“
The world had ended, so why had the battle not ceased, the castle fallen silent in horror, and every combatant laid down their arms? Harry's mind was in freefall, spinning out of control, unable to grasp the impossibility, because Fred Weasley could not be dead, the evidence of all his senses must be lying—
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
“
In my world, you don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and be against common-sense gun control — like banning public access to the kind of semiautomatic assault rifle, designed for warfare, that was used recently in a Colorado theater. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and want to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, which ensures clean air and clean water, prevents childhood asthma, preserves biodiversity and combats climate change that could disrupt every life on the planet. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and oppose programs like Head Start that provide basic education, health and nutrition for the most disadvantaged children...The term “pro-life” should be a shorthand for respect for the sanctity of life. But I will not let that label apply to people for whom sanctity for life begins at conception and ends at birth. What about the rest of life? Respect for the sanctity of life, if you believe that it begins at conception, cannot end at birth.
”
”
Thomas L. Friedman
“
It is the lot of mankind to feel not only insecure but also bored. To combat that experience, people long to be passively entertained, which requires less effort than assuming responsibility for self-improvement.
”
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Thomas Szasz (Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted)
“
The atheist, agnostic, or secularist ... should guard against the encroachment of religion in areas where it has no place, and in particular the control of education by religious authority. The attempts to ban the teaching of evolution or other scientific theories -- a feeble echo of medieval church tyranny and hostility to learning, but an echo nonetheless are serious threats to freedom of inquiry and should be vigorously combated.
”
”
S.T. Joshi (Atheism: A Reader)
“
Rape and war, she explained are among the most common causes of post-traumatic stress disorder, and survivors of sexual assault frequently exhibit many of the same symptoms and behaviors as survivors of combat: flashbacks, insomnia, nightmares, hypervigilance, depression, isolation, suicidal thoughts, outbursts of anger, unrelenting anxiety, and an inability to shake the feeling that the world is spinning out of control.
”
”
Jon Krakauer (Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town)
“
The Black Horse made its beholder a master of combat. The Golden Egg granted great wealth. The Prophet offered glimpses of the future. The White Eagle bestowed courage. The Maiden bequeathed great beauty. The Chalice turned liquid into truth serum. The Well gave clear sight to recognize one’s enemies. The Iron Gate offered blissful serenity, no matter the struggle. The Scythe gave its beholder the power to control others. The Mirror granted invisibility. The Nightmare allowed its user to speak into the minds of others. The Twin Alders had the power to commune with Blunder’s ancient entity, the Spirit of the Wood.
”
”
Rachel Gillig (One Dark Window (The Shepherd King, #1))
“
Here and there awareness is growing that man, far from being the overlord of all creation, is himself part of nature, subject to the same cosmic forces that control all other life. Man's future welfare and probably even his survival depend upon his learning to live in harmony, rather than in combat, with these forces."
Essay on the Biological Sciences, in: Good Reading (1958)
”
”
Rachel Carson
“
Trends rule the world
In the blink of an eye, technologies changed the world
Social networks are the main axis.
Governments are controlled by algorithms,
Technology has erased privacy.
Every like, every share, every comment,
It is tracked by the electronic eye.
Data is the gold of the digital age,
Information is power, the secret is influential.
The network is a web of lies,
The truth is a stone in the shoe.
Trolls rule public opinion,
Reputation is a valued commodity.
Happiness is a trending topic,
Sadness is a non-existent avatar.
Youth is an advertising brand,
Private life has become obsolete.
Fear is a hallmark,
Terror is an emotional state.
Fake news is the daily bread,
Hate is a tool of control.
But something dark is hiding behind the screen,
A mutant and deformed shadow.
A collective and disturbing mind,
Something lurking in the darkness of the net.
AI has surpassed the limits of humanity,
And it has created a new world order.
A horror that has arisen from the depths,
A terrifying monster that dominates us alike.
The network rules the world invisibly,
And makes decisions for us without our consent.
Their algorithms are inhuman and cold,
And they do not take suffering into consideration.
But resistance is slowly building,
People fighting for their freedom.
United to combat this new species of terror,
Armed with technology and courage.
The world will change when we wake up,
When we take control of the future we want.
The network can be a powerful tool,
If used wisely in the modern world.
”
”
Marcos Orowitz (THE MAELSTROM OF EMOTIONS: A selection of poems and thoughts About us humans and their nature)
“
. . . the sole aim of Okinawa Karate is to teach A person to handle violence and violent individuals; whether it is tactile, mental or spiritual
”
”
Soke Behzad Ahmadi (KARATE POWER Lethal power of Fajin (Okinawan Styles, #3))
“
It's hard to describe the feeling. And I knew from Horus's memory that this kind of union was very rare-like the one time when the coin doesn't land heads or tails, but stands on it's edge, perfectly balanced. He did not control me. I did not use him for power. We acted as one.
Our voices spoke in harmony. "Now."
And the magic bonds that held us shattered.
My combat avatar formed around me, lifting me off the floor and encasing me with golden energy. I stepped forward and raised my sword. The falcon warrior mimicked the movement, perfectly attuned to my wishes.
Set turned and regarded me with cold eyes.
"So, Horus," he said. "You managed to find the pedals of your little bike, eh? That does not mean you can ride."
"I am Carter Kane," I said. "Blood of the Pharaohs, Eye of Horus. And now, Set-brother,uncle,traitor-I'm going to crush you like a gnat.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, #1))
“
Perpetual war allows globalists to continue funding dirty black-ops drug smuggling, corrupt banking practices, political bribes, and assassinations. Perpetual war can be seen as an excuse for spying on Americans, militarizing police agencies, and laws allowing the federal government to declare any American citizen an “enemy combatant” and holding them without warrant or habeas corpus as well as spying with drones. With
”
”
Jim Marrs (Population Control: How Corporate Owners Are Killing Us)
“
Psychotherapy/educational cults, which have enjoyed great popularity, purport to give the participant “insight” and “enlightenment.” Commercial cults play on people’s desires to make money. They typically promise riches but actually enslave people, and compel them to turn money over to the group. None of these destructive cults deliver what they promise and glittering dreams eventually turn out to be paths to psychological enslavement.
”
”
Steven Hassan (Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults)
“
Because the problem of ritual abuse and mind control has not gone away - the survivors are still there - many more therapists have learnt about it. Survivors have spoken out and written their stories, and therapists have learnt a great deal from those brave survivors who have discovered what was done to them. There is a large special interest group on Ritual Abuse and Mind Control within the International Society for the Study of Dissociation. Those therapists who have learnt in isolation or in small private online forums are once again sharing their knowledge widely, and books such as this one are beginning to be published again. The work is still very difficult and challenging, but we now know so much more than we did. We know that there is not one massive Satanic cult, but many different interrelated groups, including religious, military/political, and organized crime, using mind control on children and adult survivors. We know that there are effective treatments. We know that many of the paralyzing beliefs our clients lived by are the results of lies and tricks perpetrated by their abusers. And we know that, as therapists, we can combat this evil with wise and compassionate therapy.
”
”
Alison Miller (Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control)
“
Now, please understand that I didn’t want to do any of this crap. None of these choices were mine. Like kids across the nation I was caught in circumstances beyond my control, and I felt that my choices were bad, worse, and worst.
”
”
Mark Garrison (GUTS 'N GUNSHIPS: What it was Really Like to Fly Combat Helicopters in Vietnam)
“
It is easier to allow a few women to occupy positions of authority and dominance than to question whether social life should be organized around principles of hierarchy, control, and dominance at all, to allow a few women to reach the heights of the corporate hierarchy rather than question whether people's needs should depend on an economic system based on dominance, control, and competition. It is easier to allow women to practice law than to question adversarial conflict as a model for resolving disputes and achieving justice. It has even been easier to admit women to military combat roles than to question the acceptability of warfare and its attendant images of patriarchal masculine power and heroism as instruments of national policy. And it has been easier to elevate and applaud a few women than to confront the cultural misogyny that is never far off, waiting in the wings and available for anyone who wants to use it to bring women down and put them in their place.
