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Geo-strategic issues

L&FP, 61: Learning about Agit Prop from the H G Wells, War of the Worlds broadcast (and from the modified JoHari Window)

Notoriously, on the evening of October 30, 1938, many people missed the opening remarks for Orson Welles’ radio dramatisation of H G Wells’ War of the Worlds. As History dot com recounts: Millions of Americans, as they were every night, huddled around their radios, but relatively few of them were listening to CBS when it was announced that Welles and his fellow cast members were presenting an original dramatization of the 1898 H.G. Wells science-fiction novel “The War of the Worlds.” Instead, most of the country was tuned in to NBC’s popular “Chase and Sanborn Hour,” which featured ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy, Charlie McCarthy . . . . disoriented listeners who stumbled onto the “Mercury Theatre on the Read More ›

L&FP, 57: What is naturalism? Is it a viable — or even the only viable — worldview and approach to knowledge?

What is naturalism? (And why do some speak in terms of evolutionary materialistic scientism?) While everything touched on by philosophy is of course open to disagreements and seemingly endless debate, we can find a good enough point of reference through AmHD: 3. Philosophy The system of thought holding that all phenomena can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws.4. Theology The doctrine that all religious truths are derived from nature and natural causes and not from revelation. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy suggests: The term “naturalism” has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy. Its current usage derives from debates in America in the first half of the last century. The self-proclaimed “naturalists” from that period included John Read More ›

Is China seriously contemplating [imminent?] invasion of Taiwan?

In 1958, full orbed hot war threatened to break out after dogfights over the Taiwan straights that saw a breakthrough use of Sidewinder missiles that brought down several Red Chinese Migs. We may be contemplating that brink again, if a current report on a claimed, leaked audiotape of discussions by Chinese authorities is credible. (The audiotape is in a Chinese dialect, likely Mandarin but possibly Cantonese.) As the first linked reports: In the past week, in response to the instruction of the “Central Military Commission of the State Council” in Beijing on “transitioning to a war time system,” a meeting took place involving senior officers of the People Liberation Army’s Guangdong Military Region of the Southern Command and the principal Read More ›

BREAKING: Leaked US Supreme Court Draft that would overturn the rulings that have led to 63+ million abortion deaths in the US since 1973

This, seems worth pondering on the state of the US’s ongoing 4th generation civil war as a civilisation level issue: A draft Supreme Court opinion overruling Roe v. Wade has been leaked to the press in one of the greatest scandals to ever hit the nation’s highest court and a possible attempt to intimidate one or more justices to reverse their vote or to ignite a liberal brushfire to pack the Supreme Court before Democrats lose Congress in November. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” the possible draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito reads, making the case that where the Constitution is silent, the American people govern themselves Read More ›

Breaking: Twitter accepts Musk’s Share offer buyout plan

Breitbart, as I just saw: After a two-week battle against opposition from the platform’s board members, self-declared free speech absolutist Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and currently the richest man in the world, has succeeded in his bid to buy Twitter. In a press release, the Twitter board announced that they had reached an agreement with the multi-billionaire to sell 100 percent of the company at Musk’s original price of $54.20 per share. Where does this point? DEVELOPING. U/D April 29, Followership jumps per Daily mail: A chart of followership shifts from the verge:

L&FP, 54: J C Wright on the haunting “Morlockery” of many today, in the neo-gnostic, nihilistic “Technoplutocracy”

Mr Wright, a noted Science Fiction/Fantasy writer [and married to another, L Jagi Lampwriter Wright] observes a pattern of our times: Technoplutocracy is my term for our current intellectual elite, a combination of traditionally leftwing and rightwing elements [–> outdated reference], dominating our public institutions, political and legal and scholarly, corporate culture, international finance, but most particularly in our mass media and social media. Not all Morlocks are technoplutocratic elites, but all elites are Morlocks. “Morlock,” is a strange term, tracing to pioneer Sci Fi writer H G Wells in Time Machine. As Wright describes, “[i]n Wells, the Morlock is a cannibal troglodyte who treats other human descendants [the “fair, childlike Eloi”] as cattle [–> as in, food].” So, he Read More ›

China’s surveillance and control move, targeting esp. Christians

We see in current news: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has activated measures to drastically restrict the availability of Christian content on the internet, Open Doors reported this week. Last December, China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) announced its upcoming “Measures for the Administration of Internet Religious Information Services,” a series of regulations designed to eliminate any online religious message that fails to conform to the principles of the CCP. Without express government permission, no organization or individual “shall preach on the Internet, carry out religious education and training, publish sermon content, forward or link to related content, organize and conduct religious activities on the Internet, or live broadcast or post recorded videos of religious rituals,” the CCP declared Read More ›

