,<b> even if God has some good purpose in mind for allowing natural disasters, it would infringe the rights to health and security of the individuals impacted by such disasters.</b><br /><br />What about an evil God? The evil-god hypothesis faces a ‘problem of good’ mirroring the problem of evil facing the traditional good God: if God is evil, why did God create so much good? I think a better option is a limited designer who has made the best universe they are able to make. Perhaps the designer of our universe would have loved to create intelligent life in an instant, avoiding all the misery of natural selection, but their only option was to create a universe from a singularity, with the right physics, so that it will eventually evolve intelligent life.<br /><br />I think overall the best theory of cosmic purpose is <b>cosmopsychism, the view that the universe is itself a conscious mind with its own goals.</b> ~ Philip Goff, Aeon<br /><br />Oriana:<br /><br />Back in my Catholic childhood, I found it natural to believe that god is evil. Since my grandmother was an Auschwitz survivor, I had an early knowledge of enormous evil. True, this was a human-caused evil, but it easily extended to the suffering due to natural disasters. For several years, I believed that god played his sick games, starting with lying to Adam and Eve and their subsequent expulsion for desiring knowledge rather blissful ignorance, all the way to the Holocaust — when with zero effort he (I never doubted the maleness of the evil god) he could kill Hitler by causing him to have a heart attack. <br /><br />So the argument from evil never had much effect on me. My awakening came when I learned enough about various mythologies to conclude about the Judeo-Christian tradition, “It’s just another mythology.” <br /><br />Talk about relief! No longer watched 24/7 by a monster who out-Hitlered Hitler. <br /><br />Not that I disliked mythologies: on the contrary, I found them fascinating, and in college was naturally drawn to classes such as Comparative Religion and The Bible as Literature. The various creation myths! Jonah and the Whale! The parting of the Red Sea! Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt! It was heady stuff, and I loved humanity for coming up with such great stories. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">While I agree with Taslima Nasrin, I am also aware that religion has increased cultural richness, and there are some stories and rituals I wouldn't want to become extinct. At the same time, I hasten to say that at the emotional level I don't understand the idea that religion serves as a solace. For me religion was a source of worry and the burden of endless prohibitions, and the fear the ultimate punishment. Catholicism both ruined my childhood and enriched my vocabulary. Leaving it made me find my own foundation of personal ethics.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In the end, if religion were to disappear </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">— it know it won't, but at least it's declining </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">— I would be jubilant.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS2c4e1cleDn3rv75iJ2YWhnks7qyEYibNe67toX3ZIHQ7j2KVf0mpbyYLbI2SJhWhQRYUnndfwAkostZgZyokyNuHibSxO4_ygjzJJJTaJTRRcLOmqdG82zjB2aN9RAogxxX7mX2WDOhDJRhufJGRnqcyBCzAY-N3vDXrssaDAQw9AAKR3O78yYM2REaB/s1008/Taslima%20Nasrin%20religion%20against%20women's%20rights.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="712" data-original-width="1008" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS2c4e1cleDn3rv75iJ2YWhnks7qyEYibNe67toX3ZIHQ7j2KVf0mpbyYLbI2SJhWhQRYUnndfwAkostZgZyokyNuHibSxO4_ygjzJJJTaJTRRcLOmqdG82zjB2aN9RAogxxX7mX2WDOhDJRhufJGRnqcyBCzAY-N3vDXrssaDAQw9AAKR3O78yYM2REaB/w400-h283/Taslima%20Nasrin%20religion%20against%20women's%20rights.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />*<br /><b>VEGETABLES THAT ARE BETTER FOR YOU COOKED<br /></b><br />Some vegetables are actually more nutritious when cooked. Here are nine of them.<br /><br /><b>1. Asparagus</b><br /><br />All living things are made up of cells, and in vegetables, important nutrients are sometimes trapped within these cell walls. When vegetables are cooked, the walls break down, releasing the nutrients that can then be absorbed more easily by the body. Cooking asparagus breaks down its cell walls, making vitamins A, B9, C and E more available to be absorbed.<br /><br /><b>2. Mushrooms<br /></b><br /><b>Mushrooms contain large amounts of the antioxidant ergothioneine, which is released during cooking.</b> Antioxidants help break down “free radicals”, chemicals that can damage our cells, causing illness and aging.<br /><br /><b>3. Spinach</b><br /><br />Spinach is rich in nutrients, including iron, magnesium, calcium and zinc. However, these nutrients are more readily absorbed when the spinach is cooked. This is because spinach is packed with oxalic acid (a compound found in many plants) that blocks the absorption of iron and calcium. <b>Heating spinach releases the bound calcium, making it more available for the body to absorb</b>.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Research suggests that <b>steaming spinach maintains its levels of folate (B9), which may reduce the risk of certain cancers.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>4. Tomatoes</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Cooking, using any method, greatly increases the antioxidant lycopene in tomatoes. Lycopene has been associated with a lower risk of a range of chronic diseases including heart disease and cancer. This increased lycopene amount comes from the heat that helps to break down the thick cell walls, which contain several important nutrients.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Although cooking tomatoes reduces their vitamin C content by 29%, their lycopene content increased by more than 50% within 30 minutes of cooking.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>5. Carrots</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Cooked carrots contain more beta-carotene than raw carrots</b>, which is a substance called a carotenoid that the body converts into vitamin A. This fat-soluble vitamin supports bone growth, vision and the immune system.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Cooking carrots with the skins on more than doubles their antioxidant power. </b>You should boil carrots whole before slicing as it stops these nutrients from escaping into the cooking water. Avoid frying carrots as this has been found to reduce the amount of carotenoid.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>6. Bell peppers</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Bell peppers are a great source of immune-system-boosting antioxidants, especially the carotenoids, beta-carotene, beta-cryptoxanthin and lutein. <b>Heat breaks down the cell walls, making the carotenoids easier for your body to absorb. </b>As with tomatoes, vitamin C is lost when peppers are boiled or steamed because the vitamin can leach out into the water. Try roasting them instead.<br /><br /><b>7. Brassica<br /></b><br /><i><b>Brassica, which include broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts, are high in glucosinolates (sulfur-containing phytochemicals), which the body can convert into a range of cancer-fighting compounds.</b></i></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b> For these glucosinolates to be converted into cancer-fighting compounds, an enzyme within these vegetables called myrosinase has to be active.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Research has found that steaming these vegetables preserves both the vitamin C and myrosinase and, therefore, the cancer-fighting compounds you can get from them. <b>Chopping broccoli and letting it sit for a minimum of 40 minutes before cooking also allows this myrosinase to activate.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLIGGrTXXmjnYDTbj9PqCk1QJBkg60TTzhcR3ZVoNgSRXYsqPDvVT1JbNZeSgq7Rsho2JBSQDhppED1xKSNVK2g206xBnMUBeQEDE4LQFCF_fNZ_NSN8fYzx2B6lzQS2mZ-pvzgTxHXOJC7JTsOJdYlAlwFE2UuBucNlJ5XwpPjiHNUpWEOYC9REGZ7lmy/s754/broccoli%20chopped%20florets.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="754" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLIGGrTXXmjnYDTbj9PqCk1QJBkg60TTzhcR3ZVoNgSRXYsqPDvVT1JbNZeSgq7Rsho2JBSQDhppED1xKSNVK2g206xBnMUBeQEDE4LQFCF_fNZ_NSN8fYzx2B6lzQS2mZ-pvzgTxHXOJC7JTsOJdYlAlwFE2UuBucNlJ5XwpPjiHNUpWEOYC9REGZ7lmy/w400-h284/broccoli%20chopped%20florets.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Similarly, <b>sprouts, when cooked produce indole, a compound that may reduce the risk of cancer. Cooking sprouts also causes the glucosinolates to break down into compounds that are known to have cancer-fighting properties.</b></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>8. Green Beans</b><br />Green beans have higher levels of antioxidants when they are baked, microwaved, or even fried as opposed to boiled or pressure cooked.<br /><br /><b>9. Kale</b><br /><br />Kale is healthiest when lightly steamed as it deactivates enzymes that prevent the body from using the iodine it needs for the thyroid, which helps regulate your metabolism.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br />For all vegetables, higher temperatures, longer cooking times and larger quantities of water cause more nutrients to be lost. Water-soluble vitamins (C and many of the B vitamins) are the most unstable nutrients when it comes to cooking because they leach out of vegetables into the cooking water. So avoid soaking them in water, use the least amount of water when cooking and use other cooking methods, such as steaming or roasting. Also, if you have cooking water left over, use it in soups or gravies as it holds all the leached nutrients. ~</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://getpocket.com/explore/item/nine-vegetables-that-are-healthier-for-you-when-cooked?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://getpocket.com/explore/item/nine-vegetables-that-are-healthier-for-you-when-cooked?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>WANT TO INCREASE YOUR FITNESS? TRY WALKING BACKWARDS<br /></b><br />~ Head into any gym, and you may find someone walking backward on a treadmill or pedaling in reverse on an elliptical machine. While some may be employing reverse motion as part of a physical therapy regimen, others may be doing so to boost their physical fitness and overall health.<br /><br />“I think it’s amazing to add in some backwards motion to your day,” said Grayson Wickham, a physical therapist at Lux Physical Therapy and Functional Medicine in New York City. “People are sitting way too much today, plus they lack varied movement.”<br /><br />Quite a few studies have been done on the potential benefits of retro walking, a common term for walking backward. Participants who walked backward on a treadmill for 30 minutes at a time over four weeks increased their balance, walking pace and cardiopulmonary fitness, according to a March 2021 study.<br /><br />In addition, a group of women <b>decreased their body fat and boosted their cardiorespiratory fitness after a six-week program of backward running and walking,</b> according to a clinical trial, the results of which were published in an April 2005 issue of the International Journal of Sports Medicine.<br /><br /><b>Other studies indicate backward motion may help those with knee osteoarthritis and chronic back pain, plus improve gait and balance.<br /></b><br />Retro walking may even sharpen your mind and help you become more mindful, as your brain needs to be more alert when moving in this novel fashion. For this reason, plus the fact that backward motion helps with balance, older adults may especially benefit from incorporating some backward strolls into their routine, as one 2021 study of patients with chronic stroke indicates.<br /><br />SWITCH UP THE MUSCLES YOU ARE USING<br /><br /><b>Why is backward motion so helpful? “When you’re propelling yourself forward, that’s a hamstring-dominant movement,” said Landry Estes, a certified strength and conditioning specialist in College Station, Texas. “If you’re walking backwards, it’s a role reversal, where your quads are firing and you’re doing knee extensions.”<br /></b><br />As a result, <i><b>you’re working different muscles, which is always beneficial, plus gaining strength. “Strength overcomes a lot of deficiencies,” Estes said.</b><br /></i><br />You’re also moving your body in an atypical way. Most people spend their days living and moving in the sagittal plane (forward and backward motion), and almost exclusively in the forward sagittal plane, Wickham said.<br /><br />“The body adapts to the positions and movements and postures you do most often,” Wickham said. “That can lead to tight muscles and joints, which leads to joint compensation, which leads to joint wear and tear, then pain and injury. The more we can add in varied movement into our day-to-day activities or in the gym, it’s so much more beneficial for the body.”<br /><br /><b>Retro movement is hardly a new idea. People in China have been walking backward for centuries for physical and mental health. Moving backward is also common in sports — think soccer players and referees.<br /></b><br />There are even some backward running and walking races, plus people moving in reverse while competing in famous events such as the Boston Marathon. Loren Zitomersky did so in 2018 to raise money for epilepsy research and try to break a world record. (He achieved the former but not the latter.)</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">It’s pretty easy to get started. The key, as with any new exercise, is to take it slowly. You could begin by walking backward for five minutes several times a week, Wickham said. Or take a 20-minute stroll, with five of those minutes moving in reverse. <b>As your body gets used to the motion, you can bump up the time and pace or try more challenging moves, such as walking backward in a squat.</b><br /><br />“If you’re younger and exercise regularly, you can probably walk backwards for as long as you’d like,” Wickham said. “It’s relatively safe, per se.”<br /><br />Walking backward while pulling a sled is one of the exercises that Estes favors. But he said it’s also great to walk backward on a self-powered treadmill if you can find one. While motorized treadmills are also an option, it’s more beneficial to be working under your own power, Estes said.<br /><br />Retro walking outside is another option, and one Wickham recommends. “While the treadmill simulates walking, it’s not as natural. Plus, you have the potential to fall. If you fall outside, it’s less dangerous.”<br /><br />If you opt for retro walking on a treadmill, especially a motorized one, start off by holding the handrails and setting the speed fairly slow. As you become accustomed to the movement, you can walk faster, increase the incline and let go of the handrails.<br /><br />l.</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>If
you elect to try it outside, first choose a spot that’s free of
hazards, such as a grassy patch in a park. Then begin your retro
adventure, keeping your head and chest upright while rolling from your
big toe to your heel.</b></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />While you may need occasionally to peer over your shoulder, you don’t want to be constantly doing so, as that contorts your body. Another option is to walk with a friend who is moving forward and can serve as your eyes. After a few minutes, switch roles so your friend can reap the benefits, too.<br /><br />“It’s so great to get in varied movements,” Wickham said. “And one of those is doing things backwards.” ~</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH0UDF_fJtYR5LaR87WjrtymhcTyMsj_6HnIzRcqRzAYFHg7seNMlpvrrfrLo_YFPMp2Qd9Hlk3UOTShHOTwnvrx7e0rziqSSzRnZ4NYv0keXQBEVpOyNDGP-EkW0WsBNk6R0k17UWBGzKIExhYsiFSgVrliP4ulwYPBI3ujOJTGVt8xCZ9ZWLwFmu_KdJ/s1110/walking%20backwards.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="740" data-original-width="1110" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH0UDF_fJtYR5LaR87WjrtymhcTyMsj_6HnIzRcqRzAYFHg7seNMlpvrrfrLo_YFPMp2Qd9Hlk3UOTShHOTwnvrx7e0rziqSSzRnZ4NYv0keXQBEVpOyNDGP-EkW0WsBNk6R0k17UWBGzKIExhYsiFSgVrliP4ulwYPBI3ujOJTGVt8xCZ9ZWLwFmu_KdJ/w400-h266/walking%20backwards.webp" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/03/health/retro-walking-backward-exercise-wellness/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/03/health/retro-walking-backward-exercise-wellness/index.html<br /></a><br />Oriana:</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I love little bursts of walking backwards. It's surprisingly pleasant. Try it!<br /><br />*<br /><i><b>Ending on beauty:</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Full moon<br />the silence between us<br />becomes a poem<br /><br />~ Andrzej Kosmowski (translated by Oriana)<br /></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBOTBY8v6lOCN3aCy1tqFBb8gJVcokmJxZA5SGzySB5k5Fc4GPCCQ5cdcEr-Z9RGgY3xr_ItbOPeGxsZuCc0CBKdcFbtaVZcSCHkNdVsN8OYXBQReAfgiDF0r6QaONxOd7T1voSBESrNneQwLpOKCtOzgTlsctnlScT09QOIEYXgjxQIwXuRfBYyBbpnAW/s1080/full%20moon%20blessing%20Lissa.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBOTBY8v6lOCN3aCy1tqFBb8gJVcokmJxZA5SGzySB5k5Fc4GPCCQ5cdcEr-Z9RGgY3xr_ItbOPeGxsZuCc0CBKdcFbtaVZcSCHkNdVsN8OYXBQReAfgiDF0r6QaONxOd7T1voSBESrNneQwLpOKCtOzgTlsctnlScT09QOIEYXgjxQIwXuRfBYyBbpnAW/w400-h400/full%20moon%20blessing%20Lissa.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /></span><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-25678773072304501902023-11-11T19:35:00.000-08:002023-11-19T09:16:57.331-08:00HAMAS BILLIONAIRES; IS ZIONISM RACIST? THE EARTH’S LOST SISTER PLANET; WHY THE SOVIET UNION FAILED TO BRING COMMUNISM TO THE MIDDLE EAST; WHY MILLENNIALS ARE NOT HAVING CHILDREN; WHAT REALLY HAPPENS DURING NDEs ; BACTERIAL EVOLUTION THROWS LIGHT ON HUMAN EVOLUTION<p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji3D17f9Z4QMez42yVrx8aDQGgdBnZv1aL9oun_oZf6sYgeVlwr38wuGxM-xSwu3QNeBBzU8HrrQeFskax2eCNmQ1Djd-zpGrGbz5RblqGm5cdJNPMEawBazmHckNGrttf8fPuB9uyZ-ZnXVyQjMgcPNmLc7iUaBp8egnTmD85xAbXtoDtvtb3EhM55JNz/s2450/Persephone%20and%20Hades%20vase.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2450" data-original-width="2450" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji3D17f9Z4QMez42yVrx8aDQGgdBnZv1aL9oun_oZf6sYgeVlwr38wuGxM-xSwu3QNeBBzU8HrrQeFskax2eCNmQ1Djd-zpGrGbz5RblqGm5cdJNPMEawBazmHckNGrttf8fPuB9uyZ-ZnXVyQjMgcPNmLc7iUaBp8egnTmD85xAbXtoDtvtb3EhM55JNz/w400-h400/Persephone%20and%20Hades%20vase.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Persephone and Hades<br /></i></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />ASPHODEL<br /><br />When the darkness seized me, <br />the great love of my youth,<br />when I dared to reach for the most<br /><br />magnificent narcissus, <br />the earth opened and horses <br />rearing like black smoke<br /><br />carried me off to marry <br />the Invisible Lord —<br />so my song would be both <br /><br />ravishing and true.<br />Because love has two flowers: <br />narcissus and asphodel. <br /><br />A hundred-headed narcissus! <br />We grow of many minds.<br />A hundred wishes, ten thousand —<br /><br />and echo has the last word. <br />Narcissus — flower of youth,<br />rippling into departure.<br /><br />Asphodel swaying in no wind,<br />in twilight memory of sun,<br />you have no scent except <br /><br />in the mind that remembers.<br />Asphodel, flower of soul, <br />of love at the ripe hour:<br /><br />the ancients understood<br />the soul feeds on flowers. <br />Even in hell, <br /><br />a life filled with flowers. <br />After trails of sunny narcissi, <br />I walk in mothlike meadows. <br /><br />~ Oriana<br /><br />*<br />~ Time wounds all heels but it doesn't heal all wounds, instead it turns the wounds into vaguely painful empty spaces within us, it makes us older, it makes us weaker, it makes us sadder and weepier, it makes us lonelier and ever more in need of love, it makes us maudlin and sentimental, soft and uncertain and gullible, brittle and frail, the slow-walking gluttons for life's punishment... but in the end, as its sole act of kindness, it slips away quietly and leaves us alone, face to face with its eternal opposite — timelessness. ~ Misha Iossel<br /><br />*<br /><b>AN ARAB-AMERICAN VIEWS GAZA<br /></b><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTBwL0tTyCwa8l2Xk2njs0nH_4ZU9VVTzbKFGfinhrTJ6LDVjkufmeHAbRebsQRhnja0wHBzy4HN-s6az1L9Gv4wTXG4ekjSsfMB94MVZfeBLb4h7ofDxlns5YbDzy340U3jU2XQ9mLsK2TFf2x70Zr9KeEmgHgLqRu-0K51Tk0TRMol8T0Hnci7I_a3tq/s1200/Qassem%20Ali%20on%20his%20rooftop%20balcony%20in%20Gaza.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1084" data-original-width="1200" height="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTBwL0tTyCwa8l2Xk2njs0nH_4ZU9VVTzbKFGfinhrTJ6LDVjkufmeHAbRebsQRhnja0wHBzy4HN-s6az1L9Gv4wTXG4ekjSsfMB94MVZfeBLb4h7ofDxlns5YbDzy340U3jU2XQ9mLsK2TFf2x70Zr9KeEmgHgLqRu-0K51Tk0TRMol8T0Hnci7I_a3tq/s320/Qassem%20Ali%20on%20his%20rooftop%20balcony%20in%20Gaza.webp" width="320" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Qassem Ali on his rooftop balcony in Gaza<br /></i><br />With few journalists on the ground and frequent phone and internet blackouts, it has been hard to get a clear picture of what life is like for people in Gaza.<br /><br />It is becoming a little more clear now that some foreign nationals have been allowed to cross from Gaza into Egypt. One of them is 65-year-old Qassem Ali.<br /><br /><b>Ali grew up in the northeast Gaza village of Beit Hanoun and worked as a journalist. He studied in America, and in 1997, got U.S. citizenship.<br /></b><br />Over a Zoom call, he told NPR he was visiting his 90-year-old mother in northern Gaza — about two miles from the border with Israel – when, on Oct. 7, Hamas insurgents crossed into Israel, killing more than 1,400 people and taking more than 200 others hostage.<br /><br /><b>The morning the war began, Ali was on the rooftop garden of his family home.<br /></b><br />"I love gardening, so I have a nice rooftop," he said. "I hear the missiles ... and, you know, [as a] former journalist, I start filming.”<br /><br />His video shows a lush garden full of plants. <b>There is a sunrise and the sounds of birds chirping, and then — explosions. One after another. And close.<br /></b><br />"I figure it will be serious," Ali recalled. "So I decided to take a shower before the Israelis — I know it's crazy but that's the reality — <b>I took a shower quickly because I don't want to be dying while I'm naked, you know?”</b><br /><br />He and his mother fled to his sister's apartment in Gaza City. The missiles from Israel followed them there, so they fled again. The days started to blur together.<br /><br />"You don't know days, my friend," he said. "You don't know if it's Monday or Friday, all the days are the same. If you ask me now what's the day, I don't know. That's the life of war. Especially this war.”<br /><br /><b>"I have been covering all the wars in Gaza ... but this is different. This is not just a war. This is more than a war.”<br /></b><br />In the four weeks since the conflict began, more than 10,000 people have died in Gaza, according to the Ministry of Health.<br /><br />Despite all this — despite the violence, despite not knowing what day it is, despite being a U.S. citizen — Ali said he didn't think about trying to leave. Not at first.<br /><br />"I wanted to stay with my sister and my mother," he said. But then he managed to talk to his 13-year-old daughter Nadia, who lives in Canada.<br /><br />"And I couldn't die without seeing her. So then I decided to leave," he said.<br /><br />Ali said he didn't hear anything from the American government, even after he registered as a citizen trying to leave. But <b>it was his American passport that eventually got him out — through the Rafah crossing into Egypt</b> this past Friday.<br /><br />He said those who crossed were put on a bus and they traveled for hours through checkpoints and searches until they eventually arrived at a hotel in Cairo Saturday morning.<br /><br /><b>“The only thing I wanted to do is just go have a shower," he said. "For 26 days, you don't even wash your face or brush your teeth, and [you are] in the same clothes. And it's hot during the day, and you're sweating.”<br /></b><br />Ali spoke to All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly on Sunday from Cairo, where he said he was preparing to move on to Malta.<br /><br />Qassam Ali: I<b> have to leave tomorrow morning, because they give us 72 hours. I don't understand why. I have a house in Cairo, I have a farm in Cairo</b>. [The U.S. officials say] "You'll have to leave." So I decided to go to Malta and just spend some time there to see and then to think [about] what I'm going to do after I've recovered.<br /><br />Mary Louise Kelly: So where is your mother now? Where is your sister?<br /><br />Ali: <b>My mother and my sister and my niece and nephew are still there in Gaza. They refuse to leave. </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>They decide if we're going to die, let's die in our house</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>.</b> Of course, this is why I'm not happy leaving, because I'm worried about them. My mother, she raised us, seven kids, by herself — [we] got the best education. So I love my mom, and now I am leaving her.<br /><br />People think I'm happy to leave. No. Usually, I travel a lot in my life out of Gaza, and always I feel Gaza is a prison. When you get in, you get in the prison. <b>Always you need permission to leave and always I am happy to get out of Gaza ... But this time I don't feel I am free. I don't feel I am safe. Because part of me is still in Gaza. </b><br /><br />Kelly: Do you think you'll ever go back? Do you think you'll see Gaza again in your life? </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Ali: I don't know. I love Gaza. <b>I am addicted to Gaza. You know, I have a chance to live comfortably all over the world, but I always come back to Gaza</b>. I don't know. If my mother stays alive, I will go. <b>Even if nothing is for me there after all of this destruction ... I don't like to die without seeing Gaza again. </b><br /><br />Kelly: You said you feel angry now. At who? <b>Who do you blame for what's happening to your home, to your family?<br /><br />Ali: Israelis and the Americans. And really I'm angry at Mr. Biden.</b><br /><br />Kelly: Even though the U.S. helped you get to safety? Even though the U.S. helped you get out?<br /><br />Ali: Oh, no no no. No no no. Take me to safety? No no. Not at all. When they're helping in the destruction of your own people? I think the American government, even with this situation, they were cheap. When they put us in the hotel and they tell us, "You have to leave in 72 hours. If you want to go to the States, you have to organize the ticket.”<br /><br />This is the American government which is giving Israel $14 billion, and they are not capable of taking charters for their own citizens to the United States and told me I have to be thankful for the American government? Why? There is a duty to protect and to help their own citizens, no matter what their background is – they are Palestinians or Israelis or Europeans, or anywhere. <b>All United States citizens are from immigrant origins. Why this discrimination?<br /></b><br />As for what's next, Ali said he wants to see his daughter in Canada — and his other kids — but not right away. He said he needs time, psychologically and physically, and<b> he wants to protect his kids from what he has experienced.</b><br /><br /><b>He doesn't want to bring the war to them. He just witnessed so many kids in Gaza who have no choice but to live through it</b>. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/11/06/1210847774/gaza-americans-israel-hamas-war-middle-east">https://www.npr.org/2023/11/06/1210847774/gaza-americans-israel-hamas-war-middle-east<br /></a></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1oyCPH9o7q46P0r9S9R3hpbCF3B9M26zQMVKwRxFDjXxvNc5uHURKqFR_8_FHAY0RlIB64muV7EtiwJRw2pvB7iOgrkuZ5U8p2DUtnReI-UJFM5wqMfiHNpSwWrGSfISb7M9mi9zjtCRVc5rA6CGD1fmkT2T6SCsJIQ9wLHxvD_IwxCyH_D0jWuswoInr/s602/gaza%20ruins%20weeping%20mother.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="342" data-original-width="602" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1oyCPH9o7q46P0r9S9R3hpbCF3B9M26zQMVKwRxFDjXxvNc5uHURKqFR_8_FHAY0RlIB64muV7EtiwJRw2pvB7iOgrkuZ5U8p2DUtnReI-UJFM5wqMfiHNpSwWrGSfISb7M9mi9zjtCRVc5rA6CGD1fmkT2T6SCsJIQ9wLHxvD_IwxCyH_D0jWuswoInr/w400-h228/gaza%20ruins%20weeping%20mother.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>THE DEATH TOLL IN GAZA</b><br /><br />~ More than 10,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its military offensive nearly a month ago, the Hamas-controlled health ministry in the Palestinian enclave said Monday.<br /><br />Israel declared war on Hamas after the Islamist militant group launched a brutal attack on October 7, killing 1,400 in Israel and kidnapping more than 240. Israel retaliated by launching an air and ground offensive on Gaza, vowing to eliminate the militant group.<br /><br />Ashraf Al Qudra, spokesperson for the ministry, said 10,022 Palestinians in the enclave had been killed by Israeli strikes, including 4,104 children, 2,641 women and 611 elderly people. Those numbers suggest about three-quarters of the dead are from vulnerable populations. The ministry also reported 25,408 injured.</span><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyZb7LaAWOUNkw9ayRUrGJ6BRmfoqLo22p9jMDQYecuiL5azAMaxkQWypkS80EhMfvT8oz98Ot7d9Tks0SnFSLuPy7JAI0bDbUM2K0h4Nhc7l_4OHnytUVee3KWauWR7zGf27gjqh6wOpP7kNk6qpTlLmhagyjGfqVZonpGQC0sPJpju-JkIDvL3dXYarg/s960/man%20walks%20between%20bodies%20Gaza%20November%2023.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyZb7LaAWOUNkw9ayRUrGJ6BRmfoqLo22p9jMDQYecuiL5azAMaxkQWypkS80EhMfvT8oz98Ot7d9Tks0SnFSLuPy7JAI0bDbUM2K0h4Nhc7l_4OHnytUVee3KWauWR7zGf27gjqh6wOpP7kNk6qpTlLmhagyjGfqVZonpGQC0sPJpju-JkIDvL3dXYarg/w400-h225/man%20walks%20between%20bodies%20Gaza%20November%2023.webp" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>A man walks between the bodies of people killed by Israeli bombardment in Deir Balah, central Gaza, on Monday.<br /></i><br />It’s unclear how many combatants are included in the total. CNN cannot independently verify the numbers released by the ministry in Gaza, which is sealed off by Israel and mostly sealed by Egypt.<br /><br /><b>Thousands more Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in the last month than those who died in conflicts with Israel spanning over the last 15 years.<br /></b><br /><i><b>At least one child is being killed in Gaza every 10 minutes as a result of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, according to CNN calculations based on the latest numbers released by the Gazan health ministry.</b></i><br /><br />More than 10,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its military offensive nearly a month ago, the Hamas-controlled health ministry in the Palestinian enclave said Monday.<br /><br />Israel declared war on Hamas after the Islamist militant group launched a brutal attack on October 7, killing 1,400 in Israel and kidnapping more than 240. Israel retaliated by launching an air and ground offensive on Gaza, vowing to eliminate the militant group.<br /><br />Ashraf Al Qudra, spokesperson for the ministry, said 10,022 Palestinians in the enclave had been killed by Israeli strikes, including 4,104 children, 2,641 women and 611 elderly people. Those numbers suggest about three-quarters of the dead are from vulnerable populations. The ministry also reported 25,408 injured.</span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The latest violence has caused more than 1,400 deaths in Israel and at least 10,022 in Gaza as of Nov. 6, according to authorities on both sides.<br /></b><br />It’s unclear how many combatants are included in the total. CNN cannot independently verify the numbers released by the ministry in Gaza, which is sealed off by Israel and mostly sealed by Egypt.<br /><br />Thousands more Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in the last month than those who died in conflicts with Israel spanning over the last 15 years.</span><br /></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">At least one child is being killed in Gaza every 10 minutes as a result of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, according to CNN calculations based on the latest numbers released by the Gazan health ministry.<br /><br />The international charity Save the Children said last month that the number of children reported killed in the enclave during Israel’s campaign had surpassed the annual number of children killed in armed conflict globally in each of the past four years. <b>The UN has described Gaza as a “graveyard” for children.</b><br /><br />The United States has backed Israel’s campaign throughout the war, saying it has a right to defend itself. It vetoed a UN Security Council resolution for humanitarian pauses to deliver aid into Gaza on October 18, but President Joe Biden on Wednesday said that he was supportive of a humanitarian pause to allow for the release of more hostages held in Gaza.<br /><br /><b>Washington has also warned Israel that support may wane if the carnage in Gaza doesn’t stop.<br /></b><br /><i><b>Israel’s operation in Gaza has triggered protests across the world and prompted warnings of a potential intervention from Iran-backed militants in the region, which have already been engaged in skirmishes with the Israeli military.</b></i><br /><br />Israel is, however, yet to show any signs of backing down, saying its operations in Gaza are only expanding.<br /><br />Nearly 1.5 million Gazans have already been displaced in the 140-square-meter strip, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Friday, with <b>thousands sheltering in crammed schools and hospitals with dwindling food, water and power. ~</b><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUNI3dyuKceJhK2B0n98fRNcYK7kRDeTw0SCxSsD329M6wEkYfFCzdw5AuoExk9t4p0fFPEBzn2QucktamO3QJZmokKE5ZEjT1iBOLNkedZegkAESmO__AYUX-Ed0THS81K7TIL2Weljykh_AV24LrGvi2tfQ1-NYGy_Et3cB_rOXdL720tBQ4L7wJeZfR/s2000/2%20BOYS%20ruins%20of%20Gaza.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1124" data-original-width="2000" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUNI3dyuKceJhK2B0n98fRNcYK7kRDeTw0SCxSsD329M6wEkYfFCzdw5AuoExk9t4p0fFPEBzn2QucktamO3QJZmokKE5ZEjT1iBOLNkedZegkAESmO__AYUX-Ed0THS81K7TIL2Weljykh_AV24LrGvi2tfQ1-NYGy_Et3cB_rOXdL720tBQ4L7wJeZfR/w400-h225/2%20BOYS%20ruins%20of%20Gaza.webp" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/06/middleeast/gaza-10k-deaths-intl/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/06/middleeast/gaza-10k-deaths-intl/index.html<br /></a><br /><b>*</b></span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>THE HAMAS BILLIONAIRES</b><br /><br />The Hamas terrorist billionaires live in marble-floored mansions and luxury hotels as they decry Gaza poverty after profiting from misery and terror.<br /><br />Estimates suggest some of Hamas's leaders have a net worth in the billions.<br />Israel and other critics accuse the group of spending money on luxuries instead of helping the people of Gaza.<br /><br />Conditions in the Gaza Strip have long been dire, with the territory referred to by some as the world's 'largest open air prison’.<br /><br />Even before the outbreak of war in the wake of Hamas's October 7 terror attack on Israel, <b>half of Palestinians living in Gaza depended on food supplied by the United Nations.</b><br /><br />Those conditions have deteriorated over the last month, as Israel continues its bombardment of the 140-square-mile Strip in its mission to destroy the Hamas terror group.<br /><br />But as the territory's 2.3million people suffer, several hundred millionaires are registered in the coastal Strip.<br /><br />And while the majority of citizens in the densely populated territory — which is a quarter of the size of Greater London — languish in poverty, a select few live in marble-floored mansions and luxury hotels.<br /><br />According to the Embassy of Israel in the US, <b>three of Hamas's most senior leaders </b></span><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span></b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b> Mousa Abu Marzouk, Khaled Mashal and Ismail Haniyeh — have net worths of more than $3billion each. The embassy also claims that Hamas's annual turnover is $1billion and suggests the group is second only to ISIS as the world's richest terror group</b>.<br /></span><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlMNp1l-oKkcL1IkUrFw7avF1zcr2DbQxJ7taHnWK4xh4ODuxYGkKqa9_qEl4nfT5z0uLo8PZ-G8Ik3Q5LZboIVpngkwMoW8Tvo6eYzk3hZ16hiZj7cHsfVLXp1XXHHD3MQ7VYzaSF1Lu1HdkrRmiU4J7NvFWVqGFg9GufmjoUTIORZmeYDB1LaTEBTlSu/s1908/hamas%20private%20plane.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1084" data-original-width="1908" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlMNp1l-oKkcL1IkUrFw7avF1zcr2DbQxJ7taHnWK4xh4ODuxYGkKqa9_qEl4nfT5z0uLo8PZ-G8Ik3Q5LZboIVpngkwMoW8Tvo6eYzk3hZ16hiZj7cHsfVLXp1XXHHD3MQ7VYzaSF1Lu1HdkrRmiU4J7NvFWVqGFg9GufmjoUTIORZmeYDB1LaTEBTlSu/w400-h228/hamas%20private%20plane.png" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (far right) is seen on a private plane with other senior Hamas officials</i><br /><br />Hamas is best known for its military wing, with reports that 40,000 terrorists wear the group's badge, thousands of whom took part in the October 7 attack. They are armed to the teeth with rifles and rockets, and have vowed to destroy Israel.<br /><br /><b>But the group is also the de facto authority that governs over Gaza,</b> <b>running organizations including its healthcare system, social services and the media.</b><br /><br /><i><b>It took power in 2006, with its political leader Ismail Haniyeh assuming the role of prime minister that year. It remains in control of the territory and — having called no elections since — is essentially an authoritarian regime.</b></i><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxFLzs_4ZJeFkERw9j-JjG_xP9vuuCLMpcTYM6Q9kWeaLh35xOeAKG2t6wYcQBfGA77Rtm-85k1kIBO0nYaG22Ld8frWgj0p-prgtQ4Oz1JyNf4kyvSYbIydgPgB1j3G3XzGaGlYZCXo26yy4DAml0sWKfrzsbGQWiAROODiOD7lPx_-xYiVsDWJE9pFS2/s1906/hamas%20leader%202%20sons%20luxury%20hotel.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1108" data-original-width="1906" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxFLzs_4ZJeFkERw9j-JjG_xP9vuuCLMpcTYM6Q9kWeaLh35xOeAKG2t6wYcQBfGA77Rtm-85k1kIBO0nYaG22Ld8frWgj0p-prgtQ4Oz1JyNf4kyvSYbIydgPgB1j3G3XzGaGlYZCXo26yy4DAml0sWKfrzsbGQWiAROODiOD7lPx_-xYiVsDWJE9pFS2/w400-h233/hamas%20leader%202%20sons%20luxury%20hotel.png" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (center) pictured in a luxury hotel with two of his sons<br /></i><br />In the years since taking control, the group's leaders have profited off the misery of the Gazan people.<br /><br /><b>The Embassy of Israel in the US accused the group of using its funds for building tunnels and arming its fighters rather than building vital infrastructure such as wells and water treatment.<br /></b><br />A study from 2021 suggested that about <b>one-quarter of disease spread in the territory is caused by water pollution, and 12 per cent of deaths of young children are due to infections related to contaminated water.</b><br /><br />'While Gazans are deprived of basic needs, Hamas uses aid and funds to line their own pockets,' the embassy said in a post on X (formerly Twitter). <br /><br /><b>Israel has also said Hamas continues to attack across the border without building civilian bomb shelters, knowing the Israeli military will retaliate.<br /></b><br />Instead, Israel says Hamas's leadership hoards its wealth, uses Palestinians as human shields and allows the population it claims to govern go hungry.<br /><br />According to German news outlet Bild, there are four Hamas officials who have grown particularly wealthy over the years </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>—</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> the trio of Abu Marzouk, Khaled Mashal and Ismail Haniyeh </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>—</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> as well as a fourth named Younis Qafisheh.<br /><br /><b><i>Haniyeh is believed to be the richest of the three </i></b></span><b><i><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span></i></b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><i> despite once vowing to live only on olive oil and za'atar spice.</i></b><br /><br /><b>A 61-year-old father of 13 children, Haniyeh has been in hiding since 2019, living the high-life in luxury hotels in Qatar and Turkey.</b><br /><br />German tabloid Bild reports that he often jets between Tehran, Istanbul, Moscow and Cairo in his private jet to meet leaders in friendly nations, and two of his sons Maaz and Abdel Salam are often seen in Instagram posts lounging on hotel beds in Istanbul or Doha.<br /><br /><b>Maaz, who is a very wealthy real estate mogul in his own right, is known on the Gaza Strip as the 'father of houses'.</b> When he's in Turkey, he is often seen in the company of attractive women and alcohol, despite his Islamic faith. <br /><br /><b>His brother Abdel Salam, meanwhile, was disgraced after being found to be siphoning off money in his role as sports ambassador for Hamas's 'Shura Council' (Politburo), Bild says.</b><br /><br />The publication estimates his net worth to be $2.5million, while the Israeli embassy to the US suggested it was as much as $3.2billion. Another publication, i24News, wrote last month that his wealth could be as high as $5billion.<br /><br />Khaled Mashal, 67, is the former head of Hamas's political bureau.<br /><br />He fled Damascus to escape the Arab Spring in Syria and, like Haniyeh, is now living in Qatar. From there, he handles real estate and financial transactions for Hamas.<br /><br />When he fled Syria, Bild reports, he is said to have taken $1.5 billion from Hamas's headquarters in Damascus. Israel's US embassy puts his net worth at $4billion.<br /><br /><b>Mousa Abu Marzouk, 72, is another Hamas high-flyer. He is considered the second in command within the group, and is a foreign minister of sorts.<br /></b><br />After spending 14 years in the US </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>—</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> where he was in 1995 arrested for activities supporting terrorism and deported after two years </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>—</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> he moved to Jordan, then to Syria and then to Cairo in 2012.<br /><br />Despite his arrest, he kept hold of his money, and today Bild reported his fortune is estimated at $2billion, while the Israeli embassy to the US puts it higher, at $3billion.<br /><br />Younis Qafisheh, 67, is a fourth Hamas official highlighted by Bild for his immense wealth.<br />He is one of the terror group's most important financial managers, and has been on the US sanctions list since 2022 on account of being 'involved in directing Hamas operations and [holding] key positions in several Hamas-controlled companies, including Sudan-based Agrogate Holding and Turkey-based Trend GYO.’<br /><br />Trend GYO, which is also on the US terror watch list, reported a 2022 net profit of 57.8million Turkish lira (around two million euros).<br /><br />However, according to i24News, the wealth accumulated by Hamas's very top officials is just the tip of the iceberg.<br /><br /><b>The online outlet suggests that hundreds of Hamas leaders are sitting on millions thanks to the taxation of goods brought into the territory and through international donors, mainly from Qatar.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">While some estimates of Hamas's wealth are more conservative, <b>there is no question the group leaders have amassed huge fortunes. </b><br /><br />In May 2022, the US Treasury Department sanctioned a Hamas finance official as well as other financial facilitators.<br /><br />It said: 'Hamas's Investment Office, whose leadership oversees this network, held assets estimated to be worth more than $500million, including companies operating in Sudan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and the United Arab Emirates.’<br /><br />And according to documents obtained by German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, <b>the group has a financial empire outside of the Gaza Strip worth nearly $750million (£600million).</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>*</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>But</b> <b>how has Hamas accumulated its wealth?</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />On account of it being a terror group, <i><b>Hamas is cut off from assistance from the likes of the United States and the European Union that both provide support to the Palestine Liberation Organization in the West Bank.</b></i><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Historically, Palestinian expats and private benefactors in the Middle East provided much of the group's funding, in addition to some Islamic charities in the West</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>.<br /></b><br /><b>Israel has in the past also allowed Qatar to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to the authorities in Gaza, while other foreign aid comes through the Palestinian National Authority and United Nations aid groups.</b><br /><br /><b>But Hamas has also been able to raise its own revenue, taxing goods that move through a sophisticated network of tunnels that avoid the Egyptian border crossing in the south, bringing in food, medicine, fuel and cash, and also arms.<br /></b><br />Egypt also allows for the entry of some commercial goods. As of 2021, Hamas reportedly collected upwards of $12million per month in taxes raised on Egyptian goods imported into Gaza, according to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). <br /><br />Today, <b>Iran is one of Hamas's biggest donors. The country — a sworn enemy of Israel — contributes funds, weapons and military training to the group.</b><br /><br />According to CFR, it provides some $100million per year to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other groups designated as terror organizations.<br /><br />Turkey has also been a backer of Hamas and a critic of Israel. Though Ankara says it only supports the political wing of the group, it has also been accused of funding Hamas's terrorist activities through aid diverted to the group's military wing.<br /><br />Despite its accumulation of wealth, however, <b>Hamas has avoided responsibility for building infrastructure and protecting the citizens of Gaza.</b><br /><br />In fact, just last week, Abu Marzouk declared that the political bureau of the terror group is not responsible for protecting the coastal strip's civilians amid the ongoing Israeli bombardment of the territory.<br /><br />'We built the tunnels because we have no other way of protecting ourselves from being killed in airstrikes. We are fighting from inside the tunnels,' he said. <br /><br />Passing the buck further, he added: 'Seventy-five per cent of the population of Gaza are refugees, and it is the UN's responsibility to protect them.’<br /><br />According to the Times of Israel,<b> he then went on to claim that it was Israel's obligation to provide for the needs of Gazans under the Geneva Convention.<br /></b><br />While all the sources of Hamas's income may remain unknown, one thing is certain: the group will not be diverting its funds to help the civilians of Gaza, who with each passing day are slipping deeper and deeper into a humanitarian crisis. <br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxOdOGoLWI4dBP5RwR-_6Z7p1y18obg0BJdRjhaFvlRZusBtCJXdlR5ZAFCPameWZQ2iMYUTkycgKxTJS8QoPpDThw6bw0XX6_Mg6iR1d26cJ69WYe3TB8n2hxQwnH5OSwnE_BiNmdLvn8x_5b8J10ayntEy9P0KKR5fu4WNkcHYVBEc_jKLs9Kyypu52_/s1200/gaza%20rubble%20November%202023.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="560" data-original-width="1200" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxOdOGoLWI4dBP5RwR-_6Z7p1y18obg0BJdRjhaFvlRZusBtCJXdlR5ZAFCPameWZQ2iMYUTkycgKxTJS8QoPpDThw6bw0XX6_Mg6iR1d26cJ69WYe3TB8n2hxQwnH5OSwnE_BiNmdLvn8x_5b8J10ayntEy9P0KKR5fu4WNkcHYVBEc_jKLs9Kyypu52_/w400-h186/gaza%20rubble%20November%202023.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12706715/Hamas-terrorist-billionaires-live-marble-floored-mansions.html">https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12706715/Hamas-terrorist-billionaires-live-marble-floored-mansions.html<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>IS ZIONISM “RACIST”?<br /></b><br />"...towards the end of the nineteenth century, one aspiration turned into a necessity. <b>Sanctuary</b>. Well before the Holocaust, Jews were being massacred in their tens of thousands in every corner of Eastern Europe. The Dreyfus Affair in France proved that even where Jews had lost the look of tinkers and passed into the higher ranks of society, they were not safe. Without their own country they would forever be regarded with suspicion and hate — their very rootlessness the proof that they were an accursed people. <b>Of the savage libels to which Jews have been subject for centuries, one of the most preposterous, far-reaching and despicable, is that by fleeing racism they become racists themselves.</b><br /><br />That very claim lies at the heart of the anti-Zionist mantra that Zionism is a *racist endeavor*, and it is why I will not accept that anti-Zionism distinguishes between a State and a people and so cannot be anti-Jewish. After the Hamas massacre of October 7 not a shred of that distinction remains. <b>What the terrorists were applauded for was the rape, dismemberment and slaughter of *Jews*.</b> Oh happy day! Now kill more of them.<br /><...><br />We could have been in the Middle Ages. But we weren’t. We were here and now, in citadels of higher learning in modern high tech cities.” ~ Howard Jacobson, in "The Death of Tragedy”<br /><br />*<br /><b>“I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the Holocaust will be upon us.” ~ Eric Hoffer, author of The True Believer, writing in 1968</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />Hoffer outlines the basic definition of a mass movement by emphasizing the call for self-sacrifice as a central element: The vigor of a mass movement stems from the propensity of its followers for united action and self-sacrifice. <a href="https://fs.blog/eric-hoffer-creation-fanatical-mass-movements">https://fs.blog/eric-hoffer-creation-fanatical-mass-movements</a><br /><br />*<br /><b>Theodore Herzl and the Jewish intellectuals were driven to Zionism by the humiliations heaped upon millions of Jews in Russia, and by the calumnies to which the Jews in the rest of continental Europe were subjected toward the end of the nineteenth century.</b> To a degree the nationalist movement which forced the British rulers out of India had its inception in the humiliation of a scrawny and bespectacled Indian man of words in South Africa. ~ Eric Hoffer<br /><br /><b>The reason for the tragic fate which almost always overtakes the intellectual midwives of a mass movement is that, no matter how much they preach and glorify the united effort, they remain essentially individualists.</b> <i><b>They believe in the possibility of individual happiness and the validity of individual opinion and initiative.</b></i> </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b><i>But once a movement gets rolling, power falls into the hands of those who have neither faith in, nor respect for, the individual</i></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And the reason they prevail is not so much that their disregard of the individual gives them a capacity for ruthlessness, but that their attitude is in full accord with the ruling passion of the masses. ~ Eric Hoffer</span></p><p><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: georgia;">Joe: Is Zionism racist?</span></p><p class="ydp555d7a26MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">To think that Zionism leads to bigoted attitudes against Palestinians, a person must believe that Zionists are a monolithic bloc. They are not, and a cursory study of modern-day Zionists shows they agree and disagree with their beliefs. The different types of Zionists range from the liberal to the ultra-conservative.</span></span></p><p class="ydp555d7a26MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The liberal Zionists believe in pluralism, equality among all citizens, and more normal relations with Palestine and surrounding Middle Eastern countries. They are in favor of a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Two State Solution,</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>unlike the ultra-orthodox, who believe The Gaza Strip and the West Bank belong to Israel. They do not believe in the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Two State Solution</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and want Jerusalem to be a holy site only for Jews.</span></span></p><p class="ydp555d7a26MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Since Zionists fall between the most liberal and the ultra-conservative, it is impossible to refer to them as one uniform block. It is common knowledge that bigotry crosses political boundaries, and an inoffensive term can evolve into ethnic or racial slurs. Labeling all Israelis as Zionists leads to Zionists becoming an antisemitic label.</span></span></p><p class="ydp555d7a26MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Creating a euphemism for any group leads to violence. We saw this when President Raegan took the accounting label, Welfare Mothers, and made it a euphemism referring to single, African-American mothers. Within forty years, we saw young black children shot on the street and by the police without justification.</span></span></p><p class="ydp555d7a26MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Today, the Republican House of Representatives censured Rashida Tlaib for her comments on the Palestinian-Jerusalem War. In their TV interviews, Republicans ignored the statements, leading to her indictment. They refer to her as a Muslim, meaning terrorist. <b>On Right-Wing radio, the host and the callers use the terms Muslim and Zionist to mean Arab and Jew, creating a new ethnic slur.</b></span></span></p><p class="ydp555d7a26MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Netanyahu complicated the issue by refusing to listen to a call for a cease-fire by the American, German, French, English, and the UN. DW News reports that the Israeli Institute wonders about Netanyahu’s motives. They questioned why he sent his son to America. On social media, his son, Yair, posted pictures of himself socializing with David Duke and the KKK on the Florida beaches.</span></span></p><p class="ydp555d7a26MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Why is his inner circle socializing with Holocaust deniers? This question received no response from Netanyahu, and in Israel, anger is growing against him for his handling of the war. To ask if 2,000 years of oppression turned Zionists into a racist philosophy is the wrong question. A better one is: how do we discuss the war without turning our words into anti-Muslim or antisemitic euphemisms?</span></span></p><p class="ydp555d7a26MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbnTBZk_zVoyHOV4zmnHVERE60GmbJ_sLnL4vEqJnDnReHNr57PDufcTd9vCZaJH_JCF7NhAImpbYWGQ9HFqwlv7gkcIGF5TonE-8Rx9rRdozvZccIcnQ27a1-ABwoSL1UozYloQUuZeHB43h5kwMIvnQZ22ywvWtVG9yk2HC0nUiDgkvxH0kDK_4r46yK/s1200/fiddler%20on%20an%20armored%20vehicle.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="675" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbnTBZk_zVoyHOV4zmnHVERE60GmbJ_sLnL4vEqJnDnReHNr57PDufcTd9vCZaJH_JCF7NhAImpbYWGQ9HFqwlv7gkcIGF5TonE-8Rx9rRdozvZccIcnQ27a1-ABwoSL1UozYloQUuZeHB43h5kwMIvnQZ22ywvWtVG9yk2HC0nUiDgkvxH0kDK_4r46yK/w225-h400/fiddler%20on%20an%20armored%20vehicle.jpg" width="225" /></a></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>A fiddler on an armored vehicle</i></span></span></div><span style="color: #0c343d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*</span><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>STALIN’S ELDEST SON (by his beloved Georgian wife, Kato)<br /></b><br />In 1941, German troops captured Stalin’s son Yakov Dzhugashvili as a PoW. They offered Stalin to trade him back. Stalin refused and disowned him. He was later killed trying to escape a PoW camp. After Stalin heard of his death, he said he was a real man.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0ryjZwK2OCqwrJNIK-tmpTkzVMWmv3hHoTifmVHJjhQf7BOvb0Xzh_SNKYFB6XXqh8QUrJThK2xQSmJtwP9qXqfJBT8r1QAodhLu1GkIt14Ll7dk6X3Rry8R87ymQxcbSeOhxmj5eP79NmRby5ZwoiVwS-f2RV6cdSeahXlJ7wWrihLo21wzCeCEXDtUK/s602/stalin's%20son%20Yakov%20Dzhugashvili.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="602" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0ryjZwK2OCqwrJNIK-tmpTkzVMWmv3hHoTifmVHJjhQf7BOvb0Xzh_SNKYFB6XXqh8QUrJThK2xQSmJtwP9qXqfJBT8r1QAodhLu1GkIt14Ll7dk6X3Rry8R87ymQxcbSeOhxmj5eP79NmRby5ZwoiVwS-f2RV6cdSeahXlJ7wWrihLo21wzCeCEXDtUK/w400-h199/stalin's%20son%20Yakov%20Dzhugashvili.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>WHY THE SOVIET UNION DIDN’T MANAGE TO BRING COMMUNISM TO THE MIDDLE EAST (Dima Vorobev)<br /></b><br /><i><b>We tried. The thing is, our model didn’t work in societies with strong vestiges of tribal culture, such as in Africa and the Middle East.</b></i></span></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>The closest call was Israel. But there, too, we had to pin our hopes on the Ashkenazis, who are essentially Semitic Europeans, in many ways more Westernized than us.<br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />We tried to export Communism to the Middle East in three attempts.<br /><br /><b>Attempt one: Export revolutionaries. </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>We supported the establishment of the state of Israel.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b><br />We funded left-leaning Jews who were instrumental in the Zionist movement.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>We ran a massive undercover operation that transferred a lot of WWII trophy weapons to Israel that helped them to crush the Arabs in the 1948 war.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The Israeli Air Force was founded on our training fields in Czechoslovakia.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">We voted for them in the UN on 29 November 1947. The famous Soviet foreign minister Andrey “Mr Nyet” Gromyko was central in the diplomatic cover for the whole arrangement.<br /><br />Afterward, t<b>he Israelis showed more loyalty to their state than to the cause of the Communist revolution. That was a mighty shock to Stalin.<br /></b><br />His revenge was terrible. <i><b>He had several central Czechoslovak Communists of Jewish nationality executed. The same happened to the members of the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee who, during WW2, secured a lot of goodwill in the United States and other countries for the Soviet Union.</b></i> </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>In 1953, a major purge against Jews was in the making, comparable to what Stalin did to Chechens, Crimean Tatars, and other “treasonous” nationalities. His death averted it.</b><br /><br /><b>Attempt two: Export revolutionary technologies.<br /></b><br />After Stalin, Khrushchev put the entire international revolutionary project on hold. But after his sacking, the Kremlin made a bet on radicals in the Middle East. <b>Together with the Romanian intelligence service, the KGB infiltrated PLO. Its first chairman, Ahmad Shukeiri, was allegedly a KGB agent, with his PLO program authored in Moscow.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The KGB also established its foothold in the leftist Kurdish organizations</b>, much thanks to the activity of Evgeniy Primakov, who later became foreign minister of the Russian Federation.<b><i> However, the Kurds were found to be too unmanageable and ineffective for serious political work as well.</i></b><br /><br /><b>Attempt three: Engage Nationalist parties.<br /></b><br /><i><b>Communist parties in the Middle East didn’t manage to make of themselves something more than small discussion clubs living off Soviet funding.</b><br /></i><br />Meanwhile, the Soviet model of a one-party state that owns the vital and most profitable sectors of the national economy hugely impressed Arab nationalists. Several influential aristocratic families and ambitious military commanders embraced it to grab power from old tribal and monarchical elites.<br /><br /><b>Herding cats</b><br /><br />The Soviet attitude to Pan-Arabic Socialism has long been ambivalent because of its combative nationalism. The thing is, <b>Communism is inherently adversarial to all nationalism. </b>The Chinese and Korean experiences from the 1950s confirmed to the Kremlin that nationalism precludes effective Comintern-style management of foreign revolutionary activities.<br /><br />However, <b>the rising influence of the US after the Six-Day War of 1967 required action. For lack of effective alternatives, the Kremlin decided to shift the focus to the nationalist parties of “Socialist orientation.” </b>Closer political ties, covert infiltration, and development of their economic potential, in the long term, would bring about some sort of political class with dependable Communist credentials. That was the idea. <b>This is where Russia’s affinity with the Assad clan, as well as the toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, took their origin.<br /></b><br />Below, a Soviet poster: “Freedom of the Arab people is impossible to strangle!”. A dark-skinned man sheds predatory hands marked by the USD and British Pound signs. Wearing gloves in warm Middle Eastern climate looked absurd to us. Here, this carries a strong message: “Possibly, not entirely human.”<br /><br />The freedom-loving Arab in the picture has a generic skin color, headgear, clothes, and facial features that say “anyone between Hindustan and Morocco.” This catches the depth of our understanding of how these societies really worked at the time.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq8uzvYBAMIUCW47LJ91x6C3L75FVg-yibw84CIHyeNnzVo9UzDhZm6x_5vrKsN2Lqo1whLhDGuHlp4hJzebMlyYnIvVO0NPiwC-RABfaFyazc_RMUFpHAH4C4L4wVcQxB1uLIt-WTxk6jkwaJVja6LO3XduWmGbEVR1j8TCbajYM9sU_6Z2v9zq9vR0LT/s602/soviet%20poster%20arab%20people.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="395" data-original-width="602" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq8uzvYBAMIUCW47LJ91x6C3L75FVg-yibw84CIHyeNnzVo9UzDhZm6x_5vrKsN2Lqo1whLhDGuHlp4hJzebMlyYnIvVO0NPiwC-RABfaFyazc_RMUFpHAH4C4L4wVcQxB1uLIt-WTxk6jkwaJVja6LO3XduWmGbEVR1j8TCbajYM9sU_6Z2v9zq9vR0LT/w400-h263/soviet%20poster%20arab%20people.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Rick D:<br /><b>So Stalin supported the creation of the state of Israel because he assumed that they would go Communist?</b> Very interesting.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Maybe it was because of the kibbutzim already there? They seemed like they were based on the Communist ideal, except without dictators in charge.</b><br /></i><br />Dima:<br /><b>Early Israel was rather leftist. Mayve even too leftist to Stalin’s taste—but he cherished the thought they see the light of true Marxism.<br /></b><br />Abcd Efg:<br /><i><b>Quite many (later purged) politicians of the early Communist Party were Jewish. Perhaps Stalin overestimated the popularity of Communism within the Jewish population based on this experience.</b><br /></i><br />Matt Wilson:<br />Also, <b>Stalin was trying to break up the British Empire in the Middle East.</b> The Mandatory Palestine was run by the British as just another colony, despite the League of Nations mandate to establish the Jewish homeland. Contrary to the characterization of Israel's enemies, Israel actually had to overthrow a European colonial regime in order to establish its country. <b>Supporting the founding of the State of Israel was part of the Soviet Union's strategy to co-opt Third World liberation movements.<br /></b><br />Matt Wilson:<br />Ilya Ehrenburg was one of those members of the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. He was the one the Soviet authorities utilized to pen a dismissive article about Israel (which also subtly warned off Moscow's Jewish population) when Golda Meir's presence as Israeli ambassador to the Soviet Union drew huge crowds of admirers.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5YNkCcgxCKNIhlvbMCub0Vm9A-w0J43n9HN6_t3TWP-XCbL_9Um4xm7F51VpW2ffMQc2dXxSLiQr3KWVcE1l0ycRq4ngQYmShVfOm137d7WC04dGw1qBBVigTV2I04lfGskv_1J4GzgKIelwWTKSN9IwlmIvEAB7yfXcqaQ7H_AKVB8IGDI5SzE7oKQXk/s886/golda%20meir%20on%20money.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="886" data-original-width="806" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5YNkCcgxCKNIhlvbMCub0Vm9A-w0J43n9HN6_t3TWP-XCbL_9Um4xm7F51VpW2ffMQc2dXxSLiQr3KWVcE1l0ycRq4ngQYmShVfOm137d7WC04dGw1qBBVigTV2I04lfGskv_1J4GzgKIelwWTKSN9IwlmIvEAB7yfXcqaQ7H_AKVB8IGDI5SzE7oKQXk/s320/golda%20meir%20on%20money.jpg" width="291" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The reverse side of the banknote is based on a photo of Golda thronged by a crowd of admirers in Moscow.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> *<br /><b>ARE RUSSIANS COLD-HEARTED?<br /></b><br />Russian culture greatly emphasizes privacy and strong boundaries between the public and the private. <b>Your personal life is like a cocoon, almost completely opaque and closed off from strangers</b>. Your first loyalty is to your immediate family. Your second loyalty is to your friends.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I should pause here to explain that friendship — true friendship — is treated differently in Russian culture than in its Western counterpart. The Russian language distinguishes between friends and acquaintances, with the vast majority of one’s milieu falling into the latter category. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Friendship is a close, intimate, emotionally fraught relationship in Russian culture — basically, like romantic love, minus the sex.</b> One generally has one friend, possibly two, maayybee three, but that’s it. Everyone else is an acquaintance, a co-worker, a neighbor or a stranger. These are fairly strict categories in Russian culture. In short, <b>Russians form strong emotional attachments to only a tiny handful of people; they don’t spread the love.</b></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjeDsG_Zzp8k2t6Yj2dcZkJ59wMa652DWUac0x2kbw5kfT7IMRS4Z3nAGtR5-h_yqTSbhuU6UdIjemubtPyuWA2VfbnQ2oByiA7eqzxpa1dv36yEFMUfNPm6fXTWMhRWU3K9P0K_h_J7j7IcZ_szce-n8IekAFJdsNR-YQgkrEFf92_7Yl_zkxb5Y12eJa/s602/RUSSIAN%20babushka%20biting%20into%20bread.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="389" data-original-width="602" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjeDsG_Zzp8k2t6Yj2dcZkJ59wMa652DWUac0x2kbw5kfT7IMRS4Z3nAGtR5-h_yqTSbhuU6UdIjemubtPyuWA2VfbnQ2oByiA7eqzxpa1dv36yEFMUfNPm6fXTWMhRWU3K9P0K_h_J7j7IcZ_szce-n8IekAFJdsNR-YQgkrEFf92_7Yl_zkxb5Y12eJa/w400-h259/RUSSIAN%20babushka%20biting%20into%20bread.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">If you have one of those cocoons, it’s great inside. But<b> if you are alone in Russian society, if you have no family or friends, God help you. It’s a truly lonely, miserable existence, particularly for the old.<br /></b></span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiopK-RWmGUL4wo-O1TYGg2uNjSe-URwwxCoLbRgf3gQkJR984JDdEFz7KLXZuMdgk5LNXn-nctW19cdFdk0pbKRLjyr5rcqiyZU1xJXMArFPmPS000_lNObj0NftiDlteb93VkfHW8qTbf5b36-DIpBcDih5zcEu_W3M_n1kIkELYQiSWs1JUGtQPTz_jM/s602/russia%20old%20women%20pushing%20van.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="602" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiopK-RWmGUL4wo-O1TYGg2uNjSe-URwwxCoLbRgf3gQkJR984JDdEFz7KLXZuMdgk5LNXn-nctW19cdFdk0pbKRLjyr5rcqiyZU1xJXMArFPmPS000_lNObj0NftiDlteb93VkfHW8qTbf5b36-DIpBcDih5zcEu_W3M_n1kIkELYQiSWs1JUGtQPTz_jM/w400-h266/russia%20old%20women%20pushing%20van.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Empathy and commiseration are rarely extended beyond the cocoon. Even Russian churches, unlike Western ones, do little to forge a support network for people who don’t have one, and any Orthodox priest will angrily tell you the purpose of a place of worship is to worship God, not to create social clubs.</span></b></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The result is <b><i>a general atmosphere of indifference and a lack of empathy in Russian society, and it goes a long way back. Personally, I believe it’s the result of centuries of repressive authoritarian governments that have forced people to be hyper vigilant about what they said or displayed in public, and to retreat repeatedly into private life</i></b> — but whatever the reasons are, the general “feel” of the Russian world is decidedly chilly and colored by mistrust.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In a related fashion, there are also norms that have to do with decorum and how one behaves in public. Any public display of emotion is considered inappropriate or “fake”, which is what is behind Russians’ frequent complaints that Americans “smile too much”. The only appropriate way for a dignified person to act is like you’ve got a giant stick surgically implanted in your backside.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>When I first moved to the US, I was shocked by what seemed to my Russian mind a habit by Westerners to engage in naked emotional voyeurism and exhibitionism; the kinds of private details that people were willing to share with casual acquaintances and even strangers. </b>It is something I still do not accept — I am a deeply private person, and that’s the Russian in me — but I at least understand after living here for 30 years that intimate details are a kind of currency in Western cultures, that people use as a way to bond. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Bonding is extremely important in the West. In Russia, not so much. Russians don’t want to bond, they want you to not encroach on their space; and so wherever you are, you are much more likely to hear a rude comment about the spread of your elbows than friendly banter about how dilated someone’s wife was when you could finally see the head.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">So, cold-hearted? In many ways, I’d say yes. But as far as how Russians are portrayed, <b>I’d say Russians are probably depicted in Western media as being friendlier than they actually are.<br /></b><br />~ Kate Stoneman, Quora<br /><br />*<br /><b>THE PORTRAYAL OF THE ALLIES IN THE SOVIET PROPAGANDA <br /></b><br />During the war, the Soviet propaganda inside the country largely ignored the topic of aid delivered by the US.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>No choice but support us</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The general message was that the entire humankind was on our side, and America was among them. <b>Occasional reports in the papers told how American workers and “common people of good will” watched with fascination the struggle of the Soviet Union. The “Capitalist” nature of our allies was omitted for the occasion.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>When the war was over, the Allied effort was presented in the USSR as supplementary and largely self-serving.</b> The fact of them helping us was also ascribed to their workers who “firmly required” of the ruling classes to support the USSR. Faced with this class-based solidarity, the rulers had no choice but heed.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio5sRZQUZ2u1NAygqnUrZvp_qRLxQuYLGlWPt9W-9tKgw4CZXhfBPkAEe7oAnL0AE_8vZ_-W6el-SyVfGTga8RdpvE32re76m1p9OmUzCbh1M6e72ClDgmj8-VOMnn89ww6JhM55NUZDjydI2KD6WHYiY0o5Z0J41McWKCwhksOIlZduuAXaupZ4bx9wBi/s602/Soviet%20poster%20Hitler.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="602" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio5sRZQUZ2u1NAygqnUrZvp_qRLxQuYLGlWPt9W-9tKgw4CZXhfBPkAEe7oAnL0AE_8vZ_-W6el-SyVfGTga8RdpvE32re76m1p9OmUzCbh1M6e72ClDgmj8-VOMnn89ww6JhM55NUZDjydI2KD6WHYiY0o5Z0J41McWKCwhksOIlZduuAXaupZ4bx9wBi/w400-h297/Soviet%20poster%20Hitler.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> <br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Act of nature</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Canned beans and especially spam were well known among fighting troops. British boots were very valued. But the food and equipment in transit to be distributed among troops were stripped as much as possible from foreign signage right after offloading in Soviet ports.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Otherwise, for commoners, <b>lend-lease was a non-subject. They knew the allies were sending us assistance, but the scale and value of it had never been widely advertised.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">My father who fought in the war told me they had perceived the shoes, food, tanks and trucks from the Allies just like an act of nature—just like the Sun breaking through the clouds for you to dry your soggy uniforms and boots a little bit. You don’t talk about it much, you simply pull off your things and hang them out in the sunshine.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Risk assessment</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Generally, <b>talking about America and Britain was not a very safe topic. </b>Someone could be listening. Memories were still fresh how before the war a lot of people suddenly disappeared.</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> People
who worked with the Americans and Germans who built our industries and
infrastructure kept disappearing. Those who praised their machines
publicly were often arrested for anti-Soviet propaganda, “groveling”
before the Capitalists, and “denigrating” the Soviet equipment and
management.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Discussing the help was of course much less risky among the troops who used a lot of foreign machines and equipment, e.g. in the air force and tank forces. </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The American Shermans played an important role in taking Berlin, for example.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Politically correct</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Before the D-Day, political commissars talking to the soldiers and officers made a big point of the absence the Allied troops fighting Germans in Europe. The “second front” that took too long time to come was hot topic. The fact of Britain fighting the Nazis long before the USSR joined the war was ignored. The Allied bombings and the African operations were not considered relevant, and almost never mentioned.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“Where is that frigging second front already?” was the recurring complaint that met much understanding among soldiers and civilians. The commissars used to present the Allies as cynical players who waited for us to bleed dry fighting the Nazis, just to jump in at very end, and grab the spoils of victory.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>After the war</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>By the start of 1947, our censors had effectively banned publication of all pictures and texts that showed Allied weapons and other items in use by our troops during the war. The ban was lifted first in the end of the 1980s. <br /></b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">When I went to school, the lend-lease was usually mentioned in one sentence or two in connection to the role of our Western allies in WW2. No statistics that could give an idea of the volume of help were given, apart from the number of shipments and sometimes the total value of help in US dollars. However, the bravery of British sailors dispatching the help across the Atlantic was given more place. The tragedy of the Convoy PQ 17, along with the D-Day, became one of the most known episodes among our public.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Until today, there’s a widespread belief that Lend-Lease happened on commercial terms, and we had to pay for it “in gold”.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />Our posters showing the Allied support preferred flags instead of faces, as well as weapons or items of lend-lease. Below, stylized jackhammers with the flags of the Allies are destroying the pillar of German might.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8fd5CByaVHznZ4GveJr7_Nl0V79jphOyRrlppNUo1-ewQkRF7zL18MZH0L_Wnirg_fgwizayONobLmEFygqsxAxrdMRupmifWITPlnJruFm2cFDlnypodVtZC_XA27JpehyphenhyphenScfhSXpSSvKzjcXLIQO6YMXwaqEe2DbDnwTvHoOLPsAIbzZFdFkzuUCCxt/s602/soviet%20poster%20swastika%20allies.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="423" data-original-width="602" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8fd5CByaVHznZ4GveJr7_Nl0V79jphOyRrlppNUo1-ewQkRF7zL18MZH0L_Wnirg_fgwizayONobLmEFygqsxAxrdMRupmifWITPlnJruFm2cFDlnypodVtZC_XA27JpehyphenhyphenScfhSXpSSvKzjcXLIQO6YMXwaqEe2DbDnwTvHoOLPsAIbzZFdFkzuUCCxt/w400-h281/soviet%20poster%20swastika%20allies.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Below, an abstract hand of the Allied forces is pounding Hitler. The title: “A coordinated strike hits the same target!”.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2Qn4EJXFRoxg5DpKxPxdcQeogoSlviohDU-ktoQ-6RuhIGpOGwiFAf3a2P6kTyWNRf9uQ3JvNBm3E7S38GV32nGIf5wygMrQUFhdyZGswOUdGjWRzp5271kWnOpJmGmYjfWjeIQ0Veto_x3rH8EJToFxH5foIAgSHa3TS_0PI3rcCxPVS2Qhz_qo9gGNG/s3146/soviet%20poster%20united%20hit.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3146" data-original-width="2116" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2Qn4EJXFRoxg5DpKxPxdcQeogoSlviohDU-ktoQ-6RuhIGpOGwiFAf3a2P6kTyWNRf9uQ3JvNBm3E7S38GV32nGIf5wygMrQUFhdyZGswOUdGjWRzp5271kWnOpJmGmYjfWjeIQ0Veto_x3rH8EJToFxH5foIAgSHa3TS_0PI3rcCxPVS2Qhz_qo9gGNG/w269-h400/soviet%20poster%20united%20hit.jpg" width="269" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The start of the Great Anti-Fascist march of the Red Army into Europe, 25 years after the first attempt to bring liberation to the proletarian masses west of the Soviet Union, marked the start of depicting our Allies in their human shape. Below, the poster “Paris is liberated!”<br />Worth to mention that Allied soldiers were consistently painted more dispassionate (sometimes even confused) than our own soldiers. Their clothes were too neat, weapons not too scary, and in the case of the American GI in the poster below, downright toy-like. Interestingly, the artist caught the American habit not to tie the helmet straps under the chin, several month before the mass of our troops saw their first living American with their own eyes.<br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVsVjfWVc2cezdH7axlnFWXOJ-N69iDEHqaKvEjrlMOl2dUfvjo8rNPJiSW1MesCYt1oolfdvl6zcbCG__d2BMyLR_D50OKSUELGiJrQZnswa4569Nb9Ebw7z9uobSgXAEXv3DdOBV58P5Um_688ngrORuQmrFoJpczBT0dVymGfcaO2VkoabM4Bnl-MtY/s1204/soviet%20poster%20Paris%20liberated.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1204" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVsVjfWVc2cezdH7axlnFWXOJ-N69iDEHqaKvEjrlMOl2dUfvjo8rNPJiSW1MesCYt1oolfdvl6zcbCG__d2BMyLR_D50OKSUELGiJrQZnswa4569Nb9Ebw7z9uobSgXAEXv3DdOBV58P5Um_688ngrORuQmrFoJpczBT0dVymGfcaO2VkoabM4Bnl-MtY/w200-h400/soviet%20poster%20Paris%20liberated.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Paris liberated.</i></span></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Ahead of the summits in Yalta and Potsdam, the depiction of the Allies in our propaganda became more and more liberal. Below, the Allies in action at par with our own soldier. “Let’s finish off the beast in its own lair!”:</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghA7v9ESYS6NkwX4ee9bJGQ2sL951SaJcU-kSsaQ35RcBPHvM-RsIUjyS3Wr05NUU1q4oGCVRoo_WzA0m7RcLVg_dt1PE4vk7E1LN_WGZnFysqc-WqHuXuxaB1ktpyUjGgJzBLnemxcynfAJac_lSdHrsJT8Y-n2lzGxJKAIkC704KL-neotjnFdAl9TUr/s1000/soviet%20poster%20finish%20the%20beast.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="686" data-original-width="1000" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghA7v9ESYS6NkwX4ee9bJGQ2sL951SaJcU-kSsaQ35RcBPHvM-RsIUjyS3Wr05NUU1q4oGCVRoo_WzA0m7RcLVg_dt1PE4vk7E1LN_WGZnFysqc-WqHuXuxaB1ktpyUjGgJzBLnemxcynfAJac_lSdHrsJT8Y-n2lzGxJKAIkC704KL-neotjnFdAl9TUr/w400-h275/soviet%20poster%20finish%20the%20beast.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Finish the beast in its lair</i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Jeffrey B. Popper:<br />I’ll say this much, the boys at Dunkirk sure could’ve used a “second front” rather than a stream of essential Soviet raw materials which helped the Nazi’s circumvent Britain’s blockade.<br /><br />Ra Smallwood:<br />Another comment, I know, but a bit of a different intrique… I'm curious to know what you think of the following assessment by another American academic, Dr. Hiram Mason, in his answer to the question here on Quora, “Did the Soviet Union really win WWII?” As follows:<br />If we ignore the fact that WWII officially started with the invasion of Poland, and that while the Germans attacked from the West, a certain country (who shall remain nameless), assisted by invading from the East end helping the Third Reich by carving up Polish territory, then we should let the words of the Soviets themselves, as discovered in Russian documents declassified and discovered after the fall of the Soviet Union, answer this question!</span></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">According to research by a team of Soviet historians, the Soviet Union lost a staggering 20,500 tanks from June 22 to December 31, 1941. At the end of November 1941, only 670 Soviet tanks were available to defend Moscow. However, <b>466 tanks delivered by Britain, via the port of Archangel, were placed into immediate service. The bulk of these tanks were present and necessary for the cessation of the German advance to Moscow at the Volga River by Soviet Forces.</b><br /><br />A general disarray of Soviet industry related to the German advance, meant factories which weren't destroyed, were being moved to the Ural Mountains.<b> The British convoy PQ-12 alone provided 312 machine tools for metal cutting, as well as machine presses and compressors, many of which could not be produced by the Soviets themselves, were necessary to begin production of Soviet tanks.</b><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>From the United States itself, the USSR received a total of 44,000 American jeeps, 375,883 cargo trucks, 8,071 tractors, 14,000 U.S. airplanes, and 12,700 tanks. Additionally, 1,541,590 blankets, 331,066 liters of alcohol, 15,417,000 pairs of army boots, 106,893 tons of cotton, 2,670,000 tons of petroleum products and 4,478,000 tons of food supplies were provided. </b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Beyond this, according to the American Lend-Lease Program and subsequent programs after its entry into the war, American provided goods, supplies, products and materials “destroyed, lost or used during the war” were not subject to repayment.<br /><br />And perhaps most poignantly and best stated, "Now they say that the allies never helped us, but <b>it can't be denied that the Americans gave us so many goods without which we wouldn't have been able to form our reserves and continue the war… We didn’t have explosives, gunpowder. We didn’t have anything to charge our rifle cartridges with.</b> The Americans really saved us with their gunpowder and explosives. And how much sheet steel they gave us! <b>How could we have produced our tanks without American steel?</b> But now they make it seem as if we had an abundance of all that. <b>Without American trucks we wouldn’t have had anything to pull our artillery with.</b>" ~ Soviet General Georgy Zhukov<br /><br />I hope that definitively answers the question as to whether the Soviets “really won WWII!” Yes, they were crucial. Yes, they had manpower and the grit to fight on. However, <b>the largest force one could ever assemble in a time of total war is impotent if it has no explosives, gunpowder, ammunition, steel for tanks, or even trucks to transport the material and artillery to the battlefield. </b>That's not my opinion… that is the opinion of the Soviets themselves!</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Not to mention, I imagine that the United States would have had an easier time developing a slew of larger, better tanks, such as the T-34, had someone else provided almost 13,000 tanks to do the fighting in the meantime.<br /><br />Jan Janiczek:<br />You forgot this amazing poster<br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUSHtB8uLHqsPIvKJNcbF5Yb6bE22NxH1J-byypMqJ4xK4Ub89nj9l_6z3Za4H3VxKrWr1ZyUStPMPcu5qTQ61ozCLNN9eiKo2yB9QgE0Wmm1Yy5ZQy2AfRsdXORupVPnWuNF51V3mCmmoeuyC8hrBwzNvYYvSSxoQiraPOob442y89YGPoou38E7Zy4mV/s717/Soviet%20poster%20british%20and%20Soviet%20pilot.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="717" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUSHtB8uLHqsPIvKJNcbF5Yb6bE22NxH1J-byypMqJ4xK4Ub89nj9l_6z3Za4H3VxKrWr1ZyUStPMPcu5qTQ61ozCLNN9eiKo2yB9QgE0Wmm1Yy5ZQy2AfRsdXORupVPnWuNF51V3mCmmoeuyC8hrBwzNvYYvSSxoQiraPOob442y89YGPoou38E7Zy4mV/w336-h400/Soviet%20poster%20british%20and%20Soviet%20pilot.jpg" width="336" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Dima on the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact:<br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><br /><b>As a law-abiding Russian citizen, I will never claim that the USSR was de-facto an ally of Nazi Germany [the infamous non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin].</b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>As for our propaganda in 1939–1941, WW2 was treated as a conflict of two “Imperialistic powers”, where the USSR was no more than a concerned observer who supported attempts of Germany to achieve piece with the Allies, whenever these would come.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana: </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Few people seem to realize to what extent Orwell's 1984 was based on the Soviet Union </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">– especially the erasure of history. And the lies keep marching on.<br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH6diXeTnwDN7MmuNyfkwezbKulFCvKRvYwVtSWvZZYrnSvl-r3T19CUx61kadp5Rj1xf8bPVELztBv-oNCGcJrWhNWTyqGWIKTtZrJXxHvwEYcauTHt6MV-eiebj6lufky3bw4gt6jRHflLAZ0011Y51d7G8v7RFg_FVhYN3FDeCRKh8cTOymjiDsg5BD/s1050/Russia%20Today%20Z%20Marcin%20Ludwik%20Rey.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1050" data-original-width="755" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH6diXeTnwDN7MmuNyfkwezbKulFCvKRvYwVtSWvZZYrnSvl-r3T19CUx61kadp5Rj1xf8bPVELztBv-oNCGcJrWhNWTyqGWIKTtZrJXxHvwEYcauTHt6MV-eiebj6lufky3bw4gt6jRHflLAZ0011Y51d7G8v7RFg_FVhYN3FDeCRKh8cTOymjiDsg5BD/w288-h400/Russia%20Today%20Z%20Marcin%20Ludwik%20Rey.jpg" width="288" /></a></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Peter Woodier: THE SOVIETS WERE NO BETTER THAN THE NAZIS <br /><br />The Nazi war against the Soviets was a rude interruption to the pacts that were drawn between them. The Soviets were no better than the Nazis, the only difference was that the USSR wasn’t invading Western Europe at the time.<b> Stalin didn’t even believe British intelligence that was telling him those tanks and infantry were lining up to invade him.</b> They got a bloody nose because of their bloody-minded thinking.<br /><br /><b>The Soviets were ashamed to take war aid from the West, so they tried to hide it from their people.</b> There was nothing Churchill and Roosevelt hated more than trying to talk to the Russian government. They were impossible to deal with. They weren’t our friends and had no intention of giving that impression to anyone. <b>The poor Soviet people bore the greatest losses of blood, and Stalin cared no more for them than Hitler did.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oh, and our brave sailors received terrible treatment at Soviet ports. Sometimes they wished they’d docked in a German one.<br /><br />Barry Blessed:<br />And in the US, Russia’s role has largely been written out of our popular history. We won the war for the world. You’re welcome.<br /><br />*<br /><b>MORE ON THE GERMAN USE OF HORSES DURING WW2<br /></b><br /><b>The German military killed 2.7 million horses in WW2 and effectively denuded the continent of horses for years</b>. <b>By the end of the war, even circus horses were being drafted to pull guns. </b>For every 3 working horses, 2 were needed to pull the feed wagons — and that was just for the horses. The men and their supplies needed horses to draw their stuff too. And then more horses were needed to pull the ammunition. <b>The average infantry division required 6000 horses; as the war went on, this fell to 4300 simply because there were not enough horses.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSD9J7YVmBZ-RHTrjB8qBqxNbxGAS9qXPkRIAw7lNmJCRdsGmmJnm7l8LpEyt8iG-SsozUmN4zLaxA5ULxYIJ8JDjcE_h4SE6hj5iQoG4j8DZMqnNGHVLoXqZ55xXDDXKEroU3MhbW8_9-8iSn5poMWF_4l0esPBQu8EaL0LRYFkkcedoBTAAtkFRtzhvv/s602/DEAD%20horses%20German%20ww2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="339" data-original-width="602" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSD9J7YVmBZ-RHTrjB8qBqxNbxGAS9qXPkRIAw7lNmJCRdsGmmJnm7l8LpEyt8iG-SsozUmN4zLaxA5ULxYIJ8JDjcE_h4SE6hj5iQoG4j8DZMqnNGHVLoXqZ55xXDDXKEroU3MhbW8_9-8iSn5poMWF_4l0esPBQu8EaL0LRYFkkcedoBTAAtkFRtzhvv/w400-h225/DEAD%20horses%20German%20ww2.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">At the beginning of the war, German war horses were bred and trained to work the tough conditions of combat. <b>Most of the horses that died, nearly 60 percent died of artillery or gun fire or being strafed by aircraft. 30 percent died of heart failure from overwork</b>. <i><b>The rest died of disease or exposure. In the cold of Russia, European horses had to be looked after more carefully than the men. At the beginning of the war, a war horse had a life span of 6 months; by the end of the war it was 6 weeks.</b></i> On a farm, a horse can live 25 years. The Germans ramped up mechanization as the war progressed but never divested themselves of the need for horses. The Germans got their military horses from stud farms, located primarily in Prussia, but after taking Poland, part of the “reparations” Poland was required to pay to Germany were 4000 horses a week — every week.</span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>During the brutal winter of 1941 the Germans lost 180,000 horses outside Moscow alone</b>, along a wide front. The result was significant lost equipment. Hitler was told by his generals that there was enough space on the trains going to the front for only one of three critical items: food, clothing or ammunition. Hitler chose ammunition. <b>Very little food was sent for the men, let alone the horses when at the time at least 1/3 of the cargo space on trains was allocated for horse fodder and grains, leather for harnesses and saddles and even feedbags. Feedbags were critical because horses that eat from common troughs spread disease to each other. After the invasion of Poland, a major horse disease struck the German army and nearly derailed the German’s plans for Russia and only the news that the same disease struck the Russian horses, but a little later, calmed down the high command.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The Germans lost 44,000 horses in the D-Day invasion and the month following it and an additional 80,000 horses during Operation Bagration. By that time, the Germans were raiding draft animals from farms, circuses and horse breeders. <b>When Prussia was lost, all the stud farms and horses were lost also.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Another factor not often mentioned was the loss of leather for harnesses and the harness makers as well.</b> The German artillery harness did not change much from WW1 but still required significant amounts of quality, flexible leather. As the war progresses, there wasn’t even enough leather for the boots of German soldiers let alone leather for harnesses. The types and quality of harnessed declined; <b>the first thing to go was the horse saddle. Even horses that weren’t for riding, such as draft animals, had rudimentary saddles for saddlebags and equipment the horse could carry while pulling the guns. As this disappeared, the need for what they carried did not and horses got sores and infections.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Horses were increasingly requisitioned from the farms to the point where women and children were forced to pull the plows to farm the fields.</b></i> In 1944 Albert Speer reported to Hitler that the war would most certainly be lost by 1946 by simple starvation alone. There were no horses to plow; no horses to bring in the harvest; no horses to bring the harvest to market or processing centers and there certainly was no gas for tractors.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">A horse goes into heat every 21 days but<b> it takes a pregnant horse a year to deliver a foal and 18 months to achieve the kind of maturity needed to do any kind of work; 24 months for hard work like pulling a cannon. And horses have to be trained to ignore gunfire and explosions. The Germans employed tens of thousands of soldiers as hostlers, farriers, leather workers, harness makers, vets</b> — and butchers. Because when a horse dies, by any method, it ends up in the stew pot. The Germans moved entire massive herds of cattle behind the armies to feed them; at first they also moved sheep and goats as well, but those animals provided too little benefit so they were eliminated early, and cattle were hard to move quickly. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">So horses, which rendered 700 rations versus 1000 for a head of cattle, were turned into food by the butchers. <b>It didn’t pay to get attached to your horse, not at all, because in six weeks you would be eating it.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>When the Germans invaded Russia they came across an unfamiliar beast, a small, shaggy horse called a “Panje”</b>. It was the horse the Russians used. They were unfit for riding, usually and had stubby legs and the Germans laughed at them but t<b>hey were perfectly suited for the Russian winters with their long fur and manes and they were incredibly strong. It wasn’t long before the Germans were rounding them up wherever they could. Their European horses were dying in droves from the cold alone.</b></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7nJHfyPhCgtI2emE2jfi7XTPQewGaD-zjpzAGO2XY5ljsuzBWfLN9D2KcTzSHKMpbvR0cu09pfmA9J56ffOFjT_W7QLAhSODe0Z-uhyphenhyphensoE7Yu7r2UGpB5uQrh9C1EnhkJPI-0oEME1Sdxb4PLIC8Qm4u0lruFo-7yKGiupDWL1YX2AlaWlFbbPAleNIlP/s602/Panje%20horses%20ww2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="378" data-original-width="602" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7nJHfyPhCgtI2emE2jfi7XTPQewGaD-zjpzAGO2XY5ljsuzBWfLN9D2KcTzSHKMpbvR0cu09pfmA9J56ffOFjT_W7QLAhSODe0Z-uhyphenhyphensoE7Yu7r2UGpB5uQrh9C1EnhkJPI-0oEME1Sdxb4PLIC8Qm4u0lruFo-7yKGiupDWL1YX2AlaWlFbbPAleNIlP/w400-h251/Panje%20horses%20ww2.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Panje horses</i></span></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The Germans fell in love with the Panje horses; something the Russians already knew well. Their Panje was the most valuable thing the Germans had in Russia. And the Panjes were fearless in the face of exploding bombs and bullets.</b></span><br /><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The only benefit of horses, if it could be called one, was that at that time, the horse was still a widely used tool in Europe and so there were many horses to be had. Even after the war, people could be seen with starving nags pulling their possessions from the battlefields and ruined cities.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In the US, the horse was disappearing from America so quickly that the government predicted extinction of the horse by 1955. <b>The current number of horses in America is 4 million, down from its peak in 1917 of over 50 million. America mechanized much faster than the rest of the world.</b><br /><br /><b>The Russians were still using horses to tow artillery or supplies until 1960. <br /></b><br />~ Jay Bazinotti, Quora<br /><br />Al Caron:<br />If there was a country that shouldn’t have gone to war (let alone starting it), it was WWII Germany… <b>only 20% of the German war machine was ever mechanized… the rest was all REAL horsepower…</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;">Mary:</span></p><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Once I asked my father: where have all the horses gone?? Now I guess I know- worked to death, shot and/or eaten in WWII. I never thought of horses being used in modern warfare until reading this...I thought the use of horses disappeared with wartime cavalry units, never thought of them as sheer muscle power hauling ordinance around. And the numbers quoted here are staggering.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana:</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I hurry to clarify that t<b>he American military was fully mechanized</b> and did not rely on horses the way the Germans did. A lot of the horses in Europe did indeed fall victim to the war. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #351c75; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><b>To my surprise was the Germans who were so incredibly dependent on horses.</b> For one thing, Germany had no oil, so gasoline for their vehicles was a problem. <b><i>To quite a startling extent, WW2 was about access to oil. </i></b></span><b><i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: #351c75; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18px; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></i></b></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Americans, however, had no use for horses. The relative scarcity of horses in America is due mainly to there being little use for them. The centuries when horses were essential for transport, agriculture, and the military now seem like the Dark Ages to us. Horses still exist, of course, but horse riding is now a sport. And horse racing continues. <br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Some people love horses and develop a deep bond with their animal. I was moved by the mention that some German soldiers would put their own blanket on a horse, trying to save the animal from freezing. </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;">As for the past, we know horses were essential to the Spanish conquest of the Americas, for instance. A cavalry charge is awesome to see and hear (the energy of the horses running at full gallop and the thunder of the hooves beating in unison would be enough to get the native army to break ranks and flee). </span><br /></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br /><b>BILL MAHER STANDS UP FOR WESTERN VALUES</b></span></p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnl243DjsUE" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnl243DjsUE</a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Bill Maher at his best. <br /><br /><b>I was especially struck by “the world would be a better place with more Israels.” <br /></b><br />Yes, imagine if all those small Arab countries like Aden and Qatar became like Israel, with human rights, women’s rights, labor safety laws, independent judiciary, no child marriage, no women dressed like black tents, and so on. And desalination plants providing plentiful life-giving water. <br /><br />And Jordan and Egypt too. And Afghanistan and the like. Imagine an Afghani scientist winning the Nobel Prize. And I don't mean someone of Afghani origin living in the US. (Immigrants are not representative of the population they left, or sometimes actually fled from for their lives.)<br /><br />Freedom of speech!! Due process! Women's access to education. No little girls taken out of school and forced to marry middle-aged men. No cruel and unusual punishment. No throwing gay men from the roofs. <br /><br />And I hope that is indeed the future, but Islam is in the way. <br /><br />The Arab culture was once the most advanced for the times, but the religious nuts won, and ruined everything. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS-K5tmYMvEGVrKoVunFgvDOhYJmgTF6upIuL67CMGz51gUHkpPfMUULSZ31z-SOfqiiwBzKytyh42M6-ZjXM_xAUZegeTcwgcUxn_bu3YGYgyLWDVq67MkUvFyh92G2GDqc1jvzjKd06ZHT9dReU7yYqjhjyd8_udMjmAXu4nNbDuGaexWW1uBN5rOe56/s602/Dutch%20colonizers%20in%20Indonesia.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS-K5tmYMvEGVrKoVunFgvDOhYJmgTF6upIuL67CMGz51gUHkpPfMUULSZ31z-SOfqiiwBzKytyh42M6-ZjXM_xAUZegeTcwgcUxn_bu3YGYgyLWDVq67MkUvFyh92G2GDqc1jvzjKd06ZHT9dReU7yYqjhjyd8_udMjmAXu4nNbDuGaexWW1uBN5rOe56/w400-h400/Dutch%20colonizers%20in%20Indonesia.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Dutch colonizers in Indonesia <br /></i><br />*<br /><b>WHY MILLENIALS AND GENERATION Z ARE NOT HAVING CHILDREN<br /></b><br />~ A new survey reveals that <b>only 55% of Gen Z and millennials plan to have children</b>. One in four of those surveyed, aged between 18 and 34, has ruled out parenthood entirely, with <b>the most common reason cited being “wanting time for themselves”.<br /></b><br />Why this increasing need for more “me time”? A likely reason is that young people are now navigating an era of “extended adolescence”. <br /><br /><b>In recent decades, various shifts, from the rising cost of living to the expansion of higher education, have led to both millennials and Gen Z reaching traditional milestones much later than their predecessors. Millennials are living at home, as well as delaying marriage and procreation, in record numbers. </b><br /><br />Meanwhile, members of Gen Z are less likely to have experienced adult activities like going on a date, working for pay, learning to drive, or having sex, compared to teens in the preceding five decades. Given that many young adults still feel like children themselves, it’s no surprise that they are delaying or rejecting parenthood, choosing instead to extend their “me time”. <br /><br /><b>Modern culture also continually facilitates and encourages this extended adolescence. In our materialistic and individual-centered age, the pursuit of personal desires and self-discovery is often valued above all else, with traditional bonds seen as constraints. <br /></b><br />Research by Professor Jean Twenge and her colleagues has examined the values of high school seniors from 1976 to 2006. They discovered that millennials are increasingly driven by extrinsic concerns such as money, fame and image, while moving away from intrinsic concerns like community and affiliation. These increasingly individualistic values likely contribute to younger generations’ adoption of a “slower life strategy”. Twenge observes that <b>contemporary early adulthood now involves taking more time for self-exploration in one’s twenties, a pursuit not common in traditional collectivist societies.</b><br /><br />Corporations, educational institutions and popular culture reinforce this cultural shift, capitalizing on our prolonged adolescence. Take, for instance, the rise of therapy culture and a rapidly expanding <b>trillion-dollar wellness market, which constantly encourage us to spend more money on ourselves, prioritize “me time” and cater to our “inner child”. Our infantilization is indulged and commodified across various industries, from universities providing students with coloring books, bubbles and Play-Doh to the booming market for childlike activities and products such as “kidult” toys and adult Happy Meals. </b><br /><br />While we now enjoy more freedoms and opportunities than previous generations, <b>delaying adulthood and focusing on ourselves also come with significant consequences. Women especially face limited choices if they wait too long to have children. But delayed adulthood also comes at a cost for young men, many of whom feel increasingly lost and depressed with modern life.</b> Contemporary culture keeps us all straddling a strange, intermediate state in which we face the pressures of adult life but are encouraged to cling to and prolong our “selfish years” as long as possible. <br /><br />Yet with record levels of mental health problems, and a deepening sense of nihilism and disillusionment, <b>perhaps what young people need is a culture that encourages responsibility, personal sacrifice, and commitments that stretch beyond self-indulgence and endless “me time”. Notably, numerous studies show that meeting the needs of others can better fulfill our psychological well-being than focusing solely on ourselves. <br /></b><br /><b>Not everyone needs to have children, but younger generations are being failed by a culture that places excessive emphasis on the individual, treats them like perpetual teenagers, and glamorizes living in a liminal state of prolonged adolescence. </b>As many of us flail through our twenties and thirties, trying to find meaning in the limitless freedoms and indulgences of modern life, some might one day realize, with regret, that we focused too much time on ourselves. Then, we’ll wonder what we may have missed. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0J_24bfw6HS6n_8cBJsYk1nl60zSMkM-eCW7m1FC1xViU4j8eh3FFJ9RQEHY-MPa2opZrViw30FtcseVfYouGEB2-pD8ylz8MM7wmKVLo0ON3GQC0jDChgnj3DExsMPmtagAQkPXkhjpdCirUaa1dwr_dDxGwyxWdaQO58OHR3HggeE6bh1m7VyuuKGv6/s2000/girl%20stork.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="2000" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0J_24bfw6HS6n_8cBJsYk1nl60zSMkM-eCW7m1FC1xViU4j8eh3FFJ9RQEHY-MPa2opZrViw30FtcseVfYouGEB2-pD8ylz8MM7wmKVLo0ON3GQC0jDChgnj3DExsMPmtagAQkPXkhjpdCirUaa1dwr_dDxGwyxWdaQO58OHR3HggeE6bh1m7VyuuKGv6/w400-h225/girl%20stork.webp" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://unherd.com/thepost/why-doesnt-gen-z-want-children/">https://unherd.com/thepost/why-doesnt-gen-z-want-children/<br /></a><br />Michael Cavanaugh:<br />Helen Mirren: “I love children, they are so funny and sweet, but I never wanted my own, I have never had a moment of regret about not having children. Well, I lie. <b>When I watched the movie, Parenthood, I sobbed for about 20 minutes. I realized I would never experience that, and for about 20 minutes, I sobbed for the loss of that and the fact that I never experienced it.</b> <br /><br />Then I got over it and I was happy again.”</span><br /></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:<br />I especially identify with Helen Mirren’s response. When it became obvious that it was too late to have the great adventure (be it at a high price) of parenthood, I did have a good cry — yes, for about twenty minutes. And then I was done. <br /><br />You can’t have everything. My circumstances were such that I couldn’t have afforded help. And trying to cope by myself seemed a an impossible task. In any case, what I wanted most was solitude and quiet. Again, you can’t have it all. I bowed to reality, “with the politest helplessness,” to quote Wallace Stevens. <br /><br />And yes, I counted my blessings and was happy again. But there are still moments of sadness. I wrote a poem about it:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">THE WOMEN WHO DON’T WANT CHILDREN<br /><br />want children. They comb the sun-silk <br />of their babies’ hair, tuck a blanket around them<br />like a cloud. But I, I asked myself, <br />what could I give to my child? <br /><br />Not the shiny, uncut ribbon of the river, the toy <br />blocks of bridges. Not bells of vespers, <br />that huge humming suspended in the sky. <br />Not a cascade of lit candles, the glow<br /><br />bowing down as the organist made the pillars <br />shake. Not that harsh world I fled. Wasn’t it <br />too gray? And the story I was tired of, <br />how a cousin – I had ten – <br /><br />came to welcome me, a newborn babe.<br />Asked: “Does she have a teddy bear?”<br />Told no, he disappeared for hours, <br />returned triumphant with a green-beige <br /><br />teddy bear, not from a store, stores empty,<br />the bear perhaps from before the war –<br />his plush worn, but his glass-bead eyes <br />the first jewels to my dazzled sight.<br /><br />The bear went with me everywhere, sat <br />on the bookshelf wherever we lived, <br />his stiff arms stretched out to me.<br />The Gypsy was right, I didn’t know<br /><br />I was loved. Love was the winter<br />barley soup, my father’s giving me the first <br />slice of dark brown bread, <br />so warm it steamed like living breath – <br /><br />“We are all déclassé, we can’t give <br />our children what we had,” a friend said. <br />But it wasn’t about barley soup. <br />I was too poor to send my child <br /><br />to a good school, and though I had <br />no child, my heart would spasm, <br />stabbed with the knife of that thought. <br />Yet in pine woods, when I was twelve, <br /><br />a cuckoo told me I would have<br />children beyond all count. <br />I had to travel thousands of miles<br />through oceans, deserts, continents of life <br /><br />to learn that they would be<br />the children of my mind. <br />I recognize those stubby, held out arms<br />in their drab camouflage —<br /><br />the sepia of autumn fields, of mud. <br />Look how they want to be held, <br />how their eyes want to shine<br />honey-green, like a forest in the sun.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">~ Oriana<br /><br />Doug Pingel:<br />As an octogenarian I bump into some of my ‘cohort’ who watch me waving-off my son and grandsons and wished they could do the same. Kids are not for everybody but many have been too selfish timewise and are now reaping the sorrow of childlessness. It’s often very hard work with little or no thanks and<b> it’s great being able to hand the grandkids back at the end of playtime.</b> If they are not careful I could be watching over my first great, bundle of “joy and sorrows” very soon. I’ve got something worth looking forward to in my upper-middle-age.<br /><br />Robert Hochbaum:<br /><b>“Why is it that people with children think being child-free is some kind of problem to be solved?”<br /></b><br />Does it concern you at all that we seem to have created a society over the last several hundred years that is un-breeding itself out of existence? Birth rates across the western world are below replacement rates and falling.<br /><br /><b>Does it concern you that your attitude regarding reproduction seems to indicate an attitude of what our ancestors created just doesn’t seem to be worth maintaining?<br /></b><br /><i><b>And, yes – immigration from rapidly reproducing regions of the globe can replace physical persons. But, as an American, I worry about the philosophical ideas that my country was founded upon.</b></i> Primarily, the importance of a written constitution guaranteeing each individual’s rights. Like a religion, the philosophical underpinnings of a society are only maintained by the people who feel a connection to its tenets, who understand the importance of rights and limitations of governments or kings or sheiks.<br /><br />I put it to you – <b>do you believe the freedoms and rights we enjoy as westerners, if not Americans, will survive the importation of millions of people from places that think something like the idea of free speech – from what I can tell is only guaranteed via a written constitution in America – is something worth preserving?</b><br /><br />I think you are not thinking far enough forward regarding this dilemma which I call <b>the West un-breeding itself out of existence.</b><br /><br />John Riordan:<br /><b>Raising children is ruinously expensive</b> and anyone who embarks on it without a good idea of how to afford it is a fool. And yes I know that many people jump right in without a thought because they think the government will pay for it all, but firstly they’re wrong, it doesn’t, and secondly even if it did the rest of us would be disgusted at the attitude of entitlement anyway.</span></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">So anyway, <b>let’s not have this be one more thing we’re heaping on the heads of people under 35. They’ve enough to cope with already.<br /></b><br />William Shaw:<br /><b>Half of all women under 30 are now childless and 20 percent are childless at 45, i.e. permanently. Current trends predict almost half of all women will be permanently childless by the end on this decade, just 7 years from now. </b> Mental illness, depression and loneliness among 45 year old women with no children and another 45 years to live is expected to rise exponentially.<br /><br />Mustard Clementine:<br /><b>As a woman who just turned 40 without any desire to have kids (and partnered with someone who never did, either) – it’s not something I regret in the slightest.<br /></b><br /><b>I see my brother with kids and his life seems hellish to me</b> (largely because he has a very severe case of OCD which he imposes tyrannically on everyone around him, but I digress).<br /><br /><b>I love living in a peaceful, pleasant environment with my partner.</b> It’s just not something I pontificate much about. It may be that people who regret their choices tend to talk about them more than those who are simply content – so you end up hearing from them more often.<br /><br />Maybe <b>I just don’t associate family life with happiness</b> (that’s why my partner and I moved in together quite young) – and having now built a life I am pretty happy with, adding another person (and possibly upsetting the balance) has never felt necessary or desirable to me (or said partner whose family life was much worse than mine).<br /><br />Anyhow – <b>the rhetoric of sad childless women with empty lives does not resonate with me at all. I am also not too keen on the push to convince more people into parenthood who may regret it, given my experience with unhappy families.<br /></b><br />Rachel S:<br />Really sick of reading this kind of judgmental, moralizing nonsense. <b>There is nothing selfish, infantile or individualist about not having children you can’t afford</b>. Seems to me the same people sneering at young adults for “selfishly” not cramming babies into their 1 bed rental while struggling to afford groceries are the same people who’d be sneering about “benefits scroungers” with “too many children” a few short years ago.