“The neo-con success is based on the ignorance of the people they lecture, those people for whom the Arab/Muslim is a sub-human – incapable of ‘higher’ things like patriotism, or love of his people, desire for his children to have a better life.”
Really? Because I remember the neocons insisting more or less that inside of every Pashtun was an Ohio Republican ready to jump out and buy an SUV to eat at McDonald’s if you created the right environment.
Egalitarianism taken to the extreme, pretty much.
Posted by: Tyler | 29 December 2012 at 12:43 PM
————-
Tyler,
The contradiction may be more apparent than real.
A corollary of the neocon assumption that everybody can, and must really want to, transform themselves into Ohio Republicans is an absolute inability to see any value whatsoever in the cultures people actually have. A further corollary tends to be the assumption that they themselves will be unable to see any value in these.
As in previous Jacobin political programmes – collectivisation in the Soviet Union, for example – the ‘shadow side’ of a strong faith in progress turns out to be contempt.
Posted by: David Habakkuk | 30 December 2012 at 07:55 AM
Comment: I was reading through some old posts and comments on the SST archive while this site was lost in the ether. Among so many other gems, this observation by David Habakkuk particularly struck me. The man’s comments could often go on to the crack of doom, but damn he made great observations. The idea of contempt for others, no matter how it’s dressed up, is often at the heart of many social and political movements, both left and right. It’s a characteristic of ultranationalists and reformers. This is not a modern phenomenon.
TTG
There was an effort by the US to stop older Afghan men from messing with young teen or barely teen girls by putting financial pressure on the Afghan government to address it.
Nobody in the west would approve of this culture but the average life expectancy of Aghans was nowhere near that of people in the west. Lucky to see 50 for the longest time. Unfortunately it went over the US Government’s head that it had next to nothing to do with a wicked culture. It was a matter of circumstances. You breed early and breed often. Their kids don’t have a Shriner’s or pediatric doctor in every town. A good many will die and the fields won’t plow themselves…meh.
https://twitter.com/ektrit/status/1678061992953761793?s=21
None of this is new. Throughout history one tribe or another has dominated another and try to make them in their likeness. So many Muslims have gone apoplectic when someone burns the Quran as a symbol of freedom of speech. Heck, the Ayatollah put a death warrant on Rushdie. But…these same folks have no issues when CCP commits genocide on the Uighurs Muslims. Or for that matter crush Tibetan culture to eradication.
The same folks who spew vitriol on the US for its use of power and rhetorical hypocrisy, have no qualms when it is done by CCP or an Arab sheikh.
We pontificate so much to others, and remember so little of ourselves. Three hundred years ago it was not unusual to marry that 14 year old girl up the road and get on w/making babies. You might make 12! Jerry Lee wasn’t that unusual in the cousin dept. (but he was a little late!). The avg. life span of a frontier H/W might be 45-50? Here’s a thought for the “sophisticates” of the left AND the right: not every culture wants to duplicate European and American. My Libertarian side was always revolted/amused at the idea of “nation building”. Who the fluck asked you.
There is a lot to be said about the issues you are touching on here.
I would say there is a lot more going on that you acknowledge. Leaving US role aside, I think one way to look at things is to think about how power and freedom is distributed in a country. In Afghanistan that distribution is very lopsided. That was true when we left and if course is even more true today.
Those older men would use money to buy young girls from their fathers. The girls had no choice. Also at times girls were given to other families as a way to atone for mistakes of males in her family. No choice othere either.
The percentage of Afghans who could objectively be called powerless and victims of Afghanistan society and Afghan individuals including their own family members is enormously high. Many have lived lives of great suffering for no good reason. I cannot blame our people for trying to do something about what they saw.
jerseycityjoan,
Can you blame the Russians for trying to do something about what they saw in Ukraine?
Can you be more specific? I do not know what you mean.
One thing to keep in mind is that democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. The family as godhead. To the Ancients, monotheism equated with monoculture. One people, one rule, one god. The formative experience for Judaism was the forty years in the desert, giving us the Ten Commandments.
