tag > Politics
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"The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe" - Michel de Montaigne
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Today in "the fall of western civilization": Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, US Admiral (Ret) James Stavridis just wrote a book about nuclear strike on Shanghai.
Complementary, here are a few actual opinion pieces that The New York Times published
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Today in "the fall of western and eastern civilization"
Poland summons Belarus diplomat over shots fired at border (abcnews) 🤡 Poland stokes fears of leaving EU in 'Polexit' (BBC) 🤡 Czech election: Milos Zeman in intensive care after vote (BBC) 🤡 Sebastian Kurz: Austrian leader resigns amid corruption inquiry (BBC) 🤡 Interesting book in this context: "Rogue Agent - The Cercle and the 6I in the Private Cold War 1951 - 1991" 🤡
Assessment of Damaged Attack Boat USS Connecticut Begins in Guam (USNI) 🤡 Australia to buy $1.3 billion fleet of US-made choppers as navy dumps troubled European-made MRH-90 Taipans (abc.au) 🤡 Trillion-dollar platinum coin could be minted at the last minute (Axios) 🤡 Senior Chinese diplomat meets U.S. national security advisor (Xinhau) 🤡 Why the U.S. debt ceiling fiasco epitomizes the country's political dysfunction (Xinhau) 🤡 Gazprom Plant Connected To Russia-China Gas Pipeline Shuttered Due To Fire (zerohedge) 🤡 Global Food Prices Hit Fresh Decade High (zerohedge) 🤡 1MDB and beyond: How US' biggest law firm drives global wealth into tax havens (malaysiakini) 🤡 China proposes bans on private capital participation in media (straitstimes)
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"The devil gets more help from fanatics than fools." — Sam Chadwick
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Alcoholics_Anonymous (AA) is a fascinating case-study in resilient bottom-up org design
- Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is an international fellowship requiring no membership dues or fees dedicated to helping alcoholics peer to peer in sobriety through its spiritually inclined Twelve Steps program.
- AA says it is "not organized in the formal or political sense", and Bill Wilson, borrowing the phrase from anarchist theorist Peter Kropotkin, called it a "benign anarchy".
- The Steps also suggest the healing aid of an unspecified God—"as we understood Him"—but are nonetheless accommodating to agnostic, atheist, and non-theist members.
- In Ireland, Shane Butler said that AA "looks like it couldn't survive as there's no leadership or top-level telling local cumanns what to do, but it has worked and proved itself extremely robust". Butler explained that "AA's 'inverted pyramid' style of governance has helped it to avoid many of the pitfalls that political and religious institutions have encountered since it was established here in 1946.
- The Traditions hold that helping others recover from alcoholism is AA's primary purpose. That it should have no opinions on anything else to avoid public controversy. That members and groups should not use AA to gain wealth, prestige, or property. That dogma and hierarchies are to be avoided. That AA groups are autonomous and self-supporting—declining outside contributions—but are barred from lending the AA name to other entities. And, without threat of retribution or means of enforcement, that members should remain anonymous in public media.
- A member who accepts a service position or an organizing role is a "trusted servant" with terms rotating and limited, typically lasting three months to two years and determined by group vote and the nature of the position. Each group is a self-governing entity with AA World Services acting only in an advisory capacity.
- AA groups are self-supporting, relying on voluntary donations from members to cover expenses.[27] The AA General Service Office (GSO) limits contributions to US$3,000 a year.[31] Above the group level, AA may hire outside professionals for services that require specialized expertise or full-time responsibilities.
- AA's program is an inheritor of Counter-Enlightenment philosophy. AA shares the view that acceptance of one's inherent limitations is critical to finding one's proper place among other humans and God. Such ideas are described as "Counter-Enlightenment" because they are contrary to the Enlightenment's ideal that humans have the capacity to make their lives and societies a heaven on Earth using their own power and reason.
- This commitment is facilitated by a change in the member's worldview. To help members stay sober AA must, they argue, provide an all-encompassing worldview while creating and sustaining an atmosphere of transcendence in the organization. To be all-encompassing AA's ideology emphasizes tolerance rather than a narrow religious worldview that could make the organization unpalatable to potential members and thereby limit its effectiveness.
- US courts have not extended the status of privileged communication, such as that enjoyed by clergy and lawyers, to AA related communications between members.
More on AA's history: https://silkworth.info/ - Frank Buchman Oxford Group Documentary
#P2P #Praxis #Health #Politics #Religion #OpenSource #Networks #Systems
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The separation of food, health, soil & governance is at the core of our current global malaise
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Today in "the fall of western civilization": Clown Shortages
Clown shortage reported in Northern Ireland amid COVID-19 lockdown (nypost) 🤡 Pope mandates vaccination: 3 members of the Swiss Guard resign (disclose) 🤡 Some 3,000 paedophiles in French Catholic Church since 1950: probe (france24) 🤡 Files of the Nuremberg Trials published online (disclose) 🤡 Pandora Papers: Secret wealth and dealings of world leaders exposed (BBC) 🤡 Credit Suisse offices raided over Greensill funds (FT)
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Plato's cave:Â Exit stage left (you can freely walk out at any time)
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Today in "the fall of western civilization": Mainstream News Headlines - Wednesday 09/22/21
Bonus: Watch Bill Gates Get Very Uncomfortable When Asked About Jeffrey Epstein
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"Corporate Affiliations and Funding of Machine Learning Papers" - Findings from the paper "The Values Encoded in Machine Learning Research" (2021) (discussion)
"Our analysis shows substantive and increasing corporate presence in the most highly-cited papers. In 2008/09, 24% of the top cited papers had corporate affiliated authors, and in 2018/19 this statistic almost tripled, to 71%. Furthermore, we also find a much greater concentration of a few large tech firms, such as Google and Microsoft, with the presence of these "big tech" firms increasing more than fivefold, from 11% to 58%."
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No Such Agency
Conspiracy theories assume that there is hidden agency: That somebody actually is in charge and knows what they are doing, even though they might be "evil". What is far more terrifying and realistic: There is little to no agency. Nobody is in charge and nobody knows what they are doing. A combination of chaos, incompetence and confusion is running the show and everything else is in essence just a cargo-cult invented by hairless monkeys that only recently learned how to talk.
Related: When Robert Anton Wilson was asked what the central conspiracy was that we had to look out for, he answered "stupid people".
#Cryptocracy #Evolution #Culture #Politics #Economics #Science
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Binding Chaos: Mass Collaboration on a Global Scale - Book by Heather Marsh (2013) (PDF)
The world is long overdue for a completely new system of governance. If there was ever a need for political representation or a paternalistic and opaque authority, it has been removed by technology. Every political system we have tried has proven incapable of protecting human rights and dignity. Every political system we have tried has devolved into oligarchy. To effect the change we require immediately, to give individuals control and responsibility, to bring regional systems under regional governance, allow global collaboration and protect the heritage of future generations, we need a new political model.