<br /><br />Monica:<br /><b>Since not having children became not only a possibility, but an acceptable choice, you’d have to work hard to convince people that it’s worth doing.</b> It should come as no surprise that many people don’t see the attraction when they actually think about it – instead of just doing what they were supposed to, as our forebears had always done.<br /><br />Mike Downing:<br />I think that, as with so much else, <b>this goes back to the counterculture of the 60’s and a rejection of everything that went before it. We’ve just been going through repeated cycles of this. Now is like a re-run of the 70’s in some ways but each reiteration wears away more of the foundations</b>. Surely everything will collapse in the end. Wasn’t that the original idea ?<br /><br />David Morley:<br />This has been a long time coming. <b>It’s really with the 60s that youth came to be preferred over adulthood, and the activities of youth over those of being grown up.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">It’s not wholly bad. It has perhaps removed some of the stolid resignation over aging. If older people are being active, keeping fit and enjoying life, that’s great.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But <b>an increasing number seem to be just reverting to teenhood once their own children have left. It’s the only vision of the good life they seem to have. It even seems to play a significant role in divorce – returning to dating and disco in your 50s and 60s not as adults but as born again teens.</b><br /><br />Michael Walsh:<br />The phrase “Too posh to push” , comes to mind.<br /><br />Stacy T:<br />Michael, obviously you’ve never had to push a watermelon out of your vagina, you absolute nitwit.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5HU4466S-_ESfSXfVDGLutzrJVC1HsqMjS19N5e0Sum-UiRQ8MIkJ6KfDMe-SfV-0asfi-PcYFgIE3nox3dAlBBKJsN7CpoiZQ-ic9WpRHsFjoDo1X7y0PnqALDpEJvLiFJkRPrI4x3knbmiScMU3rZCxKaZEhwGvlT0K6PEJghmR80XHbxl43d-1C_E7/s3282/watermelon.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1927" data-original-width="3282" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5HU4466S-_ESfSXfVDGLutzrJVC1HsqMjS19N5e0Sum-UiRQ8MIkJ6KfDMe-SfV-0asfi-PcYFgIE3nox3dAlBBKJsN7CpoiZQ-ic9WpRHsFjoDo1X7y0PnqALDpEJvLiFJkRPrI4x3knbmiScMU3rZCxKaZEhwGvlT0K6PEJghmR80XHbxl43d-1C_E7/w400-h235/watermelon.png" width="400" /></a></span></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>DO PEOPLE ACTUALLY REGRET NOT HAVING CHILDREN? POSSIBLY NOT<br /></b><br />~ <i><b>New research suggests people who are childfree by choice are pretty happy with their decisions, while some parents are not.</b></i> ~<br /><br />"You’ll regret it if you don’t"<br /><br />You’ll be lonely. Nobody will look after you when you get old. You’ll miss out on life’s greatest joy. You won’t ever be truly fulfilled. Your life will be meaningless and shallow. Everyone will pity you. If you choose not to have children then you’ll end up regretting it forever.<br /><br /><b>Pretty much every woman who has ever been on the fence about having kids has heard variations of the above. Either from other people or from a little voice inside their own head. </b>There is, to state the obvious, an intense societal pressure for women to become mothers.<br /><br />But <b>do people actually regret not having children? New research suggests they don’t</b>. Last summer researchers from Michigan State University found that one in five adults in the state, or about 1.7 million people, didn’t want to have children. This was followed up with another study which looked more deeply at people who are childfree by choice. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Turns out they’re all pretty happy with their decisions</b>. “[W]e found no evidence that older child-free adults experience any more life regret than older parents,” Jennifer Watling Neal, the co-author of the study, said in a statement. “In fact, older parents were slightly more likely to want to change something about their life.”<br /><br />This isn’t the first study to suggest that it’s the people who have kids who might be the ones who end up regretting their life choices. YouGov data from 2021 found that one in 12 British parents (8%) say they currently regret having kids. <b>Younger parents aged 25 to 34 (one imagines the most sleep-deprived group) were the most likely to feel regretful, while those aged 55+ were the least regretful.</b> Similarly, a 2013 Gallup survey found that around 7% of American parents older than 45 wouldn’t have any kids if they “had to do it over again”. <br /><br />And <i><b>parents seem remarkably unhappy in Germany: a 2016 YouGov study found 19% of German mothers and 20% of fathers say that if they could decide again, they would not want to have any more children.</b><br /></i><br /><b>Saying that you regret having kids is still massively taboo but, in recent years, it has become a more prominent topic of conversation and the subject of regular newspaper features. There’s a Facebook group called “I Regret Having Children” which has 59,000 followers </b>and an increasing amount of scholarship on the subject. In 2015 Israeli sociologist Orna Donath caused a number of headlines with a book called Regretting Motherhood: A Study, based on interviews with 23 women. <br /><br /><b>You’ll notice that a lot of the coverage on parental regret is really about maternal regret. That’s largely because men are not deemed quite as freakish if they don’t want kids.</b> And it’s also, of course, because much of parenting still falls to women in heterosexual relationships – parenting is a hell of a lot easier when you’re not doing the bulk of it. Which goes to the heart of the issue: parental regret, for the most part, isn’t caused by people spawning little monsters and hating their kids; it’s caused by social structures which make raising children difficult and eye-wateringly expensive. It’s a cliché but it’s true: it takes a village. <b>But instead of villages most of us have nuclear families and childcare which costs as much as a mortgage.<br /></b><br />Ultimately the takeaway from all this <b>isn’t that having kids is good or bad – it’s that there is no one way to live a happy and fulfilled life. Parenthood isn’t for everyone and it should always be a choice.</b> And yet Republicans across the US are doing everything they can to take that choice away. ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/22/adult-happiness-kids-children-childfree">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/22/adult-happiness-kids-children-childfree</a><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;">Mary:</span></p><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">It is interesting to note how people without children can be called "childless" or "child free," depending on perspective. I watched my own mother work hard through so many pregnancies, until she had all seven of us. Seeing her life from my close station as the oldest child, first to take on child care duties for the later steadily arriving siblings, I knew I absolutely didn't want that life, and decided early not to marry.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Much later, at 32, I did marry, but never had children of my own. Strangely enough <b>married life was the first living situation for me without children in the household.</b> First I lived with all my younger siblings, then with friends who had children, then with my sister and her young son. After marrying I lived for the first time in a household without children...I had acquired stepchildren, but they didn't primarily live with us. </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">I always enjoyed children and found them to be interesting and good people, fun to be around and not much trouble, but never wanted any of my own. My mother had seven, 3 girls, 4 boys. Only one of the girls ever had a child, two of the boys did. This may have been unusual in the past but I believe is very much the direction of the future, at least in the Western developed world.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">China and Russia also have plummeting births, each related to their own history and culture. In China the causes seem closer to our own, paradoxically, I think because of the increase in opportunities for education and employment for women...pitched from feudal to modern life in less than a century, the rapid transformation witnessed by the fact that until quite recently there were still some old women to be found with bound feet, crippled for life, unable to walk. </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf8i1nUR0nXqBrL3X3MZar_raWQbwTb2gK2i3UEoy2iu-3F3uAzEdojvPftBd9FC8AAfqGnaRatw4koT17bBL7QBH7y5dSLG61ccoXUdXKisO_27oZsDncPq20shGtIjJdmgn0SIJEZEmvpsafG0jJJiaQLKVAgg2W-r7a0CIzLzWQ14xNtWCShpy8efYs/s1280/foot%20binding.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf8i1nUR0nXqBrL3X3MZar_raWQbwTb2gK2i3UEoy2iu-3F3uAzEdojvPftBd9FC8AAfqGnaRatw4koT17bBL7QBH7y5dSLG61ccoXUdXKisO_27oZsDncPq20shGtIjJdmgn0SIJEZEmvpsafG0jJJiaQLKVAgg2W-r7a0CIzLzWQ14xNtWCShpy8efYs/w400-h225/foot%20binding.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Oriana: </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">It's wonderful that we have the term "child-free" coming into use in place of "childless." Voluntary childlessness is most of all about one thing: FREEDOM. </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">As with everything, there is a price. When I was still in my late teens, one woman remarked, "For you, having a child will be a great adventure." She paused, then added: "It's always a great adventure, but for you, it will be especially so." The very fact that I still remember her words indicates that they deeply affected me. Coming to the U.S. was certainly a great adventure, a very stressful one at first, but also one worth having. Falling in love was, each time, a great adventure. I have the kind of mental intensity that magnifies experiences. I have to admit that once in a while I do wonder what kind of adventure I missed. One that comes at a very high price, to be sure, but still . . . It's not the same as regret, but just an unanswered question. </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*</span></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>MEANWHILE IN RUSSIA . . . </b><br /><br />~ <b>For over a decade, </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>R</b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>ussia has been in the top ten countries losing population to emigration and also in the top ten countries with the highest immigration, accepting migrants.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">With peculiar specifics: <b>Russia is losing predominantly the educated population born in the European part of Russia, and bringing in migrants from the former republics of the USSR — mostly Muslim Asian republics</b>.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">It is mostly these migrants that support the Russian demographics by giving birth to 3–4 children. Sociologists say that<b> if the current trends continue, </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>by 2060 Russia will become a predominantly Muslim country. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">That’s why Russia is stealing Ukrainian kids (presidential administration reported that <b>700,000 children had been deported from Ukraine to Russia</b>). It was also the reason why Putin was in a hurry to announce the semi-occupied regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson annexed and include them in Russia’s constitution in full (although Russia doesn’t control in full any of the 4 regions, and doesn’t control 2 regional centers — cities of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia).<br /><br />It is also why Putin’s regime overwhelmingly sends men of national minorities — Buryat, Yakut, Chuvash, Tatars, etc. — to the front in Ukraine, to be used in the “meat attacks”. It is also why <b>the current angle of forcible mobilization is on rounding up migrants who recently got Russian passports</b>.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Russia is quickly becoming a third world country. But it still has ambitions to identify as a superpower. Putin hopes that his dream of the Russian “Eurasia” </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>from Vladivostok to Lisbon</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b> can still be achieved in his lifetime.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Russian troops just need to take Avdiivka first. They’ve been trying to do it since 2014.<br />And this means, the kids of today will be fighting the future battles — for as long as Putin is alive. ~ Quora<br /><br />*<br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b><i>“When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick." ~ Mikhail Bakunin, Russian anarchist<br /></i></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6CPC0RYiEO-MLzEO_MXt2Mg76gsqtjzQvBienoCQJGTJY6Dg1_GyfSWlN-DH8JukS8TxQKN6MWS-vXH0rkIdxL_4iCO-50ibkKpGseO905Lh1O5rcEtjs3ovjbiQNZLnBVb9Doefx6-NmRtyFs4L7skOUGQrCNz6v2PU8MCEC8mD1pOH0GPAoSBSG8L1T/s1375/bakunin%20Mikhail.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1375" data-original-width="1052" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6CPC0RYiEO-MLzEO_MXt2Mg76gsqtjzQvBienoCQJGTJY6Dg1_GyfSWlN-DH8JukS8TxQKN6MWS-vXH0rkIdxL_4iCO-50ibkKpGseO905Lh1O5rcEtjs3ovjbiQNZLnBVb9Doefx6-NmRtyFs4L7skOUGQrCNz6v2PU8MCEC8mD1pOH0GPAoSBSG8L1T/w306-h400/bakunin%20Mikhail.jpg" width="306" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br /><b>WHY THE NETHERLANDS LEADS IN NEWBORN CARE<br /></b><br />~ To new parents processing the shock of delivery and swimming in hormones, newborns can feel like a tiny, terrifying mystery; unexploded ordinance in a crib. “We were totally unprepared,” says Odilia. Neither she or her husband had ever changed a nappy and <b>had no idea the baby needed feeding every three hours. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“If you’re a new mom or dad, you have no idea,” recalls Anouk, a new mother. “I’m a doctor,” says Zarah, another new mother, incredulously. “So, you would expect that I’d know something, and I knew some things, but you really don’t have any clue.” For Giulia, an expat living far from the support of family and friends, a traumatic birth left her physically and mentally reeling.<b> “I was running on adrenaline for days and days,” she recalls. The delicate process of caring for her premature son could easily have become overwhelming.<br /></b><br />The difference for these new parents, compared to the rest of us, is that they gave birth in the Netherlands. That meant <b>help was instantly at hand in the form of the kraamzorg, or maternity carer. Everyone who gives birth in the Netherlands, regardless of their circumstances, has the legal right – covered by social insurance – to support from a maternity carer for the following week.</b><br /><br />These trained professionals come into your home daily, usually for eight days, providing advice, reassurance and practical help. It’s a different role than midwives, who continue to monitor women and babies after the birth in the Netherlands; <b>the maternity carer updates the midwife on the mother and baby’s health and progress as well as supporting the parents as they come to terms with their new child.</b><br /><br />If you’ve had a baby pretty much anywhere else in the world, this sounds little short of miraculous: exactly what many of us wished we could have had. I had my first baby at 27 and was discharged the next day to a top-floor flat far from family without the slightest clue what to do. My baby was given basic health checks but <i><b>no one examined me, ever – not even at my six-week check (the GP just asked if I was OK and if I had considered contraception – I lied yes to both).</b></i><br /><br />A maternity carer in the Netherlands, explains Betty de Vries of Kenniscentrum Kraamzorg, the organization that registers maternity carers, “takes care of the woman the first week, advises her on breastfeeding and bottle feeding, hygiene, gives advice … everything to do with safe motherhood and a safe baby. She is there for the whole day most of the time so she can see how they are doing.” Her colleague, director Esther van der Zwan, adds: “It’s a lot of responsibility.” <b>To prepare, maternity carers train for three years – a combination of academic and on-the-job placements – and have regular refresher training in everything from CPR to breastfeeding support.</b><br /><br />For most new parents, the maternity carer is an incredible comfort and relief (“Kind of a luxury,” says Zarah), but it can be far more than that. An experienced pair of eyes and ears around the house can be crucial in preventive care, spotting potential health or well-being issues with mother, baby or family setup or warning signs of abuse or domestic violence.<br /><br /><b>Josette Veerman can tell, she says, the minute she walks into a home how the week will go. “You know it’s going to be a nice or a hard week, or: ‘Oh my goodness, what’s happening here?’” She has been a kraamzorg for 15 years.</b> Before that she worked in a bank. “I came home and told my husband: ‘You’ll never guess what I’ve done today, I quit my job,’” she tells me, laughing on a video call. Now she has been present for the delivery of about 600 babies (“All a miracle”) and spends her life slotting into families at one of the most intense times of their life.<br /><br /><b>“Maybe they could have done without me,” she says of some new parents. But where families aren’t coping, it’s a different story.</b> “You can’t make right in a few days what’s already gone wrong for years, but you can open up the discussion.” That can mean tough conversations with families around sensitive topics – good communication is key.<br /><br />Her presence can also mean families “feel seen” and get the help they need – another part of her job is liaising with other parts of the maternity care system to ensure families get that support. “That’s what makes it so special and important.” <b>She worked right through the pandemic, supporting new parents when no family members could visit them, and even now, if someone in the household has Covid she still works</b>, in full PPE (though shifts are limited to three hours).</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">How did the Netherlands get this so right? Women there have historically given birth at home – the rate of home births is still much higher than in other European countries (almost 14% according to the most recent figures), though it has declined in recent decades.<br /><br /><b>The maternity-carer system grew out of the informal networks of postnatal carers that existed to support home birth. From the turn of the 20th century, concerted attempts were made to try to educate these informal carers in the new science of hygiene.</b> Since the 1920s, an official registration system required maternity carers to train in order to receive a badge allowing them to work. By the late 1940s, the system was further professionalized so only certified maternity carers could care for mothers and babies at home. It was around the same time that a universal period of maternity care was covered by the Dutch social security system.<br /><br />These days, the number of hours a family is entitled to has fallen – <b>originally the maternity period lasted 10 to 12 days; now the legal entitlement is between 24 and 80 hours, though the majority of families receive a standard 49 hours. Parents pay a contribution – currently €4.80 an hour – towards the cost of the maternity carer’s time.</b><br /><br />The actual experience will vary depending on the individuals and organizations involved (you can get a maternity carer through agencies or hire one independently, although what’s available may depend on your supplementary insurance cover and women also swap tips when they find one they really like). <b>Some maternity carers clean the house and do the laundry </b>(“The house was never so clean; the washing machine was going every hour,” recalls Zarah). One woman told me her kraamzorg even stayed over one night to support her when her partner was very sick. But whatever the specifics, the level of appreciation for the system and gratitude for the women who make it work is huge.<br /><br />For Giulia, Zarah and Odilia, <b>being able to go back to bed and rest for a few hours when the maternity carer arrived in the morning was particularly precious</b>. “She took care of our son when I was resting, which was essential for me,” says Giulia. For Anouk, whose elder daughter was a toddler when she gave birth, “she was really helpful playing with her so I and my husband could have some quality time with the baby”. She had a home birth, and <b>the maternity carer supported and advised her when her baby’s temperature dropped overnight, recommending she take her into hospital.<br /></b><br />Giulia’s maternity carer arrived the night she was discharged from hospital, traumatized and “in really bad shape” after a very difficult birth. “She got it immediately, and really understood how to handle the situation,” she says. “Ours came in the morning and we were so happy,” says Zarah who was discharged from hospital late on the day she gave birth. “She was really helpful, especially with breastfeeding. She was very calm and made me more relaxed.” There were little things that made a difference, too: expert tips on swaddling techniques and skin-to-skin contact, <b>helping out with the first bath and explaining the warning signs of mastitis.<br /></b><br /><b>For an outsider it seems potentially quite stressful to have a stranger in your home</b> – would you not worry about them finding your mess, or judging your parenting style? “She’s suddenly in your house – it’s pretty crazy,” says Zarah. <b>For Odilia, the relief far outweighed any potential misgivings or awkwardness. “I was really happy somebody was going to come.” </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Anouk’s experience was very positive but she has a friend who found it “a bit too much”, she says. <b>“You have quite intimate contact and I don’t think everybody is really open to that.”<br /></b><br />Being accepting and open-minded is a crucial part of her job, Veerman says. “You’re a kind of chameleon. You work with every kind of person: highly educated people who can’t read or write, other languages, refugees, very different cultures.” One of the important skills, she says, is “being able to adapt and understand that people have such different perspectives. You have to find the way in between, because it’s not wrong what they’re doing, it’s different ...” Some families stay with her, inevitably, she says. Sometimes there are tears. But <b>usually, she and the parents are ready to move on when the week draws to a close. “They’re happy you’ve come, but I always say that it’s healthy at the end of the week that they’re happy I will leave. It’s a good sign – they have that confidence.”</b><br /><br />That chimes with what the new parents I speak to say. What they most appreciated was the reassurance the maternity carer offers: <b>expert encouragement that they are doing a good job, building their confidence, assuring them that everything will be OK.</b> Who wouldn’t want that? </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“It’s really nice if someone who’s more experienced in working with babies tells you you’re doing great now. You know that when she leaves, you feel like, OK, I’ve got this, we can do this,” says Anouk. Not everyone is quite as philosophical when the week is over. “I cried, I really cried,” says Odilia. But, she says, the kraamzorg told her: “I would not leave if I didn’t think you could handle it yourself.” Anouk’s maternity carer said exactly the same. “I was panicky,” says Giulia. “But then you’re fine.” <b>The kraamzorg system is the envy of much of the world; in the UK, David Cameron floated the idea of introducing an equivalent in 2008; the idea seems to have been quietly shelved by the time he became Prime Minister in 2010.<br /></b><br />It’s not a perfect system, though. Some vulnerable families struggle to make the personal financial contribution required and end their maternity care period earlier as a result, while staffing shortages mean it’s currently under acute pressure. T<b>here are about 9,000 maternity carers currently working in the Netherlands</b> (Kenniscentrum Kraamzorg has 9,500 on its books, but it’s likely not all are active at any given time); the government says that<b> 11,000 more are needed</b>. But pay levels are low (a maximum of €19.83 an hour, according to the professional body for the maternity care sector, Bo Geboortezorg), and as van der Zwan says: “It’s a tough job; it’s a lot of responsibility.” “It doesn’t earn you much, so you have to have a special feeling for taking care of babies and mothers,” says de Vries.<br /><br />You also need to have “a big heart” says Veerman. I ask her what advice she would give new mothers in other places who don’t have the benefit of the kraamzorg system: “Follow your instinct and listen to your body,” she says. <b>“Delivering a baby is like running a marathon without any training. You have to recover.”</b><br /><br />The women of the Netherlands have help to make that recovery a reality and those that I speak to are very conscious of their good fortune. “It’s a fantastic system, we’re very lucky,” says Odilia. “Speaking from the position of someone who was in pretty bad shape, I think in terms of mental health it can really make or break how you recover,” says Giulia. She’s conscious nothing similar would have been available if she had given birth back in Italy. <b>“It was fundamental to get that support. It was a brilliant service.” Zarah agrees. “I don’t know how they do it in other countries. You just need a little help.”</b> ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/oct/25/a-home-help-for-eight-days-after-giving-birth-why-dutch-maternity-care-is-the-envy-of-the-world">https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/oct/25/a-home-help-for-eight-days-after-giving-birth-why-dutch-maternity-care-is-the-envy-of-the-world<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>GENTLE PARENTING<br /></b></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBPNatSuBn-HQbe718DVt_ll-2KzCo4IAGcnsqtKd8yCmeXmnp9PZriWSsK71Lja9cSTW2UgQGzkAL88GK_En9Ahyphenhyphen23z9-u6Cupi_JOzu1FngQR1Llebn4Vz-idK69E2bzkHs5vO07gVlqwcL5QcFrrotFWVNHkLjY4gN0Hv4wA-Nth49jEiIMcWG-b271/s926/3%20pairs%20of%20hands.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="616" data-original-width="926" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBPNatSuBn-HQbe718DVt_ll-2KzCo4IAGcnsqtKd8yCmeXmnp9PZriWSsK71Lja9cSTW2UgQGzkAL88GK_En9Ahyphenhyphen23z9-u6Cupi_JOzu1FngQR1Llebn4Vz-idK69E2bzkHs5vO07gVlqwcL5QcFrrotFWVNHkLjY4gN0Hv4wA-Nth49jEiIMcWG-b271/w400-h266/3%20pairs%20of%20hands.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">~ <b>Parents who practice positive discipline or gentle parenting use neither rewards nor punishments to encourage their children to behave.</b></span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">By “no rewards” I mean they don’t use charts or “bribes” such as lollies or toys. Many don’t even say “good girl/boy” or “good job”.<br /><br />And by “no punishments” I mean they don’t use time-outs, smacking, shaming or yelling. Forget the naughty step, forget the sticker chart, let’s take a journey into the world of gentle or positive discipline, which aims to teach children empathy, self-control and calmness.<br /><br /><b>What is Discipline?</b><br /><br />Discipline has come to mean many things in our culture. When we are discussing child rearing, we understand it to mean reprimanding a child for “bad behavior”. </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>The word discipline comes from the word disciple and means to teach.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b><br /><b>The discipline advocated by gentle parenting families is internalized.</b> They argue that to offer rewards and punishments overrides a child’s natural inclination to try. It teaches them to behave in certain ways for a reward, or to avoid punishment.<br /><br /><b>Advocates of gentle parenting say that rewards and punishments do not encourage children to internalize good behavior for its own sake.<br /></b><br />Here are a few steps that parents take to encourage a partnership with their children:<br /><br />They start from a place of connection and believe that all behavior stems from how connected the child is with their caregivers. </span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>They give choices not commands</b> (“would you like to brush your teeth before or after you put on your pyjamas?”). </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>They take a playful approach. They might use playfulness to clean up</b> (“let’s make a game of packing up these toys”) or to diffuse tension (having a playful pillow fight). </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">They allow feelings to run their course. Rather than saying “shoosh”, or yelling “stop!”, parents actively listen to crying. They may say, “you have a lot of/strong feelings about [situation]”. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>They describe the behavior, not the child.</b> So, rather than labeling a child as naughty or nice, they will explain the way actions make them feel. For example, “I get so frustrated cleaning crumbs off the couch.” </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>They negotiate limits where possible. If it’s time to leave the park, they might ask, “How many more minutes/swings before we leave?”</b> However, they can be flexible and reserve “no” for situations that can hurt the child (such as running on the road or touching the hot plate) or others (including pets). They might say: “Hitting me/your sister/pulling the dog’s tail hurts, I won’t let you do that.” </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>They treat their children as partners in the family. A partnership means that the child is invited to help make decisions and to be included in the household tasks. Parents apologize when they get it wrong. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>They will not do forced affection</b>. When Uncle Ray wants to hug your child and s/he says no, then the child gets to say what happens to their body. They also don’t force please or thank you.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>They trust their children. What you might think of as “bad” behavior is seen as the sign of an unmet need.<br /></b><br /><b>They take parental time-outs when needed. Before they crack, they step away, take a breath and regain their composure.<br /></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinCzhtziSABaWBEvJM3dihK-lvqg70VwLOT1EStqIV-T4UV7g3eeKYnPP9XMptcJ18b5uWzPJFgxx0IsL14OLRtIDMOFoH85RkSv6bWWwuwim0IGzLxUtLFfToifiq9i9p2_2t3fS-3XkXlYfpOjfw4lxKjT11VjD1X8t9X4Qig8EKBDHOR5fF6HyqjOVE/s754/father%20son%20biking.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="503" data-original-width="754" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinCzhtziSABaWBEvJM3dihK-lvqg70VwLOT1EStqIV-T4UV7g3eeKYnPP9XMptcJ18b5uWzPJFgxx0IsL14OLRtIDMOFoH85RkSv6bWWwuwim0IGzLxUtLFfToifiq9i9p2_2t3fS-3XkXlYfpOjfw4lxKjT11VjD1X8t9X4Qig8EKBDHOR5fF6HyqjOVE/w400-h266/father%20son%20biking.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">BENEFITS OF THE GENTLE APPROACH<br /><br />There are many sites that claim benefits to this approach. For example, Attachment Parenting International argues that <b>the child is more sensitive to others’ needs because they have learnt to expect that their needs will be met</b>, they will be treated with respect and they are equal partners in the family.<br /><br />Others argue that it may take more effort, but is more effective, because punishment and rewards are only short-term solutions. As Alfie Kohn argues, <b>using rewards and punishments is about doing things to, not <i>with</i> children. </b>Taking a gentle parenting or positive discipline approach invites children to partner with their parents to learn how to live in the community as productive members.<br /><br />PROBLEMS WITH THE GENTLE APPROACH<br /><br />The problems people may see with this style of parenting generally stem from a problem of definition. <b>Gentle parenting is not permissive parenting. Permissive parenting means never saying no, not provoking tantrums or crying and always wanting to please the child. This style of parenting is the antithesis of gentle parenting.</b><br /><br />Sometimes parents who practice gentle parenting are described as sanctimommies. The term is meant to imply they are sanctimonious. However, the issue is generally with that individual parent, not their parenting style.<br /><br /><b>Gentle parenting requires parental self-control, because you have to take a step back, think and ask, “What is my child’s behavior communicating in this moment?” and, “What can I do differently to prevent this behavior next time?”</b> ~<br /><br /><a href="https://getpocket.com/explore/item/gentle-parenting-explainer-no-rewards-no-punishments-no-misbehaving-kids">https://getpocket.com/explore/item/gentle-parenting-explainer-no-rewards-no-punishments-no-misbehaving-kids<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>THE EARTH’S LOST SISTER PLANET</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>THEIA:</b></span></p><p><span class="ILfuVd NA6bn" lang="en" style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: georgia;"><span class="hgKElc">An ancient planet named <b>Theia</b>
collided with Earth some 4.5 billion years ago and left large amounts
of its iron-rich material embedded in our planet, according to a new
study. Researchers first identified the material by studying seismic
waves, which travel more slowly in the denser material.</span></span><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: georgia;"><b> </b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />~ <b>Scientists widely agree that an ancient planet likely smashed into Earth as it was forming billions of years ago, spewing debris that coalesced into the moon that decorates our night sky today.</b><br /><br />The theory, called <b>the giant-impact hypothesis</b>, explains many fundamental features of the moon and Earth.<br /><br />But one glaring mystery at the center of this hypothesis has endured: <b>What ever happened to Theia? Direct evidence of its existence has remained elusive. No leftover fragments from the planet have been found in the solar system. And many scientists assumed any debris Theia left behind on Earth was blended in the fiery cauldron of our planet’s interior.</b><br /><br />A new theory, however, suggests that remnants of the ancient planet remain partially intact, buried beneath our feet.<br /><br /><b>Molten slabs of Theia could have embedded themselves within Earth’s mantle after impact before solidifying, leaving portions of the ancient planet’s material resting above Earth’s core some 1,800 miles (about 2,900 kilometers) below the surface, </b>according to a study recently published in the journal Nature.<br /><br />If the theory is correct, it would not only provide additional details to fill out the giant-impact hypothesis but also answer a lingering question for geophysicists.<br /><br />They were already aware that <b>there are two massive, distinct blobs that are embedded deep within the Earth. The masses — called large low-velocity provinces, or LLVPs — were first detected in the 1980s. One lies beneath Africa and another below the Pacific Ocean.<br /></b><br /><i><b>These blobs are thousands of kilometers wide and likely more dense with iron compared with the surrounding mantle, making them stand out when measured by seismic waves. But the origins of the blobs — each of which are larger than the moon — remain a mystery to scientists.</b></i></span></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But for Dr. Qian Yuan, a geophysicist and postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology and the new study’s lead author, his understanding of LLVPs forever changed when he attended a 2019 seminar at Arizona State University, his alma mater, that outlined the giant-impact hypothesis.<br /><br />That’s when he learned new details about Theia, the mysterious projectile that presumably struck Earth billions of years ago.<br /><br />And, as a trained geophysicist, he knew of those mysterious blobs hidden in Earth’s mantle.<br />Yuan had a eureka moment, he said.<br /><br />Immediately, he began perusing scientific studies, searching to see whether someone else had proposed that LLVPs might be fragments of Theia. But no one had.<br /><br />Initially, Yuan said, he only told his adviser about his theory.<br /><br />“I was afraid of turning to other people because I (was) afraid others would think I’m too crazy,” Yuan said.</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH<br /><br />Yuan first proposed his idea in a paper he submitted in 2021. It was rejected three times. Peer reviewers said it lacked sufficient modeling from the giant impact.<br /><br />Then he came across scientists who did just the type of research Yuan needed.<br /><br />Their work, which assigned a certain size to Theia and speed of impact in the modeling, suggested that <b>the ancient planet’s collision likely did not entirely melt Earth’s mantle, allowing the remnants of Theia to cool and form solid structures instead of blending together in Earth’s inner stew.</b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaCyFQOx8TRG0PYq11qkyYZYC0jm9wvak6UvlHHBc8BU-FiOpebx76Touj2Ykrm4MVbmdlbieL9G5H2WVjklxtKy0MSY2scoeXnPOXp7D_xFEuMV65orEik9P5y2MBVXYQ4TEN9TV8zKYYMUIQ_106-Ms1KMIoATXtJe2DJXqr5stV_ZOeKqzrb9jNq3xd/s1015/THEIA%20colliding%20with%20the%20early%20Earth.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="571" data-original-width="1015" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaCyFQOx8TRG0PYq11qkyYZYC0jm9wvak6UvlHHBc8BU-FiOpebx76Touj2Ykrm4MVbmdlbieL9G5H2WVjklxtKy0MSY2scoeXnPOXp7D_xFEuMV65orEik9P5y2MBVXYQ4TEN9TV8zKYYMUIQ_106-Ms1KMIoATXtJe2DJXqr5stV_ZOeKqzrb9jNq3xd/w400-h225/THEIA%20colliding%20with%20the%20early%20Earth.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This rendering shows Theia colliding with the early Earth. The combination of high-resolution giant impact and mantle convection simulations, mineral physics calculations, and seismic imaging suggests that<b> the lower half of Earth’s mantle remained mostly solid after this impact, and that parts of Theia’s iron-rich mantle sank and accumulated atop Earth's core nearly 4.5 billion years ago, surviving there throughout Earth’s history.</b> (Image: Hernán Cañellas)<br /><br />“Earth’s mantle is rocky, but it isn’t like solid rock,” said Dr. Steve Desch, a study coauthor and professor of astrophysics at Arizona State’s School of Earth and Space Exploration. “It’s this high-pressure magma that’s kind of gooey and has the viscosity of peanut butter, and it’s basically sitting on a very hot stove.”<br /><br />In that environment, if the material that makes up the LLVPs was too dense, it wouldn’t be able to pile up in the jagged formations that it appears in, Desch said. And if it were low enough in density, it would simply mix in with the churning mantle.<br /><br />The question was this: <b>What would be the density of the material left behind by Theia? And could it match up with the density of the LLVPs?<br /></b><br />The researchers sought higher-definition modeling with 100 to 1,000 times more resolution than their previous attempts, Yuan said. And still, the calculations lined up: If Theia were a certain size and consistency, and struck the Earth at a specific speed, <b>the models showed it could, in fact, leave behind massive hunks of its guts within Earth’s mantle and also spawn the debris that would go on to create our moon.</b><br /><br />“That was very, very, so very exciting,” Yuan said. “That (modeling) hadn’t been done before.”<br /><br />Desch added that, in his view, “this work is compelling. It makes a very strong case.” It even seems “sort of obvious in hindsight.”<br /><br />Dr. Seth Jacobson, an assistant professor of planetary science at Michigan State University, acknowledged that the theory may not, however, soon reach broad acceptance.<br /><br />“These (LLVPs) — they’re an area themselves of very active research,” said Jacobson, who was not involved in the study. And the tools used to study them are constantly evolving.<br /><br /><b>The idea that Theia created the LLVPs is no doubt an exciting and eye-catching hypothesis, he added, but it’s not the only one out there.<br /></b><br /><b><i>One other theory, for example, posits that LLVPs are actually heaps of oceanic crust that have sunk to the depths of the mantle over billions of years.</i><br /></b><br />“I doubt the advocates for other hypotheses (about LLVP formation) are going to abandon them just because this one has appeared,” Jacobson added. “I think we’ll be debating this for quite some time.” ~</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJjn_tbvA46LLsVgVeABwXfZ2508wgOUR_zfcQJ63Th-OddPO39dQX2xI4pXr5RCC_nfQGZRPNwadSoLZGUaxoPlxP7tR7pUXx64LPLr0fKMFtmrlRgzWpsdZurAxIUjaJ3iwLIFkjW1m8597cFeDf6odan24itJPkW_r4HKwJUnBlxyc2vu3JN3XTKf7N/s580/theia%20colliding%20with%20earth.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="464" data-original-width="580" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJjn_tbvA46LLsVgVeABwXfZ2508wgOUR_zfcQJ63Th-OddPO39dQX2xI4pXr5RCC_nfQGZRPNwadSoLZGUaxoPlxP7tR7pUXx64LPLr0fKMFtmrlRgzWpsdZurAxIUjaJ3iwLIFkjW1m8597cFeDf6odan24itJPkW_r4HKwJUnBlxyc2vu3JN3XTKf7N/w400-h320/theia%20colliding%20with%20earth.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/03/world/earth-moon-theia-collision-llvps-scn/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/03/world/earth-moon-theia-collision-llvps-scn/index.html<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>NDEs REVISITED</b><br /><br />Sci-fi author Brian Herbert once wrote, “The only guarantee in life is death, and the only guarantee in death is its shocking unpredictability.” These words ring true to researchers who investigate what happens in a person’s final moments — and the frustration that comes with these studies. One big problem almost always gets in the way: How do you ask people what dying feels like when they’re no longer here? </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Because we haven’t yet figured out how to communicate with the dead, the best-case scenario is <b>talking to people who have had a close brush with death. They often mention seeing bright lights, their life flashing before their eyes, or visions of deceased loved ones.</b> Some have even reported spotting the Grim Reaper by their bedside. It’s a paradoxical situation, says Kevin Nelson, a professor of neurology at the University of Kentucky: <b>A few perceptions are common—a shining light, for instance—but the near-death experience is unique to each individual.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">There’s still a lot of mystery when it comes to the cause, but the field is progressing thanks to people who have allowed scientists to study their brains in these situations. People who have survived these close calls say <b>the encounter can be life-changing. One thing is certain: medical experts say near-death experiences are not a figment of the imagination. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">And figuring out the mechanisms behind this phenomenon goes beyond general curiosity. One goal is to better understand how cardiac arrests happen. It could also potentially save lives, because doctors would have more knowledge for when to continue resuscitations after a patient’s heart stops.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“The research not only benefits our understanding of consciousness, but also in understanding the importance of the heart, lung, and brain in our everyday physiology,” says Jimo Borjigin, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Michigan Medical School.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Sci-fi author Brian Herbert once wrote, “The only guarantee in life is death, and the only guarantee in death is its shocking unpredictability.” These words ring true to researchers who investigate what happens in a person’s final moments—and the frustration that comes with these studies. One big problem almost always gets in the way: How do you ask people what dying feels like when they’re no longer here? </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Often, though, people with cardiac arrest will recall near-death experiences. “About a quarter of people who suffer and survived cardiac arrest have memories about some aspect of near-death experience, Borjigin says. This is because people with cardiac arrest have decreasing blood pressure, she says. With the heart unable to pump properly, oxygen is unable to travel to the rest of the body, which is essential for every single cell in your body to survive. <b>When a brain is alerted to a sudden decline in oxygen, your brain undergoes certain changes that contribute to the perceptual distortions that accompany a near-death experience. </b><br /><br />ELECTRICAL SURGES IN THE BRAIN<br /><br />Ten years ago, Borjigin and her team observed that <b>rats in simulated cardiac arrest still had fully active brains even 30 seconds after their hearts stopped.</b> <b>What’s more, their brains increased in electrical activity. To confirm whether this happens in humans, Borjigin recently tested the brains of four people who were critically ill and removed from life support.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">When these comatose patients were taken off their ventilators, they could not breathe on their own. But, <b>using EEGs, Borjigin noticed two people showed a surge in gamma brainwaves as their bodies started shutting down. Gamma brainwaves are usually a sign of consciousness, because they are mostly active when someone is awake and alert. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“<b>We’ve shown the brain has a unique mechanism that deals with a lack of oxygen because oxygen is so essential for survival that even an acute loss massively activates the brain and could lead to a near-death experience</b>,” Borjigin explains. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The boost in gamma waves occurred in a brain area called the temporo-parieto-occipital (TPO) junction. This is responsible for blending information from our senses, including touch, motion, and vision, into our conscious selves. It’s impossible to know if the increased brain activity was related to any visions they may have had, because, sadly, the two patients died. But Borjigin suggests activation of this area suggests people may likely pick up sounds and understand language. <b>“They might hear and perceive the conversation around them and form a visual image in their brain even when their eyes are closed.” </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">HIDDEN CONSCIOUSNESS</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In one of the largest studies of near-death experiences, an international team of doctors has linked the surge in brain activity to what they called a hidden consciousness immediately following death. In the study, people who were brought back to life through CPR after cardiac arrest could recall memories and conversations while they were seemingly unconscious. <br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Between May 2017 and March 2020, the team tracked 567 people who underwent a cardiac arrest. They used EEGs and cerebral oxygenation monitoring to measure electrical activity and brain oxygen levels during CPR. To study auditory and visual awareness, the team used a tablet showing one of 10 images on the screen, and five minutes after, it would play a recording of fruit names: pear, banana, and apple, for another five minutes. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Only 53 people of the original 567 participants were successfully resuscitated. Initially, they showed no signs of brain activity and were considered dead. But during the CPR, the team noticed bursts of activity. These spikes included gamma waves and others: delta, theta, alpha, and beta waves—all electrical activity that signals consciousness. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Twenty-eight of those 53 patients were cognitively capable of having an interview. Eleven people recalled being lucid during CPR, being aware of what was happening or showing perceptions of consciousness like an out-of-body experience. No one could recall the visual image but when asked to randomly name three fruit, one person correctly named all the fruits in the audio recording—though the authors note this could have been a random lucky guess. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>The study authors also included self-reports of 126 other survivors of cardiac arrests not involved in the study and what they remembered from almost dying. Common themes included the pain and pressure of chest compressions, hearing conversations from doctors, out-of-body experiences, and abstract dreams that had nothing to do with the medical event.<br /></b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The findings debunk the idea that an oxygen-deprived brain stays alive for only five to ten minutes. They also raise the question whether doctors can save people already determined to be dead. “These patients were actually alive within, as seen in the positive waves on the EEG, but externally they were dead,” says Chinwe Ogedegbe, an emergency trauma center section chief and coauthor of the study. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Beyond the brain’s resilience to the lack of oxygen, the authors propose an alternative “braking system” that could explain the distorted perceptions of consciousness. The brain normally filters and inhibits unneeded information when you’re awake. In this unconscious state, however, <b>the braking system is gone, which could allow dormant brain pathways to activate and access a deeper realm of consciousness containing all of your memory, thoughts, and actions. “Instead of being hallucinatory, illusory or delusional, this appears to facilitate lucid understanding of new dimensions of reality,” the authors write in their paper.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Unfortunately, with only a small number of participants surviving their cardiac arrest, it’s unclear whether this altered consciousness is more visual or auditory. Ogedegbe is working to increase the number of participants in the next trial to 1,500. Doing so will give researchers a better idea of the type of brain activity that goes on when someone is at death’s door, and potentially provide comfort that their loved ones can sense them in their final moments.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.popsci.com/health/near-death-experience/?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_recirculation&spot_im_redirect_source=pitc&spot_im_comment_id=sp_yZz9S9cM_575374_c_2W65lrTdAgiGryYehUyvcYWH45y&spot_im_highlight_immediate=true">https://www.popsci.com/health/near-death-experience/?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_recirculation&spot_im_redirect_source=pitc&spot_im_comment_id=sp_yZz9S9cM_575374_c_2W65lrTdAgiGryYehUyvcYWH45y&spot_im_highlight_immediate=true</a><br /><br />*<br /><i><b>Even the rise of religions or nations that promote peace came with tremendous bloodshed</b></i>. ~ </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://fs.blog/eric-hoffer-creation-fanatical-mass-movements/">https://fs.blog/eric-hoffer-creation-fanatical-mass-movements/<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>IS ISLAM A RELIGION OF PEACE?</b><br /><br />Regarding Islam, historical context is to blame for anti-Semitism. Islam itself is white-washed as a “tolerant religion of peace.” <br /><br /><b>The white-washing of Islam has a history. In Islam in History, Bernard Lewis wrote that even when Islam was at its most tolerant "the golden age of equal rights was a myth … invented by Jews in 19th-century Europe as a reproach to Christians – and taken up by Muslims in our own time as a reproach to Jews … if tolerance means the absence of discrimination, then Islam never was or claimed to be tolerant, but on the contrary insisted on the privileged superiority of the true believer in this world as well as the next.”</b><br /><br /><b><i>People familiar with the Rhineland Massacres are not generally familiar with the 1033 Fez Massacre, when Muslims massacred an estimated 6,000 Jews, took Jewish women as sex slaves, and stole Jewish property. Jews were again massacred in Fez in 1438 and 1465. In 1066, Muslims crucified a Jew in Granada, and massacred the city's Jewish population. In 1941, Muslims in Baghdad massacred Jews.</i></b><br /><br /><b>In 1817 in Morocco, Sol Hachuel, a 17-year-old Jewish girl and a renowned beauty, was beheaded for refusing to convert to Islam. In nineteenth century Morocco, Jews were required to walk barefoot when outside the ghetto. In the ninth century, Muslims forced Jews and Christians to wear identifying badges – donkeys for Jews, pigs for Christians. Periodic decrees, stretching across centuries, in Muslim North Africa and the Middle East ordered the destruction of synagogues. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Also periodically Jews were ordered to convert to Islam or be killed. In 1909, a British observer wrote, "The attitude of the Muslims toward the Christians and the Jews is that of a master towards slaves, whom he treats with a certain lordly tolerance so long as they keep their place. </b>Any sign of pretension to equality is promptly repressed." These facts are not adduced to prove that it was all bad all the time for Jews under Islam. I mention them because they complicate powerful propaganda whitewashing Islam as "tolerant" and “peaceful.” <br /><br /><i><b>Hamas describes itself, not as a political entity, but as a religious one. Hamas speaks of Israel in Islamic terms, as a "waqf," that is territory once inhabited by Muslims and that, therefore, according to Islam, must never again be allowed to be anything but part of Dar al-Islam. "Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day" reads the Hamas covenant.</b><br /></i><br />Islam, not historic context, creates and perpetuates violent hostility between Muslims and non-Muslims, especially Jews. Focus on any increase or decrease in settlements or any other political question will not end conflict. Applying distorted paradigms and wrong assumptions about Christians or Christianity to Muslims and Islam is a deadly mistake. ~ Danusha Goska, Facebook <br /><br /><br />*<br /><b>WHAT BACTERIA CAN TELL US ABOUT HUMAN EVOLUTION</b><br /><br />To discover our species’ deep history and to shape its future health, we should learn from the microbes that accompanied us on our evolutionary journey.<br /><br /><b>It is human nature to want to know where we came from. Individually, we investigate our family lineages to discover ancestors lost to history. </b>Collectively, scientists examine data from a vast array of sources, ranging from ancient fossils to current genomes, to determine where humanity itself originated, and how we came to be who and where we are as a species today.<br /><br />In the past decade, studies in this area have been revolutionized by the plunge in gene sequencing costs. The human genome project began in 1990 and cost about $2.7 billion — roughly $100 million per sequenced genome. Today, a genome can be sequenced for approximately $1,000 to $2,000, and we’re nearing a longstanding goal of the $100 genome.<br />While much of the genomic work carried out to date has focused on genetic risk factors for health and disease, we can also use genetic reconstructions to examine the history of our species. <b>But our own genes don’t necessarily tell us the whole story of our travels and migrations as a species or of the risks to our health.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">For that reason, in recent years, researchers have paid much more attention to <b>our “second genome”: that of our microbiota. Our microbiota are all of the microscopic organisms that live on and in us, playing a role in our digestion, training our immune system to correctly respond to pathogens, manufacturing key vitamins and taking up space that could otherwise be exploited by pathogens.</b> Gut microbes are the “worlds within worlds” that have e</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">volved alongside us, their hosts, as our early human ancestors moved from place to place, ate new foods and encountered new animals and environments. Our current microbiome (the collective genetic material of our microbiota) reflects some of that deep history.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Extreme Symbionts in Our Cells</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">We can glean information about human history from those organisms within us in several ways. One is by using the parts of our own cells that are, in essence, microbial: our mitochondria. These organelles can be considered “extreme symbionts”: They are remnants of microorganisms that once lived free but are now integral parts of all eukaryotic (complex) cells, producing energy and regulating metabolism.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Mitochondria retain their own DNA, separate from that of the cell’s nucleus. For many types of research, this mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is preferable to nuclear DNA as an object of study. Unlike our nuclear DNA, it isn’t a mixture of our parents’ genetic material. Because mtDNA is inherited exclusively from the egg and passed down through generations of the maternal lineage, it’s more akin to a clone of your mother (and her mother, and her mother and so on). </b>And while eukaryotic cells have only one copy of nuclear DNA in their singular nucleus, they have many mitochondria and therefore multiple copies of each mtDNA gene. Because the mtDNA genome is much smaller than nuclear DNA (containing only about 37 genes instead of 20,000 or so in humans), it is also simpler to analyze.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Analysis of mtDNA in the 1980s led to the conclusion that humanity originated in Africa, dating back to a common maternal ancestor somewhere around 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. </b>Though widely accepted today, this declaration was controversial at the time, as some biologists and anthropologists thought that modern humans evolved as a collective from diverse but interbreeding populations of archaic humans scattered throughout the Old World (the “multiregional hypothesis”).</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Microbes in our bodies can also help elucidate humanity’s ancestral journeys, because they too are inherited within families and have long been associated with human populations. One example is Helicobacter pylori, a stomach bacterium that can cause ulcers and gastric cancer, but which can also be carried without symptoms in many individuals. H. pylori is transmitted from person to person, probably by saliva (oral-oral route) or contact with feces (fecal-oral route), and possibly by contaminated food or water.</b> Other Helicobacter species colonize the guts of mammals, which suggests a lengthy co-evolution between these types of bacteria, humans and our relatives. In the past, H. pylori likely colonized a very high percentage of humans, but its prevalence has decreased in many countries over the past century because of improvements in sanitation and hygiene.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Studies during the past 15 years have examined the evolution of H. pylori by collecting and sequencing strains of the bacterium from individuals all around the world. Researchers found that H. pylori collected in Africa contained the most genetic diversity (just as human populations from East Africa do), and that one could retrace basic human migrations out of that continent and around the globe by examining the genetic makeup of this bacterium. Genomic analysis also pointed to the bacterium having co-evolved with humans for approximately 60,000 years — since close to the time when modern humans began migrating out of Africa, and carrying H. pylori and other bacteria along for the ride.</b> We can therefore use the genome of H. pylori to figure out the evolutionary history of some human populations.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Retracing Our Past in Their Genes</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Why do this when we can look at human bones or genomes to get that information? For one, it’s a powerful confirmation of the correctness of a hypothesis when genomic data from two different organisms tell the same story, especially when those organisms are as different as a human and a bacterium are. In addition, sometimes the data from one genome can fill in gaps that the other data set can’t resolve. <b>Data from H. pylori genomes were able to differentiate two ethnic communities in Ladakh, India, for instance, when the available human genetic markers at the time could not.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Today, rather than looking at a single variety of microbe, looking at the massed collection of all of them may better inform our knowledge of where we humans have been as a species, and where we may be going. <b>The idea of the holobiont — the host and all its associated microbes, analyzed as a single hologenome </b>— is taking shape as we’re starting to understand the thousands of microbial species that can live in and on our bodies.<br /><br /><b>Our microbiota do not just reflect human evolution — they affect it: Through our associated microbes, we can acquire abilities that are beneficial to populations. A 2010 study, for example, found that many individuals from Japan have a gene in their gut microbes that allows them to produce an enzyme that helps to break down carbohydrates from seaweed more efficiently. This gene is absent from the guts of people from North America, where (unlike in Japan) seaweed is not a dietary staple.</b><br /><br /><b>The gene may have been acquired by a human gut bacterium, Bacteroides plebeius,</b> possibly from the marine bacterium Zobellia galactanivorans. Zobellia could have been ingested long ago by individuals in Japan, entering their gut either as a whole bacterium or in pieces, including as free DNA. Because bacteria can acquire genes through a process known as horizontal gene transfer, Bacteroides may have picked up this gene in the gut environment. The gene could then have benefited both the bacterium and the host by opening up an additional source of nutrition, and as such would have been maintained in the population by natural selection.<br /><br /><b>Microbial Mismatches<br /></b><br />As we begin to grasp the interactions between our microbes and our ancestors since time immemorial, we may be able to use <b>these deep symbioses not only to interpret our history, but also to shape our future health outcomes</b>. H. pylori can be a cause of gastric cancer, but its propensity to promote cancer development appears to be a function of how well the bacterial strain “matches” its host. In a study examining gastric cancer and H. pylori in Colombia, researchers found that <b>African strains of H. pylori were more likely to cause cancer in the Colombian population — but those same strains were not frequently carcinogenic in Africans</b>. This observation points toward the possibility of preventing gastric cancers on an individualized basis by minimizing the risks from mismatches between hosts and their bacteria.<br /><br />Now that we are moving to a deeper awareness of the presence and function of our indigenous microbes, we are starting to see how these long-term symbioses have contributed to who we are today. Recent research has confirmed that for the microbiome as a whole, closely related organisms have a more similar microbiome makeup than those more distantly related. The microbiome as a whole could one day help us understand evolutionary relationships among species.<br /><br />Although the power of the microbiome to aid our understanding of disease-related conditions is frequently touted, the idea that our microbes may be able to inform us about ancestors lost in history may be its most intriguing application.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-bacteria-can-tell-us-about-human-evolution-20171205/">https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-bacteria-can-tell-us-about-human-evolution-20171205/<br /></a><br /><br /><i><b>ending on beauty:</b></i><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The magpie sitting next to me (I always feel</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> looked after!) can stretch its wings at any moment </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">and fly away toward the imaginary Sea of Rain. Strange, </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">but in some way this scenario lifts my spirits.</span></div><div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">~ Grzegorz Wróblewski</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi5f_EnmOyT5M2DWX9MI_2NZuwwxuZBxZ-bR_dz6Rz-6Z1fnd1PqH61XAkjnDrdHc4SGlEoBo5T_c2Dn2sTPxS8O7MZO8Gh-MkL_O1ty0mP5ebmWyuWIQL-tqq-pBB1u7FVy6DmBM6wJNyn29SAo2b5F3jwRRsZWYcltNDFaD4uC5c3_L6cIEFqeZcijlk/s1755/Monet%20Magpie%201869.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1256" data-original-width="1755" height="458" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi5f_EnmOyT5M2DWX9MI_2NZuwwxuZBxZ-bR_dz6Rz-6Z1fnd1PqH61XAkjnDrdHc4SGlEoBo5T_c2Dn2sTPxS8O7MZO8Gh-MkL_O1ty0mP5ebmWyuWIQL-tqq-pBB1u7FVy6DmBM6wJNyn29SAo2b5F3jwRRsZWYcltNDFaD4uC5c3_L6cIEFqeZcijlk/w640-h458/Monet%20Magpie%201869.jpg" width="640" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /> </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-28070744238742970122023-11-04T21:24:00.007-07:002023-11-09T18:49:13.060-08:00WHAT HAMAS MADE CLEAR; JEWISH DREAM AND JEWISH NIGHTMARE; WHY RUSSIA FAILED IN AFGHANISTAN; GIBBON AND THE DECLINE AND FALL; DIVORCE IN LATER YEARS; RUSSO-REALISM; INCREASE IN FIBER INTAKE ACTS LIKE OZEMPIC<p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDgt-2j_SgDPv_Q3XuasdVQ2k1aNEAON6I6m_-uxgNGlfygDn7HpppyzR0ofsc3XxysoTn7OHo1MwBXoBAt2JtLCAMPcKFrIKASVoSNLa4dzSFnmdck4Lbj5fa998JBLdgsd3Bjv6wPjVOSyEmXzXy95bshfsqHkcdaGOjRyXkDbQtVMi0boCSFE79sRL4/s2048/cemetery%20near%20Krakow%20cherub.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDgt-2j_SgDPv_Q3XuasdVQ2k1aNEAON6I6m_-uxgNGlfygDn7HpppyzR0ofsc3XxysoTn7OHo1MwBXoBAt2JtLCAMPcKFrIKASVoSNLa4dzSFnmdck4Lbj5fa998JBLdgsd3Bjv6wPjVOSyEmXzXy95bshfsqHkcdaGOjRyXkDbQtVMi0boCSFE79sRL4/w400-h400/cemetery%20near%20Krakow%20cherub.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span><i><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Cemetery in Rakowice, near Krakow; photo: Anna Stępień<br /></span></i></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />ALL SOULS<br /><br />Sometimes I think Warsaw fog<br />is the dead, coming back <br /><br />to seek their old homes —<br />wanting to touch even the walls.<br /><br />But they cannot find those walls, <br />so they embrace the trees instead,<br /><br />lindens and enduring chestnuts;<br />they embrace the whole city, <br /><br />lay their arms around the bridges<br />and the droplet-beaded street lamps; <br /><br />they pray in the Square of Three Crosses,<br />kneel among the candles and flowers<br /><br />under bronze plaques that say<br />On this spot, 100 people were shot —<br /><br />they bow, they kiss <br />even the railroad tracks —<br /><br />they do not complain, only hold <br />what they can, in unraveling white.<br /><br />~ Oriana</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitw-dk4eqIwMVZpZuw-8acSqj0DwJZ6xFjP1vuHClHgF0ZmciVHzo_SzdMRNJWdA7EAGv9zSf_t6z9c4eZT-gWMV8-3iIcHJomOPqsjPEirR0Zi-9PE30ORRqbOnjXYYKCJ5gmF8odCCxxIYIWKh6aK6Ei4jm6vvzxwTD0a1KeDBE1aLejjMvpBQkYysdK/s850/all%20souls%20day%20Poland.jpg" style="clear: left; color: #351c75; float: left; font-family: georgia; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="567" data-original-width="850" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitw-dk4eqIwMVZpZuw-8acSqj0DwJZ6xFjP1vuHClHgF0ZmciVHzo_SzdMRNJWdA7EAGv9zSf_t6z9c4eZT-gWMV8-3iIcHJomOPqsjPEirR0Zi-9PE30ORRqbOnjXYYKCJ5gmF8odCCxxIYIWKh6aK6Ei4jm6vvzxwTD0a1KeDBE1aLejjMvpBQkYysdK/w640-h426/all%20souls%20day%20Poland.jpg" width="640" /></a><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> <i> Polish cemetery on All Souls'</i><br /><br />*<br />“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.” ~ Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />”When I was young, I was attracted to sorrow. It seemed interesting. It seemed an energy that would take me somewhere. Now I am older, if not old, and I hate sorrow. I see that it has no energy of its own, but uses mine, furtively. I see that it is leaden, without breath, and repetitious, and unsolvable.<br /><br />And now I see that <b>I am sorrowful about only a few things, but over and over</b>.”<br /><br />~ Mary Oliver<br /><br />*<br /><b>THE DECLINE AND FALL</b><br /><br />~ Gibbon is widely regarded as a typical man of the Enlightenment, dedicated to asserting the claims of reason over superstition, to understanding history as a rational process, and to <b>replacing divine revelation with sociological explanations for the rise of religion.</b> He is probably cited most often for <b>his facetious observations about early Christianity. He is particularly severe on the miracles ascribed to the early monastics.<br /></b><br />“The favorites of heaven were accustomed to cure inveterate diseases with a touch, a word, or a distant message; and to expel the most obstinate daemons from the souls, or bodies, which they possessed. They familiarly accosted, or imperiously commanded, the lions or serpents of the desert; infused vegetation into a sapless trunk; suspended iron on the surface of the water; <b>passed the Nile on the back of a crocodile, and refreshed themselves in a fiery furnace</b>. These extravagant tales, which display the fiction, without the genius, of poetry, have seriously affected the reason and the morals of the Christians. <b>Their credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of the mind: they corrupted the evidence of history; and superstition gradually extinguished the hostile light of philosophy and science</b>.”<br /><br />He tells the story of <b>a Benedictine abbot who confessed: “‘My vow of poverty has given me an hundred thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince.’—I forget the consequences of his vow of chastity.” </b>He recounts how the practices of penance and the renunciation of the world produced one sect of Anchoret monks who “derived their name from their humble practice of grazing in the fields of Mesopotamia with the common herd.” <br /><br />More grimly, he reports the murderous zeal with which Christians pursued those of the faith defined as heretics. He produces a document from an inquisition into the heresy of Eutyches in 448 A.D.: “‘May those who divide Christ be divided with the sword, may they be hewn in pieces, may they be burnt alive!’ were the charitable wishes of a Christian synod.”<br /><br />In contrast to such passion, <b>Gibbon prefers the philosophical temperament of ancient Athens</b>, and<b> he reserves his severest rebukes for two of the men who broke “the golden chain of Platonic succession.” The Archbishop of Alexandria, Theophilus, “a bold, bad man, whose hands were alternately polluted with gold, and with blood,” in 389 A.D. sacked the edifices of the old Roman pagan religion, destroying the library of Alexandria and the two hundred thousand volumes of Greek and Roman literature deposited there by Marc Antony</b>. “The compositions of ancient genius, so many of which have irretrievably perished, might surely have been excepted from the wreck of idolatry, for the amusement and instruction of succeeding ages; and either the zeal or the avarice of the archbishop might have been satiated with the rich spoils, which were the reward of his victory.” <br /><br /><b>The Emperor Justinian in 529 A.D. suppressed the remaining Greek schools of philosophy in the name of Christ.</b> “The Gothic arms were less fatal to the schools of Athens than the establishment of a new religion, whose ministers superseded the exercise of reason, resolved every question by an article of faith, and condemned the infidel or skeptic to eternal flames.” In the summary of the fall of Rome that he gives midway through his opus, Gibbon includes “the abuse of Christianity” as one of the causes.<br /><br />“The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity [timidity]; the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion; and the soldiers' pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes, who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity… . the church, and even the state, were distracted by religious factions, whose conflicts were sometimes bloody, and always implacable; the attention of the emperors was diverted from the camps to the synods; <b>the Roman world was oppressed by a new species of tyranny; and the persecuted sects became the secret enemies of their country.</b>”<br /><br /><b>Gibbon’s modern reputation, accordingly, is largely that of an English Voltaire or Montesquieu, a man warning his country, at a time of its own rising imperial fortunes, of the need to throw off the shackles of superstition and the institutions that produced it.</b> There are aspects of Gibbon’s own career that support this impression. After he left Oxford, his real education took place at Lausanne in French Switzerland, and his first attempts at literary essays were written in French. His own great work, though inspired by his celebrated vision of barefoot monks chanting vespers in the Temple of Jupiter in the Capitol, actually began as an English attempt to better Montesquieu’s earlier history of Rome, Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur of Rome and its Decline.<br /><br />Certainly, it was as an Enlightenment radical that Gibbon appeared to my generation who, as undergraduates in the 1960s, read him in the only version of his work then readily and cheaply available, the nine hundred page abridged edition published by Penguin under its old Pelican label. But now, reading the whole thing in this new Penguin Classics edition, a very different Gibbon emerges, one that suggests an alternative view of the Enlightenment in England as well.<br /><br />Apart from publishing the full text, the major difference between the Penguin Classics and the old Pelican edition is that the former contains all <b>Gibbon’s footnotes, which are so extensive they consume roughly 20 percent of the total printed space.</b> <b>In a few places, they take up no less than three-quarters of the whole page</b>. Gibbon uses his footnotes not only to source his references but also to make lengthy, sometimes acrimonious, sometimes witty, commentaries on the veracity of both his primary and secondary sources. (A sample: “The Dissertation of M. Biet seems to have been justly preferred to the discourse of his more celebrated competitor, <b>the Abbé le Boeuf, an antiquarian, whose name was happily expressive of his talents.</b>”)<br /><br />Those with the fortitude to read them will find that a considerable number of <b>Gibbon’s notes are devoted to disputing the French version of events, especially those of Baron Montesquieu and several other Enlightenment <i>philosophes</i>.</b> Gibbon corrects Montesquieu in both his detail and his theory of history. He points out that Montesquieu is ignorant of the extent of the penetration Gothic barbarians had made of both Rome’s territory and its mercenary forces—“the principal and immediate cause of the fall of the Western Empire.” And as the Introduction by Penguin’s editor, David Womersley, argues, and the text itself confirms in many places, Gibbon has a completely different interpretation of the nature of history. <br /><br /><i><b>Montesquieu was committed to establishing that the surface milieu of history bore an underlying rationale and that there were general causes for the rise and fall of civilizations that transcended the influence of individuals. The Decline and Fall, however, is a demonstration that history is often driven by politics and sometimes by chance and that human passion usually presides over human reason. In their interpretations of the course of empire, the English and French Enlightenments are worlds apart.</b></i><br /><br /><b>Gibbon is well known for the aphorism that “history is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind,</b>” but this expression is rarely taken seriously because his own work appears to contradict it. The Decline and Fall contains some of the earliest versions of what later became the specializations of social history (in his analysis of the character of the barbarians of Germany and Siberia), economic history (the trade between Rome and China), and religious history (the sociology of paganism and Christianity; the institutional and theological development of the church). However, in the realm of Gibbon’s political history, <b>it remains true that “crimes, follies and misfortunes” dominate the scene for long periods of time.</b><br /><br />One of the reasons that Gibbon remains such a good read today is the pace of his story as he narrates the careers of those who ascended to the emperor’s purple robe from what were sometimes very humble origins as common soldiers, peasants, and slaves, or even, as in the case of Justinian’s wife, the Empress Theodora, from the nude cabaret and brothels of Constantinople. <br /><br />But equality of opportunity was matched by equality of outcome. <b>Rome was plagued for most of its existence by the problem of succession, which was normally accomplished by a civil or military rebellion combined with the assassination of the incumbent. </b>“Such was the unhappy condition of the Roman emperors, that whatever might be their conduct, their fate was commonly the same. A life of pleasure or virtue, of severity or mildness, of indolence or glory, alike led to an untimely grave; and almost every reign is closed by the same disgusting repetition of treason and murder.”<br /><br />The subjects of these princes sometimes remained immune to the violence of succession but at other times were bound up with it. <b>In just three battles in the civil war of 323 A.D. between Constantine and Licinius, sixty thousand Romans were left dead in the field. </b>When emperors fell, Gibbon notes, they could take whole provinces with them. After the failed revolt in about 265 A.D. of Ingenuus, whose troops in the province of Illyricum [modern Albania and Montenegro] had elevated him to usurp the purple, his rival Gallienus sent a message to one of his ministers. <br /><br />“It is not enough,” says that soft but inhuman prince, "that you exterminate such as have appeared in arms: the chance of battle might have served me as effectually. The male sex of every age must be extirpated; provided that, in the execution of the children and the old men, you can contrive means to save our reputation. Let every one die who has dropt an expression, who has entertained a thought against me, against me, the son of Valerian, the father and brother of so many princes. Remember that Ingenuus was made emperor: tear, kill, hew in pieces. I write to you with my own hand, and would inspire you with my own feelings."<br /><br />Gibbon’s analysis is sophisticated enough to recognize that <b>a large-scale political system such as the Roman Empire can itself display relative stability while at the same time suffering continuous turbulence at the level of the palace.</b> In the history of great monarchies, he says, the attention of both the writer and reader of history is naturally drawn to the court, the capital, and the army, while the millions of obedient subjects pursue their lives in obscurity. <b>In less established systems, such as the early republics of Athens or Sparta, the impact of ordinary individuals is much greater and thus attracts more historical attention, even when this is sometimes unwarranted.</b><br /><br />In other words, i<i><b>n opposition to the French search for general laws of historical causation, Gibbon argues that explanations need to be appropriate to their subject. In some historical circumstances, such as newly formed or emerging polities, the role of individuals such as founding fathers may be profound; in other circumstances, a system may be so well entrenched that it might survive the worst kind of abuse from apparently powerful political figures. </b></i><br /><br />Similarly, once major internal systemic problems have emerged, neither the fortunes nor adversities of politics may be able to stem the tide. Under Justinian, the general Belisarius recaptured Italy from the Goths and Africa from the Vandals. But <b>the economic decline of Rome, coupled with high taxes and the complete loss of martial spirit among the citizens, meant that new armies could not be raised and so the territorial gains could not be held. </b> </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Gibbon deploys a counterfactual (a device that some recent authors imagine has only just been invented) to argue that, <b>under the reign of Justinian’s Byzantine court, Rome had reached the state of economic and political weakness where, even if “all the Barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West.”<br /></b><br />Gibbon also argues for the impact upon history of the role of chance, of the perfidy of distant decisions, and of <b>the influence of unintended consequences. The outcomes of the wars between the various German tribes who contested the territories on the periphery of the empire, Gibbon demonstrates, depended as much on luck and ignorance of the enemy’s position as it did on strength of arms and valor.</b> The eventual survival of the Franks in Gaul was due to such accidents and fortune, while the complete extermination of the Gepidae nation was the result of an alliance formed between the Lombard and the Avar kings that was directed more at Rome than at the hapless victim.<br /><br />Volume Three of the Penguin edition traces the empire from 640 to 1500 when its history is dominated by the emergence of Islam, first by the Arab conquest of the Middle East and Africa, second by the Crusades which were organized in response, and third by <b>the final capture of Constantinople by the Ottomans. The growth of Islam, Gibbon contends, was a matter of chance. </b><br /><br />Deploying another counterfactual, he argues that </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>had Justinian’s Abyssinian allies not lost an obscure military conflict in Yemen in the sixth century, Arabia would have been preserved for Christianity and the Islamic uprising that began in Mecca would never have happened. </b></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“Mahomet must have been crushed in his cradle, and Abyssinia would have prevented a revolution which has changed the civil and religious state of the world.”<br /><br />*</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>All of Gibbon’s mockery of the miracles claimed for hermit monks, of the celibacy of the clergy, of the worship of images and relics, and of the temporal lust for wealth and power displayed by so many princes of the church, can be explained by his Protestantism. </b>Writing for an English audience, he is making the same kinds of criticism of Roman Catholicism that Protestants had urged since Luther. <br /><br /><b>To a Protestant audience, all his ridicule is directed at safe targets—the indulgence, myths, and deviations of Popery—and </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>does not call into question the basis of the religion itself</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>.</b> At one point, he even comments that an epistle he cites will be “painful to the Catholic divines; while it is dear and familiar to our Protestant polemics.” <br /><br />Moreover, <b>his identification of Christianity as one of the causes of the fall of Rome is far from unequivocal. He certainly ascribes some responsibility to the otherworldliness adopted by “the useless multitudes of both sexes” who locked themselves away from society</b>, but in the same passage he goes on to record how Christianity was a “principle of union as well as of dissension” and that the sermons from the pulpits of the empire “inculcated the duty of passive obedience to a lawful and orthodox sovereign.”</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij8IrKdUnAxSNEYhfoi9HRnHFVDRK27txB-RE9OBoBgfAi3wKN4UT70iC8jFakDoZD6apQc3bxFx30vzaflj1BzpyT2oP9I-8-l2oqclXgzyL2ws6Izep65uEWRljP-RZ-sIBRC4yP4j_0pGd9AqgbOK2-N9RYf9l-FiqM2Yol9pqW0Kj-xTWvXTAbVlHy/s1200/caligula%20horse%20turner%20painting.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="690" data-original-width="1200" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij8IrKdUnAxSNEYhfoi9HRnHFVDRK27txB-RE9OBoBgfAi3wKN4UT70iC8jFakDoZD6apQc3bxFx30vzaflj1BzpyT2oP9I-8-l2oqclXgzyL2ws6Izep65uEWRljP-RZ-sIBRC4yP4j_0pGd9AqgbOK2-N9RYf9l-FiqM2Yol9pqW0Kj-xTWvXTAbVlHy/w400-h230/caligula%20horse%20turner%20painting.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Caligula</i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Gibbon’s own justification for recording so many of the flaws of the faith is that he is not writing theology, which is “the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity,” but <b>history, which discovers “the inevitable mixture of error and corruption</b>, which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.” <i><b></b></i></span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>The Christianity for which he acknowledges most sympathy is the simple faith of the gospels, the creed that prevailed before theologians and bishops emerged to generate heresies, inquisitions, schisms, and innumerable sentences of death over fine lines of doctrine which few of the priesthood, let alone their parishioners, fully understood. </b></i><br /><br />He quotes with approval the sentiments of Procopius, the chronicler of the political, military, and religious accomplishments of the age of Justinian: that <b>religious controversy is the offspring of arrogance and folly</b>; that true piety is most laudably expressed by silence and submission; that man, ignorant of his own nature, should not presume to scrutinize the nature of God; and that it is sufficient for us to know, that power and benevolence are the perfect attributes of the Deity.<br /><br />Though it initially attracted some critics, <b>Gibbon’s work was generally highly praised when it was published. It turned him into a London literary celebrity, and he was one of the most popular authors of his day. </b>In 1776, he said his first volume was “on every table and on almost every toilet.” This means his writing was both an expression and a reflection of enlightened opinion in late eighteenth-century England. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">If this is so, then this opinion cannot be equated with that of France at the same time. Besides those already discussed, there are other areas in The Decline and Fall that, if examined in detail, could make the same point. For instance, <b>while the <i>philosophes</i> saw their king as the barrier to freedom, Gibbon argued that a hereditary monarchy was a precondition for a civilized political system since it solved the problem of arbitrary succession that had caused so much and such predictable bloodshed in Rome.</b><br /><br />His attitude to the savages and barbarians of Siberia and Africa was also the opposite of his French contemporaries’. In a long passage, he dissects and <b>demolishes Montesquieu’s concept of the “noble savage,” the idea that the natural man is virtuous and that it is civilization that makes him corrupt. For Gibbon, this Romantic idea is the opposite of the truth, as he demonstrates through several extensive examinations of the bleak and lawless pastoral societies of the Goths, Vandals, Huns, Tartars, Mongols, and other nomads</b> of the plains of Siberia and Ukraine who periodically fought their way across the Danube to wreak havoc on the cultivated lands of the Mediterranean.<br /><br />In short, the intellectual product and legacy of the English Enlightenment is quite different from that of the French. <b>In Gibbon, the spirit of inquiry and the fruits of research confirm the value of the existing institutions of English society, including its religion. In France, these tools were deployed in opposition to the same institutions. </b>In England, Gibbon emphasized the responsibility of individuals and celebrated the virtue and courage of statesmen and churchmen, where they existed, even though he recorded that the natural passions of humanity were likely to leave such qualities in short supply. <br /><br /><b>In France, the <i>philosophes</i> sought to find general laws of society that would render the actions of individuals irrelevant. </b>The intellectual heritage of the English Enlightenment, as exemplified in Gibbon, clearly goes some of the way to explaining the different political histories of the two countries in the ensuing two centuries. England has enjoyed a stable and peaceful national history marked by a gradual extension of its democracy; France has been periodically racked by revolution, internal collapse, and foreign invasion.<br /><br />Toward the end of his Introduction, David Womersley advises: “You are on the threshold of one of the greatest narratives of European literature.” Who could disagree? <b>In its own way, The Decline and Fall is as powerful a work of art as King Lear, Hamlet, or Handel’s Messiah</b>. Unlike these three, unfortunately, you cannot pop out one evening to the theater to take it in. It needs a whole summer holiday or a long winter by the fire, a time scale few of us today are likely to commit more than once or twice in a lifetime. Still, like any great work of art, once you have experienced it, you wonder how you could have lived without it. ~<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0a79qqh4jkyw3Lw0lX8xEUfnpXqOJBkv8BqUliImIlbziBEWdsXQqc3P96W3T8WpinSXs1pGFf5uN0vaxBHswv32PIHiyq3wHVq3VQuPOraNRcV6USfGi1Y0Phk13okvsE24ptr6YYHrD1CLtjuBbXiR5LCz85uR8EbOPSSZQ1ITxi4c9Qu9OboyWC_Bw/s342/edward%20gibbon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="342" data-original-width="309" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0a79qqh4jkyw3Lw0lX8xEUfnpXqOJBkv8BqUliImIlbziBEWdsXQqc3P96W3T8WpinSXs1pGFf5uN0vaxBHswv32PIHiyq3wHVq3VQuPOraNRcV6USfGi1Y0Phk13okvsE24ptr6YYHrD1CLtjuBbXiR5LCz85uR8EbOPSSZQ1ITxi4c9Qu9OboyWC_Bw/w361-h400/edward%20gibbon.jpg" width="361" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://newcriterion.com/issues/1997/6/edward-gibbon-the-enlightenment">https://newcriterion.com/issues/1997/6/edward-gibbon-the-enlightenment<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>IS A WORLD WITHOUT WORK DESIRABLE?<br /></b><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Oscar Wilde thought hard work “the refuge” of those with nothing better to do while he envisaged a society of “cultivated leisure” as machines performed the necessary and unpleasant tasks.</b></i></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /><b>Karl Marx’s dream was of state-regulated general production that allowed liberated workers to “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner” without the drudgery of being tied to one job.<br /></b><br />The 19th-century socialist activist </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>William Morris advocated for more pleasurable work, believing that once the profit motive of the factory had been abolished, less necessary labor would lead to a four-hour day.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />So Elon Musk’s suggestion to Rishi Sunak that society could reach a point where “no job is needed” and “you can do a job if you want a job … but the AI will do everything” revives a debate on the issue of how we work that has long been discussed.<br /><br />Yet <b>a world without work, experts question, may be more dystopian than utopian.</b></span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“This is an old, old story that never actually happens,” said Tom Hodgkinson, co-founder of the Idler magazine, which for three decades has been a platform to examine issues surrounding work and leisure.<br /><br /><b>“There was a poem in ancient Greece saying, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that we have invented the watermill so that we no longer have to grind our corn? The women can sit around doing nothing all day from now on.’ It’s that kind of recurrent idea.<br /></b><br />“People like Bertrand Russell were talking about this in the 30s. What would we do without work? One view is people wouldn’t know what to do because people are more or less slavish. That they would just sit around watching daytime TV or porn all day.”<br /><br />In fact, <b>given more free time, such as on furlough during Covid, “they start living better”</b>, Hodgkinson said. “They are starting neighborhood groups, doing more gardening, doing up the house, spending more time with family, doing creative things, playing music, writing poetry, all the things that are part of what I would call a good life.”<br /><br /><b>Despite that, he said, studies had shown that paid work was beneficial for mental health, for status and identity.<br /></b><br />“I think we need to do some sort of work. We should be moving towards a shorter working week, and more leisure-filled society,” Hodgkinson said, adding that a radical overhaul of our economic and education models would be needed to eliminate work on the scale that Musk predicted.<br /><br />One significant body of research in 2019, led by Brendan Burchell, professor in social sciences and a former president of Magdalene College, Cambridge, established that <b>eight hours of paid employment a week was optimal in terms of benefit in mental health, and that no extra benefit was subsequently accrued.</b><br /><br />Setting aside the “awful jobs that really screw you up”, Burchell said, <b>“your average job is good for you” in terms of social interaction, working collectively, giving structure and sense of identity.</b><br /><br />A world without work “is a terrible idea of what society would look like for all sorts of reasons, as well as people’s mental health,” he said.<br /><br /><b>The labor market, as a way of distributing money around the economy, would have to be transformed, as would the education system, “to teach people how to fill their days, by writing poetry or going fishing or whatever, instead of going to the factory or the office</b>”, Burchell continued.<br /><br /><i><b>Shifting to shorter working hours was shown to have “massive benefits for people”, said Burchell, but he added: “If we move to a society where lots of people are completely excluded from the labor market, then I get very worried that’s going to be a very dystopian future.”</b><br /></i><br />In his book Making Light Work: An End to Toil in the 21st Century,<b> David Spencer, professor of economics at the University of Leeds, also makes the case for less work, but not its elimination. “It would leave us bereft potentially of things that we value in work,” he said, citing communal enterprise, personal relationships and the development of skillsets.<br /></b><br />So in essence, <b>we would be a poorer, sadder, less skilled society.</b> “Yes, there will be some loss through loss of work,” Spencer said. “I realize not all work is good. So we ought to automate drudgery, seek to use AI to reduce the pain of work, and therefore leave work which is good.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">He draws from Morris, who talked about bringing joy to work. “Skillful work is good work and it has a role in the creation of a better society,” said Spencer. “<b>We ought to use technology to create less and better work</b>. In that sense, the future can be really positive.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4atPxaj8f6YcrmzGSduPLXCGIQCM6EXBgeG1-j9xcCTq6dl2shdliV3Q6UyOe6PqYFksE7PcarcG2mup_PiN3ICsnlyIBa2RB6mkwExrPTdOyafcF9DtMtfW7ZO_0S4y2EBBskz98ZhPryzZaDuFqcpGCbJZotusHFlRSkpaOSXHYgtjyALWx0L53_Ilf/s1610/Oscar%20Wilde%20sofa.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="988" data-original-width="1610" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4atPxaj8f6YcrmzGSduPLXCGIQCM6EXBgeG1-j9xcCTq6dl2shdliV3Q6UyOe6PqYFksE7PcarcG2mup_PiN3ICsnlyIBa2RB6mkwExrPTdOyafcF9DtMtfW7ZO_0S4y2EBBskz98ZhPryzZaDuFqcpGCbJZotusHFlRSkpaOSXHYgtjyALWx0L53_Ilf/w400-h245/Oscar%20Wilde%20sofa.png" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This was, he added, the future imagined by “Oscar Wilde, William Morris, and a lot of utopian positive thinking, where technology makes work lighter. It’s not eliminating work – it’s bringing light to work.” ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/03/experts-question-elon-musk-vision-of-ai-world-without-work">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/03/experts-question-elon-musk-vision-of-ai-world-without-work<br /></a></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;">Mary:<br /><br />A work- free world would be missing too much to be truly satisfying. I know when I was suddenly jobless there was a period of adjustment where I had to figure out what to do with my time, how to fill the days in ways that were interesting, challenging, and productive. Luckily I had many interests and "hobbies," that I now had real time to pursue. <br /><br />For some, especially those who dedicated almost all their time and energies to their work, retirement can arrive and stir a real sense of panic — a kind of restless emptiness, filled with boredom and a growing unhappiness. People solve this in different ways...some find some sort of work, maybe part time, doing something they enjoy or feel passionate about. Some take up new interests, become artists in one way or another, finding new joy in creating. Some pursue their passions, ones they didn't have time for while working. <br /><br />For those who don't find solutions in these ways there can be a long decline into passivity and boredom, which I am convinced, makes them more vulnerable to the illnesses and catastrophes of age, more likely to die sooner than those more active and engaged in the world.</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />Oriana:<br /><br />I’ve witnessed it myself: when a man’s life is dedicated to his job [usually it’s a man who’s so job-centered], retirement can be a catastrophe. Work provides not only income, but also a purpose in life and social ties at the office. The reaction to the loss of a job through retirement can indeed lead to deep grief, with predictable negative impact on health. <br /><br />The spouse. used to having the house all to herself during the day, may also be bothered by the husband unwanted presence during what used to be his “working hours.” It’s a huge disruption of the previous routine for both of them. While much is said about “retirement savings,” it seems that finding either volunteer work and/or special hobbies is much more essential. <br /><br />Some college professors continue to teach part-time until their early eighties. This may seem like a great solution, but it deprives younger faculty of classes they are eager to teach. The same goes for editors and others in senior positions, the long-term alpha males who view retirement with dread. “Retirement? don’t ever mention that word to me!” I remember one grandfatherly editor exclaiming — exploding almost.<br /><br />Some men take to obsessive fence painting and grass mowing, so that bare ground shows through — yes, I’ve witnessed that too. Others constantly go on cruises or join senior travel groups to places like Las Vegas or Disney World. The despair on the faces of some of these travelers is frightening. <br /><br />One of the privileges of being self-employed is that you can carry on as long as health allows. If you are truly engaged and connected, you’ll also be healthier and live longer.<br /><br />On the other hand, people who successfully transition to retirement may find that these are the happiest years of their lives. <br /><br />Obviously, whether retirement is a virtual death sentence or the happiest period of one’s life depends on the individual — on the richness of life he’s managed to build up. <br /><br />*<br /><b>THE RISE IN LATER-YEARS DIVORCE<br /></b><br /><i>~ The instance of mature couples divorcing is on the rise. Are over 50s less inclined to stay together than their parents, and what makes a ‘good uncoupling’? ~</i><br /><br />“I went through this process of feeling like my future had been stolen from me,” says 53-year-old Kate Christie about the end of her 22-year marriage. “He said to me, ‘I don’t love you any more. I want to leave our marriage. I want the chance to meet and fall in love with someone else while I’m still young.’ And that was that.”<br /><br />“I felt really blindsided. I was angry, upset and resentful.”<br /><br />Christie is one of a growing number of over 50s navigating life after separation and divorce.<br />“[There’s] definitely <b>an uptick in mature age divorces compared to even 10 years ago</b>,” says clinical psychologist, Dr Rashika Gomez. It’s an observation supported by the most recent research from the Australian Institute of Family Studies, which shows that the proportion of divorces among couples married for 20 years and longer has increased from about 20% in the 1980s and 1990s, to over 25% in 2021.<br /><br />Dr Gomez has also noticed an increase in the number of those in mature marriages seeking relationship advice. “They’re seeking that outside opinion on [whether] something is wrong, because you can’t see it when you’re in it.”<br /><br />It was a counselor that helped Brodie see her roller-coaster marriage for what it was – emotional abuse. “She was my savior,” says the 63-year-old of her counselor. But <b>family and friends were shocked Brodie was calling it quits after 32 years. </b>“We were known as the golden couple.” She shakes her head. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”<br /><br />Brodie says life on the other side has never been better. “Bloody amazing. I can feel the sunshine. I can hear the birds. I’ve rediscovered myself.” And <b>despite her experience, she is not anti-relationships or anti-marriage. “But I can assure you I will never have anyone live with me again.</b><br /><br />“I’d rather be on my own than unhappy,” she insists. “I’ve got my friends. I’ve got my sons.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br />Recently divorced, Raymond is grateful he has the support of a boatload of good friends, but the 71-year-old longs for that special someone. “A lot of people think friends are enough. But I don’t think they are. You’ve got to have someone special that turns into a partner.” <br /><br />And after 24 years of marriage, he thought he had that person, but the fear and uncertainty circulating during the pandemic tipped the relationship upside down. The final straw came after restrictions eased. His ex-wife was averse to him returning to the job he’s loved for over 43 years. “If you go, don’t come home.” So, ultimately, he moved out.<br /><br />REACHING THE THRESHOLD<br /><br /><b>Dr Gomez describes the point Raymond reached as a “threshold,” a common reason those in mature marriages suddenly go “I can’t do this any more”.<br /></b><br />Relationship therapist Clinton Power agrees reaching a threshold is when couples may see separation and divorce as inevitable. “Sometimes if there’s been a lot of hurt or betrayal or there’s an enormous distance from growing apart, the idea of working on the relationship feels more overwhelming than separating and starting anew.”<br /><br />In his experience, <b>the lack of a shared focus or a realization that the couple has fewer common interests are key contributors to mature age separation. It often occurs at the time the couple’s children reach early adulthood or leave home.</b><br /><br />Another is midlife, when individuals in a relationship may undergo significant personal change or question the direction of their lives. “So that’s when I see some individuals in a relationship start to think, ‘hang on, I’m not completely happy here, this relationship is not fulfilling my needs’,” says Power.<br /><br />“<b>If you just look at life expectancy, for example, in the past, people didn’t live as long as we’re living now</b>. Now we’re hitting 90, 100, with relatively fewer issues. So when you’re hitting your 50s, you’re no longer looking at 15 years more with someone you might find annoying, or you don’t get along with, you’re now looking at another 50 years with someone like that,” says Dr Gomez. “And that can feel really confronting, and overwhelming, and you just might not want to do that any more.”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Lawyer Brad Saunders, who has specialized in family law for 25 years, says <b>the over 50s are less inclined to stay together and ‘grin and bear it’ than their parents</b>. “More choose to separate and it is more acceptable to separate,” he says.<br /><br />But he sees one major difference in the way older couples, in general, approach separation compared to younger couples. “<b>Older couples are better at planning their separation more amicably</b>.”<br /><br />Power says he’s found many mature aged couples aim for a “good uncoupling” so that they can maintain a healthy relationship. “So maybe ‘we can be in each other’s lives and have a healthy relationship’, whereas sometimes <b>that slash and burn approach happens in the younger couples.</b>”</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">With his divorce finalized earlier this year, Raymond and his ex are rebuilding their friendship. “I can’t see the point in being filthy angry with anybody. All it does is eat you away as well.” But he’s adamant they’ll never get back together again. “Life’s too short, anyway.”<br /><br />Christie agrees: “<b>Life is too short to be angry, or sad, or lonely, or resentful, or unfulfilled</b>.” By March 2020, Christie and Dan had found a new way of being. “We were starting to form the basis of our new friendship,” she says. And “we were co-parenting really well”. One month later, Dan was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, then 11 months later, he passed away. “It was so brutally fast,” recalls Christie. He was 54.<br /><br />Alongside the grief, Dan’s passing ignited in Christie a desire to live life differently. “I had this really clear resolution, which I honestly feel was a gift from him, that I wanted to live very differently from that point on.” She wrote a list of things she wanted to do, experience or change. Today, Kate’s list is a structured set of goals and plans to achieve them. Earlier this year, she published a book on her new approach, called The Life List.<br /><br />She found the act of writing cathartic. “Phenomenally healing.” It’s helped her order her thoughts into words and to reflect on her separation. She can now admit that she didn’t fight to save her marriage. “I didn’t once say to him, ‘Well, fall back in love with me honey, let’s work on this.’ <b>I didn’t suggest counseling. I didn’t try and talk him out of it. I think I was relieved … I could get on with my own life</b>.” She’s proud she found the courage to show her vulnerability. “We all have a backstory and I’m proud of myself for letting people in.”<br /><br />Learning to let her guard down is something that 50-year-old Anne McCrea is struggling with after an irreparable breakdown of trust in her marriage. She and her husband had been married for 18 years. All in one moment, things fell apart. “I kind of just, you know, froze. I was at the beach with the kids and the dog and kind of just sat quietly crying to myself for a little while.”</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmiZ5EY9h7SyKoyU-C1U3Co4_LKfhaaza3w2X-QLkPgcXRQqP9Sju06ZO5ulYoFzxgLayquWafuFlJo_p5mrN0p_eV_mdTZRiB450LP3lBd5U72V1tgXntpA3xhhUsWQtzlzE1yrhSYQzMmkT63ETbdsCQZp1u0MOZ3hcO0vyblQInWJ7eMR53wbkcgbPH/s1620/woman%20alone%20beach.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1076" data-original-width="1620" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmiZ5EY9h7SyKoyU-C1U3Co4_LKfhaaza3w2X-QLkPgcXRQqP9Sju06ZO5ulYoFzxgLayquWafuFlJo_p5mrN0p_eV_mdTZRiB450LP3lBd5U72V1tgXntpA3xhhUsWQtzlzE1yrhSYQzMmkT63ETbdsCQZp1u0MOZ3hcO0vyblQInWJ7eMR53wbkcgbPH/w400-h266/woman%20alone%20beach.png" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Separating at this life stage can rarely be a clean or complete break. “We had to talk to each other, we had no choice. I couldn’t just ignore him; we had three children [aged 10, 15 and 18] that we needed to manage day to day.” McCrea adds, “so we kind of got functioning and working very quickly.” <br /><br />Functioning included traveling with her ex-husband on a planned European family holiday shortly after her grandmother’s funeral. It would only be on their return that they would confirm what McCrea admits the kids already knew, that they were separating. But she insists, “<b>it was good for them to see that we could travel together</b>”. From day one, McCrea’s priority has been her children’s well-being and maintaining their bond with their father. “[Maybe] it’s not worth saving the relationship, but it’s worth saving the future for the kids, you know, so they don’t have to have those uncomfortable Christmases.”<br /><br />After returning from Europe, McCrea was diagnosed with cancer. Treatment would delay her sharing the news of her separation with her parents. “It was at least another year before I actually told my mother and father.”<br /><br /><b>Dating and divorce parties<br /></b><br />McCrea says her trust in people has diminished and she’s developed a “bullshit radar”. She’s kept some friends, made new ones and said goodbye to others she’d shared with her ex-husband for more than 25 years. Does she want to get married again? “Who knows?” She’s dating again but admits it’s hard. She’s pickier now. “Dating in your 50s is brutal.”<br /><br />Raymond is also dating again. He’s listed on a couple of online dating sites and is hoping to find that someone special to travel and enjoy life with. But he’s found mature aged dating challenging. “<b>There are a ton of nice ladies out there, but once bitten, twice shy</b>.” Raymond sighs: “I’ll just plod along. I think she’ll have to trip over me.”<br /><br />Christie’s updated goals include finding a new love. <b>She’s proud she hasn’t rushed into anything.</b> “I wanted a period of time to understand me and what makes me tick as a person on my own.” What she found was a woman who is confident, tenacious, resilient and happy. “We’ve had some really hard years, but I think that the sadness and loss has made me the strongest that I am. I feel great.”<br /><br />McCrea is rebuilding her confidence. “It’s taken a bit of a beating.” In anticipation of receiving her divorce papers,<b> she’s planning a party – a divorce party</b>. “A celebration of the next phase and next chapter.” She’s looking forward to drawing a line under the last six years of separation. “I can’t change anything in the past. I can only change what I can for the future.” ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/nov/04/i-think-i-was-relieved-life-on-the-other-side-of-mature-age-divorce">https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/nov/04/i-think-i-was-relieved-life-on-the-other-side-of-mature-age-divorce<br /></a><br />*<br /><i><b>In breaking marriage you break more than your own personal narrative. You break a whole form of life that is profound and extensive in its genesis; you break the interface between self and society, self and history, self and fate as determined by these larger forces. ~ Rachel Cusk</b><br /></i><br />*<br /><b>IN CASE YOU DIDN’T KNOW, HAMAS MAKES IT CLEAR<br /></b><br />~ In an interview, Ghazi Hamad of the Hamas political bureau expressed the organization’s readiness to repeat the October 7 “Al-Aqsa Flood” Operation as many times as necessary, with <b>the ultimate goal of Israel’s annihilation</b>. Hamad emphasized that Palestinians are prepared to bear the costs and proudly sacrifice martyrs for their cause, […], stating that they view everything they do as justified.<br /><br />(From United with Israel, Nov 1, 2023)<br /><br />And here is that XXI-century idealist:<br /></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaKsarC7Eq-UtBTrNKfrUeifTBaVxJ_qbQCFOCCjBdf9bz2ZoR1o-jX9TaUTeEnMG0E3MNCEX16ZAJOxNBiLUDi-86s9ZuQXyhV9HDWwUpavtr9itgwwCmjmZJp6XZQJG8gOERqHrlrjNAIunS1IAxFG74fPuCSU9cJ43nSukV-yxZwZn1L1tNcaf2LSa6/s807/GHAZI%20HAMAD%20denies%20Israel's%20right%20to%20exist.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="575" data-original-width="807" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaKsarC7Eq-UtBTrNKfrUeifTBaVxJ_qbQCFOCCjBdf9bz2ZoR1o-jX9TaUTeEnMG0E3MNCEX16ZAJOxNBiLUDi-86s9ZuQXyhV9HDWwUpavtr9itgwwCmjmZJp6XZQJG8gOERqHrlrjNAIunS1IAxFG74fPuCSU9cJ43nSukV-yxZwZn1L1tNcaf2LSa6/w400-h285/GHAZI%20HAMAD%20denies%20Israel's%20right%20to%20exist.jpg" width="400" /></a></i></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">~ Henryk Grynberg, Facebook <br /><br />*<br /><b>A BETTER WAY TO ELIMINATE HAMAS (CNN opinion)<br /></b></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBXehVj49ywWcvHSNdMrjtlakPCtiCdvbSqjUZsfouvbdAuSXN8ySRC19HZim1Nnox3EXFdbjwjJr2lgr1vXX1B_HsytqCrlTsxEL7Gmh62QVGeIN30NumLDExbeF1w_mNaK3OqdQrDk2z1ZoI8kUFkoSKeZmHFAQpReanEIuZlJrZer7k_yFgLjeee4ze/s976/gaza%20Jabalia%20refugee%20camp.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="976" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBXehVj49ywWcvHSNdMrjtlakPCtiCdvbSqjUZsfouvbdAuSXN8ySRC19HZim1Nnox3EXFdbjwjJr2lgr1vXX1B_HsytqCrlTsxEL7Gmh62QVGeIN30NumLDExbeF1w_mNaK3OqdQrDk2z1ZoI8kUFkoSKeZmHFAQpReanEIuZlJrZer7k_yFgLjeee4ze/w400-h225/gaza%20Jabalia%20refugee%20camp.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">~ Israel’s strategy for defeating Hamas — destroying its military and political capabilities to the point where the terrorist group can never again launch major attacks against Israeli civilians — is unlikely to work.