The Romans adopted Christianity as a state religion around the time the Empire was rising from the ashes of the Republic. Basically to validate The Big Guy Rules. Divine right of kings. When the West went back to more populist forms of government, it required separation of church and state, culture and civics. Which is a bit like Descartes’ claim the mind and body are separate.
The logical problem created is that a spiritual absolute would necessarily be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. More the light shining through the film, than the images and narratives projected on it.
So ideals are not absolutes. Truth, beauty, platonic forms are ideals. Every village totem or alter is an ideal. When we have an entire culture founded on the assumption of ideals as absolute, it is clinically obsessive/compulsive. Every ideology, school of thought, political movement or organization has to claim universality and prove it by assuming all others are flawed.
The reality though, is more a yin and yang, a polarity between the sides of the equation, than a God Almighty. Even the concept of one, versus that of oneness is different, as one is a node, while oneness is connectivity, the network.
The anarchies of desire, versus the tyrannies of judgement, head versa heart. Motor and steering.
That the West is object oriented, from atomism to individualism, it has formed as one giant wave, which has crested and starting to roll over. While the rest of the world has become more context oriented, where it’s lots of waves, rising and falling. By pushing the rest of the world into a corner, what we have done is to force them to network and interact in ways they never would have otherwise. Organisms in the ecosystem. Eventually we will get our act back together and become one with the rest of the system.
TTG the key point you made was about the nature of the phenomenon. Namely it is not new. It is not new and is not left or right. It is, IMHO, the result of cultural and intellectual superiority one group feels over another. In fact that superiority is what drives the Russian, still today, to subdue the lesser Slavs/Balts/Finns. If you can reduce the other guy you demonstrate you are “above” him.
Is that really Russian, so much as a fundamental, organic growth dynamic?
Which, historically goes to the dawn of civilization and the tension between East and West. Where East pushed West from Neanderthals and Cro Magnons, up through Genghis Khan. Then the West pushed back, from colonialism and the Great Game though Operation Barbarossa.
I think we will eventually have to better understand the elementary physical and biological processes involved. Yet the general dynamic of education and civilization creates a process where one generation passes its knowledge onto the next, for them to build on, but creates frameworks and models that cannot be questioned, in order to remain part of the community. So “shut up and calculate,” can’t process the problem of Garbage in, Garbage out and we end up with current versions of geocentric cosmologies.
That the wheels are coming off the train in a very big way, will open up opportunities to go back and examine these foundational assumptions.
For example, is time the point of the present moving past to future, that we experience as mobile organisms with this sentient interface that operates as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, or is it activity and the resulting change turning future to past? As in tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.
We are just starting to scratch the surface, so hopefully this is more towards the end of the beginning, for humanity, than the beginning of the end.
@JM
Indeed, and in spite of all the hoopla the biggest challenges will not come from AI but from consciousness research, i.e. what believers are calling “soul”…
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2017.0344
jld,
Interesting study. Just from a quick skim, it seems to make a case for animism. I’m all for that. Add in the phenomena of remote viewing, shamanic ecstasy and the like and we may be on the way to the next evolutionary stage of man. Maybe even catch up to the whales.
As in aura? Ever hear the term “floaters?’
Those spots and waves in our vision.
When I was a kid, I remember laying out on the porch, watching this ant. When it stopped and there was this tiny cone of awareness, waving around with its antennae.
As I’ve lived my life, it’s become ubiquitous, as a combination of my own perceptions, thoughts and those of others, interacting as some field, nodes in the network. I just let my deep mind sense their attention.
Remember we have these little flat devices in our pockets, that can transmit lots of information in those radio waves, of which visible light is just part of the spectrum. Given we have been evolving for millions of years, it seems obvious we would have incorporated it into our relationships and survival instincts.
The problem is that culture indoctrinates us to these thought boxes, that as they become ever more structured and developed, become ever more of mental straitjackets. Animals, of which I’ve grown up around more of than people, don’t think in boxes, but in vibes. The boxes are secondary.
As Emerson said, we are but thickened light.
Consider that as mobile organisms, the function of this sentient interface our body has with its situation, is navigation, so it operates as a sequence of perceptions. Consequently our experience of time is as the present moving past to future. Which is the basis of culture, as narrative. Yet the reality is that activity and the resulting change are turning future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Potential, actual, residual.