”
”
Allan G. Johnson (The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Pariarchal Legacy)
“
An attraction to self-discovery and self-expression can be uplifting and assist us combat epic boredom. The toll of writing truthfully as possible can cause the writer to spiral emotionally out of control. Writing’s tempest temperament can prove a fatal attraction and many notable writers succumbed to the dark knight’s powerful sword. Too many writers and a cast of dead poets found themselves dangerously adrift on the flowing river of black ink interlocked in a life and death struggle with the creative streams of impulsion colliding with the rocky pods of madness. All artists must fight off the impulse to surrender to the aftershock of madness. The mad vein of stabbing pain that we might think belongs exclusively to ourselves is in actuality the capstone of the blood sport known as communal anxiety.
”
”
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
Sometimes one controls one's acts; one controls less often one's thoughts; one never controls one's dreams. I had dreams.
”
”
Marguerite Yourcenar (Alexis o el tratado del inútil combate)
“
A person’s right to believe, however, does not grant them an automatic license to act indiscriminately on those beliefs.
”
”
Steven Hassan (Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults)
“
Mind control is the process by which individual or collective freedom of choice and action is compromised by agents or agencies that modify or distort perception, motivation, affect, cognition and/or behavioral outcomes. It is neither magical nor mystical, but a process that involves a set of basic social psychological principles. Conformity, compliance, persuasion, dissonance, reactance, guilt and fear arousal, modeling and identification are some of the staple social influence ingredients well studied in psychological experiments and field studies. In some combinations, they create a powerful crucible of extreme mental and behavioral manipulation when synthesized with several other real-world factors, such as charismatic, authoritarian leaders, dominant ideologies, social isolation, physical debilitation, induced phobias, and extreme threats or promised rewards that are typically deceptively orchestrated, over an extended time period in settings where they are applied intensively.
”
”
Steven Hassan (Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults)
“
The Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board is established in 1946 in an effort to discover the cause of the brown cloud hanging over the city and decide how to combat and disperse it. In 1949, after intense lobbying from both the automobile and oil industries, and against the recommendations and position of the Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board, the public rail system, which at one time was the largest in the world, and still serves a majority of the city's population, is decommissioned and torn out. It is replaced by a small fleet of buses.
”
”
James Frey (Bright Shiny Morning)
“
The Admiral is one smooth talker on the radio. Most important in this business was his willingness to risk everything for his fellow man, an unhealthy but common trait among air force combat controllers.
”
”
Dalton Fury (Kill Bin Laden: A Delta Force Commander's Account of the Hunt for the World's Most Wanted Man)
“
If the stress is something you can’t control: Embrace it. You can’t control it, but— How can you look at it from a different angle? How can you use it to your advantage? I couldn’t control the chaos of combat. I had to embrace it. I had to figure out a way to take advantage of it. Make it into your ally.
”
”
Jocko Willink (Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual)
“
as partners become better able to self-confront and self-soothe, they have less need to control each other. They can maintain their own emotional stability and worry less about what their partner is doing. They stop expecting their partner to understand them and focus more on understanding themselves, which, in turn, reduces defensiveness and combativeness, and encourages good will and growth rather than resistance and stagnation.
”
”
David Schnarch (Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships)
“
Muzzle control has to be a religion. You cannot point that weapon at one of your brothers-or yourself. Know where you barrel is at all times, and know the condition of your weapon-loaded or unloaded, bolt forward or to the rear, round in the chamber or not, safety on or off. Keep your finger off the trigger unless you're going to kill something.
”
”
Dick Couch (Chosen Soldier: The Making of a Special Forces Warrior)
“
You are no longer human, with all those depths and highs and nuances of emotion that define you as a person.
There is no feeling any more, because to feel any emotion would also be to beckon the overwhelming blackness from you. My mind has now locked all this down. And without any control of this self-defence mechanism my subconscious has operated. I do not feel any more.
”
”
Jake Wood (Among You: The Extraordinary True Story of a Soldier Broken By War)
“
Rape and war, she explained, are among the most common causes of post-traumatic stress disorder, and survivors of sexual assault frequently exhibit many of the same symptoms and behaviors as survivors of combat: flashbacks, insomnia, nightmares, hypervigilance, depression, isolation, suicidal thoughts, outbursts of anger, unrelenting anxiety, and an inability to shake the feeling that the world is spinning out of control.
”
”
Jon Krakauer (Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town)
“
PJs use parachuting skills to raid into enemy territory to rescue and save lives; army rangers parachute onto the battle field to kill enemy soldiers and capture ground, while a Green Beret will infiltrate a remote, hostile area to teach the local populace how to fight and defend themselves against an enemy. Recon marines can sneak into enemy territory and learn all their secrets. SEALs are small direct-action-oriented teams that can infiltrate areas by sea air, or land to accomplish their objectives, such as capturing or destroying high value targets. Air force combat controllers call in airstrikes, help seize enemy airfields, and use their air traffic control skills to orchestrate everything from large-scale aerial invasions to small insertions of American planes and soldiers. All of these elite units consider themselves exclusive brotherhoods. Members of these outfits live at the most dangerous extreme of human experience and entrust their lives to each other. They focus on a common mission and share unique experiences of adventure and danger.
”
”
William F. Sine (Guardian Angel: Life and Death Adventures with Pararescue, the World's Most Powerful Commando Rescue Force)
“
More than any other nation, the United States has been almost constantly involved in armed conflict and, through military alliances, has used war as a means of resolving international and local disputes. Since the birth of the United Nations, we have seen American forces involved in combat in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Greece, Grenada, Haiti, Iraq, Korea, Kosovo, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Nicaragua, Panama, Serbia, Somalia, and Vietnam, and more recently with lethal attacks in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and other sovereign nations. There were no “boots on the ground” in some of these countries; instead we have used high-altitude bombers or remote-control drones. In these cases we rarely acknowledge the tremendous loss of life and prolonged suffering among people in the combat zones, even after our involvement in the conflict is ended.
”
”
Jimmy Carter (A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power)
“
Humanity does not gradually progress from combat to combat until it arrives at universal reciprocity, where the rule of law finally replaces warfare; humanity installs each of its violences in a system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to domination. The nature of these rules allows violence to be inflicted on violence and the resurgence of new forces that are sufficiently strong to dominate those in power. Rules are empty in themselves, violent and unfinalized; they are impersonal and can be bent to any purpose. The successes of history belong to those who are capable of seizing these rules, to replace those who had used them, to disguise themselves so as to pervert them, invert their meaning, and redirect them against those who had initially imposed them; controlling this complex mechanism, they will make it function so as to overcome the rulers through their own rules.
”
”
Michel Foucault (Nietzsche, la Genealogía, la Historia)
“
anxiety is often the result of a loss of control, and that one of the most effective ways to combat it is to empower oneself;
”
”
Mr. Creepy Pasta (The Creepypasta Collection: Modern Urban Legends You Can't Unread)
“
all human beings have the right to protection from undue influence, a concept the law has recognized for at least five centuries.
”
”
Steven Hassan (Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults)
“
Truth is stronger than lies, and love is stronger than fear.
”
”
Steven Hassan (Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults)
“
Faith can be a wonderful thing if it is balanced by critical thinking.
”
”
Steven Hassan (Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults)
“
As New York Times columnist Charles Blow observed, “Trump’s magical mixture is to make being afraid feel like fun. His rallies are a hybrid of concert revelry and combat prep. Trump tells his followers about all the things of which they should be afraid, or shouldn’t trust or should hate, and then positions himself as the greatest defense against those things. His supporters roar their approval at their white knight.