<br /><br />Indeed, Israel is likely already producing more terrorists than it’s killing.<br /><br />To defeat terrorist groups like Hamas, it is important to separate the terrorists from the local population from which they emerge. Otherwise, <b>the current generation of terrorists can be killed, only to be replaced by a new, larger generation of terrorists in the future. (This is described by experts as “counterinsurgency mathematics.” )<br /></b><br /><i><b>Although the principle — of separating the terror group from the broader population — is simple, it is incredibly difficult to achieve in practice.</b></i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">This is why Israel and the United States have waged major military operations that killed large numbers of existing terrorists in the near term — but ultimately led to the rise of many more terrorists, often in a matter of months.<br /><br />Exactly this pattern happened in the past when:<br /><br />1.) Israel invaded Southern Lebanon with some 78,000 combat troops and almost 3,000 tanks and armored vehicles in June 1982.<br /><br />The goal was to smash PLO terrorists, and Israel achieved significant near-term success. However, <b>this military operation caused the creation of Hezbollah in July 1982, led to vast local support for Hezbollah and waves of suicide attacks and ultimately led to the withdrawal of Israel’s army from much of southern Lebanon in 1985 and the growth of Hezbollah ever since.</b><br /><br />2.) Israel maintained a heavy military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank from the early 1990s to 2005.<br /><br />These operations succeeded in killing many terrorists from Hamas and other Palestinian groups, but also triggered vast local support for the terrorist groups and massive campaigns of suicide attacks against Israelis that stopped only when the heavy Israeli military forces left. Far from defeated, Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian elections.<br /><br />3.) Israel launched a ground offensive into Lebanon in July-August 2006.<br /><br />Although the goal was to completely destroy Hezbollah’s leaders and fighters so that it could never again kidnap Israeli soldiers and launch missiles at Israeli cities, the Israeli offensive failed, and Hezbollah is vastly stronger today as a result.<br /><br />4.) The United States invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003 with 150,000 combat troops.<br /><br />American forces completely defeated Saddam Hussein’s army within 6 weeks. However, these heavy military operations led to the largest suicide terrorist campaign in modern times, a major civil war in Iraq and ultimately, the rise of ISIS.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEittoCwlSCkGbSjL0GtcivO8Z1KOlgePPm3QMLKOlRDGCL76-AmXJBz_-PWccCDWHZlPMURL2o4w3bRv463mAHZOG7QcdxKxoKJ_KYBXNrEPqhC3kvklMF4Dz5C8QmK8bYthq8dTPHWOPebSA59KfDWGMCjZg9My64dFheplMpQ5-OXQ6C-7HCzkLtA0MpR/s1015/marine%20taking%20down%20a%20picture%20of%20Saddam.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="662" data-original-width="1015" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEittoCwlSCkGbSjL0GtcivO8Z1KOlgePPm3QMLKOlRDGCL76-AmXJBz_-PWccCDWHZlPMURL2o4w3bRv463mAHZOG7QcdxKxoKJ_KYBXNrEPqhC3kvklMF4Dz5C8QmK8bYthq8dTPHWOPebSA59KfDWGMCjZg9My64dFheplMpQ5-OXQ6C-7HCzkLtA0MpR/w400-h261/marine%20taking%20down%20a%20picture%20of%20Saddam.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>A US Marine pulls down a picture of Saddam Hussein at a school in Al-Kut, Iraq, 2003.<br /> </i><br />*<br /><b>IS HISTORY REPEATING IN GAZA 2023?<br /></b><br />In Gaza, this tragic pattern is probably already happening. Right now, <b>we are witnessing not the separation of Hamas and the local population, but the growing integration of the two, with likely growing recruitment for Hamas.</b><br /><br />The Israeli order for 1.1 million Palestinians — the population of northern Gaza — to move south is not going to create meaningful separation between the terrorists and the population.<br />Many thousands cannot move because they are too young, too old, or too sick or injured and dependent on specialized care and hospitals. Hence, evacuating the entire civilian population of northern Gaza is not possible. <b>Even if the civilian population did move, many Hamas fighters would simply go with them.<br /></b><br />Moreover, Hamas has ordered civilians not to evacuate. Since Hamas and the civilian population remain tightly integrated, it is no surprise that Israeli operations to kill Hamas terrorists has led to the death of over 8,000 civilians, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, citing sources from Hamas-controlled Gaza. <b>Virtually all have family members who are already likely being recruited by Hamas in large numbers</b>.<br /><br />We should expect that Hamas is thus growing stronger, not weaker, with every passing day.<br /><br />So, what does work?<br /><br />To defeat terrorist groups, it is crucial to engage in long campaigns of selective pressure, over years, not simply a month (or two, or three) of heavy ground operations, and <b>to combine military operations with political solutions from early on.</b><br /><br />Indeed, the very effort to finish off the terrorists in just a month or two militarily with little idea of the political outcome — as Israel appears to be doing now — is what ends up producing more terrorists than it kills.<br /><br />The only way to create lasting damage to terrorists is to combine, typically in a long campaign of years, sustained selective attacks against identified terrorists with political operations that drive wedges between the terrorists and the local populations from which they come.<br /><br />Israel is drawing comparisons with the defeat of ISIS, but it is important to remember that Muslim ground forces made an enormous difference by applying military pressure against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, over years, in ways that did not galvanize the local population to replace them, by <b>allowing the local populations to effectively govern the area cleansed of terrorists.<br /></b><br /><b>The campaign that defeated ISIS joined military and political operations together practically from the beginning.<br /></b><br />Going forward, Israel needs a new strategic conception for defeating Hamas. The only viable way to separate Hamas from the local population is politically.<br /><br />Israel’s strategic vision has been to go in heavily militarily first and then figure out the political process later. But this is likely to integrate Hamas and the local population together more and more and to produce more terrorists than it kills.<br /><br />Furthermore, <b>Israel doesn’t appear to have a political plan for the period after eliminating Hamas. Since 2006, Hamas has been the only government in Gaza. Israel claims it does not want to govern Gaza, but Gaza will need to be governed, and Israel has yet to explain what a post-Hamas Gaza will look like.</b><br /><br />What will prevent Hamas 2.0 from filling the power vacuum? Given the absence of serious political alternatives to Hamas, why should Palestinians abandon Hamas?<br /><br />There is an alternative: now, not later, start the political process toward a pathway to a Palestinian state, and create a viable political alternative for Palestinians to Hamas.<br /><br />This could, over time, separate Hamas from the local population more and more, and so lead to significant success. <b>It must be the Palestinians who decide who leads Gaza.<br /></b><br />This new strategic conception is the best way to defeat Hamas, secure Israel’s population and advance America’s interests in the region. ~ Robert A. Pape, a professor of political science and director of the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats. He is the author of several books on air power and terrorism, including “Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War.” </span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/01/opinions/israel-flawed-strategy-defeating-hamas-pape/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/01/opinions/israel-flawed-strategy-defeating-hamas-pape/index.html<br /></a><br />Oriana:<br /><br />For decades, some of the best minds have tried to offer solutions to the conflict — to no avail. Obviously, if the underlying idea of is the total elimination of the state of Israel, which came into being as a safe refuge from genocide, it’s a no-go from the start.</span></p><p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: georgia;">Joe:</span></p><div class="ydp7fb3e868yahoo-style-wrap" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><div data-setdir="false" dir="ltr"><div><div><span style="color: #073763; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I believe war is merely murder sanctified by God and the State, which is why every soldier throughout history has learned the old lie — It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. In basic training, they taught us that it is good to die for God and country, but it is better to kill the enemy than to die. Killing is murder, and having God or state sanction it does not change the immorality of the act. Because soldiers carry out orders to kill, and in war, they see their friends die, they suffer a permanent affliction from it.</span></span></div><div><span style="color: #073763; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #073763; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A WWII veteran, my uncle Bob died at 95. He bore bayonet scars running the length of his thighs. During his last months, he suffered nightmares of hand-to-hand fighting and would wake crying, ‘I did not mean to kill him. I had to.’ Killing is evil, and soldiers return from war with psychological disorders. We call it PTSD — Battle Fatigue — Shell Shock, and this condition destroys the life within the family and themselves. Although this is not always true, when governments declare war, they forget about the well-being of their people, who suffer and die.</span></span></div><div><span style="color: #073763; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #073763; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I care not only because I have friends on the Israeli side and the Palestinian side of this war. They know people who were killed, injured, raped, or brutalized, and how can I choose one side or the other? How am I to feel? I care about the marginalized people of Israel and Palestine. Although one side blames the other for the war, atrocities exist on both sides. I refuse to argue which one has the moral or historical justification to continue to murder people.</span></span></div><div><span style="color: #073763; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #073763; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">According to the Dalai Lama — Martin Luther King — Christ — Rumi — Hikmet — and the great Crow Medicine Man, Chief Yellow Knife, the only cure for state-sanctioned murder is compassion and respect. There are plenty of examples of malicious intent directed at American citizens in the United States. Examples are many: our treatment of Native Americans — African Americans — Mexican Americans — Chinese Americans —Japanese Americans, and the list goes on. Today, the news reports the attacks on our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters. </span></span></div><div><span style="color: #073763; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #073763; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In the United States, every racial and ethnic group has contributed to this country. Our immigrants never renounced their identity or their faith in their cultural traditions while they fought and died for it. Their actions demonstrated their love for their adopted country. I hope we do not become deaf and blind, enclosed in an armor of obstinacy and willful ignorance. I wish that we refuse to slip into antisemitic or anti-Palestinian language as we offer our support to the oppressed citizens of Palestine and Israel.</span></span></div></div></div></div><p><span style="color: #073763;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">You speak for an ideal: that everyone recognize that each ethnic group adds to the richness and flavor. America's greatness derives from its diversity, and no ethnic group should be put down. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Mary:</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Arundhati Roy's words seem particularly relevant now...we certainly are witness to "unspeakable violence" that we must struggle to understand, and "never, never forget." After Hamas horrific attack on October 7 it seems futile and blind to talk of peace. Such evil cannot be tolerated--and I mean Evil..outside all laws of reason, justice and humanity. No one can excuse this under any circumstances. Innocents were violated, tortured and killed, bodies desecrated and brutalized, and all done with relish, with a demonic glee, with satisfaction in their own barbarism. Hamas stated goal, stated and repeated again and again, is the extermination of all jews and the jewish state.<br /><br />Israel must take them at their words, judge them by their acts, and answer as they have done. Terrorists can't be bargained with, trusted, or allowed to flourish and continue in their stated goal of genocide. They have embedded themselves in the population, strategically, so that any action against them involves by necessity harm to the general population, including innocents. Not to act is only to invite them to more barbarism, more horrific evils, committed on their part not with reluctance but with relish.<br /><br />I think the left sympathizers with Palestine are missing the necessities of this situation, the structure of this war. They make a false equivalency between Israel and a colonizer state. Hamas is not waging a revolution but a genocidal reign of terror. It sees advantage in the deaths of civilians — civilians they commanded not to flee, because those deaths are good propaganda to use against Israel. And that propaganda is working, is having an international effect in turning sentiment against Israel...accompanied by a frightening rise in open antisemitism and antisemitic attacks.<br /><br />What is very telling is that bordering Arab nations do not want Palestinian refugees at all — because they are sure to come with embedded Hamas terrorists who have incited violence and conflict when allowed in before. Does the war radicalize, create more terrorists than it eliminates? That’s certainly a possibility. But there is no time and little appetite for a slow, years long campaign to separate the terrorists from the general population. That may be the only real solution, but the exigencies of war are making it less and less likely with every passing day.</span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVLCk0mUfSa-EA4s1SW2uRrs3x2bZnufkJmjuN1VCodH2XBgAc8Tylja8Sh1kdL096JHyf5ExH92e7RkMY3LLyjTow9T4icMX2f3YNp43kvvL3c_zzRfaRJoafivafPvRuEeAH0w4qg8j-b7ErqopW4eba7DMo0eB0xwojWEiCMe2-oaYE3p9ozMuG5hW-/s2198/gaza%20burning.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1210" data-original-width="2198" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVLCk0mUfSa-EA4s1SW2uRrs3x2bZnufkJmjuN1VCodH2XBgAc8Tylja8Sh1kdL096JHyf5ExH92e7RkMY3LLyjTow9T4icMX2f3YNp43kvvL3c_zzRfaRJoafivafPvRuEeAH0w4qg8j-b7ErqopW4eba7DMo0eB0xwojWEiCMe2-oaYE3p9ozMuG5hW-/w400-h220/gaza%20burning.png" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>WHY THE TWO-STATE SOLUTION IS DEAD (Jason Greenblatt)<br /></b><br />I spent nearly three years at the Trump White House attempting to reach a peace deal between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors. But I always understood that among the many reasons it was unachievable then, and unlikely to be for the foreseeable future, was not just the seemingly unbridgeable positions on land, Jerusalem and other well-known obstacles. (Indeed, <b>the peace plan we crafted was rejected by the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah before they even read it</b>.)</span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Even if we had come up with a solution that was acceptable to the parties, though, there were still far too many Palestinians who were intent on massacring Jews and destroying the Jewish State of Israel.<br /><br />That desire was on full display in October 7th unprecedented, devastating attack. Palestinian terrorists invaded Israel and killed at least 1200 people, wounded thousands and took hostage up to 200 (no official number has been released). <b>The captives will surely be spread out and hidden all over the Gaza Strip, making their rescue extraordinarily challenging.<br /></b><br />I was supposed to be in the Middle East this week for work, but postponed my trip in light of what’s going on. Almost every single one of my Arab colleagues and friends understood immediately why and expressed outrage, concern or disgust over what happened. Clearly, <b>many Arabs oppose such horrific violence. But I also heard a minority of voices blaming Israel.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Unless and until Palestinians of good will and their leaders fully and unequivocally condemn and repudiate this hatred and the glorification of the slaughter of Jews, Palestinians will not achieve any of their aspirations because Israel cannot, and should not, compromise on the security of its citizens. No country should.</b><br /><br /><i><b>Israel cannot achieve peace with Palestinians when a segment of the Palestinian population still intends to destroy it. Israel cannot make peace when the leaders of the Palestinians include Hamas. Or when a member of Fatah, Hamas’ political opponent and the party that runs the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, expresses not sorrow over the loss of innocent life, but celebrates a “morning of victory, joy, and pride” and urges all Palestinians to participate in the terror against Israel.</b></i><br /><br />Many of the would-be peacemakers I spoke to during my time in the White House ignored the deep-seated hatred in this subset of the Palestinian population intent on ruining any chance for peace.<br /><br />They told me that as long as the Palestinians were given a fully autonomous state of their own, this would all go away, or they pretended away this hatred in the first place. After the events of the last few days, I think they finally have to accept the truth.<br /><br /><b>Israel, like communities of Jews throughout history, will always need to protect itself from haters. As a consequence, any solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if ever one is to present itself, must always address the need for Israel to defend itself, control security over whatever the Palestinian areas might become and do what it needs to protect its citizens.<br /></b><br />I am heartened by the tremendous support for Israel from around the world. Scenes of the Israeli flag being displayed on the façade of 10 Downing Street and on Germany’s Brandenburg Gate are inspiring in these dark days. As was President Joe Biden issuing strong, appropriate remarks. I hope this support will be unwavering and be followed up by serious assistance to Israel for whatever it needs. I hope the Biden administration also recognizes the Iranian regime’s suspected role in this carnage and acts accordingly.<br /><br />Indeed, the focus of the world must be to support Israel in its quest to punish those who perpetrated these dastardly acts and to work to prevent attacks like this in the future. Any human being who values life must condemn these acts unequivocally, with no moral equivalence.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Accordingly, the world must recognize that Israel is now defending itself in Gaza, as any country would, and that the fault for the unfortunate casualties that will inevitably occur among innocent Palestinians lies with Hamas. War is a terrible thing. But it’s not Israel that asked for this war.<br /><br />Those who gather in cities around the world to celebrate the death and destruction perpetrated by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, including in my former home state of New York, are in essence saying they believe in the slaughter of innocent individuals, that it’s okay to shoot children in front of their parents, that it’s acceptable to parade women naked and to massacre grandparents.<br /><br /><b>They are saying that they are the enemy of Jews</b>. But they are also saying that they are the enemies of peace and of the Palestinians as well for so deeply hurting their cause. <b>These people should tell their loved ones, including their own grandparents, that this is what they stand for — death, destruction and misery</b>. ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/10/opinions/israel-gaza-hamas-biden-greenblatt/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/10/opinions/israel-gaza-hamas-biden-greenblatt/index.html<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>ISRAEL’S HIGH-TECH SECURITY SYSTEM<br /></b><br />~ Over the last few years, Israel spent more than $1.1 billion to construct a sprawling security barrier along the entirety of its nearly 40-mile border with Gaza. This was, allegedly, to be the fence to end all fences. In addition to 20-foot-high multi-layered wire, steel, and concrete barriers, the “smart fence” integrated a vast network of cameras, motion and other sensors, radars, and remote-controlled weapon systems, all monitored by dozens of towers that served as data hubs and high-tech observation and listening-posts. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">An underground wall and sensor system, designed to stop infiltration by tunnels, was extended far below the earth along the whole border, at great expense. Meanwhile, Israel’s advanced, exceptionally costly “Iron Dome” missile defense system protected the skies. “The barrier is reality-changing. What happened in the past won’t happen again,” the then-IDF chief of staff Aviv Kohavi declared at a ceremony marking its construction in 2019.<br /><br />Some former members of the IDF have in recent days testified on social media that the fence really was a technological marvel. <b>Not so much as a stray cat could get anywhere near the border without setting off alarms, they recalled</b>. <b>And the Israeli government and military certainly seem to have believed it was impenetrable, which partly explains why, by the start of this month, they had redeployed most of their regular military forces to guard the West Bank and northern border instead.</b><br /><br />But of course, on 7 October, this great wall of silicon proved almost totally useless, overcome in a matter of minutes by Hamas, which was then left to rampage across southern Israel almost unopposed. At least 1,400 Israelis lost their lives as a result. What happened? Let’s lay aside Israel’s broader strategic intelligence failure — having been falsely convinced that Hamas had been successfully pacified and was no longer interested in attempting attacks — which this certainly was. <b>The border’s defenses were expected to detect and repel even an unexpected assault — or at least were billed as such. How and why did they fail?</b><br /><br />At the simplest level, <b>we could say the IDF was overconfident in its defenses and underestimated its enemy. </b>“The thinning of the forces [stationed near the Gaza border] seemed reasonable because of the construction of the fence and the aura they created around it, as if it were invincible, that nothing would be able to pass it,” recounts Brig. Gen. Israel Ziv, a former head of the IDF’s Operations Division and ground forces commander in the south.<br /><br />We could also say that the IDF had allowed itself to become strategically rigid and was ill-prepared to adapt flexibly when things went wrong. From the moment the fence was proposed, some military officers warned that pouring resources into it — along with the Iron Dome — was a mistake, because it would ultimately degrade the military’s ability to maneuver offensively and pre-emptively neutralize the enemy’s capacity to conduct attacks. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Col. Yehuda Vach, commander of the IDF’s Officer Training School, warned in 2019 that “because we don’t cross the fence, the other side has become strategically stronger”, as they’d been handed operational initiative.</b> “The enemy will seek in the next campaign to carry out an operation to kidnap soldiers and harm civilians in the towns near the fence, thus enjoying the first achievement of the campaign,” he ominously predicted. <b>“The fence creates an illusion and gives a false sense of security to both the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces and the residents near the fence,” he said.<br /></b><br />These are both classic military mistakes, warned against repeatedly by strategists from Carl von Clausewitz to Sun Tzu. In this case, however, the even greater mistake may have been that <b>the IDF came to rely far too heavily on technological solutions, methods, and ways of thinking.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>One of the most famous sayings of the U.S. Air Force pilot and strategist Col. John Boyd, who helped to develop modern maneuver warfare, was: “People, ideas, machines — in that order!”</b> <br /><br />While war-fighting devices were and are important, as are doctrines, tactics, and stratagems, these are all less important than the people doing the fighting, planning, and organizing — as well as being far less adaptable and reliable. As Boyd would often harangue generals in the Pentagon, usually to no avail: “Machines don’t fight wars… Humans fight wars!”<br /><br />Boyd had seen for himself the perils of over-reliance on Big Brain tech wizardry in Vietnam. The latest generation of US aircraft, designed by geniuses who insisted that the age of aerial gunfights was long over, had been stripped of their guns and maneuverability — and built to be flying missile and bomb platforms. But in combat, the missiles proved horrifically unreliable — and the planes were no use at all in a dogfight. When they ran into lightweight North Vietnamese MIGs, they got destroyed: the US air-to-air kill ratio fell from 10:1 in the Korean War to 1:1 in 1967.<br /><br /><b>While technologies can certainly offer solutions to discrete problems, they are typically not flexible and adaptable enough to function as intended when things go sideways</b>. Moreover, fragile technological solutions can produce entirely new liabilities that did not even exist before. In the current case, the widespread reliance of the IDF’s defenses on wireless data transmission became a critical weakness that the enemy was able to exploit to great effect.<br /><br />In fact, it seems likely that Israel was actually worse off with all its high-tech border gadgetry than it would have been without it.<b> These over-engineered solutions to guarding the border were not cost-effective, instead representing an opportunity cost that could have been better spent elsewhere — such as on maintaining a far greater number of disciplined, sharp-eyed soldiers with guns.</b> When the tech failed, it was only such men who were able, eventually, to adapt and respond. By reversing Boyd’s admonition and putting machines first and people last, the IDF actively degraded the capability of those people to respond to disaster when it most mattered.<br /><br />But even this understates the bigger problem exposed by the folly of the “smart fence”. Israel’s smart border defenses should be understood as the adoption of a needlessly complex system. “Complexity” here must not be mistaken to just mean “complicated”. Rather, a complex system is a technical term defining a system composed of such a great quantity of component parts, in such intricate relationships of dependency and interaction with each other, that its composite behavior in response to entropy cannot be predictively modeled.<br /><br /><b>When things go wrong in a complex system it can’t be easily solved, because each sub-system relies on many other sub-systems, and pulling any one lever to try to solve one problem will produce entirely unexpected effects.</b> This means complex systems are vulnerable to failure cascades, in which the failure of even a single part can set off an unpredictable domino effect of further failures. Even if the original failure is fixed this cannot reverse the cascade, and the whole system may soon face catastrophic collapse.<br /><br />This is essentially what happened to Israel’s border defense system. <b>The replacement of low-tech solutions with high-tech ones needlessly added additional layers of complexity to the system, making it more, not less, fragile. Under pressure, the system then collapsed more completely and with more devastating consequences than if a simpler, more robust system had been used.</b><br /><br />On close inspection, t<i><b>hose technologies that have the most transformative and lasting impact are almost always those that are the most simple, robust, adaptable, and scalable, and which generally work in accord with the human element, rather than attempt to totally replace him with a complex system. T</b><b>he cheap little drones that Hamas used so successfully, and which have already revolutionized warfare in Ukraine and elsewhere, are a perfect example of this.</b></i><br /><br />This is true, too, beyond the world of warfare. In all aspects of life, we have come to worship technology and complexity for its own sake, believing it to be the sorcery that can solve our problems once and for all. Except far too often, it doesn’t — it just creates the illusion of having done so, while our own capacities have diminished and our vulnerabilities to systematic collapse have increased. In this way,<b> technology has become a false idol</b>, squatting in the place of or even preventing genuine human ingenuity, innovation, and adaptability.<br /><br /><b>Just as complex systems are vulnerable to collapse, so are empires and civilizations. And empires fall the same way most complex systems do: by becoming too complex to bear their own weight. They come to span the globe, and have too many alliances and commitments, too many “vital national interests”, too many IOUs, too many enemies, to ever handle at once. </b>This is what “imperial overstretch” really means: not just that there is too much budgeted for the treasury to pay for, but that overall complexity has reached such a level that the empire has become impossible to manage. <b>Trying to solve one problem only creates another. The empire may still appear strong, but it has become fragile. </b>The potential for even a single point of failure to ignite a catastrophic failure cascade grows more and more acute.<br /><br />Naturally, a wiser method would be to simplify: to deliberately pare back commitments and overextended positions, concentrating on conserving strength and defending only the most critical nodes of the system, until the balance of capabilities and commitments can reach a stable new equilibrium. But reform of this kind is extremely difficult, as untangling the imperial Gordian Knot one thread at a time often proves to be impossible. Historically, this type of impasse is typically only ever resolved, and simplicity restored, with one decisive stroke: by systemic collapse. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://unherd.com/2023/10/israels-illusion-of-security/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups">https://unherd.com/2023/10/israels-illusion-of-security/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups<br /></a></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXW0cwH1-Nk0OTP3ozM7hJ1fEtyh1VZRTkxjEF7tqYzMaLVMIR6A7AY2yW-dv0dZhxIfRO6OMkoHAGO5NTTHdmDMAE3s0qRLsneYU2w6wdGSOnPQgsS_QXd8T3-sExII8OlGotdRMdbOT7eMji5KUY_I4MpUe2jM_bsmpNsJaqaYm_P3ccUqBa4jFPDglo/s602/dali%20the%20face%20of%20war.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="502" data-original-width="602" height="334" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXW0cwH1-Nk0OTP3ozM7hJ1fEtyh1VZRTkxjEF7tqYzMaLVMIR6A7AY2yW-dv0dZhxIfRO6OMkoHAGO5NTTHdmDMAE3s0qRLsneYU2w6wdGSOnPQgsS_QXd8T3-sExII8OlGotdRMdbOT7eMji5KUY_I4MpUe2jM_bsmpNsJaqaYm_P3ccUqBa4jFPDglo/w400-h334/dali%20the%20face%20of%20war.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Dali: The Face of War, 1941<br /></i><br />*<br /><b>THE JEWISH DREAM AND THE JEWISH NIGHTMARE<br /></b><br />~<b> In the Israeli imagination, this land should have been empty when Jews immigrated here to settle it in the first half of the twentieth century: the vacant land of Israel, waiting for its children to return to it after two millennia in exile, to find refuge from their troubles. This land, we were raised to believe, is the one place Jews can claim as their own, the one place where we belong. </b><br /><br />But, as history would have it, the land was not empty and the people who lived here were reluctant to leave and hostile to the Zionist project. The existence of Palestinians in this land and their resistance to Israel was always seen as the main obstacle to realizing the Israeli dream, and Israel has responded to it by using force to push Palestinians away and to keep those who remain at bay. <br /><br /><b>The full acknowledgment of Palestinians as equal citizens would have required a substantial change in the conception of Israel as a Jewish project, while the founding of an independent Palestinian state would have required Israel to give up parts of the land that are also widely seen as essential to the Israeli project. <br /></b><br />Furthermore, many Israelis see violent Palestinian resistance to the growing Jewish community in the first decades of the twentieth century and, later, to the founding of Israel in 1948 as proof that Palestinian political freedom poses an intolerable risk to Israel’s existence. What the majority of Israelis find impossible to accept is that many Palestinians see this land as their home— that those here are deeply committed to staying here and that those who are refugees aspire to return.<br /><br /><b>The conflict became even more acute when, in 1967, Israel conquered the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, thereby taking control of millions of Palestinians, many of whom had escaped as refugees to Jordan and Egypt in 1948. Israel wanted the land it conquered, not the Palestinians who lived on it.</b> Again, force was used to control and expel Palestinian existence without recognizing the basic rights of Palestinians, who have since lived under military rule in these territories and the overwhelmingly majority of whom were not granted citizenship. <br /><br />In the 1990s, following the Oslo Accords, partial civil control over certain parts of the West Bank and Gaza was handed to the Palestinian Authority, a Fatah-controlled government body that, in many ways, serves as a contractor of the Israeli government. <br /><br /><b>In 2005 Israel dismantled its settlements in Gaza and withdrew its permanent ground forces, though it retained control of the borders, sea, air space, customs, currency, water and electricity supply, population registration, and much else.</b> Two years later, after Hamas came to power in Gaza, Israel imposed a blockade, severely restricting movement of people and products into and out of the Strip. Periodically, Hamas has fired rockets into Israel, and Israel has conducted military campaigns in Gaza. Large-scale military campaigns occurred in 2008–9, 2012, 2014, and 2021.<br /><br />Force has continued to be Israel’s primary mode of engagement with Palestinian existence in this land. But the force exercised against Palestinians, though often brutal, was restrained in various ways so as to accommodate—sometimes only in appearance—some of the demands of international law, Western politics, and Israelis’ own sense of justice. <b>Most importantly, Israelis perceived Israel’s use of force as restrained. </b><br /><br /><b>Sometimes Israel’s purported restraint was a source of pride, other times a source of frustration. </b>For example, in 1994, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin explained the importance of the newly formed Palestinian Authority by noting that, unlike Israel, Yasser Arafat could fight Hamas “without Bagatz [Israel’s supreme court] and Betselem [a prominent Israeli human rights organization]” — that is, without being constrained by legal and moral considerations. In other words, somewhat-restrained force was Israel’s modus operandi. The “Palestinian problem” was contained or managed, not resolved, but this was a compromise most Israelis felt they could live with. It is not so anymore.<br /><br /><b>If the Israeli fantasy has always been a land empty of Palestinians, the Israeli nightmare has always been a Palestinian massacre of Jews. The reason for Israel’s existence is said to be the prevention of such attacks on defenseless Jews. </b>The October 7 massacre was the greatest, most damning failure of the State of Israel in this regard: its force was not enough to defend Israelis against their own nightmares. Immediately following the massacre, comparisons to the pogroms and the Holocaust were made. The massacre is, for us, the end of history: <b>an event that refuted the premise of our existence in this place.</b><br /><br />The conclusion most Israelis draw from this situation is not that the use of force is limited in what it can achieve, but that we were mistaken to ever limit our use of force to begin with (another fantasy, another nightmare). Many find it difficult not to interpret the events of October 7 as a decisive confirmation of the longstanding Israeli suspicion that the Palestinians will slaughter us if they get the chance — in other words, as proof that the existence of one people can only come at the expense of the other.<br /><br />The fact that the Israeli nightmare became a reality leads many to conclude that the Israeli fantasy must also be achieved: we must use force to wipe “them” out, simply in order to survive.<br /><br /><b>But ethnic cleansing and genocide are not only morally reprehensible; they are impossible. Palestinians will continue to exist in this land, and there is nothing Israel can do about it.</b> I think most Jewish Israelis know this, but given what happened, they find it impossible to accept. The compromise that allowed for some bare form of Palestinian existence under Israel’s rule of force can no longer be sustained, but the idea that force is our only savior is as entrenched as it ever was in the Israeli psyche.<br /><br />I do not accept the dichotomy of recognition and the genocidal conclusion it leads to. I believe that force on its own is not power, and that power requires recognition of those who exist alongside us—recognition that their existence and dignity should be protected. To protect its own existence and dignity,<b> Israel must fight Hamas while giving Palestinians hope for a decent life, hope for recognition without violence.</b> We must not view the massacre of October 7 as an act committed by all Palestinians or as an expression of innate hatred of Jews, and we must not conflate it with the Palestinian demand for freedom, which is just. <br /><br />And yet I confess that <b>I too feel the widespread terror and panic that make such distinctions fall on deaf ears. I feel the terror of knowing it could have been me: I could have easily been one of the people who were slaughtered, one of the people kidnapped, one of the people who lost a child or a parent.</b> Like most Israelis, I know people to whom this happened, and I know people whose friends and family were directly affected. I feel the terror, the grief, and the rage; I see these feelings in the eyes and movements of the people I meet; I hear these feelings in their voices.<br /><br />When terror and brutality are as rampant as they are now, they possess us. Resisting them feels as futile as resisting a force of nature — a giant wave, an avalanche, a blizzard. We are compelled to exercise force by the force that terrifies us. <b>Yet this observation, that we do not possess force but are possessed by it, is significant.</b> It might, in the words of Simone Weil, “interpose, between the impulse and the act, the tiny interval that is reflection.” “Where there is no room for reflection,” Weil writes, “there is none either for justice or prudence.”<br /><br />*<br /><b>In The Iliad, or the Poem of Force, published in the winter of 1940, Weil argued that force is the true hero of the Iliad.</b> Force determines human affairs, but it belongs to no one; even when it serves our ends, it is never ours: “Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it.<br /><br />“When force is on our side, it blinds us to the existence of others and to our own vulnerability. Thus, the Iliad describes “men in arms behaving harshly and madly.” A sword driven into the breast of a disarmed enemy pleading at his knees; Achilles cutting the throats of twelve Trojan boys on the funeral pyre of Patroclus “as naturally as we cut flowers for a grave.” Under the spell of the force they exercise, these men cannot see that they, too, will succumb to force. “Thus it happens that <b>those who have force on loan from fate count on it too much and are destroyed.</b>”<br /><br /><b>In war, Weil says, force takes hold of us and traps us inside the terror of death.</b> It effaces even its own goals as well as the notion of it ever coming to an end. This is not easy to understand. There is a rift between those who look upon war from the outside and those who inhabit it. “To be outside a situation so violent as this is to find it inconceivable; to be inside it is to be unable to conceive its end,” she writes.<br /><br />In the presence of an armed enemy, what hand can relinquish its weapon? The mind ought to find a way out, but the mind has lost all capacity to so much as look outward. The mind is completely absorbed in doing itself violence. Always in human life, whether war or slavery is in question, intolerable sufferings continue, as it were, by the force of their own specific gravity, and so look to the outsider as though they were easy to bear; actually, they continue because they have deprived the sufferer of the resources which might serve to extricate him.<br /><br />It is now 9 p.m., Thursday, October 19. The mind is doing violence to itself. We are inside war, inside terror, but we must envision the end of war and terror. We must ask ourselves how we can bring about a reality in which life is possible, and we must accept the unalterable fact that life will not be possible for us unless it be possible for those who share this place with us. In the words of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Munir Akash:<br /><br />“It’s either him or me!”<br />That’s the way war starts. But<br />it ends with the embarrassing confrontation:<br />“Him and me!”<br /><br />There is darkness outside and darkness inside, there is inconceivable loss, unfathomable evil. This land is beautiful and its people are good. ~ </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oded Na’aman, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a longtime member of Breaking the Silence, an Israeli non-governmental organization established in 2004 by veterans of the Israel Defense Forces. It is intended to give serving and discharged Israeli personnel and reservists a means to confidentially recount their experiences in the Occupied Territories (Wikipedia)<br /><br /><a href="https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/letter-from-israel/">https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/letter-from-israel/<br /><br /></a>*<br /><b>DO ISRAEL’S CRITICS UNDERSTAND EVIL?<br /></b><br />~ After the Holocaust, academics and others tried to make sense of the murder of six million Jews. Historians pointed to the rise of nationalism following the First World War; the dismal state of the German economy when Hitler rose to power; the dehumanizing abstraction of Enlightenment rationality. <b>Some rabbis argued that the Holocaust was a punishment from God, but they could not agree on why it was merited. Was it because the Jews of Europe sought to found a state of their own? Or because they didn’t? </b>Others more prudently followed Wittgenstein’s observation: “That of which we cannot speak, we must consign to silence.”<br /><br /><b>Many historical and societal factors set the stage for the Holocaust. But none of these, individually or collectively, can explain the kind of violence to which the Nazis subjected their Jewish victims.</b><br /><br />Jewish children and babies were, for a time, thrown alive into fire pits at Auschwitz. It has been calculated that, in this manner, the SS saved approximately two-fifths of a cent per child on Zyklon-B, the insecticide they used in the gas chambers. Were the children burned alive to save money? It would be obscene to suppose that economy explains such a horrific method of murder. The same holds for sealing people in a boxcar for as much as a week without telling them to bring water and food, neither of which the Nazis provided. Or sewing twins together back-to-back, as Dr Mengele once did at Auschwitz. (Gangrene immediately set in and they died in three days.)<br /><br />In fact, <b>nothing could explain such abominations</b>. Primo Levi’s distinction between “useful” and “useless” violence makes this clear. Useful violence has an aim outside itself. A thief kills a witness to a crime in order to avoid capture. The victim would otherwise have been unmolested, but was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Such violence is evil, but useful in that it serves a purpose outside of itself. The thief might say: “I never wanted to hurt anybody, but then she came out of the back.” Perhaps he really is just unusually callous and stupid; he didn’t go looking for evil, but he found it. This explanation makes some sense, but does not excuse: the thief is going to prison for homicide, and rightly so.<br /><br /><b>Useless violence</b>, however, <b>is the deliberate production of pain and suffering as an end in itself. There is nothing apart from the violence to which one could point and say “that’s why they did these things”. The sole aim of useless violence is to torture, to inflict as much pain and suffering as possible. It is not evil, but Evil.<br /></b><br /><b>Evil (with a capital E) defies explanation, which is why it is often called “senseless”.</b> Evil is done for its own sake, and in this it mirrors, like a photographic negative, the senseless kindness of Good. In his novel Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman writes of a Soviet woman who, prepared to strangle a wounded German soldier who had participated in deadly reprisals against her village, instead gave him water. “No one could understand [her action]; nor could she explain it herself.” <b>That spontaneous and inexplicable act of kindness — kindness for its own sake — was Good.</b><br /><br />Theologians have long understood Evil as an absence or privation: complete separation from God. But while mere absence is inert, <b>Evil is as potent and contagious as certain deadly viruses. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>It can fill entire social classes and ethnic or religious groups with bloodlust, and drive them to frenzies of violence. Organized and routinized by the State, Evil can even give rise to an entire industry of death.</b> The power that produced the labor, transit, concentration, and death camps of Nazi Germany was evidently substantial and virulent.<br /><br />Still, the theologians have discerned something important about the negative capacity of Evil. Evil has a way of disabling moral receptivity and short-circuiting intelligence. Examples abound in Claude Lanzmann’s brave film Shoah, a 9.5-hour documentary that records the testimony of perpetrators, survivors, and witnesses of the Holocaust.<br /><br />Consider Frans Suchomel, SS Unterscharführer at Treblinka, a death camp where 800,000 Jews were murdered. Suchomel embodies pure superficiality: a human outside with no inside. He is secretly filmed by a van outside his apartment building. The technology Lanzmann employs generates a grainy image in which faulty video transmission or reception obscures Suchomel’s eyes with a black line, as if to emphasise his moral blindness. He sings a song that the doomed “worker Jews” of Treblinka were forced to sing as they dealt with a noxious liquid pool of decomposing corpses. <b>The song’s message is that the human lot, the lot of Germans and Jews alike, is determined by forces that we can neither fully understand nor control. </b>When he finishes, he says to Lanzmann with obvious pride: “Satisfied? No Jew knows that today!”<br /><br />Consider also Mrs Michelsohn, the wife of a Nazi schoolteacher at Chelmno, where 400,000 Jews were murdered in mobile gas vans. (These vans were outfitted with a pipe that fed exhaust fumes into the sealed interior of the vans, which were driven until the Jews packed within were asphyxiated.) Michelsohn cannot recall how many Jews died in Chelmno; she remembers only that the number began with a four. At one point she confuses Poles and Jews. Asked by Lanzmann what the difference is between the two, she says: “The Poles weren’t exterminated and the Jews were. That’s the difference. An external difference.” But she “can’t assess” the “inner difference,” for “I don’t know enough about psychology and anthropology”.<br /><br />Today, the world is still full of willfully blind Suchomels and obtuse Michelsohns, callous perpetrators and complicit witnesses who see no Evil and hide behind a veneer of intellectual abstraction. Lanzmann’s words about the making of Shoah ring true: “The worst moral and artistic crime that can be committed in producing a work dedicated to the Holocaust is to consider the Holocaust as past.”<br /><br />When they invaded Israel on October 7, Hamas terrorists beat, robbed, raped, kidnapped, and executed Jewish men, women and children. They also burned families alive, shot babies in the head, and decapitated them.<b> Such horrific crimes hadn’t been perpetrated against Jews since the Holocaust. Yet politicians and university presidents who were previously quick to comment on issues of social justice have little or nothing to say about mass slaughter in Israel, while more than a few students and professors have applauded Hamas’s atrocities and assaulted Jewish students.</b><br /><br />Hamas, whose hateful ideology was directly influenced by Nazism, has claimed that the brutal murder of Jewish children and babies in Israel was perpetrated by enraged civilians from Gaza. In fact, documents recovered from Hamas terrorists killed in southern Israel show “detailed plans to target children and young people”. Hamas’s supporters cite “facts” that are supposed to justify the terrorists’ vile deeds, including the seizure of Palestinian land in the 1948 War of Independence, when the Jews of the new nation of Israel fought the armies of five invading Arab nations. But <b>there can be no justification of Hamas’s atrocities, not even in principle. They are so vile as to </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>fall beyond the realm of explanation</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>, let alone excuse. History teaches us at least this much.</b><br /><br />In other words, <b>Hamas’s vicious deeds were Evil. They exemplified useless violence, for they were designed to make their victims — Israelis, and insofar as possible, all Jews — suffer in the most cruel possible way. </b>This must be understood, because the organs of supposedly judicious opinion are already explaining that Israel’s military response to Hamas must not be “disproportionate”. We’ve seen this movie ad nauseam: it plays on an endless loop. Israelis are murdered in terrorist attacks, and then they are denounced for taking concrete steps to protect themselves.<br /><br /><b>There is something absurd about the demand that Israel exercise proportionality in the face of Evil.</b> As Douglas Murray has observed, that would mean that “Israel should try to locate a music festival in Gaza and rape precisely the number of women that Hamas raped… kill precisely the number of young people that Hamas killed.… [They should] go door to door and kill precisely the correct number of babies that Hamas killed.”<br /><br />The revulsion this suggestion elicits in decent human beings underscores <b>the literal impossibility of reckoning with Evil. If Good is transcendent, Evil is negatively transcendent, exceeding measurement as it exceeds explanation. </b>To try to measure or explain either Good or Evil is like trying to capture mathematical infinity in a finite sequence of numerals. It simply can’t be done.<br /><br />We must not forget this when we hear “reasonable” people at the UN, The New York Times or the US State Department urge Israel not to go too far in its attempt to eradicate Hamas, or when they condemn the country — as is inevitable — for having done so. Such judgments pose as clarity, but are in fact moral and intellectual obfuscation. They can only encourage antisemites everywhere, and give Hezbollah and other agents of Iran’s theological tyranny a pretext for opening up more fronts in their effort to effect a Final Solution: to finish, once and for all, the work of the Holocaust.<br /><br />Indeed, Hamas and its Islamist allies are counting on exactly this. They have set a trap for Israel, baited by their Evil. They want the IDF to grind Gaza to a pulp. They hope that publicizing images of suffering in Gaza (including fake ones, if past performance is any indication) will stimulate world outcry and justify a wider war — one that Israel may not be able to win. This violence might seem to be “useful”, but if so, it is useful only in the cause of Evil.<br /><br /><b>If we are to speak of Evil at all — and now is no time for decent people to be silent — we cannot rely on ordinary frameworks of evaluation. The only language that can hope to do justice to Evil is theological. Perhaps all that can be said of Hamas and the worldwide gang of Islamists is that their crimes and plans are Satanic: absolutely and completely demonic.</b> ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://unherd.com/2023/10/do-israels-critics-understand-evil/?=refinnar">https://unherd.com/2023/10/do-israels-critics-understand-evil/?=refinnar</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">* <br /></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwtc6XcLeAgJyG9bsVtrvs5uGj1kRB4IBCCpSyxWCClDs8ajCUyOu66HEySj9b0VuMcpFC9JP0MQVcFIkZj7VFV3ILRTALbOfGLe5PYIUxBjpVbfC8LPJqwsFnqum7Uto64HzofXmX2kMDmaIBd-hh6dYw-7y9SLqJ5X4zJ8FmlhCKOEUh37NKAyQzsQ2P/s803/bookstore%20in%20Turkey%20Jews%20not%20allowed.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="803" data-original-width="526" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwtc6XcLeAgJyG9bsVtrvs5uGj1kRB4IBCCpSyxWCClDs8ajCUyOu66HEySj9b0VuMcpFC9JP0MQVcFIkZj7VFV3ILRTALbOfGLe5PYIUxBjpVbfC8LPJqwsFnqum7Uto64HzofXmX2kMDmaIBd-hh6dYw-7y9SLqJ5X4zJ8FmlhCKOEUh37NKAyQzsQ2P/w263-h400/bookstore%20in%20Turkey%20Jews%20not%20allowed.jpg" width="263" /></a></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>sign on a bookstore in Turkey</i></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>PARALLELS BETWEEN UKRAINE AND PALESTINE<br /></b><br />~ The striking paradox is that the logic of Russia’s policy toward Ukraine runs parallel to Netanyahu’s logic toward the Palestinian state.<br /><br /><b>Xenomorph’s egg at the doorstep<br /></b><br />Long ago, Israel agreed to a two-state solution. But deep down inside, they didn’t like the idea.<br />The recent history leaves no doubt. Anyone with half a brain understands that <b>after decades of Arab-Jewish enmity, a full-blown Palestinian state that sandwiches Israel will almost certainly be a launchpad for the next Arab-Israeli war.</b><br /><br />No UN can possibly prevent that.<br /><br /><b>Crucible for a newborn nation<br /></b><br />After all, every time democracy gets the slightest chance anywhere in the Arab world, the hawks beat the doves hands down. No one really doubts that Hamas and their brothers-in-arms would win a truly democratic election in Palestine. And <b>what’s the only thing that will keep them from butchering each other in the Night of Long Knives after the evening of victory celebration?</b></span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>A holy war on the Zionists.</b><br /><br />This is the way nation-building works everywhere.<br /><br />That’s how Israel views it. Netanyahu’s the smartest and most consistent implementer of this view. <b>They formally do not oppose the two-state solution. But in practice, they do everything not to make it happen.</b><br /><br /><b>Magnanimity scorned<br /></b><br />Same with Russia and Ukraine.<br /><br />Back in 1991, we recognized Ukraine as a separate state. We also recognized as theirs all the territories they inherited from the Communists.<br /><br />We blame drunkard Yeltsin for the foolishness. But no one forced President Putin’s hand to confirm the deal once again on 28 January 2003 when he signed a border agreement with Kiev. The idea was to slowly drag them back into the Russian World. Shower them with love and money until they forget the nonsense of being a separate nation.<br /><br />But President Putin failed.<br /><br /><b>Treasonous brothers<br /></b><br />Our President hates to fail in full public view. Making or breaking Ukraine became his personal crusade. Moreover, due to the zillion of personal and economic ties between Russians and Ukrainians, <b>a sovereign European Ukraine would be a huge hole for smuggling rotation of power, competitive politics, and other Western depravity into our realms.<br /></b><br />We had no crusades for true faith in our history. Our equivalent to the Holy Crusade is anti-Nazism. This is how the war against Ukraine joining NATO and the EU became “de-Nazification.”<br /><br />The entire logic of Russia’s nation-building led to this war. The belligerence of the nationalists in Kiev fed and amplified it, but didn’t cause it. <b>Irrespective of the outcome of the SMO, these bloodlands are going to be Europe’s 38th parallel for decades to come.<br /></b><br /><b>Dark times ahead<br /></b><br />Summed up, Israel pays lip service to the two-state solution, but <b>there will be no peace until either the tentative “Palestinian State” or Israel ceases to exist.</b> <i><b>Likewise, there will be no lasting peace in the east unless Ukraine or Russia in their present shape has crumbled.</b></i><br /><br />The only difference is that the Ukrainians would be content to be left in their 1991 borders, while the Palestinian nationalists won’t stop until Hamas has everything between the Golan Heights and the Rafah border crossing.<br /><br />Below, the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, taken by Russia from Ukrainian forces. This is something awaiting northern Gaza in the weeks to come.<br /><br /><b>It might appear a paradox that Russia scorches the territory we consider Russian</b>. But it isn’t if you keep in mind that this was a nest of enemy resistance to the Russian World. Poisonous seeds of Western influence would spread to our lands from here. If incineration is what it takes to clean this place, let it be fire. ~ Dima Vorobiev (? I'm pretty sure, given the frequent use of "we" and "our"; the former "propaganda executive" seems to identify totally with the supposed glory of his former country), Quora<br /></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU3gGzJ68yW_-KLRcNOLBmcKWiuKsw8b1aIBpGPg7IMtyQslSS0wIVk2CxxU6EfOM8Aq2-mqVm7Bra-KQOyAkwOMXpU6MskTM8IvpyUpe9jZAl5Fe_xu8f865ZCxBgsjY3Dj9pkb4VERgldLPL9a8rxu_hgGS8ei4NWH_zzsFjdJCxPmCpgcvBvX-5rpE1/s602/bahmut%20after%20bombing.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="339" data-original-width="602" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU3gGzJ68yW_-KLRcNOLBmcKWiuKsw8b1aIBpGPg7IMtyQslSS0wIVk2CxxU6EfOM8Aq2-mqVm7Bra-KQOyAkwOMXpU6MskTM8IvpyUpe9jZAl5Fe_xu8f865ZCxBgsjY3Dj9pkb4VERgldLPL9a8rxu_hgGS8ei4NWH_zzsFjdJCxPmCpgcvBvX-5rpE1/w400-h225/bahmut%20after%20bombing.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Bahmut after bombing</i><br /><br />*<br /><b>WHY HE FIGHTS FOR UKRAINE </b><br /><br />~ Russian Buryat fighting for Ukraine in a new volunteer battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine "Sibir" under the call sign "Buryat" told why he is fighting for Ukraine.<br /><br />“Why do they need this Crimea when we have our own peninsula that needs to be developed? It’s still being destroyed. Buryatia lives on subsidies. Although our republic is very rich: we have gold, Baikal, forests. But this all belongs to Muscovy, and we are waiting for handouts from them. Our winters are cold, and firewood is expensive, we don’t have gas,” said Buryat.’<br /><br />He also clarified that huge gas pipelines pass near Buryatia, through which blue fuel goes to China. <b>It is much more important for the Kremlin to sell gas abroad than to provide a decent life for its citizens</b>. Buryat also noted that many acute contradictions reign in Russian society, in particular on the ethnic issue. Racism in the country is very strong.<br /><br />"I told myself that (...) I wouldn’t set foot in today’s Russia! I won’t go back. I’ve been to Moscow three times, three times I’ve been a “chock”, “narrow-eyed”, “Chinese”, but not a citizen of the Russian Federation. In Ukraine this has never happened before, never at all,” said the fighter.<br /><br />He also added that the outcome of the war started by Russia is already determined. And this will be a victory for Ukraine.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm9AULCD5yZyadDdQm6MsALR6xlYXw_KOX7TpD5w69JG9eqeLKOM8IrjTojQ0_C39kCfAgCewbVY-045SQlezkbLVxx2VM3VZuJAzAidFC4_Fd6cfrOHcrYU5wzXZ3hrENqZOXIvdxVcrWW07NpKDf4ua9H42foUPUtnNx1Vy3TJfd7O7g2jz0tWfZTbND/s602/Buryat%20fighting%20for%20Ukraine.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="411" data-original-width="602" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm9AULCD5yZyadDdQm6MsALR6xlYXw_KOX7TpD5w69JG9eqeLKOM8IrjTojQ0_C39kCfAgCewbVY-045SQlezkbLVxx2VM3VZuJAzAidFC4_Fd6cfrOHcrYU5wzXZ3hrENqZOXIvdxVcrWW07NpKDf4ua9H42foUPUtnNx1Vy3TJfd7O7g2jz0tWfZTbND/w400-h272/Buryat%20fighting%20for%20Ukraine.webp" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>FINNISH ATTITUDE TOWARD RUSSIA: “RUSSO-REALISM”<br /></b><br />~ Finland is the only country in the world where using the traditional word describing a Russian, “ryssä,” has become so derogatory that it no longer can be used in civilized discourse. <b>The R word has become a N word.</b> </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The polite way of referring to a Russian is calling him “venäläinen”, that is to say using a word that is derived out of “vendi”, Wends having been a West-Slavic group that resided on the southern shores of the Baltic Sea, some thousand years ago.<br /><br />“Ryssittely”, calling Russians Russians, is a national pastime, and “ryssiä”<b> (to russify) is a verb, meaning to spoil or destroy something. The Finns generally have very few, if any, positive things to say about the Russians</b>. ~ Martin Cardiaster, Quora<br /><br />Oriana:<br /><br />In Poland too the word “russky” is derogatory (a more neutral term for a Russian person exists). But the special insult is “Moskal.” “Bolshevik” used to be more or less the equivalent of “savage” or “barbarian” for my grandparents’ generation. To call someone a Bolshevik was like calling him a hoodlum.<br /><br />Even though the official word for “Russia” is meant to be neutral, there is an in-built hiss. Just a linguistic accident, but it’s hard to escape the emotional impact of that hiss, and the image of viper. <br /><br />Poland and Finland (and the Baltic countries even more so) have plenty of historical reasons to feel negative about Russia. And just as those countries were beginning to feel more secure and voices rose up against “Russophobia” — that’s history, things have changed now, etc — Russia invaded Ukraine, for all to see that things have not changed. The viper has struck again.<br /><br />Vessa Heikkinen:<br /><br />Majority of Finns might be “Russo-Realists” by default but we don't express that by storming to the airports, train / bus stations and hotels and demanding suspected Russians to show their passports, ask them to pronounce Finnish word “hyvä” or firebomb their premises. <b>Only people brave enough to harass foreigners even verbally are some extreme right-wingers but they worship Putin so Russians are safe with them.</b><br /><br />*<br /><b>WHY RUSSIA FAILED IN AFGHANISTAN (Dima Vorobiev)<br /></b><br />~ <b>The reason for our defeat in Afghanistan was the same as the defeat of the US in Vietnam: we didn’t commit ourselves to winning.<br /></b><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>The resources allocated weren’t enough. The objective wasn’t defined adequately. But above all, the will to win was sadly lacking.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b><br />Stalin or Trotsky would have nailed it. But not Khrushchev, or anyone after him.<br /><br /><i><b>The crucial factor was WW2. The post-war generation of Soviet rulers were — like the rest of our nation — deeply traumatized by it. The horror and pain of the great war sat too deeply in the Soviet psyche. They drained the energy off the worldwide Soviet project bequeathed to us by Lenin and Stalin. </b><br /></i><br />Deep down inside, <b>we were sick and tired of violence and self-sacrifice needed for revolutionary struggle</b>. Neither we nor our rulers wanted to pull all the stops in the Communist crusade for peace and progress. Least of all in that dirt-poor landlocked rocky territory far from everything that had true value for us.<br /><br />The Afghans had the winning spirit. On our side, the determination and resolve needed for victory never materialized. No wonder we lost. ~ Quora<br /><br />Terry Gearing:<br /><b>The problem with both wars that neither the USSR or the USA ever attempted to hold the ground that they had won after a battle.<br /></b><br />Martin Jacob Kristoffersen:<br /><b>John McCain said</b> in his presidential debates <b>that to stabilize a country after an invasion, you need to occupy it for 50 years. Like Japan</b>. He was lambasted for saying that and compared to a frenetic warlord by both Democrats and some other Republicans. Of course, this was painful to hear and at that time, completely unpresidential thing to say in a time when everyone was fed up with Iraq. But you don’t need to study much history before you realize he was absolutely correct. Rest in peace, John.<br /><br />Matthias Heinze:<br />There is another aspect. Russia also lost militarily because they could never disable the factories that made the Stinger missiles that brought down Mi24’s. <b>They could never stop the flow of weapons to the other side.</b><br /><br />Rick Gauger:<br /><b>The guerrillas don’t have to “win” the war. They only have to persist until the foreigners give up and go home.<br /></b><br />*<br /><b>DIMA VOROBIEV ON WHY THE SOVIET UNION COLLAPSED<br /></b><br />~ <b>Marxism is a secular grandchild of Christianity. It inherited the Christian approach to error management. Whenever something goes terribly wrong on the watch of Marxists, it’s not the idea of radical justice —it’s the servants you need to blame.</b><br /><br />Marxism as an ideology is infallible, just like Jesus. It’s totally impossible to ever get disillusioned about the idea a of society where everyone is equal, no one is exploited, and the economy is an endless cornucopia in the service of human self-improvement.<br /><br />Just like Christianity itself cannot fail — because God is firmly on its side and you can’t defeat God — Communism can be defeated only in three cases:<br /><br />1. <b>Unintended deviation from the true Communist path. This is an exact parallel to the Christian notion of “falling into sin”</b>. In Soviet propaganda, our list of sins was long and included such things as “self-satisfaction”, “short-sightedness”, “loss of vigilance”, “tolerance of bourgeois views”, “errors”, “arbitrariness in decisions”, “loss of Party control” etc.<br /><br />2. <b>Willful deviation from the true Communist path. In Christian terms, apostasy</b>. True Communists here on Quora will tell you tons about how the USSR deviated from genuine Marxism, so I won’t torment you with this. <i><b>The Chinese “Communists” have created a huge corpus of “Marxist” works on where exactly the Soviet “revisionists” knowingly abandoned the Communist cause and persisted in their wrongful ways until the bitter end.</b></i><br /><br />3. <b>Treason. Same as the Devil’s work for Christians. This is what Stalinists in Russia and abroad especially mention as the main cause. In their book, Gorbachev with a small clique of sellouts at the top of Party wreaked havoc on the Soviet Union on CIA’s money. Usually they also attach “drunk Yeltsin” to the list of traitors, since he belonged to the hard core of Perestroika champions in the Kremlin until he fell out with Gorbachev.</b><br /><br />Below, a Russian cartoonist in 2008 marks his displeasure with President Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize. Obama is holding hands with Gorbachev, as if joining him in the cause of liberal treason. Dmitri Medvedev, who at the time was appointed by Putin to hold his place as President warm until his return in 2012, enviously watches the two. Medvedev is dreaming of his own prize for national treason. The text says “Perestroika 2”.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnSpKoKogvVqn8ImuVPOS0JgPwwP9apPcQDDDtkKyE0opFLN9eZIeIYnFz1drnYf5-8p08mYiC0KEenDifsBgC1HxIC3ea3WQMWpFcNkTedTUm_jU8zSthCc0Qo_dZvB_zd_PRD6Jzs52siJCdv7c0YPoZAd9DX94VNJzTqm9UndPfLhyphenhyphenOM-gp2msMnSiK/s936/perestroika%202.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="674" data-original-width="936" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnSpKoKogvVqn8ImuVPOS0JgPwwP9apPcQDDDtkKyE0opFLN9eZIeIYnFz1drnYf5-8p08mYiC0KEenDifsBgC1HxIC3ea3WQMWpFcNkTedTUm_jU8zSthCc0Qo_dZvB_zd_PRD6Jzs52siJCdv7c0YPoZAd9DX94VNJzTqm9UndPfLhyphenhyphenOM-gp2msMnSiK/w400-h288/perestroika%202.png" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br /><b>“I WAS BORN TO HATE JEWS”</b><br /><br />I was born to hate Jews.<br /><br /><b>It was part of my life. I never questioned that. </b>I was not born in Iran or Syria. <b>I was born in England. </b>My parents moved there from Pakistan. Theirs was the typical immigrant story: move to the West hoping to create a better life for themselves and their children.<br /><br />We were a devoted Muslim family, but not extremists or radicals in any way. We only wanted the best for everyone </span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">—</span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> everyone except the Jews. <b>The Jews, we thought, were aliens living in stolen Muslim land, occupiers involved in a genocide against the Palestinian people. Our hatred was therefore justified and just. </b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b> </b>And it left me and my friends vulnerable to radical extremist arguments. If the Jews were as evil as we've always believed, shouldn't those who support them — Christians, Americans and others in the West — be just as evil?<br /><br /><b>Starting from the 90s, speakers and teachers in mosques and schools began repeating this theme endlessly: We were not western. We were not British. We were Muslims, first and foremost. Our allegiance was to our religion and to our fellow Muslims. We owe nothing to western nations who welcomed us. As westerners, they were our enemies.<br /></b><br />All of this had its desired effect. At least it did on me. It changed the way I looked at the world. I began to look at the suffering of Muslims, including in Britain, as the fault of Western imperialism. The west was at war with us, and the Jews controlled the west. My experience at the university in the UK only reinforced my increasingly radical conviction. Hating Israel was a badge of honor. Set up an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian rally, and you were sure to attract a huge, approving audience. <br /><br />While in uni, I decided that the protests and propaganda against Israel were not enough. Real jihad requires violence. So <b>I made plans to join the real fight. I want to drop out of college and join terrorist training camp in Pakistan. But, fortunately for me, fate intervened — in a bookstore.</b><br /><br /><b>I came across a book called The Case for Israel by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. The case for Israel? Which case could that be? The title itself infuriated me, and I started reading the pages almost like a travesty.</b> How ill-informed, how stupid, can this guy be to defend the defenseless? Well, he was a Jew. That must have been the answer.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxLAego0CJQt4cRdzIwgfTbidtGq_bIZyO5dkF20yhg693NnaW3SaDcnQHGfsLKVYdIDhqtVHaMClvEEUO5eXFuhoyiBX2_cc4EZggX0hhFGyS7v36qi4hk0dpy12sR97aSEIQLAn3pIkfhhi9nhg595o8rUOWckulHyr6xNKZOzq9mH_6jzWzO05A4-R_/s388/Dershowitz%20Case%20for%20Israel%20cover.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="388" data-original-width="256" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxLAego0CJQt4cRdzIwgfTbidtGq_bIZyO5dkF20yhg693NnaW3SaDcnQHGfsLKVYdIDhqtVHaMClvEEUO5eXFuhoyiBX2_cc4EZggX0hhFGyS7v36qi4hk0dpy12sR97aSEIQLAn3pIkfhhi9nhg595o8rUOWckulHyr6xNKZOzq9mH_6jzWzO05A4-R_/w264-h400/Dershowitz%20Case%20for%20Israel%20cover.png" width="264" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Still I am reading. And what I read challenged all my dogmas about Israel and the Jews: <b>I read that it was not Israel who created the Palestinian refugee crisis, it was the Arab countries, the UN and the corrupt Palestinian leadership. I read that Jews did not exploit the Holocaust to create the state of Israel; the movement to create a modern Jewish state dating back to the 19th. century</b>,<b> </b>and eventually to the beginning of the Jewish people almost 4000 years ago. And I read that <b>Israel is not engaged in genocide against the Palestinians. On the contrary, the Palestinian population has actually doubled in just twenty years.</b><br /><br />All of this just pissed me off. I had to prove Dershowitz wrong to see with my own eyes how racist and oppressive Israel really was. Then I bought a plane ticket. I would go to Israel, the home of my enemy. And that's when everything changed. <br /><br /><b>What I saw with my own eyes was even more challenging than what Dershowitz had written. </b>Instead of apartheid I saw Muslims, Christians and Jews coexisting. Instead of hate, I saw acceptance, even compassion. <b>I saw a violent, modern, liberal democracy, full of flaws, for sure, but fundamentally decent. </b>I saw a country that wanted nothing but to live in peace with its neighbors. I watched my hate melt before my eyes. I knew just then what I had to do.<br /><br />Too many people on this planet are consumed by the same hate that consumed me. They have been taught to despise the Jewish state — many Muslims through their religion, many others by their university professors or student groups.<br /><br />So here's my challenge to anyone who feels this way: do what I did — seek the truth for yourself. If the truth can change me, it can change anyone.</span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY2HT99wyi5qBjAVmpovx-1LA23O-xTd_R5KYSS_HtIxjfwSSuVgMK-0781HIVXYfA5-PJqXtijIGkcqroksE2Qu6BZ6eWhbQJqQMEoko_hD6DTjcdI17Z9FQ5j3qy7GLTHq2KpWi3AgaY_4_vLqTO7hHHCPfkgq45SIONaIsSoFyTzUhKuhTnhL_avOxp/s2048/Kasim%20Hafeez.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1364" data-original-width="2048" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY2HT99wyi5qBjAVmpovx-1LA23O-xTd_R5KYSS_HtIxjfwSSuVgMK-0781HIVXYfA5-PJqXtijIGkcqroksE2Qu6BZ6eWhbQJqQMEoko_hD6DTjcdI17Z9FQ5j3qy7GLTHq2KpWi3AgaY_4_vLqTO7hHHCPfkgq45SIONaIsSoFyTzUhKuhTnhL_avOxp/w400-h266/Kasim%20Hafeez.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">I am Kasim Hafeez from Prager University. ~ Av Kaseem Hafiz, Quora<br /><br />*<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-uFULGL6Qol6jnQQYJTNk28JLhFTKRG4XM-3W0VoUfMqfV8FGuV5lzLtwjr9d4igAylCpCftiPo2_gYSy8wkemZUvDp9e7k16M6gIdSWE1bJ1w18lT_rnItRnoLAD-5u5CfYLzW98W1toq1t6P38W9kCfx4NjRmkH58ZVD9ZSzcXtMHbX077wF0Tdbm8r/s545/what%20if%20when%20you%20die%20they%20ask%20how%20was%20heaven.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="545" data-original-width="389" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-uFULGL6Qol6jnQQYJTNk28JLhFTKRG4XM-3W0VoUfMqfV8FGuV5lzLtwjr9d4igAylCpCftiPo2_gYSy8wkemZUvDp9e7k16M6gIdSWE1bJ1w18lT_rnItRnoLAD-5u5CfYLzW98W1toq1t6P38W9kCfx4NjRmkH58ZVD9ZSzcXtMHbX077wF0Tdbm8r/w285-h400/what%20if%20when%20you%20die%20they%20ask%20how%20was%20heaven.jpg" width="285" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:<br /><br />I first encountered this idea in the title of one of Jack Gilbert’s poems: “<b>We Have Already Lived in the Real Paradise</b>.” <br /><br />*<br /><b>RELIGIONS DIE WHEN WORSHIPERS ABANDON THEM <br /></b><br />The Jews invented a portable god, not dependent on temples — and it used to be a Jerusalem temple-focused cult, so that's a marvelous rabbinical achievement, that apparent survival of a bad-tempered archaic god. I hasten to add that Judaism changed so much over the last 2,000 years that one could argue t<b>he old Yahweh is indeed dead except for the ultra-orthodox. </b>A new concept of the divine has emerged, sufficiently vague that each believer can project his or her wishful belief on that undefinable “it” in the sky (or perhaps beyond earth’s atmosphere, in outer space? Diffused all over the universe? “Beyond space and time” — but what does it really mean?)<br /><br />It's easy enough to say that the old gods were not the true gods. They were obviously invented, but no, never MY god — he EXISTS independent of how many people believe in him, and will exist even with no believers. No he won't. The more recent history of world religions is mostly about the great empire builders </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>—</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> Islam and Christianity, getting its first great start via the Roman Empire (read a bit about the Emperor Justinian if you think he was a nice guy, joining the cross and the sword). <br /><br />At least some of the <b>worshipers of the old gods derived joy from participating in the rites (especially the mystery religions) and holidays, both the community feeling and the emotional security of having divine protection — but times change, and the old satisfactions can be found in new religions, more so Catholicism and Shia, both closer to the pagan ways. </b>Will we ever know the answer? I think we know it regarding <i><b>Santa Claus and Easter Bunny, so it just depends how much longer people will be able to kid themselves. </b><br /></i><br />Would you like to point out to a member of ISIS that he practices the wrong religion, and only yours is true? Monotheism has mostly been the tragedy of humanity. Not exclusively a tragedy, but mostly. Yet the moment people abandon a particular religion, where is it? Some relics in museums . . . of less and less interest. <br /><br />*<br /><b>THE ORIGIN OF THE COMPLEX STRUCTURES INSIDE THE CELL</b></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRM6OICLEBLlmw1NrRmh6zOcPVNPm6g4k5yA9Xde40abqjyMa8NaD3j1mQASeHV9uOme6mvVL1oGFn51fJ8tn6-GhrUPNWnyI-G9oDANig7w2X67RPb1Y6skuXhRQ_OxH1SlvNAV7o5BgRfk_BB8cftT2M1hOuNFa29DgzhhWKg_6pbEPFhvKlrUYoWHvz/s1500/cells%20interior%20organelles.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="956" data-original-width="1500" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRM6OICLEBLlmw1NrRmh6zOcPVNPm6g4k5yA9Xde40abqjyMa8NaD3j1mQASeHV9uOme6mvVL1oGFn51fJ8tn6-GhrUPNWnyI-G9oDANig7w2X67RPb1Y6skuXhRQ_OxH1SlvNAV7o5BgRfk_BB8cftT2M1hOuNFa29DgzhhWKg_6pbEPFhvKlrUYoWHvz/w400-h255/cells%20interior%20organelles.png" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b></b>~ <i><b>More than 1.5 billion years ago, a momentous thing happened: Two small, primitive cells became one. Perhaps more than any event — barring the origin of life itself — this merger radically changed the course of evolution on our planet.</b><br /></i><br />One cell ended up inside the other and evolved into a structure that schoolkids learn to refer to as the “powerhouse of the cell”: the mitochondrion. This new structure provided a tremendous energetic advantage to its host — a precondition for the later evolution of complex, multicellular life.</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But that’s only part of the story. <b>The mitochondrion is not the only important structure within complex eukaryotic cells. There’s the membrane-bound nucleus, safekeeper of the genome. There’s a whole system of internal membranes: the endoplasmic reticulum, the Golgi apparatus, lysosomes, peroxisomes and vacuoles — essential for making, transporting and recycling proteins and other cargo in and around the cell.</b><br /><br /><b><i>Where did all these structures come from? </i></b>With events lost in the deep past and few traces to serve as evolutionary clues, it’s a very tough question to tackle. Researchers have proposed various hypotheses, but it is only recently, with some new tools and techniques, that cell biologists have been able to investigate the beginnings of this intricate architecture and shed some light on its possible origins.<br /><br /><b>A microbial merger</b><br /><br />The idea that eukaryotes originated from two cells merging dates back more than 100 years but did not become accepted or well known until the 1960s, when the late evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis articulated her theory of endosymbiosis.<b> The mitochondrion, Margulis said, likely originated from a class of microbes known as alphaproteobacteria, a diverse group that today includes the bacterium responsible for typhus and another one important for the genetic engineering of plants, among many others.</b><br /><br />Nothing was known about the nature of the original host cell. Scientists proposed that it already was fairly complicated, with a variety of membrane structures inside it. <b>Such a cell would have been capable of engulfing and ingesting things — a complicated and energetically expensive eukaryotic feature called phagocytosis. That might be how the mitochondrion first got into the host.</b><br /><br />But this idea, called the “mitochondria late” hypothesis, doesn’t explain how or why the host cell had become complex to begin with.<br /><br />In 2016, evolutionary biologist Bill Martin, cell biologist Sven Gould and bioinformatician Sriram Garg, at the University of Dusseldorf in Germany, proposed a very different model known as the “mitochondria early” hypothesis. They argued that <b>since no primitive cells today have any internal membrane structures, it seems very unlikely that a cell would have had these over 1.5 billion years ago.</b><br /><br />Instead, the scientists reasoned, the endomembrane system — the whole hodgepodge of parts found inside complex cells today — could have evolved soon after the alphaproteobacterium took up residence inside a relatively simple host cell, of a kind from a class called archaea. <b>The membrane structures would have arisen from bubbles, or vesicles, released by the mitochondrial ancestor.</b><br /><br />Free-living bacteria shed vesicles all the time, for all sorts of reasons, Gould, Garg and Martin note, so it seems reasonable to think they’d continue to do that when enclosed inside a host.<br />Eventually, these vesicles would have become specialized for the functions that membrane structures perform today inside eukaryotic cells. <b>They would even fuse with the host cell’s membrane, helping to explain why the eukaryote plasma membrane contains lipids with bacterial features.</b><br /><br />Vesicles could have served an important initial function, says biochemist Dave Speijer of the University of Amsterdam. The new endosymbiont would have generated plenty of poisonous chemicals called reactive oxygen species, by oxidizing fatty acids and burning them for energy. “These destroy everything, they are toxic, especially on the inside of a cell,” Speijer says. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Sequestering them inside vesicles would have helped keep the cell safe from harm, he says.<br />Another problem created by the new guest could also have been helped by making membranes barriers, Gould, Garg and Martin add. After the alphaproteobacterium arrived, bits of its DNA would have mixed with the genome of the archaeal host, interrupting important genes. Fixing this would mean evolving machinery to splice out these foreign pieces — today they’re known as introns — from the messenger RNA copies of genes, so those protein-making instructions wouldn’t be garbled.<br /><br />But that created yet another problem.<b> The protein-making machinery — the ribosome — works extremely fast, joining several amino acids together per second</b>. In contrast, the intron-removing system of the cell is slow, snipping out about one intron per minute. So <b>unless the cell could keep the mRNA away from ribosomes until the mRNA was properly processed, the cell would produce many nonsensical, useless proteins.<br /></b><br /><b>The membrane surrounding the nucleus provided an answer. Serving as a spatial barrier, it allows mRNA splicing to finish up in the nucleus before the intron-free mRNA is translated in the cell’s internal fluid, the cytosol.</b> “This is the selective pressure behind the origin of the nucleus,” Martin says. To form it, vesicles secreted by the endosymbiont would have flattened and wrapped around the genome, creating a barrier to keep ribosomes out but still allowing small molecules to pass freely.<br /><br /><b>An inside-out explanation<br /></b><br />In short, Gould, Garg and Martin’s hypothesis explains why endomembrane compartments evolved: to solve problems created by the new guest. <b>But it doesn’t fully explain how the alphaproteobacterium got inside the host to begin with,</b> says cell biologist Gautam Dey at EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany; <b>it assumes the endosymbiont is already inside. “This is a massive problem,” Dey says.</b><br /><br />An alternative idea, proposed in 2014 by cell biologist Buzz Baum of University College London (with whom Dey once worked) and his cousin, University of Wisconsin evolutionary biologist David Baum, is the “inside-out” model. In this scenario, the <b>alphaproteobacterium and the archaeal cell destined to be its eventual host would have lived side by side for millions of years in an intimate symbiosis, each depending on the other’s metabolic products.</b><br /><br /><i><b>The archaeal cell would have had long protrusions, as seen on some modern-day archaea that live in close association with other microbes. The alphaproteobacterium would have nestled up against these slender extension</b></i>s.<br /><br /><b>Eventually, the protrusions would have wrapped around the alphaproteobacterium and enclosed it completely.</b> But during the long stretch of time before that happened, the archaeal cell would have begun some spatial division of labor: It would keep information-processing jobs in its center, where the genome was, while functions like protein building would take place in the cytosol within the protrusions.<br /><br /><b>The power of the inside-out model, Buzz Baum says, is that it gives the cell eons of time, before the alphaproteobacterium becomes fully enclosed, to evolve ways to regulate the number and size of the mitochondrion and other membrane compartments that would eventually become fully internal</b>. “Until you can regulate them, you’re dead,” Buzz Baum says.<br /><br />The model also explains why the nucleus has the shape that it does; in particular, it provides an explanation for its unusually large pores. Viewed from inside the center of an archaeal cell, the long protrusions would be openings that could naturally become big pores like those, Baum says.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>Most important, the inside-out model explains how the alphaproteobacterium would have gotten inside the archaeal host in the first place.<br /></b><br />Still, the inside-out model has features it needs to explain. For example, the mitochondrion would end up in the wrong place — inside the endoplasmic reticulum, the network of tubes on which sit the cell’s protein-making ribosomes, as the archaeal protrusions wrapped around it. And so an additional step would be required to get the alphaproteobacterium into the cytoplasm.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>But Martin’s main objection is that the inside-out model does not provide an evolutionary pressure that would have caused the nucleus or other membrane-bound compartments to arise in the first place.</b> The inside-out model “is upside-down and backwards,” Martin says.<br /><br /><b>The nucleus: A riddle in the middle</b><br /><br />Though the models agree that the mitochondrion evolved from an alphaproteobacterium, they have very different ideas about the origin of the nucleus and other organelles.<br /><br />In the Gould, Garg and Martin model, the source for all of the structures would have been vesicles released by the evolving mitochondrion. Vesicles to contain reactive chemicals or cellular cargo, and the ability to move this cargo around, would have evolved very early. The nucleus would have come later.<br /><br /><b>In the inside-out model, the nucleus was, essentially, the remains of the archaeal cell after it wrapped its membranes around the alphaproteobacterium.</b> So it would have appeared immediately. The endoplasmic reticulum also would have formed early, created from those squished-together protrusions. Other organelles would have come later — arising, Buzz Baum says, from buds of archaeal membrane.<br /><br />Thus the models also make different predictions about the chemical nature of the membranes of cell organelles — at least originally — and how <b>today’s complex cells came to have membrane lipids that are all chemically like the ones in bacteria, not archaea.<br /></b><br />In the Gould, Garg and Martin model, in the beginning all the membranes except for the host cell’s outermost one would have been bacterial, like the membranes of the new resident. Then, as bacterial vesicles fused with this archaeal outer membrane, the bacterial lipids would slowly replace the archaeal ones.<br /><br />In the inside-out model, the membranes of the nucleus and endoplasmic reticulum — and probably others — would have been archaeal, like the host, to start. Only later on, after genes from the bacterial genome moved over to the archaeal genome, would the lipids become bacterial in nature, Baum suggests.<br /><br />How to test these ideas? Through experiments, cell biologists are starting to glimpse ways in which simple vesicles could have diversified into different organelles with distinct jobs — by taking on different shapes, like the layered membrane stacks of the modern endoplasmic reticulum or the Golgi body, or by ending up with different proteins inside them or on their membranes.<br /><br />They are also highlighting the dynamism of the modern-day mitochondrion — and its potential to spawn new membrane structures.</span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhekjiJCGJalCQmWCRsJPg0oVFXG76-RIX9C9kjQ1NS3Pw2LlO8Z5-24ABAAsB_jVLmAQSgOd0ybY3UM1U7yB2vrjNe7AH-nbF9tY74PbvWCL9DY09uqDcFEiYwWbDeEcfdl79NgUoBDDEEWP9UMwRvfcYdFdoqfUYGi3f-rM8R-JMLF4gNr07pPYA3VpZU/s1024/cell%20interior.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhekjiJCGJalCQmWCRsJPg0oVFXG76-RIX9C9kjQ1NS3Pw2LlO8Z5-24ABAAsB_jVLmAQSgOd0ybY3UM1U7yB2vrjNe7AH-nbF9tY74PbvWCL9DY09uqDcFEiYwWbDeEcfdl79NgUoBDDEEWP9UMwRvfcYdFdoqfUYGi3f-rM8R-JMLF4gNr07pPYA3VpZU/w400-h266/cell%20interior.png" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />Take, for example, the compartment that Speijer thinks evolved early in order to deal with reactive oxygen species: the peroxisome.</span></p><p><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span class="hgKElc"><b>Peroxisomes are organelles that</b> <b>sequester
diverse oxidative reactions and play important roles in metabolism,
reactive oxygen species detoxification, and signaling</b>. Oxidative pathways housed in peroxisomes include fatty acid β-oxidation</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">It may never be possible to know for sure what happened such a very long
time ago. But by exploring what can happen in today’s living bacterial,
archaeal and eukaryotic cells, scientists can get more clarity on what
was possible — and even probable. <b>A cell moves into another cell,
bringing benefits but also problems, setting off a complex cascade. And
then, McBride says, “all this stuff blooms and blossoms.”</b></span><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><a href="https://knowablemagazine.org/article/living-world/2023/how-endomembrane-system-of-eukaryotic-cells-evolved?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://knowablemagazine.org/article/living-world/2023/how-endomembrane-system-of-eukaryotic-cells-evolved?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br /><br />*<br /><b>HOW MICROBIOMES AFFECT FEAR</b><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtgi-Wa2KIQxO9A4HVImZmtkihIECRdVaRi31ykwHqgsup3ybsMSD3n4YV1hNGA-XJLLwcXvhVznulFnsw8ETdXWfaKaFsgmoHHVT8MsfEGO8BAO5aoGvG9aaR5Byeg2wjAhulje2Jgotf8_7wYN_KSwpYE4ywtxdlmYxMET2V_KEf-r2Y4XkwCHQY3bCG/s960/microbiome%20pink%20green.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtgi-Wa2KIQxO9A4HVImZmtkihIECRdVaRi31ykwHqgsup3ybsMSD3n4YV1hNGA-XJLLwcXvhVznulFnsw8ETdXWfaKaFsgmoHHVT8MsfEGO8BAO5aoGvG9aaR5Byeg2wjAhulje2Jgotf8_7wYN_KSwpYE4ywtxdlmYxMET2V_KEf-r2Y4XkwCHQY3bCG/w400-h225/microbiome%20pink%20green.webp" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Researchers are finding evidence that microbiomes can influence the fear responses of their hosts, possibly by releasing compounds that affect the brain’s neuroanatomy and function.<br />Our brains may seem physically far removed from our guts, but in recent years, research has strongly suggested that the vast communities of microbes concentrated in our digestive tract open lines of communication between the two. <b>The intestinal microbiome has been shown to influence cognition and emotion, affecting moods and the state of psychiatric disorders, and even information processing.</b> But how it could do so has been elusive.<br /><br />Until recently, studies of the gut-brain relationship have mostly shown only correlations between the state of the microbiome and operations in the brain. But new findings are digging deeper, building on research that demonstrates the microbiome’s involvement in responses to stress. Focusing on fear, and specifically on how fear fades over time, researchers have now tracked how behavior differs in mice with diminished microbiomes. <br /><br />They identified differences in cell wiring, brain activity and gene expression, and they pinpointed <b>a brief window after birth when restoring the microbiome could still prevent the adult behavioral deficits.</b> They even tracked four particular compounds that may help to account for these changes. While it may be too early to predict what therapies could arise once we understand this relationship between the microbiome and the brain, these concrete differences substantiate the theory that <b>the two systems are deeply entwined.<br /></b><br />Coco Chu, the new study’s lead author and a postdoctoral associate at Weill Cornell Medicine, was intrigued by the concept that <b>microbes inhabiting our bodies could affect both our feelings and our actions. </b>Several years ago, she set out to examine these interactions in fine-grained detail with the help of psychiatrists, microbiologists, immunologists and scientists from other fields.<br /><br />The researchers performed classical behavioral training on mice, some of which had been given antibiotics to dramatically diminish their microbiomes and some of which had been raised in isolation so that they had no microbiome at all. All the mice learned equally well to fear the sound of a tone that was followed by an electric shock. <b>When the scientists discontinued the shocks, the ordinary mice gradually learned not to fear the sound. But in the mice with depleted or nonexistent microbiomes, the fear persisted — they remained more likely to freeze at the sound of the tone than the untreated mice did.</b><br /><br />Peering inside the medial prefrontal cortex, an area of the outer brain that processes fear responses, the researchers noticed <b>distinct differences in the mice with impoverished microbiomes: some genes were expressed less. One type of glial cell never developed properly. Spiny protrusions on the neurons associated with learning grew less plentifully and were eliminated more often. One type of cell showed lower levels of neural activity.</b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b> It’s as if the mice without healthy microbiomes couldn’t learn to be unafraid, and the researchers could see it on a cellular level.</b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br />The researchers also set out to learn how the condition of the microbiome in the gut caused these changes. One possibility was that microbes send signals to the brain through the long vagus nerve, which carries sensations from the digestive tract to the brain stem. But snipping the vagus didn’t alter the behavior of the mice. It also seemed possible that the microbiomes might stir up responses in the immune system that affect the brain, but the numbers and proportions of immune cells in all the mice were similar.<br /><br />But <b>the researchers did pinpoint four metabolic compounds with neurological effects that were far less common in the blood serum, cerebrospinal fluid and stool of the mice with impaired microbiomes. </b>Some of the compounds were already linked to neurological disorders in humans. The team speculated that the microbiome might produce certain substances in abundance, with some molecules making their way into the brain, according to the microbiologist David Artis, the director of the Jill Roberts Institute for Research in Inflammatory Bowel Disease at Weill Cornell Medicine and the senior author on the study.<br /><i></i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimxfnwby_en5weCwAlDGOG9EnXKf_rVsdxPvDpsBQSZnphgCvhEkJ1PPOaaVXiTFQqlHSq4bkKuv4G6BXR62vzCrt15uzEVha3UWadnsA7haSFganR4b2WQZbff-FMGM-mZozIILhcK7C8WDz0JVVG_6EM2cjUMJAGgjH8erilaQosrg4hflEf9IutHOiq/s1000/medial%20prefrontal%20cortex.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1000" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimxfnwby_en5weCwAlDGOG9EnXKf_rVsdxPvDpsBQSZnphgCvhEkJ1PPOaaVXiTFQqlHSq4bkKuv4G6BXR62vzCrt15uzEVha3UWadnsA7haSFganR4b2WQZbff-FMGM-mZozIILhcK7C8WDz0JVVG_6EM2cjUMJAGgjH8erilaQosrg4hflEf9IutHOiq/w400-h300/medial%20prefrontal%20cortex.jpg" width="400" /></a></i></div><i>the medial prefrontal cortex<br /></i><br /><b>The medial prefrontal cortex, an area near the front of the brain, is important in the extinction, or “unlearning,” of fear responses. In this micrograph of the region, neurons appear green and microglial cells are red. </b>Researchers found abnormalities in these cells in mice that had depleted microbiomes.<br /><br />In many laboratories, <b>there’s a growing interest in tracking specific bacterial substances that are involved in nervous system signaling</b>, said Melanie Gareau, an associate professor of anatomy, physiology and cell biology at the University of California, Davis. Numerous metabolites and pathways are probably involved in such processes.<br /><br /><b>Research on other disorders like depression has also pointed to the involvement of particular compounds created by microbes, but there’s still no consensus on which ones contribute to any condition</b>, said Emeran Mayer, a professor of medicine and director of the G. Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience at the University of California, Los Angeles. And although the intestinal microbiome is clearly altered in many people with brain conditions, it’s often unclear if that change is a cause or an effect, he said. <b>Differences in the microbiome might give rise to neurological problems, but the conditions could also change the microbiome.</b><br /><br />There’s disagreement within the field not just about the consequences of diseased microbiomes, but also about healthy ones. “For a long time, we’ve been focused on this idea that we could identify specific types of bacteria that provide either risk or resilience to stress-related disorders, and it may be that it doesn’t have to be a particular microbe,” Lowry said. <b>Even in healthy people, microbiomes vary widely. Particular microbes might not matter if a microbiome has enough diversity</b> — just as there are many kinds of thriving forests, and one individual type of tree may not be necessary.<br /><br />Still, the study of microbial effects on the nervous system is a young field, and there is even uncertainty around what the effects are. Previous experiments reached inconsistent or contradictory conclusions about whether microbiome changes helped animals to unlearn fear responses. What gives extra weight to the findings from Chu and her colleagues is that they can point to evidence for a specific mechanism causing the behavior they observed. <p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Animal studies like this one are especially helpful in cementing <b>a clear connection between the nervous system and the microbiome</b>, even if they don’t point to treatments for humans, said Kirsten Tillisch, a professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “The way that humans process emotion, physical sensation and cognition in the brain is just so different than in animals that it’s just very difficult to translate,” she said.<br /><br />In theory, <b>the presence of certain microbial substances might help predict who is most vulnerable to disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder</b>. Experiments like these could even identify pathways of communication between the brain and the microbiome that could be targeted by treatments. “That’s always the big hope from these mouse experiments, that we’re getting close to interventions,” Mayer said, and the studies often generate striking results through rigorous methods. But the operations of the human brain aren’t fully reflected in mice. Moreover, <b>the interactions of the brain and the gut microbiome differ in humans and mice, and diet-driven differences between their respective microbiomes add to the disparity.</b><br /><br /><b>For humans, interventions targeting the microbiome might be most effective in infancy and childhood, when the microbiome is still developing and early programming takes place in the brain</b>, Mayer said. In this new research, the scientists saw a specific window of time in infancy when mice needed a typical microbiome to extinguish fear normally when they grew up.<b> Mice that were totally isolated from microbes for their first three weeks were then mixed in with mice that had typical microbiomes. The germ-free mice picked up the microbes of the other mice and developed rich microbiomes, but when they grew up and went through the same fear unlearning experiments, they still showed deficits. At only a few weeks old, they were already too old to learn to extinguish their fear normally.</b><br /><br />But when microbiomes were restored in newborn mice, who gained rich microbiomes after they were placed with foster parents, the infant mice grew up to behave normally. In the first few weeks after birth, the microbiome appeared to be critical — an insight that fits smoothly into the larger idea that circuits governing fear sensitivity are impressionable during early life, Tillisch said.<br /><br />The kind of fear unlearning that the researchers tested is a fundamental skill in an evolutionary sense, Artis said. Knowing what merits fear and adapting when it no longer poses a threat can be crucial to survival.<b> An inability to extinguish fear is also present in PTSD and tied to other brain disorders, so deepening scientific knowledge around the mechanisms that influence this circuitry could illuminate core human behaviors and pave the way for potential therapies.</b><br /><br />On an evolutionary timescale, human microbiomes have changed as more people have come to live in cities, and brain disorders have become increasingly prominent. The swarms of microbes inhabiting each of us have evolved with our species, and it’s vital that we understand how they impact both physical and mental health, Lowry said. <b>Our environments may affect our nervous systems by way of the microbiome, adding new layers of complexity to the study of health and disease in the brain.</b><br /><br /><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-microbiomes-affect-fear-20191204/">https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-microbiomes-affect-fear-20191204/<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>IS THERE A NATURAL WAY TO IMITATE THE EFFECTS OF OZEMPIC?<br /></b><br />~ While reading study after study about Wevgovy and Ozempic, I learned that the drug mimics a hormone that our bodies naturally make when we're eating food. It's called GLP-1. This made me wonder: Could we increase levels of this hormone by changing our diet?<br /><br />Turns out, the answer is yes – <b>you can increase your body's production of GLP-1 with your diet, says Frank Duca, who studies metabolic diseases at the University of Arizona. One of the key foods that triggers its release is a food most Americans struggle to eat enough of, even though it comes with a cornucopia of health benefits. Yup, I'm talking about fiber.</b><br /><br />"Whenever my family finds out that I'm studying obesity or diabetes, they say, 'Oh, what's the wonder drug? What do I need to take? What do I need to do?'" Duca explains. <b>"And I say, 'Eat more fiber.'"</b></span><br /></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">But here's the hitch. Not all fiber works the same way. Duca and other researchers are beginning to show that <b>particular types of fibers are more potent at triggering GLP-1 release and at regulating hunger than others.</b> "We're seeing now that companies are adding fiber to foods, but a lot of the time, they don't add the kind of fiber that's super beneficial for you," Duca says.<br /><br /><b>How GLP-1 helps flip hunger into satisfaction<br /></b><br />To understand why fiber is so important for producing GLP-1, let's look at what happens when you don't eat much fiber. Let's say you wake up in the morning feeling hungry and you eat two slices of white bread and a fried egg. As the digested food moves into the small intestine, many of the nutrients, such as the carbohydrates, fats and amino acids, trigger an avalanche of activity in your blood and brain.<br /><br /><b>"The food activates cells in your intestine, which then release a ton of hormones," says Sinju Sundaresan, who's a gut physiologist at Midwestern University. </b></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>About 20 of these hormones, including GLP-1, are known as satiation hormones.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>"They tell your body to start absorption, and to suppress your hunger signals," Sundaresan says. So you slow down eating and eventually stop because you feel satisfied.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b><br />At this point, GLP-1 kicks into action. It stimulates the release of insulin and slows down how quickly the bread and egg moves from your stomach into the intestine. So you don't use up the fuel all at once, says Gary Schwartz, who studies the neuroscience of eating and appetite at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.<br /><br />GLP-1 also likely activates neural circuitry inside the brain by turning on nerves inside the lining of your gut. "These neurons collect information from the gut, and then signal all the way to the brain stem, where you find another signaling pathway for GLP-1," Schwartz explains.<br /><br /><b>But GLP-1's actions are extremely fast.</b> "Once the hormone hits the blood, it begins to be degraded," says integrated physiologist Darleen Sandoval, at the University of Colorado, who has studied GLP-1 for more than a decade. "By the time GLP-1 gets to the heart and the rest of the circulation, there's very little of it left," she says.<br /><br />And so an hour or two after eating this no-fiber breakfast [eggs and white bread], GLP-1 levels in your blood plummet. And when lunch rolls around, you're hungry again.<br /><br /><b>This is where GLP-1 differs substantially from semaglutide, the active ingredient in weight-loss drugs. GLP-1 sticks around in the blood for only a few minutes, but semaglutide persists for days. </b>And this stability allows the drug to go into the brain, where it squelches appetite and cravings directly, says Sandoval. That's why people on these drugs lose so much weight. "In mice or rats, we can give naturally occurring GLP-1 directly into the animals' brains, and it stops them from eating," Sandoval says.<br /><br />But, back to our breakfast scenarios: What if, instead of eating white bread, you had two slices of high-fiber rye bread, with about 8 to 10 grams of fiber in them? Turns out, <b>adding that hefty portion of fiber adds another opportunity for your intestine to release GLP-1, many hours after the meal.</b><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Satiation hormones last longer after eating fiber<br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><b>Our bodies don't have the capacity to break down fiber. So it moves through our small intestines largely unchanged, and eventually – approximately 4 to 10 hours after a meal – reaches our colons.</b><br /><br /><b>Here, inside the large intestine, the fiber meets a whole crew of microbes that can digest the fiber. Bacteria in your large intestine can break down certain dietary fibers into smaller molecules. And these smaller molecules can trigger the release of not only GLP-1, but also another key hormone that decreases your appetite, called PYY (peptide YY).</b> These smaller molecules also can suppress appetite on their own, and have been linked to lower body weight and better glucose regulation.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>Since this extra boost of GLP-1 and PYY occurs hours after you eat, it can tamp down cravings between meals and even the overall desire to eat the next meal.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> "PPY regulates satiety – that is how long you wait between meals," says the University of Arizona's Frank Duca. "<b>The release of PYY, in addition to the GLP-1, can increase the length of time between meals</b>," he says.<br /><br /><b>These hormones may even influence how much you eat at the next meal. "This is what's called a second meal effect," says Edward Deehan</b>, a nutritional microbiologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "If you eat a lot of fiber at one meal, by the time it's in your colon, it's around the time of your next meal. So you may have improved insulin responses and improved satiety or a feeling of fullness," Deehan says.<br /><br />But, not all fiber is equal: To get this extra boost of satiation hormones,<b> you need to eat fiber that bacteria can digest. These fibers are called fermentable because bacteria literally ferment them, in a similar way that yeast ferments barley into beer.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwxot4O-2BKsWD27Jc6zLFs1Tam0kHgKN8IEpxbvE2owLF-B-4X3rsgRfCD_bxkA3CDFcTJgmawiGSQHQ-dy3HVIFBFyBgyuyxH0cvRTfPMZY56dlZkf7Io5hyrPZfn0EmbJsKksFcw4VmVKQOzl1GwQLfkNaxqCSfLShWz2ryGpvRBrZmdfSLJWFo3KMH/s1260/asparagus%20oligofructose.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="840" data-original-width="1260" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwxot4O-2BKsWD27Jc6zLFs1Tam0kHgKN8IEpxbvE2owLF-B-4X3rsgRfCD_bxkA3CDFcTJgmawiGSQHQ-dy3HVIFBFyBgyuyxH0cvRTfPMZY56dlZkf7Io5hyrPZfn0EmbJsKksFcw4VmVKQOzl1GwQLfkNaxqCSfLShWz2ryGpvRBrZmdfSLJWFo3KMH/w400-h266/asparagus%20oligofructose.webp" width="400" /></a></b></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Aparagus is a good source of oligofructose</i><br /> <br />Scientists, such as Duca, have just started trying to figure out which fermentable fibers may be best at suppressing appetite and inducing weight-loss. "So the agricultural community in the U.S. could prioritize the growing of grains with these fibers," he explains.<br /><br />In one preliminary study with mice, Duca and his colleagues found that a fiber in barley, called <b>beta-glucan, induced the most weight loss in obese animals.</b> "At face value and, at least in our settings, it was only beta-glucan that was effective," he says.<br /><br />Beta-glucan is also found in oats and rye, mushrooms and algae. And indeed, studies with people have found that <b>beta-glucan fiber may improve insulin sensitivity, lower blood pressure and increase satiation between meals.</b><br /><br />Other fermentable fibers include <b>dextrin</b> in wheat, potatoes, corn, and rice, <b>oligosaccharides</b> in beans, peas and lentils, and <b>pectin in apples, pears and green bananas.<br /></b><br />If your diet currently doesn't include much fiber, Duca says, don't worry too much about which fiber you start adding. "Just being aware of how much fiber you're eating and increasing it, that's a huge step to improving your health," he says. "Then once you get into the habit of eating more fiber, you can be more specific about adding more beta glucan and barley.”<br /><br />But beware of processed foods that claim to have fiber added to them, Duca says. "Companies are hearing that they need to increase the fiber in their foods, but then a lot of times, they're adding fiber that isn't super beneficial for you," he says. "It's the type of fiber that just passes right through you, without triggering the release of any hormones.” ~</span><p></p><p><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;">~ </span><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en" style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><span class="hgKElc"><b>Most fermentable fibers are soluble</b>,
but there are also some insoluble fibers that can function in this way.