There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
Energy is “conserved,” because it manifests this presence, creating time, temperature, pressure, color, sound. Frequencies and amplitudes, rates and degrees.
So the energy goes past to future, because the patterns generated come and go, future to past. Energy drives the wave, the fluctuations rise and fall.
Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Though it is the digestive system processing the energy, feeding the flame, while the nervous system sorts the information and the digestive system is feedback in the middle.
So consciousness has this love/hate relationship with order and structure. Both building it up and breaking it down. Yet our modern culture puts order as the highest virtue. Though the reality of order without chaos would be like signal without noise.
Galaxies are energy radiating out, as structure coalesces in.
JLD,
A bit off tangent but since you mentioned AI I’m put off by people’s faith that it will change anything. It will amplify what’s already there. Just like small cell phones and internet message boards amplify who we are. It won’t change anything except cost some blue collar workers their jobs.
Blind tech faith is annoying. Years ago I rolled my old, very dirty small car through a short, unmanned car wash. The sign in the front advised you to wait for the car in front of you to finish before inserting your card. A lady pulled up behind me and started almost immediately. Before long she was on my rear bumper and hit me. I heard her tires trying to break against the rollers. Got out fast and confronted her in her business suit. I wasn’t mad on behalf of my car. I was mad she let the machine think for her.
Possibly useful background re Wagner’s opera music and even possibly the huge dusty cups in France. Since this is a huge rich continent on which almost no reporting is done in the mainscream press, it’s quite an oversight as always. (And oversight is the name of our game, no?) The wars in Africa have killed colossal numbers over the past decades, really colossal, and do you hear about it? Not so much really.
Also, it’s on topic – Diver City.
Russia secretly in war in Africa
https://youtu.be/ydH39HjuFZs
McFrog,
New here ey? Yes and you’ll find some commentary on those in the archives. There was a lot of correspondence on the color revolutions – various sponsored (allegedly) by the usual suspects – and even some on operations Mali and Niger. But Russia in Africa is not much news, their conduct being a sideshow. Africans killing Africans has been the cause of all that killing. Don’t worry though, once the sacred and ivoliolable borders of Ukraine are secure the usual influencer people will be all gung-ho to save various parts of Africa. Though maybe not Egypt, Tunisa, Morrocco, or even South Africa. (The latter is doing a great job of destroying its economic vitality.) Maybe they’ll have another go at Libya, though stabilizing (wonderful word, that) the place would mean a curtailment of ‘immigration’ er, refugee flow, and the possibility that Italy or other EU nations could have access to oil and natural gas that wouldn’t be controlled via the City of London or the folks in Brussels.
@Fred
Most probably not, it is transparently good old “Fourth and Long”. 🙂
No idea why he choose to use various roving pseudos but that fits well with his style.
jld and Fred,
Nothing wrong with a little fun and whimsey. Good on ya F&L.
jld & TTG,
Darnit, shucks and horsefeathers. You’ve ruined my reply to Fred. I was going to say – thanks for the tip, and now after searching the archives under “Fred,” all I find are entries with this theme song .
Don’t click on the link if you have sensitive ears. I thought I’d maybe enjoy it but I was conditioned to expect something better by being exposed to years of listening to good jazz ensembles playing souped up versions of this 50s TV classic. No it wasn’t a bar. This hurts my ears to hear by comparison.
Flintstones theme song:
https://youtu.be/uq7noaMwLfg
But now that my cover is blown:
Dear Fred,
So don’t watch the video on Wagner in Africa. Fine by me. I was familiar only superficially with this site’s coverage of Wagner, I admit. That being so, I would still wager my entire collection of HCQ purchased at the local marijuana shop right next to where an 85 yr old man was shot dead last night by a lunatic riding a stolen scooter that there may be something relevant to recent events in Ru and France which is discussed in the video I linked to re Wagner in Africa.