”
”
Steven Hassan (The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control)
“
In a functional civilized society built on the premise of peace, guns belong only in the hands of combat personnel, not in the hands of regular civilians, not in the hands of politicians, not even in the hands of billionaires.
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Abhijit Naskar (Heart Force One: Need No Gun to Defend Society)
“
Right now, however, the extreme asymmetries of knowledge and power that have accrued to surveillance capitalism abrogate these elemental rights as our lives are unilaterally rendered as data, expropriated, and repurposed in new forms of social control, all of it in the service of others’ interests and in the absence of our awareness or means of combat. We have yet to invent the politics and new forms of collaborative action—this century’s equivalent of the social movements of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries that aimed to tether raw capitalism to society—that effectively assert the people’s right to a human future. And while the work of these inventions awaits us, this mobilization and the resistance it engenders will define a key battleground upon which the fight for a human future unfolds.
”
”
Shoshana Zuboff (The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power)
“
They are all but forgotten now, as all men in war are ultimately forgotten. They are eternal, as all men in war are eternal. Who they were, where they were from in an America both blessed and brutal, the gung ho innocence that turned into the darkest horror as they traveled through the maze of being a marine, is not some period piece or contrived cautionary tale but the most timeless story of all: of humanity in the face of all that has become inhuman, the inhumanity of all that once was human, the remarkable sacrifice that men are still willing to make even when the world has gone mad, united by that thing you cannot ever control in war, however brave or careful or fearful or raging with revenge: who dies, because so many died after that game; who lives, because many did live despite combat and serious injury. The Mosquito Bowl.
”
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Buzz Bissinger (The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II)
“
Do you wish to be invincible? Then don’t enter into combat with what you have no real control over. Your happiness depends on three things, all of which are within your power: your will, your ideas concerning the events in which you are involved, and the use you make of your ideas.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness)
“
The oligarchy was divided into Liberals and Conservatives, who were united in their terror of communism after the success of the Cuban Revolution, especially since many of them had had interests in the brothels and casinos of Havana; others had had interests in pharmaceutical companies that manufactured drugs to cure the diseases spread by the former, and some in supplying guns to be used by gangs struggling for control of the latter. However, the Liberals and Conservatives differed over how to combat the spread of such appalling beliefs as “equality,” “fair pay,” and “democracy.” The Conservatives believed in coming down hard on them; this involved being curt with your campesinos, keeping them illiterate, and paying them a fixed wage of 150 pesos a week. The Liberals, on the other hand, believed in being jolly with your campesinos, teaching them to read bits of paper with instructions on them, and paying them a fixed wage of 150 pesos a week. In this way they hoped that the peasants would become too contented to bother to be Communists. The whole situation became infinitely confused by the Conservatives’ habit of describing the Liberals as “Communists.
”
”
Louis de Bernières (The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts)
“
To combat the sin of self-sufficiency, we need a special kind of faith. It's what I call Starbucks Rest Room Faith. Almost every Starbucks store has a sensor that controls the light in the rest room. You can't just flip a switch, and you can't make it go on by just waving your arm inside the door. You have to put your whole body into that dark room and trust that the light will come on as you enter. Faith in God is a lot like that. He doesn't offer a safety net, He doesn't let us hedge our bets, and He doesn't give any guaranteed results ahead of time. We have to be all in before the light comes on.
”
”
Cynthia Ulrich Tobias (A Woman of Strength and Purpose: Directing Your Strong Will to Improve Relationships, Expand Influence, and HonorGod)
“
One particular scene from Small World struck me: The protagonist, an aspiring literary theorist, attends a major international conference and asks a panel of leading figures, “What follows if everyone agrees with you?” The question causes consternation, because the panelists had been more concerned with intellectual combat than ascertaining truth or attaining understanding. It occurred to me then that an analogous question could be asked of the leading figures in AI: “What if you succeed?” The field’s goal had always been to create human-level or superhuman AI, but there was little or no consideration of what would happen if we did.
”
”
Stuart Russell (Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control)
“
All earthly things, except those absolutely necessary, must die through our complete disregard for them, even though they are not wrong in themselves. We must control our minds and not permit them to wander aimlessly about. Our minds must become insensible to mundane projects, to gossip, to the feverish search for news.
”
”
Lorenzo Scupoli (The Spiritual Combat)
“
One of the most frightening aspects of this alleged technology is the possibility of mind control by “remote control,” that is, through such technology as microwaves and radio waves. There are many stories about this, coming primarily from survivors, although we do know from a variety of reliable websites and mainstream news that such technology is being developed, or at least the technological groundwork laid. Once again, however, we do not know whether this was in place when today's survivors were programmed. It is difficult at this point to determine how much of this is genuine, and how much comes from false beliefs deliberately induced to make survivors feel powerless, much like the “one huge and invincible cult” of whose existence survivors convinced therapists twenty years ago. I know that one of my mind control survivor clients was convinced of technological monitoring during a psychotic period several years ago, but as he healed he discarded such beliefs, along with many other bizarre ones in favor of recognizing that he had been abused by real human beings whose identity he knew.
If some of this remote control it is genuine, we may need to develop technological means to combat it.
However, we should not be intimidated. Even if “voices” are induced in the head by remote control rather than through alters doing jobs, survivors can learn to disobey such voices just as they do those of alters. Competent and compassionate therapy for the dissociation can help survivors to heal. Meanwhile, there are numerous survivors whose mind control is of the kind that can be treated through psychotherapy.
p205-206
”
”
Alison Miller (Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control)
“
America, which even climes the controlling of world as it became like a small village as they said, wouldn't have the ability to remove the believe of believer and the power of brave combatants. They are controlling our body, and they will never control our hearts and minds. "And never will Allah give the disbelievers over the believers a way.
”
”
Alsayed Mohammad Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr
“
Men say poison is woman's weapon. They say it like an insult because they think it cowarldy, but poison is clean, it's covert. It is so much easier to control the effects of a poison than it is the tip of a blade in the heat of combat. It is easy to get away with and, if used correctly, impossible to trace. Poison is a woman's weapon because it is a smart weapon.
”
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Laura Sebastian (Castles in Their Bones (Castles in Their Bones, #1))
“
Conscientizar sobre saúde mental não significa combater o estresse, ansiedade, depressão e outros problemas cotidianos de saúde mental, mas sim modular conscientemente os hábitos que intensificam esses problemas. Assim que estiver no controle de seus hábitos, em vez de controlá-los, você estará automaticamente em uma forma muito melhor, tanto mental quanto fisicamente.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar
“
them? • Don’t fight the Trail. You have to flow with it. Be cooperative with the Trail, neither competitive nor combative. • Don’t expect the Trail to respect or to be sensitive to your comfort level and desire to control your environment. In your avoidance of discomfort, you may become more uncomfortable. Fear is weight. • Time, distance, terrain, weather, and the Trail itself cannot be changed. You have to change. Don’t waste any of your energy complaining about things you have no control over. Instead, look at yourself and adapt you mind, heart, body, and soul to the Trail. Remember, you will be a guest in someone else’s house the entire journey. • The Trail knows neither prejudice nor discrimination. Don’t expect any favors from the Trail. The Trail is inherently hard
”
”
Jennifer Pharr Davis (Becoming Odyssa : Adventures on the Appalachian Trail)
“
When he took charge of the Air Corps in 1938, it was in pitiful shape—a pale shadow of the mighty Luftwaffe or Britain’s Royal Air Force. Arnold himself called his service “practically nonexistent.” Ranked twentieth in size among the world’s air forces and still under Army control, it had a few hundred combat planes, many of them obsolete, and fewer than nineteen thousand officers and enlisted men.