<b> Fermentable fibers include pectins, beta-glucans, guar gum, inulin and
oligofructose. The best whole-food sources of fermentable fibers are
beans and legumes</b>. ~</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3iEke4M3lyqxnXAwBy6E4pnQEcqlVSGSHtbvbtSy3Hcslhhvw64HmSk2Ql9y8q2xAYdZxn3QGtIjfrzbM1d4hbDKgSOjvRsG3eYMH3R7ebYAno1Kr9Tmlxgyyr5K_IK3LYh6LB4r8ZLYigrCKOC_ipBt_RjS0B8tS1IU_AwNpRHnP-C5Uu1mYzHZSBx0A/s2121/beans%20variety.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1414" data-original-width="2121" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3iEke4M3lyqxnXAwBy6E4pnQEcqlVSGSHtbvbtSy3Hcslhhvw64HmSk2Ql9y8q2xAYdZxn3QGtIjfrzbM1d4hbDKgSOjvRsG3eYMH3R7ebYAno1Kr9Tmlxgyyr5K_IK3LYh6LB4r8ZLYigrCKOC_ipBt_RjS0B8tS1IU_AwNpRHnP-C5Uu1mYzHZSBx0A/w400-h266/beans%20variety.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/10/30/1208883691/diet-ozempic-wegovy-weight-loss-fiber-glp-1-diabetes-barley">https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/10/30/1208883691/diet-ozempic-wegovy-weight-loss-fiber-glp-1-diabetes-barley</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">What I have found effective in causing satiation is not so much fiber, with its unpleasant side effects such as that bloated feeling, as healthy fats. If I add olive oil or MCT oil to the meal, I can go for many hours without eating. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Still, it's important to eat enough fiber. We have go feed our friendly bacteria. Be good to your bacteria, and they'll be good to you. <br /><br />*<br /><b><i>ending on beauty:</i></b><br /><br />A single rose is all the roses<br />and this one—the irreplaceable one,<br />the perfect one — a supple spoken word<br />framed by the text of things.<br /><br />How could we ever speak without her<br />of what our hopes used to be,<br />and of the tender moments<br />in the continual departure.<br /><br />~ Rilke, from The Late French Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke tr. by David Need<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnllLQPOB9QZCalTchKvpukZL0Dt031Tw94Q5tItUsDffkk9L60ppcIGVG5ELEWLKPLT3M2axJvEhNIXb5k1ga6b1m_RfCzNiw7cGq3pSCPRrbSlrnogSuxfMiJao_vyfj59o3UHFLViUkqQRgxaeE8yq0F-RLDG8KRhEIOKyibVWWPJoHgNkixnH3892u/s2048/rose%20pale%20pink.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1592" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnllLQPOB9QZCalTchKvpukZL0Dt031Tw94Q5tItUsDffkk9L60ppcIGVG5ELEWLKPLT3M2axJvEhNIXb5k1ga6b1m_RfCzNiw7cGq3pSCPRrbSlrnogSuxfMiJao_vyfj59o3UHFLViUkqQRgxaeE8yq0F-RLDG8KRhEIOKyibVWWPJoHgNkixnH3892u/w311-h400/rose%20pale%20pink.jpg" width="311" /></a></i></b></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /><br /> </span><br /><br /><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-83621624523501795582023-10-28T16:43:00.006-07:002023-11-02T16:27:02.342-07:00AUGUSTUS AND THE BIRTH OF THE WEST; HAMAS' TUNNELS; HUNGARIAN UPRISING 1956; FRANCE AND WORLD WAR 2; WHY THE SOVIET UNION LET THE EMPIRE FALL; FRUCTOSE AS THE MAIN DRIVER OF OBESITY; BERBERINE PROTECTS AGAINST DEMENTIA<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3XGnZsk-y_xW60mD53Tej7Vh8gnghw1TtQ3_en-Djm8W2l9LKSO6gWFE4pRkdJbQViAZ1Js9O3jPPL-btAxi9AfiXeqX-Z4WRrCW7WQMomCTj1cB3VFS5TpE1hOnrj1gXv0fvXL_dLnZXw_nNoQoL-Dk4aPuyNw3IyDjHNBK7_nURqv0wmre3vyZhBAna/s1286/railroad%20tracks%20lightning.jpg" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1286" data-original-width="965" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3XGnZsk-y_xW60mD53Tej7Vh8gnghw1TtQ3_en-Djm8W2l9LKSO6gWFE4pRkdJbQViAZ1Js9O3jPPL-btAxi9AfiXeqX-Z4WRrCW7WQMomCTj1cB3VFS5TpE1hOnrj1gXv0fvXL_dLnZXw_nNoQoL-Dk4aPuyNw3IyDjHNBK7_nURqv0wmre3vyZhBAna/w300-h400/railroad%20tracks%20lightning.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>@kbrown: Untitled, 2023</i><br /><br />*<br />THE OTHER ONE<br /><br />We meet between no and yes.<br />She has my voice, my face,<br />my shadow interrupting<br />moon-shadow of the blinds.<br /><br />My dreams belong to her, <br />the one who stayed behind —<br />who’ll ride red Warsaw streetcars<br />for the rest of my life.<br /><br />The one who married someone else,<br />the one who had a child —<br />the one who said,<br />Why should I sacrifice for art?<br /><br />She’s been to China <br />and the Himalayas; divorced <br />a linguist, met a shaman;<br />raised a red-haired son. <br /><br />I show her my rejection slips, <br />petals from flowers of despair; <br />ghost children hug me <br />with their unborn arms.<br /><br />On sleepless nights we hold<br />our separate ceremonies of regret.<br />If only we could slip <br />into each other’s lives,<br /><br />and close the blinds —<br />But she’d find my<br />staring at the wall, fine-tuning<br />words, no life at all —<br /><br />she’d rather bathe a baby,<br />soap the slippery small body.<br />On milky California mornings <br />I read and scribble,<br /><br />sipping hot cocoa as in childhood; <br />she rushes about the kitchen<br />before going to work — <br />suddenly stops, unravels in hoarse sobs.<br /><br />Mostly we walk the opposite way,<br />wearing our choices <br />like a coat of fog.<br />I’d like to stop her, give her <br /><br />the black silk rose from Antonina’s hat, <br />our great-grandmother —<br />iron lips of a general, the burning<br />eyes of a heretic or saint.<br /><br />Will we ever sit together,<br />I and I, my other one?<br />When will we speak at last<br />of all that hasn’t happened?<br /><br />But she’s more and more <br />difficult to see, a figure in the crowd, <br />her footsteps’ decaying echoes<br />on the other side of time. <br /><br />~ Oriana<br /><br />*</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mary:</span></span></p><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Aren't we all "wearing our choices/like a coat of fog"? Each life shaped by a long chain of choices probably just as important as genes and environment and experience... all intimately intertwined so closely it is almost impossible to tease out an individual thread. I believe just as in the individual life, the movement of history itself plays out between the macrocosm of events and great forces, punctuated at times by the existence and actions of individuals...sometimes extraordinary, sometimes not...</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;"> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;">The key is to be there at the instant of ripeness and opportunity, where an individual act can "tip the scales" and influence the movement of history. That individual may be a great general, or an abysmal one, a hero or an assassin..a traitor, .or someone, like Zelenskyy, who goes against all expectations and chooses ammunition rather than escape.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;"> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Oriana:</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;"> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;">The contrast between Zelensky, staying to fight for his country's freedom, and Putin, using body doubles and an armored train, as well as a series of bunkers with offices made to look as if he's addressing the country from Moscow, could hardly be greater. We need not wait for the verdict of history, or even the outcome of this war. It's already obvious who is the hero and who the coward. <br /></span></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvEam77mHjAgSp1VzgLMUZn8TuCFrKs32wccdgqzZq0_IBHKj0v2QbdKNJkl-TwpcN3KUWLpQeP885u3eNrPvJFPnyF9DTASCACEuAbBCK0zNWfREeeqMAdtohB0grpuF0bzYhZ97bPefn67vK9MpmfM8KEe5Z_p_nvTFb5fo8Dl-DQ2eu2Ad7iXRhsf9P/s736/Madame%20Bovary%20she%20wanted%20to%20die%20but.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="736" data-original-width="736" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvEam77mHjAgSp1VzgLMUZn8TuCFrKs32wccdgqzZq0_IBHKj0v2QbdKNJkl-TwpcN3KUWLpQeP885u3eNrPvJFPnyF9DTASCACEuAbBCK0zNWfREeeqMAdtohB0grpuF0bzYhZ97bPefn67vK9MpmfM8KEe5Z_p_nvTFb5fo8Dl-DQ2eu2Ad7iXRhsf9P/s320/Madame%20Bovary%20she%20wanted%20to%20die%20but.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">One manifestation of the human condition. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I had a dear friend whose dream was to live in Coronado, a beautiful "old money" part of San Diego. And oddly enough the old electrical wiring made her house unsafe, and while rebuilding was going on, thanks to insurance she was able to live for some months in a bright, spacious apartment in Coronado. True, eventually she had to move back to her updated house in National City, a very modest (to put it gently) neighborhood -- but having finally experienced her dream. <br /><br />*</span><br /></span></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGN1IgP7KFx4RW8aqU9GLrUiKyfQhLLUq6bBXuK7vJcStA5-ikuo2mXZgjUIjRfGeoPu_cKGiogn4-2hiyzw0KEMCkwX6Y1VNxm7fqX3bUfKu9BTI1c5Dl7n28om0xvkMyNYVH94emsQ6YD6sV2Lx2pdounYj4XDBTaJyKVKd5liQfisp-06CjgqpZmiQG/s1050/JOAN%20DIDION%20young.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="548" data-original-width="1050" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGN1IgP7KFx4RW8aqU9GLrUiKyfQhLLUq6bBXuK7vJcStA5-ikuo2mXZgjUIjRfGeoPu_cKGiogn4-2hiyzw0KEMCkwX6Y1VNxm7fqX3bUfKu9BTI1c5Dl7n28om0xvkMyNYVH94emsQ6YD6sV2Lx2pdounYj4XDBTaJyKVKd5liQfisp-06CjgqpZmiQG/w400-h209/JOAN%20DIDION%20young.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />“It was for decay that man was born. We are not ideal savage creatures. We are mortal and imperfect beings conscious of mortality, even though we keep pushing it forward, which ends up not working due to our own complications.<br /><br />When we mourn our losses, we become so saddened, that we cry, for better or for worse, also for ourselves. For what we were. For what we are no longer. For one day we'll be nothing.”<br /><br />~ Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking<br /></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3wDpGwncxuIZAMznO61oiZM1_DEiPzTgaxd-dNuBHlfZ8q6LH0Z6gGVcfZs5icGL0JBKebU7hk-vG1WrYUpoafXza7QbByTQ93pKHkYR_Gr-v44mvC4L3twWJ6NcCIOIQ_4sz2g1k9mcTyfYmplwfvMza0UpDqgqLSqj3egXFEJ45GLpx2H2v4W1eeWLA/s1425/JOAN%20DIDION%20emaciated.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1425" data-original-width="1140" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3wDpGwncxuIZAMznO61oiZM1_DEiPzTgaxd-dNuBHlfZ8q6LH0Z6gGVcfZs5icGL0JBKebU7hk-vG1WrYUpoafXza7QbByTQ93pKHkYR_Gr-v44mvC4L3twWJ6NcCIOIQ_4sz2g1k9mcTyfYmplwfvMza0UpDqgqLSqj3egXFEJ45GLpx2H2v4W1eeWLA/w320-h400/JOAN%20DIDION%20emaciated.webp" width="320" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>AUGUSTUS AND THE BIRTH OF THE WEST<br /></b><br />~ While the works of Alexander the Great and Napoleon disappeared with their exit from the stage of history, and where George Washington and Winston Churchill worked on a smaller canvas, Imperator Caesar Divi Filius <b>Augustus created and dominated a political system that set the Western world on its path for the succeeding two thousand years.</b> In forgetting the death of Rome’s first emperor and ignoring his legacy, Americans continue to impoverish their understanding of the world they now bestride.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuWOre5-ZPWKk8EgjJy2CZ5JY-L4aiTdYkQaI0pJOfMsWGk4Bs7xLfvdqWhjFwc8O1D2BZPtOSeio1e8GUfvVkQAenOEOPnp_GKaQZCKvJYyke4YJUesi-VscKrEqlBrwbZKlnf_X1myU8qX9A3nzzFfMqtnR5juSlf56ngjn2-Nc-2Ltcc98uB2CjC5nU/s1200/augustus%20white%20marble.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="626" data-original-width="1200" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuWOre5-ZPWKk8EgjJy2CZ5JY-L4aiTdYkQaI0pJOfMsWGk4Bs7xLfvdqWhjFwc8O1D2BZPtOSeio1e8GUfvVkQAenOEOPnp_GKaQZCKvJYyke4YJUesi-VscKrEqlBrwbZKlnf_X1myU8qX9A3nzzFfMqtnR5juSlf56ngjn2-Nc-2Ltcc98uB2CjC5nU/w400-h209/augustus%20white%20marble.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">On August 19, 14 A.D. , Augustus died peacefully at the age of seventy-seven, after ruling the Roman Empire and much of the civilized world for forty years. <b>History continues to be fascinated with his uncle and adoptive father, Julius Caesar, but it was Augustus who succeeded where the brilliant Caesar had failed;</b> it was Octavian (as he was then known) who emerged triumphant from the decades of civil war that consumed Republican Rome; it was a frail boy in his teens who first challenged, and then vanquished, some of the greatest names in history: Brutus, Cassius, Mark Antony. <b>His chief political creation, the principate, survived in the western half of the empire for nearly 500 years after his death, and in an altered state for another full millennium in Constantinople, where the eastern Byzantine Empire kept alive many of the forms, cultural patterns, and laws of Rome.<br /></b><br /><b>Two thousand years after his death, the Rome that Augustus built is perhaps more popular than ever. </b>A new generation of historians is publishing gripping histories and biographies of Rome and her greatest figures, including Augustus himself. Mystery novels set in both Republican and imperial Rome fill shelves in bookstores, while, only a few years ago, the lavishly produced Gladiator won the Academy Award for Best Picture. When President George W. Bush launched America into war with Iraq in 2003, a blizzard of opinion pieces, articles, and books questioned whether the United States had become an empire like Rome. Likewise, <b>some see the European Union as only the latest manifestation of a dream to reunite a Europe that has been unnaturally divided since the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 A.D.<br /></b><br />None of that would have happened, and indeed the West itself would not exist as we know it, without Augustus’s extraordinary achievement. Few today know much about his deeds. Perhaps that is due to the fact that <b>his life and actions have been the source of disagreement among classicists for generations. The pre-war British historian Ronald Syme saw Augustus as little more than the thuggish leader of a faction</b>, summing up the sanguinary record of the princeps in his classic The Roman Revolution (1939) thusly: “When a party has triumphed in violence and seized control of the State, it would be plain folly to regard the new government as a collection of amiable and virtuous characters.” </span><br /></span><p></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">On a contrary view, H. H. Scullard, in his survey From the Gracchi to Nero (1959, 1982), s<b>aw Augustus as a savior: “the ruthlessness of youth was replaced by an unshakeable sense of duty . . . ; proceeding by trial and error, he succeeded where a more doctrinaire approach would have led to disaster.”</b> More recently, Anthony Everitt lauded the first emperor as a cautious, moderate, and simple-living man who <b>brought peace and stability to a world wracked by internecine fighting </b>(Augustus, 2006). As happens so often in the case of great figures of history, all these interpreters are right in their assessments of his character.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>What is indisputable is that Augustus created an enduring concept of political stability: a devil’s bargain between security and freedom, where real power was disguised by the trappings of shared authority</b> (in his case, a “restored” republic with a dyarchy between princeps and Senate), and where the interests of state demanded a seriousness and probity of character that remained the ideal long after the reality of imperial licentiousness provided a focus for all subsequent anti-monarchist sensibilities.<br /><br />The magnitude of Augustus’s accomplishment is hard to overstate. By the time young Octavian threw himself into the civil wars, Rome had been wracked for nearly a century by ever-worsening cycles of political conflict. The first political violence that had spilled blood inside Rome in hundreds of years — the killing of the populist tribune Tiberius Gracchus by his political opponents in 133 B.C.— fatally upset the delicate balance among patricians, plebians, the military, Romans, and non-Romans, <b>drawing in ever more groups of antagonists to use public power for personal ends and twist the organs of state to factional use</b>. Many, at the time and after, have decried as a cause of the erosion of republican morals the wealth that poured into Rome from conquest in the East and from the domination of the Mediterranean world that Rome achieved with the destruction of Carthage in the final Punic War that ended in 146 B.C.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49, it seemed as though disorder had become the natural way of things. </b>The Senate had long ceased to be an effective body, and violent factions had taken over public business and corrupted Rome’s actions abroad. <b>The dictator Sulla had foreshadowed Rome’s fate by marching his troops into the city in 88 B.C., thereby legitimizing the use of what were now essentially private armies to settle political disputes. </b>The decline of the citizen army and its transformation into bands loyal to their commander had itself taken shape under the influence of Sulla’s great enemy, Marius, in the previous decades. Thus, in just half a century, from roughly 100–50, Republican Rome’s domestic consensus, political effectiveness, and security structure had degraded beyond repair. A crisis was inevitable.<br /><br /><b>After the Ides of March, the teenaged Octavian figured in no one’s political calculations.</b> Mark Antony was the dominant figure, and Brutus and Cassius retained significant forces. Yet within just a few years, it would be Antony and Octavian fighting for the ultimate supremacy of the Western world. To read of Octavian’s cautious, calculating, and sure moves during the two decades of civil war, leading to his victory at Actium in 31 B.C., is to encounter <b>political genius of the rarest kind</b>. <b>With his indispensable partner, Agrippa, Octavian then did what had escaped even the great Caesar: establish a durable and impregnable political system to capitalize on his military victory. Thus ended both a century of civil war and Rome’s traditional freedoms.</b> To a world desperate for stability, Augustus was accepted as the unquestioned and irreplaceable arbiter of order.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Augustus’s legacy did not stop with politics, for the Rome of our dreams, too, is largely his creation, carried to its ultimate expression by his successors. The world might not still be fascinated with a city of brick had not Augustus left it one of marble, to paraphrase his famous saying. The fora, baths, Colosseum, and palaces of eternal Rome maintained, even enhanced, their spell over men’s imaginations by their ruins, as much as in their pristine prime. Even the anti-monarchical Americans drew legitimacy from Rome’s material forms. <b>Washington, D.C. is modeled more on imperial Rome than Greece, with its Capitol Hill and classic architecture.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Yet even here, Augustus’s achievement is not uncritically praised. <b>The classicist Edith Hamilton, in her Roman Way to Western Civilization (1932), bemoaned the Romans’ materialism and pedestrian pride in the abundance of the things they possessed, seeing it as a fatal flaw in their character.</b> Whereas Athens was the “school of Greece,” in Pericles’ ringing words, Augustus was a mere, if grandiose, property developer, in Hamilton’s view. From there, <b>it was a short step to bread and circuses, the deadening of the human spirit, and the Rome of brutality and oppression, despite the lingering example </b></span></span><span style="color: #800180;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>of the Spartan-like lifestyle of the Western world’s master, an irony no less powerful twenty centuries later.</b><br /></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />Possibly, Rome’s history would have turned out differently, and been far less bloody, with a different set of post-Augustus emperors, perhaps descending from his preferred heir, his nephew Marcellus. Even the majestic Augustus, however, could not cheat Death of his wages of the Julian clan, leaving only an unwanted stepson, Tiberius, to carry on the imperial line. That, however, is to view Rome through a modern sentimental glass, imposing a contemporary sensibility on a race of warriors who had been constantly at battle for centuries by the time <b>Augustus closed the doors of the Temple of Janus after his victory over Mark Antony, thereby symbolizing the end of war.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Little of this would matter to us had Rome not been mistress of the ancient world. <b>Empire is what continues to draw our modern attention: some to praise it, some to bury the concept. </b>Succeeding centuries of war, ethnic cleansing, inquisitions, and the like have made the dream of pax Romana a constant siren’s call, regardless of the brutality that by necessity created the conditions of stability. The idea of global order, of commonwealth and cosmopolitanism, has been a shimmering mirage alike for those who glorify power and those who seek a brotherhood of man.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>The closest successors to Augustus have been the impersonal British and American global hegemonies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which are less concerned with territorial control than with imposing a form of value-inspired international order. </b>The world has benefited as greatly from the largely liberal policies of London and Washington as it did from the rule of the emperors. Trade, development, scholarship, law, even tourism, have all flourished in our past century and a half of international order, just as they did under Rome’s tutelage. Even the three great wars of the twentieth century (if one includes the Cold War) did little to interrupt the progress of pax liberalis.<br /><br /><b>Today, Augustus is perhaps most relevant in light of our struggles to maintain that global order.</b> The idea of empire that he fashioned has become distorted over the centuries to reflect the prejudices of its critics. As the inheritors of a long era of decolonization and national self-determination, our eyes are trained to see Augustus’s kind of order as little more than brute control. Oppression there was, to be sure, but also flexibility and autonomy. <b>There is more similarity between the Roman and American historical experiences of empire than appears on the surface, but also far less than the criticisms of those who simply condemn the use of power abroad.</b> Both powers shared elements of capriciousness—and made disastrous decisions—but both also provided the reality and hope of order that allowed other fruits of human effort to flower.<br /><br />The great struggle today is to settle on what kind of international order is best. <b>Revisionist powers such as Russia and China seek to return to a nineteenth-century model of power politics based on cynicism and grievance. On the other side of the spectrum, those who believe in cooperation and multilateral approaches betake of an idealism that assumes a type of universal rationality and the possibility of change in human nature.</b> Yet Augustus lived through decades in which human nature was revealed at its most base, and in which rationality could be claimed equally by Cicero, in his defense of the traditional Republic, and by Julius Caesar, in his destruction of it. Only Augustus cut the Gordian knot by providing </span></span><span style="color: #800180;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>both order and an illusion of political freedom that nonetheless contained elements of true individual liberty. </b></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">That his successors did not equally maintain the balance does not detract from its revolutionary nature.<br /><br /><b>America today may be the world’s only superpower, but the coming decades look to be more unstable, both at home and abroad, than even the unsettled recent ones. There remains much for us to learn from Augustus’s life and times: from the corrosive effects of faction and governing incompetence to the desperate need for a vision of the future that is both inspiring and also rooted in reality.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Above all, <b>there is the lesson on the </b></span></span><span style="color: #800180;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>eternal need for order</b></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>. Discovering how to achieve it without limiting our own precious freedom would serve as a fitting coda to the last 2,000 years of Western history.</b> The anniversary of Caesar Augustus’s death provides an excuse to look back, so as to understand our future better. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://newcriterion.com/issues/2014/12/augustus-the-birth-of-the-west">https://newcriterion.com/issues/2014/12/augustus-the-birth-of-the-west</a></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdZtEXLx1vFmyWA3kxUoxO-L9FSQEe1RGwbywnV8ydBfcZJSG8PomTmVM4rvXqfgT3Vw54nlfEiTkmZ75eue9wtRp0ZN4mdwTCB4FuBoAJnFkn1Hno8bzD5ATNM7euEay2doIwHCM81C4qZ-cYGSOQdjekPfcW0PbdSR-1pe7lEUXVkacXntO1H0fW8ZUM/s1200/augustus%20roman%20temple.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="690" data-original-width="1200" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdZtEXLx1vFmyWA3kxUoxO-L9FSQEe1RGwbywnV8ydBfcZJSG8PomTmVM4rvXqfgT3Vw54nlfEiTkmZ75eue9wtRp0ZN4mdwTCB4FuBoAJnFkn1Hno8bzD5ATNM7euEay2doIwHCM81C4qZ-cYGSOQdjekPfcW0PbdSR-1pe7lEUXVkacXntO1H0fW8ZUM/w400-h230/augustus%20roman%20temple.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>*<br />HAMAS AND ITS UNDERGROUND CITY</b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">~ Why is Hamas so stressed about the lack of fuel in the Gaza Strip?</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">It is crucial to understand what is happening in Gaza’s underground. This murderous terrorist organization has created <b>an entire city underground with 1300 branched maze-like tunnels, Located 70 meters (230 feet) under the surface with a total length of 500 km (310 miles). </b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">These tunnels are made from the exact concrete that the Western World donated, that was actually meant for schools, hospitals, kindergartens and other civilian infrastructure and services. <b>These tunnels protect high ranked Hamas officials, commanders and 30 thousand terrorists.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now here’s why Hamas is so stressed about the fuel:</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The air to the tunnels is supplied by a ventilation system. The system is operated by fuel powered engines. <b>This is their only source of oxygen. No fuel means no air, no oxygen</b>. If there is no air, it means they have to come out of the tunnels to breathe. Coming out of the tunnels means they will be annihilated by the IDF.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">At the moment, Hamas has stolen all the fuel from UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency] which is meant to be used in hospitals and for refugees. ~ Roro, Quora</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEsH9tuGDoaQuneYas0h0YPasGVSRdTjGlAxpkEfshLm0I8MskCudCaUK6jLr_P3h-ZD-8HhQCJ9nY7wRrdf4tiIIxNxOlY6Mlcclt_eMJBUn9-0Gyz_7w-gfs8yilOIQ2iH9Z1JAfPQo1aIhkvHzwAv7usd-luVSTeulR4teS-jIM04f_EXduHUQFVtFQ/s602/HAMAS%20tunnel.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="602" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEsH9tuGDoaQuneYas0h0YPasGVSRdTjGlAxpkEfshLm0I8MskCudCaUK6jLr_P3h-ZD-8HhQCJ9nY7wRrdf4tiIIxNxOlY6Mlcclt_eMJBUn9-0Gyz_7w-gfs8yilOIQ2iH9Z1JAfPQo1aIhkvHzwAv7usd-luVSTeulR4teS-jIM04f_EXduHUQFVtFQ/w400-h297/HAMAS%20tunnel.webp" width="400" /></a><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Hamas tunnel, part of the "Gaza metro,"</i></span></span></span></span><br /><div class="aj35ze" style="transform: rotateZ(-180deg);"></div><div class="L3Ezfd" data-ved="2ahUKEwj0-uPGppmCAxUuJEQIHXbuAFMQuk56BAhCEAI" style="visibility: hidden;"></div><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc" style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span style="color: #351c75;">an
extensive labyrinth of tunnels built by the Hamas militant group
stretches across the densely populated strip, hiding fighters, their
rocket arsenal and over 200 hostages they now hold (AP).<br /></span></i></span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Tami Stone:<br /><b>The generators are kept underground and the exhaust is diffused to leave no heat signature by the time it reaches the surface.</b> Fuel is also needed to run the cars and trucks they use to sneak their rockets around for launching. Without that ability they will expose themselves lugging rockets around by foot. <br /><br />Donald Rich:<br />No fuel or electricity also means no pumping to remove the water that seeps into the tunnels.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvX_r5fblRR0zL5Xo08jsmuUk3VQxYpTP7g1w83RhXxVY6Nc69Hjo02cOwhHr5HkEqa2LvqRqcJiny1iunmWwNhjLUC_kozy8PKD9cRo6kAsqFNaG8wdcnp94OxRc_J3zzBV4jiQv6D5HRFzfs425izBHtRuxKtxrXdFIUuvsXsYcYOzqeUbAaJa2FOy3l/s922/gaza%20metro%20bluish.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="922" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvX_r5fblRR0zL5Xo08jsmuUk3VQxYpTP7g1w83RhXxVY6Nc69Hjo02cOwhHr5HkEqa2LvqRqcJiny1iunmWwNhjLUC_kozy8PKD9cRo6kAsqFNaG8wdcnp94OxRc_J3zzBV4jiQv6D5HRFzfs425izBHtRuxKtxrXdFIUuvsXsYcYOzqeUbAaJa2FOy3l/w261-h400/gaza%20metro%20bluish.jpg" width="261" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Toro:<br />The deepest tunnels are 70 meters deep. Some are 30 and some less.<br />It is their (Hamas) shelter against the Israeli bunker penetrating bombs. And where most high command centers are placed.<br />Interesting they don’t build shelters for citizens in the same way huh?<br /><br />Joseph Fitzsimmons:<br /><b>And does Hamas let any Gazans into these tunnels to escape Israel’s bombs? Nope.</b><br /><br />Stewart Page:<br /><b>On both sides you have an influential minority of zealots who simply believe the people on the other side should not exist. ‘ They should all just die or move away because the land they are living on is ours’ is pretty much the attitude.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The majority of less absolutely certain of their righteousness Israelis or Palestinians, those with some empathy towards the other side, recognition that they have legitimate rights, some recognition of their shared suffering as human beings, are sidelined, ridiculed, cowed and certainly not elected to lead their people because <i><b>very commonly efforts at compromise and tolerance are repaid by the other side with violence. Compromise is taken as weakness</b></i>. Israel is the graveyard of good intentions. So people are just afraid. They have stopped thinking and just react.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz2ImF92uCH6-_msV3Pp-0Ux7rQLOHy5ZiUg3t_i90ICdIioesSa4Gie0rj0jteKCTseinQjk0XsdEEDbE98_ayh7S3YSzqrUTTarCua8cVKdq86-YUVdKtaQHYRepQrGgf6e7ePH6IslArjm5QfjXaqFT5J2oq405LHeY5sGsqcupoKszcyiCm67FemXm/s1015/Hamas%20soldier%20inside%20a%20tunnel.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="671" data-original-width="1015" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz2ImF92uCH6-_msV3Pp-0Ux7rQLOHy5ZiUg3t_i90ICdIioesSa4Gie0rj0jteKCTseinQjk0XsdEEDbE98_ayh7S3YSzqrUTTarCua8cVKdq86-YUVdKtaQHYRepQrGgf6e7ePH6IslArjm5QfjXaqFT5J2oq405LHeY5sGsqcupoKszcyiCm67FemXm/w400-h265/Hamas%20soldier%20inside%20a%20tunnel.webp" width="400" /></a></span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Hamas knew that if they slaughter Israelis, the Israelis will come straight back and slaughter Palestinians in far greater numbers. That didn’t seem to bother them.</b></i></span></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Hamas has previously claimed the tunnels stretch for 500km (310 miles).
Many have entrances hidden within houses, mosques, schools and other
public buildings.</span><br /></span></b><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />Pat Mason:<br />There is no moral equivalency. If the Muslims threw down their guns there would be peace. If the Jews threw down their guns there would be no Israel.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizHxL0WHyBH0IXMRSr-prXU_KqSgxE3hE4kXNU787R1svGH8YoXQNuOPupW4qcel7tAgnnAfOsJTxwdZGytoxid2lWVtOu1TI1kDxa-B0rXMgc1ZzYNZA5g36oA74cWqvTyQjymcmDUvfGXGFHN2iEgXtdp4XG9RBFezlELQL4DXWZ7Kr65RxURIrpAerL/s2000/gaza%20ruins%20dove.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1335" data-original-width="2000" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizHxL0WHyBH0IXMRSr-prXU_KqSgxE3hE4kXNU787R1svGH8YoXQNuOPupW4qcel7tAgnnAfOsJTxwdZGytoxid2lWVtOu1TI1kDxa-B0rXMgc1ZzYNZA5g36oA74cWqvTyQjymcmDUvfGXGFHN2iEgXtdp4XG9RBFezlELQL4DXWZ7Kr65RxURIrpAerL/w400-h268/gaza%20ruins%20dove.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mary:</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The information about Hamas dependence on fuel to maintain their tunnel system could be part of an effective plan to destroy them, or at least cripple their efforts. It seems an obvious Achilles’ heel.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The very fact that they used humanitarian donations for building those tunnels, rather than for food, medical supplies, and other needs of their people, tells me everything about their values. Terribly sad.</span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">At the very least they could allow civilians to use them as bomb shelter. But that's the privilege of the Hamas elite. Otherwise it's "No Lives Matter." </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mary:</span></span></p><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;">It is both interesting and instructive to see how even the "experts," blinded by their assumptions or over confidence, can be so spectacularly wrong...as the US about Ukraine, and Russia's armed power, as the Israeli's about Hamas' violent raid...vital information supposedly the work of expert spies and surveillance..who were in the event completely clueless. The signs must have been there...why were they not seen-or not given credit? How can this be corrected?</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d;"> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana: </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Israel by similarly surprised by the outbreak of the Yom Kippur war. In fact after the war was over, Golda Meir resigned over the issue of having been caught by surprise. Technology is no substitute for intelligent humans monitoring borders and infiltrating radical groups. </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;">This is an eternal lesson: don't rely on technology alone. Technology has a way of failing just when it most needed. A pair of human eyes and the intelligent brain behind them -- there is no substitute. Having a trained dog helps too. <br /></span></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>TEN TRUTHS WE CAN’T ESCAPE<br /></b><br />You are not going to exist forever. You’re just a tiny speck in this vast universe and your time in this world is limited.<br /><br /><b>Anything harsh said to a loved one in anger leaves a permanent scar, no matter how much you try to bandage it.<br /></b><br /><b>Health is the most important wealth you can acquire. No matter how much gold you own, it can not quell the torture of an illness.<br /></b><br />Every old person was once as old as you are today. Time stops for none.<br /><br />Things which are most important for you today might be worthless tomorrow. Avoid spending money on urges.<br /><br /><b>Something as simple as saying sorry first can prevent countless disputes. It is not a sign of weakness.</b><br /><br />Who your friends are determine who you become.<br /><br />To become good at conversation, learn to be a good listener first.<br /><br /><b>Luck favors those who don’t give up.<br /></b><br />Be grateful if you have a roof for shelter, clean water to drink, food on your table, and a healthy functioning body. Try to imagine the absence of even one of these in your life. ~ Raunak Brij, Quora</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">These are not absolutes. Friends do not "determine" who you become. Your genes are certainly more important, though in part, yes, they influence your perception of who you'd like to be friends with. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In this brief compilation, if there is an eternal truth that's also useful, it's the last item. Gratitude and counting your blessings should be a daily ritual. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">*<br /></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid5Y-esWvOq_pEZHnWHJnZbjUwnlEwrpLFy34hpbRsRwPFqJNVvT8BxfO1w3rg7JWt4vQNxCFOSV0wC1b1_xqzR9raACbxAzAcVOqFiPZaEdFq2uBgEY0oAQgFB1H6skV2sursy4-0P7sKnTTEISrkvTcuynJ8p5lseT0o0AmXNV1otWYpZNbvo2_kkl2f/s481/art%20supplies%20and%20pain.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="481" data-original-width="480" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid5Y-esWvOq_pEZHnWHJnZbjUwnlEwrpLFy34hpbRsRwPFqJNVvT8BxfO1w3rg7JWt4vQNxCFOSV0wC1b1_xqzR9raACbxAzAcVOqFiPZaEdFq2uBgEY0oAQgFB1H6skV2sursy4-0P7sKnTTEISrkvTcuynJ8p5lseT0o0AmXNV1otWYpZNbvo2_kkl2f/w399-h400/art%20supplies%20and%20pain.jpg" width="399" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>COULD FRANCE HAVE DEFEATED NAZI GERMANY?<br /></b><br />~ No, they couldn’t have.<br /><br />France had the technology. It had the industrial might. It had the largest army in Europe. It had more tanks than Germany and had the second-largest navy in Europe.<br /><br />Please know that the individual French soldier was no coward.<br /><br />Thousands fought bravely and lost their lives while the bureaucracy and disorganization left them without the means to succeed. While estimates vary, on average, during the very short German attack of just 46 days in May-June 1940, around 110,000 French soldiers died, and 180,000 wounded. This equates to something like almost NINE THOUSAND casualties per day.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">But still, <b>France didn’t stand a chance against the Third Reich. Several reasons:<br /></b><br />1. <b>France did not want war: France was among the countries that suffered the most from the First World War, just two decades before. France lost 1.7 million people; more than the sum of all the dead from the United Kingdom, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, Belgium, and Greece.</b> Worse yet, unlike most other countries,<b> the bloodiest, scorched-earth battles of this war occurred in France. Horrible battles such as Somme and Verdun</b> (at the time called “the meat grinder”):</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMvAiWW2z-nn1fVewc94ASPXWzxQ7DQi8XYRw_bbG5npwIzs-Fl2xwMJQid-uDunlKiuLPQtufYmHS8V03or5yY2iXAzfZYEfZatvpq4NS7dYs1iSx3IsNsGVS2dMQUJqaHGtf4Cy5Jgq8i4KCoYFguuKi7CXIAuQ_9vvIwqbGHGmwnQkEnwKL_bBi1tvQ/s535/FRENCH%20troops%20ww1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="304" data-original-width="535" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMvAiWW2z-nn1fVewc94ASPXWzxQ7DQi8XYRw_bbG5npwIzs-Fl2xwMJQid-uDunlKiuLPQtufYmHS8V03or5yY2iXAzfZYEfZatvpq4NS7dYs1iSx3IsNsGVS2dMQUJqaHGtf4Cy5Jgq8i4KCoYFguuKi7CXIAuQ_9vvIwqbGHGmwnQkEnwKL_bBi1tvQ/w400-h228/FRENCH%20troops%20ww1.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></span></div><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The offensives at Marne, Arras was only slightly better. The greatest and bloodiest offensives. Towns and countryside looked like ruins set on a lunar landscape. Burnt dead trees looked like gnarly hands begging to a deaf god.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg29XuOZEWfNPCO4DZF91mntt3vvVohgcxHZekbjuUbLIvwzP5vWUnHBC8o8JFOQnpUCZgjKBaX7vHipAg3SlJxEebL4ccjwHU3VO0wI5OmHUQ9qv_jakTbL-UQedvbR-PdfQLnmPxssfU7fVcp40hg0xr9GmWUgNlp9T8Px2PaVwHSyz12sqtPWxUMIanA/s1500/ww1%20belleau%20wood.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1167" data-original-width="1500" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg29XuOZEWfNPCO4DZF91mntt3vvVohgcxHZekbjuUbLIvwzP5vWUnHBC8o8JFOQnpUCZgjKBaX7vHipAg3SlJxEebL4ccjwHU3VO0wI5OmHUQ9qv_jakTbL-UQedvbR-PdfQLnmPxssfU7fVcp40hg0xr9GmWUgNlp9T8Px2PaVwHSyz12sqtPWxUMIanA/w400-h311/ww1%20belleau%20wood.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Poison gas killed countless soldiers, civilians, and livestock. <b>Germany, in contrast, lost the war, but with its social and industrial infrastructure intact. Practically no allied soldier ever set foot on German soil.</b><br /><br />The example that proves the point of France's unwillingness to enter this conflict is that, having declared war on Germany on September 1939, they never attacked them, despite the fact that Germany was distracted fighting Poland. <b>France sat idle until they were attacked. One morning, in fact, French troops crossed the border, invaded some small German town, no shots were fired and promptly returned that same day behind their borders.<br /></b><br />2. France was a Country Divided. Political differences had grown into an unbridgeable void.<b> A large percent of the population, with communist inclinations, felt more kinship with the Soviet Union (then a Hitler ally) than with their own country. The fact that Hitler had made a non-aggression pact with Stalin made unity in France almost impossible.</b><br /><br />Pictured: Conflicting messages in French posters of the time:<br /><br />Anti-communist ones:<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibdUKEdLVRoHsJHX822sXsVD9VwEm4iWN1ktp8ditgGSXsFIjNXRNI77YYzYdvrwnTOHGeQ5x7rIW22HDzGnIpRBtx9WUufKrMYRoR_zkaYE_O2X9WqM3pwqqb_kx5eZ6hsQsd-tQr-xH2C3lbYzzxRrLJgFYlL957nNLVxOHqZY0T4WMgenRVRSKpJJAx/s237/if%20the%20Soviets%20poster.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="237" data-original-width="200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibdUKEdLVRoHsJHX822sXsVD9VwEm4iWN1ktp8ditgGSXsFIjNXRNI77YYzYdvrwnTOHGeQ5x7rIW22HDzGnIpRBtx9WUufKrMYRoR_zkaYE_O2X9WqM3pwqqb_kx5eZ6hsQsd-tQr-xH2C3lbYzzxRrLJgFYlL957nNLVxOHqZY0T4WMgenRVRSKpJJAx/w338-h400/if%20the%20Soviets%20poster.jpg" width="338" /></a></div>And pro-Soviet (anti-American) ones:<br /></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHp0-I9Tw99xNQnIUKVa6TD3Yy-KpkQhWIusv7OOujr880SQscZmyDkREFOL6EHaDNgNrYPg0zNE7AvG6EXT4mPsTWJudUxqUhP8Rq0NyV7BqM6GHAay1PrW3lJFvNPmt4hY2u7Y5vVX-r23wUnWR_3RqO_AGZKclc4tVOorfvLBjKNkUitUqb0-fI3evW/s297/anti%20American%20french%20poster.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="297" data-original-width="214" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHp0-I9Tw99xNQnIUKVa6TD3Yy-KpkQhWIusv7OOujr880SQscZmyDkREFOL6EHaDNgNrYPg0zNE7AvG6EXT4mPsTWJudUxqUhP8Rq0NyV7BqM6GHAay1PrW3lJFvNPmt4hY2u7Y5vVX-r23wUnWR_3RqO_AGZKclc4tVOorfvLBjKNkUitUqb0-fI3evW/w288-h400/anti%20American%20french%20poster.jpg" width="288" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">By the time Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the French Resistance did unite, as communist Russia and the West fought a common foe — but by then, France was divided, invaded and with a collaborationist government in Vichy.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0af0wyx8ZPmks-DwIxPAyhBvx6GPWZ8BWrDdFgZcuCpM1rXdv51sLx1tIbLusex7lIexWw9Bzmh1fEQ7QYmhcKtGOstktO5NU3ftyNOlAVawP2yO_FZwXxJ5V2Zdh27-0hw1vicGoSTNUmvFchB9cDJSo9wvgjrPU2L-3BVXC-atAuJ45eQZ9WzUJxM0I/s350/USA%20as%20octopus.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="230" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0af0wyx8ZPmks-DwIxPAyhBvx6GPWZ8BWrDdFgZcuCpM1rXdv51sLx1tIbLusex7lIexWw9Bzmh1fEQ7QYmhcKtGOstktO5NU3ftyNOlAVawP2yO_FZwXxJ5V2Zdh27-0hw1vicGoSTNUmvFchB9cDJSo9wvgjrPU2L-3BVXC-atAuJ45eQZ9WzUJxM0I/w263-h400/USA%20as%20octopus.jpg" width="263" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #800180;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>3. France used a failed strategy: </b></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b><br /><b>Because the Great War had been fought in trenches, and France had been on the winning side, this reaffirmed their commitment to trench warfare in the future. They created the mother of all trenches: The Maginot line, thousands of kilometers bordering the country from Switzerland to Belgium.</b><br /><br />This was a highly advanced bunker system with automatic feeding artillery, reinforced concrete, pillboxes for machine gun emplacements, with berths and galleys for thousands, underground rail transport, wired communications, etc.<br /><br /><b>The Germans either went around, flew over the Maginot line, and most importantly, broke through it in a matter of hours, by crossing the Ardennes forest, thought to be impassable for any army, and hitting the line at its weakest and least manned point.<br /></b><br />In addition to that, France fell for the German trick of believing that the invasion would follow the same path than it had in WWI: Through Belgium in the northern border. Hitler did send significant armored divisions from Belgium, but the main body of the attack went through the Ardennes forest, up till then considered impassable by any significant force. It broke through the Maginot line around the town of Sedan, and in short time, cut the country in two.<br /><br />4 <b>France Lacked Effective Commanders. </b></span><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">It had passive, careful and timid generals such as Maurice Gamelin, 67, or Maxime Weygand, 72, who lacked the spirit to drive a country to success.<br /><br />This attitude was also mirrored by France’s president, Edouard Daladier, who was almost dragged to comply to the defense of Poland by a humiliated Neville Chamberlain, British prime minister. <b>The French failed to create a successful strategy and remained stuck to war tactics completely surpassed by the technology of the time</b>. They also dismissed offhand the desperate requests of the pompous but undeniably brave Charles De Gaulle.<br /><br />As soon as they realized the campaign was not going their way, France’s leaders were just too quick to retreat, to negotiate, to capitulate, to flee with their possessions, and eventually, to infamously collaborate. Pictured below, Pétain, in his “amicable” surrender to Nazi Germany. He then became the leader of the German ally and leader of the Vichy Republic.<br /></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2amHrYb4GS9x9ErgTmNf4c5E6z2kOgjKh_aSzGbCuT1jgwSrS_E1cLmX1wtUp11tmiAUvPkKPTfM2HtKRhbV-SXcf3e8VldidCgwS3FoiqIV8BKnDk2cqPAbsKJhzWQ3JjeyM-rOyYeePfNGttv5NbQIqV4kN17APvfONynchJlX4sBL5DrLBl60PKja1/s450/Petain%20surrendering%20to%20Hitler.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="337" data-original-width="450" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2amHrYb4GS9x9ErgTmNf4c5E6z2kOgjKh_aSzGbCuT1jgwSrS_E1cLmX1wtUp11tmiAUvPkKPTfM2HtKRhbV-SXcf3e8VldidCgwS3FoiqIV8BKnDk2cqPAbsKJhzWQ3JjeyM-rOyYeePfNGttv5NbQIqV4kN17APvfONynchJlX4sBL5DrLBl60PKja1/w400-h300/Petain%20surrendering%20to%20Hitler.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And <b>his successor, Pierre Laval, actively worked for the Germans, going above and beyond the wishes of his masters in Berlin, rounding up Jews for deportation to the concentration camps. He claimed he had acted in the best interests of the French people.<br /></b><br />After the war ended, both were found guilty of treason and condemned to death. In consideration of Pétain's age and honorable services during WW1, he was never executed. Laval wasn't as lucky. In a trial many have considered being biased and political, <b>Pierre Laval faced a firing squad on a chilly Monday morning, October, 15th, 1945 at the Fresnes Prison yard. He was 62.</b></span><b><br /></b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Compare the French leadership actions with Stalin's attitude facing a similar situation just one year later. When the Huns were at the gates of Moscow, he stayed in the city and forced his cabinet to do so, under pain of death. Facing no other choice than defending the city to the last man, they, with the help of General Winter, stopped the German juggernaut in its tracks.<br />~ Pram Osmu, Quora</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>WHY THE SOVIET UNION LET THE REPUBLICS GO<br /></b><br />~ “<b>Why did the Russians, despite all that one would expect from them given the histories of the downfalls of empires, decide not to fight and to let the empire fall?</b>” asked Serhii Plokhii, Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University, at a 29 April 2013 lecture at the Kennan Institute. Plokhii discussed the fall of the Soviet Union in the context of the last five months of the Soviet Union in order to explain why <b>it was not accompanied by the violent conflicts triggered by the collapse of previous empires.<br /></b><br />Plokhii argued that the fall of the Soviet Union is a unique case in the history of empires: <b>“Russia let most of the republics go without a fight, without a struggle.” While there were slogans and campaigns for independence among the Union republics in the months before the collapse, none were campaigning for the complete disintegration of the empire. Rather, each was struggling against the central authority to augment its own independent power base.</b> Even the Baltic states, the most independently minded of the republics, operated along these lines. Other republics, such as <b>those in Central Asia, were not struggling at all against the Union for political independence.<br /></b><br /><b>It is common for scholars to mark the Soviet Union’s de facto end in August 1991, when Boris Yeltsin suspended the activities of the Communist party on the territory of the Russian Federation. </b>However, Plokhii stated that this action alone did not precipitate the end of the USSR and independence of its constituent parts. Plokhii contended that <b>only the exit of the Baltic States was inevitable at that moment; the status of other republics like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Ukraine was not fully understood until December 1991.</b><br /><br />Consequently, Plokhii focused on the five month period between August and December 1991, because it was still not clear at the time what would happen to the Soviet Union. Early on in this period the goal of both Russian and republic elites was to save the Soviet Union in some form. However, over time, <b>decisions taken by Russia’s first elected president, Boris Yeltsin, increasingly convinced Russian elites that it was time to exit the Soviet Union.<br /></b><br /><b>The Russian democratic movement starting in 1989 undertook a widespread switch in allegiance from Soviet to Russian institutions to realize their political aspirations. The Russian democratic leaders believed it would get more traction in the Russian Duma than in the all-Union Supreme Soviet, because Gorbachev was mobilizing the more conservative votes in the Union parliament against the democratic movement.</b> This switch in allegiance was facilitated by the institutional structure at the time, which consisted of parallel national and republic state structures. As a result, Yeltsin’s Russian Federation was able to replicate and replace Soviet state control across Russia.<br /><br /><b>Yeltsin’s next move came when he disbanded the Communist Party in August 1991. In so doing, Yeltsin effectively undermined in one stroke one of Gorbachev’s most powerful instruments of political power as president of the Soviet Union</b>. Immediately following this move, the Russian state moved to take complete control of the institutions of the Soviet Union. <b>Plokhii explained that it was Russia’s takeover of Soviet institutions that prompted the declarations of Ukrainian independence that echoed throughout the Soviet Union over the following week.</b><br /><br /><i><b>Once Russia’s attempt to take over Union institutions failed in the wake of Ukrainian declaration of independence, Yeltsin knew his political career depended upon successfully governing Russia rather than preserving or replacing the Soviet Union</b></i>. Drastic economic reforms were to be planned with only Russia in mind, disregarding the republics. Ethnic and religious considerations also played a role in Yeltsin and Russian elites deciding to abandon the Union: <b>Once it was clear that Ukraine was lost, Russia was not interested in a union with a greatly diminished Slavic influence relative to the populations of Central Asia and the Caucasus.</b><br /><br />In the end, </span></span><span style="color: #800180;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Russian control over the natural resources on its territory played perhaps the most important role in convincing Yeltsin and Russian elites to abandon the Soviet empire</b></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">. Plokhii observed that unlike previous large empires that had external colonies with vital natural and economic resources, the Soviet empire’s resources were concentrated largely within the Russian Federation itself: “<b>Russia left the empire with natural and economic resources, leaving the former colonies struggling without them</b>.”<br /><br />“The thinking in August and September 1991 was that Russia needed time to use its resources to rebuild its economy,” said Plokhii. <b>Russian elites thought that eventually the republics would have to return to the Russian fold to get access to Russian resources and trade. </b>Ultimately, explained Plokhii, “the idea was not there that the split would be permanent, and Putin’s foreign policy of the last decade has not departed much from this vision.”<br /><br /><a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/why-did-russia-let-the-republics-go-revisiting-the-fall-the-ussr">https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/why-did-russia-let-the-republics-go-revisiting-the-fall-the-ussr<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>THE ROLE OF UKRAINE IN THE DISSOLUTION OF THE SOVIET UNION<br /></b><br />~ <b>A few weeks before the Soviet Union collapsed, the CIA issued a report with expert prognosis on how long the USSR will last.<br /><br />The report said that despite the recent attempt of a coup in the Soviet Union (August 1991), the economic reforms of 1980s, Perestroika and Glasnost, the USSR would exist at least until the year 2020.</b><br /><br />This report was produced in November 1991, and on 8 December 1991 presidents of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia signed the decree that dissolved the Soviet Union.<br /></span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjdkpcq4R-U0ocQx_AAqHY_87ivLwpyYXDZVi2ZNyPYTVT0TEw_caGrJrYJQ1xNYwA_8y8qzxgtFQYk2A6k_5HHFBDgN3Md0QeIc0TQwZLEVNSXRjHA3EF6ifj-4_vqHCZWz-2E33eKQWhug6NGmIATGTs39LLsUyTQXghj_WFDZVcYvzaI0KNKOcBNGGx/s624/kravchuk%20Shushkevich%20Yeltsin%20end%20of%20SU%201991.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="351" data-original-width="624" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjdkpcq4R-U0ocQx_AAqHY_87ivLwpyYXDZVi2ZNyPYTVT0TEw_caGrJrYJQ1xNYwA_8y8qzxgtFQYk2A6k_5HHFBDgN3Md0QeIc0TQwZLEVNSXRjHA3EF6ifj-4_vqHCZWz-2E33eKQWhug6NGmIATGTs39LLsUyTQXghj_WFDZVcYvzaI0KNKOcBNGGx/w400-h225/kravchuk%20Shushkevich%20Yeltsin%20end%20of%20SU%201991.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Kravchuk, Shushkevich, Yeltsin signing the dissolution of the Soviet Union<br /></i><br /><b>How did it happen that experienced and educated CIA analysts, best of the best, couldn’t predict the event that was looming and eventuated in just weeks, putting an end to America’s long-term enemy state?<br /><br />They underestimated the role of an individual in history.</b><br /><br /><b>No, it wasn’t caused by Mikhail Gorbachev</b>, the first President of the USSR, who is blamed by Vladimir Putin for “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century” (which, according to Putin, was the collapse of the Soviet Union).<br /><br /><b>It wasn’t even Boris Yeltsin,</b> the first president of the Russian Federation, who was one of the three leaders of the Soviet republics that started the process.<br /><br /><b>It was Leonid Kravchuk,</b> the first President of Ukraine, who said to Yeltsin: “When foreign presidents come to Kyiv, they’ll come to me. When foreign presidents come to Moscow, they’ll come to Gorbachev”.<br /><br />Yeltsin, prior to this meeting, was going to follow Gorbachev’s instructions to maintain the connections between republics within the Soviet Union. <b>Gorbachev did everything he could to keep the USSR together.</b><br /><br />But it was because of Leonid Kravchuk’s idea that Yeltsin jumped on the opportunity to dissolve the USSR, journalist Dmitry Gordon revealed in his recent video.<br /><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhssMnlKNlL4coMXOql6axyB48qXP-dNkkRD7SoH8JjwubP5-9hFvQ0jLUprg9prqi-hlIRtnyA9UXaOO1kV1kryMgCwhEm3uCLmoarj-gGFd0mavhosy8AT9nmcgvFJ6BJFPXAo3T12ufxydZHCqWe1LlzlPihf1ATgfHbmVvsYz7cwBLZxiEwMtqtqHWP/s602/Leonid%20Kravchuk,%20first%20preident%20Ukraine.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="338" data-original-width="602" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhssMnlKNlL4coMXOql6axyB48qXP-dNkkRD7SoH8JjwubP5-9hFvQ0jLUprg9prqi-hlIRtnyA9UXaOO1kV1kryMgCwhEm3uCLmoarj-gGFd0mavhosy8AT9nmcgvFJ6BJFPXAo3T12ufxydZHCqWe1LlzlPihf1ATgfHbmVvsYz7cwBLZxiEwMtqtqHWP/w400-h225/Leonid%20Kravchuk,%20first%20preident%20Ukraine.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></span></div><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Leonid Kravchuk</i><br /></span></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Kravchuk said, “We had a referendum in Ukraine and people voted for independence”. He had the mandate of the Ukrainian people and he followed their will.<br /></b><br />Kravchuk was elected on 1 December 1991, just days prior to the date of meeting with presidents of Russia and Belarus at the state residence near Viskuli in Belovezhskaya Pushcha (Belarus). Kravchuk scored 61.6 % of votes in the election.<br /><br /><b>It was on the same date, 1 December 1991, that Ukraine voted for independence: 90.3% of Ukrainians voted for independence. More people in Ukraine voted for country’s independence than voted for Kravchuk.</b><br /><br />Kravchuk took upon his duties as the president on 5 December.<br /><br />The 3 presidents met in Belarus on 7 December. The meeting didn’t have the agenda to cancel the Soviet Union. According to Belarus president Shushkevich, “The idea [to dissolve the USSR] was spontaneous”.<br /><br /><b>The will of Ukrainian people was realized on 8 December by dissolving the Soviet Union and thus making Ukraine independent.<br /></b><br />Apparently, t<b>he UK’s prime minister Margaret Thatcher and the USA’s president George Bush asked the Ukrainian president not to go independent.<br /></b><br /><b><i>Western politicians couldn’t imagine the world without the Soviet Union. They didn’t have it in their picture of the world, how it could exist with no USSR.</i><br /></b><br />But <b>Leonid Kravchuk, the President of Ukraine, followed the will of his nation and put an end to the monstrous state that was threatening the world for decades. The state which the CIA predicted to remain in the picture for another 30 years.</b><br /><br />In fact, <b>it was the will of the Ukrainian people that put an end to the Soviet Union in 1991.</b></span></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><b>In 2022, presidents of the USA, Germany, France can’t imagine the world without the Russian Federation (or even the Russian Federation without Putin).<br /><br />But Ukrainian people can.</b><br /></i><br />Just as the CIA experts were giving Ukraine in February 2022 merely a week before it would be crushed by Russia’s military machine – and made a critical mistake, the underestimation of the year: underestimating Ukraine and its people, their ability to fight back; it could be also called the overestimation of the year – overestimating Russia’s military prowess.<br /><br /><b>In 1991, the CIA experts overestimated the strength of the Soviet Union and underestimated nations’ drive to be free. It only took one president – the Ukrainian president – to tip the scales.</b><br /><br />In 2022, it was again the Ukrainian president – president Zelensky – who tipped the scales by refusing to evacuate and staying in Kyiv to defend it against the Russian forces, when no one expected Ukraine to last longer than a few weeks: “I don’t need a ride, I need ammunition”, Zelensky said.<br /><br />Never underestimate the role of an individual in history. Because every turn in the labyrinth of history is determined by a willing individual who tips the scales. ~ Elena Gold, Quora<br /><br />AltDermative:<br />This is the negative thing about Marxist thought. They can't think individuals. Sometimes the individual matters more than the group. For good or bad.<br /><br />Elena Gold:<br />Analysts often look only at the “objective reasons” or “foundations”. <b>There are objective reasons for Russians to revolt, but they don’t — simply because there are no individuals who could lead a revolt.</b> But if a revolution happens tomorrow, analysts will point out to all the reasons that objectively existed to make it happen.<br /><br />At every turn in history, it was up to an individual to push the stone off the mountain.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDYVByo1XWe6woiyNx5UFx1Q89yraQRzlzsmRqyu5Z6D28lVx5Nzahu3ujBhFximHKo9wmngvZoJH1F4nsDKVI3e57h068OUN1qkUvWoZ0XE_pyWnL5wFpnSkPUmmfcFmYTI3ddrxWmEuEn32pFiFFR6F1UoC5RT-DGKiIxJbbIQ6R89Vv6qhz_40UIMmo/s602/Putin%20%20and%20Yeltsin%20door.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="602" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDYVByo1XWe6woiyNx5UFx1Q89yraQRzlzsmRqyu5Z6D28lVx5Nzahu3ujBhFximHKo9wmngvZoJH1F4nsDKVI3e57h068OUN1qkUvWoZ0XE_pyWnL5wFpnSkPUmmfcFmYTI3ddrxWmEuEn32pFiFFR6F1UoC5RT-DGKiIxJbbIQ6R89Vv6qhz_40UIMmo/w400-h233/Putin%20%20and%20Yeltsin%20door.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><i><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Tee-totaler Putin and Yeltsin, whose alcoholism became legendary. <br /></span></span></i></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Andreas De Wulf:<br />Yeltsin's moves were about keeping the resources inside Russia for Russia alone. They didn't believe their periphery could make it economically without them.<br /><br />*<br /><b>ONLY IN RUSSIA</b><br /><br /></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN-RsgV-g4eqFKRENNwTuPMmmrQKawNZNXEBQAwGM-RcfGAVjc9ZJNSlgUjjgJlMgUwdRNwEuEM5zvMFKMhi4GG0k1FuXsXfxy4oBbokCysq3osePlAtd6KYNQYBVttTahLN6I59mn6qJ20vM0wPuiHCMobKeOQL5vmmTfCThObAEdzAuuJIZC5rrUlT5D/s602/railway%20in%20Tuva.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="402" data-original-width="602" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN-RsgV-g4eqFKRENNwTuPMmmrQKawNZNXEBQAwGM-RcfGAVjc9ZJNSlgUjjgJlMgUwdRNwEuEM5zvMFKMhi4GG0k1FuXsXfxy4oBbokCysq3osePlAtd6KYNQYBVttTahLN6I59mn6qJ20vM0wPuiHCMobKeOQL5vmmTfCThObAEdzAuuJIZC5rrUlT5D/w400-h268/railway%20in%20Tuva.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>This is the new railway in Tuva. 12 years ago, Vladimir Putin personally launched its construction.<br /><br />Yet nothing has been built in 12 years.</b><br /><br />This is what modern Russia is about: lies and theft under the cries of greatness.<br /><br /><b>Pompous launch of the road to nowhere.<br /></b><br />There are a lot of things had been built </span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">—</span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">mansions, yachts — the list goes on. But not in Tuva.<br /></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_9QBS19m1bVCedWJH2TYZmLEhRc36h56jJgU8yUgQYjYf4tMxlqre420-m5iXOsbJHlzAMwZps24SzC3IzbZECVMU1zI89GvTwVMxhGu7dbl1pXuNd-oKClmAyHJSeLOEUWagvAFaPthdTDeTJkKskwxW0rd24MpEvLjIV09baNy1UHzanH1p-B7q8lYb/s602/Tuva%20railway%20snow.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="344" data-original-width="602" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_9QBS19m1bVCedWJH2TYZmLEhRc36h56jJgU8yUgQYjYf4tMxlqre420-m5iXOsbJHlzAMwZps24SzC3IzbZECVMU1zI89GvTwVMxhGu7dbl1pXuNd-oKClmAyHJSeLOEUWagvAFaPthdTDeTJkKskwxW0rd24MpEvLjIV09baNy1UHzanH1p-B7q8lYb/w400-h229/Tuva%20railway%20snow.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></span></div>"<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Tuva railway" under snow</i><br /><br />Russia is stuck on the road to nowhere.<br /><br />And it can’t go back either. ~ Elena Gold, Quora<br /><br />Giovanni B:<br />First picture looks like Nihilistic art. Somehow representing the direction taken by that country, as you aptly say.<br /><br />Elena Gold:<br />In 2021, Interfax wrote that the financing of the project hadn’t been allocated. And the project is “delayed until 2026”. Maybe it was just damage control because of the public outcry.<br /><br />Markku Head:<br />Putin is stuck on the idea of taking Russia back.<br /><br />He wants to restore the relevance of Soviet Union in the 1970’s.<br /><br />He wants to fight Nazis and Bandera in the 1940’s.<br /><br /><b>He wants the Russian borders in the 1860’s.</b><br /><br />Unfortunately, the clocks and calendars keep going steadily the other way.<br /><br />*<br /><b>THE HUNGARIAN UPRISING OF 1956<br /></b><br />On October 23, 1956, an anti-Soviet uprising began in Hungary — t<b>he first, and perhaps the only attempt in history to overthrow the communist dictatorship with weapons in hands.</b></span></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>The 1956 uprising lasted over 2 weeks - from October 23 to November 9.</b><br /><br />On October 23, a mass demonstration took place in Budapest, in which 200,000 people took part.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>In the city center, demonstrators toppled and destroyed a huge monument to Stalin.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqXzLZKGBfkSagYXlHwW8BWcBCAj_1dwDpoZ1qA73Q8ol1Eeykv7SmsjThktAhN7_xUvok-_FQV3V6yfi0ajsEik3Zo2hse6zPvK6uNEj8InqQcX6-ET3u0lTInumDtA5z07r1C1VkdRYhpfNXQRh_t_QUEAG_p0DKqW3sUe5xiJ3kzLn_jBdsf_k91viV/s440/Stalin's%20head%20Budapest.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="311" data-original-width="440" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqXzLZKGBfkSagYXlHwW8BWcBCAj_1dwDpoZ1qA73Q8ol1Eeykv7SmsjThktAhN7_xUvok-_FQV3V6yfi0ajsEik3Zo2hse6zPvK6uNEj8InqQcX6-ET3u0lTInumDtA5z07r1C1VkdRYhpfNXQRh_t_QUEAG_p0DKqW3sUe5xiJ3kzLn_jBdsf_k91viV/w400-h283/Stalin's%20head%20Budapest.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></span></div><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>The rebels stormed the Radio House, requesting to broadcast their demands. Hungarian state security opened fire, killing and wounding some protestors.<br /><br />The rebels entered the territory of several military units and seized weapons.<br /></b><br /><b>A significant part of the Hungarian army and police swapped sides and joined the rebels. The population of the country supported the anti-communist revolution.<br /></b><br />But then the USSR troops stationed in Hungary came into play.<br /></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2TNo7knDy825X8w0hQB5vQ1e0p3HO4y3J2A5SQ17v-De6dX9sZQB355bTuqyrhmSJOYd1t1ea7MA1XHcLDCR_GRVs524BI6viUBOOuzMybjHgle8uKAtEArqbB_b0_ZJ5RT8rz4bndb9cR_oaxKu1hs_zyUsheW1S01Iz4-9T0xBhZVHAR0nCxPJr6kry/s602/Hungary%201956%20%20soviet%20tanks.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="402" data-original-width="602" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2TNo7knDy825X8w0hQB5vQ1e0p3HO4y3J2A5SQ17v-De6dX9sZQB355bTuqyrhmSJOYd1t1ea7MA1XHcLDCR_GRVs524BI6viUBOOuzMybjHgle8uKAtEArqbB_b0_ZJ5RT8rz4bndb9cR_oaxKu1hs_zyUsheW1S01Iz4-9T0xBhZVHAR0nCxPJr6kry/w400-h268/Hungary%201956%20%20soviet%20tanks.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">On October 25, units of the Soviet army entered Budapest. During the protest near the parliament building, a Soviet tank was burned. In response, Soviet troops opened fire at the rebels, killing more than 60 people.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikox4HvfsafjdKqMy9gos5qW3koZAWcuU2ed8rooz4FH70CgfFaELwrRu2sAbbDqkU7vv6xaMiUA-x8pDKWfu0UCKAfhd7PVJxynIbnkUl2Xv8hkmgDmfGVBaPxPPSL9ugWga9rKHbA8Fg371Sj6YxuKQ5HufX0F7_ODzIRDFQsaUbVc4GK5uVkjg3vTir/s602/hungary%20Soviet%20tank.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="405" data-original-width="602" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikox4HvfsafjdKqMy9gos5qW3koZAWcuU2ed8rooz4FH70CgfFaELwrRu2sAbbDqkU7vv6xaMiUA-x8pDKWfu0UCKAfhd7PVJxynIbnkUl2Xv8hkmgDmfGVBaPxPPSL9ugWga9rKHbA8Fg371Sj6YxuKQ5HufX0F7_ODzIRDFQsaUbVc4GK5uVkjg3vTir/w400-h269/hungary%20Soviet%20tank.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />After that, rebels began attacking officers of internal security and communists all over the country.<br /><br />Over the next 3 days, Soviet troops were withdrawn from Budapest.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1uIusBnze1XQQP8ClCRGwrZ60Og4jKKmY86bkn9wNZE9Pnz3wjn-ihuhTF5EFkflRwlO1WYA2PuiQNd6Esw7zsnLERNJRA7zglIPfaZ0CimU56UZiwOeCE-CeJLSqJk7fcMyDXT2ds0Qeus6MCirEF9mALjHzHY1buS57qNM38Htqxba9ekjdpsZHujLU/s825/imre%20nagy%20trial.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="825" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1uIusBnze1XQQP8ClCRGwrZ60Og4jKKmY86bkn9wNZE9Pnz3wjn-ihuhTF5EFkflRwlO1WYA2PuiQNd6Esw7zsnLERNJRA7zglIPfaZ0CimU56UZiwOeCE-CeJLSqJk7fcMyDXT2ds0Qeus6MCirEF9mALjHzHY1buS57qNM38Htqxba9ekjdpsZHujLU/w400-h266/imre%20nagy%20trial.png" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Imre Nagy formed a government on a multi-party basis.<br /></b><br />The new government announced a ceasefire, the dissolution of the Hungarian People's Army and the creation of new armed forces, as well as the beginning of negotiations with the USSR on the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary.<br /><br />It seemed that the revolutionaries had won.<br /><br />But on October 31, things went wrong.<br /><br />The rebels surrounded the building of the Budapest Communist Party Committee. In response, shots were fired and protesters fell, wounded and dead.<br /><br />The angry crowd broke into the city committee and lynched about 20 people, including the first secretary, Imre Mezo.<br /><br /><b>Throughout the city, rebels began catching and hanging from trees state security officers, who were recognized by the yellow uniform boots.<br /></b><br />This dramatically changed the moods in Moscow.<br /><br /><b>USSR Marshal Ivan Konev, who commanded the Soviet troops, used the same tactics in Budapest that he used during the storming of Berlin: he brought a big number of tanks into the narrow streets of the city.<br /><br />The defenders of Budapest pelted tanks with Molotov cocktails and fired at them from the upper floors of buildings.<br /><br />Over the course of 3 days, 2,652 Hungarians and 640 Soviet soldiers were killed. 19,226 Hungarians and 1,251 Soviet soldiers were wounded.<br /></b><br />Officially, after the uprising, 6 death sentences were imposed: for the Prime Minister of Hungary Imre Nagy, who led the liberation movement, the Minister of Defense Pal Maleter, the publicist Miklos Gimes and 3 other persons involved in other trials.<br /><br />846 people were taken to Soviet GULAG camps and prisons, about 13,000 were locked in prisons in Hungary.<br /><br />The head of the Catholic Church of Hungary, C<b>ardinal József Mindszenty, who on November 3 spoke on the radio calling for the country's neutrality and freedom of conscience, took refuge in the American embassy after Soviet troops entered Budapest.<br /></b><br /><b>He lived in the embassy, without leaving the building, for almost 15 years</b>, which is a record of this kind. Only in 1971, thanks to the efforts of Vatican, the authorities of communist Hungary allowed him to leave for the West.<br /><br />What is most noteworthy, is that the children and grandchildren of those who crushed the residents of Budapest with tanks and to this day do not regret anything, still believe today that they have the right to “teach” people how they should live their lives — “teach” by driving tanks over people’s bodies and shooting.<br /><br /><b>In the history textbooks of Russian schools, the 1956 revolution is called a “fascist coup.”</b></span><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>And the Russians chant, following their leaders, “We can repeat!”<br /></b><br />~ Elena Gold, Quora<br /><br />Balazs Ivan József:<br />My grandmother had a dream that my would-be father died. She was so upset, that she went and searched him (a student at the time) in the demonstrating crowd at the Kossuth Square, where she knew him to be. She scolded and dragged him and the scene became so inconvenient, that he gave up and rather let her escort him away. Soon the crowd was shot at.<br /><br />Tim Doherty:<br />The first fight to overthrow Communism took place during the Civil War in Ukraine almost a hundred years ago. As we can see, Russia went full circle.<br /><br />Irena Votavova:<br />Prague Spring wasn’t violent, yet we got the same “brotherly help” from Soviet tanks in 1968. It was simply a matter of USSR not allowing its vassal states break free.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpqi7lrwZv65hKeZ-ktGgsAN2TPNrlxroq60sHAAKRyJkRbYmOlUvdo6LtHOGfERfmJSc0wchw1z6NmNIIq9KLOZQcGMv4Mc_53IzweTQmjZNqXGYxK4G5aA3t6gnB-JJLxrbTTdR-kcv_k-B8NEyELqbgFHSPsf6FUomAgXMTCqhd68u2wk0Kbg34U7x5/s2000/prague%20uprising.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1398" data-original-width="2000" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpqi7lrwZv65hKeZ-ktGgsAN2TPNrlxroq60sHAAKRyJkRbYmOlUvdo6LtHOGfERfmJSc0wchw1z6NmNIIq9KLOZQcGMv4Mc_53IzweTQmjZNqXGYxK4G5aA3t6gnB-JJLxrbTTdR-kcv_k-B8NEyELqbgFHSPsf6FUomAgXMTCqhd68u2wk0Kbg34U7x5/w400-h280/prague%20uprising.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br /><b>PYRAMIDS INSTEAD OF CROSSES IN A RUSSIAN CEMETERY (Misha Firer)<br /></b></span><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipMofcdN9yK-sp1d_8fA5YRhOokfogYYqHuQj2W3v7Z5tCEs5kljpW3y4u9MpwFb5YFKYg51lO9K7vRBtF_TpyMXLeEKdjLdIKBHpMqsn5hLZvK4kOpgqoQvQd2pHYWVosa-NEH6eUrzkV1Qo4xCW7hiu5YAANhtQL7DlwS7wlfpzrcjIHVhLB5-SEq0Ly/s602/Yekaterinburg%20cemetery%20pyramids.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="602" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipMofcdN9yK-sp1d_8fA5YRhOokfogYYqHuQj2W3v7Z5tCEs5kljpW3y4u9MpwFb5YFKYg51lO9K7vRBtF_TpyMXLeEKdjLdIKBHpMqsn5hLZvK4kOpgqoQvQd2pHYWVosa-NEH6eUrzkV1Qo4xCW7hiu5YAANhtQL7DlwS7wlfpzrcjIHVhLB5-SEq0Ly/w400-h266/Yekaterinburg%20cemetery%20pyramids.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Yekaterinburg cemetery<br /></i><br /><b>Christian crosses were removed and heathen pyramids were installed in the military cemetery in Yekaterinburg where Wagner Group mercenaries are buried. In the pseudo-Christian country where the pseudonym of the most popular singer is Shaman, it’s no wonder that Ancient Egyptian pyramids are used as gravestones.</b><br /><br />Schizophrenia or cognitive dissonance if you like is widespread — Russians continue to use Western products and services, they drive Mercedes and VW rather than substandard Lada and at the same time they brag about being locked in a clinch against degenerate West.<br /><br /><b>“I’m Russian to spite the whole world!” sings patriotic pop singer Shaman, a name reminiscent of the direction that Russia has taken under the guidance of Putin — smoke and mirrors for the uninitiated and wealth for the inner circle and those in the know.<br /></b><br /><i><b>Russia is not an empire, but rather a colony where a group of wealthy colonists occupy the territory to suck resources and administer the subjugated aborigines by providing trinkets, circus-grade entertainment, and using propaganda to mess with their heads.</b></i> ~ Quora<br /><br />*<br /><b>CAN RUSSIA FALL APART AS THE USSR DID? (Dima Vorobiev)</b><br /><br />No, for two solid reasons.<br /><br /><b>Nationalism</b><br /><br />One is nationalism. <b>It was ethnic nationalism that buried the USSR and brought about the Russia of Yeltsin and Putin.</b><br /><br />This is essential. </span></span><span style="color: #800180;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><i>Nationalism was the enemy of the USSR and a friend of the Russian Federation. </i></b></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ethnic Russians constitute about 4/5ths of the population. The expedited nation-building that culminated in the Ukraine war, makes it stronger, not weaker. Any possible collapse—highly unlikely—if it happens, comes from somewhere else.<br /><br /><b>Agents of change<br /></b><br />Two is the driving political force.<br /><br /><b>The Dolkschtoss [stab in the back] theory about CIA machinations and Gorbachev’s treason goes strong in Moscow nowadays. But this is just a propaganda device, a smokescreen over what really happened.<br /><br />What happened was that the majority of the Soviet political class, the middle- and low-level Party functionaries and state servants, made a disorganized but powerful effort to dismantle the system from within.<br /></b><br />These were the cogs and levers in the Communist machine, tens and hundreds of thousands of them. </span></span><span style="color: #800180;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Detente allowed them to see the West with their own eyes. </b></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>At the same time, the elders in Nomenklatura clogged the system. No Stalinist purges meant stagnation.<br /></b><br /><b>Ownership is king<br /></b><br />As a result, <b>throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, the younger part of our political class came to the conclusion they would be better off privatizing the whole thing altogether.</b> Brezhnev’s elders lost touch with reality. They took the foolish decision to endorse Gorbachev’s Perestroika. The young Turks around the USSR saw a window of opportunity and poured into it en masse.<br /><br />This was how President Putin and his men became some of the richest and most powerful people in the world. Their plan worked. <b>No wonder </b></span></span><span style="color: #800180;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>there was no Nuremberg trial over Communism in the 1990s, and no restitution to victims of the Marxist project. </b></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>These guys were no idiots to shoot in their own foot.</b><br /><br />There’s no comparable driving force for dismantling the Russian Federation today.<br /><br /><b>A Soviet superpower ruled by Orthodox Communists who rejected the progressive garbage and are proud of our imperial past. Call it a kind of post-Maoist China with a white man’s face. This was the vision of people who ruined the Soviet Union from the inside.<br /></b><br /><b>These people own Russia today. They are super-rich and intend to stay this way indefinitely. Why would they want to ruin it?</b> ~ Dima Vorobiev, Quora</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigzplDal3WEHGh8KzfBRhfTfsQgPUxUUoTDNWhuiLR-qmzILyy49SfNK-FHqoyq3tiGEauSVsLvXDjoN6bxnUxy1GMXp9mLhkjsr-eaKbgdz8o2bOKGOCbtP_sG-0n_hyRc2sczrmYjdc-FaUTUqK5NZVJE2RAVv5FG-V_L6mp_y8py3Z7EdowMHZZWd6f/s593/gennady%20zhivotov%20the%20twilight%20of%20the%20General%20Secretaries%201983.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="593" height="324" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigzplDal3WEHGh8KzfBRhfTfsQgPUxUUoTDNWhuiLR-qmzILyy49SfNK-FHqoyq3tiGEauSVsLvXDjoN6bxnUxy1GMXp9mLhkjsr-eaKbgdz8o2bOKGOCbtP_sG-0n_hyRc2sczrmYjdc-FaUTUqK5NZVJE2RAVv5FG-V_L6mp_y8py3Z7EdowMHZZWd6f/w400-h324/gennady%20zhivotov%20the%20twilight%20of%20the%20General%20Secretaries%201983.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Gennady Zhivotov: Twilight of the General Secretaries, 1983<br /></i><br />*<br /><b>RUSSIAN WOMEN AND CHINESE MEN<br /></b><br />In the Russian Far East, there’s a peculiar but not surprising trend that started long before the COVID pandemic. <b>Russian women are pressed by their drunk and jobless husbands to find a Chinese lover and sleep with him for money. </b>Sometimes they do it out of desperation, at other times to continue drinking and not go to work.<br /><br /><b>In contrast, Chinese men work a lot, don’t drink alcohol, and have money although they start off as migrants making far less than locals do.<br /></b><br />They also don’t force Russian women to work — all they need is a married partner in order to have a plot of land to plant soybeans — foreigners are not allowed to own land nor take out bank loans.<br /><br /><i><b>In the end, they make up to five times more profits than in China and many become millionaires over the years, buying big houses and driving SUVs.</b><br /></i><br />For example, while Jews are fighting with Arabs over scarce land in Israel, <b>the Jewish Autonomous Oblast (where Yiddish used to be the official language) in the Russian Far East has 40% of land cultivated by Chinese nationals.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Likewise, Chinese migrants sign contracts with Russian firms that formally own the companies that they operate.<br /><br />Russian women like to marry Chinese men for the stability that they bring to the table in terms of employment and finances — Russian men are notoriously unpredictable and reckless — while the Chinese like Russian women for their beauty.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Russia is an authoritarian state. People are not permitted to create wealth unless the state gets directly involved. Any initiative is attacked. Creativity stifled. Ambition is a dirty word.</b></span><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>At the same time, one experiences life as unstructured and permissible. It’s liberating — you can do what you want as long as you manage to get away with it — and frustrating — the state counteracts lack of structure with oppressive policies.</b><br /><br /></span></span><span style="color: #800180;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><b>The State Duma deputy Gurilev (Russian answer to Lindsey Graham) suggested, “to exterminate 20% of the Russian citizens who don’t support Putin.”</b><br /></i></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />If you can’t jail critics, why not kill them all, while at the same time pretending that you’re a democratic regime and conducting presidential elections?<br /><br />The Commission of Ethics in the State Duma concluded that “it’s his opinion and personal position” and also “the natural right of the deputy…it’s not an insult.”<br /><br /><b>If you suggest that Putin is an illegitimate president and that war is not peace you’re a traitor and crossed the line, but if a member of parliament wants to exterminate you it’s ethical and democratic.</b><br /><br />Conceptually, it’s impossible for Russia to become a developed country without some fundamental changes on every level. In its absence, there’s barbarism, half-ass attempts to copy Western institutions and general disorder. ~ Misha Firer, Quora<br /><br />Ray Ryan:<br /><b>Only China may infiltrate Russian society. This will be a good thing for both societies. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Russians need a New Way and China has it for you. Their way works for them and it will for you. <b>China is the Borg of the world, looking for entities to absorb.</b> It is ready to teach Russians how to live the Chinese way. Rail lines and highways will need to be built, petro pipelines, some language learning. There is no ocean in the way, maybe some mountains and distance.<br /><br />Having China imprint itself on Russia and remake Russian DNA would be a good thing for world stability at least in the near term. <b>Russia needs help and China wants to give it. The west will have to come to terms with this United Eurasian juggernaut nation and share the planet.</b> We’ll all still have plenty of nukes no matter what so we might as well just get along.<br /><br />*<br /><b>MORE “RUSSIA AS USUAL” (Misha Firer) </b></span><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><b>“Isolate the 50 richest Jews, and the wars will stop”, Moscow city Duma deputy Ekaterina Engalycheva wrote on her Telegram channel.</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i></i></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBJ-WKjlBADd-VOk3KuUxMP2p0O9bK83S4jakq5v1CiOBKC0T7UdRbHinVFoeOcAcXmF5yi1Kjiq8dmoxjL7zsipwUUDTIgzCwKGJTE1vCrYfGFrMwWnwViEbaX7RYB_GayqgaFvdroghJgWWK3TYMU6WmqQ_kkisJmY4aYRM27KCOZLd25S_GLBrMjevY/s256/Yekaterina%20Engalycheva.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBJ-WKjlBADd-VOk3KuUxMP2p0O9bK83S4jakq5v1CiOBKC0T7UdRbHinVFoeOcAcXmF5yi1Kjiq8dmoxjL7zsipwUUDTIgzCwKGJTE1vCrYfGFrMwWnwViEbaX7RYB_GayqgaFvdroghJgWWK3TYMU6WmqQ_kkisJmY4aYRM27KCOZLd25S_GLBrMjevY/s16000/Yekaterina%20Engalycheva.png" /></a></i></span></span></div><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><b></b></i></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">~ Moscow City Council deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Ekaterina Engalycheva was outraged by the provision of free calls by Russian mobile operators to their subscribers located in Israel, which is currently at war.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Why such unprecedented generosity towards the Israelis at our expense?”</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">To be fair, residents of Russia’s border regions with Ukraine that are constantly being shelled and bombarded don’t get any freebies from the mobile operators.</span></span></p><p><b><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ethnic Russians feel they’re treated as second-class citizens, which of course they are in their own country. It should be noted that ethnic Russian citizens do not have their country and never have had since Mongols enslaved them back in the 13th century.</span></span></b></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Russian Empire comprises hundreds of nationalities and doesn’t begin nor end anywhere, therefore ethnic Russians must suffer silently and commit to their lot of unstoppable personal sacrifice to their comrades in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East.</span></span></p><p><b><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Free international calls to Israelis is the least of Russians’ sacrifices. Putin has recently written off tens of billions of dollars of debts from Africa in order to provide them with more financial aid in their war against Western imperialism.</span></span></b></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">As for Moscow City Council Deputy Engalycheva, she can barely hide her rampant anti-Semitism. Last year she proposed to “isolate the 50 richest Jews to stop wars.”</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Engalycheva and many of her compatriots believe in the conspiracy theory that purports that all wars are started by Jews with the goal of world domination, citing Volodymir Zelensky who resisted the Russian invasion as a primary example. Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov also subscribes to this view, claiming in an interview that Adolph Hitler is part Jewish.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><b>I won’t be surprised if the permanent</b> <b>representative of Russia to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia who last year blamed Ukraine for breeding combat mosquitoes in the swampy lowlands of Kherson that assaulted ethnic Russians infecting them with deadly diseases like malaria would pronounce that Napoleon and Genghis Khan were Jewish, too.</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Engalycheva has also exposed the West’s plans to develop a “psycho-electronic weapon” and <b>fought tooth and nail against anti-COVID measures as she wasn’t satisfied that only one million Russian citizens died from COVID-19 and wanted her country to set the world record.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Engalycheva who’s by any metric not the sharpest corkscrew in the drawer got elected into Moscow City Council by Alexey Navalny and his anti-corruption team FBK’s project “Smart Voting.”</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Smart Voting is imprisoned opposition leader’s odd idea to engineer an election campaign to put in the seats of regional government candidates who are not from the United Russia ruling party through voting for the candidates from FBK’s list.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>It’s like coming to the restaurant where the waiter promptly orders you what to eat and gives you a tip for compliance. In Russia, elections elect you.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><b>Engalycheva, however, is a crook like anyone else from the ruling party.</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">She broke up with her husband and cohabited with businessman Sergei Skuratov, who left his family for her sake, and after his death which happened under suspicious circumstances, she attempted to take control of the management of his company.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">When Skuratova’s family was about to sue Engalycheva, she preemptively sued them.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">During the trial, Engalycheva stated that she lived with the deceased for more than four years, purchased several apartments with him, and therefore has the right to them and demanded to be included as a co-founder of Travel Company Country of Tourism LLC, which belonged to her partner. However, Engalycheva failed to seize the property of her common-law husband.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Concurrently, Engalycheva attempted to take over Skuratov’s business by creating a clone company “Country of Space Tourism” with a turnover of 37 million rubles to attract all the customers from her former lover’s company using the company’s assistant who also left his wife and children for Engalycheva to help out with the hostile takeover.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Engalycheva was accused of hiding her property in order not to pay taxes and was arrested and fined twice for illegal meetings to propagate her conspiracy theories to the masses.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>So much for family values and smart voting. All seems to be a major fraud and profanity in the Federation of Russia</b>. ~ Misha Firer, Quora<br /><br />Gerhard Mansfeld:<br />Thanks for the latest news from the criminal mental asylum aka motherland.<br />It's very entertaining as long as you don't become a victim of it.<br /><br />Elena Gold:<br />And <b>retired general Andrey Gurulev (head of Russia’s defense committee in State Duma) supported Hamas. Because “Iran and groups from Muslim World are our allies, and Israeli is the ally of the USA.”</b><br /><br />Now you know. Russia has never been a friend of Israel. They lied.<br /></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsi94SAO1WSm4p6fPaaIpIbP7BTT4Mlax3pyCRsOm-dXoT5gV3A33EbHqK_EAI8riciGzUYgpFznkQ5r_gf-D7ntkJvnEVaE0E-kNnsbJLkHhJYiUP7nNpsJLxcJrlORNomN17kSqFS8DddPf2BZ0iU0CB8lftFYluYP-kJCFEsOGJLS0IwLxUWD_XvtgQ/s585/andrei%20Gurulev.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="415" data-original-width="585" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsi94SAO1WSm4p6fPaaIpIbP7BTT4Mlax3pyCRsOm-dXoT5gV3A33EbHqK_EAI8riciGzUYgpFznkQ5r_gf-D7ntkJvnEVaE0E-kNnsbJLkHhJYiUP7nNpsJLxcJrlORNomN17kSqFS8DddPf2BZ0iU0CB8lftFYluYP-kJCFEsOGJLS0IwLxUWD_XvtgQ/w400-h284/andrei%20Gurulev.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Andrey Gurulev</i></span></span></div><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">George Swanson:<br />Know what I love Misha for? The answer is always different from the question, the good ‘ol Jewish classic.<br />Kid goes to a Rabbi and asks:<br />— Rabbi, where do you believe we go after we die?<br />— Where do you think we go?<br />— I don’t know, that’s why I am asking this question<br />— Why do you think you are asking these questions?<br /><br />*<br /><b>THE SOVIET N1 “MOON ROCKET”<br /></b><br /><b>The N1 was a big moon rocket, the Soviet’s answer to the Saturn V. It had 30 (THIRTY!) rocket engines in its first stage. This kind of complexity required control computers that did not yet exist, so it blew up. Every time it attempted to fly. After the final failure (which happened AFTER Apollo 11 landed on the moon) it was abandoned and all mention of it was hidden for decades.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzop7g7f3cXIYX4xcejLk-XW3uQGxXHXeTM-EAAi7leWXoj6UtQhnVDCZM1VpEibHp_TPL0IosD9gHGyGnnpkAdN8I649LMeBw03nNK05nk0m9CXCGJLgW3imq1YH4KIGaWWt-Kn_FqrbYhERgTFQM9f8pDd1EJPC-clPEQed98pmOc2A_-W7mTRh5iczv/s550/n1%20soviet%20moon%20rocket.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="434" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzop7g7f3cXIYX4xcejLk-XW3uQGxXHXeTM-EAAi7leWXoj6UtQhnVDCZM1VpEibHp_TPL0IosD9gHGyGnnpkAdN8I649LMeBw03nNK05nk0m9CXCGJLgW3imq1YH4KIGaWWt-Kn_FqrbYhERgTFQM9f8pDd1EJPC-clPEQed98pmOc2A_-W7mTRh5iczv/w316-h400/n1%20soviet%20moon%20rocket.jpg" width="316" /></a></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b></b>N1 rocket<br /><br />Andrew in Minnesota:<br />Even had the N1 worked, the Soviet moon program would still have to be madly rushed to beat the U.S.<br /><br />The first N1 launch — where a leak at 25 seconds caused a fire, leading the computer to shut down the motors — did not happen until February 1969, less than five months before Apollo 11 lifted off. This came 15 months before the first Saturn V launch, which didn’t result in men on the moon for another 20 months. Also, the capsule and life-support system wasn’t ready in July 1969 (it wouldn’t be launched on an unmanned test, using a Soyuz-L rocket, until November 1970).<br /><br />Note: <b>The Soviets actually had two moon programs. One featured the N1 intended to land on the moon’s surface, whereas the other featured a Proton rocket intended only to orbit the moon. The latter was cancelled because, again, while the rocket was ready, the capsule and life-support system were not. And after Apollo 8 circled the moon, the Soviet leadership quit caring about an orbital mission.</b><br /><br />Ken Foster:<br /><b>What were they thinking? Thirty rockets — what could go wrong.<br /></b><br />Jim Reich:<br />30 rocket engines with Soviet quality control and minimal testing, and only 2 flight attempts to get it right. There’s nothing wrong with 30 rockets, as the 27 engined Falcon Heavy has shown. In fact, it’s the only way to make propulsive landing work.<br /><br /><b>It now turns out, that the Soviets actually had it right. It just took a mad genius with a billion dollars in his pocket, a super competent team and no fear of failure to show us that</b>. And it wasn’t even the issue of electronics, as a bunch of people are claiming. Given a dozen attempts to get it right, I’m pretty sure Soviet analog computers could have handled the controls. They would just have to have the ability to repeatably produce super high quality engines and the time and resources to fully test them, including static fires on the pad.<br /><br />Theodore Carlin:<br /><b>If I am remembering that final try, the whole thing blew up, killing quite a lot of people including a general in the rocket forces and a lot of engineers and scientists.</b> The kind of mistake of making too complex a machine is almost a guarantee of disaster. Kind of makes you wonder how they built an Atomic bomb…<br /><br />Oh yeah. The U.S designed it, they copied it. They likely got the design for the hydrogen Bomb the same way. They once made the biggest hydrogen bomb ever with a yield of 40 megatons and they called the Tsar. It was so huge it had to be moved to the test site on 2 railroad cars.<br /><br />Tim Nichols:<br /><b>The N-1 was a failure because Korolev was dead.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaaBRhIY2DEFvQIVGQVPWVzLXXbIP6swgyTr9E0PTSvUJ-Ap3AqsJRszQdN8pbBCoe0npc6nzmNmbEguI23V3nnDTypz_VyOzOxirfbnXISKuzRXsySsNxMt6lwSmfLY3Zj9khXRYkR-ZMHBtXm6ibxJZqga_fb6hZ9uIV7SEWGAdNH3ATGdukHHccBEDa/s2521/sergei%20Korolev%201969%20Soviet%20stamp.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1818" data-original-width="2521" height="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaaBRhIY2DEFvQIVGQVPWVzLXXbIP6swgyTr9E0PTSvUJ-Ap3AqsJRszQdN8pbBCoe0npc6nzmNmbEguI23V3nnDTypz_VyOzOxirfbnXISKuzRXsySsNxMt6lwSmfLY3Zj9khXRYkR-ZMHBtXm6ibxJZqga_fb6hZ9uIV7SEWGAdNH3ATGdukHHccBEDa/w400-h289/sergei%20Korolev%201969%20Soviet%20stamp.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></span></div><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Korolev was a brilliant rocket engineer, but also knew how to work Moscow to get the funding needed.<br /><br />He died in 1966 [Oriana: due in large part to the injuries he sustained while imprisoned in Siberia on false charges], and the person who came after him was not as good at getting funding. The result was that corners were cut. Things which should've been tested weren't. The result was not surprising: the N-1 failed.</b><br /><br />*<br /></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"></span><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdu-RC71BKn1DNZTI29ehUnyBdqg0ZhrSLYJavF-teLy_ioCDg7IIdmAeqIkCpd5RoXoM-eLjrQNhrNtNOy5R-iDh30ztq78LzeAeAwzpGeIfQWIyIA5imZWXuuiSj5i-H8nWH0nUtXK41nI7u8czhgXBJi1rrjKl7U8lYcWWhcjLpZz1KBCcEoggDuo3X/s902/Niels%20Bohr%20on%20quantum%20physics.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="902" data-original-width="750" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdu-RC71BKn1DNZTI29ehUnyBdqg0ZhrSLYJavF-teLy_ioCDg7IIdmAeqIkCpd5RoXoM-eLjrQNhrNtNOy5R-iDh30ztq78LzeAeAwzpGeIfQWIyIA5imZWXuuiSj5i-H8nWH0nUtXK41nI7u8czhgXBJi1rrjKl7U8lYcWWhcjLpZz1KBCcEoggDuo3X/w333-h400/Niels%20Bohr%20on%20quantum%20physics.jpg" width="333" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>THE NEANDERTHAL “FLOWER BURIAL” — OR PERHAPS NOT<br /></b><br />The clumps of pollen found in the large cave in northern Iraq contained traces of hyacinth, bachelor’s button and hollyhock. These elements alone would not make your average pollen remarkable, but these clumps were found in the 1950s near <b>10 Neanderthal skeletal remains at Shanidar cave, in the Zagros Mountains.</b><br /><br />The US archaeologist Ralph Solecki, along with pollen analysts and palynologists (who study fossilized plant pollen) called the site they excavated the ‘Flower Burial’. In a series of papers and books published in the 1970s detailing their findings, <b>they suggested that Neanderthals had intentionally buried, and then placed flora around their dead in a show of funerary ritual.<br /></b><br />All aspiring archaeologists read about the Flower Burial in school, says Graeme Barker, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge. It was never just about the flowers, but about what they meant about Neanderthals’ inner emotional lives. The Flower Burial expanded ideas about what Neanderthals, an extinct species or subspecies of ancient humans, were cognitively capable of. If Neanderthals treated their dead in this way, they might have been feeling emotions such as compassion and grief, or considering what death means.</span><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>‘With the findings of flowers in association with Neanderthals, we are brought suddenly to the realization that the universality of mankind and the love of beauty go beyond the boundary of our own species,’ wrote Solecki in his book Shanidar: The First Flower People (1971).<br /></b><br />In 2011, the Kurdistan Regional Government invited Barker to re-excavate Shanidar. In 2014, Barker’s initial trip ended suddenly when the terrorist group ISIS got too close to the site, but he returned the following year, joined in 2016 by the Cambridge paleoanthropologist Emma Pomeroy. They have found themselves facing questions raised by the Flower Burial more than 60 years ago.<br /><br />‘In many ways, Shanidar is at the beginning of the debates about Neanderthals and how similar or different they were to Homo sapiens,’ Barker says. ‘<b>At the heart of that is how did they deal with the dead, and what do they think about death?’<br /></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ9enuVSxgPXUFjd1jzmH8e4oOXgNpB6pDZqLQ_kzDq4ZoKjevxHb4KBCT4x-2p-gYhZjUoXs4OYmqTNZhp2Kt0ovFviNCeTiUHBM5VlCsvbmwoy1QxxXBpNJeSGlFoVMw72dclYf2Wrvmev2GUmPT_PD5RKxNHi8CjpD3o4wPvJVOHmLA8TNV5Bwc08ra/s1180/Shanidar%20Cave%20Iraq%20Neanderthal.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="835" data-original-width="1180" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ9enuVSxgPXUFjd1jzmH8e4oOXgNpB6pDZqLQ_kzDq4ZoKjevxHb4KBCT4x-2p-gYhZjUoXs4OYmqTNZhp2Kt0ovFviNCeTiUHBM5VlCsvbmwoy1QxxXBpNJeSGlFoVMw72dclYf2Wrvmev2GUmPT_PD5RKxNHi8CjpD3o4wPvJVOHmLA8TNV5Bwc08ra/w400-h283/Shanidar%20Cave%20Iraq%20Neanderthal.webp" width="400" /></a></i></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>Fossils of 10 Neanderthals were unearthed in Shanidar Cave in the foothills of the Baradost Mountains in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region.<br /></i><br />When Barker was invited to Shanidar, he says his goal wasn’t to find more remains or to disprove the Flower Burial. He targeted the spots where Solecki found Neanderthals, in order to date them using modern techniques but then he and his team happened upon more, previously undiscovered, Neanderthal remains by chance. ‘It was a complete surprise,’ Barker says.</span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">In 2015 and 2016, they found leg bones from Solecki’s so-called ‘Shanidar 4’ Neanderthal. In 2017, they spotted the bones of a new individual near the Flower Burial that they then excavated in 2018 and 2019: a crushed skull of an adult, and parts of arms and upper torso. <b>The burial dates to between 70,000 and 60,000 years ago, some 30,000 years older than the previous remains at the site. They called it Shanidar Z.<br /></b><br />When Solecki found the remains of the Neanderthal individuals in the 1950s, their bodies contained provocative indications of something like emotional lives. <b>One body appears to be a man who had been crippled when he was younger, but died as an adult. ‘That raises all sorts of questions about how he must have been looked after by the community to survive,’ Barker says, and whether Neanderthals cared for the sick or the disabled, and why.</b><br /><br />But there were doubts about the meaning of the pollen early on. Some of the workmen at the original excavation liked to put flowers in their belts that could have shed pollen, and wild flowers grew all around the cave, with pollen that could be brought in by rodents or wind. People visiting the cave might have tracked in pollen on the bottom of their shoes.<br /><br />In a study from August 2023, Barker, <b>Pomeroy and others proposed that the pollen is probably better explained by nesting solitary bees who burrow into the ground and walls of the caves, bringing pollen with them.</b> ‘The pollen loads of individual bees can contain more than one species if they are foraging different species at once,’ the researchers wrote. This would help explain why the original analysis of the pollen clusters contained ‘two or three different species of agglutinated pollens’, which would be hard to explain if the pollen came only from flowers placed on top of bodies.<br /><br />This means that the pollen that sparked curiosity about our distant relatives is probably not a relic of Neanderthal grieving – but that doesn’t mean that the cave can’t act as a window into the psychological past, and how Neanderthals treated their dead.<br /><br /><b>Even if the Flower Burial pollen was carried by bees, continuing to find so many bones altogether is likely not a coincidence, indicating it might have been a burial site, not just a place people died by happenstance.</b> ‘The flowers captured people’s imagination,’ says Pomeroy. ‘But the fact that you’ve got this really tight cluster of individuals has received a lot less attention.’</span></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>One way of identifying whether a behavior is something practical or more symbolic is to look for patterning, Pomeroy says. Shanidar 4 and Shanidar Z are positioned in the same way, and facing the same direction – towards the entrance of the cave.</b><br /><br />‘If the direction you put a body in doesn’t mean anything, then we probably expect them to be fairly random,’ Pomeroy says. In the cave, there’s a large vertical pillar of rock that fell down from the ceiling that would have been there in the time when the Neanderthals were burying the bodies. Barker says it could have served as potential markers for the graves.<br /><br />There are open questions about why Neanderthals went extinct, and how similar their behavior was to humans. By looking at the sediments in the cave in more detail, Barker, Pomeroy and the team have also been able to find charred plants, showing that the <b>Neanderthals were making pastes with wild grains and nuts, and cooking them. They’ve also found evidence for hearths where fires were created for short periods of time.</b> ‘We’re getting these snapshots of the real everyday stuff,’ says Pomeroy.<br /><br />Studying soils and sediments from the site at a microscopic level, an approach known as micromorphology, the team has even found evidence of more pollen deeper in the ground – though it’s unclear what its source is. They’ve also shown that there’s sediment between the Neanderthal remains suggesting that <b>some skeletons were buried above the others. This could mean that people returned back to the caves for burials, to that exact spot, and more than once.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The word ‘Neanderthal’ is still used widely as a slur, meaning less intelligent or unrefined. ‘It’s rarely used for somebody where you think he’s a fine poet,’ Barker says. While they’re trying to avoid undue storytelling, he thinks that what’s clear from their continued findings is evidence of deliberate, thoughtful behavior, repeated over time.<br /><br />‘It fits with an awful lot of other evidence that these species were much more complicated in many ways than we thought a few years ago,’ Barker says.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="color: #800180;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Neanderthals are not our direct ancestors, though all humans have some Neanderthal DNA</b></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>.</b> Ancient humans and Neanderthals lived alongside each other. <b>That Neanderthals cared about the placement of their dead in some ways could help to reveal the path by which ancient humans too came to care about and bury their dead.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzxd6_6UaxmLF5sC2pjdmCC9wXD2cbQSGkTIfOMGJj8jbxlqeDYeKW0c-YZ9fwDoOXj0D0ktuPA_hVWQwdnLrZ7NDPxOd8u-X73Cgz-OzffFK2HyFYe-W8q2TXDVodE5Su2KZ9jVS03r2mRPqdCmYJOElbNhJlV5YlA2KkRO0SDP-l9psSnUnIsTsCBw6S/s905/neanderthal%20skeleton%20vs%20modern.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="905" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzxd6_6UaxmLF5sC2pjdmCC9wXD2cbQSGkTIfOMGJj8jbxlqeDYeKW0c-YZ9fwDoOXj0D0ktuPA_hVWQwdnLrZ7NDPxOd8u-X73Cgz-OzffFK2HyFYe-W8q2TXDVodE5Su2KZ9jVS03r2mRPqdCmYJOElbNhJlV5YlA2KkRO0SDP-l9psSnUnIsTsCBw6S/w266-h400/neanderthal%20skeleton%20vs%20modern.jpg" width="266" /></a></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b> </b><br /><i>Neanderthal skeleton and modern Homo sapiens skeleton</i></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">‘How did we end up being this kind of animal that uses symbolism and behaves in these complex ways and has these huge brains and, and has been able to sort of create this highly complex world?’ Pomeroy says. ‘That’s why understanding other related species is so important. We can’t answer that question unless we look back into our evolutionary past.’ ~<br /><br /><a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/digging-for-answers-in-a-cave-filled-with-neanderthal-skeletons?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=0577e4cce7-">https://psyche.co/ideas/digging-for-answers-in-a-cave-filled-with-neanderthal-skeletons?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=0577e4cce7-<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>LEAVING ISLAM<br /></b><br />I had no intentions of leaving Islam, but was literally forced out of it due to the events after <b>I married a Hindu. After I married, my brothers, uncles, male cousins, and other acquaintances suddenly made it their life mission to call me at least three to four times a day to tell me the horrible things they were going to do to me and my husband for my having married a Hindu. </b><br /><br />This continued for the next 2 months until all my attempts to make peace with them failed, and I then changed my number. <b>I got deaths threats, acid attack threats, rape threats while they told me that they would kill my husband and chop him into small pieces (boti-boti) and feed to the dogs, or that I would find his dead body in a garbage dump one day. <br /></b><br />It was such a terrible experience that I was disgusted by this religion that had turned my own brothers, uncles and cousins into potential killers and rapists. I decided to leave Islam. I also decided I would do everything I could to cure as many as possible of this disease. So far, I have helped around 20 Muslims, mostly women, save themselves from it. ~ Aisha Ghosh, Quora</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">*</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">About a quarter of adults who were raised Muslim (23%) no longer
identify as members of the faith, roughly on par with the share of
Americans who were raised Christian and no longer identify with
Christianity (22%), according to a new analysis of the 2014 <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/05/12/chapter-2-religious-switching-and-intermarriage/#net-gains-and-losses-by-religious-tradition-unaffiliated-make-big-gains-catholics-suffer-major-losses">Religious Landscape Study</a>. But while the share of American Muslim adults who are <i>converts </i>to Islam also is about one-quarter (23%), a much smaller share of current Christians (6%) are converts. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">A 2017 <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/07/26/findings-from-pew-research-centers-2017-survey-of-us-muslims/">Pew Research Center survey</a>
of U.S. Muslims, using slightly different questions than the 2014
survey, found a similar estimate (24%) of the share of those who were
raised Muslim but have left Islam. Among this group, 55% no longer
identify with any religion, according to the 2017 survey. Fewer identify
as Christian (22%), and an additional one-in-five (21%) identify with a
wide variety of smaller groups, including faiths such as Buddhism,
Hinduism, Judaism, or as generally “spiritual.” </span><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br /></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Cgv54QwbQaZfy2aLP1fBWT_XcL-XQ5VOzcko7KzOgljY47T6-8aW4YR0NuX8EeAvW3q1BAYCqrP9nYC-DOfQpkaAAuhrjFFZa7jAz5Eri-aGTs4x6J_vAUbJolcyHEBC6vHEvB34U9RCaR7U37n0VAKuVEiBEyWNpOpsI2GFE6esURT-4Lg02TJ9XA56/s602/death%20penalty%20for%20leaving%20Islam.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="205" data-original-width="602" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Cgv54QwbQaZfy2aLP1fBWT_XcL-XQ5VOzcko7KzOgljY47T6-8aW4YR0NuX8EeAvW3q1BAYCqrP9nYC-DOfQpkaAAuhrjFFZa7jAz5Eri-aGTs4x6J_vAUbJolcyHEBC6vHEvB34U9RCaR7U37n0VAKuVEiBEyWNpOpsI2GFE6esURT-4Lg02TJ9XA56/w400-h136/death%20penalty%20for%20leaving%20Islam.webp" width="400" /></a></b></div><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b><br />PLASTIC-EATING BACTERIA<br /></b><br />~ In 2001, a group of Japanese scientists made a startling discovery at a rubbish dump. In trenches packed with dirt and waste, they found <b>a slimy film of bacteria that had been happily chewing through plastic bottles, toys and other bric-a-brac. As they broke down the trash, the bacteria harvested the carbon in the plastic for energy, which they used to grow, move and divide into even more plastic-hungry bacteria.</b> Even if not in quite the hand-to-mouth-to-stomach way we normally understand it, the bacteria were eating the plastic.<br /><br />The scientists were led by Kohei Oda, a professor at the Kyoto Institute of Technology. His team was looking for substances that could soften synthetic fabrics, such as polyester, which is made from the same kind of plastic used in most beverage bottles. Oda is a microbiologist, and he believes that whatever scientific problem one faces, microbes have probably already worked out a solution. “I say to people, watch this part of nature very carefully. It often has very good ideas,” Oda told me recently.<br /><br />What Oda and his colleagues found in that rubbish dump had never been seen before. They had hoped to discover some micro-organism that had evolved a simple way to attack the surface of plastic. But these bacteria were doing much more than that – <b>they appeared to be breaking down plastic fully and processing it into basic nutrients.</b> From our vantage point, hyperaware of the scale of plastic pollution, the potential of this discovery seems obvious. But back in 2001 – still three years before the term “microplastic” even came into use – it was “not considered a topic of great interest”, Oda said. The preliminary papers on the bacteria his team put together were never published.<br /><br />In the years since the group’s discovery, plastic pollution has become impossible to ignore. Within that roughly 20-year span, we have generated 2.5bn tons of plastic waste and each year we produce about 380 million tonnes more, with that amount projected to triple again by 2060. <b>A patch of plastic rubbish seven times the size of Great Britain sits in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,</b> and plastic waste chokes beaches and overspills landfills across the world. At the miniature scale, <b>microplastic and nanoplastic particles have been found in fruits and vegetables, having passed into them through the plants’ roots. And they have been found lodged in nearly every human organ – they can even pass from mother to child through breast milk.</b><br /><br />Current methods of breaking down or recycling plastics are woefully inadequate. The vast majority of plastic recycling involves a crushing and grinding stage, which frays and snaps the fibers that make up plastic, leaving them in a lower-quality state. While a glass or aluminum container can be melted down and reformed an unlimited number of times, the smooth plastic of a water bottle, say, degrades every time it is recycled. A recycled plastic bottle becomes a mottled bag, which becomes fibrous jacket insulation, which then becomes road filler, never to be recycled again. And that is the best case scenario. In reality, <b>hardly any plastic – just 9% – ever enters a recycling plant. The sole permanent way we’ve found to dispose of plastic is incineration, which is the fate of nearly 70 million tons of plastic every year – but incineration drives the climate crisis by releasing the carbon in the plastic into the air, as well as any noxious chemicals it might be mixed with.</b><br /><br />In the years after their discovery, Oda and his student Kazumi Hiraga, now a professor, continued corresponding and conducting experiments. When they finally published their work in the prestigious journal Science in 2016, it emerged into a world desperate for solutions to the plastic crisis, and it was a blockbuster hit. <b>Oda and his colleagues named the bacterium that they had discovered in the rubbish dump Ideonella sakaiensis – after the city of Sakai, where it was found – and in the paper, they described a specific enzyme that the bacterium was producing, which allowed it to break down polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the most common plastic found in clothing and packaging.</b> The paper was reported widely in the press, and it currently has more than 1,000 scientific citations, placing it in the top 0.1% of all papers.<br /><br />But the real hope is that this goes beyond a single species of bacteria that can eat a single kind of plastic. Over the past half-century, microbiology – the study of small organisms including bacteria and some fungi – has undergone a revolution that Jo Handelsman, former president of the American Society for Microbiology, and a science adviser to the Obama White House, described to me as possibly the most significant biological advance since Darwin’s discovery of evolution. We now know that micro-organisms constitute a vast, hidden world entwined with our own. We are only beginning to grasp their variety, and their often incredible powers. Many scientists have come around to Oda’s view – that for the host of seemingly intractable problems we are working on, microbes may have already begun to find a solution. All we need to do is look.<br /><br />A discovery like Oda’s is only a starting point. <b>To have any hope of mitigating this globe-spanning environmental disaster of our own making, the bacteria will have to work faster and better.</b> When Oda and his group originally tested the bacteria in the lab, they placed them in a tube with a 2cm-long piece of plastic film weighing a 20th of a gram. Left at room temperature, they broke down the tiny bit of plastic into its precursor liquids in about seven weeks. This was very impressive and far too slow to have any meaningful impact on plastic waste at scale.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Fortunately, over the past four decades, scientists have become remarkably proficient at engineering and manipulating enzymes</b>. <b>When it comes to plastic chewing, “the Ideonella enzyme is actually very early in its evolutionary development”, says Andy Pickford, a professor of molecular biophysics at the University of Portsmouth. It is the goal of human scientists to take it the rest of the way.</b><br /><br />When any living organism wishes to break down a larger compound – whether a string of DNA, or a complex sugar, or plastic – they turn to enzymes, tiny molecular machines within a cell, specialized for that task. Enzymes work by helping chemical reactions happen at a microscopic scale, sometimes forcing reactive atoms closer together to bind them, or twisting complex molecules at specific points to make them weaker and more likely to break apart.<br /><br /><b>If you want to improve natural enzyme performance, there are approaches that work in almost every case. Chemical reactions tend to work better at higher temperatures, for instance </b>(this is why, if you want to make a cake, it is better to set the oven at 180C rather than 50C); but most enzymes are most stable at the ambient temperature of the organism they work in – 37C in the case of humans. <b>By rewriting the DNA that codes an enzyme, scientists can tweak its structure and function, making it more stable at higher temperatures, say, which helps it work faster.<br /></b><br />This power sounds godlike, but there are many limitations. “It is often two steps forward, one step back,” says Elizabeth Bell, a researcher at the US government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado. <b>Evolution itself involves tradeoffs, and while scientists understand how most enzymes work, it remains difficult to predict the tweaks that will make them work better. “Logical design tends not to work very well, so we have to take other approaches,” says Bell.</b><br /><br />Bell’s own work – which focuses on PETase, the enzyme that Ideonella sakaiensis produces to break down PET plastics – takes a brute-force approach in order to turbocharge natural evolution. <b>Bell takes the regions of the enzyme that work directly on plastic and uses genetic engineering to subject them to every possible mutation. In the wild, a mutation in an enzyme might occur only once in every few thousand times the bacteria divide. Bell ensures she gets hundreds or thousands of potentially beneficial mutants to test</b>. She then measures each one for its ability to degrade plastic. Any candidates that show even marginal improvement get another round of mutations. The head of the NREL research group, Gregg Beckham, refers to it as “evolving the crap out of an enzyme”. <br /><br />Last year, she published her latest findings, on a PETase enzyme she had engineered that could degrade PET many times faster than the original enzyme.<br /><br />But building an enzyme that suits our purposes isn’t just a case of scientists tinkering until they get the perfect tool. <b>Before the publication of Oda’s paper in 2016, no one knew that bacteria capable of digesting plastic existed</b>. Now, we have one solidly documented case. Given that we have discovered only a tiny fraction of microbial life, a far better candidate might be out there. In engineering terms, we may currently be trying to squeeze elite racing performance out of a Toyota Yaris engine, when somewhere, yet to be discovered, there is the bacterial equivalent of a Ferrari. “This is something we constantly struggle with,” says Beckham. “Do we go back to the well to search and see if nature has the solution? Or do we take the small footholds we have to the lab and work on them now?”<br /><br />This question has led to a boom in what is known as bioprospecting. <b>Like panning for gold in a river, bioprospectors travel the world looking to discover interesting and potentially lucrative microbes</b>. In 2019, a team at Gwangju National University in South Korea took a construction drilling rig to the municipal dump outside town, and drilled 15 meters. Efforts like Waksman’s were relatively rare. <br /><br />It wasn’t until the discovery of simple chemical techniques to read the sequence of DNA – first emerging in the 1970s, but widely and commercially available from the mid-1980s – that things began to change. Suddenly the microbes under the microscope could be catalogued and identified by their DNA, which also hinted at how they might grow and function. Not only that, says Handelsman, “the genetic diversity we were seeing was enormous”. It turned out that “these life forms that looked quite similar are in fact very, very different. It opened this door to realizing how much more was out there.”<br /><br /><b>About 25 years ago, the consensus among scientists was that there were probably fewer than ten million species of microbes on the planet; in the past decade, some new studies have put the number as high as a trillion, the vast majority still unknown.</b> In our bodies, scientists have found microbes that affect everything from our ability to resist disease to our very moods. <b>In the deep seas, scientists have found microbes that live on boiling thermal vents. In crude oil deposits, they have found microbes that have evolved to break down fossil fuels. </b>The more we look, the more extraordinary discoveries we will make.<br /><br />Their adaptability makes microbes the ideal companion for our turbulent times. <b>Microbes evolve in ways and at speeds that would have shocked Darwin and his contemporaries</b>. Partly because they divide quickly and can have population sizes in the billions, and partly because they often have access to evolutionary tricks unknown to more complex lifeforms – rapidly swapping DNA between individuals, for instance – they have found ways to thrive in extreme environments. <br /><br />And, <b>at this historical moment, humans are creating more extreme environments across the globe at an alarming rate.</b> Where other animals and plants have no hope of evolving a solution quickly enough to outpace their changing habitats, <b>microbes are adapting fast. They bloom in acidified water, and are discovered chewing up some of the putrid chemicals we slough off into the natural world. Just as Kohei Oda suggested, for many of our self-created problems, they are proposing their own solutions.</b><br /><br /><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/28/plastic-eating-bacteria-enzyme-recycling-waste?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/28/plastic-eating-bacteria-enzyme-recycling-waste?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us</a></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mary:</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">There is great hope in the investigations into microorganisms that can break down and actually digest plastics. What is so marvelous is that we are discovering the great range and pervasiveness of life, with its seeming determination to adapt to any and all conditions, even the most extreme and hostile...existing and flourishing in places we would think inimical to any form of life. I think of the fungal life growing on the walls of the failed and highly radioactive Chernobyl reactor, and of the microbes living in the boiling thermal vents of the deep ocean. <br /><br />How can such adaptive organisms be used or modified to solve problems like pollution...can we amplify their evolution to make them even more effective? Can we find more already in existence that are already better at digesting plastic waste...or fossil fuel spills? This is exciting and encouraging — makes me think with this kind of inventive adaptability any problem can be resolved. So much great and fascinating work to do! So much to learn!<br /></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />*<br /><b>BERBERINE APPEARS TO PREVENT OR ALLEVIATE DEMENTIA<br /></b><br />Since metformin has been found to protect against dementia, it makes sense to expect that the supplement berberine, which provides many of the same benefits, would also be neuroprotective, lowering the risk of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, MS, and other neurological diseases. <br /><br /><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9895386/">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9895386/</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Berberine, an important protoberberine isoquinoline alkaloid, has
several pharmacological activities, including <b>antimicrobial, glucose-
and cholesterol-lowering, antitumoral, and immunomodulatory properties</b>.