And the lunatic shot 3 other innocent bystanders. The city elders seem to worrying outloud that maybe scooters shouldn’t be so easily available. That’s interesting. Shooters is understandable, but scooters? The cops had to chase the guy over a long distance spanning two boroughs. No license plate. 9 millimeter pistol. The toxic cargo ship fire is still burning in the port of Newark NJ for days now. The main things burning are cars actually. Just like the pictures from France where cars are not only burned on the street but in stacked rows in lots. And entire fleets of municipal buses. Then, due to my penchant for wordplay I noticed:
Cargo. Car go. And thought of the CAR – Central African Republic, from whence Wagner etc. And I even wondered if there isn’t something especially toxic in automobile fires. And the nice wildfires in Canada which continue to plague us. Of course they are only only caused by global warming, I’m certain. And in Quebec, which is a province of Canada, they speak French. Do they speak French in any of those African lands where Wagner works? Yes I think they do.
Question 1:
If you were paying a person to commit acts of arson in a country, would it be disadvantageous or advantageous for the terrorist to be familiar with the language of the country in which you propose to send him for your nefarious cause?
Question 2:
Would mercenaries who work for years in French speaking countries of say, Africa, be likely to aquire familiarity with the French language?
Question 3:
If you were going to hire someone to commit terrible crimes such as arson which demonstrate cruel disregard for human life and safety as well as infrastructure, would it occur to you perhaps to hire a hardened mercenary killer (who might even speak ..) or would you think rather to employ a kindly old school crossing lady?
Question 4:
Could a cargo ship in a major port which is set on fire for days possibly also do something else? Like:
A) Explode?
B) Draw off critical workers such as firefighters, especially those with special training, from where they might also be gainfully employed.
Question 5 (For extra credit):
If suddenly a series of crime sprees during which stolen scooters were used to randomly murder people in major metropolitan areas were to arise as though out of nowhere, do you think it could possibly be related to toxic cargo ship fires nearby and wildfires raging up north which subject an entire continent of cities to oppressive and deadly smoke?
That’s all for now, Fred. I hope you enjoy looking down on us poor peons from Air Force One or your personal helicopter fleet as you heroically drop life saving lozenges of archive checking nostrums down to us as we gag and burn.
Yours Always,
— You know by know who this is by now.
jld,
love me some sauteed frogs legs. Tastes just like chicken, but lighter.
McDinner,
BLM and Colonists in New-Old France both seem to have surprisingly easy access to to guns. Though Europe’s finest seem to prefer the ones shipped via UA. You can read all about it in “What Color is Your Revolution by Barry Soweto.
Answer 1: Pay? You need to pay them for de revolution?
A2: Aren’t NGO schools just grand?
A3: BLM is hardly hardened, except maybe the veterans of CHAZ.
A4: The Bon Homme Richard burned with the fire fighters right there. Guess E-4s were a bit to tired to call out the smoke before they hit the PX. A few burner phones and false alarms could have the FD/PD chasing all over town. No need for a freighter fire. Though those EV carriers have a way of burning all on their own.
https://www.euronews.com/2022/03/01/massive-cargo-ship-carrying-electric-cars-sinks-in-atlantic-ocean-after-fire
A5: Pleeeeease: It’s Archivum Nostrum.
If it not permitted to address you as the Conqueror of all Sulfourus Shipping and Subtlety, then:
Fred,
A man applied to our offices of reading comprehension and commentary looking for gainful employment, so we asked only the header and first paragraph of the brief article linked below, and if he wouldn’t mind, tell us the significance or not.
Trapped drivers swam out of their cars. A woman died after being swept away by floodwaters. What to know about the heavy rainfall hitting the Northeast.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/10/weather/northeast-storms-flooding-excessive-rainfall/index.html
We summarize his answer:
The good Lord, who hates to see his creation burn, sent down tremendous rainfall to quench the horrifying fires which were causing millions of people to nearly choke to death and die. But it seems he might have gotten a bit carried away.
Since you have a track record of dutifully answering challenging questions, may we ask: Do you think this man qualifies more for:
A) US President
B) Howdy Doody
C) Overseer of the United States Treasury
D) A job as Chief Meteorologist of say a Continental superpower
?
Thank you.
For whatever reason, there is a documented difference in the ability of different societies to produce a functional state.
Now, that may sound controversial, but let’s look at some specific examples.
1. Take the U.S.
It produces crude oil, refines the crude oil, then consumes the refined oil.
The refining produces a lot of middle class jobs for Americans.