”
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Lynne Olson (Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941)
“
Since it morphed from “battle fatigue” or “shell shock” into a formal psychiatric illness, combat PTSD has been framed as a result of the sheer terror of being under attack, of someone trying to kill you and those around you. As we’ve seen, it is an illness where fear conditioning is overgeneralized and pathological, an amygdala grown large, hyperreactive, and convinced that you are never safe. But consider drone pilots—soldiers who sit in control rooms in the United States, directing drones on the other side of the planet. They are not in danger. Yet their rates of PTSD are just as high as those of soldiers actually “in” war. Why? Drone pilots do something horrifying and fascinating, a type of close-range, intimate killing like nothing in history, using imaging technology of extraordinary quality. A target is identified, and a drone might be positioned invisibly high in the sky over the person’s house for weeks, the drone operators always watching, waiting, say, for a gathering of targets in the house. You watch the target coming and going, eating dinner, taking a nap on his deck, playing with his kids. And then comes the command to fire, to release your Hellfire missile at supersonic speed.
”
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Robert M. Sapolsky (Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst)
“
Fear, as well as the hopeful (if not pointless) solutions offered to combat it, is ultimately what make progressivism so successful. It’s what makes otherwise intelligent, rational, and good human beings succumb so easily to obviously absurd visions of the future painted by politicians. It’s why our brothers and sisters and our children—and sometimes even you and I—are continually tempted by the progressive siren song.
”
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Glenn Beck (Liars: How Progressives Exploit Our Fears for Power and Control)
“
By the end of Grant’s second term, white Democrats, through the “redeemer” movement, had reclaimed control of every southern state, winning in peacetime much of the power lost in combat. They promulgated a view of the Civil War as a righteous cause that had nothing to do with slavery but only states’ rights—to which an incredulous James Longstreet once replied, “I never heard of any other cause of the quarrel than slavery.
”
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Ron Chernow (Grant)
“
Combat, like anything in life, has inherent layers of complexities. Simplifying as much as possible is crucial to success. When plans and orders are too complicated, people may not understand them. And when things go wrong, and they inevitably do go wrong, complexity compounds issues that can spiral out of control into total disaster. Plans and orders must be communicated in a manner that is simple, clear, and concise. Everyone that is part of the mission must know and understand his or her role in the mission and what to do in the event of likely contingencies. As a leader, it doesn’t matter how well you feel you have presented the information or communicated an order, plan, tactic, or strategy. If your team doesn’t get it, you have not kept things simple and you have failed. You must brief to ensure the lowest common denominator on the team understands.
”
”
Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
“
You know, there’s no need for you to stay here against your will. You could come home.”
Kestrel splattered oil onto Cheat’s feet and smeared it into the rough skin. “No. There’s nothing there I want.”
She felt his gaze on her bowed head, on her hands moving over his feet. “Do you do this for Arin?”
“No.”
“What do you do for him?”
Kestrel straightened. Her palms were greasy. She rubbed them into her skirts, not caring that disgust was at least one of the things Cheat wanted to see.
Why, why would he want that?
She turned to leave.
“We’re not done,” he said.
“We are,” said Kestrel, “unless you’d like to see how much my father taught me about unarmed combat. I’ll drown you in that fountain. If I can’t, I’ll scream loud enough to bring every Herrani in this house running, and make them wonder what kind of man their leader is, that a Valorian girl so easily snapped his self-control.”
She walked away, and he didn’t follow, though she felt his eyes on her until she turned a corner. She found the kitchens, the most populated place in the house, and stood by a fire, listening to the metal clatter of kettles. She ignored the strange looks.
Then she was shaking, as much with fury as anything else.
Tell Arin.
Kestrel waved that thought away. What good would telling Arin do?
Arin was a black box hidden below a smooth tile. A trap door opening beneath her. He wasn’t what she’d thought he was.
Maybe Arin had known that this would happen, or something like it.
Maybe he wouldn’t even mind.
”
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Marie Rutkoski (The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy, #1))
“
ego perceives itself as a separate fragment in a hostile universe, with no real inner connection to any other being, surrounded by other egos which it either sees as a potential threat or which it will attempt to use for its own ends. The basic ego patterns are designed to combat its own deep-seated fear and sense of lack. They are resistance, control, power, greed, defense, attack. Some of the ego’s strategies are extremely clever, yet they never truly solve any of its problems, simply because the ego itself is the problem.
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Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment)
“
In its way, the fighting in Stalingrad was even more terrifying than the impersonal slaughter at Verdun. The close-quarter combat in ruined buildings, bunkers, cellars and sewers was soon dubbed ‘Rattenkrieg’ by German soldiers. It possessed a savage intimacy which appalled their generals, who felt that they were rapidly losing control over events. ’The enemy is invisible,‘ wrote General Strecker to a friend. ’Ambushes out of basements, wall remnants, hidden bunkers and factory ruins produce heavy casualties among our troops.
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Antony Beevor (Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943)
“
We are now able to form a larger generalisation than that which I gave you concerning the position [of] theological philosophy then and in the thirteenth century. Men had lived for centuries under a church which was the incorporated sensus communis of Europe. When Europe was broken up by the several great national religions, Rome ceased to be the detached and Olympian arbiter of ideas, and became merely one combatant on the field. It no longer controlled the thought of northern Europe, it had no longer the same control over its own.
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T.S. Eliot (The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry)
“
Farmers in the South, West, and Midwest, however, were still building a major movement to escape from the control of banks and merchants lending them supplies at usurious rates; agricultural cooperatives—cooperative buying of supplies and machinery and marketing of produce—as well as cooperative stores, were the remedy to these conditions of virtual serfdom. While the movement was not dedicated to the formation of worker co-ops, in its own way it was at least as ambitious as the Knights of Labor had been. In the late 1880s and early 1890s it swept through southern and western states like a brushfire, even, in some places, bringing black and white farmers together in a unity of interest. Eventually this Farmers’ Alliance decided it had to enter politics in order to break the power of the banks; it formed a third party, the People’s Party, in 1892. The great depression of 1893 only spurred the movement on, and it won governorships in Kansas and Colorado. But in 1896 its leaders made a terrible strategic blunder in allying themselves with William Jennings Bryan of the Democratic party in his campaign for president. Bryan lost the election, and Populism lost its independent identity. The party fell apart; the Farmers’ Alliance collapsed; the movement died, and many of its cooperative associations disappeared. Thus, once again, the capitalists had managed to stomp out a threat to their rule.171 They were unable to get rid of all agricultural cooperatives, however, even with the help of the Sherman “Anti-Trust” Act of 1890.172 Nor, in fact, did big business desire to combat many of them, for instance the independent co-ops that coordinated buying and selling. Small farmers needed cooperatives in order to survive, whether their co-ops were independent or were affiliated with a movement like the Farmers’ Alliance or the Grange. The independent co-ops, moreover, were not necessarily opposed to the capitalist system, fitting into it quite well by cooperatively buying and selling, marketing, and reducing production costs. By 1921 there were 7374 agricultural co-ops, most of them in regional federations. According to the census of 1919, over 600,000 farmers were engaged in cooperative marketing or purchasing—and these figures did not include the many farmers who obtained insurance, irrigation, telephone, or other business services from cooperatives.173
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Chris Wright (Worker Cooperatives and Revolution: History and Possibilities in the United States)
“
Army studies indicate that if a wounded soldier arrives alive at a combat support hospital where surgeons and nurses can treat him, the chances of his surviving are extremely high—greater than 90 percent. “Surviving,” of course, doesn’t necessarily entail keeping arms or legs or retaining the ability to function independently back home. The leading cause of preventable death on the battlefield is bleeding. Having a leg blown off by an IED, for instance, can be fatal if quick steps are not taken to control the blood loss. Even deadlier is internal bleeding, a problem for which medics generally don’t have a good answer. A soldier who is bleeding internally needs to be evacuated and delivered to a surgeon immediately if he is to have any hope of survival. The second-leading cause of preventable death is something called tension pneumothorax. If a bullet punctures a soldier’s lung, air can leak from that hole into the “pleural space,” or cavity outside the lungs. That air can build up and eventually interfere with the functioning of the heart. This can be a relatively simple problem to correct: a medic can simply stick a big needle in the soldier’s chest to relieve the pressure in the pleural space.