Substantial studies suggest that berberine may be beneficial to
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) by limiting the pathogenesis of extracellular
amyloid plaques and intracellular neurofibrillary tangles. Increasing
evidence has indicated that berberine exerts a protective role in
atherosclerosis related to lipid- and glucose-lowering properties,
implicating that berberine has the potential to inhibit these risk
factors for AD. </span><br /></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5055107/">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5055107/</a></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>HOW FRUCTOSE PROMOTES OBESITY; OBESITY AS A LOW-ENERGY STATE<br /></b><br />The authors propose that fructose resets cell metabolism, increasing hunger and driving the desire for energy-rich foods, such as fats and carbohydrates, which results in weight gain.<br /><br /><b>Obesity is a growing problem worldwide. Obesity rates have tripled since 1975, with 13% of all adults now classified as having obesity.<br /></b><br /><i><b>In the United States, between 1980 and 2008, obesity rates rose from 13.4% to 34.3% of adults, and by 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 41.9% of adults in the U.S. had obesity.</b></i><br /><br />Having obesity increases the risk of many health conditions and adverse events, such as sleep apnea, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and stroke.<br /><br />It may also increase the likelihood of developing certain cancers, and is linked to issues with the digestive system, skin, fertility, and mental health.<br /><br />Now, a paper from the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine proposes that a single substance — <b>fructose — is the main driver of obesity.<br /></b><br />The authors have built on their previous work about the effect of fructose on cells, formulating the “fructose survival hypothesis” to explain the rapid increase in obesity rates.<br /><br /><b>Obesity is not merely a result of consuming excessive energy but, instead, a condition of low energy, marked by</b></span></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b> insufficient ATP</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b> [adenosine triphosphate], due to the types and amounts of food consumed.</b><br /><br />THE FRUCTOSE SURVIVAL HYPOTHESIS<br /><br />When a person eats food, most of the energy ingested is converted to adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the molecule that supplies energy to cells. If too much food is eaten, that excess energy is stored as fat.<br /><br /><b>If the food contains fructose, the fructose initially undergoes the same conversion to ATP to fuel all the body’s functions.<br /><br />However, as more fructose is ingested, </b></span></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>it suppresses the activity of mitochondria </b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>— the organelles that produce ATP — in the cells, reducing levels of ATP.</b><br /><br /><i><b>When ATP levels drop, this sends an alarm signal that the cell might run out of energy, which stimulates a number of biological responses, among them hunger, thirst, increased energy intake, insulin resistance, increased food absorption and reduced resting metabolism.</b><br /></i><br />Where food is abundant, and much of it contains fructose, these changes are likely to lead to weight gain.<br /><br />Fructose is the naturally occurring sugar in fruit and vegetables. However, Costa advised that this should not discourage people from eating whole fruits.<br /><br />“While most whole fruits naturally contain fructose, their consumption is not associated with obesity or weight gain in humans, as the presence of dietary fibers, bioactive compounds, and essential nutrients counteracts the effects of fructose on satiety and insulin sensitivity,” she told us.<br /><br /><b>The problem arises when fruits are processed, or fructose is added to foods.<br /></b><br />And it is not only sweet foods, such as sodas, sweetened juices and packaged desserts and cakes, that contain it. Foods that we regard as savory, including bread, canned soups, prepackaged meals, cereals and many fast foods are all likely to contain fructose in the form of high-fructose corn syrup.<br /><br />“<b>The proposed ‘fructose survival switch’ potentially underlies the influence of ultra-processed foods on energy intake and weight gain. High salt content often found in these foods could further stimulate fructose production, exacerbating the energy imbalance and contributing to obesity</b>,” according to Kelsey Costa.<br /><br /><b>Fructose is also present in table sugar, or sucrose — which is made up of glucose and fructose </b>— and it is made in the body from glucose and other carbohydrates, as Costa explained.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">“<b>The body can also convert glucose to fructose through the polyol pathway, activated by various triggers such as diabetes, high glycemic or high carbohydrate diets, high salt intake, low water intake, purine-rich foods, or stress conditions, leading to obesity and other metabolic effects. Alcohol intensifies this process, stimulating more fructose production,</b>” she told MNT.<br /><br />Lead author Prof. Richard Johnson, professor of medicine – renal diseases and hypertension in the School of Medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, explained in a press release that “fructose is what triggers our metabolism to go into low power mode and lose our control of appetite, but fatty foods become the major source of calories that drive weight gain.”<br /><br />“This theory views obesity as a low-energy state,” he added. “<b>Identifying fructose as the conduit that redirects active energy replacement to fat storage shows that fructose is what drives energy imbalance, which unites theories of obesity.</b>”<br /><br />Lowering fructose consumption includes reducing consumption of sodium, refined and high-glycemic carbohydrates, purine-rich foods like red <b>processed</b> <b>meats</b>, and alcohol to limit fructose production in the body. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/is-fructose-the-unifying-factor-of-all-mechanisms-underlying-obesity#Moderate-fructose-intake-to-help-manage-weight">https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/is-fructose-the-unifying-factor-of-all-mechanisms-underlying-obesity#Moderate-fructose-intake-to-help-manage-weight</a></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">What stays in my mind is a paragraph in Dr. Gundry's book about the summer when they decided: This time, <b>no fruit</b>. He and his wife lost 5 lbs each. Less fructose improves energy production. We are not bears and don't need to fatten up for winter. <br /><br />*<br /><b>PATHOLOGIES THAT STEM FROM OBESITY<br /></b><br />Increased mortality (death risk) from all causes<br />high blood pressure (hypertension)<br />high LDL cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol, or high levels of triglycerides (dyslipidemia)<br />type 2 diabetes<br />coronary heart disease<br />stroke<br />osteoarthritis — a breakdown of cartilage and bone within a joint<br />sleep apnea and breathing problems<br />many types of cancer<br /><br />A report published in August 2022 gave the following warning: “Given dire implications in terms of comorbidities and mortality, these updated epidemiological findings call for coordinated actions from local and regional governments, the scientific community and individual patients alike, as well as the food industry for the obesity pandemic to be controlled and alleviated.”<br /><br />The authors called for coordinated international efforts to combat the obesity pandemic similar to those used against COVID-19.<br /><br />We live in an obesogenic environment with increase in per capita food supply, increased availability and marketing of high-calorie and high-glycemic-index foods and drinks, larger food portions, leisure time physical activities being replaced with sedentary activities such as watching television and use of electronic devices, inadequate sleep, and the use of medications that increase weight.<br /><br />RISE IN CHILDHOOD OBESITY<br /><br />Obesity is not increasing only in adults — t<b>he number of children with obesity has risen alarmingly. </b></span></span><span style="color: #800180;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Worldwide, the number of children and adolescents with obesity has increased tenfold since 1975.</b></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b> </b>If t</span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">his trend continues, soon there may be more children with obesity than there are underweight children. <br /><br />This is particularly worrying, as<b> obesity when young predisposes a person to many health issues.</b><br /><br />The younger a child is when developing obesity, the higher the chances of developing health problems as an adult. Furthermore, the earlier the child suffers from obesity, the earlier the health problems begin.<br /><br /><b>These health problems may include fatty liver disease, sleep apnea, type 2 diabetes, asthma, cardiovascular disease, high cholesterol, menstrual abnormalities, impaired balance, and orthopedic problems.<br /></b><br />And children with obesity are likely to continue with obesity into adolescence and adulthood. <b>55% of children with obesity will go on to have obesity in adolescence, and 80% of those adolescents will still have obesity when adults.<br /></b><br /><b>However, the same analysis notes that of adults with obesity, 70% did not have childhood obesity, so targeting childhood obesity is unlikely to solve the problem.<br /></b><br />According to the World Health Organization, obesity and overweight are no longer just a problem for individuals, but <b>a global epidemic — which it refers to as “globesity” — that is taking over in many parts of the world. And it is not only an issue in industrialized countries; obesity is a growing concern in developing countries. </b><br /><br />There is little evidence that community-based interventions and social marketing campaigns specifically targeting obesity provide substantial or lasting benefit. Instead, a more appropriate strategy would be to enact high-level policy and legislative changes to alter the obesogenic environments in which we live by <b>providing incentives for healthy eating and increased levels of physical activity.</b><br /><br />But combating the global problem of obesity will take more than just telling people to eat less and exercise more. We need to understand how people interact with their environments, and how that environment influences food intake.<br /><br />IS FOOD MARKETING TO BLAME?<br /><br />It is a given that people want plentiful, safe, convenient, and inexpensive food — we need food to stay alive. And food manufacturing is a lucrative business, so manufacturers and retailers make huge efforts to persuade us to buy it.<br /><br />Pricing is perhaps the most powerful in persuading people to overeat. The review noted that pricing was the strongest predictor of increased energy intake and obesity. <b>When consumers pay less for a food product, they not only eat more of it, but they also tend to eat it more rapidly.</b><br /><br />So-called healthy options can be deceptive. One study found hat low-fat nutrition labels increased people’s perceptions of the appropriate serving size and decreased the guilt associated with eating the food, thereby increasing intake.<br /><br />Another factor is package size. Larger packs provide better value for money for the consumer, but several older studies have shown that they increase consumption.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">So, perhaps the key is persuading food manufacturers and retailers that they can still turn a profit when they are helping consumers to eat better, rather than promoting unhealthy foods.<br /><br />And <b>maybe consumers need to develop a different attitude to food, regarding it as a means of achieving and maintaining good health</b>. This is where culinary medicine might make an impact.<br /><br />CULINARY MEDICINE<br /><br />Culinary medicine has evolved from the growing interest in the relationship of food, eating, and cooking to health. It has been described as “a new evidence-based field in medicine that blends the art of food and cooking with the science of medicine.”<br /><br />Culinary medicine uses a high-quality, tailored diet, to prevent and treat disease and maintain well-being. The anti-inflammatory diet, for instance, can provide relief from rheumatoid arthritis, and <b>the Mediterranean diet</b> — which emphasizes fruits, vegetables, olive oil, legumes, and whole grains, and includes less ultra-processed foods and meat than a typical Western diet —<b> is effective in preventing cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.<br /></b><br /><b>Culinary medicine is the discipline of educating and empowering people to choose and cook healthy foods.</b> However, as with other methods of weight loss, each individual will respond differently to this approach and thus have varying degrees of success.<br /><br />Key to its success is ensuring that healthy food gives pleasure, and is not seen as a poor substitute for the unhealthy food it replaces.<br /><br />Combating obesity on a population level requires political will, not just individual action. Culinary medicine may be one approach to the problem, but until governments legislate to <b>make healthy food affordable for all</b>, obesity will remain a health risk. ~ </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1FRlpfNCjxjxhfimde7fKuuUYhyphenhyphenNzS1BEb3FO1UogZIbIFsjq68mi28UFpJPpBdJl4LH-O4-lwaeZLtyxVg1Adm0cJhTXk3PXpidL1Pwqbg3qYvKpwKmbrGsWZ7WXEsRgn2uvOohwfYp0BPZw_LC4bfljOzQi1gg-bM5pEksyUDFe69-2-zsgMFN8F9OT/s755/raspberries.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="755" height="159" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1FRlpfNCjxjxhfimde7fKuuUYhyphenhyphenNzS1BEb3FO1UogZIbIFsjq68mi28UFpJPpBdJl4LH-O4-lwaeZLtyxVg1Adm0cJhTXk3PXpidL1Pwqbg3qYvKpwKmbrGsWZ7WXEsRgn2uvOohwfYp0BPZw_LC4bfljOzQi1gg-bM5pEksyUDFe69-2-zsgMFN8F9OT/w400-h159/raspberries.webp" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/treating-obesity-with-culinary-medicine-could-it-be-a-solution">https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/treating-obesity-with-culinary-medicine-could-it-be-a-solution<br /></a><br />Oriana:<br /><br /><b>Fortunately, there is one positive trend: Americans are eating out less, and cooking at home instead</b>. “Six out of ten Americans cook at home more than five times a week. Back in 2019, only 33.14% of Americans had declared the same, and another 37.22% said they only manage to cook meals at home three to five times a week.” </span></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.testhut.com/how-many-americans-cook-statistics/">https://www.testhut.com/how-many-americans-cook-statistics/</a><br /><br /><b>At least 50% of Americans cook dinner every day.</b></span><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Dinner is the most-cooked meal of Americans, and Monday is the day when 60% of them make an effort to prepare it from scratch. Data also shows that the share of Americans cooking dinner throughout the week declines to 49% on Fridays and 50% on Saturdays, which are the days when most decide to either eat out or prepare their meal from pre-packaged or frozen food. <br /><br />Additionally, 58% of Americans said that they eat homemade dinner on Tuesdays, and 56% said the same for Wednesdays and Thursdays. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">As for making healthy food affordable: in my experience, most healthy food is already affordable. Vegetables don't cost much. It's junk food that's expensive. We also know that sugary and salty junk food is addictive. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Would it be too great a leap to label sugar as poison, the way it was successfully done with tobacco products? </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Healthy food served in inexpensive cafeterias might also go a long way. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Above all, it takes awareness. The anti-smoking campaign persistently pointed out health damage caused by smoking. We need more voices out there speaking out against sugar, cookies, cake, and junk food in general. And taxes on junk food would be great. After all, taxes on cigarettes did work. Why should Hostess Ding-Dongs enjoy the non-taxable status along with broccoli and carrots? </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV-Eifq0WFrxCGfUaH1bN_O4YoVMuPxd7yKlUxSn_mJtWivrFN7aF-e1w-OdcvqXdJ7oQgLn8DTrPgXClXF_Tjh76pchLINpQGYFskvj-7q95LaA2bXzpWgB_v-WAWcDxx47uBM2AO7OsziYiLFz369sLqfqVsP2wJx2gIlGiu8TQfix4aoxCWMu_4vkVE/s1024/steak%20mushrooms.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV-Eifq0WFrxCGfUaH1bN_O4YoVMuPxd7yKlUxSn_mJtWivrFN7aF-e1w-OdcvqXdJ7oQgLn8DTrPgXClXF_Tjh76pchLINpQGYFskvj-7q95LaA2bXzpWgB_v-WAWcDxx47uBM2AO7OsziYiLFz369sLqfqVsP2wJx2gIlGiu8TQfix4aoxCWMu_4vkVE/w400-h300/steak%20mushrooms.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></span></div><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Just add some green veggies! Healthy cooking is fabulously simple. <br /></i></span></span><p></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>UNTREATED ADULT ADHD NEARLY TRIPLES THE RISK OF DEMENTIA<br /></b><br />~ Dementia is a syndrome characterized by dysfunction in daily life due to cognitive impairment. It ranks as a leading cause of disability and mortality. It is estimated that in 2022, among US individuals aged 65 years or older, 6.5 million had dementia, a figure that is predicted to increase to 13.8 million by 2060. Hence, <b>identifying risk and preventive factors for dementia is an international priority.</b><br /><br />Although generally defined as a neurodevelopmental disorder, evidence supports the concept of adult-onset attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Research has reported that 5% of children with ADHD meet ADHD criteria in adulthood, constituting 3% of adult ADHD cases. <b>Studies also show that child and adult ADHD present different social, psychological, and genetic profiles. Despite being distinct from childhood ADHD, little is known about adult ADHD.</b><br /><br />Adult ADHD may be associated with an increased risk of dementia based on common health outcomes, clinical observations, family-based research, and epidemiologic risk studies. Meta-analyses have identified 6 health outcomes (ie, depression, midlife hypertension, smoking, type 2 diabetes, and low levels of education and physical activity) that are modifiable dementia risk factors and consequences of ADHD. <b>Clinical observations and research suggest that adult ADHD appears to mimic some cognitive symptoms of dementia (eg, memory loss). <br /></b><br />Nonetheless, ADHD is underascertained in specialist old age clinics with a dementia focus. Family-based research demonstrates that ADHD is associated with dementia across generations, but the magnitude of the association is attenuated by less genetic kinship, suggesting shared familial risk between the diagnoses. <b>Most, but not all, epidemiologic studies support a significant association between ADHD and the risk of dementia. However, the association is null in some studies and is stronger among males than females.<br /></b><br />The association between adult ADHD and dementia risk remains a topic of interest because of inconsistent results and key factors are yet to be studied. These factors include prescribed psychostimulant medications and reverse causation. P<b>sychostimulant medications are cognitive enhancers used to treat ADHD and so may modify the potential trajectory of cognitive impairment.</b> Reverse causation challenges the association between adult ADHD and dementia because adult ADHD is accompanied by cognitive impairments that resemble dementia and coincide with the onset of the protracted preclinical phase of dementia.<br /><br />This prospective cohort study examined the association between adult ADHD and dementia risk. <b>The present study results showed that an adult ADHD diagnosis was associated with a 2.77-fold increased risk of incident dementia.</b> Complementary analyses generally supported this association.<br /><br />The present study finding that adult ADHD is associated with a higher dementia risk is consistent with most, but not all prior epidemiologic studies. It may be plausible that adult ADHD reflects a brain pathobiological process that reduces the ability to compensate for the effects of later-life neurodegenerative and cerebrovascular processes. Less cognitive and brain reserve may result in pathobiological processes of ADHD that, in turn, reduce compensatory abilities. This explanation is consistent with our findings that show, for the first time to our knowledge, that the association between adult ADHD and dementia risk showed mild evidence of reverse causation.<br /><br />CONCLUSIONS:<br /><br />In this cohort study of 109 218 participants followed up to 17.2 years, after adjustment for 18 potential sources of confounding, the primary analysis indicated that an adult ADHD diagnosis was associated with a 2.77-fold increased dementia risk. Complementary analyses generally did not attenuate the conclusion of the primary analysis. This finding suggests that policy makers, caregivers, patients, and clinicians may wish to monitor ADHD in old age.<br /><br /><a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2810766">https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2810766<br /></a><br />Oriana:<br /><br />The great news here is that the <b>ADHD patients taking neurostimulants (e.g. Ritalin, a form of amphetamine) showed no increased risk of dementia. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's also worth noting that ADHD and dementia both involve a deficit in the inhibitory function. Yet this function is amenable to training. You can learn to stop being distracted by sensory overload. Meditation is one proven method. And you don't need to "do it right." Doing it badly still has benefits. Focus on the phrase "The quiet brain." <br /><br />*<br /><i><b>ending on beauty:</b></i><br /><br />Sometimes I wonder about my father’s<br />years on those islands: why<br />was he so attractive <br />to women? He was in straits then, I suppose<br />desperate, I believe<br />women like to see a man<br />still whole, still standing, but<br />about to go to pieces; such<br />disintegration reminds them<br />of passion. I think of them as living<br />their whole lives<br />completely undressed.<br /><br />~ Louise Glück, from Telemachus’ Fantasy</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">(Image: The Sorrow of Telemachus, by Angelica Kauffmann) <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkj9evDkSNdMwh7lqVb-tuMN_lLAc_Rcnlml8MipdFuibWv4ilzQCnMDH8TUF_G_37Ulgd9Dj8zK87HkkXxcJWJupUAjVC0qBz6F5txmHMazsZ_QBgyyGQa1FcbVnMTquVhILDAwrZCzsY2r-3mKTZATYEotD_83YkQY-HgHlrR3iWHm_0G265fMpVOs7l/s3867/sorrow%20of%20Telemachus%20Angelica%20Kauffman.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2845" data-original-width="3867" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkj9evDkSNdMwh7lqVb-tuMN_lLAc_Rcnlml8MipdFuibWv4ilzQCnMDH8TUF_G_37Ulgd9Dj8zK87HkkXxcJWJupUAjVC0qBz6F5txmHMazsZ_QBgyyGQa1FcbVnMTquVhILDAwrZCzsY2r-3mKTZATYEotD_83YkQY-HgHlrR3iWHm_0G265fMpVOs7l/w400-h294/sorrow%20of%20Telemachus%20Angelica%20Kauffman.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /></span><br /><br /></span><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-4559236895348611602023-10-21T16:18:00.016-07:002023-10-25T11:43:30.637-07:00THE TWILIGHT OF ANTIQUES; WRITERS WHO DON’T UNDERSTAND WOMEN; ABOUT HAMAS; UKRAINIAN AND RUSSIAN CASUALTIES; HUMANS AND THE DESK; THE UNCHURCHED BELT; DOPAMINE AND ADDICTION AND DEPRESSION; NIGHTTIME LEG CRAMPS<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIvZ2tKA7y6iVW5ZKfkt98Dj7WN3-jU9ke-jYR435xOjp_sWBxhFpDCJLlzta9ZeXwSHeWUU1R2h0LpvKKC5CkGzzuNxX9Vu-mUzBPdTwgE4Goa_jZPQ0ITXuGIjTqe4sJq81lZF2sDnHJVJlGHdznMJ3O6C6j8nIToMGSFV_V3b0Woakuu7bGsHjMzL53/s1800/hopper%20sun%20in%20an%20empty%20room%201963.jpg" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1308" data-original-width="1800" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIvZ2tKA7y6iVW5ZKfkt98Dj7WN3-jU9ke-jYR435xOjp_sWBxhFpDCJLlzta9ZeXwSHeWUU1R2h0LpvKKC5CkGzzuNxX9Vu-mUzBPdTwgE4Goa_jZPQ0ITXuGIjTqe4sJq81lZF2sDnHJVJlGHdznMJ3O6C6j8nIToMGSFV_V3b0Woakuu7bGsHjMzL53/w400-h291/hopper%20sun%20in%20an%20empty%20room%201963.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Edward Hopper: Sun in an Empty Room, 1963.</i><br />*<br />BEFORE SUMMER RAIN<br /><br />Suddenly, from all the green around you,<br />something, you don't know what, has disappeared;<br />you feel it creeping closer to the window,<br />in total silence. From the nearby wood<br /><br />you hear the urgent whistling of a plover,<br />reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome:<br />so much solitude and passion come<br />from that one voice, whose fierce request the downpour<br /><br />will grant. The walls, with ancient portraits, glide<br />away from us, cautiously, as though<br />they weren't supposed to hear what we are saying.<br /><br />And reflected on the faded tapestries now:<br />the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long<br />childhood hours when you were so afraid.<br /><br />Rilke, trans. Edward Snow<br /><br />*<br /><b>MALE WRITERS WHO DON'T UNDERSTAND WOMEN</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">~ My favorite Hemingway was For Whom The Bell Tolls. I liked Maria. My favorite Fitzgerald was his letters. I liked Zelda. I liked the god-filled literature of Vonnegut, especially in comparison to his personal communication, where he lambasted his wife for being a whore. I liked A Clockwork Orange. <b>The brutality reminded me of my classmates: rapists, racists, hunters, and God-fearing drunks. Why did I like Lolita? She reminded me of myself.</b></span></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Here, in books, were the realities I encountered every day that I had been told over and over again did not exist.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>At the center of all my favorite novels were women who were ciphers. Women who suffered the men around them. Women the narrator did not understand.</b> Women the protagonist either fell in love with, scorned, pitied, or feared. Women whose interiority was obscured to the point of occlusion.<b> Women who, at the last minute, revealed that everything the characters thought they understood about them was really just an illusion, after all.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">It wasn’t until I went to college and spoke about reading Foster Wallace with my classmates that I realized other people did not see the power in capturing the pathetic death throes of (white) male-dominated reality in these novels, and instead <b>saw the text of Foster Wallace as a glorification of masculinity</b>. At first I couldn’t believe it. His themes were obvious critiques to me, chronicling all the traps masculinity entails: emotional castration, overt reliance on violence as communication, sexual manipulation that ultimately isolates the manipulator, spiritual emptiness, praise of silence, and <b>a dedication to uphold the individual at all cost, especially at the cost of the individual themselves.</b></span></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Even my favorite people were overwhelmingly preoccupied with Scott Pilgrim-esque fantasies of <b>“winning” a “dream girl.”</b> The exclusion of complex women wasn’t intentional, I realized with horror. It wasn’t some winking joke we were all in on. It wasn’t a grand metaphor for the way life was. It was accidental. It was out of ignorance. All of the women symbolized or stood for the status of the man they were in relation to.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>I could write about Hemingway and his lesbian mentors, Vonnegut and his Madonna complex, Fitzgerald and his marital thievery, but instead I want to focus on Joelle Van Dyne: the leading lady of Infinite Jest who also goes by the moniker Madam Psychosis.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Joelle is so crippled by her own beauty and the onslaught of male desire that accompanies it she is no longer capable of existing publicly, and instead must resort to wearing a veil in public in order to be treated humanely. So great was her beauty that even her own father sexualized her. All the men in the novel orbit Joelle: fathers, sons, and addicts alike.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In Don Gately’s dream, she appears to him as a symbol of death. The men of the Incandenza family obsess over her, at their own peril. There is a missing video tape that is rumored to contain her image, and is so entertaining that to watch it is to become instantly addicted. This addiction “kills” the viewers capacity to experience joy in other areas of their life. Throughout the text <b>it is unclear if Joelle is actually disfigured, or if her beauty (and her gender) is itself the disfigurement: so overpoweringly ‘other’ that no one can treat her as human unless she wears a disguise.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">This metaphor seemed so overwhelmingly obvious and true. I wondered and still wonder, did Foster Wallace himself know what he had done?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br />I did not escape the influences I’ve documented here. Most of the time I’m not necessarily bothered by this, though occasionally I am struck down by lightning bolts of shame. <b> I remember reading Max Fischer’s biography of David Wallace and seeing myself in Mary Karr, who Wallace had an intense relationship with in the nineties. He pushed her out of a moving car and then later broke into her house. Yet later still, in an interview with Laura Miller, he mentioned her as one of the best poets working at the time. I had boyfriends like that. I often wondered whether they knew how cruel and confusing their behavior was.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">His ignorance at his own foibles coupled with his inability to escape them in his fiction—in fact his almost orbital and <b>predictable return to misogyny in his work—is perhaps the greatest tragedy and most central element of his legacy</b>, and does not surprise me. I have read, after all, everything he has written and almost everything written about him.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">One of my favorite articles of criticism about him is Zadie Smith’s “The Difficult Gifts of David Foster Wallace.” Smith was one of the first novelists I read who was a woman. I read White Teeth, and marveled at its ambition, voice, and scope. I also read James Wood’s takedown of White Teeth. Smith was twenty-three when the novel was published. After White Teeth and Wood’s review, Smith’s style noticeably changed, her voice became more cultured, her prose less recursive, her stories less “hysterical.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>I missed the hysteria. Hysteria seemed warranted to me. Is this world not absolutely mad? Do we not engage with people every day who love us and hate us in equal measure because of what we represent or the potential we contain? </b>I find influences do not cause either ecstasy (per Jonathan Lethem) or anxiety (Harold Bloom), but are instead a type of map we can follow to understand how an artist came to the literary tradition. <b>It is an inevitable and embarrassing reality for every human that we learn not from ideal sources, but flawed ones. As we move through time our educators are inevitably revealed to be mortal after all.</b></span></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Sometimes I would like to be like my protagonist Jonathan. How freeing it might be to ignore the reality of others and think of the world only through the story of yourself. He is obsessed with being “the best” of “figuring it out” and in the process “taking care” of all the women around him. He goes out of his way to convince others, especially women, that he is someone fundamentally different than who he actually is.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Understanding the difference between irony, empathy, cruelty, and sincerity is often dependent on understanding the context, and context can only be gained in the passage of time. Like a chimera, our understanding of life and our relation to one another is constantly changing. In every decision we make, we further become ourselves, and <b>often the self we become is not the self we expected to be.</b></span></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">To reinterate, his themes were obvious critiques to me, chronicling all the traps masculinity entails: emotional castration, overt reliance on violence as communication, sexual manipulation that ultimately isolates the manipulator, spiritual emptiness, praise of silence, and a dedication to uphold the individual at all cost, especially at the cost of the individual themselves. ~ Molly McGhee<br /><br /><a href="https://lithub.com/men-who-dont-know-women-on-unlearning-the-lessons-of-dick-lit/">https://lithub.com/men-who-dont-know-women-on-unlearning-the-lessons-of-dick-lit/<br /></a></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzU1_KlR5Moy6cyuyOjaw6TcAwC9CeF0FC9K-SU88WoWmpefDcs56hxzsohzPeDvlgL1b4jUpoRf65l_p7jLQCRI5-VKGX6OhjurjpYEul2E3RO66sDzJCHzV7_hsvUCXvH8EAmqc51Ao7tk0YatpQ8muQE2CrUaZkyw81epcxglA_MCjp49N49J8H79OU/s800/david%20foster%20wallace%20on%20steps.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="491" data-original-width="800" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzU1_KlR5Moy6cyuyOjaw6TcAwC9CeF0FC9K-SU88WoWmpefDcs56hxzsohzPeDvlgL1b4jUpoRf65l_p7jLQCRI5-VKGX6OhjurjpYEul2E3RO66sDzJCHzV7_hsvUCXvH8EAmqc51Ao7tk0YatpQ8muQE2CrUaZkyw81epcxglA_MCjp49N49J8H79OU/w400-h245/david%20foster%20wallace%20on%20steps.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>David Foster Wallace</i></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><span>Mary:</span></span></p><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I read Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest' and found it both entertaining, frustrating, and a hard slog. I admit I did not faithfully read all the footnotes and endnotes and the footnotes' footnotes...they were sometimes amusing, sometimes a drag, and too much a sort of metafiction game I was tired of playing. The theme of addiction and recovery was absorbing, for me, the tennis academy much less so. Women are extremely scarce in this world, and very problematic.</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>There are two major women characters...the Mother who runs the tennis academy...a sort of domineering, devouring, controlling figure. And the other, the actress Joelle van Dyne, also called Madame Psychosis. She goes always veiled, either because she is so blindingly beautiful she holds all who see her in thrall, or because she is hideously scarred from acid her mother threw at her face, intending to hit her father, but missing. </b>She is also the star of the dangerous "entertainment" that addicts anyone who sees it, to the point that they are completely possessed by it, and will watch it until they waste away and die. It is revealed at one point that the substance of this entertainment is that the viewer is put in the position of an infant, gazing up into the blurred image of the mother, who repeats an endless apology. This is so satisfying the viewer cannot look away, return to any other act, but wants only to be held in the eternal embrace of that maternal apology.</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Foster Wallace's female characters are like mythological monsters that trap and hold, control and devour. Their appearance is like Medusa's or Helen's...supremely hideous or supremely beautiful...either or both means capture and destruction. Like Joelle and the "entertainment" the only way to safety is to control them, veil them, outlaw them, refuse to hear that seductive apology, powerful as the sirens' song.</span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i></i>*<br /><b></b></span></span></p><div><div dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r9v:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">“This world was tiny, and it was awful. A stone lay just before my eyes, a little stone so chipped as to resemble the face of an old woman with a large jaw. A piece of string lay not far away, and a bunch of feathers that still breathed. My world was tiny, and it was awful. I closed my eyes so as not to see it, and pressed myself tight into the ground that lay beneath me in soothing dumbness. This trampled earth in no way resembled real life, waiting for exams in real <span></span>life. Somewhere far away Woe rode across it on a great steed, but the noise of the hoof beats grew weaker and died away, and silence, the bitter silence that sometimes overwhelms children in their sorrow, suddenly deleted the boundary between body and the earth that was moving now hither. The earth smelled of raw depths, of the tomb, of flowers. I smelled its smell and started crying, unafraid.” ~ Isaac Babel, The Story of My Dovecot (translated by Peter Constantine and Cythia Ozick)</span></div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div><div><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic"><div><div><div><div class="x1n2onr6"><div class="x6s0dn4 xi81zsa x78zum5 x6prxxf x13a6bvl xvq8zen xdj266r xktsk01 xat24cr x1d52u69 x889kno x4uap5 x1a8lsjc xkhd6sd xdppsyt"><div class="x6s0dn4 x78zum5 x1iyjqo2 x6ikm8r x10wlt62"><span aria-label="See who reacted to this" class="x1ja2u2z" role="toolbar" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="x6s0dn4 x78zum5 x1e558r4" id=":ra2:"><span class="x6zyg47 x1xm1mqw xpn8fn3 xtct9fg x13zp6kq x1mcfq15 xrosliz x1wb7cse x13fuv20 xu3j5b3 x1q0q8m5 x26u7qi xamhcws xol2nv xlxy82 x19p7ews xmix8c7 x139jcc6 x1n2onr6 x1xp8n7a xhtitgo"><span class="x12myldv x1udsgas xrc8dwe xxxhv2y x1rg5ohu xmix8c7 x1xp8n7a"><span class="x4k7w5x x1h91t0o x1h9r5lt x1jfb8zj xv2umb2 x1beo9mf xaigb6o x12ejxvf x3igimt xarpa2k xedcshv x1lytzrv x1t2pt76 x7ja8zs x1qrby5j"></span></span></span></span></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><span aria-label="See who reacted to this" class="x1ja2u2z" role="toolbar" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="x6s0dn4 x78zum5 x1e558r4" id=":ra2:"><span class="x6zyg47 x1xm1mqw xpn8fn3 xtct9fg x13zp6kq x1mcfq15 xrosliz x1wb7cse x13fuv20 xu3j5b3 x1q0q8m5 x26u7qi xamhcws xol2nv xlxy82 x19p7ews xmix8c7 x139jcc6 x1n2onr6 x1xp8n7a x1vjfegm"><span class="x12myldv x1udsgas xrc8dwe xxxhv2y x1rg5ohu xmix8c7 x1xp8n7a"><span class="x4k7w5x x1h91t0o x1h9r5lt x1jfb8zj xv2umb2 x1beo9mf xaigb6o x12ejxvf x3igimt xarpa2k xedcshv x1lytzrv x1t2pt76 x7ja8zs x1qrby5j"></span></span></span></span></span><span aria-label="See who reacted to this" class="x1ja2u2z" role="toolbar" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="x6s0dn4 x78zum5 x1e558r4" id=":ra2:"><span class="x6zyg47 x1xm1mqw xpn8fn3 xtct9fg x13zp6kq x1mcfq15 xrosliz x1wb7cse x13fuv20 xu3j5b3 x1q0q8m5 x26u7qi xamhcws xol2nv xlxy82 x19p7ews xmix8c7 x139jcc6 x1n2onr6 x1xp8n7a x1ja2u2z"><span class="x12myldv x1udsgas xrc8dwe xxxhv2y x1rg5ohu xmix8c7 x1xp8n7a"><span class="x4k7w5x x1h91t0o x1h9r5lt x1jfb8zj xv2umb2 x1beo9mf xaigb6o x12ejxvf x3igimt xarpa2k xedcshv x1lytzrv x1t2pt76 x7ja8zs x1qrby5j"></span></span></span></span></span><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>*</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>ABOUT HAMAS</b><br /><br />~ It is not known how many Gazans genuinely support Hamas. It is possible most of them support it, in which case hoping for any internal revolution is insanity. A much more optimistic scenario, which is also quite realistic, is that most Gazans do not support Hamas and do realize it is the principal cause of their misery. In that scenario an internal revolution is about as difficult as the job of the White Rose movement.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYEPozrHh_fed0L3FuFfD0hduu_ShlLLTxhFrxYX9p3HphxYGsDcErTG9lOmmn4PPHJJxo77F3eYVy67kdSSshoNpaQlLoSpwCSvQIyQcvV46CyBCQMU7Zzi-DcpESO-Y5GXSRI7QD3M_yFl5je2HfCFRea-dd71jOWUhX7uUkc_iiTKdSbgz_GsaW5hy5/s2020/hamas%20flag%20after%20Israeli%20airstrikes%20in%20Gaza%20City.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1346" data-original-width="2020" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYEPozrHh_fed0L3FuFfD0hduu_ShlLLTxhFrxYX9p3HphxYGsDcErTG9lOmmn4PPHJJxo77F3eYVy67kdSSshoNpaQlLoSpwCSvQIyQcvV46CyBCQMU7Zzi-DcpESO-Y5GXSRI7QD3M_yFl5je2HfCFRea-dd71jOWUhX7uUkc_iiTKdSbgz_GsaW5hy5/w400-h266/hamas%20flag%20after%20Israeli%20airstrikes%20in%20Gaza%20City.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Hamas flag in rubble of Gaza</i><br /><br />Hamas isn’t a political party, it’s not running a state and it’s not a religious cult either. <b>Hamas is an organized crime ring, anchored in Islamic fundamentalism, that is also performing the duties of a state in Gaza. In other words, it is an unholy alliance between mafia and religious wackos. As such it has complete control over the distribution of goods in Gaza. </b></span><b><br /></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Those who do not work for Hamas live in abject squalor; being a member is basically a prerequisite to hold a job, with very few exceptions.</b> Those who oppose Hamas die a violent death. The result is most people either work for or with Hamas and no one is willing to oppose them, it’s too dangerous and spies are everywhere.<br /><br />There isn’t any way an internal resistance might organize either. <b>People might not like Hamas, but they all know what happens to those who defy it. </b>Religious organizations are all agents of Hamas and there isn’t a whole lot other ways for people down there to organize. Besides, if there are 10% genuine supporters any organization of three members or more will likely be infiltrated or spotted by an informant. The larger it gets the easier and quicker it becomes to notice.<br /><br /><b><i>Gazans cannot be counted upon to revolt. Even if they earnestly desire is to overthrow Hamas and finally have a chance to live a life worth living, they genuinely can’t do it. Hamas has all the guns and plenty of thugs to enforce their will. Protests, riots, peaceful demonstrations just get you raped, mutilated and killed — not necessarily in that order, but you’ll get all three, don’t worry.</i><br /></b><br />The only way Hamas can be defeated is if the international community finally starts treating it for what it is: a crime syndicate with religious backing, cosplaying a state. But <b>it is a crime syndicate first and foremost, it always has been. Their leaders aren’t beyond our reach. They live in Qatar in a five star hotel and watch the conflict from a distance, sipping cocktails and enjoying the fruits of their labor.</b> ~ Tomaž Vargazon<br /><br />Terry Bowden:<br />Hamas uses the people of Gaza as cannon fodder. They want Israel to launch a large scale operation into Gaza that will kill thousands of Gazans. They will use it as a propaganda tool and as a means of recruiting new terrorist candidates.<br /><br />Harold Citron:<br />And when the dead Palestinians aren’t available, Hamas will create them for the cameras. Just saw a video of a Palestinian man running past a bunch of journalists and cameramen into a hospital holding what appears to be a wounded baby covered in blood. Inside the hospital, the ‘baby’ is shown to be a doll.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4kehMjZtPLN65w_sknk-ZmA3Q0sA2KPsknjgQBBPMtcbkgZNxzLMLjvEIaPP-oYeRoysZ2Fj7wqCQ7MopFVdbVqH03MXCmYxjGSXRxsrSmwYzaYtx5FRNqG7ol9-78St34AVo8cLmtT-h2dy-rAXxIdyL8h-HhycQcoMXNJ8m7jkxR9etYB6cBKdhH6va/s602/hamas%20flags%20street.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="402" data-original-width="602" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4kehMjZtPLN65w_sknk-ZmA3Q0sA2KPsknjgQBBPMtcbkgZNxzLMLjvEIaPP-oYeRoysZ2Fj7wqCQ7MopFVdbVqH03MXCmYxjGSXRxsrSmwYzaYtx5FRNqG7ol9-78St34AVo8cLmtT-h2dy-rAXxIdyL8h-HhycQcoMXNJ8m7jkxR9etYB6cBKdhH6va/w400-h268/hamas%20flags%20street.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Andrew Tanner:<br />It should be remembered that Hamas also runs all of the typical government services in Gaza — at least those that exist.</span><br /></span><p></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Hamas has social security programs, performs street maintenance, runs the schools, collects the garbage, etc.</span></span></b></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I doubt it does those things very well, but it does do them.</span></span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>That puts the average citizen of Gaza in a difficult position when it comes to deciding who to support.<br /></b><br />Maya N:<br />Hamas actually runs relative few of the government services. A lot is provided by the UN and other international NGOs.<br /><br />Melanie Drogr:<br />True, but if Hamas shouts loud enough that they were the ones, most won’t know.<br /><br />Austin Lewis:<br />Yep. Hamas generally UNDERMINES services in Gaza and elsewhere.<br /><br />Max Seryodkin:<br /><b>Until we threw Putin’s protege Yanukovych out of our country, his people were doing the same thing, giving a set of products for voting for them, putting up children’s playgrounds and doing expensive repairs, but the quality of all this was disposable in order to bribe people, instead of simply fulfilling their duties city administration, they did it all ostentatiously and then stole billions from the budget of Ukraine.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> Is this kind of help really considered helping people? no, because this is part of the corruption schemes that Western politicians do not pay attention to until the radicalization of power reaches the point of threatening Western existence.<br /><br />Terry Brennan:<br /><b>They are similar in that way to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Though Mr. Vargazon calls Hamas a criminal gang, they are equally a charity.</b> That’s one of the contradictions that happen because the West doesn’t understand Islamic societies very well. Even a Western notion like “state” doesn’t always apply to Islamic societies.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<b> <br /></b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>PARALLELS BETWEEN OCTOBER 7 2023 AND THE YOM KIPPUR WAR OF 1973</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">~ When the Palestinian militants of Hamas unleashed their attack inside Israel on Oct. 7, triggering the latest war in the Middle East, it was impossible to miss the significance of the timing.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The deadly assaults that killed more than a thousand Israeli troops and civilians in the first four days<b> came just 50 years and a day after the start of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. That brief but intense war, like this month's Hamas attacks, seemed to catch the vaunted Israeli intelligence and front-line defenses with their guard down.</b><br /><br /><i><b>For a few days, the 1973 attackers from Egypt and Syria carried all before them, seizing territory they had lost in the Six-Day War of 1967 in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. It seemed possible for several parlous days that the Jewish state, then just 25 years old, might not survive.</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>But Israel was able to turn the tide, bolstered by enormous shipments of U.S. tanks, jet fighters and ammunition, driving the attackers back.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />The Israelis pursued the retreating Arabs and eventually threatened their capital cities of Cairo and Damascus. <b>At that point, the Soviet Union intervened directly and threatened all-out war in defense of its Arab allies. At one point, U.S. nuclear forces were placed on high alert (DEFCON 3). Eventually, the U.S. and Soviet Union agreed to back a U.N. peacekeeping force, and the crisis eased.</b><br /><br /><i><b>The memory of that war still burns bright in Israel, seared into the national psyche even half a century later. And while most Americans today had not yet been born in 1973, the fallout from that year continues to shape the lives of all who have come since.</b><br /></i><br />The consequences of the Yom Kippur War played an outsize role in shaping not only the 1970s but the direction of U.S. foreign policy and energy policy ever since.<br /><br />Fifty years ago, President Richard Nixon had a secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, who had dealt extensively with the Soviets and with all the key actors in the Middle East. Flying from Cairo to Damascus to Jerusalem, Kissinger was said to be conducting "shuttle diplomacy" in brokering a peace agreement after the front lines of 1973 had stabilized.<br /><br />But <b>then, as now, the Middle East fighting had to share the front page with developments in a domestic political crisis in Washington. In our moment, the news is the paralysis of Congress due to the lack of a speaker in the House</b>. Having ousted their own elected leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House's majority Republicans have struggled to coalesce behind a successor, leaving the nation's legislative branch unable to conduct business.<br /><br /><b>Back in 1973, the domestic crisis was the crumbling presidency of Republican Richard Nixon</b>. Nixon was in the first year of his second term, having won reelection in a 49-state landslide the previous November. But Nixon and his team were distracted by a separate domestic crisis that had increasingly occupied the White House staff that year.<br /><br />It was 50 years ago — Oct. 20 — and a Saturday. Television news went into its own version of DEFCON 3, and the event was soon dubbed the Saturday Night Massacre. It would lead to a protracted argument in the Supreme Court over the tapes, which when released gave witness to Nixon's involvement in the Watergate cover-up. The House moved to impeach, and Nixon resigned.<br /><br /><b>Widening waves of shock and aftershocks<br /></b><br /><i><b>The enormous outpouring of U.S. support for Israel after the Yom Kippur assaults in 1973 led directly to a series of decisions by Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Persian Gulf region to cut off crude oil shipments to the United States. Although still producing large amounts of domestic oil, the U.S. had become heavily dependent on foreign producers with lower production costs.</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The price of a barrel of crude oil went up 300% on the world market, and gasoline prices quadrupled at the pump. </b>After generations of cheap oil and gas, Americans were ill-prepared for what was called the first "oil shock." But <b>as the 1970s continued, the expanding repercussions of the Arab oil embargo and lesser disruptions that followed affected all aspects of American car culture.</b><br /><br />Yet the focus for many Americans was not on the price of gas but its availability. <b>For the first time since World War II, drivers were either waiting in line for a few rationed gallons or going without.<br /></b><br />Moreover, the sudden spike in oil prices affected other energy prices as well, driving a larger upward movement in prices for all consumer goods. The resulting inflation would lead the Federal Reserve Board eventually to raise interest rates, creating years of "stagflation," the unwelcome combination of tight money and ever-escalating costs.<br /><br />*<br />"But we're not there yet," Yergin said. And much depends on whether that can be avoided.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The Iran issues are not all about oil.<b> Iran has also emerged as a major supplier of Russia's drones and other forms of tech weapons used in Ukraine. That could make Russia and its nuclear arsenal once again a factor in the high-stakes politics of the region and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular.</b><br /><br />Although there are differences within their ranks, both major parties in Congress support further aid to Israel and have expressed support for that country since this month's Hamas attacks.<br /><i><br /><b>But that does not ensure the aid that Israel is counting on. Just as in 1973, Israel relies on the U.S. as the ultimate guarantor of its security, an ally prepared to go as far as needed — whatever the consequences. That made all the difference in 1973, and it could do so again this fall.</b></i><br /><br />At this point, with President Biden having addressed the nation on Israel and Ukraine aid, his administration is preparing new defense packages for both countries and new commitments to security on the border with Mexico. A bipartisan group in the Senate appears willing to go along. But the House is literally unable to act, hamstrung by its own leadership struggle in the Republican majority.<br /><br />Unable to elect a speaker with the votes of the party's narrow majority and unwilling to make a deal with the Democrats, the Republicans are unable to deal with any legislation or any matter of any kind. House rules depend on there being a speaker before action may be taken.<br />Meanwhile, the historic crises of the moment continue.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/10/20/1207015189/israel-hamas-yom-kippur-war">https://www.npr.org/2023/10/20/1207015189/israel-hamas-yom-kippur-war</a><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguJlPCvIeYhJ2yk4FDW0RCJpMSjNGUdZ9DTtyz48UcxxvmFXeZ5R2HRF-rauzFn4dlQgKiuCsYSORroEW2KBuMYPZvThjv4pdeR2BasNrAxCdExhwnoXLYIWZyRzkziBL2chyLQp75_uRrxF95Nk9IuYd7NsteZhsc4JVKC1wfUhgrcK1vDZ-wQa2MSfqS/s612/Israeli%20armored%20vehicle%20Yom%20Kipper%20war.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="405" data-original-width="612" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguJlPCvIeYhJ2yk4FDW0RCJpMSjNGUdZ9DTtyz48UcxxvmFXeZ5R2HRF-rauzFn4dlQgKiuCsYSORroEW2KBuMYPZvThjv4pdeR2BasNrAxCdExhwnoXLYIWZyRzkziBL2chyLQp75_uRrxF95Nk9IuYd7NsteZhsc4JVKC1wfUhgrcK1vDZ-wQa2MSfqS/w400-h265/Israeli%20armored%20vehicle%20Yom%20Kipper%20war.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>UKRAINIAN AND RUSSIAN CASUALTIES </b><br /><br />~ <b><i>Putin’s propagandists say that Russia killed a million of Ukrainians and that the losses are 8:1; so, they try to state that Russia had lost 125,000 personnel.</i></b></span><br /></span></p><p><b><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">According to the Ukrainian side, Russia lost 290,000 personnel.</span></span></i></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The Russian side doesn’t comment on its losses.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The last time Russians commended on their losses was in September 2022, when minister of defence Shoigu claimed that less than 6,000 Russian servicemen died. That number was grossly understated.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Journalists of BBC and ‘Mediazona’ found names of 34,112 of Russian servicemen killed in Ukrainian war since February 2022, by mentions in the media and social networks (as of 13 October 2023). Journalists believe the actual number is much higher.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>A high-ranking NATO official on the sidelines of the meeting of defense ministers of the Alliance countries said that total Russian losses are around 300,000, corroborating numbers by the Ukrainians.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"As for the losses, the Russians are suffering heavy losses, and we know this. We know for sure that the Russians suffer significantly more losses than the Ukrainians. Therefore, we believe that we are approaching the figure of about 300,000 Russian soldiers and mercenaries who have died since the invasion in February 2022,” the NATO official stated.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">So, here it is: 34,000, 125,000 or 300,000?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Pick the number that you prefer. ~ Elena Gold, Quora</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Doug Thompson:<br />These Russian are not from St Petersburg or Moscow so they don't matter, is the impression you get. But either way it's a wasted life for Putin’s ego. But then Russia is a wasted country when you compare how China has transformed itself, and the lives of its people.<br /><br />Mark Daichendt:<br />The NY Times reported on August 18, 2023 the total losses (killed and wounded) for Russia was ~300,000 and for Ukraine ~200,000. These were estimates from US officials.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Russia: 120,000 killed and 170,000–180,000 wounded.<br />Ukraine: 70,000 killed and 110,000–120,000 wounded.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><i><b>There is a distinct sense that the entire current era of our lives is coming to an end, with most of its foundational illusions having been depleted. What exactly is coming to replace it is not quite clear yet. ~ Misha Iossel</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>*<br />The best lack all conviction, while the worst<br />are full of passionate intensity. <br />~ </b></i></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>W.B. Yeats: </b></i></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>“The Second Coming”<br /></b></i>*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>RZHEV, A SMALL TOWN IN RUSSIA</b><br /><br />~ A year ago, 42-year-old Mikhail Smirnov from Rzhev, Tver region of Russia, was mobilized to the Russian army.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Friends told him not to go to war, but Smirnov was afraid that his property would be taken away. He owned a modern house and 2 apartments.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">His concern was unfounded: there was no law allowing the state to confiscate property for not showing up to the enlistment office, but Smirnov decided to show up. He was sent to the front.<br />Last month, a closed coffin was brought to Rzhev.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Locals were told that it was the body of Mikhail Smirnov. The city administration announced that the body would be buried on October 2 and invited residents to the funeral.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7WoDM4sKoL94yHUFJeg-LqEW4dwc7KA8IZ5env3xrrbD0fSO6igFqEIhfmtLfviOYUlM28PIRvhy_RNxgGAr8tXNU9OqgD3Z5Cw6c2jRNecwBAtVSFLfUM4PwX8UctShr2XGrOuJsgOgw8e7hXlKMCOU5LQqpLvVzx3L-H4BR0Jb7pFO0xEBRrOtV_u1s/s602/MIKHAIL%20Smirnov.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="532" data-original-width="602" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7WoDM4sKoL94yHUFJeg-LqEW4dwc7KA8IZ5env3xrrbD0fSO6igFqEIhfmtLfviOYUlM28PIRvhy_RNxgGAr8tXNU9OqgD3Z5Cw6c2jRNecwBAtVSFLfUM4PwX8UctShr2XGrOuJsgOgw8e7hXlKMCOU5LQqpLvVzx3L-H4BR0Jb7pFO0xEBRrOtV_u1s/s320/MIKHAIL%20Smirnov.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Mikhail Smirnov</i><br /></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Smirnov’s acquaintances (he had no close relatives) suspected a substitution: they were told that the body was brought from Luhansk (Smirnov said that he was fighting in Bakhmut), and the death certificate indicated the year of birth in 1995, although the Rzhev man was 42 years old.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Friends demanded to open the coffin.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">When they looked at the body, they realized it wasn’t their friend Smirnov in the coffin: the person in the box was much younger, no gray hair (the face was disfigured). The teeth were different.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The funeral has been postponed.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">DNA was taken for analysis, which will take at least 3 months.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The administration insisted that the body needed to be buried, just so that it wouldn’t lie in the morgue.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The relatives agreed to hold the funeral without waiting for test results.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">On October 9, an unknown body under the name of Mikhail Smirnov was buried in Rzhev.<br />Not in his parents’ grave, but still as Mikhail Smirnov. Because the heirs — not close family members (Smirnov’s mother and sister died last year) wanted the death payout.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">After receiving the death money, the relatives stopped answering messages from Smirnov’s friends.<br /><br />What happened to Smirnov is unknown. And who was the person buried? How many other coffins that families didn’t open, had bodies that weren’t their sons or husbands?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfVQJXxoqNGj9Pb0RN3_PnHJKsrc66IL_prEhrSCm_NKHQkvrNeOqeaHWBvNUsWxQJWqplYhSRgdtdeBdj2m9D_SkO_zMvTFQMNmm_TnyHOGTsE-naPdFAdreuGkOJnucgUV4_nIEvxeVnVKwu_3DUaOpD_qC48MGtbR5CD4YBIUHQ3EeKYTkDwzJrHVEu/s602/30%20coffins.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="241" data-original-width="602" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfVQJXxoqNGj9Pb0RN3_PnHJKsrc66IL_prEhrSCm_NKHQkvrNeOqeaHWBvNUsWxQJWqplYhSRgdtdeBdj2m9D_SkO_zMvTFQMNmm_TnyHOGTsE-naPdFAdreuGkOJnucgUV4_nIEvxeVnVKwu_3DUaOpD_qC48MGtbR5CD4YBIUHQ3EeKYTkDwzJrHVEu/w400-h160/30%20coffins.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>About 30 coffins arrive to Tver region from the front in Ukraine every second day.<br /></i><br />The city of Tver is the regional center, population 400,000. It’s only 180 km from Moscow.<br />In 2023, the average monthly wage in Tver is around 52,000 rubles ($520).</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Rzhev is a much smaller town, population only 55,000. The average monthly wage in Rzhev is 48,000 rubles ($480).</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Rzhev is 220 km from Moscow.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Russians living in cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg have no idea how people live in regional towns. They have absolutely no idea.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxC_6VMLnqfUDmrfqksJjcRU0zXGdX4jZkEjLiVblWhAJNd1grjqiFBGuo6s-EHN-56hPXOIk-wakJSyZCa5fkO2stTmCNLNBZyFtM6jCLljoAq4AqqmtrY71MC9tg9n-L8nZAfm_FYzZIis83vpIQGPCoaaq6V7mR0P8U91EUHmK9l1wcHqPvp7-1_Pko/s602/rzhev%201%20man.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="596" data-original-width="602" height="396" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxC_6VMLnqfUDmrfqksJjcRU0zXGdX4jZkEjLiVblWhAJNd1grjqiFBGuo6s-EHN-56hPXOIk-wakJSyZCa5fkO2stTmCNLNBZyFtM6jCLljoAq4AqqmtrY71MC9tg9n-L8nZAfm_FYzZIis83vpIQGPCoaaq6V7mR0P8U91EUHmK9l1wcHqPvp7-1_Pko/w400-h396/rzhev%201%20man.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">They don’t understand the type of relationships in the families, the struggle, the everyday poverty.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Russians living in cities like St. Petersburg live in their own bubble. They’ve never seen hospitals that haven’t been renovated since 1975. They don’t understand the level of depravity and hopelessness, driving people to alcoholism.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCK36xbnu8vujEtnvlehmCmmzKCOru9-qzipj80OGuNYPK1jSRnN6jMVzw_Z6q2JGdl_laWboaXMMwWl9fq0v-cC183I2e3pOkGuMySSj6tDgFUphQHDecbqZHx05kKZ5D4yFDwviQ8AkwVR6hpix-OxzvBpuMHUmB1qyknfUufa9lRsbpk2WbUisQnTP6/s602/rzhev%20alcoholic.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="399" data-original-width="602" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCK36xbnu8vujEtnvlehmCmmzKCOru9-qzipj80OGuNYPK1jSRnN6jMVzw_Z6q2JGdl_laWboaXMMwWl9fq0v-cC183I2e3pOkGuMySSj6tDgFUphQHDecbqZHx05kKZ5D4yFDwviQ8AkwVR6hpix-OxzvBpuMHUmB1qyknfUufa9lRsbpk2WbUisQnTP6/w400-h265/rzhev%20alcoholic.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Simply because of money and the desire to live problem-free “outside of politics,” people cease to be humane.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">They rejoice at the school desk named after their murdered son.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>They thank the authorities for the bag of dumplings they received for their murdered husband.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>They bury a stranger’s body and put a sign on the grave with the name of a relative.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">And then they happily rush to buy a white Lada. ~ Quora<br /><br />Grant Petrel:<br />The gift of the Mafia state just keeps on giving, the earlier Marxist one, no better.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The inter generational struggle has created a poverty of the mind. </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Psychologically damaged people with little resilience.<br /></b><br />Sarah Bleaka:<br />Those are like photographs from Romania after the fall and death of Ceausescu. Sense of hopelessness in those small towns you posted. How very sad.<br /><br />Kevin Goetz:<br />Or from.backwoods Appalachia in the USA.<br /><br />Dominykas Neureušis:<br />Sad that people like this have no idea how people in Europe live, and repeat the lies told by the media about the ‘decadent West’. They genuinely believe they are the superior nation, and you really can’t blame them - living in this level of poverty, they simply can’t know any better.<br /><br />Russia is essentially an organized crime gang that also ‘runs’ a country.</span></span></p><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mary:</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">It is hard to imagine the level of callous indifference and sheer incompetence that would send fallen soldiers' remains back to their families without ensuring they are sending the correct remains to those grieving families. It is like a dark comedy, a circus of grotesques, a tragedy played by clowns...heartless and soulless. I understand they also deliberately avoid collecting their dead combatants, to avoid paying the death benefit to wives and parents. In such brutal and inhuman circumstances, with the level of poverty in the general non-urban population, it is no wonder that some shrug off the question of whether the coffin contained their own son/husband/father and turn to enjoying the cash bounty this death provides them.</span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>COULD THE SOVIET UNION RISE AGAIN?</b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS739OsXaxP4axrN6CT46WV2egm-FDHnzviYbuNwlPMg52hIWsX8XLY1YK-yrLliNDSlZ6Gg6iXebT-zC9PEoud55eCPeVZvkL9jSaAt3GmuUARDb-pasH8K6MRaBEBigNcZTzkj1fxkT919eIXKNWIEnpjvHFsbwptzZdK3W0dAHY5mCpqu5_OlY2jh6X/s602/Europe%20i1919.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="411" data-original-width="602" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS739OsXaxP4axrN6CT46WV2egm-FDHnzviYbuNwlPMg52hIWsX8XLY1YK-yrLliNDSlZ6Gg6iXebT-zC9PEoud55eCPeVZvkL9jSaAt3GmuUARDb-pasH8K6MRaBEBigNcZTzkj1fxkT919eIXKNWIEnpjvHFsbwptzZdK3W0dAHY5mCpqu5_OlY2jh6X/w400-h272/Europe%20i1919.webp" width="400" /></a></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Europe in 1919</i><br /><br />The Soviet Union arose as a coup in Russian Free Democratic Republic, which was at the time fighting a desperate battle against advancing German and Austrian forces. Nationalist movements were everywhere and an absolutely brutal war was being fought in western Europe. <b>The Soviets pushed the Russian Republic out of centers of power and not so much sued for peace as utterly surrendered to the Germans and their allies. The resulting peace gave all the concessions to Germany it hoped for and she could turn her focus westward. The war in the west turned even uglier and lasted for another year.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>This bought the Bolsheviks enough time to defeat the remnants of the Russian Democratic Republic. </b>By that time German army was defeated in the west, Austria-Hungary fell apart, Ottoman Empire descended into a civil war and the victorious Entente could finally spare some resources again.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Those resources were thin. <b>The war bankrupted two of the richest, most powerful nations at the time: Britain and France. USA had a strong economy, but little interest in affairs beyond the Americas. </b>War continued in eastern Europe and the Middle East and Bolsheviks could defeat their key opponents first. <b>Then they marched westwards and took over Ukraine and parts of Poland, they were stopped at the gates of Warsaw in 1921.</b> But <b>by that time the imperial powers were spent and could not hope to push the Bolsheviks out and they had enough time to consolidate their power and take the most valuable regions of the old Russian Empire to become a formidable force.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Those aren’t common conditions. If Russia collapsed into a civil war right now there would be plenty of support for whomever. You bet Chinese weapons would flow to their chosen power in vast amounts and there would be Western support for the other side </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>—</b></i></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> to speak nothing of what Ukrainians would send. Russia would fight and fight and fight, until there would be nothing worth fighting for any more in the eastern land. It would be a desolate wasteland no one would care about any more and stay that way.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The Soviet Union could become a meaningful power only because it arose at just the right time in history. Those conditions won’t be replicated easily. </b>~ Quora<br /><br />Mark Hoheisel:<br /><b>It was also helped by riding on a new populist ideology much as Napoleon benefited from the ideas of the French Revolution. Socialism/Communism no longer has that novelty or appeal </b>and at least at the moment there isn’t any equivalent new ideology around.</span><span style="color: #800180;"><b> The world’s conflict zones are making do with old religious and nationalist banners.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />*<br /><i><b>"Suffering doesn't make you good" is a way to break that attitude of indifference "Oh, you are suffering, well it will make you: good/stronger/better.” We all know by now that </b></i></span><span style="color: #800180;"><i><b>in medical terms reduction of pain increases the speed of healing — it is the same for all suffering.</b></i></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>” ~ Kirsten Miles</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>*</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Roland Bartetzko on Ukrainian casualties:<br /></b><i><b><br /></b></i>~ When the Russians tried to encircle Kyiv last year, many of the Ukrainian defenders had as good as zero military training. There was simply no time to do this.</span></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Many military commanders of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) had no combat experience and as a result, they made costly mistakes.</span></span></b></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In addition, many Ukrainian soldiers had no body armor and no ballistic helmets. They also had no TCCC (tactical combat casualty care) training and not enough medical supplies. All this contributed to a relatively high number of casualties.</span></span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">To make matters worse, <b>at the time, the Russians had total artillery superiority. Some of the earlier battles in the East were meat grinders.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Today, the situation has completely changed. New recruits for the AFU receive extremely thorough and practice oriented training. Their personal gear is of the highest quality and they fight with experienced combat veterans and commanders.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Russia’s artillery fire also isn’t that devastating anymore.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">What probably has contributed most to the decrease of Ukrainian casualty numbers is the introduction of Western-made Main Battle Tanks, Infantry Fighting Vehicles, and Armored Personnel Carriers.<b> The Leopards, Bradleys, and Marders provide their crews with maximum protection.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Therefore, referring to Ukrainian soldiers as cannon fodder really doesn’t make any sense. ~ Quora</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b></b></i></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQq_V_7Rd7XRQdAoReWQfnBmkQ-2LVXh91JMRI601-ebbFLYO6IVme9-5gHkEPJTgjTp716r-1fQsFUXVfxTzqEQU1y6hFAGhIJEK1vGiaPz0zvE3ZWmQqxxUxvwiStU97PpWiEBlve6EWnmqTpWWQCcL7qC_owXogVjt5yVUtw8t2wz09-v-5Tjz3zR-U/s1280/zelensky%20soldiers%20blue%20on%20helmets.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQq_V_7Rd7XRQdAoReWQfnBmkQ-2LVXh91JMRI601-ebbFLYO6IVme9-5gHkEPJTgjTp716r-1fQsFUXVfxTzqEQU1y6hFAGhIJEK1vGiaPz0zvE3ZWmQqxxUxvwiStU97PpWiEBlve6EWnmqTpWWQCcL7qC_owXogVjt5yVUtw8t2wz09-v-5Tjz3zR-U/w400-h225/zelensky%20soldiers%20blue%20on%20helmets.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b> </b></i><br />*<br /><b>WAS HITLER ACTUALLY A NICE GUY IN PERSON?<br /></b><br />~ <b>As gruesome as it sounds, yes. Hannah Arendt could have well used Adolf Hitler as a hallmark of the banality of evil.</b></span><b><br /></b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">If by anything else, this became evident in a clandestine recording by YLE (Finnish broadcasting corporation in 1942. <b>It is the only time Adolf Hitler’s ordinary table voice has been recorded, and turned out he was completely normal.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">We have a tendency to imagine Hitler as a ravaging maniac lunatic, and as a psychopath. Nothing could be further away the truth. <b>Hitler was a deeply narcissistic individual, but a very much functional narcissist.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Hitler had several redeeming qualities:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>He hated child abuse, abuse of women, etc, having himself been seriously abused</b>. [by his father, an alcoholic who beat him and beat his mother, Klara]<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">He hated porn and exploitation of women.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>He was deeply anti-elitist.</b> He came from the lower ranks of the people, and he got much better along with the little people than the aristocrats or plutocrats</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">He hated vanity and the pompous lifestyle many Nazi bosses led.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">He was easy to talk to outside of business. He had an extremely wide range of general knowledge.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>He was easy-going with children, and he was known as a matchmaker among the Nazi elites.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>He liked animals, and dogs in particular</b>. (No, he did not hate cats like Mussolini did.)</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">He liked natural beauty & scenery, and had an eye for architecture.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">He was a health fanatic, and he hated drugs and alcohol, and tobacco especially.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">He hated law breakers and criminals; yes, the paradox is obvious.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWb5AG9mAYyLRYO9LncXJrXiQrgNoomSikOk5ry9C7YrjNz173WI_LCBqD8g05BR6htL5BHPORakSHkxn1TL9RKKMmSULbeRU5DaTwyAxqZRk9ZX7NDuTx44gYAjR2M5GEc8IF1hcSWIGSZ8lNoBuyVQM991k6T8aTbQUfodFPCzhW0I6LixcQ0dLgjL5K/s672/HITLER%20DOG.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWb5AG9mAYyLRYO9LncXJrXiQrgNoomSikOk5ry9C7YrjNz173WI_LCBqD8g05BR6htL5BHPORakSHkxn1TL9RKKMmSULbeRU5DaTwyAxqZRk9ZX7NDuTx44gYAjR2M5GEc8IF1hcSWIGSZ8lNoBuyVQM991k6T8aTbQUfodFPCzhW0I6LixcQ0dLgjL5K/w359-h400/HITLER%20DOG.webp" width="359" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">This banality of evil — that anyone can become a dark lord in suitable circumstances — is striking. Hitler resembled far more a humble company CEO than a crime linchpin.<br /><br />~ Susanna Viljanen, Quora<br /><br />*<br /><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixkDa9Kb62QbdgNN_BwpaUDXIFtYMblx0NcWGaUpazfx2yI_HwP4MMSYhF7cUCBBwYcpwxZnp7wxCKzJnWC7L1g4CQKThtqm2fS5btURbAso_Bnn5lDJxDeZu-cclNEIWu2WdAlkmEMDkT3RtUn-I6nP4GNzF4hbkXZtuYYW7mRXa0IdB9RQQi-EhherU4/s932/washroom%20Bolsheviks.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="932" data-original-width="636" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixkDa9Kb62QbdgNN_BwpaUDXIFtYMblx0NcWGaUpazfx2yI_HwP4MMSYhF7cUCBBwYcpwxZnp7wxCKzJnWC7L1g4CQKThtqm2fS5btURbAso_Bnn5lDJxDeZu-cclNEIWu2WdAlkmEMDkT3RtUn-I6nP4GNzF4hbkXZtuYYW7mRXa0IdB9RQQi-EhherU4/w273-h400/washroom%20Bolsheviks.jpg" width="273" /></a></b></div><p><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*</span></b></p><p><b><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">HUMANS AND THE COMPUTER DESK<br /></span></b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />~ In the 1980s and 90s, the personal computer revolutionized workplace productivity — but it also led to a sharp increase of office work-related pain.</span><br /></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Poor posture, muscle strain, backache, eye strain, carpal tunnel syndrome; these are some of the most common complaints caused by the sedentary office job</b>, says Laine Nooney, a computer and video game historian and assistant professor at New York University.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Nooney's 2023 book The Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal chronicles the origin of the personal computer and its toll on the human body. "I think a lot of us don't realize how much pain we live in because of our interactions with computing," they say. "We don't remember a time before this kind of stress on the body.”</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZBOOQqPmkPwt2hqwphcn0CJXiSPzyGFeRP8HbHO6wC83_UA8u4Q6RWLIlGnEIKG4nUTREzUgEFnPuSBz1j2Q4Jmke1cbbUXpMgzED_m5jigBZH3vy9-LJNNkX9lj0KPQi7LvFr9quxIxluQlVzK4o3Tuv203I_m-Wz2T8LlS8PNhhiyICA0NlglY7yD8a/s1800/human%20and%20desk.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1012" data-original-width="1800" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZBOOQqPmkPwt2hqwphcn0CJXiSPzyGFeRP8HbHO6wC83_UA8u4Q6RWLIlGnEIKG4nUTREzUgEFnPuSBz1j2Q4Jmke1cbbUXpMgzED_m5jigBZH3vy9-LJNNkX9lj0KPQi7LvFr9quxIxluQlVzK4o3Tuv203I_m-Wz2T8LlS8PNhhiyICA0NlglY7yD8a/w400-h225/human%20and%20desk.webp" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>How computers trickled into our lives</b></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Nooney says when personal computers first entered the workplace in the late 1970s and 80s, they were primarily used for administrative jobs. "It wasn't the executive or the managerial class that was first interested in having computers in their offices," they say. Instead, computers landed on the desks of people fairly low on the corporate ladder.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">It had an immediate impact on the physical and psychological wellbeing of these workers, Nooney says. They point to<b> an ethnographic survey by researcher Shoshana Zuboff, first published in 1988, wherein employees were asked to draw themselves before and after the computer became a part of their workday</b>.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>In the 'before' drawings, people depicted their days as full of motion: retrieving physical files, walking back and forth between cabinets, filling out paper forms. Zuboff noted that they often depicted themselves as happy in these pictures.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>The 'after' drawings showed a gloomier scene. Gone were the small-but-constant motions, replaced by eight hours at a computer, and workers drew themselves as unhappy.</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><i>In the 1990s and 2000s, as computers spread into homes and became pervasive in office jobs, the physical effects became more pronounced; now, chronic pain affects around one in 5 adults in America.</i><br /></b><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Sitting at a computer is worse than binging TV</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Nooney says that today, working at our desks is worse for our bodies than watching TV for hours on end. When we watch TV, we're more likely to shift positions, and the distance between us and the screen tends to be greater.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Meanwhile, office workers have just one primary posture: sitting in the same sedentary position, with hands on the keyboard and heads in a specific placement, staring at the screen.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Laptops, Nooney says, are even worse. "The turning down of the head is much more pronounced on a laptop.</b> There's really no accommodation for anything resembling an ergonomic posture for the keyboard. And so it's not like any of this stuff has ever gotten better as computing has 'innovated.' And in some cases I would say it's gotten quite worse."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>How to prevent computer pain</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">To counteract some of the pain, Nooney says <i><b>people could try to move more throughout the workday.</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">But they also acknowledge that much of the pain plaguing office workers is outside the individual level — because computers were never designed for our comfort. They were designed for productivity.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"When we feel pain in our neck, or our wrists, or our arms, that pain is a historical legacy of a sort," says Nooney. "And it actually has to do with things that are way, way bigger than you, and forces that shape and dictate the kind of ways we use technology that no one individual is really in control of.”<br /><br /><a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/10/10/1200611619/ted-radio-hour-draft-10-10-2023?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://www.npr.org/2023/10/10/1200611619/ted-radio-hour-draft-10-10-2023?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br />*<br />“I am glad that I paid so little attention<br />to good advice;<br />had I abided by it I might have been saved<br />from some of my most valuable mistakes.”<br /><br />~ Edna St. Vincent Millay</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrqreRRzMOEgO5smx2m4lQ49dtzEftFevmKKXU5cKMZWbWjWY8O6nMRhED_1d70zaTzalNo5EinCs9mYlopRmOCtQFshho-FO-JcCr-xGNu3TssgNWNLjRvM3aH5U1Hf-4m13Lw__DOWHqTJgLMnmmPzQgJNF9oU3JHYkP48LhZ-OI826d2-qyrrbK9IUU/s617/edna.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="617" data-original-width="480" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrqreRRzMOEgO5smx2m4lQ49dtzEftFevmKKXU5cKMZWbWjWY8O6nMRhED_1d70zaTzalNo5EinCs9mYlopRmOCtQFshho-FO-JcCr-xGNu3TssgNWNLjRvM3aH5U1Hf-4m13Lw__DOWHqTJgLMnmmPzQgJNF9oU3JHYkP48LhZ-OI826d2-qyrrbK9IUU/w311-h400/edna.jpg" width="311" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>THE TWILIGHT OF ANTIQUES<br /></b><br />My parents spent lavishly on antiques in the 1970s. My childhood was spent with coasters always required, even in my own room. I was constantly being told to be careful of the furniture. There were rooms I wasn’t allowed in unsupervised, because I might knock over a Ming vase or something.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirJwXGOlsed2z1_99rHWkKZPKBWbX6ALBHBmLpcQKP_p9eTV1gmk6kkcb1pmTE02cyu8OCl4-oVYhvP0u7GF4AFXVZIiNBRDlcpddw0M_N-noNu0bRr_wynaOTw9ZwMRcA2YZiJQ1G4wVO9sLRJKR_hTZl-8ShU2j0t4oHrwcslAY6TVjxbpYhG8hVjMo2/s602/ming%20vase%20blue%20dragon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="387" data-original-width="602" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirJwXGOlsed2z1_99rHWkKZPKBWbX6ALBHBmLpcQKP_p9eTV1gmk6kkcb1pmTE02cyu8OCl4-oVYhvP0u7GF4AFXVZIiNBRDlcpddw0M_N-noNu0bRr_wynaOTw9ZwMRcA2YZiJQ1G4wVO9sLRJKR_hTZl-8ShU2j0t4oHrwcslAY6TVjxbpYhG8hVjMo2/w400-h258/ming%20vase%20blue%20dragon.jpg" width="400" /></a></b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Ming vase </i></span></span><br /></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">When my father ran into financial troubles, <b>he always counted on there being about $1M worth of antiques in the house. My parents had spent maybe $250k in today’s dollars to acquire their collection, and he assumed they had appreciated, as antiques always had.<br /></b><br /><b>When my father passed, we had an appraiser come out to value everything. We got quite a shock. The antique market had been flooded by all the elderly people dying with their huge antique collections. At the same time, younger, affluent people in their 30s and 40s no longer wanted or expected to pay $20k for an antique dresser.</b><br /><br />Because my father’s antiques were so beaten up and needed restoration work, they couldn’t even be sold for the severely depressed prices that were now available.<br /><br />Appraiser after appraiser told us the same thing. My father’s priceless antiques were now basically firewood.<br /><br /><b>I kept a couple of really neat pieces I had room for. Then we let a whole batch of them go for $500. We were happy to get that because otherwise, we’d have had to pay to get them moved somewhere else.</b><br /><br />Honestly, I’m just glad my father never found out they were worthless. ~ Charles Kendrick</span></span></p><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mary:</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Antique furniture belongs to a time when we lived differently...that's the main reason for its deflation in value. People don't want it because it no longer fits in our lifestyle or in our rooms. China closets are only useful if you have china to "display." Young people want neither the extra set of "good" dishes, nor the place to store them. My mother had a large kitchen cabinet with an upper part for flour, a work surface, and shelves and breadbox beneath cabinet doors on the bottom. Old houses had big open kitchens with nothing "built in" but the sink. I had seen pieces like my mom's in antique stores, and thought one would take hers off my hands. But no, the ones I saw there were there because they couldn't sell them...they wouldn't fit in a modern kitchen. No one wanted them.</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #20124d; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This "downsizing" goes along with much smaller families. It was one thing to have an average of eight people around the large dining-room table (nowadays, how many people have dining rooms?), and quite another to have a household of two or three. It seems that the maximum people I had over in the last decade was three. True, I'm more introverted than most, but I know I'm not the only such woman even in my little cul-de-sac. </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I do like cooking, and sometimes when I happen to prepare something delicious, I wish I could share it with, say, ten people. But I know better. Even one extra person means more work, and that time and energy could go toward something else, something I can later return to and feel surprised: "<i>I</i> wrote that? That's pretty good." </span></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">But I also know that the self that wrote those poems and essays no longer exists. Yes, there is some continuity of course, but now I'm in a different time-space, and my priorities have changed. The whole world has changed. I still have a few crystal vases I never use . . . and some crystal bowls that at least serve as a good place for ripening avocados. <br /></span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>THE ADVANTAGES OF BEING A NUN DURING THE MIDDLE AGES<br /></b><br />Women became nuns for different reasons.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Some women truly had a calling to the monastic life. Religion was at the center of people’s lives in the Middle Ages, and most were extremely devout. Not surprisingly, some women became nuns out of a genuine desire for this kind of life, even if this put them at odds with their families. </b>These included women like Saint Clare, who founded her own order in the Franciscan tradition, the Poor Clares; and Saint Catherine of Siena, who authored treatises and prayers, and engaged in active correspondence with the Pope.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Parenthetically, while I have no concrete proof of this — so take my ruminations for what they are worth — I feel like <b>some of these women, who defied their families to become nuns, were products of families going overboard in training them to be submissive and pious.</b> You really can’t stamp out a truly rebellious, active or independent spirit: taught to be meek and obey from an early age as a way to make them compliant, some of them came to the conclusion they would rather obey a distant God and maybe the almost as distant Pope, rather than their fathers or uncles.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">For the less religious and more practical, nunnery was actually a good option in medieval times — which is why <b>medieval Jesus, like any other important groom in that era, required a substantial dowry of his brides.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggT3tMkAs0ycq2YnrWCU0byPlPm5OwLqgER6lVZUUJUAAyQCk2DpMudzC1kwYZZYo0SC9Y2yYoHsfMmD1Q_69QMYk2mEllNZqfYjKCp7Fo5j8mwC18WG5cWbyi0yGr2JjG5tI9N4_4yOL3RGWMFgP_2x0es6pNHIHTPStWlnp0ZjJS_QcgkO3lJisjRCkv/s1931/st%20Catherina%20of%20Siena%20mystic%20marriage.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1931" data-original-width="1920" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggT3tMkAs0ycq2YnrWCU0byPlPm5OwLqgER6lVZUUJUAAyQCk2DpMudzC1kwYZZYo0SC9Y2yYoHsfMmD1Q_69QMYk2mEllNZqfYjKCp7Fo5j8mwC18WG5cWbyi0yGr2JjG5tI9N4_4yOL3RGWMFgP_2x0es6pNHIHTPStWlnp0ZjJS_QcgkO3lJisjRCkv/w398-h400/st%20Catherina%20of%20Siena%20mystic%20marriage.jpg" width="398" /></a></b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>The mystic marriage of St. Catherine of Siena</i><br /></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Not everyone could become a nun. If you came from a poor family and could only offer your labor, you could, at best, become a tenant farmer for a monastery, and render your service that way. <b>Actually taking the vows and therefore gaining access to the benefits of monastic life required a financial contribution, with the result that most nuns came from well-off classes of society and had families that were willing — either genuinely or through social pressure — not only to forgo a bargaining chip in the form of a marriageable female, but to part with a substantial sum in the process.</b> (Of course, some nuns were infertile wives of important men, whose husbands were only too happy to pay a monastery to take a barren spouse off one’s hands.)</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Even in cases of women who entered nunneries agains the objections of their powerful families — eventually those families would cave to pressure and start financially supporting their daughters’ endeavors in order to gain at least some influence in the church.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">You can actually go through the list of <b>famous medieval nuns or female saints from that era, and you will notice that virtually all of them came from an upper-class background. That is because economic realities and the politics of class pervade even sacred spaces</b>, as much as religious people are loathe to admit this (and something which the Protestant Reformation tried — and failed — to eradicate). If you were poor, if you didn't contribute any money to a monastery, there is no way that the monastery would spend its own funds feeding and clothing you, educating you and having you write letters to popes and cardinals all day. <b>If you couldn’t pay the equivalent of a marital dowry, you didn't get to marry Jesus.</b> This was true even of the Poor Clares who, at least in the early days of the order, took a strict vow of poverty. Sure, those women slept on the ground, went barefoot in winter and ate almost nothing, but the monastic infrastructure, and the activities the order engaged in, required funds. And where would those funds come from? The nuns’ families, of course.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Women who were particularly wealthy, or important enough (or, in some cases, former royal mistresses being bought off) could even buy their own nunneries. It was not unusual for a woman with no prior background in monastic life to just become an abbess, straight out the gate</b>.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">This was different, by the way, from the power dynamics of men from important families becoming monks. If a family dedicated one of its sons to the Church, they could hope for that son to become a bishop, God willing a cardinal, maybe even the Pope one day — putting him in the position of manipulating big politics and gaining great wealth to benefit his clan. Having one’s daughter become a nun fed no such ambitions. Although some nuns gained influence and some became renowned scholars and mystics, women generally had much less power in the Church than did men. And so, allowing one’s daughter or sibling to take the vows AND giving her the financial means to do that was a tall order for most upper class and wealthy merchant families.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">For women who could pull it off, however, monastic life had many benefits in the Middle Ages:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Freedom from the horror of child-bearing. </b>An upper class or a merchant class woman was expected to marry young (in the case of the aristocracy or royalty, around the age of 15), and to keep having children, one after the other, until she either died or her uterus fell out. Serial child-bearing was a lot less adorable in the Middle Ages than it is today. Maternal medicine was non-existent. Lots of women died in childbirth or of post-partum complications, and did so in horrific, prolonged pain. (When the movie industry shows us women dying in childbirth, it’s far more peaceful and romantic than it is in real life, and especially the way it was before modern medicine.) Lots of children died too, more so among the elites because everyone was everyone else’s cousin. Upper-class mothers were also not allowed to bond with their children, because that would interfere with their breeding and other duties. In short, <i><b>motherhood was a real nightmare in the Middle Ages, even for upper-class women, and becoming a nun was a way out of it.</b></i><br /><br /><b>Freedom from marriage</b>. If you were an upper-class woman in the Middle Ages, you’d spend most of your time married, even after your childbearing years were over. Some of those marriages were companionate, but many weren’t. Husbands were free to beat their wives — the possibility that a woman of this rank could be pregnant at any moment being the only, and not always effective, deterrent — and they cheated on their wives openly and with impunity; often in set-ups where the wife and the mistress saw each other constantly and traveled in the same circles.<b> If your husband died, you’d be recycled within a year, tops, especially if you were still within your window of fertility</b>. It didn’t matter whether you were ready to enter another marriage, it didn’t matter if you were still grieving your previous husband, it didn’t matter how young your children were, and it certainly didn’t matter if you even liked the next one. You'd just be told to pack up your stuff, and you’d get shipped to an unfamiliar place to live with a stranger. And in another five years, maybe another.<br /><br /><b>Freedom from male guardianship.</b> Although they were still subject to the Church’s male leadership, nuns led lives of relative independence, where they at least weren’t being traded as commodities. Arguably the absolute best position for a woman in the Middle Ages was to be an upper-class, guardian-less widow with a minor son, but that was rarely attainable. Being a nun was the next best thing.<br /><br /><b>Relative safety during conflict</b>. Contrary to what many people believe about the “laws of chivalry”, it was neither unprecedented nor even that uncommon for upper-class women to become victims during armed conflicts which raged through Europe basically non-stop. Being important was no guarantee of safety. Cecily Neville, for instance, was accosted in Ludlow Castle in 1459 by Lancastrian forces after her husband and his retainers fled to save their lives. The Lancastrians sacked the castle and … did something. We’re not sure what. But it is very likely — though there is no irrefutable proof — that Cecily and one of her daughters were assaulted. Whether sexual assault was involved, or just a thrashing, the mother and daughter were significantly manhandled. Cecily was one of the most important women in England. She was a descendant of Edward III and a cousin of the current king. (And the mother of the future king, though this was precisely what her attackers were trying to prevent.) This is far from an isolated example, and although elite families had a way of suppressing damaging information about their womenfolk, wartime violence did not spare even high-born women. But assaulting a nun was different. It was considered a crime so heinous (at least after pagan Viking raids came to an end) that even stone-cold killers in that era were generally too mindful of God’s wrath to go there. This does not mean this never happened, but it was very uncommon. As a result, <b>a nun’s habit conferred relative safety.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGVYvvT41z2aCqJzHqZ-jBKXkWSWXnSqjk_JnglLxBaD3jYMr6IHVkKtYRycNlCrg9VDB5yACGgn1R-kaYzsqDoUkzj9RTJAru7FLU5mq_4Kw0WiQw1KhuH2f8UcDFvPC-j1avnsPFbAhWTondrbwhsgpm1fVlLlZsEs1L3-dfgRNQxL4VFJ4NbYiD1ZbL/s734/st%20clare%20of%20assissi.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="734" data-original-width="540" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGVYvvT41z2aCqJzHqZ-jBKXkWSWXnSqjk_JnglLxBaD3jYMr6IHVkKtYRycNlCrg9VDB5yACGgn1R-kaYzsqDoUkzj9RTJAru7FLU5mq_4Kw0WiQw1KhuH2f8UcDFvPC-j1avnsPFbAhWTondrbwhsgpm1fVlLlZsEs1L3-dfgRNQxL4VFJ4NbYiD1ZbL/w294-h400/st%20clare%20of%20assissi.png" width="294" /></a></b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>St. Clare of Assisi, founder of the order of Poor Clares</i><b><br /></b><br /><b>Educational opportunities</b>. Upper-class women were generally well educated in the Middle Ages, but in that era, good education meant the ability to speak several languages, a good command of Latin, the ability to play a musical instrument and some passing familiarity with literature. An in-depth study of anything, however, was frowned upon. Nuns, unlike worldly women, had the freedom to pursue advanced education, and many studied subjects like astronomy, botany, Ancient Greek, Hebrew and advanced theological subjects.<br /><br />There is also the fact that <b>at least in some orders, and certainly at the time when High Middle Ages segued into the Renaissance, many nuns lived lives of comfort, even luxury. It was, basically, a form of genteel retirement.</b> The worldliness and libertinism of (some) nuns was a perennial concern for the Papacy and one of the complaints of Protestant reformers.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In short, medieval nunnery was neither dour nor motivated by tragic circumstances, and was in fact an attractive alternative to marriage and motherhood for those medieval women who could afford alternatives.<br /><br />~ Kate Stoneman, Quora</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;"><span>Mary:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #20124d;">In my view one of the best things to be if you were a medieval woman was become a nun. It was free of negatives like marriage and childbirth and never-ending pregnancies. It was also full of opportunities for education and self expression, and even influence and power. I think of Hildegarde of Bingen of course, but we have also learned that nuns could be manuscript illustrators, writers, preachers and musicians. They could even defy their bishops when necessary. The nuns who taught at my high school (Ursulines founded by St. Angela Merici) upheld that tradition by resisting their own bishop when they thought it necessary. They were also primarily dedicated to educating women.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #20124d;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #20124d;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW3MB6yEn608wLBlpjkNKHhsg3_qADch-QA96-2nhQ-phCdCGZLHLJl6sh2CAKmWFLHjwgfWG7AO9wl8o5Ss6RxtL3lhM9juNsW7hy0gE5LLGZG6AbNgidKkJ28Nvxj4UfFha55znsE6cldnod-m1rI6Hi1PrH3Nf2nCGTUhMxhVXJyqe2t_hKbbi31TEL/s1600/st%20angela%20Merici.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW3MB6yEn608wLBlpjkNKHhsg3_qADch-QA96-2nhQ-phCdCGZLHLJl6sh2CAKmWFLHjwgfWG7AO9wl8o5Ss6RxtL3lhM9juNsW7hy0gE5LLGZG6AbNgidKkJ28Nvxj4UfFha55znsE6cldnod-m1rI6Hi1PrH3Nf2nCGTUhMxhVXJyqe2t_hKbbi31TEL/w400-h225/st%20angela%20Merici.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>THE UNCHURCHED BELT<br /></b><br />~ The Unchurched Belt is a region in the far Northwestern United States that has low rates of religious participation. The term derives from Bible Belt and the notion of the unchurched.<br />The term was first applied to the West Coast of the United States in 1985 by Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, who found that California, Oregon, and Washington had the United States' lowest church membership rates in 1971, and that there was little change in this pattern between 1971 and 1980. <br /><br />Since 1980, however, California's church membership rate has increased; in 2000, the state had a higher percentage of church members than several states in the Northeast and Midwest. Some religious groups are undercounted in surveys of religious membership.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_groOplHF7fya5eQc8Jw6J2VPDy3XBCY0SOkNUs3m_7Absho7uECYNF5udidtNVA-15h7uuzo51iWfsnoB3dsfpxEdQU6Fo_pFuEU6bxhUVHFMeRAX7G2dsyMEljFeEfPW35mBybq8ktjI8a9VB2163dRtriIzH9BI06482std9q5saqQWoYltrrtKgmR/s200/unchurched%20belt%20gray.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="123" data-original-width="200" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_groOplHF7fya5eQc8Jw6J2VPDy3XBCY0SOkNUs3m_7Absho7uECYNF5udidtNVA-15h7uuzo51iWfsnoB3dsfpxEdQU6Fo_pFuEU6bxhUVHFMeRAX7G2dsyMEljFeEfPW35mBybq8ktjI8a9VB2163dRtriIzH9BI06482std9q5saqQWoYltrrtKgmR/w400-h246/unchurched%20belt%20gray.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>The most common religious affiliation. States in gray have “no religion” as the most common “affiliation.” </i><br /><br /><b>As of 2000, the six states and provinces reported to have the lowest rate of religious adherence in North America were Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Nevada, and West Virginia.