2. Now take Nigeria.
It produces oil and consumes refined oil.
But to a large extent it has to ship the raw crude oil to other countries to be refined (which gives jobs and income to those other countries), then has the refined oil shipped back to Nigeria to be consumed.
Obviously this is economically inefficient and deprives Nigerians of the good-paying jobs in refining oil.
There have been news reports saying oil refineries were built in Nigeria years ago.
However, the monies the big oil companies sent to Nigeria to pay for the maintenance on those refineries disappeared into corruption.
See, e.g.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/nov/09/a-wealth-of-sorrow-why-nigerias-abundant-oil-reserves-are-really-a-curse
This is literal insanity.
It is not rich natural resources that bring corruption to a country,
but rather the character of its people.
Why are abundant oil reserves “a curse” in Nigeria but not in Norway or the U.S.?
For another reference, see
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2021-04-05-nigerias-oil-refineries-are-a-mess-and-symbolise-the-countrys-descent-into-corruption-and-waste/
If the above is true (and AFAIK it is), who do you blame for that?
White racists?
More from the Guardian article:
Gee, how about the people and their values?
Arnold Toynbee wrote of “The Virtues of Adversity”.
Maybe he was onto something.
Keith Harbaugh,
The problem or set of problems you refer to are older than the hills and have been documented and gossiped about since twenty years after time began. They are even mentioned on some interesting tape recordings of private conversations between President Richard M Nixon and Sec of State Henry Kissinger. Wouldn’t it be great fun to live to see the day when the NY Times and Washington Toast finally admit the real reason for the missing 17 minutes? (Chuckle) But as you may or may not know – you live in a world dominated by a country in which it has been decided that no one can discuss these topics. Or else. In my unsolicited opinion, the old USA has maybe five years left at the rate it’s going. Maybe it can survive what’s coming, sort of. And then sell tickets to see the ruins. Our noble forefathers such as Jefferson and his friends foresaw what was coming. They weren’t wrong.
Keith, please get a copy of Fukuyama’s “Trust” – the economic value of trust and cooperation.
The missing ingredient between Nigeria for example and Norway. is the level of trust. I have been looking at examples of exactly the same phenomenon in Sicily for the last few weeks.’
Strangely, Ukraine may prosper from losing a war with Russia if it Galvanises enough Ukrainians to trust each other enough to work together to achieve something useful.
“A corollary of the neocon assumption that everybody can, and must really want to, transform themselves into Ohio Republicans is an absolute inability to see any value whatsoever in the cultures people actually have.”
I wait with anticipation for a number of Americans to not rip down statues of Confederate dead (or Lincoln or deface Union monuments), or pull them down like presidential wanabe Nikki Haley cart them off in the middle of the night because it is politically expediant. Equally I wait for the bi-coastal elites to not again suppress things like the Sound of Freedom while pushing Cuties as entertainment. Or doctors to prescribe HCQ and Ivermetin and not just tick of the “protocols” of the CDC like they were a religous mantra. Heck I even anticipate polite conversation with New Yorkers that does not involve denegrating people raised below the Mason Dixon line (which said persons can’t find on a map) or speak with what to their ear is an accent.
Fred,
Speaking of coastal elites and their attitudes, we were warned in 2015:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/08/radical_egalitarianism_is_the_real_threat_.html
The article has been proven true today.
Is David still around? I would love to see posts from him.
TTG, good work keeping the blog going.
This was a great find and I agree 100% with Tyler’s observation and with David Habakkuk’s characteristically eloquent and highly insightful response. As you have entitled this post “Diversity” I have decided to post my thoughts:
I would contend that the word “diversity”, in the modern ubiquitous sense of a desirable ends a society (any society) should work towards, is just such a garment dressing up the real agenda of our would-be diversifiers. Their real agenda is simply the exercise of greater power over us – itself of course the most ancient of phenomena. In this case “diversify” is merely code for the destruction of culture – in particular any aspects of any culture which may pose a threat to the existing global oligarchy who are rapidly consolidating absolute control over us all.