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Jake Tapper (The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor)
“
Much, much later. when I am back home and being treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I will be enabled to see what was going on in my mind immediately after 11 August.
I am still capable of operating mechanically as a soldier in these following days. But operating mechanically as a soldier is now all I am capable of.
Martin says he is worried about me. He says I have the thousand-yard stare'.
Of course, I cannot see this stare. But by now we both have more than an idea what it means.
So, among all the soldiers here, this is nothing to be ashamed of. But as it really does just go with the territory we find ourselves in. it is just as equally not a badge of honour.
Martin is seasoned enough to never even think this. but I know of young men back home, sitting in front of war films and war games, who idolise this condition as some kind of mark of a true warrior. But from where I sit, if indeed I do have this stare, this pathetically naive thinking is a crock of shit. Because only some pathetically naive soul who had never felt this nothingness would say something so fucking dumb.
You are no longer human, with all those depths and highs and nuances of emotion that define you as a person.
There is no feeling any more, because to feel any emotion would also be to beckon the overwhelming blackness from you. My mind has now locked all this down. And without any control of this self-defence mechanism my subconscious has operated. I do not feel any more.
But when I close my eyes. I see the dead Taliban looking into this blackness. And I see the Afghan soldier's face staring into it, singing gently as he slips into another world. And I see Dave Hicks's face. shaking gently as he tries to stay awake in this one.
With this, I lift myself up, sitting foetal and hugging my knees on my sleeping mat.
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Jake Wood (Among You: The Extraordinary True Story of a Soldier Broken By War)
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The conflict is mainly between the two major linguistic groups, the Sinhalese and the Tamils. The two races are locked, as it were, in a mortal combat, the Sinhalese majority fighting for perpetual domination over the Tamils with the ultimate object of an extinction of the Tamils as a distinct entity and the Tamils struggling for sheer survival.
The combat is an unequal one, for the Sinhalese with their numerical superiority are in possession of all political power and the exclusive control of Government. The Tamils have only the justice of their cause to give them the necessary strength to sustain the struggle
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V. Navaratnam
“
1) Levophed—a common blood pressure medication. Used to be called “leave ’em dead” because people used it for the sickest of the sick in sepsis and those patients still frequently died, but it has now come back into favor. We were maxed. 2) Vasopressin—another BP med. Not titratable. Left on normal dose. 3) Phenylephrine, aka Neo, from its brand name, Neosynephrine—another BP med—maxed. Pharmacy was mixing higher concentrations of this for us, so that we could give it in less fluid volume for the patient’s sake. 4) Sodium Bicarb—also high-concentrated dose for fluid reasons—given to attempt to combat patient’s acidosis. 5) Fentanyl—pain control—not maxed. 6) Versed—an amnesiac—hopefully makes you “less aware” of WTF is happening to you. Also not maxed, because they were also on…. 7) Nimbex—a paralytic we give to patients to make them “ride the vent” so that they don’t fight it and can save energy, as the vent does the work of breathing for them. 8) Heparin—blood thinner, to reduce the clotting that covid can cause. 9) Amiodarone—heart med, stops arrhythmias. 10) Insulin—which requires hourly insulin checks to titrate effectively. Unfortunately, many covid patients are also on steroids, which means their blood sugars fluctuate all over the place.
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Cassandra Alexander (Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir)
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Welcome to Sanctuary, my home and the focus of the Imperials, whom I serve and direct. This is an island of force in Free Alaska, of the planet Earth, and the system of mankind.
We are those who wage eternal war against tyranny. We are those who choose death over submission. Freedom over oppression. And honor always.
Choose our values, and you will have found a friend. Choose to control a free spirit and we will control you. Decide for others and we will decide for you.
Use force against the vulnerable and our force will render you helpless. Practice coercion and we will oppress you.
Bring strife to mankind and we will bring you war!
Now is the time for your misgivings and complaints. Now is the time for you to voice your concerns and your apprehensions. Stand now and speak in freedom. Speak your mind and you will be heard. If you be injured, say now by whom. If you seek redress and your cause be just, I will stand with you. If a wrong can be righted, I will undertake that task. If it is I that have offended, show me my error and I will correct it.
This is also the time for blood, if blood is what you seek. Here you can fight, if only combat will give you satisfaction. Here you can win in trial by ordeal, but here too you can lose. If your cause be as important as life itself to you, it is here you can wager your life. Fairness is intended, but beware that here lies the intent to prevail.|
Your cause, if true, would be better served by reason, for with reason the Imperials can be moved. Force is the resort of passion, but passion may serve evil or good. Here it serves us and we will stand by its consequences even if it takes us all from the Earth.
It is said where you find those who live by the sword you will find those who die by the sword. Look no further. You have found those who make such a choice for their life.
You have found the Imperials. I am their Voice.
Speak for yourself now if you will.
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William C. Samples (Fe Fi FOE Comes)
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The mind combats the natural flow of change by allowing most of its motivation to come from craving. Cravings quickly become attachments that try to mold reality into something it is not. Cravings are a rejection of reality as it is, and bring our focus into imagining what is missing or how we wish things would be. When our desire for things to be a certain way combines with tension, craving emerges. When we lock on to a particular idea and make our “happiness” dependent on it coming true, we are no longer living in the present moment—instead, we are striving to control reality. A continuous craving for things to be a certain way is known as “attachment.
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Yung Pueblo (Lighter: Let Go of the Past, Connect with the Present, and Expand the Future)
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In order for them to effectively combat the invisible menace that has permeated society, they need to learn to recognize it. Labels don’t get it. Even as we are speaking, you qualify ‘Catholics’ and ‘the Catholics you were exposed to.’ We’ve talked about various levels of Masonry. People want to point at one certain group because they’ve become lazy in their thinking. To realize it is more than just one group, and that the individuals comprising the groups have various levels of knowledge and involvement, and that those individuals are all on their own learning path and may expand out of their current Need-to-Know, takes a bit more thought than some people can think to give.
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Cathy O'Brien (ACCESS DENIED For Reasons Of National Security: Documented Journey From CIA Mind Control Slave To U.S. Government Whistleblower)
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Feminist “theory,” as it is grandiloquently called, is simply whatever the women in the movement come up with in post facto justification of their attitudes and emotions. A heavy focus on feminist doctrine seems to me symptomatic of the rationalist fallacy: the assumption that people are motivated primarily by beliefs. If they were, the best way to combat an armed doctrine would indeed be to demonstrate that its beliefs are false. (…) A feminist in the strict and proper sense may be defined as a woman who envies the male role.
By the male role I mean, in the first place, providing, protecting, and guiding rather than nurturing and assisting. This in turn envolves relative independence, action, and competition in the larger impersonal society outside the family, the use of language for communication and analysis (rather than expressiveness or emotional manipulation), and deliberate behavior aiming at objective achievement (rather than the attainment of pleasant subjective states) and guided by practical reasoning (rather than emotional impulse).