</b> Although West Virginia is reported to have a low rate of religious adherence, it is above the national average rate of church attendance. Sociologist Samuel S. Hill, comparing data from the North American Religion Atlas and the American Religious Identity Survey, concluded that a "disproportionately large number of West Virginians" were not counted.<br /><br />In 2006, Gallup reported that the lowest rates of church attendance among the 48 contiguous states were in Nevada and the New England states of Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Maine. Church attendance in the western states of Oregon, Washington, and California was only slightly higher. <i><b>A 2008 Gallup poll comparing belief in God among U.S. regions found that only 59% of residents in the Western United States believe in God, compared to 80% in the East, 83% in the Midwest, and 86% in the South.</b><br /></i><br />A 2011 Gallup poll showed that when it comes to the number of people seeing religion as important in everyday life, New Hampshire and Vermont were the least religious, both with 23%, followed up with 25% in Maine.<br /><br /><b>There has been debate as to whether the Western United States is still the most irreligious part of the United States, due to New England surpassing it as the region with the highest percentage of residents unaffiliated with any religion. </b>On a state level, it is not clear whether the least religious state resides in New England or the Western United States, as the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) ranked Vermont as the state with the highest percentage of residents claiming no religion at 34%, but a 2009 Gallup poll ranked Oregon as the state with the highest percentage of residents identifying with "No religion, Atheist, or Agnostic", at 24.6%. ~ Wiki</span></span><p></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/232223/religious-regions.aspx">https://news.gallup.com/poll/232223/religious-regions.aspx</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana:<br /></span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Mirror, mirror on the wall,<br />who’s the least religious of them all?<br />Is it the East Coast, or the West? <br />The unchurched is best.</span><br /></span><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I can live without knowing that answer as to which coast leads in being "unchurched." The overall trend toward secularization cannot be denied. <br /><br />I regret that I won’t live long enough to see the religion reduced to the lunatic fringe, as the US catches up to Europe. So many crucifixes to be taken off the walls! Or else the churches will remake themselves into community centers, in effect secularizing themselves also. I’ve heard that mainline Protestant churches are pretty close to that already. The Unitarians are already there.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNUxMKVQ3gAmn5zTBKrQraFKtDedfcLHdEqhVqI-EEiv-ePw68AtHaEosS7KMW7jkq8PxEGwIyPU4JaVeXX8XT-u_hLeXKJQw4AHNgtheQSh-vATwgB-iYxC6tXRL1o31jGDll45eIHXf1MWJ7PvUpwi9F_D2c7LIDkJeXAWCGWfbX-A-s7eDrf7IAeQ1g/s1080/religious%20trauma%20syndrome.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNUxMKVQ3gAmn5zTBKrQraFKtDedfcLHdEqhVqI-EEiv-ePw68AtHaEosS7KMW7jkq8PxEGwIyPU4JaVeXX8XT-u_hLeXKJQw4AHNgtheQSh-vATwgB-iYxC6tXRL1o31jGDll45eIHXf1MWJ7PvUpwi9F_D2c7LIDkJeXAWCGWfbX-A-s7eDrf7IAeQ1g/w400-h400/religious%20trauma%20syndrome.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>NEADERTHAL MYSTERIES REMAIN<br /></b><br />A new analysis of ancient genomes is deepening scientists’ understanding of the Neanderthal DNA carried by human populations in Europe and Asia — genetic traces that may have medical relevance today.</span><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The finding, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, tracks the genetic legacy of the archaic relatives of our species, Homo sapiens, with more precision, thanks to a critical mass of invaluable data, according to the researchers.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>Most humans alive today can trace a very small percentage of their DNA to Neanderthals — a result of prehistoric sexual encounters between our ancestors and the now-extinct Stone Age hominins before the latter disappeared around 40,000 years ago.</b></i><br /><br />However, <b>Neanderthal DNA is slightly more abundant in the genomes of East Asian populations.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>This discrepancy has long perplexed scientists because Neanderthal remains have been found extensively across Europe and the Middle East but not further east of the Altai Mountains in Central Asia.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“So what’s puzzling is that an area where we’ve never found any Neanderthal remains, there’s more Neanderthal DNA,” said study coauthor Mathias Currat, a senior lecturer of genetics and evolution at the University of Geneva.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>On average, Neanderthal DNA accounts for about 2% of the genetic makeup of people in Eurasia, while in East Asia the proportion can be as high as 4%, Currat said.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Currat and his colleagues at the University of Geneva came up with an explanation for this inconsistency by analyzing the distribution of the DNA inherited from Neanderthals in the genomes of humans over the past 40,000 years.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“We are beginning to have enough data to describe more and more precisely the percentage of DNA of Neanderthal origin in the genome of Sapiens at certain periods of prehistory,” Currat explained. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The researchers found that, <b>over time, the distribution of Neanderthal DNA didn’t always look as it does now.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">DILUTING THE GENOME</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The study team mined information from a database of more than 4,000 ancient genomes from across Europe and Asia collected by a team led by Dr. David Reich, professor of genetics and human evolutionary biology at Harvard Medical School in Boston.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The genomes of Stone Age Homo sapiens who lived as hunter-gatherers in Europe after Neanderthals’ extinction contained a slightly higher proportion of Neanderthal DNA than those who lived in Asia for samples older than 20,000 years, the researchers found.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The study team thereby concluded that the current pattern of a higher percentage of Neanderthal ancestry in Asian populations compared with those in Europe must have developed at a later stage, mostly likely during the Neolithic transition when farming began to replace hunting and gathering as a way of life some 10,000 to 5,000 years ago.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>At that point in time, the first farmers from Anatolia, in what’s now western Turkey and the Aegean, began to mix with the existing hunter-gatherers in Western and Northern Europe. This resulted in a lower proportion of Neanderthal DNA observed in European genomes during this period.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“The thing was that they had less Neanderthal ancestry so they diluted the (Neanderthal ancestry) in European populations,” Currat said.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">He said <b>it was less clear how this transition unfolded in Asia because of a relative lack of information. The study included 1,517 samples from Europe versus 1,108 from Asia — an area more than four times as large.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Tony Capra, an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics in the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute at the University of California, San Francisco, said the paper was “an example of a very exciting and promising strategy for integrating analysis of ancient human DNA from different geographic locations with modern genomes to connect the dots of evolution through time and space.” He wasn’t involved in the research.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Some of the genetic traces left by encounters with Neanderthals could make a difference in modern humans’ health. For example, Neanderthal DNA may play a small role in swaying the course of Covid-19 infection, according to a September 2020 study. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/18/world/neanderthal-ancestry-dna-percentage-scn/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/18/world/neanderthal-ancestry-dna-percentage-scn/index.html<br /></a></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMmdsjbFKeL6sOpjHQVPyCJY1USida902-tej6Awh47BX8luS4YLEs92Wkmo2wdfak13Pryrcvn9wo_2YvLDOlGRCW1WCnNe5rMSjgF8Kzo4wPgkrm3MIl7YaKt2CTZwD57t-ni4KZyqKWBk4H5ODAbkFl3EVTwHCSC0i2qKsCzRLXJUsgMmkbljUiLH3R/s960/Neanderthal%20skull.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMmdsjbFKeL6sOpjHQVPyCJY1USida902-tej6Awh47BX8luS4YLEs92Wkmo2wdfak13Pryrcvn9wo_2YvLDOlGRCW1WCnNe5rMSjgF8Kzo4wPgkrm3MIl7YaKt2CTZwD57t-ni4KZyqKWBk4H5ODAbkFl3EVTwHCSC0i2qKsCzRLXJUsgMmkbljUiLH3R/w400-h225/Neanderthal%20skull.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>STUDY REVEALS IMPORTANT DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SAPIENS BRAIN AND NEANDERTHAL BRAIN<br /></b><br /><i><b>Results believed to be first compelling evidence that modern humans were cognitively better than Neanderthals.</b></i><br /><br />Neanderthals have long been portrayed as our dim-witted, thuggish cousins. Now groundbreaking research has – while not confirmed the stereotype – revealed striking differences in the brain development of modern humans and Neanderthals.<br /><br />The study involved inserting a Neanderthal brain gene into mice, ferrets and “mini brain” structures called organoids, grown in the lab from human stem cells. <b>The experiments revealed that the Neanderthal version of the gene was linked to slower creation of neurons in the brain’s cortex during development, which scientists said could explain superior cognitive abilities in modern humans.<br /></b><br /><b><i>“Making more neurons sets the basis for higher cognitive function,” said Wieland Huttner, who led the work at the Max-Planck-Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics. “We think this is the first compelling evidence that modern humans were cognitively better than Neanderthals.”</i></b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Modern humans and Neanderthals split into separate lineages about 400,000 years ago</b>, with our ancestors remaining in Africa and the Neanderthals moving north into Europe. <b>About 60,000 years ago, a mass migration of modern humans out of Africa brought the two species face-to-face once more and they interbred – people alive today of non-African heritage carry 1-4% of Neanderthal DNA. </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>By 30,000 years ago, though, our ancient cousins had vanished as a distinct species and the question of how we out-competed Neanderthals has remained a mystery.</b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />“One concrete fact is that <b>wherever homo sapiens went they would basically out-compete other species there.</b> It’s a bit weird,” said Prof Laurent Nguyen, of the University of Liège, who was not involved in the latest research. <b>“These guys [Neanderthals] were in Europe a long time before us and would have been adapted to their environment including pathogens. The big question is why we would be able to out-compete them.”</b><br /><br />Some argue that our ancestors had an intellectual edge, but until recently there has been no way to scientifically test the hypothesis. This changed in the last decade when scientists successfully sequenced Neanderthal DNA from a fossilized toe fragment found in a Siberian cave, paving the way for new insights into how Neanderthal biology differed from our own.<br /><br />The latest experiments focus on </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>a gene, called TKTL1, involved in neuronal production in the developing brain. The Neanderthal version of the gene differs by one letter from the human version. When inserted into mice, scientists found that the Neanderthal variant led to the production of fewer neurons, particularly in the frontal lobe of the brain, where most cognitive functions reside</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>. </b>The scientists also tested the influence of the gene in ferrets and blobs of lab-grown tissue, called organoids, that replicate the basic structures of the developing brain.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“This shows us that even though we do not know how many neurons the Neanderthal brain had, we can assume that <b>modern humans have more neurons in the frontal lobe of the brain, where [the gene’s] activity is highest, than Neanderthals</b>,” said Anneline Pinson, first author of the study.<br /><br />Chris Stringer, head of human origins research at the Natural History Museum in London, described the work as “pioneering”, saying that it started to address one of the central puzzles of human evolution – why, with all the past diversity of humans, we are now the only ones left.<br />“Ideas have come and gone – better tools, better weapons, proper language, art and symbolism, better brains,” Stringer said. “At last, this provides a clue as to why our brains might have outperformed those of Neanderthals.”<br /><br /><b>More neurons does not automatically equate to a smarter type of human, although it does dictate the brain’s basic computing capacity. Human brains contain about twice the number of neurons as the brains of chimpanzees and bonobos</b>.<br /><br />Nguyen said the latest work is far from definitive proof of modern humans’ superior intellect, but demonstrates that Neanderthals had meaningful differences in brain development. “This is an exciting story,” he added. ~ </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO2BvNQ0SdzPyyWFu7-5TAc8U5FffzFvDMKserQi7D179semII83WGxZqtrozsx8Cg4FJQB1W_lEzE8vORw3u-EfIuQUkzb6kj9FbmCwdqn_2yJoHdRVZunEsVFxDefXuc3Q4ZQ6Od8WuvUFFkrIZ_TOdnpRujJvoyiIDfWfSUQ1olnBHh5aW6craQ5JE6/s2048/Neanderthal%20young.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO2BvNQ0SdzPyyWFu7-5TAc8U5FffzFvDMKserQi7D179semII83WGxZqtrozsx8Cg4FJQB1W_lEzE8vORw3u-EfIuQUkzb6kj9FbmCwdqn_2yJoHdRVZunEsVFxDefXuc3Q4ZQ6Od8WuvUFFkrIZ_TOdnpRujJvoyiIDfWfSUQ1olnBHh5aW6craQ5JE6/w400-h266/Neanderthal%20young.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/sep/08/study-reveals-striking-differences-in-brains-of-modern-humans-and-neanderthals">https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/sep/08/study-reveals-striking-differences-in-brains-of-modern-humans-and-neanderthals</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Mary:<br /><br />Anything on early hominims and how our evolution proceeded is fascinating. We are finding Neandertals had more in the way of culture than we thought — witness burial practices, painting or marking on cave walls, tool making.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #20124d;">I would be fascinating if they still existed, those quite capable distant cousins of modern humans. But then, given all the wars within our own species, I can see that only one kind of Homo would be tolerated. </span><span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>THE EPIGENETIC SECRETS BEHIND DOPAMINE, DRUG ADDICTION AND DEPRESSION<br /></b><br /><i><b>~ New research links serotonin and dopamine not just to addiction and depression, but to the ability to control genes. ~</b><br /></i><br />As I opened my copy of Science at home one night, an unfamiliar word in the title of a new study caught my eye: <b>dopaminylation</b>. The term refers to the brain chemical <b>dopamine’s ability, in addition to transmitting signals across synapses, to enter a cell’s nucleus and control specific genes.</b> As I read the paper, I realized that it completely upends our understanding of genetics and drug addiction. <b> </b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The intense craving for addictive drugs like alcohol and cocaine may be caused by dopamine controlling genes that alter the brain circuitry underlying addiction. Intriguingly, the results also suggest an answer to why drugs that treat major depression must typically be taken for weeks before they’re effective</b>. I was shocked by the dramatic discovery, but to really understand it, I first had to unlearn some things.<br /><br />“Half of what you learned in college is wrong,” my biology professor, David Lange, once said. “Problem is, we don’t know which half.” How right he was. I was taught to scoff at Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and his theory that traits acquired through life experience could be passed on to the next generation. The silly traditional example is the mama giraffe stretching her neck to reach food high in trees, resulting in baby giraffes with extra-long necks.</span><span style="color: #351c75;"> Then </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>biologists discovered we really can inherit traits our parents acquired in life, without any change to the DNA sequence of our genes. It’s all thanks to a process called epigenetics — a form of gene expression that can be inherited but isn’t actually part of the genetic code. This is where it turns out that brain chemicals like dopamine play a role.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />All genetic information is encoded in the DNA sequence of our genes, and traits are passed on in the random swapping of genes between egg and sperm that sparks a new life. Genetic information and instructions are coded in a sequence of four different molecules (nucleotides abbreviated A, T, G and C) on the long double-helix strand of DNA. <b>The linear code is quite lengthy (about 6 feet long per human cell), so it’s stored neatly wound around protein bobbins [histones]</b>, similar to how magnetic tape is wound around spools in cassette tapes.<br /><br /><b>Inherited genes are activated or inactivated to build a unique individual from a fertilized egg, but </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>cells also constantly turn specific genes on and off throughout life to make the proteins cells need to function. </b><i><b> </b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>When a gene is activated, special proteins latch onto DNA, read the sequence of letters there and make a disposable copy of that sequence in the form of messenger RNA. </b></i></span><span style="color: #800180;"><i><b>The messenger RNA then shuttles the genetic instructions to the cell’s ribosomes, which decipher the code and make the protein specified by the gene.</b></i></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />But none of that works without access to the DNA. By analogy, if the magnetic tape remains tightly wound, you can’t read the information on the cassette. <b>Epigenetics works by unspooling the tape, or not, to control which genetic instructions are carried out. </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>In epigenetic inheritance, the DNA code is not altered, but access to it is.</b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><i><b>This is why cells in our body can be so different even though every cell has identical DNA. If the DNA is not unwound from its various spools — proteins called histones — the cell’s machinery can’t read the hidden code. So the genes that would make red blood corpuscles, for example, are shut off in cells that become neurons.</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b></b></i></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwcrGhqvmB5_7M_A3l99ZMcDqPbPrCtNazIZwPgpM_YKr8D7mQ8_ClVoooxYJYoul7TogqGgAIhD7sW2K_4b76m21wDnyMjIPKpCx9Wr4JCQCEfc5lwsJwZMy4xQLWuzS6fIwKQ59mynapSAOVIRY1SeFZdqMVOTEg9q7KSHiiIHyxaHR1fDQ_QffcVTea/s1200/DNA%20wrapped%20around%20histones.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="1200" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwcrGhqvmB5_7M_A3l99ZMcDqPbPrCtNazIZwPgpM_YKr8D7mQ8_ClVoooxYJYoul7TogqGgAIhD7sW2K_4b76m21wDnyMjIPKpCx9Wr4JCQCEfc5lwsJwZMy4xQLWuzS6fIwKQ59mynapSAOVIRY1SeFZdqMVOTEg9q7KSHiiIHyxaHR1fDQ_QffcVTea/w400-h210/DNA%20wrapped%20around%20histones.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></i></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>DNA wrapped around histones<br /> </i><br />How do cells know which genes to read? <b>The histone spool that a specific gene’s DNA winds around is marked with a specific chemical tag, like a molecular Post-it note.</b> That marker directs other proteins to “roll the tape” and unwind the relevant DNA from that histone (or not to roll it, depending on the tag).<br /><br />It’s a fascinating process we’re still learning more about, but we never expected that a seemingly unrelated brain chemical might also play a role. Neurotransmitters are specialized molecules that transmit signals between neurons. This chemical signaling between neurons is what enables us to think, learn, experience different moods and, when neurotransmitter signaling goes awry, suffer cognitive difficulties or mental illness.<br /><br />Serotonin and dopamine are famous examples. Both are monoamines, a class of neurotransmitters involved in psychological illnesses such as depression, anxiety disorders and addiction. <b>Serotonin helps regulate mood, and drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are widely prescribed and effective for treating chronic depression.</b> We think they work by increasing the level of<b> serotonin</b> in the brain, which <b>boosts communication between neurons in the neural circuits controlling mood, motivation, anxiety and reward. That makes sense, sure, but it is curious that it usually takes a month or more before the drug relieves depression.</b><br /><br /><b>Dopamine</b>, on the other hand, <b>is the neurotransmitter at work in the brain’s reward circuits; it produces that “gimme-a-high-five!” spurt of euphoria that erupts when we hit a bingo. Nearly all addictive drugs, like cocaine and alcohol, increase dopamine levels, and the chemically induced dopamine reward leads to further drug cravings.</b> A weakened reward circuitry could be a cause of depression, which would help explain why people with depression may self-medicate by taking illicit drugs that boost dopamine.<br /><br />But (as I found out after reading that dopaminylation paper), research last year led by Ian Maze, a neuroscientist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, showed that </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>serotonin</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"> has another function: It can act as one of those molecular Post-it notes. Specifically, it </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>can bind to a type of histone known as H3, which controls the genes responsible for transforming human stem cells (the forerunner of all kinds of cells) into serotonin neurons.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"> <b>When serotonin binds to the histone, the DNA unwinds, turning on the genes that dictate the development of a stem cell into a serotonin neuron, while turning off other genes by keeping their DNA tightly wound.</b> (So stem cells that never see serotonin turn into other types of cells, since the genetic program to transform them into neurons is not activated.)<br /><br />That finding inspired Maze’s team to wonder if dopamine might act in a similar way, regulating the genes involved in drug addiction and withdrawal. In the April Science paper that so surprised me, they showed that </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>the same enzyme that attaches serotonin to H3 can also catalyze the attachment of dopamine to H3 — a process, I learned, called dopaminylation.</b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><br /></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Together, these results represent a huge change in our understanding of these chemicals. By binding to the H3 histone, serotonin and dopamine can regulate transcription of DNA into RNA and, as a consequence, the synthesis of specific proteins from them. That turns these well-known characters in neuroscience into <i><b>double agents, acting obviously as neurotransmitters, but also as clandestine masters of epigenetics.</b><br /></i><br />Maze’s team naturally began exploring this new relationship. <b>First they examined postmortem brain tissue from cocaine users. They found a decrease in the amount of dopaminylation of H3 in the cluster of dopamine neurons in a</b> <b>brain region known to be important in addiction: the ventral tegmental area, or VTA.</b><br /><br />That’s just an intriguing correlation, though, so to find out if cocaine use actually affects dopaminylation of H3 in these neurons, the researchers studied rats before and after they self-administered cocaine for 10 days. <b>Just as in the human cocaine users’ brains, dopaminylation of H3 dropped within the neurons in the rats’ VTA</b>. The researchers also found <b><i>a rebound effect one month after withdrawing the rats from cocaine, with much higher dopaminylation of H3 found in these neurons than in control animals. </i></b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b><i>That increase might be important in controlling which genes get turned on or off, rewiring the brain’s reward circuitry and causing an intense drug craving during withdrawal.</i><br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />Ultimately, i<b>t looks as though dopaminylation — not just typical dopamine functioning in the brain — may control drug-seeking behavior.</b> <b>Long-term cocaine use modifies neural circuits in the brain’s reward pathway, making a steady intake of the drug necessary for the circuits to operate normally</b>. That requires turning specific genes on and off to make the proteins for those changes, and this is an epigenetic mechanism driven by dopamine acting on H3, not a change in DNA sequence.<br /><br />To test that hypothesis, the researchers genetically modified H3 histones in rats by replacing the amino acid that dopamine attaches to with a different one it doesn’t react with. This stops dopaminylation from occurring. <b>Withdrawal from cocaine is associated with changes in the readout of hundreds of genes involved in rewiring neural circuits and altering synaptic connections, but in the rats whose dopaminylation was prevented, these changes were suppressed. </b><br /><br />Moreover, neural impulse firing in VTA neurons was reduced, and they released less dopamine, showing that these genetic changes were indeed affecting the brain’s reward circuit operation. This might account for why people with substance use disorder crave drugs that boost dopamine levels in the brain during withdrawal. Finally, in subsequent tests, <b>the genetically modified rats exhibited much less cocaine-seeking behavior.</b><br /><br />To put it plainly, the discovery that monoamine neurotransmitters control epigenetic regulation of genes is transformative for basic science and medicine. These experiments show that the <b>tagging of H3 by dopamine does indeed underlie drug-seeking behavior, by regulating the neural circuits operating in addiction.</b><br /><br />And, equally exciting, the implications likely go well beyond addiction, given the crucial role of dopamine and serotonin signaling in other neurological and psychological illnesses. Indeed, Maze told me that his team’s latest research (not yet published) has also found this type of epigenetic marking in the brain tissues of people with major depressive disorder. <b>Perhaps this connection even explains why antidepressant drugs take so long to be effective: if the drugs work by activating this epigenetic process, rather than just supplying the brain’s missing serotonin, it can take days or even weeks before these genetic changes become apparent.</b><br /><br />Looking ahead, <b>Maze wonders if such epigenetic changes might also occur in response to other addictive drugs, including heroin, alcohol and nicotine.</b> If so, medicines based on this newly discovered epigenetic process could eventually lead to better treatments for many types of addiction and mental illnesses.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg8KkyIFLKS-UOYEbSsu-mKVSMqJZJkbXaSxuxI7JqlhoXggKbLA6MriaVyDwlkGFgZGaXJ1nvno9wuCiQ8aimxLhzt8jcbKxNSkpTJM0VXKEX7hmLK0fZuxzvvxrRh3ediaHwc5_Kmh5WNhjHVJlPVaoZX6iRuI4fTJD3EEtXmgYr4sP3gwvjTJ8ZiaLP/s389/Junkie%20.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="280" data-original-width="389" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg8KkyIFLKS-UOYEbSsu-mKVSMqJZJkbXaSxuxI7JqlhoXggKbLA6MriaVyDwlkGFgZGaXJ1nvno9wuCiQ8aimxLhzt8jcbKxNSkpTJM0VXKEX7hmLK0fZuxzvvxrRh3ediaHwc5_Kmh5WNhjHVJlPVaoZX6iRuI4fTJD3EEtXmgYr4sP3gwvjTJ8ZiaLP/w400-h288/Junkie%20.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In a commentary accompanying the research, Jean-Antoine Girault of Sorbonne University in Paris made a final, intriguing observation. <b>We know that typical neural impulse firing works by causing a ripple effect of dynamic changes in calcium concentration inside neurons that eventually reach the nucleus. But Girault noted that the enzyme that catalyzes the attachment of dopamine to H3 is also regulated by levels of intracellular calcium. In this way, electrical chatter between neurons is relayed to the nucleus, suggesting that neural activity — driven by a behavior — could attach the dopamine epigenetic marker to genes responsible for drug-seeking behavior. That’s how the experiences one has in life can select which genes get read out, and which do not.</b> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Lamarck would be proud. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-epigenetic-secrets-behind-dopamine-drug-addiction-and-depression-20201027/">https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-epigenetic-secrets-behind-dopamine-drug-addiction-and-depression-20201027/<br /></a><br /></span><span style="color: #20124d;">Mary:<br /><br />Serotonin, dopamine and epigenetics — we seem to be finding things about how they interact that suggests possible usefulness in some of our most miserable of ills, such as depression.<br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />*<br /><b>THOSE AWFUL NIGHT-TIME LEG CRAMPS <br /></b><br />From various sources on the Internet:<br /><br />“Cramps are likely the result of tired muscles and nerve problems. <b>The risk of having night leg cramps increases with age. Pregnant people also are more likely to have night leg cramps. </b>Kidney failure, diabetic nerve damage and problems with blood flow are known to cause night leg cramps."<br /><br />This would indicate that lion mane extract — which is supposed to help regrow nerves — would be the best remedy. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>"The older you are, the more likely you are to have leg cramps. This is because your tendons (the tissues that connect your muscles to your bones) naturally shorten as you age</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;">. Women are also more likely to get them. Up to 60% of adults get leg cramps at night, as do up to 40% of children and teenagers.<br /><br />Night leg cramps (nocturnal leg cramps) can happen to anyone at any age, but they happen most often to older adults. Of people over age 60, 33% will have a leg cramp at night at least once every two months. Nearly every adult age 50 and older will have them at least one time. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Approximately 40% of people will experience leg cramps during pregnancy. Healthcare providers believe that’s because the extra weight of pregnancy strains your muscles</b>.<br /><br />Possible causes for leg cramps at night (nocturnal leg cramps) include:</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Sitting for long periods of time (like at a desk job).</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Overusing your muscles.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Standing or working on concrete floors.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Having poor posture during the day.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Kidney failure, diabetic nerve damage, mineral deficits and issues with blood flow.” <br /><br />*<br />Potassium deficiency is also a possibility. <br /><br /><b>The Avocado: A Potassium Powerhouse</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0KHmA2DiXKYPwGL8KXjri8NQqeARJPEYFkDql5elBjwjQwEJn05keyiOjh2B_6QnVjIyXe2pGR42aWGNzuC0LWsvxK9Y7hystPePxE9eeai1PG3i4xLuLLGw2az1-FHBwxtHltkUWmCvNUV-D7M7OTs1Jra_7KdrHSlaLebnuYjaCnNcG13LNXweGm8Ho/s960/avocado%20carving.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0KHmA2DiXKYPwGL8KXjri8NQqeARJPEYFkDql5elBjwjQwEJn05keyiOjh2B_6QnVjIyXe2pGR42aWGNzuC0LWsvxK9Y7hystPePxE9eeai1PG3i4xLuLLGw2az1-FHBwxtHltkUWmCvNUV-D7M7OTs1Jra_7KdrHSlaLebnuYjaCnNcG13LNXweGm8Ho/s320/avocado%20carving.jpg" width="240" /></a></b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"One creamy green berry (yes, it's really a berry!) has about 975 milligrams of potassium, twice as much as a sweet potato or banana. <b>Potassium is important because it helps your muscles work and keeps your heart healthy. </b><br /><br /><i><b>Soaking in a warm bath near bedtime might be a preventative measure</b></i>.” <br /><br />Magnesium is allegedly involved but it’s done nothing for me to prevent cramps. I take it for other benefits. <br /><br /><b>Stretching</b>!! It would make sense to try stretching at bedtime. Here you probably already know how to stretch those shrinking tendons. Just as you’ve learned to stretch your hands, you can learn to stretch your legs whenever you remember. Frequent leg stretches just might do it.<br /><br />Back when I used to swim, as I got older I got cramps (mainly in the toes) practically every time. I suspect it was the coldness of the water and whatever damage accumulates during aging.<br /><br />So avocados, yams, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, bananas and other potassium-rich foods may help. But I suspect that stretching exercises are most effective (though not 100%). <br /><br /><b>Pickle Juice</b><br />Some athletes swear by pickle juice as a fast way to stop a muscle cramp. They believe it’s effective because of the high water and sodium content. But that might not be the case. While pickle juice may help relieve muscle cramps quickly, it isn’t because you’re dehydrated or low on sodium. It is more likely because the pickle juice sets off a reaction in your nervous system that stops the cramp, according to recent research.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGuD22Hp8DhnY9X_wJuWs7vxqZFvOV10xb3zPMHonfrOe0akljRepH3rn8fIzzpzmpcElicSHvIWt86fFQvMtAl23TSfG0tTOzN0sj4xM3v_3dYPdi5D08c0_Ic4Hu5UontcIS1uXPf2H4FbgsSr3goNJApiIu0Zqs_HWcUjs-4cW0mVc41r20B07O9ry_/s612/jar%20of%20pickles.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="508" data-original-width="612" height="333" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGuD22Hp8DhnY9X_wJuWs7vxqZFvOV10xb3zPMHonfrOe0akljRepH3rn8fIzzpzmpcElicSHvIWt86fFQvMtAl23TSfG0tTOzN0sj4xM3v_3dYPdi5D08c0_Ic4Hu5UontcIS1uXPf2H4FbgsSr3goNJApiIu0Zqs_HWcUjs-4cW0mVc41r20B07O9ry_/w400-h333/jar%20of%20pickles.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br />For menstrual cramps, ibuprofen worked best — but it shouldn’t be taken for a long time in large doses (it may take three ibuprofens to stop menstrual cramps — four is the maximum dose).<br /><br />Still, on a particularly crampy night, ibuprofen might help even with leg cramps.<br /><br />I think stretching at bedtime will be most helpful. Gett the toes to face toward the body as much as possible; relax, repeat. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">And lion mane extract just might help </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">— if not with toe cramps, then in the prevention of dementia. (By the way, that extract is a godsend when it comes to neuropathy.)</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />*<br /><b><i>ending on beauty:</i></b><br /><br />EARLY FALL<br /><br />The first cold morning,<br />the first lost tomato<br />pulled rotting from the vine,<br />the first grey, rainfilled sky — <br /><br />sunless as February,<br />lonely as April,<br />before spring learns<br />the secret of love.<br /><br />~ John Guzlowski (photo below also by John Guzlowski)<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkkuuzZ8nQFm3LA7L5Ll1VuTSUy_RFuw6hcfTgUIqCV0efbFQkpwJUBvpFpPFH9DnsdI9hvuAqnE8WH96hxagh_2ST4_3GeZ7y64pS_24D8IyUSrWEC8C3cLLd-EbLdk09_LlVfhrj8yMQmJDJKSkPEmP6Ea8mMGC3GSfbz846Abbbyu5Qw9NFl4ww973C/s2048/autumn%20Iossel.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1474" data-original-width="2048" height="461" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkkuuzZ8nQFm3LA7L5Ll1VuTSUy_RFuw6hcfTgUIqCV0efbFQkpwJUBvpFpPFH9DnsdI9hvuAqnE8WH96hxagh_2ST4_3GeZ7y64pS_24D8IyUSrWEC8C3cLLd-EbLdk09_LlVfhrj8yMQmJDJKSkPEmP6Ea8mMGC3GSfbz846Abbbyu5Qw9NFl4ww973C/w640-h461/autumn%20Iossel.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-78309598409551241862023-10-14T22:45:00.007-07:002023-10-21T15:04:35.107-07:00WHY HUMAN DIE AROUND 80; HITLER’S GREATEST MISTAKE; THE ART OF MARC CHAGALL; GIVING CASH TO THE HOMELESS; FEMALE GHOSTS DOMINATE THE AFTERLIFE; GAMMA BRAIN WAVES A PROMISING TREATMENT OF ALZHEIMER’S<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt-P70RZxEtc4q6-VHdDAkBYCyZtOZiFgiPJXzKjzHYlPtX8b-Axtt71C1zJU9ahDr9Vytn7bNqtvqiuCkXeWBidpFDSSCU9KkYlRAIqYbhnHghA_GmgprowZwdaAT7wIgxEDAOC5JNVICQh3vuNfEYMu73tw4AytV3QJgGZ_zCIvoRqb3RUUFS05xjJ-q/s420/chagall%20I%20and%20the%20Village%201911.jpg" style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="330" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt-P70RZxEtc4q6-VHdDAkBYCyZtOZiFgiPJXzKjzHYlPtX8b-Axtt71C1zJU9ahDr9Vytn7bNqtvqiuCkXeWBidpFDSSCU9KkYlRAIqYbhnHghA_GmgprowZwdaAT7wIgxEDAOC5JNVICQh3vuNfEYMu73tw4AytV3QJgGZ_zCIvoRqb3RUUFS05xjJ-q/w314-h400/chagall%20I%20and%20the%20Village%201911.jpg" width="314" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Marc Chagall: I and the Village, 1911</i></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br />I, MAY I REST IN PEACE<br /><br />I, may I rest in peace — I, who am still living, say,<br />May I have peace in the rest of my life.<br />I want peace right now while I'm still alive.<br />I don't want to wait like that pious man who wished for one leg<br />of the golden chair of Paradise, I want a four-legged chair<br />right here, a plain wooden chair. I want the rest of my peace now.<br />I have lived out my life in wars of every kind: battles without<br />and within, close combat, face-to-face, the faces always<br />my own, my lover-face, my enemy-face.<br />Wars with the old weapons — sticks and stones, blunt axe, words,<br />dull ripping knife, love and hate,<br />and wars with newfangled weapons — machine gun, missile,<br />words, land mines exploding, love and hate.<br />I don’t want to fulfill my parents’ prophecy that life is war.<br />I want peace with all my body and all my soul.<br />Rest me in peace.<br /><br />~ Yehuda Amichai, tr. Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu9xnZwoaaQf7a7wHh-6nWe5GhvwOs0dl06CKFFa5cmZW66zurkgHBbnriptF584e3An5xrK4zpfGNJToYfnDAI7CK5AQKfLkyx9X80YEXzgZcdkfV4GEwm5NL7-mJnfZJLhBMfsnBhkCFsvqwpWUlrnzz3UyOqRViLsx-nyxrvuyWeycWh2NUO87Ar9-m/s1000/yehuda%20Amichai%20book.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="659" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu9xnZwoaaQf7a7wHh-6nWe5GhvwOs0dl06CKFFa5cmZW66zurkgHBbnriptF584e3An5xrK4zpfGNJToYfnDAI7CK5AQKfLkyx9X80YEXzgZcdkfV4GEwm5NL7-mJnfZJLhBMfsnBhkCFsvqwpWUlrnzz3UyOqRViLsx-nyxrvuyWeycWh2NUO87Ar9-m/w264-h400/yehuda%20Amichai%20book.jpg" width="264" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br />I love the idea of wanting to rest in peace while still alive </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">— wanting a plain wooden chair in this life, rather than one leg of the golden chair in paradise.</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> I planned to follow up Amichai with a beautiful, humanitarian poem by Mahmoud Darwish, called perhaps My Enemy — or perhaps The Man I Wanted to Kill — but couldn’t find it online. I kept finding love poems instead, which was frustrating at first, but now it seems symbolic — a love poem is a love poem regardless of the ethnic or religious identity of the poet. The face of the beloved is always the most beautiful sight in the world. A love poem from Africa resembles a love poem from Australia or India or Japan. All love poetry reminds us of our common humanity. <br /><br />But the poem by Darwish that I couldn’t find is more explicit about that common humanity than most poems. The speaker describes wanting to kill a particular man — one who displaced him from his house and land. But then he pauses and wonders if that man, his enemy, has a father who sighs when he hears about his son, and presses his hand to his heart — and imagining the aggrieved father, the speaker can’t proceed with the killing. Or perhaps the enemy has a mother who stays up at night, praying for her son's safety </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">— </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">or a sister, or wife, or children who eagerly wait for Papa to return — or anyone to whom that enemy is dear, anyone who daily prays for his safety — and the weapon falls from the speaker’s hand. <br /><br />It’s one of the eternal themes of poetry, the recognition that the enemy is a kind of secret brother </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">— </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">part of the greater human community that ultimately also includes the poet. Alas, the kind of empathy that poetry tries to express seemed sadly lacking in a video I recently watched. An Israeli teenager was running for his life from the site of the music festival which turned into a massacre in the latest Hamas attack. He was pursued by an armed Palestinian of about the same age. The Israeli youth, likely exhausted, lay down on the ground, seeking shelter alongside a white car parked nearby. His pursuer, who looked uncannily similar, got closer and shot him point blank. <br /><br />No recognition of their common humanity. No empathy. <br /><br />Given the many atrocities committed on that day, the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, this could be dismissed as a minor incident. But because the victim and the killer looked practically the same, and could be otherwise mistaken for two classmates running after a soccer ball, I was particularly shaken. I could indeed see how the death of one person is a tragedy, while the death of a million is a statistic.<br /><br />A friend pointed out that someone must have been very near, shooting a video of this — a fact that sickened me all the more. <br /><br /><b>Stav Bartel, former commander in IDF</b>, posted this message on Quora: <br /><br />~ Lots of my friends and acquaintances and their loved ones were butchered. <b>The enemy is cynically denying anything they themselves filmed doing. Don't legitimize this. Hamas is evil. Don't fall into that stupid relativistic attitude, that attempts to show the "other side" of Hamas.</b> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">See the true pictures from Gaza, the voice of the Gazans, but not the voice of Hamas. A group that launches an attack that massacres, butchers innocent men, women and babies, a group that burns houses with civilians trapped inside, forcing them to flee and then massacring them. My friends told me the terrorists were piling bodies from the festival with a tractor and tried to burn them.<br /><br />A family member of a friend of mine was raped three times. Others were abducted. An acquaintance of mine told me she hid in a bunker after the attack on the rave party, luckily left to treat the wounded, and she saw the terrorists throwing grenades into the bunkers. Her friends were injured, others killed. She carried them wounded under fire. I've received these testimonies already on Saturday morning. At the kibbutzim, babies were abducted, others killed, choked, and beheaded. Grandmothers were abducted, entire families were wiped out. </span></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">This is not an IDF assault from air on a building used by Hamas, housing civilians as human shields. And this is no mistake. <b>There is no way to compare. None of these people were a threat to anyone, they were not next to IDF troops</b>. And <b>this attack had no military objective. This is not a legitimate response to anything, not a proper way to deal with occupation or blockade. There is absolutely no way to justify any of this.</b><br /><br />. . . But <b>Hamas are not true representatives of the Palestinians. They are a proxy of Iran, they are a lunatic, ultra-religious murderous organization.</b> They portray themselves as the weak freedom fighters, but in truth, they are just thugs. All of them. We are no saints, but they are the devil. While we sometimes fail in judgment, they have no morals in the first place. <b>They celebrate death, cheer for the sight of fire and destruction and enjoy the smell of blood. </b>They are animals and they have always been, ever since they started with the suicide bombings. And Hezbollah and the PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] and all other terrorist organizations are no different.<br /><br />I woke up on Saturday with a rocket barrage on my city, Tel Aviv, in the metropolitan area of 3 million people was attacked. A rocket fell in my neighborhood, where there is no military presence, no strategic sites. Just civilians. <b>Soon we received the reports of terrorists armed for an all out war, rampaging through cities and villages, butchering people, desecrating their bodies and burning houses. We saw the videos of thousands of people fleeing from the festival. And there are stories I've heard that I can't yet process. </b>I am unable to even think about them. So much blood and gore on the most innocent of lives.<br /><br />No more than 6 hours later, I was already on my way south to arm up with hundreds of other reservists in my unit. Some of them I've never seen. People who did not show up to previous reserve activity for years have showed up. <b>300 thousand Israelis showed up. This is the largest deployment in the country's history. This is how eager we are to defend our homeland</b>. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">And civilians are doing everything they can just to provide us with food and equipment. Everyone joined, not a single soul in Israel remained indifferent. Jews, Druze, Christians, Arabs, Bedouin, people who just a few seconds ago only saw their differences, have all united against evil. There is no question here, <b>Hamas must be eradicated, just like ISIS.</b> And what they have done is as big a crime against Israel as it is against the Palestinians. They have done nothing but bring on death and destruction on themselves, and we haven't started yet.<br /><br />I am now near the front, thwarting continuous infiltration attempts. They try and fail. Dozens of terrorist were killed. They are getting weaker and weaker and we are getting stronger and braver. They keep shooting at civilians. Rockets are falling near us, exploding over our heads. But our spirit is strong, we are strongly united, brothers and sisters, from all over the country, religious, secular, rich, poor... And the ground is shaking under our feet front our air force pounding of the devil's den.<br /><br />While their leaders are hiding in bunkers, some of our leaders, members of the Knesset, have showed up, volunteered to join the fighting units. My battalion commander, who lives in a kibbutz just next to the strip, who was abroad at the time, has lost his 18-year-old son, and before burying or even seeing him, he decided to take a flight, show up and help in whatever he can, even though he was given the option to stay home and weep. This is the spirit of our country. <b>And we have no other land to go to. This is our secret weapon. We have one homeland.</b><br /><br />I have gave much thought about my grandparents who fought the Nazi attempt to eradicate them, and others who suffered persecution anywhere they've been. Here we are united together, we have the right and duty to help ourselves. And we will do that for eternity. <b>We cannot be beaten, and whoever will challenge us will be destroyed.</b><br /><br />I am no religious person, but now more than ever the words Am Yisrael Chai [the people of Israel live] are inscribed on my heart. ~ <br /><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjMr0Qr2hZbzGkL8G1VEuNQ7gKrb2fvblYa3JULQxrEwRF_zyID_0kGF-qjhXBaTrpaZT9fcMnR5aXPtLT9n6Sj-nQmh8MwzKNOB7MF50tSiPeEsf-tDnCKIHvjbdYqkNoZoxnWaq4eCB_7Qh1DokOK9CvbNfIxQMTgzP_SNQeEo3Wci6MxTODgehYzaxn/s602/rockets%20Hamas%202023.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="602" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjMr0Qr2hZbzGkL8G1VEuNQ7gKrb2fvblYa3JULQxrEwRF_zyID_0kGF-qjhXBaTrpaZT9fcMnR5aXPtLT9n6Sj-nQmh8MwzKNOB7MF50tSiPeEsf-tDnCKIHvjbdYqkNoZoxnWaq4eCB_7Qh1DokOK9CvbNfIxQMTgzP_SNQeEo3Wci6MxTODgehYzaxn/w400-h266/rockets%20Hamas%202023.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>*<br />MORE THAN ONE THING CAN BE TRUE AT THE SAME TIME, INCLUDING BUT NOT EXCLUSIVELY:<br /></b><br />~ Jews were mass murdered over and over again and have a justifiable fear of being murdered again AND that fear has made us do horrifying things to the Palestinians over and over again that are not justified in any way.<br /><br />Jews have lived in Israel for thousands of years, and have a historic claim to it AND we use religious language and assumptions that may be mythological to most. AND real Palestinian people lost their homes unfairly.<b> More than one people can have a historic claim to the same place.</b><br /><br />The Palestinians were cruelly displaced AND the Arab countries around declined to take them in even though they had kicked out hundreds of thousands Jews into Israel. Everyone was a refugee, and refugees don't have good choices.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #351c75;">Gaza is a monstrous construction, a huge open air prison with horrific mistreatment of the Palestinians that is absolutely evil and wrong AND Palestinians keep choosing leadership that wants to murder all Jews. <b>Hamas has used millions of dollars not to build infrastructure and schools but to dig tunnels and buy weapons.<br /></b><br />We all (including me) live on stolen land, and have no intention of giving it back, but you want the Israelis to give back the land they stole and have lived on. AND when America is attacked we go on to conquer countries that weren't even involved, but when Israeli is attacked they should show more restraint. AND Israeli disproportionism in attacking civilians is reprehensible, as is Hamas in taking civilian hostages as possible human shields.<br /><br />Israelis were attacked shamefully by Hamas during a religious holiday causing mass death, AND Israelis have engaged in colonial provocation and colonization is generally overthrown by violence.<br /><br />Europe offloaded its "Jewish problem" to the Middle East rather than give up Bavaria for a Jewish homeland, which should have happened, and <b>translated its profound and loathsome historic antisemitism into anti-Zionism (which are not the same things, but can be hard to sort out)</b>, AND Jews then created a situation so horrifying that many leftist Jews became anti-Zionist too.<br /><br /><b>This is a proxy conflict for a number of countries (and has been since before Israel existed actually, pretty much for the entire history of the area for thousands of years) and is being played out in part in the lives of people who do not deserve it on both sides. And it should scare us all </b></span></span><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">—</span></span></b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b> not just for the victims, but for how this could light a larger fire.<br /></b><br />2. I don't care how justified you think Palestinian or Israeli violence is in the circumstances. If you argue that the sexual abuse of women, torture, parading naked corpses through the streets or mass bombing civilians BY ANYONE is an acceptable response, you have crossed the line. Those are war crimes.<br /><br />3. <b>This has more actors than just the Israelis and the Palestinians and has throughout everything. </b>The technology for those drone strikes came from somewhere. The Israeli intelligence failures came from somewhere. Nations are choosing up sides in a proxy conflict, and that's dangerous as hell. Remember that — <b>no one is acting alone here</b>, so if you ascribe everything to one party, you are missing important stuff.<br /><br />4. <i><b>This is a climate change problem as well. There is a very good chance we are starting a global war over a place where NEITHER national group will be able to live in 50 years due to extreme heat and lack of water.</b><br /></i><br />5. This is just fucking sad and awful and horrible. And <b>the people who suffer the most will be the ones with the fewest choices and least power. And most of the people involved have no safe place to retreat to. This will be a long nightmare. </b>It is fine to be sad and angry here. It is not fine to blanket blame any people, who all pretty much feel about their governments much the way we do about ours, and often don't have a lot of good choices.<br /><br />(Though the name of Naomi Weisberg Siegel was attached to this, she denies being the author.)<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnO6AsySlI4sKwNRtafZLzCRQNO_fEkIGaaGZshme96P-PpNc_Ww_8WsvsqHBPX1wQd4xEJ5EO8NK5Drz-3GNGWTYEO8NHuE0ImeWAhe42PugaRIBvBepjY_UgRvIzm-5YKMYWlLLZlK8eKY35g1bxHYp_WMAGO_krJUJyDmm7jj2uv3PS1AcG0fQBWayx/s1000/israeli%20fighter%20jet.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="642" data-original-width="1000" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnO6AsySlI4sKwNRtafZLzCRQNO_fEkIGaaGZshme96P-PpNc_Ww_8WsvsqHBPX1wQd4xEJ5EO8NK5Drz-3GNGWTYEO8NHuE0ImeWAhe42PugaRIBvBepjY_UgRvIzm-5YKMYWlLLZlK8eKY35g1bxHYp_WMAGO_krJUJyDmm7jj2uv3PS1AcG0fQBWayx/w400-h256/israeli%20fighter%20jet.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Israeli fighter jet<br /></i><br />*<br />Misha Iossel:<br /><br />The different faces of hatred.<br /><br /><b>The Nazis murdered Jews — especially women and children and the elderly — with a slightly disgusted look on their faces, as if performing some distasteful yet essential duty, something that needed to be done as expeditiously and dispassionately as possible; they were exterminating Jews in the same way people get rid of rats or cockroaches, for that's who Jews were to the Nazis: subhuman creatures.</b><br /><br />Now behold the faces of the Hamas terrorists in their own videos — and they were very eager to document the carnage they were carrying out, at that rock festival, in those kibbutz homes — as they were murdering and raping and mutilating Jews last Saturday: <b>what joy illuminates their visages, what pure ardor, what unadorned happiness.</b> Yes, you can tell they're experiencing some of the happiest moments of their miserable lives doing the unthinkable. <b>They're shouting for joy and thanking God for giving them the opportunity of slaughtering those babies, those teens, those infirm old people. <br /></b><br />They didn't come there to take on the Israeli army — they knew they stood no chance against it. No, they came to kill and rape and mutilate and burn the helpless and the innocent, especially the women of all ages, the little children and the elderly: <b>the more helpless the victims, the better, the greater the satisfaction, the happier that made them feel.</b><br /><br />Murdering babies in their cribs, raping girls and parading women's bodies through jubilant crowds, abducting little children and putting them in cages — what made those men the way they are? What has disfigured them so as human beings? What has turned them into vicious animals? <b>What kind of culture had shaped them? What their home life was like, when they were little?</b> <br /><br />Indeed, how horribly humiliating and cruel and emasculating their childhood must have been, how much cruelty they must have witnessed and experienced at home…<br /><br />They won't change — those terrible, unspeakable men. Yes, the concrete perpetrators of the Saturday horrors will be hunted down and eliminated, but there is a whole generation of their likes to replace them. The world must be mindful of that.<br /><i></i></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn8EuY3k4-gdm_pUy4vmsX7YSZSVqS0xAqA3jMq-BwbPbviZ1doYdkDyQSeHN66C7ARGKcVyO5_RPf8UEVCDZfNGJEBvTeB1hqpmBTprcOmuwkphfsi_tjAuMBhuozuEj6JRkp4NjsSstjtl6vTriBYQvdBDZ-0GHW9Oll7i10dX0D9h0alljHbY8F1a_j/s750/ben%20shahn%20allegory%201948.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="750" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn8EuY3k4-gdm_pUy4vmsX7YSZSVqS0xAqA3jMq-BwbPbviZ1doYdkDyQSeHN66C7ARGKcVyO5_RPf8UEVCDZfNGJEBvTeB1hqpmBTprcOmuwkphfsi_tjAuMBhuozuEj6JRkp4NjsSstjtl6vTriBYQvdBDZ-0GHW9Oll7i10dX0D9h0alljHbY8F1a_j/w400-h301/ben%20shahn%20allegory%201948.jpg" width="400" /></a></i></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Ben Shahn: Allegory, 1948.<br /></i><br />*<br /><b>THE TWO-STATE SOLUTION IS DEAD</b></span><b><br /></b></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">~ Israelis attending a music festival murdered in cold blood. Reports of women stripped naked and paraded by fighters in Gaza, toddlers kidnapped alongside Holocaust survivors, homes burst into by terrorists hunting down Jews. Naked bodies, mutilated bodies, dead bodies. <b>Jubilant shouts of “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great”) over the carnage. Two-state solution.<br /><br />Which of these terms doesn’t belong? The last one, with its supposed vision of a peaceful Palestinian state living side by side with Israel.</b><br /><br />I spent nearly three years at the Trump White House attempting to reach a peace deal between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors. But I always understood that among the many reasons it was unachievable then, and unlikely to be for the foreseeable future, was not just the seemingly unbridgeable positions on land, Jerusalem and other well-known obstacles. (Indeed, the peace plan we crafted was rejected by the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah before they even read it.)</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Even if we had come up with a solution that was acceptable to the parties, though, there were still far too many Palestinians who were intent on massacring Jews and destroying the Jewish State of Israel.<br /><br />That desire was on full display in Saturday’s unprecedented, devastating attack. Palestinian terrorists invaded Israel and killed at least 900 people, wounded thousands and took hostage up to 150 (no official number has been released). <b>The captives will surely be spread out and hidden all over the Gaza Strip, making their rescue extraordinarily challenging.<br /></b><br />I was supposed to be in the Middle East this week for work, but postponed my trip in light of what’s going on. Almost every single one of my Arab colleagues and friends understood immediately why and expressed outrage, concern or disgust over what happened. Clearly, <b>many Arabs oppose such horrific violence. But I also heard a minority of voices blaming Israel.<br /></b><br />Unless and until Palestinians of good will and their leaders fully and unequivocally condemn and repudiate this hatred and the glorification of the slaughter of Jews, Palestinians will not achieve any of their aspirations because Israel cannot, and should not, compromise on the security of its citizens. No country should.<br /><br /><b>Israel cannot achieve peace with Palestinians when a segment of the Palestinian population still intends to destroy it. Israel cannot make peace when the leaders of the Palestinians include Hamas. </b>Or when a member of Fatah, Hamas’ political opponent and the party that runs the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, expresses not sorrow over the loss of innocent life, but celebrates a “morning of victory, joy, and pride” and urges all Palestinians to participate in the terror against Israel.<br /><br />Many of the would-be peacemakers I spoke to during my time in the White House ignored the deep-seated hatred in this subset of the Palestinian population intent on ruining any chance for peace.<br /><br />They told me that if the Palestinians were given a fully autonomous state of their own, this would all go away, or they pretended away this hatred in the first place. After the events of the last few days, I think they finally have to accept the truth.<br /><br /><b>Israel, like communities of Jews throughout history, will always need to protect itself from haters. As a consequence, any solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if ever one is to present itself, must always address the need for Israel to defend itself</b>, control security over whatever the Palestinian areas might become and do what it needs to protect its citizens.<br /><br />I am heartened by the tremendous support for Israel from around the world. Scenes of the Israeli flag being displayed on the façade of 10 Downing Street and on Germany’s Brandenburg Gate are inspiring in these dark days. As was President Joe Biden issuing strong, appropriate remarks. I hope this support will be unwavering and be followed up by serious assistance to Israel for whatever it needs. I hope the Biden administration also recognizes the Iranian regime’s suspected role in this carnage and acts accordingly.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Indeed, the focus of the world must be to support Israel in its quest to punish those who perpetrated these dastardly acts and to work to prevent attacks like this in the future. <b>Any human being who values life must condemn these acts unequivocally, with no moral ambivalence.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Accordingly, the world must recognize that Israel is now defending itself in Gaza, as any country would, and that the fault for the unfortunate casualties that will inevitably occur among innocent Palestinians lies with Hamas. <b>War is a terrible thing. But it’s not Israel that asked for this war.</b><br /><br />Those who gather in cities around the world to celebrate the death and destruction perpetrated by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, including in my former home state of New York, are in essence saying they believe in the slaughter of innocent individuals, that it’s okay to shoot children in front of their parents, that it’s acceptable to parade women naked and to massacre grandparents.<br /><br /><b>They are saying that they are the enemy of Jews. But they are also saying that they are the enemies of peace and of the Palestinians as well for so deeply hurting their cause. These people should tell their loved ones, including their own grandparents, that this is what they stand for — death, destruction and misery</b>. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/10/opinions/israel-gaza-hamas-biden-greenblatt/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/10/opinions/israel-gaza-hamas-biden-greenblatt/index.html<br /></a><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio03P4wuzCmolLAz44gak7sbvgpOucYoQ1fagmvpya81z2XtbQqWNaab0TPw1lGJ2CxFPWXmUuHNde3dYvKyDh2b3zKQUfNM7olQd8oY7MNQMF19VNbM0IOyXw0GaHgnvkVJ1prwhP_q9fdSRyZR7JYgJX4U0blmO5YcJSkmP8akn28cxO9wiB6PflWm18/s2000/gaza%20ruins%20dove.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1335" data-original-width="2000" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio03P4wuzCmolLAz44gak7sbvgpOucYoQ1fagmvpya81z2XtbQqWNaab0TPw1lGJ2CxFPWXmUuHNde3dYvKyDh2b3zKQUfNM7olQd8oY7MNQMF19VNbM0IOyXw0GaHgnvkVJ1prwhP_q9fdSRyZR7JYgJX4U0blmO5YcJSkmP8akn28cxO9wiB6PflWm18/w400-h268/gaza%20ruins%20dove.webp" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br />Misha Iossel posted this article by Julia Ioffe:<br /><br /><b>TRAGEDY IN ISRAEL</b></span><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">~ "I want to start by saying that, like for so many Jews in the world, this is deeply, deeply personal for me. This isn’t just because I have friends and relatives in Israel, though I do. (Ironically, many of them are from Moscow: they just fled the war there 18 months ago.) Like so many modern Jews, <b>I am alive because so many of my grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on up the chain, managed to escape annihilation just in time. Scores and scores didn’t. They haunt my family. </b>And I’m not just talking about the Holocaust, but pogroms, the Crusades, the Khmelnitsky revolt in Ukraine, the antisemitic violence launched against Jewish communities all across Europe because someone owed money to a Jew or it was a Christian holiday or because hey, someone was just in the mood to lock some Jews in a synagogue and set it on fire.<br /><br />We’ve been driven to near extinction in Europe many times, and the Holocaust was just the latest salvo. Most Ashkenazi Jews are descended from just 350 people because of a population bottleneck that occurred about a thousand years ago, and it wasn’t for happy reasons. And by the way, the reason we were in Christian Europe to begin with—where every country and kingdom would take turns expelling us—is because, in the first and second centuries A.D., the Romans slaughtered us and kicked us out of the place we were originally from, Judea, and then renamed it Palaestina. <b>After the slaughter, the Romans brought 100,000 Jewish slaves from there to ancient Rome</b>, where they were forced to build some of the monuments tourists flock to see today. And still, there was a small but continuous presence in what is now Israel-Palestine from then until now.<br /><br />I say all this not because I don’t also value Palestinian life—I do—or because I don’t think this place is also Palestinians’ home—I do—but because so <b>many people who are not Jewish do not understand the urgent feeling of scarcity that so many Jews feel about their community. After everything, and especially after the Holocaust killed most European Jews, there is not just a sense of fear that something like this can happen again—after all, it always has—but also that we’re always balancing on the precipice of extinction.</b> </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>So when 1,000 Jews are killed in a single day—the single deadliest day for Jews since the end of the Holocaust—it strikes at something very, very deep in me and, I’m sure, most Jews.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />We see the photos of people who were killed—who look like they could have been our parents, our children, our family members—and we feel that we have been pushed that much closer to the abyss of oblivion. (To pretend that there isn’t some tribal element in all this would be dishonest, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily malign. It all depends on what you do with those feelings, but more on that in a bit.)<br /><br /><b>The other reason I mention all this brutal history is because I have been stunned at the level of historical illiteracy I’ve seen</b>. (Though seeing Donald Trump, Jr. post that Hamas would have been 'no más' if his dad were president, as if he hadn’t already been president and hadn’t already had a chance to make Hamas no más, was something.) <br /><br />But I’m especially concerned by the illiteracy on the left, especially when it comes to the Jewish side of this conflict, because it has real implications for the Democratic Party. The party base, especially its younger and more progressive wings, have been moving steadily on the issue, to a point where now, Democrats are more sympathetic to the cause of the Palestinians than Israelis, as if it is a zero-sum game.<br /><br />Two years ago, during the last war between Hamas and Israel, I did a little survey on social media and asked people where Jews came from, originally. Most people said 'Europe.' It was deeply telling and explained why, <b>in so many narratives I’ve seen proliferate on social media, Jews are considered the white colonizers of Palestinians and people of color.</b> The Jews, in this narrative, were like the British in Africa, India, and Pakistan: white foreigners who came from far away to subjugate brown people and steal their resources. It’s a nice, easy narrative that fits perfectly into the conversations about the evils of colonialism and systemic racism. And it’s why so <b>many groups on the left have aligned themselves exclusively with the Palestinian cause and see Jews as white aggressors.<br /></b><br />There’s one problem: it’s not quite true. It would be if the British were originally from India or Africa and returned, 2,000 years later, to claim it as theirs. In fact, most of these misguided narratives also leave out the role of British colonial rule and especially the U.N. in creating the state of Israel—as well as an Arab Palestinian state next to it. (Which Palestinians rejected, for some understandable reasons, after which neighboring Arab countries attacked the new Jewish state.) Israel, in other words, wasn’t a rogue state, but one created and recognized by the international community. It wouldn’t have existed without it.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>These narratives also completely ignore the fact that not all Jews are white and European. In fact, Jews of color make up around half the Jewish population</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">, and they include Black Jews, the Falasha or Ethiopian Jews. The Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews of North Africa, Yemen, Iraq, Iran and Syria, are not white, and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them were thrown out of their homes and violently dispossessed by these Muslim countries after 1948 in response to the founding of Israel and the dispossession of Palestinians. Do they too have the right of return?<br /><br />My point here is not to relitigate history or to excuse the actions of the Israeli government, which has pursued an increasingly horrific and dehumanizing policy toward the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, especially under Bibi Netanyahu. (In fact, Bibi has always played with violence, provoking it and ratcheting it up in the occupied territories so that he can come down hard and show Israelis, See? Only I can protect you.) My point is <b>these incomplete narratives—if I’m to put it diplomatically—erase the Jewish connection to the place. They also erase the value of Jewish life.</b><br /><br />We see that kind of erasure, unfortunately, on both sides. Right-wing Israelis claim that Palestinians aren’t a real people and that they don’t have a right to the land. Left-wing Westerners, often with no ties to the region, say that Jews are white colonizers, oppressors who are getting what they deserve. <b>Much of what is being said now on the left in response to this horrific attack is that this is what decolonization looks like</b>, with many reluctant to criticize the Hamas attacks, saying that the blame for it lies solely with Israel, mocking the victims and even reveling in the violence. (To be fair, some, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, decried this as antisemitism.)<br /><br />I don’t know what will happen or what can happen to solve this. <b>Those who talk about a two-state solution are living in a world that hasn’t existed for a decade. Neither Israelis nor Palestinians seem to want one anymore. They each want a state of their own, a state without the other,</b> <b>and the ethno-nationalism that built Israel—born as it was out of slaughter and oppression—has fueled the ethno-nationalism of the Palestinians, born out of the exact same elements</b>. Both sides have hardened to an exclusionary extreme that precludes compromise or coexistence, and the events of the last week will ensure that even the embers of those hopes are doused cold. Before Saturday, the plan seemed to have been to wait each other out—or, if they were Israelis, ignore the problem and their complicity in it. Now, it is to fight to the death.<br /><br />The last time Israel and Hamas fought, in 2021, I had many private conversations with people I didn’t naturally agree with, people who held some of the above views. I said that I felt absolutely hopeless about a two-state solution, but that I also couldn’t imagine how—after everything Israelis have done to Palestinians and Palestinians have done to Israelis—they could live in one country together, serve side by side in one military or one police force.<br /><br /><b>This was, I was told, colonialist thinking. This was how the British thought about Indians—that they were savages incapable of peace. </b>The Palestinians wanted one state where everyone was equal before the law, not retribution, these people told me. I don’t know how Saturday’s massacre and the left’s defense of it as a necessary and expected part of decolonization squares with that. I do know that there are now far fewer ears ready to hear it. And after the retribution that Israel will continue to deliver, I doubt there will be many Palestinians who will want it either. I can’t say I blame them.<br /><br />I don’t know exactly how this ends, nor do I have any hope that it ends well. It had always been hard for people to hold two contradictory truths simultaneously, that these two deeply traumatized peoples both have a real and legitimate claim to the land, claims that each side has at times acknowledged about the other, claims that have been warped in both camps by emotion and trauma and religion and nationalism into dehumanization and heartlessness, into forgetting that Israeli children and Palestinian children both deserve to live and thrive. Now, it will be impossible, at least for the foreseeable future, though, my god, do I wish it weren’t so.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">~ Julia Ioffe, Puck News</span><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJTFSYI9YBV1Ne4sYvw628N3F2JjP0waPQeCCRSk65xSuM5QtA0FeqSmMharGJxpsSBW31dD1FDmUEpUOzbMdiwK-Vvj2F6eWh71hEr97jBw_7azP7VvFFtIDsCIHCVtEutQsHN6DgGCUrnkEbE4K9NYdbjA7_aOjijAWXdtkr_YcfZe4zyfW6uDzf5DRp/s2198/gaza%20burning.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1210" data-original-width="2198" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJTFSYI9YBV1Ne4sYvw628N3F2JjP0waPQeCCRSk65xSuM5QtA0FeqSmMharGJxpsSBW31dD1FDmUEpUOzbMdiwK-Vvj2F6eWh71hEr97jBw_7azP7VvFFtIDsCIHCVtEutQsHN6DgGCUrnkEbE4K9NYdbjA7_aOjijAWXdtkr_YcfZe4zyfW6uDzf5DRp/w400-h220/gaza%20burning.png" width="400" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Mary:<br /><br /><b>The war between Israel and Hamas is indeed a proxy war, and the immediate combatants seem unable to see any solution but total eradication of the other's existence</b>. This truly precludes resolution, guarantees perpetual conflict, and assures that conflict will NOT avoid, but employ tactics considered War Crimes. Once you have named the enemy inhuman, animal, vermin, there is no limit to your actions in the course of extermination.<br /><br />The fear and hate driving this war is longstanding, deep rooted, buttressed by the historical experience of both Jews and Palestinians — as well as by the history of all the states in the Middle East. It goes back not only to partitions made after WWII but to the history of the Crusades, and the Roman Empire. I can't see much hope for anything but escalation, and a long horrible struggle, with massive human losses.<br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />Oriana:<br /><br />In my teens, I couldn’t understand any of it (nor can I claim to have arrived at any radiant clarity). To me, the “Promised Land” was not Israel but America. One time I even suggested to my mother that the creation of the state of Israel was questionable in view of all the wars that followed. She responded with a brief but decisive little lecture that radically enlarged my perspective. <br /><br />Of course I don’t have any practical solutions, and it seems no one does. Greater minds than mine have grappled with this, yet here we are . . . again. <br /><br />*<br /><b>ON MARC CHAGALL<br /></b><br />~ It was inevitable, perhaps, that the headline on The New York Times’s front-page obituary of Marc Chagall would describe him as “One of Modern Art’s Giants.” This was the status which the press had routinely conferred upon the artist for as long as anyone could remember, and it would have been churlish—if not something worse—to deny him this outsize claim on the occasion of his death at the age of ninety-seven. It may, after all, have been one of the last occasions on which the claim could be made without risking ridicule. Posterity, which can always be counted on to observe a different code of etiquette in regard to fame of this sort, is unlikely to be so kind.</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS4h0NEUC29YdlD_IBHeIsGMaWmKprf1cCgDAEVxfWAuXQKgsTcOXzL6gbmrKaQz3Bj5v88JglX9DxrAmiDcFIpBxaqnbLg86STknMcl5nsik2W50N9JD-gg-9nWe43GOqLpDfomRh8oR44AOYRw6ER0d-1dMM7WIYORqG2HFJ9tEVEFAcneY5sfpwxVoh/s768/chagall%20artist%20at%20easel.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="704" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS4h0NEUC29YdlD_IBHeIsGMaWmKprf1cCgDAEVxfWAuXQKgsTcOXzL6gbmrKaQz3Bj5v88JglX9DxrAmiDcFIpBxaqnbLg86STknMcl5nsik2W50N9JD-gg-9nWe43GOqLpDfomRh8oR44AOYRw6ER0d-1dMM7WIYORqG2HFJ9tEVEFAcneY5sfpwxVoh/s320/chagall%20artist%20at%20easel.jpg" width="293" /></a></div></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Chagall: Artist at Easel, 1965<br /></i></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Yet if Chagall was never exactly the towering “giant” which his admirers had long taken him to be, he was certainly a better painter and a more interesting artist than his detractors—who were also numerous—were generally willing to grant.</b> It was in fact Chagall’s reputation as a “giant” which came more and more to act as an obstacle to any clear understanding of his achievement. To that reputation he owed the large decorative commissions of his later years— commissions which proved, in all too many cases, to be unmitigated aesthetic disasters, and which had the effect of making the artist an object of contempt for anyone capable of distinguishing the artist an object of contempt for anyone capable of distinguishing artistic quality from its meretricious counterfeit. The generation that knows Chagall primarily as the author of those ghastly murals at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, for example, can easily be forgiven for regarding him as something of a hack. It was New York’s misfortune—and not only New York’s, of course—that such commissions came to Chagall when he was no longer in a position to do them justice, and it was Chagall’s misfortune that they came to loom so large in the public’s perception of his gifts.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt-JUfyH5xcFuLFs7Do3Ln62xGSUs4yXWMCgyEe3zgwnI0iZSAqpsWSFgsDSyYCVmQK4FCN_PsswDr5CkZYZyDKgug-OsLxDevl3GwsdxBNRpcar0PCgBhAap3iI38ak6fFDkmL8WsG9W2wEVhubioDQ4UfNYdmUonbs0FOiHRSK1bBpP5m16O73VB2KRr/s2685/Marc%20and%20Bella%20Chagall%201923,%20Hugo%20Erfurth.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2685" data-original-width="2030" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt-JUfyH5xcFuLFs7Do3Ln62xGSUs4yXWMCgyEe3zgwnI0iZSAqpsWSFgsDSyYCVmQK4FCN_PsswDr5CkZYZyDKgug-OsLxDevl3GwsdxBNRpcar0PCgBhAap3iI38ak6fFDkmL8WsG9W2wEVhubioDQ4UfNYdmUonbs0FOiHRSK1bBpP5m16O73VB2KRr/w303-h400/Marc%20and%20Bella%20Chagall%201923,%20Hugo%20Erfurth.jpeg" width="303" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Marc and Bella Chagall, 1923, Hugo Erfurth, bromoil print<br /></i><br />But there is another Chagall, as we know. He is a smaller and more distant figure, to be sure, than the hyped-up colossus who, in the last three decades of his life (when his artistic powers were clearly on the wane), became a kind of mascot of government agencies, cultural bureaucrats, and religious publicists the world over; but this figure is a more authentic one. And it is to him that we must turn if we are to recover a sense of the artist’s special quality and power. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i></i></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAeWH0w90Yuo-FDqiBW7yFbgxPkAouuonI_SOVwA5LhyphenhyphenK1nhpZvXecKdc9D0G1PTnh3WJ8FChVwbLrla_aVmsJervtQTRzLbNgBXG37KbOjsBBEWSuJvoy9gAgJPb4f4mtiKyD_Qrz7Gu4bS1RkbJXanwx4c_DosOKAXK1l_ewjOK0qNEfecTLABktdD5u/s960/chagall%203%20candles.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="700" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAeWH0w90Yuo-FDqiBW7yFbgxPkAouuonI_SOVwA5LhyphenhyphenK1nhpZvXecKdc9D0G1PTnh3WJ8FChVwbLrla_aVmsJervtQTRzLbNgBXG37KbOjsBBEWSuJvoy9gAgJPb4f4mtiKyD_Qrz7Gu4bS1RkbJXanwx4c_DosOKAXK1l_ewjOK0qNEfecTLABktdD5u/w291-h400/chagall%203%20candles.jpg" width="291" /></a></i></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Chagall: Three Candles, 1938</i></span></span><br /><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>In this other Chagall—the young and vigorous artist who had made his way from the provincial backwater of Vitebsk to the cosmopolitan art worlds of St. Petersburg and Paris in the first decade of the century</b>—we shall find the originals, so to speak, from which all those later counterfeits were made and remade with such an easy, dispiriting fluency. We shall find something else as well—an artist of far narrower and more intensely inward interests than could ever be suspected from the anodyne public symbols and universalist sentiment which made the decorative projects of the later years so appealing, so popular, and so empty.<br /><br />By a happy stroke of timing, the retrospective exhibition needed for the recovery of this more interesting and authentic Chagall was already in place at the time of his death on March 28. Organized by Susan Compton at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where I saw it in March, the exhibition goes on view this month at the Philadelphia Museum of Art—its only American showing. While it is anything but complete —particularly in the way it scants, for example, the artist’s immense graphic oeuvre, where some of the best of his later work is likely to be found—this exhibition is at once a fitting memorial to Chagall and something of a milestone in itself. <br /><br />Dr. Compton is a specialist in modern Russian art. She thus brings to this exhibition precisely the perspective which in the past has so often been missing from the study of Chagall’s art—a perspective which places the artist and his work firmly <b>in the context of the Russian cultural milieu which exerted so great an influence on his artistic outlook</b>. Much has been made—and properly made—of Chagall’s life as a Jew, of course, and Dr. Compton does not neglect this crucial element in the artist’s identity and in the subject matter of his art. <br /><br />But even this crucial matter is not easily separable from the Russian context, and it is especially to the illumination of the latter that Dr. Compton makes an important contribution. Hers is, I believe, the first major Chagall exhibition to give this subject its due. The essay Dr. Compton has written on “The Russian Background” for the catalogue of the exhibition, together with some of the detailed commentaries on individual paintings, adds a great deal to our understanding of the oeuvre as a whole. In the end we are fully persuaded that in some important respects “the Russian Chagall,” as Dr. Compton writes, “takes precedence over the adoptive Frenchman, or even the Jew.”<br /><br /><b>It certainly alters our view of the young Chagall to be made aware, as we are on this occasion, that until 1922, when the artist was thirty-five years old and had already produced the bulk of the work likely to retain a place among the classics of twentieth-century art, he had spent a total of less than four years outside his native Russia.</b> For the better part of those four years (1910-14) he was in Paris, and, as everyone knows, his encounter with the Paris avant-garde brought decisive and permanent changes in his painting. Yet even in this pivotal stage of Chagall’s development he tended, not surprisingly, to frequent a distinctly Russian milieu—and this, in turn, had very specific consequences for both his art and his life. <br /><br />He was particularly close to the Swiss poet Blaise Cendrars, who had lived in St. Petersburg for three years (1904-07) and spoke Russian. (So did the woman Cendrars married, Féla Poznanska, to whom Chagall was also close.) <b>He was drawn into the circle of Sonia Delaunay, who was Russian, and her husband Robert Delaunay—probably the most important single influence on Chagall’s painting in this Paris period</b>. In the studio building—the legendary La Ruche—where Chagall lived for a time, “there were so many Russian contributors to the Salon des Indépendants,” Dr. Compton writes, “that it was even suggested that they should form a separate exhibit.” And not all of the Russians who inhabited La Ruche were painters. One of them was the writer A. V. Lunacharsky, who, as Lenin’s first Commissar of Education subsequently appointed Chagall to the position of Commissar of Art in his hometown of Vitebsk. <b>It wasn’t until 1923 that Chagall settled in France, and even then the first task he undertook on his return to Paris was to produce a series of etchings based on Gogol’s Dead Souls.</b><br /><br />Thus, the crucial turn in Chagall’s life and work occurs not—as we have tended in the past to believe—in 1910, when he goes to Paris for the first time, but in 1922 when he uproots himself from his native Russia for the last time. <b>From 1923 onward Chagall is a different kind of artist—an artist adrift in a dream of the past.</b> There is even something apt in the choice of Gogol as the author he illustrated at this important juncture in his life, for not only does Chagall at that moment <b>take leave of the present in order to find refuge in the past but there is a sense in which it can be said that he, too, now turns to trafficking in dead souls. The present is never again quite as real for Chagall as it was before 1922. </b><br /><br />Perhaps another way of saying this is that from this time onward he severs his connection with history. Thereafter, like those floating figures who now become so ubiquitous in his paintings—is this, perhaps, their real meaning?—he quits the realm of earthly events to enter a world of timeless and homeless archetypes, which, the further removed from real experience they become, the more they succumb to an unalloyed sentimentality. <b>After his exit from Russia—which was also, it is worth recalling, his exit from the Revolution he served as an artist and a commissar—Chagall made some periodic attempts to re-attach his art to the realm of historical experience, most notably in the paintings he produced in 1944 as a response to the Holocaust. But by then it was too late. He no longer possessed the means of bringing that effort to an effective realization. In a sense he never touched earth again.</b><br /><br /><i><b>The difference between this “floating” Chagall, aloft in a world of increasingly unreal archetypes, and the young artist who preceded him is so striking and definitive that in the exhibition at the Royal Academy, where each period was afforded a separate gallery, one had the sensation of encountering the work of a quite alien personality as soon as one entered the third gallery, devoted to “France 1923–41.” </b></i>In the first two galleries, given over respectively to “St. Petersburg 1907–10 and Paris 1910–14” and “Russia and Berlin 1914–22,” one saw an artist vibrant in his response to the diverse worlds he inhabited, an artist keenly observant of both familiar surroundings and new experiences, and eager to provide a vivid account of them in his painting. <br /><br />At the same time, it is painting itself that is clearly the most highly charged area of experience for this young artist. The intensity of Chagall’s engagement with his medium is there in the earliest pictures—those dark and melancholy portraits and genre scenes, painted in St. Petersburg in 1908–10, which have nothing of the light, the clarity, or the complexity that came into his art once he immersed himself in the Paris art scene, but <b>which sing, all the same, with a vitality and tenderness that remain irresistible. They are the pictures of a young man for whom painting has become the central experience of life.</b><br /><br />This headlong engagement is further intensified and brought to maturity in the pictures which Chagall produced with such dizzying speed and confidence in that first encounter with the Paris avant-garde. Let us remember that<b> he was twenty-three years old when he arrived in Paris in the fall of 1910, and scarcely twenty-five when he painted Half Past Three (The Poet), Homage to Apollinaire, The Soldier Drinks, I and the Village, and The Cattle Dealer—his first masterpieces and almost his last. </b>His entire experience until this time had been that of a Northerner, nurtured on the long, dark, snowbound ordeals of the Russian winter and the white nights of the Northern summer—a climate that is the natural habitat for the kind of introspective and melancholic expressionism that characterized the paintings of the St. Petersburg period. <br /><br />Upon a Northern sensibility of this sort we naturally expect the impact of Paris to have had the customary salutary effect—which it did, of course, but not always in the ways that might have been predicted. Chagall does not at this time become what Dr. Compton calls an “adoptive Frenchman.” That was a development which came later, in the Twenties, when his art was already in decline. <b>In this first Paris period Chagall’s painting becomes, if anything, more deeply entrenched than ever in exploring his memories of Russia.</b> Despite the Paris-from-my-window motif—a theme probably traceable to the influence of Robert Delaunay and never, in any case, a major one for Chagall—</span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>France remains a largely unrecorded experience in his painting. It never takes possession of his soul. What consumes his imagination is the life he left behind in Russia. What Paris gives him is a new way of encompassing that life in his painting.</b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b><br /></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxI1woBrQ97oXv9WDXMZuWzYC-RtyORn0kWx_NOMc6ou9WFnO2adOCWcbbeDqxUn682c8XclZLYbpWI8oYUG5ECk0TCOIirO5Hx6VeSnIltpNz-52uDAU9vtF6xVWYUROenxCqhq4ZycDmqtVksKkCX2vrR9MhzM2JM4GDquah9FsrRPdYe5xbNQMghsUa/s1280/chagall%20the%20soldier%20drinks%201912.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1104" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxI1woBrQ97oXv9WDXMZuWzYC-RtyORn0kWx_NOMc6ou9WFnO2adOCWcbbeDqxUn682c8XclZLYbpWI8oYUG5ECk0TCOIirO5Hx6VeSnIltpNz-52uDAU9vtF6xVWYUROenxCqhq4ZycDmqtVksKkCX2vrR9MhzM2JM4GDquah9FsrRPdYe5xbNQMghsUa/w345-h400/chagall%20the%20soldier%20drinks%201912.jpg" width="345" /></a></i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Chagall: The Soldier Drinks, 1911-1912</i></span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Except in the case of Cendrars, for whom he always retained a tender and grateful memory, Chagall was notoriously ungenerous in acknowledging the influences—especially the avant-garde influences—which shaped his painting at a crucial stage of its development. Cubism, for example, he was later in the habit of mocking. Yet it was from Cubism that he derived the syntax of his greatest paintings. </b>The entire design of a picture such as Half Past Three (The Poet) (1911) is unimaginable without that syntax, and so is the modeling of the face and the hands in The Soldier Drinks (1911-12). <br /><br />The whole subject is really beyond argument. <b>The hard, crystalline quality of the forms in Chagall’s painting, together with their transparency—which has the effect of radiating an inner light—and the discipline of their control, all this owes everything to Cubist precedents</b>, and it is nonsense to claim otherwise. The precedents in question might have been Le Fauconnier’s and Delaunay’s rather than Picasso’s or Braque’s—as Norbert Lynton suggests in his essay for the catalogue—but that is a subsidiary issue.<b> Cubism of one sort or another is central to Chagall’s pictures in this period.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz3ISnjsv4Lj8BAaXYoMk5zcLyAcchexQsWEl5BMDjvJTa0ZCXYcPZ06pXjmJGRXpg-do8H2GHKpY6tPVxtYTOCUkHm8GDhQP5MZ5DkOxuP9vBHVdUCHrDd4QeqFe0b3Wg_VgUkA_9lZzMroX_mFb6OEjLNPQMqpuWp8Dc_vzdM2JSIPM9aM-M_V28f9xD/s1899/chagall%20half%20past%20three%20(the%20poet).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1899" data-original-width="1351" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz3ISnjsv4Lj8BAaXYoMk5zcLyAcchexQsWEl5BMDjvJTa0ZCXYcPZ06pXjmJGRXpg-do8H2GHKpY6tPVxtYTOCUkHm8GDhQP5MZ5DkOxuP9vBHVdUCHrDd4QeqFe0b3Wg_VgUkA_9lZzMroX_mFb6OEjLNPQMqpuWp8Dc_vzdM2JSIPM9aM-M_V28f9xD/w285-h400/chagall%20half%20past%20three%20(the%20poet).jpg" width="285" /></a></b><i><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Chagall: Half Past Three (the Poet), 1911</span></i></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The question of Chagall’s color, which also becomes an important element in his painting for the first time in this period, is less easily resolved. Fauvism is often claimed as the principal influence on Chagall’s use of color, and it would be foolish to deny that Fauvist color played some role in the formation of his style. After all, it affected virtually every painter who followed closely in the wake of Matisse’s chromatic audacities. </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Yet the fact remains that Chagall’s color isn’t really Fauvist in quality. Mr. Lynton shifts the emphasis in claiming that “it is primarily and specifically Delaunay from whom [Chagall] learnt the art of . . . using color not just brightly (after his often dark Russian paintings) but also lightly, strong enough to give sensations of light but also transparently, freshly, so that <b>light seems to come through the canvas as well as from it.</b>” This too is not to be denied. Yet it doesn’t solve the problem, for Chagall’s color isn’t really Delaunay’s either.<br /><br />It seems to me there is a specifically Russian quality to Chagall’s color that is not accounted for in these explanations. No doubt Fauvism—and Delaunay, too—taught Chagall much about the importance of color, but they would appear to have contributed little to the particular quality of the color he came to use. My own hunch is that <b>the key is to be found in Post-Impressionist color (Gauguin especially) as it was adapted to Russian taste by Bakst, Chagall’s teacher in St. Petersburg. There is a nocturnal, artificial, theatrical quality to Chagall’s color we do not find in Matisse or Delaunay—but it is pervasive in Russian painting of this period. </b> </span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><b>It is color which has almost nothing of the sun in it—it is interior and mystical, it has more to do with lamplight and memory than with the sun-drenched color of the French landscape or cityscape. It is color which has virtually nothing to do with natural light—color which therefore easily lends itself to illuminating the scenery of dreams. This, it seems to me, is its real function in Chagall’s painting—to serve the interests of a dreamlike narrative.</b><br /></i><br />In the paintings of his first Paris period it is his highly imaginative use of the narrative mode that accounts for what is most truly original in the work. That he felt compelled to deny the very source of his own originality tells us something about the real relation in which Chagall stood to the world of “advanced” art in pre-1914 Paris—it was, in fact, an extremely tenuous relation—but it does nothing to alter <b>the centrality of the narrative mode in his own art.</b></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcldrkYi0B9Q-lcj7rYUeT2uLF9KrdAgG_jX0u3OjF9oVGtLo_OMtvS5bpa31ATz8C5u8rPSQFxQoJBFxGpIXdpywgdOVQ5byGLMdBtpdqkRWC7kas3l9IcH2Qwer2y1nZ2D4_6InVY-wyL_6WdFq9P68lgO86qmFL5LAKdBpW_cKdfTs0tbwcrlM43AgZ/s2499/chagall%20The%20Cattle%20Dealer%201912.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1199" data-original-width="2499" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcldrkYi0B9Q-lcj7rYUeT2uLF9KrdAgG_jX0u3OjF9oVGtLo_OMtvS5bpa31ATz8C5u8rPSQFxQoJBFxGpIXdpywgdOVQ5byGLMdBtpdqkRWC7kas3l9IcH2Qwer2y1nZ2D4_6InVY-wyL_6WdFq9P68lgO86qmFL5LAKdBpW_cKdfTs0tbwcrlM43AgZ/w400-h193/chagall%20The%20Cattle%20Dealer%201912.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Chagall: The Cattle Dealer, 1912<br /></i><br />Chagall had journeyed to Berlin in the summer of 1914 for the opening of his one-man show at the Sturm gallery. From there he traveled to Vitebsk to see his family and the girl he hoped to marry (and whom he did marry the following year)—his beloved Bella. If it was the coming of the First World War that at first prevented Chagall from returning to Paris, it was no doubt<b> the Revolution that kept him in Russia after 1917. For the Revolution, which he welcomed with enthusiasm, made him a power in the new Soviet art world. In 1918 he was named Commissar of Art for Vitebsk and the surrounding region. He presided over a museum, an art school, and theater production. By 1920–21, moreover, he was also designing productions for the new State Kamerny [Chamber] Theater in Moscow. It was to the Revolution that Chagall owed his emergence as a “public” artist.</b><br /><br />But the power and position which he now enjoyed were anything but secure. In art matters, no less than in other realms of revolutionary ideology, factionalism abounded, competition for preferment was fierce, and the debates often acrimonious. The avant-garde was given unprecedented authority under Lunacharsky’s short-lived reign as Commissar of Education, but <b>did Chagall really qualify as a member of this new avant-garde? There were important figures in the expanding Soviet art establishment who thought not.</b> <br /><br />In a cultural milieu that came more and more to look upon a doctrinaire commitment to abstraction as a test of revolutionary orthodoxy, <b>Chagall’s figurative paintings—which were even more avowedly figurative than thitherto—looked old fashioned, a throwback, perhaps, to the despised bourgeois era.</b> There were plots and intrigues and bureaucratic squabbles. Malevich, the leader of the Suprematists, was dispatched to Vitebsk to assist Chagall in his duties. There was a power struggle, and Chagall lost out. Whenever, years hence, Chagall could be heard denouncing abstract art, one could be reasonably certain that it was the power struggle with Malevich and his gang he had in the back of his mind.</span><br /></span></p><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV1w6uZqhlm8x-UFA14ca3VdUjm3wPXSxoHU0M9_UOGxAwoLPrvhIo3JOckowO3YiR-NpdM4yfyOuWjP3o8b9ZZOwitOUu7T_v9RuGa6fFIXBaYjgTk1zArt_xSQYE_RAu6ac4gha5dU8qKEzeMZnmApXpEIKnJS_mRTSa3_JxKO7XhrozEb0fBSOuBq3j/s1024/chagall%20birthday%201915.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="815" data-original-width="1024" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV1w6uZqhlm8x-UFA14ca3VdUjm3wPXSxoHU0M9_UOGxAwoLPrvhIo3JOckowO3YiR-NpdM4yfyOuWjP3o8b9ZZOwitOUu7T_v9RuGa6fFIXBaYjgTk1zArt_xSQYE_RAu6ac4gha5dU8qKEzeMZnmApXpEIKnJS_mRTSa3_JxKO7XhrozEb0fBSOuBq3j/w400-h319/chagall%20birthday%201915.jpeg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Chagall: The Birthday, 1915</i></span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Chagall’s own paintings in this period are of several kinds. The best of them—The Birthday (1915), for example—continue very much in the narrative Cubist vein he developed in Paris. But joining these pictures now are others, like David in Profile (1914), a portrait of his brother, that are more studiedly objective in style—they resemble, in fact, some of the portraits that emerged from the New Objectivity movement in Germany in the Twenties. In still others, of which the marvelous Bella with a White Collar (1917) is the outstanding example, the narrative and objective modes are combined. There is also in these years <b>a more concentrated interest in Jewish themes. Chagall’s religious outlook does not succumb to the facile universalism he made famous in later years</b> until he quits the scene of his childhood associations and family connections.<br /><br />There are ample signs, even in this second Russian period, that Chagall had lost a certain sense of direction in his painting. The really achieved paintings come less often now and are less consistent in their strengths than the paintings he produced in Paris before 1914. But he remains recognizably the same artist who produced those earlier masterpieces.<br /><br />It was Marc Chagall’s tragedy to become, early on in his long career, an artist orphaned by history. It is not for us to pretend that this tragedy had a happy ending. ~<br /></span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7Yw4AOaWMfwF-nGfjiHi8CMYejUB6x7lZCl-FuU-CEiP-3EgLRNdbypipKeQZ7KoG7FdHdGt2FqfLeaEVWCGVzmmI0k2yaa4kryXUgHdOJJ0-AToMtwB5UquS5cmBL4U7AryvaHWDaMiKH6mqOiJoJs5O1MthmOFiFSHrAyjvdTRXLpD4voNqCy2Tj9am/s768/Chagall%20Hour%20between%20Wolf%20and%20Dog%201938-43.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="576" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7Yw4AOaWMfwF-nGfjiHi8CMYejUB6x7lZCl-FuU-CEiP-3EgLRNdbypipKeQZ7KoG7FdHdGt2FqfLeaEVWCGVzmmI0k2yaa4kryXUgHdOJJ0-AToMtwB5UquS5cmBL4U7AryvaHWDaMiKH6mqOiJoJs5O1MthmOFiFSHrAyjvdTRXLpD4voNqCy2Tj9am/w300-h400/Chagall%20Hour%20between%20Wolf%20and%20Dog%201938-43.jpg" width="300" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Chagall: The Hour between the Wolf and the Dog, 1938-1943<br /></i></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><a href="https://newcriterion.com/issues/1985/5/marc-chagall-1887-1985">https://newcriterion.com/issues/1985/5/marc-chagall-1887-1985</a> (slightly abbreviated by Oriana)<br /><br />Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">What matters to me is that Chagall did create some magical paintings that live on after him. The question of whether or not he deserves to be called one of the "giants" of modern art doesn't really interest me. The "tragedy" of Marc Chagall? His best paintings live on. I see this as the happiest of possible happy endings.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">What this article opened my eyes to is that this is a story of a man's great love for one woman. I wondered about the frequent presence of the newlyweds in Chagall's paintings. Perhaps the answer is really startlingly simple: he was passionately in love with his wife. This too is opposite of a tragedy. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #073763; font-family: georgia;"><span>Charles:</span></span></p><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #073763; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I think Chagall was an overestimated artist of the 20th Century. He didn't change the way we see art or our consciousness about it.</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #073763; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #073763; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">But I still love his work!