Dr John Campbell, more on Ivermectin

Here is Dr John Campbell on Ivermectin (IVM): Recall, here is a picture of the kit used in Uttar Pradesh, India where the sort of protocol illustrated helped break the Delta dominated wave: Food for thought. END

DEVELOPING: The US Truckers’ protest convoys converge at Hagerstown MD, head for the DC Beltway March 5th

According to Gateway Pundit (a handy source not an endorsement): On Friday, the largest group, ‘The People’s Convoy,’ merged with another massive group when it arrived at its final rest stop in Hagerstown, Maryland, which is just 75 miles (90 minutes) away from the nation’s capital. The convoy is now well over 10,000 vehicles long, including thousands of trucks. There are so many participants in the caravan that it has taken over three hours for them to get off the highway, and there is still no end in sight. We will monitor, including watching out for a riot that can conveniently be made into a further Reichstag fire framing incident. DEVELOPING

BREAKING/DEVELOPING: Russia invades Ukraine

BBC announces: Russian forces have launched a military assault on neighbouring Ukraine, crossing its borders and bombing military targets near big cities. A residential building in Chuguev was destroyed after it was shelled. Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Moscow’s response will be “instant” if anyone tries to take on Russia. Ukraine has urged the UN “to do everything possible” to stop what it says is a full-scale war. We could title this, the geostrategic price of weakness, starting with the USA. Recall here, my 2016 framework: Of course as this seems overnight the fog of war is very much in effect and we need to bear in mind that we are unlikely to have a full or reliable Read More ›

Vivid’s comment on Critical [Race] Theory i/l/o the clash with truckers — what culture form marxists do with power

Yet another headlined comment, here from Vivid answering Sc in the lab rats thread: Vivid, 281: >>[Sc:] “I am aware of critical race theory but I honestly haven’t given it much thought. My gut tells me that there are some morsels of truth in it but that it is greatly overhyped as an explanation for things seen in society.” [Vivid:] It is not overhyped it is the meta narrative of our age. Here are some excerpts from a letter to a few friends several years ago. “Once I came to understand Critical Theory everything became clear. I understand why Van Jones says white people have a virus that others don’t , I mean just wow!! I understand why even though Read More ›

L&FP, 51: The fallacy of the false dilemma

A classic rhetorical tactic is to pose a dilemma, an argument where the opponent is presented with alternatives, all bad so forcing him or her to either make a bad choice or back away from the position taken. In a variant, one of the choices is presented as a lesser of evils, which is to be taken even reluctantly. It is a powerful rhetorical strategy, and so it is often posed even when it is unwarranted, which is where fallacious dilemma arguments come from. This post is about that fallacious case, and the following infographic will help: Here, we see how policy proposal or argued position P is presented with a dilemma, Q XOR R — two exclusive, allegedly exhaustive Read More ›

Let us listen to Dr Robert Malone, dissenting expert, on the COVID-19 crisis

HT LCD, here is a sobering, 3-hour video on the Covid-10 crisis, by a dissenting expert: U/D: Based on a transcript and a debate on what is in Uttar Pradesh home isolation Covid-19 kits, I post two pictures: and: Here is a kit label passed to Malone from someone in Uttar Pradesh, it seems there were/are likely several suppliers and different levels of kits — notice the electronics in one kit above: I note a Dr John Campbell video that should be pondered: Let me put in the transcript clip from comment 3: Joe Rogan 37:52 So were they [= China, v. early in the pandemic, in its protocols] using Ivermectin as well? No. But other countries have, like Japan Read More ›

L&FP, 48i: Dallas Willard on the legitimate authority of knowledge (vs the radical narrative of oppression)

In the course of exploring the marginalisation/disappear-ING of moral knowledge, Professor Dallas Willard gave an expanded definition of knowledge that also draws out the legitimate authority of knowledge; including, moral knowledge, i.e. knowledge of duty to right conduct etc. As we can see from his handout for a 2010 video lecture: What is knowledge and what does it do? Knowledge is the capacity to represent something as it is, on an appropriate basis of thought and experience. It and it alone confers the right and perhaps the responsibility to act, direct action, formulate policy and supervise its implementation, and teach. This helps us see what disappears along with “moral knowledge.” He goes on to note on the “[f]ear or resentment Read More ›

L&FP, 48h: Building sound Government on a built-in, Natural Law base (The US Declaration of Independence as a case study)

The natural, built in law framework in 48g culminates: . . . in civil society with government, justice is a principal task of legitimate government. In short, nihilistic will to power untempered by the primacy of justice is its own refutation in any type of state. Where, justice is the due balance of rights, freedoms and responsibilities. (In Aristotle’s terms as cited by Hooker: “because we would take no harm, we must therefore do none; That since we would not be in any thing extremely dealt with, we must ourselves avoid all extremity in our dealings; That from all violence and wrong we are utterly to abstain, with such-like .”) Thus also, 11] Eleventh, that as the US DoI, 1776 Read More ›