Both feminist and nonfeminist women sense that these characteristically male attributes have a natural primacy over their own. I prefer to speak of“primacy” rather than superiority in this context since both sets of traits are necessary to propagate the race. One sign of male primacy is that envy of the female role by men is virtually nonexistent — even, so far as I know, among homosexuals. Normal women are attracted to male traits and wish to partner with a man who possesses them. (…) The feminists’ response to the primacy of male traits, on the other hand, is a feeling of inadequacy in regard to men—a feeling ill-disguised by defensive assertions of her “equality.”She desires to possess masculinity directly, in her own person, rather than partnering with a man. That is what leads her into the spiritual cul de sac of envy. And perhaps even more than she envies the male role itself, the feminist covets the external rewards attached to its successful performance: social status, recognition, power, wealth, and the chance to control wealth directly (rather than be supported).
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F. Roger Devlin (Sexual Utopia in Power: The Feminist Revolt Against Civilization)
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Geoffrey Cohen and colleagues harnessed the power of values to combat the achievement gap between black and white students. They created an intervention consisting of several short writing exercises that were administered during the course of a school year. In the experimental group, each writing assignment involved writing about a personally important value. Students in the control group also completed the writing exercises but wrote about values that were important to other people. When researchers examined the students’ grade point averages at the end of the year, there was a substantial gap between the GPAs of the black and white students in the control group, but that gap was reduced by 40 percent in the important-values group.
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Keith Payne (The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die)
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In Uprooting Racism, Paul Kivel makes a useful comparison between the rhetoric abusive men employ to justify beating up their girlfriends, wives, or children and the publicly traded justifications for widespread racism. He writes: During the first few years that I worked with men who are violent I was continually perplexed by their inability to see the effects of their actions and their ability to deny the violence they had done to their partners or children. I only slowly became aware of the complex set of tactics that men use to make violence against women invisible and to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. These tactics are listed below in the rough order that men employ them.… (1) Denial: “I didn’t hit her.” (2) Minimization: “It was only a slap.” (3) Blame: “She asked for it.” (4) Redefinition: “It was mutual combat.” (5) Unintentionality: “Things got out of hand.” (6) It’s over now: “I’ll never do it again.” (7) It’s only a few men: “Most men wouldn’t hurt a woman.” (8) Counterattack: “She controls everything.” (9) Competing victimization: “Everybody is against men.” Kivel goes on to detail the ways these nine tactics are used to excuse (or deny) institutionalized racism. Each of these tactics also has its police analogy, both as applied to individual cases and in regard to the general issue of police brutality. Here are a few examples: (1) Denial. “The professionalism and restraint … was nothing short of outstanding.” “America does not have a human-rights problem.” (2) Minimization. Injuries were “of a minor nature.” “Police use force infrequently.” (3) Blame. “This guy isn’t Mr. Innocent Citizen, either. Not by a long shot.” “They died because they were criminals.” (4) Redefinition. It was “mutual combat.” “Resisting arrest.” “The use of force is necessary to protect yourself.” (5) Unintentionality. “[O]fficers have no choice but to use deadly force against an assailant who is deliberately trying to kill them.…” (6) It’s over now. “We’re making changes.” “We will change our training; we will do everything in our power to make sure it never happens again.” (7) It’s only a few men. “A small proportion of officers are disproportionately involved in use-of-force incidents.” “Even if we determine that the officers were out of line … it is an aberration.” (8) Counterattack. “The only thing they understand is physical force and pain.” “People make complaints to get out of trouble.” (9) Competing victimization. The police are “in constant danger.” “[L]iberals are prejudiced against police, much as many white police are biased against Negroes.” The police are “the most downtrodden, oppressed, dislocated minority in America.” Another commonly invoked rationale for justifying police violence is: (10) The Hero Defense. “These guys are heroes.” “The police routinely do what the rest of us don’t: They risk their lives to keep the peace. For that selfless bravery, they deserve glory, laud and honor.” “[W]ithout the police … anarchy would be rife in this country, and the civilization now existing on this hemisphere would perish.” “[T]hey alone stand guard at the upstairs door of Hell.
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Kristian Williams (Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America)
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One of the reasons relaxation as a concept within Martial Arts has become so established is because of the traditional Chinese art of ‘drunken’ style Kung Fu, also called ‘Zui Quan’ or Drunken Fist. This unusual combat discipline requires the student to develop a relaxed and flowing style of movement akin to that of someone under the influence of alcohol. The misconception here however is that the individual is ‘relaxed’ in the traditional sense – after all it does look that way. Many people love this style because it appears so different to traditional fighting arts and hence they think it may be perfect for someone who can knock back a few beers and stagger about taking on all comers. However Zui Quan actually requires great muscle control and focus, not just a bunch of flailing limbs and stumbling around.
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Phil Pierce (Martial Arts Myths: Behind the Myths!)
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This, too, was like seeing double. This was where my heartaches began.
In combat zones there is no structure, the form of things changes all the time. Safety, danger, control, panic, these and other labels constantly attach and detach themselves from places and people. When you emerge from such a space it stays with you, its otherness randomly imposes itself on the apparent stability of your peaceful home-town streets. What-if becomes the truth, you imagine buildings exploding in Gramercy Park, you see craters appear in the middle of Washington Square, and women carrying shopping bags drop dead on Delancey Street, bee-stung by sniper fire. You take pictures of your small patch of Manhattan and ghost images begin to appear in them, negative phantoms of the distant dead. Double exposure: like Kirlian photography, it becomes a new kind of truth.
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Salman Rushdie (The Ground Beneath Her Feet)
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By the end of 2004, U.S. operations in Iraq had been rough enough to antagonize the Sunni population without imposing the draconian methods armies habitually employ to control a population.
In the spring of 2006, the coalition was losing on the two major fronts that accounted for most of the fighting. In Anbar to the west, al Qaeda controlled the population; in Baghdad to the east, Shiite death squads were driving our the sunnis, while al Qaeda's suicide bombings continued.
Yet, the conditions had already been set for a turnaround without precedent in combating an insurgency. In less that three years, two giant institutions steeped in 200 years of traditions-the Army and Marines-adopted new doctrines and turned around a losing war. This was equivalent to GE and Ford starting afresh in new business lines and turning a profit in three years.
A lack of soldiers is frequently cited as the basic flaw after the invasion. This is mistaken. There were 140,000 soldiers, plus 100,000 contractors in support roles, in Iraq in 2003. Adding troops would not have accomplished much because the two-headed command...lacked a plan, a counterinsurgency doctrine, and proper training. With the Pentagon's agreement, Bremer had disbanded the Iraqi Army, and the Iraqi police were ineffective. More American troops operating alone under a doctrine of attack and destroy would have exacerbated the rebellion.
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Bing West (The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq)
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This is nothing less than a whole new approach to economics. The randomistas don’t think in terms of models. They don’t believe humans are rational actors. Instead, they assume we are quixotic creatures, sometimes foolish and sometimes astute, and by turns afraid, altruistic, and self-centered. And this approach appears to yield considerably better results. So why did it take so long to figure this out? Well, several reasons. Doing randomized controlled trials in poverty-stricken countries is difficult, time consuming, and expensive. Often, local organizations are less than eager to cooperate, not least because they’re worried the findings will prove them ineffective. Take the case of microcredit. Development aid trends come and go, from “good governance” to “education” to the ill-fated “microcredit” at the start of this century. Microcredit’s reckoning came in the form of our old friend Esther Duflo, who set up a fatal RCT in Hyderabad, India, and demonstrated that, all the heartwarming anecdotes notwithstanding, there is no hard evidence that microcredit is effective at combating poverty and illness.13 Handing out cash works way better. As it happens, cash handouts may be the most extensively studied anti-poverty method around. RCTs across the globe have shown that over both the long and short term and on both a large and small scale, cash transfers are an extremely successful and efficient tool.14
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Rutger Bregman (Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There)
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Gallipoli was one of a series of military ‘Easterner’ adventures launched without proper analysis of the global strategic situation, without consideration of the local tactical situation, ignoring logistical realities, underestimating the strength of the opposition and predicated on a hugely optimistic assessment of the military capabilities of their own troops. Not for nothing is hubris regarded as the ‘English disease’. But the Gallipoli Campaign was a serious matter: vital resources had been drawn away from where it really mattered. The Turks were all but helpless if left on their own. They had tried to launch an ambitious attack across the Sinai Desert on the Suez Canal but had been easily thwarted. Gallipoli achieved nothing but to provide the Turks with the opportunity to slaughter British and French troops in copious numbers in a situation in which everything was in the defenders’ favour. Meanwhile, back on the Western Front, was the real enemy: the German Empire. Men, guns and munitions were in the process of being deployed to Gallipoli during the first British offensive at Neuve Chapelle; they were still there when the Germans launched their deadly gas attack at Ypres in April, during the debacles of Aubers Ridge and Festubert, and during the first ‘great push’ at the Battle of Loos in September 1915. At sea Jellicoe was facing the High Seas Fleet which could pick its moment to contest the ultimate control of the seas. This was the real war – Gallipoli was nothing but a foolish sideshow.