</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #073763; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Oriana:</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Chagall may be the best of the “naive” tradition — also a surrealist. </span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;">He didn’t switch from style to style like Picasso, and it could be argued that he got mentally stuck in the mode of a Russian village combined with the Eiffel Tower— but that’s also his special charm. </span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Also, pondering him side by side with Dali, Dali was a true giant because there was a ruthlessness about his work, a lack of caring if someone might be offended. Chagall seems to want to please. </span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #351c75;">An odd similarity the two share is the importance of the central woman in their lives: Gala, Bella. We don't need to call them these painters' "muses," but there might not be Chagall without Bella, and Dali without Gala.<br /></span></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><span style="color: #073763; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXiDX3i0NAlgw-EY7iLiHFHnh7qO9C8_3U7Cr3R_tRaDoey4PIm7kk5b3jwqSxNHtg0_Bx5WF8PpyJbqO5blwlLT5RUjVZ9bicR5lFBASG-u10LCJWezavsqJnIZZ5JKvsHnU3r7gKVzdUo3hgKkAnLc79NwHb90KX6Na0HzC281TfFqiC1blgtS7skCz3/s2179/Gala%20contemplating%20the%20Med%20Sea%20Dali.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2179" data-original-width="1652" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXiDX3i0NAlgw-EY7iLiHFHnh7qO9C8_3U7Cr3R_tRaDoey4PIm7kk5b3jwqSxNHtg0_Bx5WF8PpyJbqO5blwlLT5RUjVZ9bicR5lFBASG-u10LCJWezavsqJnIZZ5JKvsHnU3r7gKVzdUo3hgKkAnLc79NwHb90KX6Na0HzC281TfFqiC1blgtS7skCz3/w304-h400/Gala%20contemplating%20the%20Med%20Sea%20Dali.jpg" width="304" /></a></div></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span style="color: #351c75; font-size: small;"><span>Dali, 1976: </span></span><span style="color: #351c75;">Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln-Homage to Rothko<br /></span></i></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>DENVER’S EXPERIMENT: GIVING CASH TO THE HOMELESS<br /></b><br />~ Several hundred Denverites experiencing homelessness have received regular sums of cash, no strings attached, as part of an experiment by the Denver Basic Income Project. Six months into its yearlong experiment, an interim report has shown <b>some encouraging results. Recipients are spending the money on vital needs and sleeping on the street less, and they appear to be securing full-time work at higher rates when given more money.</b><br /><br />The cash assistance program, which is being conducted in coordination with the University of Denver’s Center for Housing and Homelessness Research, involves <b>820 adults</b> who lack “fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence” because of loss of housing or economic hardship or similar problems. The participants are divided randomly into three groups: <b>Group A, in which participants receive $1,000 a month for 12 months (a total of $12,000 for the year); Group B, in which participants receive $6,500 upon enrollment and then $500 a month for the following 11 months (also a total of $12,000 a year); and Group C, which receives $50 a month, for a total of $600 for the year. This third group is meant to provide a point of comparison for the two other groups.</b><br /><br />The idea behind experiments associated with the idea of “universal basic income” (UBI) is to measure the effects of giving people cash directly and without restrictions on how it can be spent. Unlike, say, federal SNAP benefits (which most of the study’s participants were receiving), <b>the money doesn’t have to be spent on food. In many ways, UBI experiments are meant to challenge and test the premise that people — especially poor people — can’t be trusted to spend money responsibly and for their own good without supervision.<br /></b><br />Six months in, a majority of the program’s participants report that they are seeing marked improvements in their lives on many fronts. <b>All three groups saw significant upticks in participants who were staying at homes they either rented or owned: Group A reported a 26% increase, Group B reported a 35% increase, and Group C reported a 20% increase</b>. <i><b>There was also a decline in participants sleeping outside, which isn’t where most people sleep when they are homeless, although it represents one of the most publicly visible — and dangerous — ways homelessness is experienced. </b><br /></i><br /><b>Upon enrollment, 10% of Group A’s participants were sleeping outside, but by the six-month mark no one was. Group B went from 10% to 3%, and Group C went from 8% to 4%</b>. The percentages of participants who spent nights in shelters roughly halved across all three groups, as well. <b>Participants in Groups A and B reported feeling safer and more welcome in their sleep environments.</b><br /><br />One of the report’s most notable findings is that <b>cash assistance is associated with a higher likelihood of securing a job. At enrollment, 18% of participants in Group A had full-time work, and at the six-month mark 25% did. In Group B, the number went from 21% to 35%. Group C saw no change.</b><br /><br />With another six months to go, there’s reason to be tentatively optimistic that Denver’s cash assistance program is having a meaningfully positive effect. The preliminary findings suggest that the larger amounts of cash assistance are allowing some of the city’s most vulnerable residents to live safer lives and to find proper places to rest their heads at night and that they help them find jobs. <br /><br />This data tracks with widely observed trends in other basic income experiments that show that </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>recipients of “no strings attached” cash tend to use the money effectively to address urgent necessities. While American conservatives prefer to attach conditions and strict supervision to financial assistance, experiments with unconditional cash transfers, like the one in Denver, can counter the knee-jerk assumption that people with limited resources can’t be trusted to help themselves. </b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />Reading the report raised many questions for me about basic income as a way to address homelessness specifically. I’m still curious to know whether cash assistance to people experiencing homelessness is the most efficient or effective way to help people during a housing and financial crisis, as compared to, for example, immediately placing people in permanent housing. <i> </i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><i>The National Alliance to End Homelessness describes the “housing first” model as a belief in “housing as the foundation for life improvement” that’s guided by the belief that “people need basic necessities like food and a place to live before attending to anything less critical, such as getting a job, budgeting properly, or attending to substance use issues.”<br /></i></b><br />A lot of data shows that supportive housing is an effective way to reduce homelessness among certain populations and to help people get back on their feet, mentally and financially.<br /><br /><b>Another question is how much the Denver model could inform policy decisions to address homelessness when eligibility for the program required “not having severe and unaddressed mental health or substance use needs.”</b> A significant proportion of the chronically homeless population experiences such challenges. <i><b>It seems possible that cash assistance and supportive housing could serve as different, complementary solutions to different parts of the homeless population, but it would be useful to see comparative data. </b></i><br /><br />In any case, the data from Denver’s program is interesting and important. Particularly at a time when housing prices are spiraling out of control, it’s imperative to remain open-minded and take risks as governments and nonprofit groups work through how to alleviate the tremendous crisis of people losing safe places to stay. ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/denver-basic-income-homeless-cash-rcna119033">https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/denver-basic-income-homeless-cash-rcna119033</a><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyK3ZqLj4v8vVF3YVfrma4WickohM7b3QhUpNJKeG2yUH50EcUiOrW3PuXXVAe7yffMCC5HH9Ag0uPWPwh97-KFYK75FriEAN1v8aeStmPdCy_dwxx5AoUPWduLIiYE0reoWi-QC8t7yGKEVw-S5LtKSTTlrTLNFJJ11XuBs3wcW1YgNzkDpP6Q_9S5pS5/s2000/homeless%20encampment.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1333" data-original-width="2000" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyK3ZqLj4v8vVF3YVfrma4WickohM7b3QhUpNJKeG2yUH50EcUiOrW3PuXXVAe7yffMCC5HH9Ag0uPWPwh97-KFYK75FriEAN1v8aeStmPdCy_dwxx5AoUPWduLIiYE0reoWi-QC8t7yGKEVw-S5LtKSTTlrTLNFJJ11XuBs3wcW1YgNzkDpP6Q_9S5pS5/w400-h266/homeless%20encampment.webp" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>HITLER’S GREATEST MISTAKE (Dima Vorobiev)<br /></b><br />~ <b>Hitler lost WW2 in the east. If he had won over the USSR, he most probably would have won the entire world war, one way or another.<br /></b><br />The main reason why Hitler lost in the East was the irreconcilable contradiction between the ultimate goal of winning Lebensraum (“living space”) in our territory and the hard requirements of a protracted all-out war.</span><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>To win over Russia, you need support from the locals. But you can’t win their support if you obviously trying to get rid of them!</b><br /><br />Consider the following: thanks to improbable luck, Hitler caught Stalin wrong-footed and in 1941–42 annihilated almost the entire Red Army in our European territory. The immense advantage we possessed over Nazi Germany before June 22, 1941, dissipated.<br /><br /><i><b>By the end of 1942, Hitler possessed our most productive farming lands, and the territory with 40% of our pre-war population. That’s 80 million. You can do a lot with 80 million souls on your side, even if Stalin’s mobilization took many able men among them. </b><br /></i><br />These territories were severely hit by Stalin’s collectivization. When Hitler attacked, Stalin ordered a scorched earth policy for our retreating troops. If executed properly, this order doomed the death of everyone left behind on the occupied territory, as it happened during Napoleon’s invasion. Thanks to the chaos of the first months of the war, the execution was patchy, and most of the remaining locals got a chance to survive.<br /><br />This made the local population largely friendly to the Germans. <b>To begin with, WW2 on our territory turned into a continuation of the Civil War of 1918–34. Many troops were unwilling to fight for Stalin and surrendered. (As it turned, foolishly—. Millions would starve to death as PoWs.) Over the course of the war, at least 800,000—and probably more than 2 million—Soviet citizens took the side of the Nazis against Soviet rule, many as a fighting force.</b><br /><br /><i><b>However, Hitler wasn’t very interested in cooperation from the locals. They occupied the territory where Germans were supposed to settle after the war. They consumed food that should have been eaten by German troops and civilians throughout the war. Hitler simply didn’t see them as a resource. They were a liability, an economic burden.</b></i><br /><br />As a result, the Germans didn’t abolish the kolkhoz (compulsory “collective farms”) system and didn’t return land to the peasants. Despite what Soviet propaganda claimed, this—and not the German atrocities—became the major factor why the locals increasingly turned against the Germans and cooperated with the embedded NKVD commandos in what we call partisan movement (“guerrilla warfare”). <br /><br /><b>The same thinking was behind the willful murder of more than 3 million Soviet PoWs by starvation in German captivity. Hitler didn’t use this massive manpower against Stalin, which might have broken the back of the Red Army already in the winter of 1941/42.</b> Hitler reasoned that they would rob his own soldiers of food he expected to provide to his army on our territory.<br /><br /><b>The decision to form the Ostlegionen was too little done too late. By that time, the US was already heavily involved in the war in Europe, the torrent of Lend-Lease deliveries was swelling the Soviet war capacity by the hour, and the Allied bombardments were steadily crumbling the German military production.</b><br /><br />If Hitler had immediately started arming and sending to battle our PoWs after the attack on June 22, 1941, we would have lived in a different world now. ~ Quora<br /><br />Andy Wiskonsky:<br />You pretty well hit this on the head. Hitler's treating Slavs as Untermenschen doomed him to failure in the East. <b>Millions of ex-Soviet and newly Soviet residents would have gladly fought against Stalin and what was left of the Bolsheviki. Instead, Hitler murdered millions of Soviet POWs and mistreated the local populations who had plenty of grievances against Soviet rule.<br /></b><br />Yevgeniy Leto:<br />The irony is that USSR was big and had more than enough land to incorporate the (imagined) “German settlers” without destroying the local Ukrainians and Russians. </span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>The reality was that there weren’t many Germans who were willing to leave home and settle in the steppe.</b></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">The Austrian corporal was crazy, but he was an oratorial demon who managed to convinced the nation to go crazy with him.<br /><br />Tim Orum:<br />Hitler made the same mistake in France. Much has been made of the weakness of the response of the French military to Hitler’s invasion. I believe they used the correct tactic. Rather than throwing wave after wave of human bodies at the superior speed and military might of Hitler’s army many of them melted into the landscape. <b>While Hitler strutted around the Eiffel Tower his military now faced endless sabotage and</b> <b>guerilla strikes from the partisans that never stopped. They drained the Germans slowly but without the millions of dead and wounded that a full-on frontal assault would have brought. That is the same tactic used by native Americans that made life miserable for the colonists for centuries.</b> Hitler would have been dead much sooner than that.<br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ_1ZEIuW2JTiuBR0wvrBlBchhat2QkhfJ0C-oFc0fxMtbSnpzJMspwMcY7NIMdYD3eqtmXYvp5jLhE_YsBciLUDkXYUy5Hb3RUVN5EJHNmeYIK0NuPS_hN0r4SDcPsRfVdYMYSntayvtdlhCtNVwdl7z_X6jZIj831eOOQbASiWVBNiJ8PWQGgCf6sPlF/s1536/Hitler%20Eiffel%20Tower%203%20men.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="1261" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ_1ZEIuW2JTiuBR0wvrBlBchhat2QkhfJ0C-oFc0fxMtbSnpzJMspwMcY7NIMdYD3eqtmXYvp5jLhE_YsBciLUDkXYUy5Hb3RUVN5EJHNmeYIK0NuPS_hN0r4SDcPsRfVdYMYSntayvtdlhCtNVwdl7z_X6jZIj831eOOQbASiWVBNiJ8PWQGgCf6sPlF/w329-h400/Hitler%20Eiffel%20Tower%203%20men.jpg" width="329" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>THE ADVENTURES OF A CHILDFREE LIFE<br /></b><br />~ Deciding whether or not to become a parent is deeply personal, which is why I’ve never felt compelled to write about my own experience. But I was excited to read Maria Coffey’s new book, Instead: Navigating the Adventures of a Childfree Life, in hopes that she would articulate emotions I’ve been carrying around for decades.<br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4-PvmO0jFk8uHpKEf67XzYSRLPybzENuw6zL3SUtsEZ2hsGZGxgJ61xN9baf6kZ264Lgi3XFqIbfiFBPU1M9mxa0UZ1TmjuELvwsDQkYf7Y5aZV_bXu_KZ2ZzQudtD0DdgKSpjAUGMa_3pSz8ukMAmVO3W19Cd2zni_d4t9hBrm5Ce8-j8Qn7V44JdnPS/s768/instead%20maria%20coffey%20childfree%20life.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="768" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4-PvmO0jFk8uHpKEf67XzYSRLPybzENuw6zL3SUtsEZ2hsGZGxgJ61xN9baf6kZ264Lgi3XFqIbfiFBPU1M9mxa0UZ1TmjuELvwsDQkYf7Y5aZV_bXu_KZ2ZzQudtD0DdgKSpjAUGMa_3pSz8ukMAmVO3W19Cd2zni_d4t9hBrm5Ce8-j8Qn7V44JdnPS/w400-h225/instead%20maria%20coffey%20childfree%20life.webp" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Coffey, who splits her time between British Columbia and Spain, is 71 years old and a hard-core traveler in the vein of her contemporaries Tim Cahill or Paul Theroux. She’s paddled a kayak all over the world; started the adventure travel company, Hidden Places, with her partner Dag Goering; and co-founded the non-profit Elephant Earth Initiative.<br /><br />She’s also an award-winning author of 12 books. In 1989, seven years after Joe Tasker, the love of her young life, disappeared while trying to summit Mount Everest, Coffey wrote Fragile Edge: A Personal Portrait of Loss on Everest. She followed it up with Where the Mountain Casts its Shadow, exploring what happens to the people left behind by tragedy through interviews with the world’s top climbers and the families of climbers who had died. It won a 2004 National Outdoor Book Award.<br /><br />Coffey’s books are honest, full of inquiry, and beautifully written. But what intrigued me about Instead is the hard-earned wisdom: <b>It’s one thing to proclaim the joys of a child-free life as a twenty- or thirty-something influencer. It’s another thing to examine that life as a septuagenarian facing old age without any biological offspring. Perspectives change as we age—was Coffey still happy with her decision?</b><br /><br /><b>“Yes I am,” Coffey told me in an email. But there are caveats. “It was only around my mid- sixties, when I realized others were seeing me as elderly, that I began to think about the reality of being old and child-free, and fear started creeping in. What happens to old child-free nomads when they get really old?”</b><br /><br />With Instead, Coffey sets out to answer that question. In the process she offers readers a generous glimpse into her lifetime of wanderings, which makes her book feel like the best kind of old-school adventure travel yarn.<br /><br />It begins with a Covid-era anecdote that would chill any traveler: While they’re living in Catalonia, Spain, Coffey’s husband Goering fails to return home after a routine e-bike ride. He’s crashed, destroyed a leg, and dragged himself more than a mile to the nearest country road, where he flags down a passing vehicle. Maria is on her own to navigate the complications of care and recovery in a foreign country during a pandemic.<br /><br />The book then skips back in time to <b>Coffey’s own precarious brush with death, a near drowning at age 21 off the coast of Morocco. She survives, barely: “I had been returned to life—but differently,” she writes. “The invincibility of youth had been stripped away. Underneath was a raw understanding of the fragility of existence. It was a knowledge that would impel me to chase my dreams and inform the biggest choices I was to make in the years ahead.”</b><br /><br />The trouble, however, is that Coffey grew up in England and <b>her Irish Catholic parents, who lived through World War II and only want peace and stability for their children, resist most of her choices. That sets her at odds with her mother, a woman she describes, in part, as “a fierce and controlling matriarch who branded guilt like a weapon.”</b><br /><br />Coffey backpacks through Europe, staying in youth hostels, hitchhiking, and experimenting with drugs. Upon graduating from university, she tries to appease her parents, accepting a teaching position at a Liverpool high school, but longs for something “bigger and exciting” and soon quits that job to follow her boyfriend to Peru. That relationship blows up and Coffey returns to Manchester, which leads her to a new circle of friends and to Tasker, who disappears on Mount Everest 30 months into their relationship. <b>His death sets off three years of despair, inspires Coffey’s first book, and fuels her exodus to Canada.</b><br /><br />In Canada, Coffey falls in love with Goering, a veterinarian five years her junior who wants five children. <b>His wish forces her to face her fears around motherhood that “are rooted in loss,” she writes. </b>After Tasker’s death, she writes: “I understood there was no way to defend oneself against such pain, except not to love so deeply….No matter how I tried to rationalize it,<b> the thought of having a child, of opening myself up to the possibility of the worst kind of bereavement, terrified me.”<br /></b><br />The couple delay their decision to have kids and instead set off around the world on a tandem kayaking journey. The years tick off as they survive many near-misses while paddling, Goering’s cerebral malaria in the Solomon Islands, and a riot in Kenya. They start an adventure travel company to feed their wanderlust. In lieu of having her own kids, <b>Maria forms bonds with children along the way, like Agnes, a Samburu girl from Kenya who she helps support through university and who calls her “mother.”</b><br /><br />Coffey’s life is full. She has friends and family across the globe who have replaced the need for a nuclear family. But as she ages, doubts creep in: “All those warnings during my reproductive years about not having children started looming up again,” she writes. “‘You’ll regret it. You’ll be lonely when you’re old.’ At the time, I’d easily sloughed them off. <b>Now I kept thinking about where parenthood might have led us.”</b><br /><br />Reading comments like these, I had an inkling that Coffey wasn’t as sold on her child-free life as her book title implies. Or that she may have written it to finally free herself of the guilt brought on by her mother. <b>She later clarifies, however, that it’s not regret she’s feeling. It’s more, as a friend helps her realize, “counterfactual curiosity, wondering about ways you could have lived life differently.” Ultimately, Coffey concludes that “the life I chose is the one I wanted.”</b><br /><br />That knowledge, though, doesn’t help Coffey and Goering circumvent the realities of aging. <b>One of the more poignant and humorous moments in Instead comes when they decide to play it safe and move off their island to an inland co-housing project where meals and chores are shared by neighbors. It’s a cloying mismatch from day one. They quickly sell the house and move to Spain, where Georing’s near-fatal accident takes place.</b><br /><br />Coffey is almost 20 years older than me, but our lives have parallels. I, too, have had an overpowering desire to see the world since I was a girl. And I had childhood experiences that made me ambivalent toward motherhood. <b>As a child-free adult I’ve also felt as if people perceive my life as more frivolous and less meaningful than that of a mother’s, and I’ve even been told outright that I’m selfish. </b>Unlike Coffey, however, I had support from my parents. Instead of feeling guilty, I was free to make the best choice for me at the time I was able to bear children.<br /><br />I picked up Coffey’s book hoping that it would be a ringing endorsement of a child-free life. But </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>I quickly realized that Coffey is too honest to oversimplify such a fundamental, complex choice. What she offers instead is an articulate grappling with the great cosmic irony of being a woman: whether you bear one child, many children, adopt, or have none at all, each of these decisions will bring joy and pain. </b></span><span style="color: #351c75;">This reality should bond, rather than separate women, no matter which path we choose.<br /><br /><b>“Having a child is taking a big risk,” Coffey wrote me in an email. “Deciding not to have children is also a risk. Life is a risk. You have to follow your own heart, trust your gut instincts. Don’t make the decision to make someone else happy. </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Make it entirely for yourself.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;">” ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.outsideonline.com/culture/books-media/instead-maria-coffey-child-free-review/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://www.outsideonline.com/culture/books-media/instead-maria-coffey-child-free-review/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br />Oriana:<br /><br />Due to many factors, one of them being probably having been an only child and liking it, I knew early on that solitude was extremely important to me — meaning having enough time to myself to pursue my passions, making my own mistakes, having a rich inner life. <br /><br />Part of that inner life, however, included trying to imagine what it would be like to have a child. Never “children” plural — just the very thought was exhausting. With my intensity, one thing I knew with certainty was that one would be the maximum I could cope it. <br /><br />Or perhaps even that would be too much, and I wouldn’t be able to hide my resentment at child-rearing chores. I couldn’t afford a nanny — but couldn’t help noticing that women who had nannies still put a lot of energy into child-rearing. There was no escape.<br /><br />What helped me a lot was an article in a women’s magazine — I forget which one, I forget the name of the author — which now feels like flagrant ingratitude. <br /><br />The article had the refreshingly cool-headed tone of someone who has learned that nothing is all good or all bad, and that most choices involve sacrifices. It outlined the positives and negatives, and included a sentence that I instantly knew to be an important truth. In paraphrase, it stated “If your work requires a lot of quiet and solitude, then you shouldn’t have children.” The bliss of relief enveloped my whole body. It was the opposite of being labeled “selfish.” <br /><br />It was, finally, a permission to put my own life first. While in fantasy I could envision a beautiful and gifted child, another part of me warned that the complex self I liked to commune with would be erased —a voice crying in the wilderness and getting no answer. No matter what the adventures and rewards of motherhood, that erasure of myself and my dreams seemed too high a price. <br /><br />There used to be a saying about those from Eastern European countries who chose to stay in the West: “He chose freedom.” Of course that meant sacrifices as well, and many moments of doubt and despair — perhaps the choice was a huge mistake. But for all the chorus of voices warning me, “When you get older, you will regret it” — somehow in the depths I knew I would not regret it. Not in any significant way. I reveled in my clarity. For me, life without quiet solitude was not worth living. <br /><br />But I also acknowledge that for many — probably most — people, “family” means mainly children, and for them life might not be worth living without children. And that’s fine with me. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In my younger years I too have experienced the pressure to have children, and that was unwelcome and unpleasant, to put it mildly. The main argument was, “When you get older, you will regret it.” I don’t regret it. I realize that I've lost something and also gained something — but that’s how life is. <b>No matter what you choose, there is a price to pay. <br /></b><br />*<br /><i><b>She was what we used to call a suicide blonde — dyed by her own hand. ~ Saul Bellow</b><br /></i></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>WHY DO HUMANS DIE AROUND EIGHTY?<br /></b><br />The mystery of why humans die at around 80, while other mammals live far shorter or longer lives, may finally have been solved by scientists.<br /><br /><b>Humans and animals die after amassing a similar number of genetic mutations</b>, researchers have found, <b>suggesting the speed of DNA errors is critical in determining the lifespan of a species.</b></span></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">There are huge variations in the lifespan of mammals in the animal kingdom, from South Asian rats, which live for just six months, to bowhead whales, which can survive for 200 years.<br /><br /><b>Previously, experts have suggested that size is the key to longevity, with smaller animals burning up energy more quickly, requiring a faster cell turnover, which causes a speedier decline.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>But a 2022 study from the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge suggests the </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>speed of genetic damage could be the key to survival, with long-living animals successfully slowing down their rate of DNA mutations regardless of their size.</b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><b>It helps explain how a five-inch long naked mole rat can live for 25 years, about the same as a far larger giraffe, which typically lives for 24. <br /></b><br />When scientists checked their mutation rates, they were surprisingly similar. <b>Naked mole rats suffer 93 mutations a year and giraffes 99. </b><br /><br /><i><b>In contrast, </b></i></span><span style="color: #800180;"><i><b>mice suffer 796 mutations a year and only live for 3.7 years. The average human lifespan in the study was 83.6 years, but the mutation rate was far lower at around 47. </b><br /></i></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />Genetic changes, known as somatic mutations, occur in all cells and are largely harmless, but some can start a cell on the path to cancer or impair normal functioning.<br /><br />Dr Alex Cagan, the first author of the study, said: “To find a similar pattern of genetic changes in animals as different from one another as a mouse and a tiger was surprising. <br /><br />“But the most exciting aspect of the study has to be finding that <b>lifespan is inversely proportional to the somatic mutation rate. This suggests that somatic mutations may play a role in aging.”</b><br /><br />The team analyzed genetic errors in the stem cells from the intestines of 16 species of mammal and found that <b>the longer the lifespan of a species, the slower the rate at which mutations occur.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The average number of mutations at the end of lifespan across species was around 3200, suggesting there is a critical mass of errors after which a body is unable to function correctly. <br /><br /><b>‘Aging is a complex process’</b><br /><br />Although the figure differed about threefold across species the variation was far less than the variation in body size, which varied up to 40,000 fold.<br /><br />The researchers believe the study opens the door to understanding the aging process, and the inevitability and timing of death. <br /><br />Dr Inigo Martincorena, the senior author of the study, said: “Aging is a complex process, the result of multiple forms of molecular damage in our cells and tissues. <br /><br />“<b>Somatic mutations have been speculated to contribute to aging since the 1950s, but studying them has remained difficult.</b> <br /><br />“With the recent advances in DNA sequencing technologies, we can finally investigate the roles that somatic mutations play in aging and in multiple diseases.”<br /><br />The research was published in the journal Nature. ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://getpocket.com/explore/item/mystery-of-why-humans-die-around-80-may-finally-be-solved?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://getpocket.com/explore/item/mystery-of-why-humans-die-around-80-may-finally-be-solved?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a><br />*<br /><i><b>Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door. ~ Saul Bellow</b></i><br /></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwcCOUx_RO8AMSfjaiuaFtD1UTZiYeB2g5kHwykdGGVE3RsnJDresuTe2ad2nfRcT1GXsL-PIoWpsE2Ta6IhFjAvNYHpb1eViF50wKrUEiKF-5xBKi3p9c53S1AThtpdW0K57WV5F9WKVGDR6NJqCeQaiAa2rhraERLWPdG2qrjKUGlyB9OSGZpnoFK4dz/s750/wolf%20aurora%20polar%20park%20norway.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="379" data-original-width="750" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwcCOUx_RO8AMSfjaiuaFtD1UTZiYeB2g5kHwykdGGVE3RsnJDresuTe2ad2nfRcT1GXsL-PIoWpsE2Ta6IhFjAvNYHpb1eViF50wKrUEiKF-5xBKi3p9c53S1AThtpdW0K57WV5F9WKVGDR6NJqCeQaiAa2rhraERLWPdG2qrjKUGlyB9OSGZpnoFK4dz/w400-h203/wolf%20aurora%20polar%20park%20norway.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>*<br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>CHANGING HOW WE TALK ABOUT SUICIDE <br /></b><br />~ Social stigma around suicide can amplify shame for people experiencing suicidality — which includes suicidal thoughts, plans and attempts — making seeking help or talking about it more difficult, said Urszula Klich, a clinical psychologist in Atlanta.<br /><br />“When we’re stigmatizing those aspects of mental health, and then those individuals don’t get help,” Klich added, “very often, that’s the slippery slope into some of the key factors that wind up increasing risk for death by suicide.”<br /><br />Stigmatizing language about suicide can also cement ideas that people who attempted or died by suicide, when compared with everyone else, are broken, disabled, less than or different in some way, experts said.<br /><br />This “us and them” mindset can detract people from feeling empathy or being compassionate, fragmenting our ability to connect with others’ struggles and developing strategies that might help prevent suicides, Klich said — which is why <b>experts have suggestions for ways you can discuss suicide without potentially worsening the problem</b>.<br /><br />Some of the earliest calls for changing how we talk about suicide began in the mid-2000s, with authors whose own lives had been affected by the suicides of loved ones. P. Bonny Ball’s 2005 book “The Power of Words: The Language of Suicide” identified words in need of replacing due to problematic connotations. <b>Thomas Joiner’s 2007 book “Why People Die by Suicide” also helped facilitate understanding about the issue</b>, Klich said.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmniT1HR3qExMEwAuP7V7LythdrT8mE5ycooSTbak2LuGZCJpprxa76UXBpNQ460hZeuiR5Klpym6CpAMe7E49BIsl5BoSf-8Xz12JF0pDkkue4VTEJka27DvsbC3mfCY5jlCiA99y81ZaY_fVi802PoyupwVZIqsck04MFspgFzBCPVmw0XOAP-GaNF_9/s234/why%20suicide.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="234" data-original-width="155" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmniT1HR3qExMEwAuP7V7LythdrT8mE5ycooSTbak2LuGZCJpprxa76UXBpNQ460hZeuiR5Klpym6CpAMe7E49BIsl5BoSf-8Xz12JF0pDkkue4VTEJka27DvsbC3mfCY5jlCiA99y81ZaY_fVi802PoyupwVZIqsck04MFspgFzBCPVmw0XOAP-GaNF_9/w265-h400/why%20suicide.jpg" width="265" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">It was around then that the Alberta Mental Health Board, as part of its provincial suicide prevention strategy, addressed harmful standard terms and suggested alternatives, according to Canada’s Centre for Suicide Prevention. The center publicly supported this in 2011, saying educating those in power — such as the media, academia and educators — would be key in efforts to change the language overall.<br /><br />Since then, studies have shown that academic publication of the word “commit” has decreased by about 20% since 2000 — but “it has not translated, really, to the general population,” Klich said.<br /><br />Use of the word “committed” stems back to when suicide attempts were illegal in many countries, before <b>Germany was the first country to decriminalize the act in 1751 and other European countries and North America did so after the French Revolution</b>, according to a 2015 study. <b>Suicide remains a crime in at least 23 countries, including the Bahamas, Nigeria and Bangladesh</b>, according to the World Health Organization.<br /><br />In addition to the phrase “committed suicide” implying criminality, it also “clearly has a moral judgment, and it might not reflect the situation,” said Dr. Jacek Debiec, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan.<br /><br /><b>Some other problematic words people use are “successful,” “failed” or completed, experts said.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The first two are particularly harmful. <b>“Successful” has connotations of a positive achievement, which taking one’s life is not.</b> Additionally, “to the person struggling with (suicidality), that success to them might be very different than the provider assessing the risk,” said Justin Baker, clinical psychologist and clinical director of The Suicide and Trauma Reduction Initiative for Veterans at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center.<br /><br />And <b>since “failed” typically has negative undertones, using it to describe someone who attempted, but didn’t die from, suicide can imply a lack of strength of character or that surviving isn’t the best outcome.</b> “It’s not unheard of to have a patient go, ‘I can’t even die correctly,’ and use that to further shame and blame themselves,” he added. “We want to not do that — we want to help work towards improved outcomes and quality of life.”<br /><br />Given these factors,<b> to eliminate stigma and judgment, the preferred language “is ‘died by suicide,’ (like) ‘someone died of a heart attack or stroke,’”</b> Baker said.<br /><br />“Fatal suicide attempt,” “killed herself” or “took his own life” are other alternatives, experts said. And when referring to someone who didn’t die from a suicide attempt,<b> acceptable shorthand ways to say that include “nonfatal suicide attempt” or simply “suicide attempt.”</b><br /><br />Another commonly used, but misguided, phrase is that suicide is a “selfish act.”<br /><br /><b>Characterizing suicide as “selfish” has derogatory connotations because it implies the person did it for a pleasurable reason, when in reality, people who attempt or die by suicide more often want to end their pain or see themselves as burdensome, clinical psychologist Michael Roeske explained.<br /></b><br />“It’s a decision based on the idea that ‘I don’t know how to get out of this moment. I feel so overwhelmed. I feel so stressed. I feel so sad that this opportunity to escape is what I need, and I don’t feel I have any other choice,’” Roeske, senior director of the Newport Healthcare Center for Research & Innovation, said.<br /><br />Therefore, <b>“nearsighted” may be a better term, he added, since “their focus becomes really limited down to what’s immediately in front of them and they’re not able to see the larger context of the history of their life, the relationships and the dimensionality of things.”<br /></b><br />Overall, sticking to factual, nonjudgmental terms is best, Baker said.<br /><br /><b>If we use more inclusive language and become “aware that people die by suicide, they die from their mental health problems, then we might be a little bit more apt to feel that we also can</b>,” Klich said. <b>“This consciousness of other people’s distress and a desire to alleviate it — we open the pathway to compassion more than when we say ‘committed suicide.’”</b> ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/10/health/suicide-why-you-shouldnt-say-committed-wellness/index.html">https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/10/health/suicide-why-you-shouldnt-say-committed-</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">wellness/index.html</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Mary:<br /><br />What is missing from the usual language about suicide, including words like "commit" and "selfish," is exactly that sense of shared humanity that is empathy and compassion. You "commit" crimes and sins — and suicide has historically been judged as both, punishable by god and the state. <br /><br />Once when I was sick and struggling and incredibly weary, casting about for some kind of help, I was considered too much of a suicide risk for the practice I came to as a patient. The members were split on accepting me as a patient, with the majority feeling I was too likely to commit suicide, and that would be Bad for Their Reputation. After an extensive interview they "took me on," but only to be handled by their senior psychiatrist.<br /><br />This experience of dehumanization might have been enough to push me further toward self annihilation, but instead made me angry and resistant to such judgement, such callous worry about their reputation over concern for my survival. At one point in my thrashing around for relief I thought I could go back to the church...that if I went to confession I might win some relief. The priest quizzed me on "the sin of Despair." If I could not give up my despair I would not be forgiven. <br /><br />Medicine and Religion both absolved themselves from empathy.<br /><br />I admit some of this seeming callousness comes out of fear...fear of contamination, fear of seeing yourself mirrored in the suffering of the Other, fear of getting too close to their madness, their pariah existence. Suicide threatens our most basic assumptions about life, and is frightening. This may be true, but is not an excuse…certainly not from health care professionals.<br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />Oriana:<br /> <br />I was once involved with someone who ended up killing himself. It’s not like a natural death. The first few months I was completely in a daze from the emotional shock. I was so sure he wouldn’t do it as long as his mother was alive that I ignored signs as obvious as his asking, the last time we were together, “Wanna see my revolver?” <br /><br />And I was quite familiar with suicidal depression myself, and yet . . . I was blind. <br /><br />And then the never-ending (at first constant, calming down with time) questions: 1)Why? 2) Could I have done or said anything to prevent it? <br /><br />Now I realize that I’ll never know the full answer to these questions, especially the Why. But the point is not to find a rational answer(s), but indeed to show empathy and somehow affirm that this person is to be valued. <br /><br />The “Sin of Despair” is an astonishing example of Catholic insanity. As I came to understand it it’s the “sin against the Holy Ghost” — and sins against the Holy Ghost is the only kind that will not be forgiven. A murder can be forgiven, but not despair. You are absolutely required to believe in salvation — in the afterlife, so no need for any evidence. <br /><br />And the body of someone without died by suicide could not be buried in consecrated ground, i.e. a cemetery. So even the dead body was further insulted.<br /><br />Thank goodness we have the suicide hotline now, and some counseling help that’s not the super-expensive individual therapy. <br /><br />Even so, suicide presents a continual puzzle, since the risk of suicide is actually higher for those with higher IQ, more education, and even higher income. <br /><br />Various solutions have been proposed, including this controversial one: “You want to kill yourself? Sure, fine, you have the right to. When?” — After the “when” question is answered, “Why the delay? Why not now? What’s keeping you from doing it today?” <br /><br />I’m not sure I could be cold-blooded enough to use this technique when faced with an actual person who’s just bought a revolver. What appeals to me more is “Sure. But before you do, I want you to do just one more good thing while you’re still here.” <br /><br />I’m sure the hotline people have been trained in various techniques, possibly different if it’s a man than a woman. <br /><br />As for the greater problem of living in a society in which it’s so easy to see oneself as a failure, that’s beyond me. Depression changes the brain, including access to positive memories — I know it was very hard for me, and I could barely remember two good things, while a friend readily rattled off thirteen. And she too had experienced the pull of suicide . . . <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVneJL56wkL1tFtzYsxiih2Fb4wXbmijcMK_nYA9-kpgihIWcbZgkZuxZ01LitffjzhaAXLir3i7p3yH-diW0G9fwjjN3RzYXnJI2i4Ug5-CxhqK7MCHouu_Hkwa26_hyphenhyphenAqXRT4G8k8lshCHSkH2Evn852bkKGyeDMMbEwC8qAuY3PbzuexUsnXKuApB50/s3592/suicide%20arm%20in%20water.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3592" data-original-width="2874" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVneJL56wkL1tFtzYsxiih2Fb4wXbmijcMK_nYA9-kpgihIWcbZgkZuxZ01LitffjzhaAXLir3i7p3yH-diW0G9fwjjN3RzYXnJI2i4Ug5-CxhqK7MCHouu_Hkwa26_hyphenhyphenAqXRT4G8k8lshCHSkH2Evn852bkKGyeDMMbEwC8qAuY3PbzuexUsnXKuApB50/w320-h400/suicide%20arm%20in%20water.jpg" width="320" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>FEMALE GHOSTS DOMINATE THE AFTERLIFE<br /></b><br />~ If you drive south of San Antonio, Texas on Applewhite Road, past the fire station and the Toyota plant, and pull over just shy of the Medina River, you can walk a few hundred feet through tranquil forest and patchy sunlight to where a small bridge crosses a burbling stream just out of sight of the highway.<br /><br />There, on certain evenings, when the last rays of light cut through deepening shadows, and the sound of the wind has faded from the tree tops, you may have an experience you cannot easily explain. A rustle in the undergrowth, a flicker in your vision, the distinct clopping of hooves. You may not see her, but, as many visitors report, the Donkey Lady was nearby.<br /><br /><b>This quirkily-named phantom has for decades been said to haunt the San Antonio bridge. Visitors report the sound of hoofbeats and distant screams and the presence of a specter, her face and body disfigured, lurking nearby. Some even claim to have found hoofprints on their cars. Despite the apparent danger, or perhaps because of it, the Donkey Lady bridge has become a popular spot with locals eager for a ghostly encounter, and a tourist attraction of sorts.</b><br /><br />“When I moved to San Antonio in 2002, the first stop that my friends brought me to [was] not to the Fiesta, or the Riverwalk, or even the Alamo, it was the Donkey Lady bridge,” says Marisela Barrera, a San Antonio-based artist.<br /><br />As one version of the story goes, <b>the Donkey Lady is the ghost of a woman who lived outside of San Antonio more than a century ago, raising donkeys on a farm by herself. She died in a fire that left her body horribly maimed and, unable to find peace, her spirit lingers near the bridge.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">For Barrera, this supernatural persistence, similar in some ways to the stubborn animals the unnamed woman raised, is a measure of her spirit’s strength.<br /><br />“The Donkey Lady stands her ground,” she says. “She’s so strong-willed that she could survive despite her circumstances.”</span><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Real or not, <b>the Donkey Lady is also representative of a curious trend found throughout American folklore. A significant proportion of ghosts, from the omnipresent Lady in White to the spectral “Mrs. Spencer” who haunted Joan Rivers’ New York apartment, are women.<br /></b><br /><b>The Afterlife is Female<br /></b><br />There is no conclusive database of hauntings to reference, of course (though perhaps there should be). But browse through lists of haunted places and famous ghosts, and you’ll notice a distinct bias.<br /><br />“It does really seem that the numbers are skewed more towards female ghosts,” says Leanna Renee Hieber, a writer and co-author of A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America’s Ghosts.<br /><br />Potential explanations range from the supernatural to the mundane. Do women’s souls have more sticking power? Are women more motivated to return after their mortal coil has been shuffled? Are female ghosts more memorable to us? Or perhaps we’re more likely to think of a woman in a white dress when we see an errant patch of fog (or ectoplasm).<br /><br /><b>It could be, as Gothic master Edgar Allan Poe once wrote, that dead women are simply more emotionally resonant than dead men.<br /></b><br /><b>“The death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world,” Poe wrote in his essay “The Philosophy of Composition.”<br /></b><br />Whatever the reason, the preponderance of ghostly women is interesting for much the same reasons that ghosts themselves are interesting, regardless of your belief in the supernatural.<br />“There’s a saying that seeing is believing, but it’s equally true that believing is seeing,” says Anna Stone, a psychologist and researcher at the University of East London <b>“Our ghosts are a reflection of our own beliefs about what ought to be happening, our own desires.”</b><br /><br />What then, is the common thread that unites feminine specters like Gertrude Tredwell, who haunts the Merchant’s House in New York City, the Bell Witch that tormented the Bell family in Tennessee, and the undead, forlorn lover said to claw at cars passing over Emily’s Bridge in Vermont? <b>Like women’s evolving role in society, the answer is complex.<br /></b><br />“There’s just like layers and layers and layers of the way female identity, as it’s constructed in Western society in the last two to three centuries, overlaps and intersects with the deathly,” says Andrea Janes, who runs the ghost tour company Boroughs of the Dead, and co-wrote A Haunted History of Invisible Women with Hieber.<br /><br /><b>Who’s Afraid of a Woman Ghost?</b></span><br /></span><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>One big factor could be the gravitational pull of the Victorian era, when ghost stories abounded, on present-day culture. It was a time when gender roles were becoming tightly confined, Hieber says, in response to a changing, industrializing society.<br /></b><br />That meant women were more tightly tied to the domestic sphere, and their houses, even after death. In a time before funeral parlors, it was often women who washed and prepared the dead, further strengthening their connection with death. Add to that <b>a predilection toward romanticizing death, as Poe did, and you’ve got a formula for memorable dead women—and their ghosts.</b><br /><br /><i><b>Women also took a more central role in the otherworldly around this time, Hieber says, from their involvement with the spiritualist movement as mediums, to a growing cadre of 19th-century authors like Rhoda Broughton and Charlotte Ridell penning stories populated by phantasms and spirits, who were often women.</b><br /></i><br />“The pump was primed, as it were, for women to be involved in ghost lore because they had been directly involved in creating it,” Hieber says.<br /><br /><b>A ghost’s purpose has shifted over time, too. In Medieval times, ghosts were manifestations of cautionary tales. A woman might return as a ghost if she transgressed society’s boundaries, or committed a perceived wrong. Think, for example, of Anne Boleyn’s ghost wandering Hampton Court with her head under her arm.<br /></b><br />Those cautionary tales cut both ways. In Medieval times, being a ghost was typically a punishment for misdeeds, real or perceived. <b>Later, it was ghosts like the Bell Witch, rumored to have killed Bell family patriarch John Bell, doing the punishing.<br /></b><br />“We have an innate sense of justice, we all do,” Stone says. “We like to see bad people punished and good people rewarded, however long it takes.”<br /><br /><b>For a woman abused by her husband, or cast out by her community, the post-mortal realm may have been the only avenue for recompense available. Her story, relayed by women to their family members and friends, could then serve as its own kind of healing.<br /></b><br />There’s “some kind of comfort in the fact that you can haunt someone forever if they failed to meet your needs in life,” Janes says.<br /><br /><i><b>Ghost stories are also a means of preserving history. For past women who may not have had the right to own property, represent themselves in court, or even keep their last names, a ghost story may be the most powerful means of being remembered.</b><br /></i><br /></span><span style="color: #800180; font-family: georgia;"><b>As ghosts, women “have a staying power, they have a voice</b></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>,” </b>Hieber says.<b><br /></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg98d8DEn-RqKjPdMtMJ04_ZCGIpxakauD7kMNGY5SfFNajoW8YkAlHiNTs_MVgCG2cYdzQqbjvQJK2M2ErceplxGzp1QoehDLQkbr7FoILzQScb049uuQThesyVFEvtCPIYYmlJCLNGEIC3jMkIDefVhLNhe3dmGhyphenhyphenmSM16LidYRviznvOMERzYe8VJqLH/s1200/seance%20france%20Eusapia%20Palladino%201898.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="941" data-original-width="1200" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg98d8DEn-RqKjPdMtMJ04_ZCGIpxakauD7kMNGY5SfFNajoW8YkAlHiNTs_MVgCG2cYdzQqbjvQJK2M2ErceplxGzp1QoehDLQkbr7FoILzQScb049uuQThesyVFEvtCPIYYmlJCLNGEIC3jMkIDefVhLNhe3dmGhyphenhyphenmSM16LidYRviznvOMERzYe8VJqLH/w400-h314/seance%20france%20Eusapia%20Palladino%201898.jpg" width="400" /></a><i style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">A seance in a French parlor, 1898; medium: Eusapia Palladino<br /></i></div><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><b>A Female Ghost Phones Back<br /></b></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><b>In San Antonio, that voice became literal in 2018, when Barrera established a hotline for San Antonio residents to call and leave messages about their encounters with the Donkey Lady. For some lucky callers, the Donkey Lady even picked up and talked back. The hotline received thousands of calls</b>, Barrera says, and the responses revealed a community with diverse, sometimes contrasting opinions.<br /><br /><b>“The Donkey Lady received marriage proposals,” she says. “She received sweet messages. She received laughs. She received racist messages.”<br /></b><br />The Donkey Lady’s story, as originally told, reflects some stereotypes of female ghost stories (stereotypes that are also reflected in haunted house attractions). She was seen as a spinster, an independent woman raising livestock in male-dominated ranching country who may have been marginalized by her community. <b>Her death was gruesome, perhaps befitting her status as an outcast.</b><br /><br />But the Donkey Lady also embodies the strength and resourcefulness of women who struck out on their own. In San Antonio, </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Barrera says strong, independent women are sometimes called a “burra,” which translates as something close to “Donkey Lady.”</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><br /></b><br />It is perhaps that spirit of independence, more than anything else, that lent the Donkey Lady her fearsome aura.<br /><br />“Is it sort of scary when a female then does not meet a cookie cutter type of identity?” Barrera says. “Is it scary when a female then has the strength?”<br /><br />In San Antonio, the story of the Donkey Lady has been around for decades, the details shifting with the times. In some versions, she is ferocious, in others she is a misshapen victim, in yet others a steadfast protector. But, always, she is there. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ghost-women-why-are-there-so-many-female-ghosts?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ghost-women-why-are-there-so-many-female-ghosts?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us<br /></a></span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWZpKOJ0c8uND2fQuP4B3OBpyR9jjJfcobwPGm1hvWew20j6stqp_BDdFh4Ndo3ZX6U8VhlietjmqJtx6Nu2UXz2_apgqK21PWJdUhSKNiDjV4ZqwfJu_dSIDFNWXA80DyrPm9R4c3vPHNvDX0RrU0OswEfZrKYFFpgpvk1xkcVw63dNivd_jefiC9rrDf/s252/burro%20high%20desert.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="252" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWZpKOJ0c8uND2fQuP4B3OBpyR9jjJfcobwPGm1hvWew20j6stqp_BDdFh4Ndo3ZX6U8VhlietjmqJtx6Nu2UXz2_apgqK21PWJdUhSKNiDjV4ZqwfJu_dSIDFNWXA80DyrPm9R4c3vPHNvDX0RrU0OswEfZrKYFFpgpvk1xkcVw63dNivd_jefiC9rrDf/w400-h317/burro%20high%20desert.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><br /><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">*<br /><b>SPREADING THE WORD ON A POSSIBLE ALZHEIMER’S TREATMENT<br /></b><br />~ Discoveries that transcend boundaries are among the greatest delights of scientific research, but such leaps are often overlooked because they outstrip conventional thinking. Take, for example, <b>a new discovery for treating dementia that defies received wisdom by combining two formerly unrelated areas of research: brain waves and the brain’s immune cells, called microglia</b>. It’s an important finding, but it still requires the buy-in and understanding of researchers to achieve its true potential. The history of brain waves shows why.<br /><br />In 1887, Richard Caton announced his discovery of brain waves at a scientific meeting. “Read my paper on the electrical currents of the brain,” he wrote in his personal diary. “It was well received but not understood by most of the audience.” <b>Even though Caton’s observations of brain waves were correct, his thinking was too unorthodox for others to take seriously. Faced with such a lack of interest, he abandoned his research and the discovery was forgotten for decades.</b><br /><br />Flash forward to October 2019. At a gathering of scientists that I helped organize at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago, I asked if anyone knew of recent research by neuroscientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who had found a new way to treat Alzheimer’s disease by manipulating microglia and brain waves. No one replied.<br /><br />I understood: Scientists must specialize to succeed. Biologists studying microglia don’t tend to read papers about brain waves, and brain wave researchers are generally unaware of glial research. A study that bridges these two traditionally separate disciplines may fail to gain traction. But this study needed attention: <b>Incredible as it may sound, the researchers improved the brains of animals with Alzheimer’s simply by using LED lights that flashed 40 times a second. Even sound played at this charmed frequency, 40 hertz, had a similar effect.<br /></b><br />Today, brain waves are a vital part of neuroscience research and medical diagnosis, though doctors have never manipulated them to treat degenerative disease before now. These oscillating electromagnetic fields are produced by neurons in the cerebral cortex firing electrical impulses as they process information. <b>Much as people clapping their hands in synchrony generate thunderous rhythmic applause, the combined activity of thousands of neurons firing together produces brain waves.</b><br /><br />These waves come in various forms and in many different frequencies. <b>Alpha waves, for example, oscillate at frequencies of 8 to 12 hertz. </b>They surge when we close our eyes and shut out external stimulation that energizes higher-frequency brain wave activity. <b>Rapidly oscillating gamma waves, which reverberate at frequencies of 30 to 120 hertz, are of particular interest in Alzheimer’s research, because their period of oscillation is well matched to the hundredth-of-a-second time frame of synaptic signaling in neural circuits. </b><br /><br />Brain waves are important in information processing because they can influence neuronal firing. Neurons fire an electrical impulse when the voltage difference between the inside and outside of the neuron reaches a certain trigger point. The peaks and troughs of voltage oscillations in brain waves nudge the neuron closer to the trigger point or farther away from it, thereby boosting or inhibiting its tendency to fire. <b>The rhythmic voltage surging also groups neurons together, making them fire in synchrony as they “ride” on different frequencies of brain waves.</b><br /><br />I already knew that much, so to better understand the new work and its origins, I sought out Li-Huei Tsai, a neuroscientist at MIT. She said the idea of using one of these frequencies to treat Alzheimer’s came from a curious observation. “We had noticed in our own data, and in that of other groups, that 40-hertz rhythm power and synchrony are reduced in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease,” she said, as well as in patients with the disease. <br /><br /><b>Apparently, if you have Alzheimer’s, your brain doesn’t produce strong brain waves in that particular frequency. In 2016, her graduate student Hannah Iaccarino reasoned that perhaps boosting the power of these weakened gamma waves would be helpful in treating this severe and irreversible dementia.</b><br /><br /><i><b>To increase gamma wave power, the team turned to optogenetic stimulation, a novel technique that allows researchers to control how and when individual neurons fire by shining lasers directly into them, via fiber-optic cables implanted in the brain. Tsai’s team stimulated neurons in the visual cortex of mice with Alzheimer’s, making them fire impulses at 40 hertz. The results, published in 2016 in Nature, showed a marked reduction in amyloid plaques, a hallmark of the disease.</b></i><br /><br />It was a good indication that these brain waves might help, but Tsai’s team knew that an optogenetic approach wasn’t an option for humans with the disease, because of ethical concerns. They began to look for other ways of increasing the brain’s gamma wave activity. Tsai’s MIT colleague Emery Brown pointed her to an older paper showing that you can boost the power of gamma waves in a cat’s brain simply by having it stare at a screen illuminated by a strobe light flickering at certain frequencies, which included 40 hertz. “Hannah and our collaborators built a system to try that sensory stimulation in mic<br />e, and it worked,” Tsai told me. <b>The thinking is that the flashing lights whip up gamma waves because the rhythmic sensory input sets neural circuits “rocking” at this frequency, like when people rock a stuck car out of a rut by pushing together in rhythm</b>.<br /><br />In fact, <b>the strobe lights had an additional effect on mice: They also cleared out amyloid plaques.</b> But it wasn’t clear exactly how the optogenetic stimulation or the flashing-light therapy could do that.<br /><br /><b><i>Following a clue from Alois Alzheimer himself, the researchers quickly shifted their attention from neurons to microglia. In Alzheimer’s first description of brain tissue taken from patients with “presenile dementia,” which he examined under a microscope near the turn of the 20th century, he noted that the deposits of amyloid plaques were surrounded by these immune cells. Subsequent research confirmed that microglia engulf the plaques pockmarking these patients’ brains.</i></b></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Tsai and colleagues decided to check out these immune cells in the animals whose brain waves they’d boosted. They observed that microglia in all the treated animals had bulked up in size, and more of them were digesting amyloid plaques.<br /><br />How did these cells know to do this? Unlike immune cells in the bloodstream, which are unaware of neuronal transmissions, <b>the brain’s microglia are tuned in to the rhythms of electrical activity in the brain. </b>While immune cells in the bloodstream and microglia in the brain both have cellular sensors to detect disease and injury,<b> microglia can also detect neurons firing electrical impulses. That’s because they have the same neurotransmitter receptors that neurons use to transmit signals through synapses. This gives microglia the ability to “listen in” on information flowing through neural networks and, when those transmissions are disturbed, to take action to repair the circuitry. Thus, </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>the right brain waves can drive microglia to consume the toxic protein deposits.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />“I find this intersection [between brain waves and microglia] to be one of the most exciting and intriguing results of our work,” Tsai told me. Her team reported last year in Neuron that <b>prolonging the LED strobe-light flashing for three to six weeks not only cleared out the toxic plaques in mice brains but also prevented neurons from dying and even preserved synapses, which dementia can destroy.</b><br /><br />The team wanted to know if other types of rhythmic sensory input could also rock the neural circuits like a stuck car, producing gamma waves that resulted in fewer amyloid plaques. In an expanded study in Cell, they reported that <b>just as seeing flashes at 40 hertz resulted in fewer plaques in the visual cortex,</b> <b>sound stimulation at 40 hertz reduced amyloid protein in the auditory cortex. </b><br /><br />Other regions were similarly affected, including the hippocampus — crucial for learning and memory — and the treated mice performed better on memory tests. </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Exposing the mice to both stimuli, a light show synchronized with pulsating sound, had an even more powerful effect, reducing amyloid plaques in regions throughout the cerebral cortex, including the prefrontal region, which carries out higher-level executive functions that are impaired in Alzheimer’s.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br />I was amazed, so just to make sure I wasn’t getting unduly excited about <b>the possibility of using flashing lights and sounds to treat humans</b>, I talked to Hiroaki Wake, a neuroscientist at Kobe University in Japan who was not involved with the work. “It would be fantastic!” he said. <b>“The treatment may also be effective for a number of neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s disease and ALS,” where microglia also play a role</b>. He notes, however, that while the link between microglia and brain oscillations is well founded,<i><b> the biological mechanism by which 40-hertz stimulation prods microglia into removing the plaques and rescuing neurons from destruction remains unknown.</b></i><br /><br />Tsai said the mystery may be solved soon. A team of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, including Tsai lab veteran Annabelle Singer, laid out a possibility in a February paper. They reported that <b>in normal mice, gamma stimulation with LED lights rapidly induced microglia to generate cytokines</b>, proteins that neurons (and immune cells generally) use to signal one another. They’re one of the main regulators of neuroinflammation in response to brain injury and disease, <b>and the microglia released them surprisingly quickly, within just 15 to 60 minutes of the stimulation</b>. “These effects are faster than you see with many drugs that target immune signaling or inflammation,” Singer said.<br /><br />Cytokines come in many forms, and the study found that getting the microglia to produce different kinds required specific frequencies. “Neural stimulation doesn’t just turn immune signaling on,” Singer said. <b>It took a particular rhythm to produce these particular proteins. Different types of stimulation could be used to tune immune signaling as desired</b>.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">That means doctors could potentially treat different diseases just by varying the light and sound rhythms they use. <b>The different stimuli would rock the neurons into producing appropriate brain wave frequencies, causing nearby microglia to release specific types of cytokines, which tell microglia in general how to go to work repairing the brain.<br /></b><br />Of course, it may still be a while before such treatments are available for patients. And even then, there may be side effects. “Rhythmic sensory stimulation likely affects many types of cells in brain tissue,” Tsai said. “How each of them senses and responds to gamma oscillations is unknown.” <b>Wake also pointed out that rhythmic stimulation could do more harm than good, because such stimuli could induce seizures, common in many psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders.</b><br /><br />Still, the potential benefits are great. Tsai’s team has just begun assessing their strobe-light method on patients, and they’re sure to be joined by others as more researchers learn of this promising work. (Most experts I talked to were not aware of this research until I asked.)<br />Just as new species spring up at the boundaries between ecosystems, new science can flourish at the interface between disciplines. It takes a sharp eye to spot it, but as Richard Caton found, it can also require a bit of persuasion to convince others. ~<br /><br /><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/spreading-the-word-on-a-possible-alzheimers-treatment-20200527/">https://www.quantamagazine.org/spreading-the-word-on-a-possible-alzheimers-treatment-20200527/</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>*</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>ending on beauty:</b><br /><br />I touch your lips with my fingers:<br />that too is a prophetic gesture.<br />And your lips are red, the way a burnt field<br />is black. <br />It’s all true. <br /><br />~ Yehuda Amichai<br /></span></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMqNPSuTSOwNt0TyCJgc8G9pejgAkdXTq0qse5Kqt1iezWQvFuiwxna69UHNVzv5hy6-bpKbdalKjQLgW2bP7WZx8J_X_tGJPz34XtGZ-sw6wi8uoXXv19TKafN5MHADk_0rL0tx2Q6zoKp4RAqt814A69X1Cw6KygcHP1r1BLi9GZL43KcwlBWE_dZhWJ/s960/Chagall%20Adam%20and%20Eve%20Mainz%20Germany.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="763" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMqNPSuTSOwNt0TyCJgc8G9pejgAkdXTq0qse5Kqt1iezWQvFuiwxna69UHNVzv5hy6-bpKbdalKjQLgW2bP7WZx8J_X_tGJPz34XtGZ-sw6wi8uoXXv19TKafN5MHADk_0rL0tx2Q6zoKp4RAqt814A69X1Cw6KygcHP1r1BLi9GZL43KcwlBWE_dZhWJ/w318-h400/Chagall%20Adam%20and%20Eve%20Mainz%20Germany.jpg" width="318" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /><br /><br /></span><br /></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-83052858003494654172023-10-07T17:37:00.005-07:002023-10-11T18:30:50.752-07:00DO CHILDREN NEED AMBITION? NAZI GERMANY’S DEPENDENCE ON HORSES; THE EFFECTS OF AMERICANS’ LIVING LONGER; SOCIAL CLASS IN THE U.S.; WHY NO NEW RELIGIONS; BEING A VEGETARIAN IS PARTLY IN YOUR GENES<p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguRkQAFLa01M8BCj_fLDzQRtQHDTd_bAMUuqicKgT3QDpUlEIsPd9nQV8zmsHK9i0Pdn2watIrzeSAMnqcFIx8YGy2WO8jqXhyphenhyphenRyjPJNzZEB32B3fsUnAAoVbi4zBHhQzmguoDgev0mFhzMLbcuhvaY2iEXVlHYrrXUfKq7zsHMnx0kcShhSGgYVm0b45R/s718/conciergerie%20clock%20dial.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="634" data-original-width="718" height="354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguRkQAFLa01M8BCj_fLDzQRtQHDTd_bAMUuqicKgT3QDpUlEIsPd9nQV8zmsHK9i0Pdn2watIrzeSAMnqcFIx8YGy2WO8jqXhyphenhyphenRyjPJNzZEB32B3fsUnAAoVbi4zBHhQzmguoDgev0mFhzMLbcuhvaY2iEXVlHYrrXUfKq7zsHMnx0kcShhSGgYVm0b45R/w400-h354/conciergerie%20clock%20dial.png" width="400" /></a></div><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i>The Conciergerie Clock, the first public clock in France, 1371</i></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><i><br /></i></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br />A LULLABY FOR EINSTEIN<br /><br />Einstein said that clocks<br />stop at the speed of light.<br />“Don’t think about it, child; <br />I knew a physicist once<br />who went out of his mind<br />trying to figure it out,”<br />my father warned,<br />looking at his watch.<br /><br />But that’s what <br />keeps me sane,<br />seeing in my mind<br />that silent starfall of time.<br /><br />In an ecstatic vision <br />I see a flock of clocks —<br />grandfather clocks, cuckoo clocks, <br />school clocks and office clocks;<br />great railroad clocks,<br />tyrants of train stations, <br />four-faced like ancient gods —<br /><br />From cathedrals,<br />from city squares, <br />London, New York, Moscow — <br />millions and millions of clocks<br />mutely sweeping through cosmic dust,<br />their pointing, merciless hands <br />going nowhere at last<br />at the speed of light. <br /><br />That’s what eternity means.<br />I heard it the other night:<br />no more ticking or chiming, <br />cuckooing, beeping or bonging. <br />All that racket is over. <br />Good night, sweet Albert,<br />good night.<br /><br />~ Oriana<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD1xusLHk_NL17PURj1kPsRb66XWoSU6ArCKQ8WIfeoSVdvDrV9HZ61tAHmZXcMnYeeYisYdz4yBBlY02e9cZHsayFj0pTPk6PlHyfD-y4xp0hgKr4jYhO6puTdZ5orAO_0BEDMLX17OBrx2OnYxgoubTbzecr1_ZzepcoRZZ7mOr6LrRjWrQcAAS5O5RD/s733/clock%20dials.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="412" data-original-width="733" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD1xusLHk_NL17PURj1kPsRb66XWoSU6ArCKQ8WIfeoSVdvDrV9HZ61tAHmZXcMnYeeYisYdz4yBBlY02e9cZHsayFj0pTPk6PlHyfD-y4xp0hgKr4jYhO6puTdZ5orAO_0BEDMLX17OBrx2OnYxgoubTbzecr1_ZzepcoRZZ7mOr6LrRjWrQcAAS5O5RD/w400-h225/clock%20dials.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><i><b>PROUST: “PLEASURE IS LIKE PHOTOGRAPHY”<br /><br />~ What we take in the presence of the beloved object is merely a negative, which we develop later, when we are back at home, and have once again found at our disposal that inner darkroom, the entrance to which is barred us so long as we are with other people. ~ </b>Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Volume 2<br /><br />*</i><br /><b>JOAN DIDION: “GRAMMAR IS A PIANO I PLAY BY EAR”<br /></b><br />Of course I stole the title for this talk from George Orwell. One reason I stole it was that I like the sound of the words: Why I Write. There you have three short unambiguous words that share a sound, and the sound they share is this:<br />I<br />I<br />I<br />In many ways, <b>writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind</b>. It’s an aggressive, even a hostile act. You can disguise its aggressiveness all you want with veils of subordinate clauses and qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with ellipses and evasions—with the whole manner of intimating rather than claiming, of alluding rather than stating—but there’s no getting around the fact that <b>setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I stole the title not only because the words sounded right but because they seemed to sum up, in a no-nonsense way, all I have to tell you. Like many writers I have only this one “subject,” this one “area”: the act of writing. I can bring you no reports from any other front. I may have other interests: I am “interested,” for example, in marine biology, but I don’t flatter myself that you would come out to hear me talk about it. I am not a scholar. I am not in the least an intellectual, which is not to say that when I hear the word “intellectual” I reach for my gun, but only to say that I do not think in abstractions. During the years when I was an undergraduate at Berkeley I tried, with a kind of hopeless late-adolescent energy, to buy some temporary visa into the world of ideas, to forge for myself a mind that could deal with the abstract.<br /><br />In short I tried to think. I failed. <b>My attention veered inexorably back to the specific, to the tangible, to what was generally considered, by everyone I knew then and for that matter have known since, the peripheral</b>. I would try to contemplate the Hegelian dialectic and would find myself concentrating instead on a flowering pear tree outside my window and the particular way the petals fell on my floor. I would try to read linguistic theory and would find myself wondering instead if the lights were on in the Bevatron up the hill. When I say that I was wondering if the lights were on in the Bevatron you might immediately suspect, if you deal in ideas at all, that I was registering the Bevatron as a political symbol, thinking in shorthand about the military-industrial complex and its role in the university community, but you would be wrong. <b>I was only wondering if the lights were on in the Bevatron, and how they looked. A physical fact.</b><br /><br />All I knew then was what I couldn’t do. All I knew then was what I wasn’t, and <b>it took me some years to discover what I was.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Which was a writer.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">By which I mean not a “good” writer or a “bad” writer but <b>simply a writer, a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper.</b> Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. Why did the oil refineries around Carquinez Strait seem sinister to me in the summer of 1956? Why have the night lights in the Bevatron burned in my mind for twenty years? What is going on in these pictures in my mind?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">When I talk about pictures in my mind I am talking, quite specifically, about images that shimmer around the edges. There used to be an illustration in every elementary psychology book showing a cat drawn by a patient in varying stages of schizophrenia. This cat had a shimmer around it. You could see the molecular structure breaking down at the very edges of the cat: the cat became the background and the background the cat, everything interacting, exchanging ions. People on hallucinogens describe the same perception of objects. I’m not a schizophrenic, nor do I take hallucinogens, but certain images do shimmer for me. Look hard enough, and you can’t miss the shimmer. It’s there. You can’t think too much about these pictures that shimmer. You just lie low and let them develop. You stay quiet. <b>You don’t talk to many people and you keep your nervous system from shorting out and you try to locate the cat in the shimmer, the grammar in the picture.</b><br /><br />Just as I meant “shimmer” literally I mean “grammar” literally. <b>Grammar is a piano I play by ear</b>, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. <b>All I know about grammar is its infinite power. </b>To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed. Many people know about camera angles now, but not so many know about sentences. The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. <b>The picture dictates the arrangement</b>. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or short, active or passive. The picture tells you how to arrange the words and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what’s going on in the picture. <b>Nota bene:</b></span></span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>It tells you.<br />You don’t tell it.</i></span></span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir-chhXP6ryOzyI0E45-Q3tt9S2hSwPJPsEQWEzSt4zHbQR34IGNvZbKXs9YQFnTQNdiqq9bBCDjENnuOhA_p44roYThprfRL4tGnOKpgd61BTkao39xp3wgyMLvpmDS8kvytCstJHtro7YcAyLFWWJajgRgOrqpCadeTBqy7gW9ECrzRY_MNaO3TkzaWB/s800/joan%20didion%20color.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="800" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir-chhXP6ryOzyI0E45-Q3tt9S2hSwPJPsEQWEzSt4zHbQR34IGNvZbKXs9YQFnTQNdiqq9bBCDjENnuOhA_p44roYThprfRL4tGnOKpgd61BTkao39xp3wgyMLvpmDS8kvytCstJHtro7YcAyLFWWJajgRgOrqpCadeTBqy7gW9ECrzRY_MNaO3TkzaWB/w400-h200/joan%20didion%20color.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i> <br /></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i></i><a href="https://lithub.com/joan-didion-why-i-write/">https://lithub.com/joan-didion-why-i-write/</a> (excerpt) </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Joan Didion died in December 2021.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;"><span>Mary:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #20124d;">I have only one short note on Didion's statement that she wrote to find out what she was thinking — that was exactly the process I went through, and still encounter, in my own writing...the process of writing uncovers, discovers, and surprises you with your own unexpressed, unrealized thought processes....and can be quite a revelation.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;">Oriana:<br />I think that’s what the writing process is like for all serious writers. Writing comes from the unconscious, and its wonderful reward is the discovery, the surprise — the unexpected emerges. And you learn to guard against cliches, and thus probe in greater depth. As Nietzsche observed, "To improve one's style means to improve one's thinking." This includes a keener perception of feelings as well as external images </span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span>—</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> though nothing is complete external. <br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />*<br /><b>DO CHILDREN NEED AMBITION?<br /></b><br />I’ve only ever asked my son once what he might want to do when he grows up, and he very quickly and <b>firmly told me he doesn’t ever want to be an adult or get a job. </b>Last summer, while he was chatting with an older kid, a second grader, about going into first grade, my son learned about homework, a concept he’d been totally unaware of until that moment. She assured him first grade would be fun but gave an ominous warning about how different it was from kindergarten; she mentioned math and tests. <br /><br />I laughed it off — how hard could a first-grader’s homework be? — but my son froze, and when the playground cleared out, <b>he burst into tears. He didn’t want to, “grow up, do work, and then die,” he told me. </b>I comforted him, reminded him he gets to be a carefree kid for a very, very long time and that it’s really not so bad being a grown-up either. <b>But the voice in the back of my mind agreed with him: Do I even want to be an adult or have a job if I could choose otherwise?</b><br /><br />As both my young children get older, and parents around me are signing their first graders up for countless extracurriculars, I’ve been <b>thinking a lot about the intense pressure to succeed that I began to feel even at their age. And I get the sense I’m supposed to be putting my own children under that same stress to become something I’ve imagined for them, instead of just being kids. </b><br /><br />From preschool, parents are told we should be making decisions about our barely out-of-toddlerhood children’s futures. Are they going to the best school? Are they in the right activities? Should I hold them back so they can be the oldest and, therefore, the most advanced in the class?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">According to the CDC, <b>anxiety and depression in kids ages 3 to 17 has increased over the last 15 years. High school teachers contend with teens who have high levels of stress. </b>When I was in my senior year, I remember feeling like the entirety of my future rested in the decisions I was making at that moment. My potentiality seemed tied up in my youth, and if I fucked it up then, my whole life would be a disaster from that moment on. I<b> didn’t hear stories about later-in-life career changes or diverting paths of success</b>; my peers, parents, and teachers told of bright, young futures that rested on the choices of us adolescents.<br /><br />In my own community, I see 8-year-olds stressed about keeping up with school work and worried about how their grades now will affect them down the road. I know many parents who, despite not speaking the language themselves, are losing sleep over whether to put their 5-year-old in French immersion, <b>anxious about what it’ll mean for their future job opportunities rather than the joys of learning another language </b>or whether the kid themselves wants to do it.<br /><br />This style of ambition-focused parenting is hard on both kids and parents. A carefully curated, packed schedule of classes designed to rear the best and brightest leaves caregivers feeling stretched, overwhelmed, and resentful over the lack of time. <b>Kids end up with little space for the kind of unstructured boredom that often leads to them discovering what hobbies and activities excite them.</b> It was in those days of meandering freedom that as a kid, I found myself and my love of writing. I value that kind of mental space and want my kids to have the same opportunities to get lost in themselves, outside of external influences.<br /><br />As adults we’ve been reckoning with how we work since the pandemic, yet from speaking with other parents, that same existential shift isn’t making its way down to how we view achievement when it comes to our kids. <b>So much of what we’re told to focus on with kids is based on an ideal of career success that, honestly, doesn’t even exist now</b>, <b>let alone will be true for them in 10 or 20 years</b>. <br /><br />Working in media, I’ve seen it firsthand, having spent the entirety of my career watching my industry crumble. Entire outlets have come and gone, giants of publishing have folded, and any sense of job security was long gone by the time I got my first real job. <b>I’ve lived through countless layoffs and restructuring, buyouts, and new owners, all for fluctuating pay that was often demeaning. The burnout from years of this triggered my own breakup with the kind of ambition that was pushed on me in childhood.</b><br /><br />So having realized, in my own life, that a certain kind of ambition can leave you feeling fried, frustrated, depressed, and without anything more or better to show for it, how could I ask my own children to follow in those same footsteps?<br /><br />Before having kids, I’d imagined I’d want to be involved in their career success in ways my own parents weren’t. I thought fixating on a certain kind of achievement would make their lives easier than mine was. In the years since having them, <b>it really doesn’t matter to me what they want to do or accomplish when they’re older. </b><br /><br /><i><b>I’m more focused on the kind of person they want to be. Are they empathetic and aware of others’ feelings? Do they take care of the environment around them and understand that they’re connected to a community bigger than just themselves and their family? Do they feel safe expressing themselves wholly and sharing that with the people around them? Are they kind?</b><br /></i><br />When I wrote last year about losing my ambition, I talked about embracing the idea of mediocrity, letting go of a compulsion for exceptionalism, never being satisfied with the life in front of me. Now it’s true of my approach to parenting too. It’s not that I don’t want the best for my kids — it’s just that I have a new understanding of what “the best” looks like. <b>It’s not about raising the ideal employee with an overstuffed resume thanks to an overstuffed schedule, but a loving, aware person, who understands there are many ways to feel fulfilled and successful. </b><br /><br />Meanwhile, my son hasn’t had any homework yet, but by allowing him to focus on what he enjoys now, in giving him ample room to be a child without worrying about what lies ahead, he does actually think first grade is pretty great.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwZfU_2PUwcL5ScXmRpG9rmIq597EvsKzVexygCiUnTsDxFAkTIY3krUSyWhm7EVJyRE2SDhzpB3A2v6XBwWp3t32SxSIzl0Tt5Tsz7JI2QvCbedVMnxoy3NbgqNjc7_KbMmUl9rSki9w1iL2IxaMfQ8yu1c5KUIRHNEPWm2y1yEztVdYJ8Hh6HoYMrivG/s700/BEAR%20and%20cub.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="700" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwZfU_2PUwcL5ScXmRpG9rmIq597EvsKzVexygCiUnTsDxFAkTIY3krUSyWhm7EVJyRE2SDhzpB3A2v6XBwWp3t32SxSIzl0Tt5Tsz7JI2QvCbedVMnxoy3NbgqNjc7_KbMmUl9rSki9w1iL2IxaMfQ8yu1c5KUIRHNEPWm2y1yEztVdYJ8Hh6HoYMrivG/w400-h400/BEAR%20and%20cub.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.thecut.com/2023/09/do-kids-need-ambition.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://www.thecut.com/2023/09/do-kids-need-ambition.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us</a></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #20124d; font-family: georgia;"><span>Mary:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Programming ambition into children at a very young age can do many negative things...perhaps the worst is to steal their opportunity to play. Unstructured free play is not only the essential joy of childhood, it is also integral to learning and development. If all of childhood's free inventive play is replaced with programmed adult-sponsored activity, that child's independence and growth, both intellectual and emotional, will be severely curtailed. What is being served is the adults' ambition, forcibly fitted onto the child, like a too tight suit that prevents freedom of movement.<br /><br />Ambition focused parenting creates enormous pressure on both parents and child, generating stress about the present and future that can be not only painful, but crippling. All this dedicated preparation can also, as noted, come to naught, in a rapidly changing and evolving world where work and careers no longer have the same shapes and requirements we may have so earnestly prepared for. In a world where old skills and knowledge may shift and become obsolete, adaptiveness and flexibility, and intellectual curiosity rather than rigidity, become the most useful qualities for success...and survival.<br /><br />I have always been profoundly lacking in ambition. I never had any sort of map or plan for the future, either self generated or imposed. I knew I had more interest, more Fun, learning, reading and thinking than just about anything else. Far from being directed toward college, my parents sadly thought there was no chance for that. At the time it was easy to get scholarships and grants, and teachers suggested I apply. I was in luck, but had no plan of how college would lead to a career...I never thought about careers at all. I never had stress over school or the future — if I thought about it at all. There was nothing I was working toward.<br /><br />In fact I simply enjoyed the act of learning, exploring, playing with ideas...it was all, not tedium, not work, but play, fun. I lived in this very enjoyable present world with no thought of where or how it would end. Graduate school seemed not another step on a ladder, but simply a way to keep doing what I loved. Even exams were fun...like entertaining games. I took the Masters exams not because I planned to, but because they were offered and some fellow students were going. Did PhD work with no real idea of an academic career, but simply because it was the next usual step.<br /><br />I'm not really recommending my ambitionless approach. I had no idea what to do past graduate school… I am simply remarking that my whole time at school was an incredibly rich and satisfying time lived in the moment, with no pressure or anxiety about the future. And when the future came, with health and life changes, I, like many others, switched direction and trained for something new that I hadn't been planning on, and that pursuit was as engaging and enriching as what came before.<br /><br />My approach to the future was haphazard perhaps, but remarkably happy and stress free, like childhood play.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><span>I envy you. I blamed myself for being chaotic, directionless, lost. The people I admired most were those who knew their vocation already in childhood. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Not that I didn't show a clear talent -- the gap between my score on verbal ability and math ability was profound. But I would have preferred it the other way, reaping the rewards of those who have the socially preferred STEM bend. Only later I saw the the pleasure of being more versatile, being able to shift between literature and the sciences the way a bilingual person shifts between languages. The latter was a particular pleasure, but I could also attend a medical conference, or one in the biosciences, and feel sheer bliss reading about fungi, for instance, or the mysteries of marine biology. But I couldn't accept that versatility. I felt like a failure, my depression shifting between chronic and acute. I sobered up when I realized that no longer had all that much life left, and it was too late to be depressed. And the result was, would you believe it, this very blog, which I started in 2010, and which allowed me to indulge my many interests. Proust in the morning, plate tectonics in the afternoon -- I loved it all, and finally accepted myself as intellectually promiscuous, without feeling guilty about it.</span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /> </span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />*<br /><b>THE STARTLING LIFE EXPECTANCY GAP IN THE U.S. BETWEEN THOSE WITH A COLLEGE DEGREE AND THOSE WITHOUT</b><br /><br />~ When people talk about the difference between the haves and the have-nots, they're typically thinking about wealth. But in America there's another metric that divides the two: longevity.<br />As Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton show in their new research, <b>the gulf in life expectancy between people with and without a college degree has widened dramatically since the 1990s. As of the end of 2021, there was a shocking 8.5-year age gap between the two cohorts, </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>with the life span of Americans without a college degree trending sharply downward in recent years.</b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />It is this grim trend of shortening life expectancy among Americans without college degrees that explains why the <b>U.S.'s mortality rate is a stark outlier among rich nations, far lower than countries such as Japan and Switzerland. "If all Americans had the life expectancy of those who are college educated, the United States would have been one of the best performers among the rich countries in terms of life expectancy, not the worst</b>," wrote Case and Deaton in a recent op-ed explaining their findings in The New York Times. "It is the experience of those without college degrees that accounts for America’s failure.”<br /><br />That failure is an enormous one, and it should prompt introspection about the American promise. It shows that social inequality isn't just leading to diverging quality of life for people in different social strata. It's killing us. Nearly two-thirds of Americans don’t have a college degree, which means a solid majority of Americans are seeing their prospect of a long life dimming.<br /><br />Case and Deaton's dataset shows that <b>in 1992, the life-expectancy gap between those with and without a college degree was about 2.5 years. Notable, but not huge. That gap began widening by the 2000s and after 2010 the two sets really diverged, as life expectancy for those with a college degree continued to rise, while life expectancy for those without one declined.</b> Both groups experienced a downturn during the pandemic, but for college-educated Americans it slipped about a year, while for noncollege-educated Americans it slipped by 3.3 years. <br /><br /><b>By 2021, at the age of 25 a college-educated American could expect to live, on average, more than 58 more years (that is, to live to be over 83), while those without college could expect to live less than 50 more years (that is, not reach 75).</b> Case and Deaton note that they've found no precedent for this college divide in modern history except "in the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union." <br /><br />There are a lot of potential mechanisms that explain the strong correlation between college degrees and longevity. Case and Deaton spotlight, among other things, that the college-educated have more access to a wider array of jobs and higher wages. <b>Their counterparts without degrees are disproportionately likely to live in communities without jobs or to have been affected by the opioid epidemic. The cost of health care is prohibitive for many people with lower wages.</b><br /><br />Lest one think that it's "natural" for this kind of longevity gap to emerge between people who could loosely be thought of as the working class and the professional class, remember that other rich countries are not seeing these kinds of sharply different fates for their people.<br /><br />There are a number of potential explanations, but among other things,<b> many rich countries have more robust social safety nets than the U.S., particularly when it comes to health care. </b>And many are more hospitable to worker organizing and input into the political economy, which in turn affects the way wages are distributed.<br /><br />Another way the U.S. might be an outlier is <b>the huge variation in the distribution of social services and public health measures in blue states and red states. A new Washington Post investigation explores the differing premature death rate between three adjacent counties along Lake Erie in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and finds that Ohio's higher death rates may be attributable to its lack of more progressive public health measures, such as seatbelt laws and cigarette taxes.</b><br /><br /><b>It's hard to think of a clearer marker of second-class citizenship than the likelihood of having predictably less time to live than a more well-off set of people</b>. There are always going to be huge parts of the nation's workforce that don't require a college degree. There are always going to be communities where it's unfairly difficult to obtain a college degree. And <b>even if demand grows there will always be a relatively limited number of high quality degrees. It's one thing to say that people without a degree have fewer job options. But it's another thing altogether to say they have fewer years on Earth</b>. ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/college-degree-life-expectancy-rcna118571">https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/college-degree-life-expectancy-rcna118571<br /></a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>Men in the top 1 percent of the income distribution can now expect to
live fifteen years longer than those in the bottom 1 percent. For women,
the difference is about ten years—an effect equivalent to that of a