The state of ‘diversity’ sought by these folk is a populous severed from all traditional sources of spiritual strength; religious identity, racial identity, national identity and even family and sexual identity. In fact it is analogous to the catastrophic “flies of a summer” state Burke describes in his famous passage in Reflections... It is quite evident to me that this profoundly anti-human state of mankind is being actively worked towards by a very powerful and evil group who are utterly contemptuous of all that most of us hold dear. Diversity for them means no more rallying points for revolutions, just the low hum of we flies, a few of whom may need to be batted away from time to time.
It is an exceptionally clever strategy too, as a greater state of “diversity” appeals to any existing minority group. Above the grievance layer the idea appeals to the legions of useful idiots who cannot see the real agenda for the affirmative action trees and above them to the well-meaning of the progressive faith who are blissfully unaware that they are merely carrying out the will of the cynical wannabe Lords of the Flies group at the top. Additionally, with the criteria defining the ‘diverse’ being infinitely mutable, we have a classic state of Marxist permanent revolution. Inside every conservative American their is mixed race, non-binary, value fluid, world government desiring Utopian drone ready to jump out and salute whatever iteration of the Pride flag we are currently on.
Barbara Ann,
The article I linked above to Fred would fit with your comments too.
The Honourable Barbara of Ann, former Duchess of Innsbrück on Instruct,
Speaking of Diversity (which begins with “Dive”), and or things unsayable,
shall we do you think, devise a … logarithmic, … cinquo-quatro-hypersonic or other form of scaling with which to measure the wide and spacious breadth and tantalizingly adept display of variance which can be discerned in the listing of authors which the paper of record (notice I didn’t say Wreck-Horde) allows us to discern below – namely the Brothers Anger?
(I speak of the duet: Da Vi des Anger and St. Even Erl Anger)
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/10/us/politics/nato-biden-ukraine.html
As NATO Gathers, Unity Among the Alliance Has Become Harder to Sustain.
The international cooperation celebrated by President Biden has been challenged as the war in Ukraine drags on and questions linger over that country’s membership in the alliance.
Yours truly with appreciation,
The Once Formless of Lang Xi Toodle Ooh and Oopsie, Now merely Viscount Alessandro of South Quimple-Derry East.
We await the third Anger, Louis, or as his mates liked to call him, briefly: Lew
So they could say: “Look there. Sakes alive if it isn’t Le Wanger!”
To those who only care about the differences it must be constant war. There is no choice for them. The very existence of “others” is a threat to their culture.
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!
–Kipling.
Keep it transactional and it’s about commonalities. As the Mandalorian would put it: “This is they way.”
The neocons don’t want to transform anyone into Ohio Republicans. They despise Ohio Republicans, just as they despise Arabs, Persians, and European Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox.
“The idea of contempt for others, no matter how it’s dressed up, is often at the heart of many social and political movements, both left and right.”
This is especially true when the social and political movements are driven by a certain ethnic group that holds itself as “chosen” and considers the rest of humanity less than human.
David Habakkuk knows this, and his comment about neocons being unable to see value in other cultures highlights it. This one, though, takes the prize: As in previous Jacobin political programmes – collectivisation in the Soviet Union, for example – the ‘shadow side’ of a strong faith in progress turns out to be contempt.
TTG –
The lead photo with Bronisław Malinowski in the center got me curious. So I looked him up on Wiki. Now I’ve bound and determined to read a copy of his book ‘Argonauts of the Western Pacific’. Never thought about it before but those Melanesians must have been darn good sailors and navigators – considering that their oceanic territory extends 3500 miles from Fiji to some of the small eastern islands of Indonesia. That is well over a million square miles thru some deep waters. Doesn’t seem like they did all of that spreading out by walking when sea levels were lower.
leith,
I’m glad to see the photo of Malinowski made you curious. He’s oft considered the father of modern anthropology or at least how we conduct anthropological field work. He believed that culture can only be fully understood through the lens of those who live that culture. He also saw no culture as more advanced or better than any other. That’s his connection to my title of “Diversity”. You may very well enjoy his “Argonauts of the Western Pacific” but don’t expect a ripping nautical yarn. To this day, it still stands as one of the finest ethnographies written.
Also see “We The Navigators” (1972) by Dr. David Lewis. He learned, documented and used the ancient navigation practices of the Pacific.