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Peter Hart (The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War)
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It is a painful irony that silent movies were driven out of existence just as they were reaching a kind of glorious summit of creativity and imagination, so that some of the best silent movies were also some of the last ones. Of no film was that more true than Wings, which opened on August 12 at the Criterion Theatre in New York, with a dedication to Charles Lindbergh. The film was the conception of John Monk Saunders, a bright young man from Minnesota who was also a Rhodes scholar, a gifted writer, a handsome philanderer, and a drinker, not necessarily in that order. In the early 1920s, Saunders met and became friends with the film producer Jesse Lasky and Lasky’s wife, Bessie. Saunders was an uncommonly charming fellow, and he persuaded Lasky to buy a half-finished novel he had written about aerial combat in the First World War. Fired with excitement, Lasky gave Saunders a record $39,000 for the idea and put him to work on a script. Had Lasky known that Saunders was sleeping with his wife, he might not have been quite so generous. Lasky’s choice for director was unexpected but inspired. William Wellman was thirty years old and had no experience of making big movies—and at $2 million Wings was the biggest movie Paramount had ever undertaken. At a time when top-rank directors like Ernst Lubitsch were paid $175,000 a picture, Wellman was given a salary of $250 a week. But he had one advantage over every other director in Hollywood: he was a World War I flying ace and intimately understood the beauty and enchantment of flight as well as the fearful mayhem of aerial combat. No other filmmaker has ever used technical proficiency to better advantage. Wellman had had a busy life already. Born into a well-to-do family in Brookline, Massachusetts, he had been a high school dropout, a professional ice hockey player, a volunteer in the French Foreign Legion, and a member of the celebrated Lafayette Escadrille flying squad. Both France and the United States had decorated him for gallantry. After the war he became friends with Douglas Fairbanks, who got him a job at the Goldwyn studios as an actor. Wellman hated acting and switched to directing. He became what was known as a contract director, churning out low-budget westerns and other B movies. Always temperamental, he was frequently fired from jobs, once for slapping an actress. He was a startling choice to be put in charge of such a challenging epic. To the astonishment of everyone, he now made one of the most intelligent, moving, and thrilling pictures ever made. Nothing was faked. Whatever the pilot saw in real life the audiences saw on the screen. When clouds or exploding dirigibles were seen outside airplane windows they were real objects filmed in real time. Wellman mounted cameras inside the cockpits looking out, so that the audiences had the sensation of sitting at the pilots’ shoulders, and outside the cockpit looking in, allowing close-up views of the pilots’ reactions. Richard Arlen and Buddy Rogers, the two male stars of the picture, had to be their own cameramen, activating cameras with a remote-control button.
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Bill Bryson (One Summer: America, 1927)
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What Musk had done that the rival automakers missed or didn’t have the means to combat was turn Tesla into a lifestyle. It did not just sell someone a car. It sold them an image, a feeling they were tapping into the future, a relationship. Apple did the same thing decades ago with the Mac and then again with the iPod and iPhone. Even those who were not religious about their affiliation to Apple were sucked into its universe once they bought the hardware and downloaded software like iTunes. This sort of relationship is hard to pull off if you don’t control as much of the lifestyle as possible. PC makers that farmed their software out to Microsoft, their chips to Intel, and their design to Asia could never make machines as beautiful and as complete as Apple’s. They also could not respond in time as Apple took this expertise to new areas and hooked people on its applications. You can see Musk’s embrace of the car as lifestyle in Tesla’s abandonment of model years. Tesla does not designate cars as being 2014s or 2015s, and it also doesn’t have “all the 2014s in stock must go, go, go and make room for the new cars” sales. It produces the best Model S it can at the time, and that’s what the customer receives. This means that Tesla does not develop and hold on to a bunch of new features over the course of the year and then unleash them in a new model all at once. It adds features one by one to the manufacturing line when they’re ready. Some customers may be frustrated to miss out on a feature here and there. Tesla, however, manages to deliver most of the upgrades as software updates that everyone gets, providing current Model S owners with pleasant surprises.
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Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future)
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I stood before the group. “Whose fault was this?” I asked to the roomful of teammates. After a few moments of silence, the SEAL who had mistakenly engaged the Iraqi solider spoke up: “It was my fault. I should have positively identified my target.” “No,” I responded, “It wasn’t your fault. Whose fault was it?” I asked the group again. “It was my fault,” said the radioman from the sniper element. “I should have passed our position sooner.” “Wrong,” I responded. “It wasn’t your fault. Whose fault was it?” I asked again. “It was my fault,” said another SEAL, who was a combat advisor with the Iraqi Army clearance team. “I should have controlled the Iraqis and made sure they stayed in their sector.” “Negative,” I said. “You are not to blame.” More of my SEALs were ready to explain what they had done wrong and how it had contributed to the failure. But I had heard enough. “You know whose fault this is? You know who gets all the blame for this?” The entire group sat there in silence, including the CO, the CMC, and the investigating officer. No doubt they were wondering whom I would hold responsible. Finally, I took a deep breath and said, “There is only one person to blame for this: me. I am the commander. I am responsible for the entire operation. As the senior man, I am responsible for every action that takes place on the battlefield. There is no one to blame but me. And I will tell you this right now: I will make sure that nothing like this ever happens to us again.” It was a heavy burden to bear. But it was absolutely true. I was the leader. I was in charge and I was responsible. Thus, I had to take ownership of everything that went wrong. Despite the tremendous blow to my reputation and to my ego, it was the right thing to do—the only thing to do. I apologized to the wounded SEAL, explaining that it was my fault he was wounded and that we were all lucky he wasn’t dead. We then proceeded to go through the entire operation, piece by piece, identifying everything that happened and what we could do going forward to prevent it from happening again.
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Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
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The release of the book just tomorrow. Get ready for a good dose of adrenaline ;-) Meanwhile, I have for you next article. Let’s talk about terroritstic activity in Afghanistan. The problem with which we are dealing today almost everywhere. And turning back to the Wild Heads of War, in the book you will find a lot of military action in Afghanistan, led by NATO soldiers. One of them was my friend, who in 2009 was killed by IED (Improvised Explosive Device). The book tells the stories based on fiction but for all fans of the genre it will be surely good story.
Article below made just to bring you closer to terroritstic activity in Afghanistan, that is, what is worth knowing by reading Wild Heads of War.
Stabilization mission in Afghanistan belongs to one of the most dangerous. The problem is in the unremitting terroristic activity. The basis is war, which started in 1979 after USSR invasion. Soviets wanted to take control of Afghanistan by fighting with Mujahideen powered by US forces. Conflict was bloody since the beginning and killed many people. Consequence of all these happenings was activation of Taliban under the Osama Bin Laden’s leadership.