lifetime of smoking.</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hpb20180817.901935/">https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hpb20180817.901935/</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">None of this is surprising. The rates of obesity and smoking have long been associated with lower social status. This is due in part to higher stress. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Alcohol consumption presents a more complex picture. There is more drinking as social status goes up, but it tends to be moderate drinking rather than heavy drinking or binge drinking. <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-beast/201202/are-rich-people-heavy-drinkers">https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-beast/201202/are-rich-people-heavy-drinkers</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>IQ AND LIFE EXPECTANCY<br /></b><br />~ In my article about neuromyths, I debunked the commonly-held belief that IQ tests results only represent your ability to take IQ tests. In reality—and despite their flaws—IQ tests are predictive of many things. And, in particular, <b>IQ tests can help predict your chances of dying.In a cohort study conducted in 2009 with almost a million Swedish men who took a mandatory IQ test during their military service when they were around 18 years old, researchers followed-up with participants during 20 years after they took the test to see who was still alive and who had died.</b> The graph below speaks for itself.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcaLTEnIwx1RygHimvmeXgq_yS7GR57qvbEmJmzhQTUwNPKa-O2EoqpPPkHzIhR3YGUnlBL0mjqS2MhtJ1Ed6hyswyDKs-Rgr5KN7KsGLb2C3X9h3if2zthwdSMTCfXCQSxnnfsezpcHEaO-8iwqFMXvDlYy-9QLaosRlX5AkvuOSQiruQiDzA6Dwm8Gy6/s703/IQ%20LONGEVITY.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="489" data-original-width="703" height="279" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcaLTEnIwx1RygHimvmeXgq_yS7GR57qvbEmJmzhQTUwNPKa-O2EoqpPPkHzIhR3YGUnlBL0mjqS2MhtJ1Ed6hyswyDKs-Rgr5KN7KsGLb2C3X9h3if2zthwdSMTCfXCQSxnnfsezpcHEaO-8iwqFMXvDlYy-9QLaosRlX5AkvuOSQiruQiDzA6Dwm8Gy6/w400-h279/IQ%20LONGEVITY.png" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">As you can see, the graph shows the relation between IQ score—split into nine levels—on the x-axis, and risk of death in the 20 years following the IQ test on the y-axis. There is an impressive, staircase-like correlation between IQ score and risk of death. <b>The people with higher IQ scores were less likely to be dead at the follow-up.</b><br /><br /><b>One million people of the same gender and the same age, and an almost perfect correlation between IQ and risk of death</b>. But researchers decided to take it a step further, and <i><b>to check if this result was mediated by other factors such as blood pressure, body mass index, or cigarette smoking. And they found that it wasn’t. All things made equal, individuals in the study tended to live longer if they were considered smarter as measured by the IQ test they took when they were 18.</b><br /></i><br /><b>The link between intelligence and longevity<br /></b><br />The researchers admit in their paper that while the correlation is pretty clear, the actual causes aren’t. But there are a few hypotheses as to why smarter people tend to live longer.<br /><br /><b>Being smarter improves your quality of life. It may mean a better job, which could come with better quality healthcare, and living in a nicer area. Basically, more money means a better lifestyle.</b></span><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Being smarter in general means being smarter with your health. For example, </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>IQ is negatively correlated with smoking and getting into car accidents</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"> (as you will see if you click these links, most large-scale studies have been done on Swedish men during and after their military service). <b>You’re less likely to put yourself in danger. You take better care of yourself, so you live longer.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>A lower IQ can be a sign of a bad childhood</b>. It can be a signal that things haven’t gone well for you as you developed. Maybe you’re from a deprived background, or you had malnutrition or an illness as a child. This may have affected your IQ by stopping your brain from developing to its full potential, and it also might as a result affect your life expectancy.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>The genes that affect your brain may also affect the rest of your body. Some luckier people may just have better-built systems. The genes that build a healthier brain may also build healthier hearts, lungs, and so on.</b></i><br /><br />But you don’t need to know why to start using this correlation to your advantage. The great news is that <b>IQ is not fixed, and there are many science-based ways to increase it, even as an adult.</b><br /><br /><b>Four ways to get smarter</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">One of the reasons why many people are against IQ tests is because they believe IQ is supposed to be a fixed measure of intelligence. It’s not. It’s just a snapshot of one’s intelligence taken at a specific point in life. <b>Anyone can get smarter by stimulating their brain in the right way. </b>And no, listening to Mozart won’t work. Unfortunately, raising your IQ will take a bit more effort than that.<br /><br /><b>Meditation</b>. Many studies have shown that meditating has positive effects on cognition. You can start seeing these effects with as little as 20 minutes of daily meditation. If you’re struggling to build a meditation habit, try an app such as Headspace or Calm and go through their introductory meditation course.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Playing an instrument</b>. Research by the University of Zurich showed that becoming proficient in a musical instrument can raise the IQ of both adults and children. And I’m not talking about insignificant gains. <b>Playing music can raise your IQ by 7 points or more.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Learning a new language</b>. You know how hard it is to learn a new language? It’s because it’s actually changing the fundamental connections inside your brain. By navigating a new set of complex rules, learning a new language forces cortical thickening and increases the volume of your hippocampus. The great thing is that it also helps you with other language tasks like reading, negotiating, and problem-solving.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Sleeping</b>. Ha, finally one that doesn’t require too much effort. Research from the Loughborough University’s Sleep Research Centre found that every hour less than eight hours of sleep a night can knock off a full point from your IQ. In fact, not sleeping enough can make people perform at work at the same level as someone with a learning disability.<br /><br /><b>Other tactics you can use to increase your IQ include playing chess and exercising</b>. Next time someone tells you IQ tests are bullshit, remember: they are just a snapshot of how well you’re taking care of your brain, right now. Put another way, IQ tests are a measure of your current intelligence. I<b>ntelligence is not fixed, and it can be fostered with the right strategies. Anyone can get smarter—and live longer</b>. ~ <br /><br /><a href="https://nesslabs.com/iq-death-smarter-people-live-longer">https://nesslabs.com/iq-death-smarter-people-live-longer</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUR2Pei19yM0GzXIy49Ny9wm_cnr-Bx2kOIpfPrbnO8KG62Ar3WtJn5HYefonaNcoDTwiv3ZT1meyrLgOGlEKoX9JvNOe0xMkfmdkHUr7qYh2oVjLj7cgXs5jMNF9AeM66XnwqgpLf3eqG-XQhmm1t6Wdg9LzaB9ENqJi8jLDceEA-pQ5a_XsHpOs807oU/s4992/girl%20piano.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4992" data-original-width="3328" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUR2Pei19yM0GzXIy49Ny9wm_cnr-Bx2kOIpfPrbnO8KG62Ar3WtJn5HYefonaNcoDTwiv3ZT1meyrLgOGlEKoX9JvNOe0xMkfmdkHUr7qYh2oVjLj7cgXs5jMNF9AeM66XnwqgpLf3eqG-XQhmm1t6Wdg9LzaB9ENqJi8jLDceEA-pQ5a_XsHpOs807oU/w266-h400/girl%20piano.jpg" width="266" /></a></span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>SOCIAL CLASS IN THE U.S. IS NOT ABOUT MONEY</b><br /><br />~ While there are social classes in the US, it’s erroneous to say that they’re all about money. <b>Social class in the US has more to do with perceived status/influence, not money. The two concepts often go hand in hand, but not always, and we see this in expanding divisions between red and blue states, urban and rural Americans, those who live on the coasts versus those who live inland, those who have advanced degrees versus those who do not, and those who work in white-collar professions versus those who work in farming or industry. <br /></b><br />Just to use one of the example, <b>there are plenty of truck drivers right now who are earning as much or more than college professors, but I can assure you that</b> <b>neither trucker nor prof are likely to see each other as occupying the same social class.</b> There are many farmers who are worth 7 or even 8 figures on paper, but they’re probably not perceived as being in the same class as government lawyers living with roommates in cramped apartments in “important” places like Washington or New York. American class is a lot more complicated than just the size of one’s bank account.<br /><br /><b>When it comes to socializing, Americans are a friendly, egalitarian people, and are generally willing to interact with people from all walks of life. But in order to befriend people, you have to come into contact with them regularly. </b>In answering this question, I thought long and hard about my own life: <b>the people in my circle of friends are largely other lawyers, white-collar energy executives, bankers/financial advisors, doctors, entrepreneurs, and academics</b>. I didn’t choose to be friends with any of them on account of what they did for a living, but they are people I’ve generally met through school, work, or my neighborhood.<br /><br />I’m friendly with some people who drive trucks and work construction through my gym, but in all honesty, I chose a no-frills health club whose lower fees attract a broader clientele. If I were to spring for something fancier, no doubt I’d run into plenty more lawyers and bankers. <br /><br /><b>Economic segregation is increasing in the US</b>, so while your typical lawyer or doctor would be happy to socialize with a truck driver or roofer, the opportunities to do so are increasingly rare. ~ Ty Doyle, Quora<br /><br />AJ:<br />Paul Fusel wrote a book called Class. One thing he wrote that stuck with me: “Upper Middle Class is where you want to be.” Tongue-in-cheek like everything in the book, but his point was that group actually dresses the best and has the creature comforts relatable to most people, while the really rich tend be be more reclusive, live spartan, let fine clothes look shopworn, and have conversations and hobbies that would likely bore most people.<br /><br />I laughed because one time I was at Thanksgiving with an old-money family with a recognizable name. The dinner conversation was mundane, the family house peeling, the rooms drafty, the clothing obviously well-made but smelling of mothballs. Fussel nailed it.<br /><br />Jimmy Lee:<br />People need to get out and see America. Many of those guys in the plaid flannels and jeans are driving pickups that are way pricier than a BMW sedan. They own RVs and boats and real estate. Their construction businesses dwarf a doctor or lawyers salary many times over.<br /><br />Aurel Kola:<br />Yes and they associate with people like themselves, that's what the author is stating because those are the circles they run into. On the other hand, <b>for every wealthy construction worker or farmer, there are a thousand wealthy doctors.</b><br /><br />Sarah Peterson:<br />The top percentile of lawyers are multi billionaires. The top percentile of “construction businesses” by construction workers are mid six figures… the starting salary for a good lawyer. The numbers speak for themselves. <b>There are some construction conglomerates owned by professionals/VC firms/investors in the multi billions but those are not your plaid shirt guy. That guy is an illiterate, low IQ, low skill worker who is working a huge number of hours, breaking his body and will die/be disabled by middle age. </b>The only reason he is able to make above minimum wage is because of a labor market that is economically protected by national labor force unions that block free market labor. The professionals compete on the international level and out-compete the best talent and still win.<br /><br />Clipperz:<br />I take great offense in the “illiterate, lowIQ” horse dung you sling. Lawyers are smart with words, construction people are smart with doing things (reading blueprints, applying codes, engineering application, commanding others, etc etc.)<br /><br />Amy Chai:<br />Because I came from extreme poverty and land of the hillbillies and fundamentalists and racial minorities, I totally feel more comfortable in these groups than I do in groups of my economic and social class “equals.”</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />I am completely chill with the underclass because I am one of them. You can dress me up and give me money but I am still the same person I always was.<br /><br />Frederick Dolan:<br />In the U.S., social class is thought to be solely “about money” only by people in the middle and lower classes. The higher up the class ladder, the less important is money, at least in purely quantitative terms. How you acquired it, and what you’re doing with it, matter more.<br />But to answer the question, medical doctors and lawyers earning $300,000 per annum are in the middle class, which is the class most afflicted with status anxiety. For that reason, they tend to avoid truck drivers and roofers no matter how much money they earn.<br /><br />The truck drivers and roofers, for their part, avoid the professionals except while working for them. This is due to what Ian William Miller calls “upward contempt.” <br /><br /><b>Addendum<br /></b><br />In light of some of the comments, a fuller exposition of class in the United States may be in order. I favor Paul Fussell’s metric for class:<br /><br />[H]ow much built-in resistance you have to being pushed around by shits.<br /><br />He adds that income and social status also play a role, as well as things like style and taste.<br />In America, according to Fussell, we have nine classes:<br /><br />Top out-of-sight<br />Upper<br />Upper middle<br />Middle<br />High proletarian<br />Mid-proletarian<br />Low proletarian<br />Destitute<br />Bottom out-of sight<br /><br />As for the stylistic and otherwise visible markers of class divisions, Fussell suggested a few. Those who fall for the “college swindle,” for example – the notion that a degree from a third-rate university will give you much of an advantage in terms of income or anything else<br />– are in the lower classes. <b>Proletarians have “goofy collections of things [Bobbleheads, Beanie Babies, Cracker Jack prizes] they think might be worth money someday.”</b> Low proletarians will take an old tire, turn it inside out, and use it as a planter.<br /><br /><b>A reproduction of any Picasso artwork indicates that you are in a middle class home, as well as the presence of any item alluding, even remotely, to Tutankhamen. </b>A bowling-ball carrier is mid-proletarian. An original drawing or lithograph by an internationally recognized artist is upper middle; original paintings point towards upper. (In my youth, a successful dentist might have a Jim Dine or a Lichtenstein lithograph; a lawyer or academic with family money would exhibit an Oldenberg soft ashtray or even a Warhol.)<br /><br />Keke:<br />Can being “middle class” be defined by ones attitude toward money? I grew up in a family that struggled for many years (eating cold cereal for dinner, one pair of shoes a year, buying glasses was a hardship). Situational poverty (divorce of parents) as it were. BUT we also were raised to value having a savings account and to not be in debt. I<b> worked in a community of migrant workers and I observed generational poverty. A way of life handed down that included NOT having a savings account and living a life heavily in debt to acquire consumer goods.</b> I considered my family” middle class” even though we may have had the same disposable income (for an extended time) as the immigrant population of the community I worked in as an adult.<br /><br />Fredrik Johansson:<br />In Sweden, there is a divide between the middle class and working class for various reasons. One is historical, one is because of living in different areas (big house vs apartments) and third is that they have different jobs so they don't meet, and fourth is a difference in cultural interests</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">, e.g. <b>working class watch other TV programs.</b></span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Joshua Gross: SOCIAL CLASS IS NOT “ABOUT MONEY”<br /><br /><b>We use the terms working class, middle class, and upper middle class as euphemisms. We often do attach rough monetary values to these “classes”, but they’re about lifestyle, opportunity, and career trajectory.<br /></b><br />No truck drivers or roofers earn the kind of money you’re talking about from driving a truck or nailing shingles. Some business owners do, but many are not up on the roof or in the cab, and those who are will earn more from others doing the same work.<br /><br />As for how people socialize, in the US, socialization is often tied to work peers or longterm friends (since childhood). There are complex reasons for this, but it’s nonetheless true, and increasingly so.<br /><br />Most of my friends have PhDs. Not all, but most. Most of the rest have master’s degrees or other professional degrees. I have one very close friend who never went to college, but he’s the unusual one in his social circle; he mostly socializes with people with degrees. His current partner, his ex, and all of his kids have college degrees.<br /><br />I didn’t set out to have a friend group like this, but when I move across the country (and it’s a big country), the people I meet are the people I work with.<br /><br />Rob S:<br /><b>Most people self segregate</b>. It's human nature. We like to be around people like us, and we feel uncomfortable (and usually judgmental) about people different from us. So <b>people who work with their hands, even ones who make very good incomes such as welders and electricians don't generally feel as comfortable around people that work at desks, and vice-versa, even if the welder actually makes more money.</b> That's why the common slang for the first group is "blue collar" and the slang for the second is "white collar" which is about the type of clothes they wear to work which indicates how they work, not the amount of money they make.</span><br /></span><p></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">But ... and here's the cool part ... that is all up to the individual. Depending on where you live and your own attitudes, some people socialize widely across class, while others are very much bound to it.<br /><br />Mark Gist:<br /><b>Social class in the US has to do more with education than money</b>. Doctors and lawyers tend to socialize with each other and with other white-collar, college educated people.<br /><br />*<br /><b>RUSSIAN EUPHEMISMS FOR WAR (Misha Firer)</b><br /><br />~ Russians authorities have always given wars of aggression funny terms.<br /><br /><b>First Chechnya War was “Operation to restore constitutional order in Chechnya” while Second Chechnya War was called “Counter-terrorism operations in the North Caucasus region.”</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>Afghan War that lasted ten years and broke Soviet economy was “military conflict” and “international duty.” Likewise, Ukraine war is a “special military operation.”<br /></b><br />It’s because the Russians as any other people in the world loathe wars. Humans by and large wanna live. They don’t wanna die.<br /><br />Additionally, <b>in Russia, there’s a strong association of war with invaders coming from the west that are being fought against, with wasteful peasant body count then buried necessarily in common graves, on the Russian territory.<br /></b><br />When there’re no invaders like in Chechnya and Afghanistan and populace is not convinced that there should be a military intervention, government tells them that it’s not a war. It’s a special military operation.<br /><br />This deception is so ingrained in Russian collective psyche that when Putin invaded Ukraine , my coworkers at the office wouldn’t discuss it , and outright respond that they won’t talk about events in Ukraine — and that was before censorship kicked in!<br /><br /><b>Effectively every single person in the office self-censored without any cue from television. </b>Remember that the best herder of the sheep are the sheep themselves.<br /><br />Now <b>I believe that this time the result of “international duty” won’t be any different from Afghanistan.</b> Is it because democracy always prevails over authoritarian regime? Light over darkness and stuff like that?<br /><br />Morale does count for motivation and to elevate spirits, but I think the bottom line is the West is banally much stronger than Russia, in economic war and more advanced in military hardware. Russia is by every count the weaker side in the conflict.<br /><br />That’s all there is to it.<br /><br /><b>When Putin invaded Ukraine he believed he’s fighting a weaker enemy but he’s now thrown against the strongest group of countries in the world and got no allies on his side except for fellow pariah states </b>. Which brings us to nukes.<br /><br />As it’s becoming obvious that America will stay with Ukraine through thick and thin and won’t back down, it is also becoming clearer that Putin will go down in flames. ~ Misha Firer, Quora<br /><br />Tim Orum:<br />Putin may not even need nukes and may be more clever than thought. Through Ukraine, Putin is draining billions from the West and distracting attention away from their serious domestic issues while his allies in China destroy the US and Europe from within by sowing division and compromising politicians into doing their bidding. It’s a multi-prong approach to taking down the West.<br /><br /><br />*<br /><b>THE SOVIET UNION WAS LESS POWERFUL DURING THE COLD WAR THAN THE US BELIEVED<br /></b><br />The Red Army abolished professional NCO corps in 1960s.<br /><br /><b>The key to maintaining a capable army is preserving institutional knowledge.</b> Experience is invaluable in an army and unless you’re the Silastic Armorfiend from Striterax, <b>only a portion of your armed forces will ever experience combat. As wars end the number of soldiers that saw action begins to decline almost immediately. Within four years of the end of the war most grunts never saw combat.</b><br /><br /><b>NCOs are the best way we know of to preserve this valuable experience. An army that seeks to retain some portion of their experienced personnel and uses them to train the next generation</b> <b>will retain institutional knowledge much better than armies who do not have such a program.</b> The Red Army was superbly experienced after World War 2 and as capable as anyone else in maneuver warfare and logistics that came with it.<br /><br />This lasted probably into 1960s, when they were still retaining older soldiers who had experience and using them to train the new generations. After that this knowledge began to decline rapidly. Worse still, <b>with no older soldiers to keep order, discipline collapsed and brutal hazing became prevalent.</b> Within a few years the once feared Red Army became a band of scared boys with big guns and little in the way of leadership or discipline. We saw how well an army like that fights last year near Kyiv.<br /><br />The Soviet Union had a massive nuclear arsenal and this made them dangerous. However the Red Army was a paper tiger from perhaps 1970 onwards and we all know how well their economy worked. Science and technology too fell behind by that time. You can’t progress without cooperation and for that you need openness. <b>From about 1970 onwards (give or take a couple of years) the Soviet Union was certainly a mere shadow of the behemoth it presented itself as</b>. ~ Tomaž Vargazon, Quora<br /><br />Charles Catt:<br />Basically a collection of thugs a rapists. Same as they are now. Good riddance. Clean them from the world and start fresh.<br /><br />Ronald Mills:<br />And really it was portrayed as a world superpower second only to America when more accurately<b> it was a European land superpower with nukes and little to no means of projecting forces very far from its borders.<br /></b><br />*<br /><b>THE UKRAINIAN “I WANT TO LIVE HOTLINE” HAS BEEN A SUCCESS<br /></b><br />~ I can only speculate why <b>almost 10,000 Russians have surrendered through the “I Want to Live” hotline</b>, but from what I have read:<br /><br /><b>Well-being — being a soldier in Russia is fairly awful. </b>Conscripts are treated poorly, are ill equipped, barely trained, possess no autonomy whatsoever (instead they are expected to blindly obey orders given by people who only hold their rank through corruption, cronyism and political favoritism), and are often subject to being sexually abused by their superior officers (who insist this is not a homosexual act, by the way, just how discipline is done in the Russian military). <b>There are untold numbers of complaints seen from Russian soldiers </b></span></span><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">—</span></span></b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b> on video, in letters, phone calls, and interviews — about how poorly they are equipped and the depredations they are suffering</b> for a wide variety of reasons.<br /><br /><b>Safety concerns — most Russians, especially those recently conscripted, don’t actually want to die in a foreign land to satiate Putler’s thirst for power and empire.</b> They have families and children they would rather live to support than to become fertilizer for sunflowers, and they know they lack the training and equipment to have any appreciable chance of doing anything other than dying. The hotline may appeal to Russian soldiers who have grown weary of the conflict and fear for their own safety, and<b> surrendering through the hotline may be seen as a safer option than continuing to fight or being captured on the battlefield. </b>Besides, even with Russia’s revisionist take on history, they all know how the battles of WWII were won, and that their commanders haven’t learned any new tactics since. <b>Better to surrender than be shot in by your own comrades when retreating from an untenable position.<br /></b><br />Humanitarian concerns — the hotline's name, "I want to live," suggests a focus on the human toll of the conflict. Ukrainian authorities may be hoping that Russian soldiers will be moved by this appeal and more willing to surrender. <b>Those who haven’t been utterly blinded by propaganda will know that they will be treated far better by the UAF as a POW than they were by their own military.</b><br /><br />Propaganda/PsyOps — Ukrainian authorities have launched targeted campaigns to spread the word about the hotline, including through social media and related efforts, which has increased the hotline's visibility and made it more appealing to Russian soldiers who may be looking for a way out of the conflict that doesn’t involve a (usually empty) casket. <b>By offering a hotline for surrenders, Ukrainian authorities effectively undermine the morale of Russian troops by making them question the legitimacy and chances for success success of their “3-day Special Military Operation” that has been going on for over a year now.</b><br /><br /><i><b>Immunity from prosecution — Ukrainian authorities may be offering amnesty to Russian soldiers who surrender and provide truthful accounts of their actions, which could be a powerful incentive for those who fear prosecution for the war crimes being committed by Russians in Ukraine.</b></i><br /><br />Overall, there are a variety of likely overlapping contributing factors, but <b><br />mainly it comes down to exactly what the hotline is named: they want to live, and the Russian army is not famed for placing more value on the lives of their soldiers than they do the lives of their enemies. They are happy to sacrifice 10 of their own just to kill one of the enemy</b>, and if you’re not an utterly brainwashed zealot looking to die for glory of Mother Russia, this probably doesn’t strike you as great odds or a worthy use of one’s own life. ~</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvOOAe2Wcg0NAxovjiAY7mZgcO663wELxeQnmoYWN5_cnPwpa2tE81ozgLOZZAlxmxzKusv0VPVftQKrGHLaO6FV6UZd48coBUp-IVbDPqQwIwJimxhDA6NWDga_yPJx5-KT0s2brim2bPNrSXsurabzOxNUKlf9NQb9sy_eh_GsGV__hKMkNQDFaRhYGr/s602/russian%20recruit%20train%20Putin.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="389" data-original-width="602" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvOOAe2Wcg0NAxovjiAY7mZgcO663wELxeQnmoYWN5_cnPwpa2tE81ozgLOZZAlxmxzKusv0VPVftQKrGHLaO6FV6UZd48coBUp-IVbDPqQwIwJimxhDA6NWDga_yPJx5-KT0s2brim2bPNrSXsurabzOxNUKlf9NQb9sy_eh_GsGV__hKMkNQDFaRhYGr/w400-h259/russian%20recruit%20train%20Putin.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>PUTIN’S “CAPITALISM”<br /></b><br />While China has been working towards becoming global leader in science and technology, Russians were stuck in the past worshiping war victory cult.<br /><br /><b>Undergrad students at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (Russia’s MIT) will study Chinese as a second compulsory subject.<br /></b><br />It will not be possible to choose a language other than Chinese and English in the first year. The measure is due to the fact that 27% of scientific articles on physical and technical topics are written in Chinese.<br /><br />And there you have it , <b>the real pivot to the East when you do it not out of whims of the tsar but because you can’t stay relevant in your field of studies and profession if you don’t.<br /></b><br />I worked for a Russian pharmaceutical company that exemplifies everything what’s wrong with Putin’s “capitalism.”<br /><br />The founder and CEO of the company who takes care of day to day business is a linguist who hasn’t studied chemistry nor understands anything about it.<br /><br />His partner is a banker.<br /><br />His deputy is an economist.<br /><br /><b>Looking at his office you would see grim chemists sitting in the open space while private rooms for the privileged employees are occupied by the CEO’s nephew with no formal education who did corruption schemes in Ukraine before war put an end of it</b>; a woman who buys subpar APIs from India and China; a financial director and her friend who specializes in avoiding paying taxes; a public official dude (ironically the only medical doctor on the premises) who eases red tape; and an accountant.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><b>A professional chemist with a master’s degree in chemistry from MSU who does new drugs registration and takes charge of research and development lives in a 18 square meter prison-cell size studio in a working class apartment complex while the woman who tricks VAT payments wears Gucci and Dolce Gabana and lives in a luxurious apartment for the upper class.</b></i><br /><br />From the onset the only conclusion you would draw is that these people are in money-making business. Drugs are a sideshow to facilitate money transfers to the top dogs’ bank accounts.<br />The whole thing enjoys a high level KGB/FSB protection and as I soon realized are heavily involved in mutually arranged embezzlement schemes, but I wouldn’t wish to go down that particular rabbit hole.<br /><br /><b>In any Western country this outfit wouldn’t last a week crushed by competition from professional pharmaceutical companies.<br /></b><br />Not in Russia. Putin’s law gives privileges to Russian drug companies in drug procurement schemes to state hospitals and pharmacies.<br /><br />If there’s just one Russian company competing against any number of Western drug companies in a tender, <b>the hospital is under legal obligation to purchase from the Russian drug company even if their price is higher and quality is lower, which is always the case as Russia makes far inferior drugs for higher costs due to inefficiencies and backward scientific base.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">In Putin’s system, the bosses of Russian pharma companies can never lose. He ensured that they rake in money while Russian citizens who already live less than Syrians and Africans would be dying in droves from legal poison.<br /><br />Russian pharma hasn’t been investing in R&D to create original drugs because it’s prohibitively expensive and waiting time for ROI is too long hey expect profits next year or the year after the next at the latest — and yet time and again they’re rewarded for it. <b>The less you do the more money you make.</b><br /><br />If in the past, this pharma company purchased APIs (substances) from Europe to make meds, due to sanctions they switched to India while keeping the prices as high. <b>Fake and substandard drugs are pouring in from India to Russia without any notifications to the patients.<br /></b><br />Perhaps the best example of the current state of affairs is that <b>this former boss would buy meds only from Western Europe to treat himself and his family while continuing to sell dangerous crap to locals.</b><br /><br />As his friend and a former owner of drug company once told him, “I was selling Russians the kind of meds that I wouldn’t give my dog.”<br /><br />This confession has stayed singed in my memory for many years. ~ Misha Firer, Quora<br /><br />J Lewis:<br />I suppose that if this is indicative of the general state of Russian industry and therefore, by deduction, the likely trajectory of the wider Russian economy, it's a question of “when” not “if” the Russian economy collapses 1991 Soviet style.<br /><br /><b>A purely extraction economy with failing manufacturing and services is not tenable in the long run.<br /></b><br />Let's just hope that Ukraine is the ultimate beneficiary.<br /><br />Cal Greg:<br />Is everything corrupt in Russia? everything to be scammed? No one cares at all about the country, but of course they say they are patriots, as long as they can scam everyone. It sounds so depressing and corrupt. No wonder there can be no long term change for the best. Everyone is so out of touch with these realities or they just don’t care because they know it can never change. How do you spell hopeless…<br /><br />Daniel Lunsford:<br />“From the onset the only conclusion you would draw is that these people are in money-making business. Drugs are a sideshow to facilitate money transfers to the top dogs’ bank accounts.”<br />That’s actually not much different than the U.S.; just replace “oligarchs” with “corporate board of directors”. Often in the U.S., the BoD elected by the major shareholders have just as little practical background. As one example: ZeniMax Media, whose BoD was composed of a venture capitalist, multiple attorneys, and a retired baseball star. The only guy who actually had background in game development was forced out of the BoD early on…<br /><br />*<br /><b>HOW A VISIT TO AN AMERICAN SUPERMARKET WAS A FACTOR IN THE DISSOLUTION OF THE SOVIET UNION<br /></b><br />~ <b>If Boris Yeltsin, Member of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, hadn’t visited the USA in 1989, the history of the world could have taken a different path.<br /></b><br /><i><b>If Yeltsin hadn’t stopped at an American supermarket on the way to the airport, he might have never become the President of Russia, and never initiate the dissolution of the USSR.</b></i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #800180;"><i><b>That one trip to America — and the fateful spontaneous stop at Randall's, made such an impression on Yeltsin, he became disillusioned with the very idea of communism.</b></i></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><br /></i><br />In September 1989, Boris Yeltsin arrived on his first unofficial visit to the United States.<br />He wasn’t the president of Russia, just one of the top Communist Party officials of the Supreme Council of the USSR — one of 500+ of them.<br /><br />So, he was just like a regular member of State Duma today.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">During his short stay in America, Yeltsin hadn’t been to any grocery stores. So, he decided to check one on his way to the airport, before flying back home.<br /><br /><b>The bus stopped at an ordinary American supermarket in Houston, TX.<br /></b><br /><b>The store shocked Yeltsin. He was flabbergasted. At the age of 58, he never seen anything like this in his life.</b><br /><br />And Yeltsin wasn’t a commoner. He was heading one of strategic federal regions for a decade, before becoming the head of Moscow city. He was even put on the list to become one of the members of the almighty Politburo. <b>He was bona fide member of the Soviet Communist elite. But such abundance of food and goods in a regular store genuinely shocked him.</b><br /><br /><b>Yeltsin kept throwing up his hands in surprise. He said that even members of the Politburo do not have such abundance. Even Gorbachev didn’t, Yeltsin said.</b><br /><br />Later, on the plane, Yeltsin went silent for a long time. He sat with his head in his hands, and the struggle of feelings was clearly visible on his face.<br /><br /><b>Some Soviet people, after returning from western countries back to the USSR, were falling into deep depression.</b> For there was an insoluble psychological conflict between how a person lived his entire life — and how he could have lived if he had been born in another country.<br /><br /><b>When Yeltsin came to his senses, he said bitterly: “What our poor people had been brought to.”</b><br /><br />“All my life I’ve been telling fairy tales, my whole life I’ve been trying to invent things. But everything in the world has already been invented," lamented Yeltsin.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">**<br /><br /><b>This is how Yeltsin's aide described it:</b><br /><br />“When we were already returning to the airport, the devil pushed us to take a look at a typical American supermarket.<br /><br /><b>It was called Randall's Supermarket.</b> From our group, only Boris Nikolaevich and I had never been to this kind of trading establishments.<br /><br />Moreover, this was not a metropolitan, much less a New York store and, according to our standards, a very “ordinary” provincial one. If, of course, Houston can be considered a province.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Getting off the bus, <b>I began to look for a crowd of people and something similar to our queues. However, there was no queue</b> — neither around nor in the store itself.<br /><br />It was a one-story building made of light metal structures. Naturally, none of the service personnel knew about our arrival and therefore there could be no talk of any “showing off”. An ordinary day, an “ordinary” assortment, “ordinary” visitors…<br /><br /><b>I was immediately struck by the abundance of light. And in general, the color scheme of everything was so bright and impressive that it felt like we were descending into the depths of a kaleidoscope.</b><br /><br />The abundance of flowers was also mesmerizing — juicy, vibrant, as if just cut from a flower bed. Moreover, the flowers were not for sale, but as a decorative element.<br /><br />As soon as we entered the supermarket, they called someone from the administration. From somewhere in the belly of the utility rooms appeared a very handsome young man in a snow-white shirt, neatly combed and, of course, smiling. It was the chief administrator. We introduced ourselves and said that we would like to find out about the work of the store.<br /><br />No problem: the administrator invited a young saleswoman to assist us, and she led us through the aisles.<br /><br />The main thing that interested us was the assortment. And in this regard, Yeltsin asked questions of the store employees.<br /><br />The figure they named literally shocked us, and Boris Nikolayevich even asked again: did he understand the translator correctly? And the administrator repeated once again that the range of food products at that time actually amounted to approximately 30 thousand items.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbRDQnT1OxAIXXlicSlSMv_MjO6JnHvGpQ17Slo3IbD66a-djNj4nRhN4A2Wxuw3AfHw47A6qSiEqIkYoZ5OsPjQawk76tVx6LPYw7uWT3nhF9uAIK2ea16TgVQS4NNvlB48eO9CSQYCB0OLlenyn9tI1ia_6rI3KkM6u9yOMmVvB9RPJO3kCWM5FuNeRc/s602/Yeltsin%20onions%20Randalls.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="376" data-original-width="602" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbRDQnT1OxAIXXlicSlSMv_MjO6JnHvGpQ17Slo3IbD66a-djNj4nRhN4A2Wxuw3AfHw47A6qSiEqIkYoZ5OsPjQawk76tVx6LPYw7uWT3nhF9uAIK2ea16TgVQS4NNvlB48eO9CSQYCB0OLlenyn9tI1ia_6rI3KkM6u9yOMmVvB9RPJO3kCWM5FuNeRc/w400-h250/Yeltsin%20onions%20Randalls.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">When we walked along the rows, our eyes didn’t know where to stop. I could guess different things, but what I saw in this supermarket was no less amazing than America itself.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Some of us started counting the types of hams. We lost count.<br /><br />I remembered our sausage shop on Krasnaya Presnya, where back in 1963 you could buy “Brunswick”, “Stolichnaya”, “Tambov”, “Uglich”, “Krakov” and a few other types of sausages. <br /><br /><b>At that time, I thought this [the variety of sausages] was the top of human dreams and that the first signs of communism hatched.</b> To be fair, over the years, the store’s shelves began to empty and now only memories of its bright past remained. <b>I remembered that Soviet store and compared it with this one in Houston, and realized that the abundance to which Khrushchev promised to lead us to had passed us by.</b><br /><br />At that moment (in Houston), all 300 Soviet research institutes and departments whose job was to point to the advantages of socialism over capitalism could be trying to convinced me, but their efforts would be pointless.<br /><br /><b>The American reality, for example this supermarket, looked 100 times more convincing than any Soviet theories.</b> Sure, not by bread alone a man lives... Not by sausage alone, not by cheese alone…<br /><br />By the way, have you seen red, brown, lemon-orange cheese? How many types of cheese do you think we've seen in Houston? What about ham? All this unimaginable delicacy that everyone can try right in the store and decide — is it worth spending dollars on?<br /><br /><b>We couldn’t count the names of sweets and cakes, couldn’t grasp their variety of colors and their appetizing attractiveness with our eyes.<br /></b><br />And although I am trying to convey my impressions, I understand that this is just a pathetic attempt, because the word is powerless before the reality of what that American store could offer.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Occasionally, I glanced at Yeltsin and noticed that it was a difficult test for him. And when a woman with a cart caught up with him, on top of which a little boy was sitting, Boris Nikolaevich, apologizing, began to question her.<br /><br />Does she often go to this store? It turned out, only on Saturdays.<br />Is your family big? 3 people: she, husband and child.<br />What is your family income? The woman explained that she was temporarily not working and lived on her husband’s salary, $3,600 a month.<br /><br />Yeltsin asked how much she usually spends on food? It turned out that this family was spending about $170 on food for a week. From Saturday to Saturday. She still paid rent, insurance…<br /><br /><b>In the vegetable section, we were literally shocked by the quality of the produce.<br /></b><br />A radish the size of a large potato was illuminated by bright light, and water was scattered onto it from small “sprinklers.”<br /><br />Radishes were literally dazzling, and next to them were onions, garlic, eggplants, cauliflower, tomatoes, cucumbers.<br /><br />You want smoked eel — here.<br /><br />Would you like lamprey? Or is your liver accustomed to sturgeon and oysters? Pineapples, bananas…<br /><br />And at the confectionery section, one can could stand for hours: it probably surpasses Hollywood in terms of entertainment. A huge cake representing a hockey arena awaited the customer on a stand. The player figures were made of chocolate. A real work of art, and most importantly — accessible, quite accessible.<br /><br />In general, this was a hypertensive topic. <b>For Boris Nikolaevich and me, visiting the supermarket was a real shock.</b><br /><br />As I am writing this book, my wife today (September 1991) went to the store to buy milk at 7 am, but there were queues. Queues are everywhere: you have to stand for 2 days to buy sugar. And this is here — in Moscow, in the second half of the 20th century, 73 years after the Great Revolution. <b>At the time, when, according to Khrushchev’s calculations, we should all already be living under communism. Or maybe what we had built in the USSR is the true communism?</b><br /><br />At the exit from the American supermarket, the girl sitting at the cash register didn’t not have to count anything. In her hands, she held a small device that resembled a hair dryer, which she quickly ran over the price code on the packages. After this operation, the price appeared on the computer cash register screen, the customer paid and could freely pass through the electronic turnstile. Well, what else could be simpler and smarter than such a system?<br /><br />When we left the supermarket, the administrator gave us a present: a huge plastic bag with the packs of food from this store.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>I fully believe that it was after Houston (after visiting the supermarket), on the plane, that Yeltsin’s last faith in his Bolshevik way of thinking finally collapsed.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><br /></b><br />Perhaps, in those moments of spiritual turmoil, the decision to leave the Communist party and join the struggle for supreme power in Russia irrevocably matured in him.”<br /><br /><b>It was then that Yeltsin realized that all the stories of “international journalists” about American workers who allegedly were dying in hellish poverty and dreamed only about moving to the USSR, all these stories were nothing more than propaganda. Even the party “elites” did not know that.<br /></b><br />Based on the book by Lev Sukhanov (Boris Yeltsin’s assistant), "3 years with Boris Yeltsin."<br /><br />*<br />After his visit to America, Yeltsin managed to become the first ever President of Russia.<br />It is in the status of the president of Russia that Yeltsin negotiated and signed the agreement to dissolve the USSR together with newly elected presidents of Ukraine and Belarus. Just the 3 of them destroyed the state that millions of communists were building for over 70 years. ~ Quora<br /><br />Pat McCormack:<br /><b>I drove across Ukraine and Russia and on to Almaty in the spring of 1997. It was shocking.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><br />Later I worked in Siberia and from there Moscow might have well been Mars.</b><br /><br />Despite the lovely trees in Tashkent the Soviet system failed utterly.<br /><br />Alexander Yeletsky:<br />And 1997 was much better than 1990–92.<br /><br />Giorgio Bellini:<br /><b>The USSR nostalgia we so often read on Quora is exactly the nostalgia of what?<br /></b><br />Elena Gold:<br /><b>Free apartments, guaranteed jobs, no crime, free education, free medical care. Stability. Predictability. Youth of those who still remember the USSR.<br /></b><br />Son of Peace:<br />Some people attach their self-worth to that of their country. The Soviet Union had power and accomplishments in spite of how terrible it could be.<br /><br />Despite all the crimes against humanity, there are those who saw a benefit. The Russian language was once privileged across the Soviet Union. Today Ukrainian, Estonian, Kazakh and most of the others are on the rise.<br /><br />Some might even see this independence as a threat to their pride. <b>Russia is only a shadow of the Soviet Union. She is smaller and weaker. It doesn’t surprise me that such people prefer the past.</b><br /><br />Jay Bazzinotti:<br /><i><b>There is a story of how, in the 1960s, a Russian journalist was finally able to move to the West Berlin Bureau and when he got there and saw the abundance in the grocery store of ordinary Germans he exclaimed, “But WE won the war!” because he realized the Russians had nothing despite winning the war.</b></i><br /><br />Son of Peace:<br />It might sound silly that a simple supermarket took out a superpower. But considering the history I am not sure it could’ve ended any other way.<br /><br />Tom Bellinger:<br /><b>The thing people don’t think about in concrete terms about communism was its promise of utopia, that the poverty and deprivation and totalitarianism was claimed to be temporary, a step on the road to a post-scarcity world where man could live in peace and harmony and nobody would want for anything.</b><br /><br />Oh, sure, Internet kiddos will tell you they never achieved true communism like that’s an actual argument in its favor, but nothing about <b>the generations that grew up under repression and shortages realizing the utopia would never come, realizing this is all there is.<br /></b><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>UKRAINE’S BIRTH RATE AT A RECORD LOW<br /></b><br />~ <b>Birthrates in Ukraine have fallen by 28% in the first half of 2023, compared to the same period prior to the war</b>, marking the most significant drop since Ukraine gained its independence in 1991, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sept. 25.<br /><br />Before the full-scale Russian invasion, <b>Ukraine's birth rate was already among the lowest in Europe. Now, Ukrainian demographers predict it could become the world's lowest</b>. In a worst-case scenario, Ukraine's population could drop to 30 million over the next two decades, down from 43 million before the invasion, says demographics expert Oleksandr Gladun from the Kyiv-based Ptoukha Institute for Demographic Studies.<br /><br /><b>In 2014, following the Russian occupation of Crimea, Ukraine's birth rate started to decline, with annual births dropping by 12%.<br /></b><br /><b>When Russia launched the war in 2022, Ukraine's fertility rate, according to experts, fell to approximately 1.2</b>. This is nearly twice as low as the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman needed to maintain a stable population.<br /><br />Due to the ongoing war, millions of Ukrainian women with children were forced to leave the country, while men aged 18 to 60 were prohibited from leaving. As a result, many couples were physically separated, while others delayed starting families, the report says.<br /><br />In the first half of 2023, there were 96,755 children born in Ukraine. <b>Since 2013, the country's fertility rate has been dropping by approximately 7% per year.</b><br /><br />In early 2023, Ella Libanova, the director of the Ptoukha Institute, predicted that by 2030, Ukraine's population will become one of the oldest in Europe and will be approximately 30-35 million.<br /><br /><a href="https://english.nv.ua/nation/birth-rates-in-ukraine-could-drop-to-world-s-lowest-level-news-50356055.html">https://english.nv.ua/nation/birth-rates-in-ukraine-could-drop-to-world-s-lowest-level-news-50356055.html<br /></a><br />Oriana:<br />Speaking of fertility rates, Chinas’s is 1.09 — or, depending on the source, 1.28. This is still higher than South Korea and Singapore.<br /><br />Replacement rate is 2.1. <br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFOlPcRZcwzhWqUQl04Z_VDcPO2jONfqDz-hqDMpgtCDE7vVrNw8czF2IZiuXGj6KnDcAIIi4Cf7xLI-v6b3G6U2MRhFCuvAC5Qu89xt1sOnieulEuRB12HJJyPR50hjx_HLmdQPP5Z6vqAlgBm-129PGMGtzN7CQb-hNLwNu3AwM98AnV6A1mdWJRJ5gY/s800/conscripts%20buses.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFOlPcRZcwzhWqUQl04Z_VDcPO2jONfqDz-hqDMpgtCDE7vVrNw8czF2IZiuXGj6KnDcAIIi4Cf7xLI-v6b3G6U2MRhFCuvAC5Qu89xt1sOnieulEuRB12HJJyPR50hjx_HLmdQPP5Z6vqAlgBm-129PGMGtzN7CQb-hNLwNu3AwM98AnV6A1mdWJRJ5gY/w400-h266/conscripts%20buses.webp" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Russian conscripts have been getting older</i></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />*<br /><b>THE USE OF HORSES IN WW2<br /></b></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigARwLlHqhYcg1nuhYlZlUs08TbBt4vm0ONWoDAtjc7c6SVA4GioogAsOjOk3Szi8R8bCXZB_PzYUkzG53EKYeCwB6iEsFMZ4UdzDpX67LQ6pucwr6AAnNxTFQMaZ6IchzEL03Vw7xElZbkL6veE3YfcmsbC-QkcoehnAPvt7b8nf8GdXGy8Xb01e_oYg8/s602/horse%20transport%20Germans%20WW2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="602" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigARwLlHqhYcg1nuhYlZlUs08TbBt4vm0ONWoDAtjc7c6SVA4GioogAsOjOk3Szi8R8bCXZB_PzYUkzG53EKYeCwB6iEsFMZ4UdzDpX67LQ6pucwr6AAnNxTFQMaZ6IchzEL03Vw7xElZbkL6veE3YfcmsbC-QkcoehnAPvt7b8nf8GdXGy8Xb01e_oYg8/w400-h290/horse%20transport%20Germans%20WW2.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Oriana:<br /><br />Yes, it really is WW2 — horses weren’t used as extensively as during WW1, but several million horses were indeed used. <br /><br />I imagine the common soldiers loved the horses, and brushing them and taking care of them was probably a wonderful escape from the misery of wartime. Officers may have felt that taking care of a horse was beneath them, and thus deprived themselves of effective therapy.<br /><br />"<b>Many of the soldiers loved their horses very much and did their best to care for them but food was scarce for both people and horses. There were some soldiers that even gave up their blankets so they could put them on their horses to help keep them warm in the cold rainy nights.</b>"<br /><br />Yes, more horses (and donkeys and mules) were used in WW1 (there was still actual horse cavalry at the beginning of the war, but tanks replaced it). <br /><br />"<b>How many horses, donkeys and mules died in WW2? Unlike the 8 million figure for WW1, there is no definitive answer to the question of how many equines died in WW2. Estimates vary between 2-5 million</b>.” (wiki)<br /><br />Horses used in battle — millennia of tradition. But WW1 was pretty much the end of it. WW2 was getting more and more mechanized, but Germans apparently still relied on horses for supplies and some troop transport. <br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Not many people know that the greatest use of horses in any military conflict in history was by the Germans in WWII: 80% of their entire transport was equestrian.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><br /></b><br /><b>German were stunned to see American troops completely motorized. I wonder to what extent it would be accurate to say that WW2 was about oil. </b>Germany had no oil, and thus was motivated to try to conquer the Russian Baku fields in Azerbaijan. <br /><br /><a href="https://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=2486">https://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=2486<br /></a><br /><i>Considering that 600,000 horses were needed to carry supplies in Operation Barbarossa, what issues did Germany have that prevented them from having a fully mechanized army in World War 2? </i><br /><br /><b>Germany actually relied even more heavily on horses than that — at various stages in the war, they used more than one million horses for military logistics.</b> Also, a motorized army — let alone a mechanized one, as the question suggests — is very different from motorized logistics. <b>Even had they replaced the cumulative millions of horses they used with trucks, the German soldiers would still have marched to battle on foot.<br /></b><br /><i><b>The reasons why motorized logistics, let alone a mechanized army were beyond Germany’s reach start in the 1920s and early 1930s.</b><br /></i><br />At the start of the Nazi rearmament scheme in 1934, Nazi Germany had a few assets inherited from the Weimar days. This included the foundation for its military industry and a small, but overtrained army of 100,000 men. It was not so much an army of 100,000 men as much as 100,000 officers, NCOs, and specialists waiting for an army to lead.<br /><br />But <b>despite Germany’s great total industrial output, its economy on the whole was already not nearly as mechanized as the UK, the US, or even France. It had very little military materiel and hardly any reserves of trucks, ammunition, etc.</b><br /><br /><b>Over the course of the war, Germany (2.75 million) and the Soviet Union (3.5 million) together employed more than six million horses. </b><i><b>The logistical role of horses in the Red Army was not as high as it was in the German Army because of Soviet domestic oil reserves and US truck supplies.</b></i><br /><br /><b>Building An Army is Cheap; Using it is Expensive<br /></b><br />While analyses of military production during WWII tend to focus on tanks and planes, planes are only a plurality of military production and tanks are almost cheap. The hundreds of thousands of armored fighting vehicles of WWII represent something like 10–15% of all industrial production.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Germany and the Soviet Union together used more than six million horses throughout the war; the largest land armies in Europe never came close to motorizing their logistics.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"> But even the partial motorization of their logistics, together with motorized Anglo-American logistics meant that motor transport production dwarfed tanks throughout the war. Motor vehicles were in turn dwarfed by ammunition manufacturing.<br /><br /><b><i>Building a model army is easy. Moving the tanks more than a few hundred kilometers from the factories is harder, and supplying an army for prolonged operations is even harder than that.</i><br /></b><br /><b>Spending Too Much Too Fast — Still Not Enough<br /></b><br /><b>If the Nazis wanted to run a balanced budget and build a powerful, well-rounded military on the order of the Imperial Army of 1914, they could not have had it any sooner than 1950. </b>This is obviously incompatible with the promises that got them into office and the basic goals of Nazi ideology, so they did not run a balanced budget nor did they build a well-rounded military.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">They undertook a vast, organized scheme of financial fraud and cut corners so they could preempt the other combatants with an “All guns, no butter” army. <b>On the financial side, Nazi Germany averaged budget deficits of 180% for five years straight</b>. <b>Despite stealing Austria and Czechoslovakia’s gold reserves, Nazi Germany was on the brink of bankruptcy prior to invading Poland.</b><br /><br /></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>Fit for Battle, But Not for War: 1939–1940</b><br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />As for corner-cutting, the Nazis spending the German economy to oblivion only got them so much to show for it. The Heer had priority and got its share of shiny toys, but <b>as of 1939, it was impossible to also adequately provision it with motor transport, rail stock, and deep reserves of ammunition and materiel. The Kriegsmarine, well — the U-boat fleet was still modest, and compared to the Royal Navy,</b> <b>the US Navy, or even Italy’s Regia Marina.</b> The surface fleet was a punchline.<br /><br />Building a large army in such a time was only possible thanks to Hans von Seeckt and the army he built for Weimar Germany, which went on to be the core of Hitler’s army. <b>The speed of the German buildup meant that quite a few divisions were hastily trained, unused to operating together, and consisted of middle-aged men.</b><br /><br />However, the excellent quality of the NCO and junior officer corps meant even these units had reasonable combat value. Likewise, the best units of the Heer were undoubtedly excellent and well-led at all levels.<b> These men could work little miracles on the battlefield, which their skilled commanders could often turn into great operational successes. But no matter how skilled they might be as soldiers, </b></span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>their logistical foundation was remarkably shaky.</b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><br /></b><br /><b>Brilliant Soldiers Still Need Ammo<br /></b><br /><b>Even the brief invasion of Poland cost Germany almost 20% of its artillery ammunition stocks</b>, despite how relatively little heavy fighting occurred. Had more cautious, realistic figures in the Polish government and military prevailed in Poland’s defensive planning, the German logistical system may have collapsed during the invasion of Poland </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>—</b></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> especially since Polish resistance lasting longer would have bought time for the planned French September offensive into the Saarland.<br /><br />Likewise, <b>Germany was only able to defeat France with little heavy fighting because the French Commander-in-Chief gambled on committing all of France’s reserves to a mobile battle in Belgium.</b> This was not necessarily a stupid decision, but was much more risky than the situation would have recommended.<br /><br />While he might not have been able to fully know that Germany was at the apex of its strength and would only weaken without new conquests, he would have known that the French and British had effectively only just begun their mobilizations and would be much stronger as time went by. Yet, he did not appreciate that France’s mission was first and foremost to survive the danger of the summer of 1940 so that Germany could be outproduced to oblivion in the spring of 1941.<br /><br /><b>Had his deputy, the more sensibly cautious and acute Alphonse Georges been in command, the French would have occupied safer dispositions and kept a healthy strategic reserve. As a consequence, the rapid French collapse would have been impossible and the Heer [army]would have ultimately exhausted itself.</b><br /><br />This is not my own armchair generalship, but the opinion of the German generals who planned the operation themselves. The victory condition for the Manstein Plan was nothing more or less than the total, premature commitment of France’s strategic reserve.<br /><br /><b>Why Germany Could Never Motorize Its Logistics<br /></b><br />Germany’s logistics and motorization efforts were hampered by <b>chronic shortages of oil</b>, to be sure. But the most fundamental truth is that <b>Nazi Germany’s economy was utterly inadequate to provide the Wehrmacht with what it needed to win a long war</b>. Germany would have been helped quite a lot if it had infinite oil, but its air and naval forces would remain woefully inadequate, the vehicles to fully motorize its logistics could never be built, and the soldiers would still labor under vast logistical difficulty in either North Africa or the Caucasus.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpBzIbmxw5ZkwRuAkgthIXe2OUuMN5fh-gHhyqX7Q7RmojMzt6_UDFiEIEENPf1FNBXLYO5vfjdgOrZLTUMgtPjALqugonqLbXoA5-Pd0bFi1bcsCQiiGAQllYhTzyKFXJt9vEkuMjcwkYRWf1WtSl9Op6H8IMmu0yIqE-RTMGc0ISfszICkLGYSylZ8UN/s788/German%20soldier%20and%20his%20horse%201941.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="788" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpBzIbmxw5ZkwRuAkgthIXe2OUuMN5fh-gHhyqX7Q7RmojMzt6_UDFiEIEENPf1FNBXLYO5vfjdgOrZLTUMgtPjALqugonqLbXoA5-Pd0bFi1bcsCQiiGAQllYhTzyKFXJt9vEkuMjcwkYRWf1WtSl9Op6H8IMmu0yIqE-RTMGc0ISfszICkLGYSylZ8UN/w400-h270/German%20soldier%20and%20his%20horse%201941.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>German soldier and his horse in Russia, 1941. In two months, December 1941 and January 1942, the German Army on the Eastern Front lost 179,000 horses.<br /></i><br />The whole war was strategically unsound from the beginning and relied on operational miracles to compensate. It reminds one of a famous Sun Tzu maxim:<br />Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.<br /><br />When Hitler encountered a nail, his only hammer was the mass, skill, and aggression of the Heer and its ability to execute quick, decisive, war-winning battles.<br /><br />That this could not overcome the distances and logistical trials of Russia and North Africa is only slightly less obvious than the fact that it could not overcome the waters of the English Channel.</span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Not only were they incapable of the impossible feats that defeating the USSR demanded, but attrition would put all of Han von Seeckt’s core of miracle men in the grave by 1943.<br /><br />~ Robert Hansen, Quora</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #20124d;">Mary:<br />Horses in WWII — WOW... That really surprised me.<br /></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />Oriana:<br />An American reaction — by now also a pretty universal one in the developed world. But during WW2, only the US, the birthplace of the automobile, had a fully mechanized army. <br /><br />But America had its own romance with the horse — the cowboy and his faithful steed. <br /><br />Benedict Miller:<br />Germany had many problems that prevented it such as a shortage of oil, a shortage of rubber, the allies conducting a bombing campaign to destroy synthetic fuel production and the production of ball bearings… and that is just the things that come to mind immediately. If you couple those things with the fact that as you pointed out <b>Germany was busy trying to produce weapons and ammunition more than trucks and it also begins to show other bottle necks in the quest to mechanize/motorize the army itself since to support that army they also needed a more robust logistical system</b> as you mentioned… because while it is somewhat true that horses could live off the land to some degree, trucks cannot.<br /><br />Therefore, until the logistical apparatus that supported the army could be robust enough to supply the needs of the military as it stood (without the additional fuel and parts requirements) <b>it certainly couldn’t supply the needs of a mechanized army which would require so much more of everything than Germany had available. Germany just didn’t have enough time, oil, fuel, factories to produce the things they needed, manpower, production capacity to do it in the time they had, ball bearings, etc. </b><br /><br /><b>For Germany to succeed, the same as Japan, relied on a series of very quick victories that so demoralized and weakened its enemies that they simply withdrew or capitulated.</b> <b>If that strategy failed, then it was merely a matter of time until Germany lost </b>and the degree to which its logistical support could improve was more or less hampered once several things occurred (the entrance of the US into the war which allowed for more bombing campaigns, the invasion of the USSR which closed off transport of resources from Japan to Germany through the USSR, the inability to force Britain to exit the war, failure to dominate the shipping routes between the US and Britain, etc).<br /><br />Sebastian Mehler:<br />I read that<b> Hitler was often envious of Imperial Germanys army of 1914 and that many senior officers expressed the opinion that the imperial army of 1914 was in a much better shape than the Wehrmacht of 1939 — which of course infuriated Hitler.<br /></b><br />Robert Hansen:<br /><b>It’s quite remarkable to think that all the powers were more or less shells of their former selves in the run-up to WWII — but that Germany was the one positioned and motivated to devour the power vacuum created in Central and Southeastern Europe.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">When the two world wars are taken together, Germany “won” the first insofar as shattering the Entente and weakening its enemies far more than it was itself weakened. Even the loss of the navy and colonies was an imposed gift of sorts — the Nazis couldn’t have had nearly the army they did if they were paying for maintaining those, as well.<br /><br />Albert Hall:<br />One of Germany’s problems was that they did not have the necessary logistics, being mainly dependent on the HORSE in the 3rd Echelon supply chains.<br /><br />Robert Hansen:<br /><b>The Depression-era tariffs are a great tragedy for how they disproportionately hurt Japan and Germany, being nations that lacked private access to vital resources.</b> Germany and Japan’s crimes cannot be “blamed” on tariffs, of course — they made their own decisions.<br /><br />But it was one of many factors preventing them from being integrated into/creating the modern, global economic system until they were crushed militarily and forced to prosper peacefully.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The failure of Yeltsin-era Moscow and Washington to overcome the same sort of problems is a large part of how we got so much misery in the Caucasus over the past 30 years, as well as the rise of Putin and his criminal war in Ukraine.<br /><br />Douglas Williams:<br />Talk about “biting off more than you can chew.” Strategically, that is.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b>The real secret of Nazi Germany’s initial success lay in the battlefield miracles individual commanders like Rommel, Hoth, Guderian, and von Rundstedt were able to create, given the logistics they had to work with.</b></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz3Bzt2PbrjBSDZfByMnFvKBt_C6EjXpFiAtZp8PCmgmfRWbIV3dbmTKYXnM9RskaoBBn6m95xRaGJ9u8pwO13d7j-CMFZWgxrxaguo2crcm5wXoZyylpjb6fpnF2gzD7fd334l9YhiaSOvA_qXFA27fhnAOI-7nHKSNaJq76NowOSj2rLaw-LJcmDrA2_/s1605/General%20Heinz%20Guderian.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1605" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz3Bzt2PbrjBSDZfByMnFvKBt_C6EjXpFiAtZp8PCmgmfRWbIV3dbmTKYXnM9RskaoBBn6m95xRaGJ9u8pwO13d7j-CMFZWgxrxaguo2crcm5wXoZyylpjb6fpnF2gzD7fd334l9YhiaSOvA_qXFA27fhnAOI-7nHKSNaJq76NowOSj2rLaw-LJcmDrA2_/w299-h400/General%20Heinz%20Guderian.jpg" width="299" /></a></b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>General Heinz Guderian</i><br /><b> </b><br />But winning battles was all that concerned Adolf Hitler—not whether his troops had dry socks or canned beef!<br /><br />Cliff Sweeting:<br />That’s a pretty sound analysis. <b>Germany was never going to win a war of attrition. Churchill understood this in 1939. All he had to do was get the Americans on board.<br /></b><br /><br />*<br /><b>THE PROFOUND EFFECTS OF AMERICANS LIVING LONGER LIVES<br /></b><br />Despite a recent dip in life expectancy, <b>more Americans than ever are living into their 90s.</b> How they spend their money and time is altering the workplace, real estate, philanthropy, and more.<br /><br />Thanks to lifestyle changes and the miracles of modern medicine and science, the number of people living into their 90s and beyond is growing every year, even with a slight dip in life expectancies due to the pandemic. Today, more than one third of all Americans are over 50. Every day 10,000 Americans are turning 65 and <b>by 2030, one in five of us will be 65 or over</b>, including the first Gen Xers. The 50-plus age group has already begun to reject the traditional retirement script of the previous generation, and in doing so are reimagining work and life choices that will pave the way for new kinds of lifecycles.<br /><br />The question is: <b>how will we use this incredible gift of time in a meaningful and productive way?</b></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Some of us are opting out of our careers early, as we are seeing with the Great Resignation. <b>The pandemic has led to an uptick in the number of retired Americans</b>, according to a Pew study, fueled in part by rising household wealth, a result of strengthening home values and historic stock market gains. Others are staying in their jobs beyond age 65, out of desire or financial need, while demanding changes to accommodate schedules and work rhythms that suit them. They are beginning to understand the leverage they have as companies scramble to fill a resulting talent vacuum from those leaving.<br /><br />Yet, according to a PWC study, only eight percent of corporations include age as a component of their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies, which affects everyone regardless of gender, race, or religious beliefs and needs to change for all of us. <b>A study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that at age 60, most people reach the pinnacle of their potential, and then ride that wave into their 80s.</b><br /><br />Some “Reimagineers,” as I call them, are refiring into second careers, like Randy Boyd, a former businessman who is now the president of the University of Tennessee, a job that he stepped into at 60 (with only a bachelor’s degree) or Stephanie Young, who became a medical doctor in her early 60s after a long career as a book editor. According to a 2016 Kauffman Foundation study, the fast-growing cohort of entrepreneurs are people aged 55 to 64 years old, who account for 25 percent of total entrepreneurs (vs. less than 15 percent in 1996).<br /><br /><b>Boomers continue to be fit and active in ways that will push past the boundaries of how our bodies can perform as we live longer. </b>When I ran the Toronto marathon in 2011, I watched in awe as Fauja Singh crossed the finish line at age 100—the oldest person to ever do so. At 68, I’m still running marathons, skiing, and hiking mountains and hope to do so for many more years, as a role model for those who come after me.<br /><br />We are also defying the marketing belief that people over 50 are brand loyal and locked into our younger-years preferences. Just ask any Tesla dealer who their primary customer is.<br /><br /><b>Often ignored by marketers, older Americans have $15 trillion in spending power,</b> which represents nearly double digits growth from 2010, according to the Global Coalition on Aging. To disregard this group is to miss out on a generation of vibrant and dynamic spenders who are offended by the outdated images of older consumers walking into the sunset in most advertising and marketing messages. We’ll force a reckoning on this front, too, demanding to be portrayed as active, tech-savvy and curious.<br /><br /><b>Another market we are upending: housing. More of us are choosing to move to inter-generational neighborhoods, as opposed to senior living communities</b>. We don’t want to move to Florida, we want to age at home. We don’t want to stay alive at all costs and will pioneer new ways of living that generations after us will refine, as they have with other trends that we have started.<br /><br />It has been much reported that <b>over the next 20 years, the Boomers will deliver the largest transfer of generational wealth in the history of the world, an estimated $60 to $70 trillion dollars in assets that will either be accessed by them or passed on to the next generations.<br /></b><br />Perhaps this is how we can make the biggest statement of our generational legacy.<br /><br />For those of us who are financially fortunate, we can make a massive impact on the philanthropy world, addressing climate change, social justice, mental health, and more. We have the opportunity to create social impact by funding new initiatives that drive meaningful change, bringing us full circle to our earlier days as activists in the 60s and 70s.<br /><br />For those of us who are financially fortunate,<b> we can make a massive impact on the philanthropy world, addressing climate change, social justice, mental health, and more</b>. We have the opportunity to create social impact by funding new initiatives that drive meaningful change, bringing us full circle to our earlier days as activists in the 60s and 70s.<br /><br />Yup, we boomers are at it again. This time, however, it will be how we blow up what we are supposed to do as we live longer and construct new ways of living our lives that will lead to more possibilities for us and the next generations.<br /><br /><a href="https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-profound-effect-of-americans-living-longer-lives?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us">https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-profound-effect-of-americans-living-longer-lives?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us</a></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />*<br /><b>“WHAT? TWO THOUSAND YEARS AND NO NEW GODS?”<br /></b><br />Collective imagination, collective psyche. Joseph Campbell was often asked why myth-making has ceased (and let’s not forget Nietzsche’s pretend outrage: “What? 2,000 years, and no new gods?”) Campbell would point to movies like Star Wars as an example of modern myth-making, but he also admitted that in the sense of <b>myths becoming a religion, those times seem to over. The conditions aren't right for it</b> (though certainly new cults are born — they just don't seem to last very long). <b>I suspect the main condition for “sacred” myth making is that the culture has to be pre-scientific, and better yet, pre-literate.<br /></b><br />In addition, perhaps Julian Jaynes is right, and people’s mentality needs to be such that they experience their thoughts as external voices — or at least enough of them do, becoming revered as prophets, with others willing to be guided by the prophets’ hallucinations. But once we “owned” our thoughts and dreams, we became our own gods. Dawkins said about Jaynes: “It is one of those [theories] that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between! Probably the former, but I'm hedging my bets.”<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZBFVEr_qYoXNWnxK4qN7U9K0xqMj_0C5Sc-huMRWFBOfrqLUmzKvkLlIRpH4z7gLY8poQdB-Tca-xkoeCXzEWlYB0yI-FYQUnqIbvraqWpveuZGGJVvXMREzpZRgLc_uHdhs4mY_IEKMfjk08mINIHQFoN-Hf_L9HNkZxFoJF9gvYJmzDmj8LXtG_4ykw/s646/joseph%20campbell%20gods%20imagination.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="646" data-original-width="440" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZBFVEr_qYoXNWnxK4qN7U9K0xqMj_0C5Sc-huMRWFBOfrqLUmzKvkLlIRpH4z7gLY8poQdB-Tca-xkoeCXzEWlYB0yI-FYQUnqIbvraqWpveuZGGJVvXMREzpZRgLc_uHdhs4mY_IEKMfjk08mINIHQFoN-Hf_L9HNkZxFoJF9gvYJmzDmj8LXtG_4ykw/w273-h400/joseph%20campbell%20gods%20imagination.jpg" width="273" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />*<br /><b>THE MADONNA OF TENDERNESS<br /></b><br />Painted around 1130 in Constantinople, now in Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery, The Madonna of Vladimir is also known as "Our Lady of Tenderness.” It is an example of a type of icon known as t<b>he Eleusa — a depiction of the Virgin Mary in icons in which the Christ Child is nestled against her cheek. In the Western Church the type is often known as the Virgin of Tenderness.<br /></b><br />The root of “Eleusa” reminds me of the part of the Catholic mass known as “Kyrie.” It’s very simple. The priest intones: “Kyrie eleison” — Lord, have mercy — and the response is Christe eleison — Christ have mercy. This is repeated in a special pattern. Perhaps because of the simplicity, this was my favorite part of the liturgy. Now I’m taken aback by the idea that life must have been pretty miserable for the faithful to be constantly begging for mercy. <br /><br />What especially delighted me was that we were suddenly using Greek (I loved languages). </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipjaAymKUNahXnhQtv5thWUdlPNMaiJ5ctF0vDfstSYsLvXPkp-oT1sss95ySLTSs0XzluV1gNW7Bevy1Ja3Gqv5e0LP0EX_J_VwNuUqeZeucwV-ZoCxoA7R1gxLRdNXtZhNI3sQpyPeTlKDx1cwOEtUDA14cYoXw2CfxEoOFxxPpDDnrS7PZhHpe9gjU9/s967/madonna%20of%20tenderness%20(of%20Vladimir).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="967" data-original-width="750" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipjaAymKUNahXnhQtv5thWUdlPNMaiJ5ctF0vDfstSYsLvXPkp-oT1sss95ySLTSs0XzluV1gNW7Bevy1Ja3Gqv5e0LP0EX_J_VwNuUqeZeucwV-ZoCxoA7R1gxLRdNXtZhNI3sQpyPeTlKDx1cwOEtUDA14cYoXw2CfxEoOFxxPpDDnrS7PZhHpe9gjU9/w310-h400/madonna%20of%20tenderness%20(of%20Vladimir).jpg" width="310" /></a></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>THE HAPPY MADONNA<br /></b><br />Commenting on the Madonna of Tenderness, a friend said that Mary looks unhappy. I replied that Christianity is not a happy religion, with a suffering god (as opposed to the happy Buddha — some statues show him as fat and laughing).<br /><br />Still, I tried to find a happy Madonna, and — success! She's in Toledo, Spain. She is officially called the SMILING MADONNA. Some say her smile looks like the archaic smile of early Greek statues.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-tc21WCXvTNYd_nYxSkMK7JtTmDfEN3nR7NlmljgK-CsvauDDpaII39i24syJqrCBxHrbg-yRLTX2lzR0j_prWEhbDqzh-aXj-jyI5y7IfHh2iI9JKik4P5ex2ZcY_pybx1w-XmjyZwrjct89s3rwemaAcBeFQg06n58CXRVFK0DE_MreMvbhhJxfc05Y/s640/smiling%20madonna%20toledo%20spain.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="427" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-tc21WCXvTNYd_nYxSkMK7JtTmDfEN3nR7NlmljgK-CsvauDDpaII39i24syJqrCBxHrbg-yRLTX2lzR0j_prWEhbDqzh-aXj-jyI5y7IfHh2iI9JKik4P5ex2ZcY_pybx1w-XmjyZwrjct89s3rwemaAcBeFQg06n58CXRVFK0DE_MreMvbhhJxfc05Y/w268-h400/smiling%20madonna%20toledo%20spain.jpg" width="268" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">*<br /><b>WHY DEVOUT CHRISTIANS SUPPORT TRUMP<br /></b><br />~ I live in a society (Australia) where religion is not a common topic of conversation, so I was initially perplexed that a man with Donald Trump’s apparent character flaws could be elected as President of the United States with considerable support from strongly religious constituents. I now find that psychology research has shown that these characteristics may be typical of the strongly religious members of society (although this may not be true of moderately religious constituents). In other words, <b>apart from religiousness, Trump seems more typical of many devoutly religious people than they would care to admit.<br /></b><br />David M. Wulff reports, in Psychology of Religion 2nd ed., 1997):<br />More than a half century ago, social scientists began exploring the relationship of religiousness to a variety of moral and humanitarian concerns. What they uncovered was disturbing, especially to those who were religious themselves. Abraham Franzblau (1934), for example, found <b>a negative relation between acceptance of religious beliefs and all three of his measures of honesty. Furthermore, religious belief bore no relation to his test of character</b> …<br /><br />Hirschi and Stark (1969) discovered that children who attended church regularly were no less likely to commit illegal acts, according to their own estimations, and Ronald Smith, Gregory Wheeler, and Edward Diener (1975), in a quasi-experimental situation found that <b>religious college students—including a group of Jesus people—were no less likely to cheat on a multiple-choice test and no more likely to volunteer to help mentally retarded children than atheists and other "nonreligious" persons.</b> The religious subjects in Russell Middleton and Snell Putney's (1962) investigation even reported a higher frequency of cheating on examinations than did the skeptics.<br /><br />Rokeach (1969) found his </span><span style="color: #800180;"><b>religious subjects to be preoccupied with personal salvation and relatively indifferent to social inequality and injustice.<br /></b></span><span style="color: #351c75;"><br />There you have it. According to this research, devout Christians are not as concerned with “Christian values” as they would like us to believe. ~ Dick Harfield, Quora<br /><br />Lee Coppack:<br />There seems to be a strong element of credulousness among religious fundamentalists and, in the US, Trump supporters and the far right. This seems to circumvent the negative credibility of the object of their beliefs It would be interesting to know if there are particular areas of the brain involved.<br /><br />Laura Streeter:<br /><i><b>Trump is similar to the televangelist pastors his followers see on TV and his rallies are almost interchangeable with the mega church gatherings that his devotees attend every Sunday.</b></i> It’s all an enormous spectacle with Trump standing in the center of his stage soaking up the adulation of his cult followers like he’s a giant narcissistic orange sponge. He stirs up their racism, fear of immigrants, vengeance against gay people, or anyone else they are uncomfortable with or hate. And because his followers have no critical thinking skills, he has become their god-like authority and they figure it gives them permission to attack others.<br /><br />In 2021, a year after he left office, presidential historians across the board from conservative to liberal ranked him 4th from the bottom of all US presidents. This was before the 91 criminal charges against him. If he is convicted of any one of these charges he will most likely be ranked as the worst president in US history. ~ Quora<br /><br />*<br />*<br /><b>NEURONAL SCAFFOLDING PLAYS A SURPRISING ROLE IN CHRONIC PAIN<br /></b><br />~ Neuroscientists, being interested in how brains work, naturally focus on neurons, the cells that can convey elements of sense and thought to each other via electrical impulses. But equally worthy of study is a substance that’s between them —<b> a viscous coating on the outside of these neurons. Roughly equivalent to the cartilage in our noses and joints, the stuff clings like a fishing net to some of our neurons, inspiring the name perineuronal nets (PNNs)</b>. <i><b>They’re composed of long chains of sugar molecules attached to a protein scaffolding, and they hold neurons in place, preventing them from sprouting and making new connections.</b></i><br /><br />Given this ability, this little-known neural coating provides answers to some of the most puzzling questions about the brain: <b>Why do young brains absorb new information so easily? Why are the fearful memories that accompany post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) so difficult to forget? Why is it so hard to stop drinking after becoming dependent on alcohol? </b>And according to new research from the neuroscientist Arkady Khoutorsky and his colleagues at McGill University, we now know that <b>PNNs also explain why pain can develop and persist so long after a nerve injury.</b><br /><br />Neural plasticity is the ability of neural networks to change in response to experiences in life or to repair themselves after brain injury. <b>Such opportunities for effortless change are known as critical periods when they occur early in life.</b> Consider how easily babies pick up language, but how difficult it is to learn a foreign language as an adult. In a way, this is what we’d want: <b>After the intricate neural networks that allow us to understand our native language are formed, it’s important for them to be locked down, so the networks remain relatively undisturbed for the rest of our lives.<br /></b><br />This means that <b>after a critical period, neural networks become resistant to change, and PNNs are a major reason why. They form over neurons and lock neural network wiring in place at the end of the critical period. This happens most often between the ages of 2 and 8, but PNNs also form on neurons in adulthood in association with behaviors that are hard to break, or in the formation of long-term memories.</b> If we could delay the closure of critical periods, or somehow reopen them later in life, this would restore youthful neural plasticity, promote recovery from injury and undo difficult neurological disorders that are resistant to change.<br /><br />Recent research shows that this can indeed be done, simply by manipulating PNNs. For example, keeping an animal in complete darkness slows the development of PNNs on vision neurons, keeping open the critical period for neural plasticity to correct vision problems much longer. Chemical agents and genetic manipulation can also degrade PNNs and reopen critical periods, and researchers have done this to make mice forget memories that caused them PTSD (in their case, memories of an electric shock administered right after they heard a tone).<br /><br /><b>It’s also possible to stimulate the growth of PNNs. This happens when someone drinks alcohol to excess, which results in the formation of these nets on neurons involved in addiction. The coating is believed to protect neurons from the chemical toxicity of the alcohol, but it also locks in the thought process that triggers an overpowering urge to drink.<br /></b></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi20txL0rJizSHC7dFpjySNi4pOmT7V_3bBKK2C_7ATXzYasPlgwPgyHuu9f87TGPvAP4q43PrG0to0pjHkMsMeDL36JdimiMMPO2eYfh8j8P-1mog10kPEakMLfiKi0W7BhA4YqMuJicNmVlnd_urX9il0tMDhdSZUn0V04bCbKpBEpqCGgqQWepaXLzge/s1120/PERINEURONAL%20NETS.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="936" data-original-width="1120" height="334" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi20txL0rJizSHC7dFpjySNi4pOmT7V_3bBKK2C_7ATXzYasPlgwPgyHuu9f87TGPvAP4q43PrG0to0pjHkMsMeDL36JdimiMMPO2eYfh8j8P-1mog10kPEakMLfiKi0W7BhA4YqMuJicNmVlnd_urX9il0tMDhdSZUn0V04bCbKpBEpqCGgqQWepaXLzge/w400-h334/PERINEURONAL%20NETS.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i>Perineuronal nets (in red) surround neurons in a mouse brain (with nuclei stained blue). New research shows similar nets in the spinal cord also help regulate how a brain perceives pain.<br /></i><br />While neuroscientists have learned about these aspects of PNNs over the past few decades, <b><br />the influence of PNNs on chronic pain was an unexpected recent discovery.</b> This work, which further extends the nets’ influence beyond critical periods, not only improves our understanding of the basic science of pain, but also gives us a better picture of PNNs themselves.<br /><br /><b>Chronic pain, which persists long after an injury, reflects a change in neuronal circuitry that can be difficult to overcome. When something hurts, our whole body gets involved</b>. <b>Specialized pain neurons throughout the body transmit neural impulses into the spinal cord, where they are relayed to the brain. This means the spinal cord plays a major role in our sense of pain; indeed, doctors often manage the pain of childbirth by administering an epidural, which involves injecting anesthetics into the space surrounding the lumbar spinal cord, blocking neural impulses from reaching the brain.<br /></b><br />Now imagine if instead of suppressing neural transmission at this point, a nerve injury made those neurons hypersensitive. Even a gentle touch in the affected area would cause a barrage of neuronal impulses to travel up the spinal cord, registering as intense pain. <b>Previous research identified several mechanisms that can cause such hypersensitization, but no one expected PNNs to be involved.</b><br /><br />A few years ago, however, Khoutorsky saw a paper reporting that <b>PNNs were coating certain small neurons in a brain region where pain information is transmitted. These “inhibitory interneurons” form synapses on the pain neurons, suppressing their ability to transmit pain signals. </b>Khoutorsky wondered if PNNs might be doing something similar at the critical pain relay point inside the spinal cord, and he asked his graduate student Shannon Tansley to look into it. “At that time nothing was known,” Khoutorsky said.<br /><br />Tansley did indeed find that <b>PNNs were encasing certain neurons in the spinal cord where it relays pain signals to the brain. The neurons have long axons (the “tail” that sends signals to the next cell in line) that point up the spinal cord to the brain. They also have a set of inhibitory interneurons attached to them through small holes in the PNN, and the inhibitory neurons can squelch the firing of the long projecting neurons, shrinking the signal reaching the brain and blunting the sensation of pain.</b> Tansley discovered, to her surprise, that <b>only these inhibitory neurons in the spinal cord relay point were coated with PNNs.</b><br /><br />This finding inspired Khoutorsky’s team to undertake experiments on laboratory mice to determine if these nets were somehow involved in chronic pain after a peripheral nerve injury. They cut branches of a mouse’s hind leg nerve, known as the sciatic, while it was under general anesthesia. This mimics sciatic injuries in people, which are known to cause persistent pain. Days later, Khoutorsky’s team measured the mouse’s pain threshold with non-harmful tests, such as timing how quickly it recoiled from a warmed surface. As expected, t<b>he team saw the mouse display sharply increased pain sensitivity — but they also noticed that the PNNs around the projecting neurons had dissolved.</b> Just as the brain’s changes during critical periods affects PNNs, the abrupt changes after nerve injury in the mouse had modified the PNNs in its spinal cord’s pain circuit.<br /><br />The team then figured out what was causing the nets’ destruction: microglia, the brain and spinal cord cells that initiate repairs after disease and injury. To test the connection between microglia and pain, the team turned to mice with virtually no microglia (made possible with genetic engineering) and performed the same operation. In these mice, the PNNs remained intact after the sciatic nerve surgery and, remarkably, the mice did not become hypersensitive to painful stimuli. To confirm the connection, the team used various means to dissolve the nets, which raised the mice’s sensitivity to pain.<br /><br />This proved that the <b>PNNs were directly suppressing pain sensitivity</b>. By measuring synaptic transmission with electrodes, Khoutorsky’s team even found out how it works. Degrading the PNNs caused a chain reaction that resulted in increased signaling from the projecting neurons that send pain signals to the brain: When the microglia responding to the nerve injury dissolved the PNNs, this weakened the influence of the inhibitory neurons that normally dampen the firing of the brain-projection neurons. <b>Losing their inhibitory brakes meant runaway neural firing and intense pain.</b><br /><br />Microglia release many substances that cause pain neurons to become hypersensitive after nerve injury, but their unexpected action on PNNs has a major advantage: specificity. “Usually what perineuronal nets do is they lock plasticity, and they also protect cells,” Khoutorsky said. “So why are these nets only around these pain relay neurons, and not around other cell types [nearby]?” He suspects that it’s because <b>this pain relay point in the spinal cord is so important that these neurons and their connections need extra protection so that their control of pain transmission is strong and reliable</b>. Only something as dramatic as a neural injury can disrupt that stability.<br /><br />“The beauty of this mechanism is that it is selective for specific cell types,” Khoutorsky said. The substances microglia release to increase neural firing and cause pain after neural injury affect all types of cells in the vicinity, but the <b>PNNs encase only these neurons precisely at the critical relay point in the spinal cord.</b><br /><br />Research is underway to better understand this new mechanism of chronic pain.<b> If researchers can develop methods to rebuild PNNs on these neurons after injury, it could provide a new treatment for chronic pain — an urgent need, considering that opiates, the current solution, lose their potency over time and can become addictive or result in a fatal overdose.<br /></b><br />What goes on inside neurons is fascinating and important to understand, but neural networks are formed by individual neurons linked together, and here it is the neglected cartilaginous cement in the space between them that is vital.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/neuronal-scaffolding-plays-unexpected-role-in-chronic-pain-20220728/">https://www.quantamagazine.org/neuronal-scaffolding-plays-unexpected-role-in-chronic-pain-20220728/</a><br /><br /><br />*<br /><b>BEING A VEGETARIAN MAY BE PARTLY IN YOUR GENES<br /></b><br />~ From Impossible Burger to "Meatless Mondays," going meat-free is certainly in vogue. But a person's genetic makeup plays a role in determining whether they can stick to a strict vegetarian diet, a new Northwestern Medicine study has found.<br /><br />The findings open the door to further studies that could have important implications regarding dietary recommendations and the production of meat substitutes.<br /><br />"Are all humans capable of subsisting long term on a strict vegetarian diet? This is a question that has not been seriously studied,"said corresponding study author Dr. Nabeel Yaseen, professor emeritus of pathology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.<br /><br />A large proportion (about 48 to 64%) of self-identified "vegetarians" report eating fish, poultry and/or red meat, which Yaseen said suggests environmental or biological constraints override the desire to adhere to a vegetarian diet.<br /><br />"It seems there are more people who would like to be vegetarian than actually are, and we think it's because there is something hard-wired here that people may be missing.”<br /><br /><b>Several genes involved in lipid metabolism, brain function<br /></b><br />To determine whether genetics contribute to one's ability to adhere to a vegetarian diet, the scientists compared UK Biobank genetic data from 5,324 strict vegetarians (consuming no fish, poultry or red meat) to 329,455 controls. All study participants were white Caucasian to attain a homogeneous sample and avoid confounding by ethnicity.<br /><br /><b>The study identified three genes that are significantly associated with vegetarianism and another 31 genes that are potentially associated. Several of these genes, including two of the top three (NPC1 and RMC1), are involved in lipid (fat) metabolism and/or brain function</b>, the study found.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">"One area in which plant products differ from meat is complex lipids," Yaseen said. "My speculation is t<b>here may be lipid component(s) present in meat that some people need. And maybe people whose genetics favor vegetarianism are able to synthesize these components endogenously.</b> However, at this time, this is mere speculation and much more work needs to be done to understand the physiology of vegetarianism.”<br /><br />The study will be published Oct. 4 in the journal PLOS ONE. It is the first fully peer-reviewed and indexed study to look at the association between genetics and strict vegetarianism.<br /><br /><b>Why do most people eat meat?</b><br /><br />Religious and moral considerations have been major motivations behind adopting a vegetarian diet, and recent research has provided evidence for its health benefits. And although vegetarianism is increasing in popularity, <b>vegetarians remain a small minority of people worldwide</b>. For example, <b>in the U.S., vegetarians comprise approximately 3 to 4% of the population. In the U.K., 2.3% of adults and 1.9% of children are vegetarian.<br /></b><br />This raises the question of why most people still prefer to eat meat products. <b>The driving factor for food and drink preference is not just taste, but also how an individual's body metabolizes it</b>, Yaseen said. For example, when trying alcohol or coffee for the first time, most people would not find them pleasurable, but over time, one develops a taste because of how alcohol or caffeine makes them feel.<br /><br />"I think with meat, there's something similar," Yaseen said. "Perhaps you have a certain component -- I'm speculating a lipid component -- that makes you need it and crave it."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">If genetics influence whether someone chooses to be a vegetarian, what does that mean for those who don't eat meat for religious or moral reasons?<br /><br /><b>"While religious and moral considerations certainly play a major role in the motivation to adopt a vegetarian diet, our data suggest that the ability to adhere to such a diet is constrained by genetics,"</b> Yaseen said. "We hope that future studies will lead to a better understanding of the physiological differences between vegetarians and non-vegetarians, thus enabling us to provide personalized dietary recommendations and to produce better meat substitutes.”<br /><br /><a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/10/231004150529.htm">https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/10/231004150529.htm<br /></a><br />Oriana:<br /><br />One interesting statistic about vegetarianism is that “In the majority of the Western world, female vegetarians seem to outnumber male by about 2 to 1.” (Quora)<br /><br />*<br /><b>MOTHER’S LONGEVITY PREDICTS LONGEVITY IN DAUGHTERS<br /></b><br /><b>The mother’s life span can determine how long daughters will have and whether they will suffer from cancer, diabetes or heart disease, says a new study.<br /></b><br />Women whose mothers live up to the age of 90 are more likely to have increased lifespan, without suffering from any serious illnesses like cancer, diabetes, or heart disease, a study has found. The study, published in the journal Age and Aging, also found that if the father lived to 90, it did not correlate to increased longevity and health in daughters.<br /><br />However, <b>if both the mother and father lived to 90, the likelihood of the daughter achieving longevity and healthy aging jumped to 38%,</b> researchers said. “Our results show that, not only did these women live to age 90, but they also aged well by avoiding major diseases and disabilities,” said Aladdin Shadyab, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California — San Diego in the US.<br /><br />The study analyzed data from about 22,000 postmenopausal women participating in the Women’s Health Initiative, a large, national study in the US investigating major risk factors for chronic diseases among women. Shadyab and colleagues believe a combination of genetics, environment and behaviors passed to subsequent generations may influence aging outcomes among offspring.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“We now have evidence that <b>how long our parents live may predict our long-term outcomes, including whether we will age well, but we need further studies to explore why.</b> We need to clarify how certain factors and behaviors interact with genes to influence aging outcomes,” Shadyab said.<br /><br />The women in the study whose mothers lived to at least 90 were more likely to be college graduates, married with high incomes and incorporated physical activity and a healthy diet into their lives, researchers said.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5QMdBNyf9gUT5GI0SMlRfXjnFebIi3QiyAkjf-9xakQCGmqIffBXz07q2Js0bTDmJocpCWUTyoZxCM3NbVy4fTdMY0fxRLvdWm7wtbRpkwDIjgN8p5pw2x9b39dmjk_PF-ZqSJg9kZHOjxT3D5og-qkVq2fdGfhNGPWh7XZs3PYXk1Do_rtLAS66PeZLP/s630/MOTHER%20daughter%20exercise.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="630" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5QMdBNyf9gUT5GI0SMlRfXjnFebIi3QiyAkjf-9xakQCGmqIffBXz07q2Js0bTDmJocpCWUTyoZxCM3NbVy4fTdMY0fxRLvdWm7wtbRpkwDIjgN8p5pw2x9b39dmjk_PF-ZqSJg9kZHOjxT3D5og-qkVq2fdGfhNGPWh7XZs3PYXk1Do_rtLAS66PeZLP/w400-h229/MOTHER%20daughter%20exercise.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/fitness/mother-s-life-span-determines-how-long-daughters-will-live-how-healthy-they-will-be/story-ugq4WkQbLl3LxO0BNhoE7L.html">https://www.hindustantimes.com/fitness/mother-s-life-span-determines-how-long-daughters-will-live-how-healthy-they-will-be/story-ugq4WkQbLl3LxO0BNhoE7L.html<br /></a><br />*<br /><b>PREGNANCY PERMANENTLY REWIRES THE BRAIN<br /></b><br /><i><b>Pregnancy leads to a permanent rewiring of neurons, according to research that gives new insights into the influence of hormones on behavior.</b><br /></i><br />The research, in mice, revealed that their <b>parenting instincts were triggered by changes in the brain that occur in response to estrogen and progesterone late in pregnancy</b>. Similar changes are likely to occur in the human brain, according to scientists, who said the work could pave the way for <b>fresh understanding into parenting behavior and postpartum mental health.<br /></b><br />Dr Jonny Kohl, who led the research at London’s Francis Crick Institute, said: “We know that the female body changes during pregnancy to prepare for bringing up young. One example is the production of milk, which starts long before giving birth. Our research shows that such preparations are taking place in the brain, too.”<br /><br />The findings are consistent with brain imaging research in women showing <b>changes to brain volume and brain activity that endure long after pregnanc</b>y. Kohl pointed out that “parenting is obviously a lot more complex in humans”.<br /><br />The studies were carried out in mice, which undergo a dramatic shift in behavior, with <b>virgin females showing no interest in pups, and mouse mothers spending most of their time looking after young</b>. Previously it had been widely assumed that the onset of this behavior occurred during or just after birth, possibly triggered by hormones such as oxytocin. However, <b>the latest research puts the change at an earlier stage and also suggests that the changes may be permanent.</b><br /><br />The scientists used miniature devices attached to the heads of the mice to record directly from a population of neurons in the hypothalamus, which had already been linked to parenting behaviors.<br /><br />Brain recordings showed that <b>estrogen reduced the baseline activity of these neurons, but made them more excitable in response to incoming signals</b>. <b>Progesterone rewired their inputs, causing the formation of more synapses so that these neurons were more densely connected up to other parts of the brain – and these changes appeared to be permanent.<br /></b><br />“We think that these changes, often referred to as ‘baby brain’, cause a change in priority – virgin mice focus on mating, so don’t need to respond to other females’ pups, whereas mothers need to perform robust parental behavior to ensure pup survival,” said Kohl. “What’s fascinating is that <b>this switch doesn’t happen at birth – the brain is preparing much earlier for this big life change</b>.”</span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;">When the mice were engineered so that the neurons were insensitive to the hormones, they failed to show any switch to parental behavior even after giving birth, suggesting that there is a <b>critical window in late pregnancy when these hormones take effect.<br /></b><br /><i><b>In humans, hormonal changes are not the only, or even necessarily the primary influence on parenting behavior. But understanding the changes taking place in the brain could provide new insights into the influences on parental bonding and conditions including postpartum depression and psychosis.</b><br /></i><br />Prof Robert Froemke, of NYU Langone, who was not involved in the research, said: “There is still so much we don’t understand about parenting and hormone signaling in the body and brain – these results are a solid step in that direction. <b>Parenting is among the most complex and difficult set of behaviors we and other animals engage in, and there’s not a lot of room for ‘trial and error’ especially in the earliest days postpartum when infants need a lot of care.<br /></b><br />“<b>The hormonal changes documented here seem to help prime the parental brain to respond to infant needs right out of the gate</b>, so that parental rodents, much like new human parents, can do a good job and be sensitive to their babies as soon as possible,” Froemke added.<br /></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ObytA5I733PWR9g2XWexfTXkg7ACI_WJwNsn0O_D13WVSS4SxXfwqw_pY4gUxOw5KqP8Y1opEO9lefcUy3lBmEzr-VURR7RMuDeKB1dFx_D25iRwzQjZuWhDXkQx-VeSf7VY4nz7Kl_paQoikjJhtsVfkGmOT-So6lhfq7D3giZ63xwrILjrooZZ1oCl/s300/newborn%20crying.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ObytA5I733PWR9g2XWexfTXkg7ACI_WJwNsn0O_D13WVSS4SxXfwqw_pY4gUxOw5KqP8Y1opEO9lefcUy3lBmEzr-VURR7RMuDeKB1dFx_D25iRwzQjZuWhDXkQx-VeSf7VY4nz7Kl_paQoikjJhtsVfkGmOT-So6lhfq7D3giZ63xwrILjrooZZ1oCl/w400-h224/newborn%20crying.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/oct/05/pregnancy-leads-to-permanent-rewiring-of-brain-study-suggests">https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/oct/05/pregnancy-leads-to-permanent-rewiring-of-brain-study-suggests</a><br /><br /><span style="color: #351c75;">*</span></span><span style="color: #351c75; font-family: georgia;"><br /><b>ending on beauty:</b><br /><br />Not knowing when the Dawn will come,<br />I open every Door,<br />Or has it Feathers, like a Bird,<br />Or Billows, like a Shore —<br /><br />~ Dickinson</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggbgsLut8wKbl-5aDsXzFdgZ8qb-G3MiTdy9OGOiaPSFiHBisNq92bem1Ng47XOmdqkf-38JPCTOGrRoVbUx5OnMF6Pih-anez22JnylE2bKZpV8ME_VJqhCvLc_nfs_xUfmV9fI6RpF-XnOSmyPRzzx9_3V4WtD9iiMIAwIsw_BRKl-Z2ag_jL-5z8bRX/s500/sunrise%20above%20clouds.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="331" data-original-width="500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggbgsLut8wKbl-5aDsXzFdgZ8qb-G3MiTdy9OGOiaPSFiHBisNq92bem1Ng47XOmdqkf-38JPCTOGrRoVbUx5OnMF6Pih-anez22JnylE2bKZpV8ME_VJqhCvLc_nfs_xUfmV9fI6RpF-XnOSmyPRzzx9_3V4WtD9iiMIAwIsw_BRKl-Z2ag_jL-5z8bRX/w400-h265/sunrise%20above%20clouds.jpg" width="400" /></a></div></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><br /></span><br /></span><p></p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0