That pic reminds of Michael Rockefeller who was studying diversity from a pot
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Rockefeller
Off topic, but don’t know a better place for it:
Some may find this of interest:
US Now Aiding Vietnam in Finding the Country’s Missing in Action
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/07/07/overcoming-our-legacies-of-war-us-now-aiding-vietnam-finding-countrys-missing-action.html
“By helping the Vietnamese,
the U.S. also stands to gain in the search for America’s missing from Vietnam,
according to officials of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.”
Australian veterans, aided by Australian Defence forces have been doing this for at least ten years – prime source is unit diaries and after action reports.
The families believe the souls of their relatives will wander as ghosts until they have a proper (buddhist?) burial.
It’s been official policy since 2019.
https://www.minister.defence.gov.au/media-releases/2019-09-11/australia-supports-recovery-vietnamese-war-remains
We received this from – Near death experience Department, sometimes referred to as The Department of Lights at the End of the Tunnel.
Zeihan represents the really enlightened approach of presenting defeat or if you prefer – Climb Down – as victory (!) with a new spicy ginger & carrot cake slice of the pie for everyone. And it’s not only very clever and sagacious but quite likely (sans huge cataclysmic blunder & disaster) the only way forward.
For these purposes he finds it necessary to say that 3 destroyers in the Indian Ocean will reduce China’s population by 750 million by the year 2075, and that Vladimir Putin is evil and that the US will definitely lose multiple cities to nuclear strikes in the foreseeable future, but it’s more fun that way – you get to keep saying how big and bad you are while in reality quietly backing off and retreating and becoming self sufficient on the sly. And even if you are incurably gung-ho and all engines full on gunboat jingoist diplomat – if you have 20 remaining functional brain cells you know you need this restoring-reshoring as plan B (backup, bailout plan) in case the Plan A (Nancy & Joe Dynamic Non-binary Duo Think Tank) proves really faulty. Which it almost certainly might prove to become.
So why is this on topic for TTG’s meditations on Diversity?
Because it promises something for everyone – white collar, blue collar, old, young, rich, poor etc etc, due to the diversity of skills and aptitudes that the program will necessarily require – from building factories, to insuring them, to safeguarding them to designing them etc. In other words Make America Great Again (sorry) which means feed, educate, nurture and enrich a wider and more inclusive spectrum of humanity than those who work in or for Wall Street.
The Greatest Reindustrialization Process in US History – Peter Zeihan
https://youtu.be/UNxkpqx1LDw
I’ve seen Peter Zeihans type before; a vary slick and entertaining presentation of a one dimensional answer that explains the history of the world – his shtick is demographics with a little technology talk thrown in.
Any Government can put a spanner in Zeihans simple demographic wheel very easily.
TGG,
Your posting re “diversity” I can bring to a personal level.
As an undergrad my major was in cultural anthropology. After wandering through various courses, intro classes in cultural and physical anthropology caught my attention and led on to a major. Grad school, though, in a different major area took me into a long career in child welfare. However, elements of “culture and diversity” learned in my undergrad major were often present in such work.
Interest in anthropology always remained. Later in life spending multiple visits
wandering in Belize and Guatemala. Eventually all three of my adult children married spouses from different cultures (Mexico, China, Guatemala), as well as a niece with husband from Bangladesh. Making for very rich family experiences and lovely blended grandchildren.
This is really remarkable
(make of it what you will):
[Retired] Army Colonel [Kathryn Spletstoser]
Gets $975,000 in Sex Assault Case Against
Former Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman
[John Hyten]
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/07/13/army-colonel-gets-975000-sex-assault-case-against-former-joint-chiefs-vice-chairman.html
“Army Col. Kathryn Spletstoser, who served as Hyten’s aide in 2017, filed the lawsuit,
and in the settlement reached in U.S. District Court in California on Wednesday,
the federal government will pay her $975,000.
…
Hyten vigorously denied her allegations during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in July 2019,
with his wife seated behind him and Spletstoser looking on from a short distance away.”
Here is a video showing the two principals making their claims:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=qLBl3B7crUA
General Hyten only:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=-d-JLAPVqZg
Here the Democratic Senator Jack Reed questions General Hyten:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=1zGC_wYh0T8