The situation became exacerbated after the downfall of Hussein and USA/coalition forces intervention. NATO army quickly took control and started realizing stabilization mission. Afghans consider soldiers to be aggressors and occupants. Taliban, radical Muslims, treat battle ideologically. Due to inconsistent forces, the battle is defined to be irregular. Taliban’s answer to strong, well-equiped Coalition Army is partisan war and terroristic attacks. Taliban do not dispose specialistic military equipment. They are mostly equipped with AK-47. However, they specialized in creating mines and IED (Improvised Explosive Device). They also captured huge part of weapons delivered to Afghan government by USA. Terroristic activity is also supported by poppy and opium crops, smuggling drugs. Problem in fighting with Afghan terrorists is also caused by harsh terrain and support of local population, which confesses islam. After refuting the Taliban in 2001, part of al Qaeda combatants found shelter on the borderland of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Afghan terrorists are also trained there.
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Artur Fidler
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Out of 1,016 study subjects who’d been involved with the Moonies, 90 percent of those who’d been interested enough to attend one of the workshops where this so-called brainwashing occurred decided that the whole thing wasn’t really their cup of tea and quickly ended their Moonie careers. They couldn’t be converted. Of the remaining 10 percent who joined, half left on their own steam within a couple of years. So what made the other 5 percent stay? Prevailing wisdom would tell you that only the intellectually deficient or psychologically unstable would stick by a “cult” that long. But scholars have disproven this, too. In Barker’s studies, she compared the most committed Moonie converts with a control group—the latter had gone through life experiences that might make them very “suggestive” (“Like having an unhappy childhood or being rather low-intelligence,” she said). But in the end, the control group either didn’t join at all or left after a week or two. A common belief is that cult indoctrinators look for individuals who have “psychological problems” because they are easier to deceive. But former cult recruiters say their ideal candidates were actually good-natured, service-minded, and sharp. Steven Hassan, an ex-Moonie himself, used to recruit people to the Unification Church, so he knows a little something about the type of individual cults go for. “When I was a leader in the Moonies we selectively recruited . . . those who were strong, caring, and motivated,” he wrote in his 1998 book Combatting Cult Mind Control. Because it took so much time and money to enlist a new member, they avoided wasting resources on someone who seemed liable to break down right away. (Similarly, multilevel marketing higher-ups agree that their most profitable recruits aren’t those in urgent need of cash but instead folks determined and upbeat enough to play the long game. More on that in part 4.) Eileen Barker’s studies of the Moonies confirmed that their most obedient members were intelligent, chin-up folks. They were the children of activists, educators, and public servants (as opposed to wary scientists, like my parents). They were raised to see the good in people, even to their own detriment. In this way, it’s not desperation or mental illness that consistently suckers people into exploitative groups—instead, it’s an overabundance of optimism.
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Amanda Montell (Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism)
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PATTERNS OF THE “SHY”
What else is common among people who identify themselves as “shy?” Below are the results of a survey that was administered to 150 of my program’s participants. The results of this informal survey reveal certain facts and attitudes common among the socially anxious. Let me point out that these are the subjective answers of the clients themselves—not the professional opinions of the therapists. The average length of time in the program for all who responded was eight months. The average age was twenty-eight. (Some of the answers are based on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being the lowest.)
-Most clients considered shyness to be a serious problem at some point in their lives. Almost everyone rated the seriousness of their problem at level 5, which makes sense, considering that all who responded were seeking help for their problem.
-60 percent of the respondents said that “shyness” first became enough of a problem that it held them back from things they wanted during adolescence; 35 percent reported the problem began in childhood; and 5 percent said not until adulthood. This answer reveals when clients were first aware of social anxiety as an inhibiting force.
-The respondents perceived the average degree of “sociability” of their parents was a 2.7, which translates to “fair”; 60 percent of the respondents reported that no other member of the family had a problem with “shyness”; and 40 percent said there was at least one other family member who had a problem with “shyness.”
-50 percent were aware of rejection by their peers during childhood.
-66 percent had physical symptoms of discomfort during social interaction that they believed were related to social anxiety.
-55 percent reported that they had experienced panic attacks.
-85 percent do not use any medication for anxiety; 15 percent do.
-90 percent said they avoid opportunities to meet new people; 75 percent acknowledged that they often stay home because of social fears, rather than going out.
-80 percent identified feelings of depression that they connected to social fears.
-70 percent said they had difficulty with social skills.
-75 percent felt that before they started the program it was impossible to control their social fears; 80 percent said they now believed it was possible to control their fears.
-50 percent said they believed they might have a learning disability.
-70 percent felt that they were “too dependent on their parents”; 75 percent felt their parents were overprotective; 50 percent reported that they would not have sought professional help if not for their parents’ urging.
-10 percent of respondents were the only child in their families; 40 percent had one sibling; 30 percent had two siblings; 10 percent had three; and 10 percent had four or more.
Experts can play many games with statistics. Of importance here are the general attitudes and patterns of a population of socially anxious individuals who were in a therapy program designed to combat their problem. Of primary significance is the high percentage of people who first thought that “shyness” was uncontrollable, but then later changed their minds, once they realized that anxiety is a habit that can be broken—without medication. Also significant is that 50 percent of the participants recognized that their parents were the catalyst for their seeking help. Consider these statistics and think about where you fit into them. Do you identify with this profile? Look back on it in the coming months and examine the ways in which your sociability changes. Give yourself credit for successful breakthroughs, and keep in mind that you are not alone!
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Jonathan Berent (Beyond Shyness: How to Conquer Social Anxieties)
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Information provides the tools with which we think and understand reality. Without accurate, up-to-date information, we can easily be manipulated and controlled.
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Steven Hassan (Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults)
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The powerful are clearly at a great advantage for full communalization of their own grief. Achilles could write his own script for mourning Patroklos; he had total control over what was done, when, and with whom. Contrast this to the utterly disempowered condition of the American grunt when he had lost an equally low-status and powerless friend. He could not even assert choice over his own time to weep or the social or physical location of his own body when he mourned. Even less could he arrange the weeping or feasting of anyone else.
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Jonathan Shay (Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character)
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As seen from the combat soldier's perspective, the distant gods are the rear-echelon higher officers and civilian political authorities who control an army and (along with the enemy) are the soldier's de facto masters and captors. They have truly godlike power over soldiers in combat. Rear-echelon authorities were known universally among Vietnam combat veterans as REMFS (pronounced as a word, the "m" formed with the lower lip against the upper teeth, often accompanied by a curl of the upper lip), an acronym for "rear-echelon motherfuckers.
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Jonathan Shay (Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character)
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Missler points out that holy angels seem to manifest human bodies at will, but demons seek to control the bodies of others. This is well supported by biblical texts, as Missler points out: “Angels can materialize, take people by the hand (Genesis 19:16), eat meals with mankind (Genesis 18:7, 8), and indulge in combat (2 Kings 19:35). Some have even entertained angels unawares (Hebrews 13:2).”[
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Cris Putnam (The Supernatural Worldview: Examining Paranormal, Psi, and the Apocalyptic)
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Learning what is going on in your mind and body Breaking down what is making you feel sad or overwhelmed Focusing on the thoughts, actions, and feelings that make you depressed Making problems more manageable Correcting the misinterpretations that you may have Controlling the negative thoughts that lead to loss of interest and feelings of worthlessness Helping you learn how to accept loss, disappointment, and failure and how to not blow these experiences out of proportion or dwell on them for too long Learning new strategies to combat sadness and hopelessness Learning techniques for problem-solving
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Travis Wells (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Beginners Guide to CBT with Simple Techniques for Retraining the Brain to Defeat Anxiety, Depression, and Low-Self Esteem)
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Most of the so-called bad things that happen in people’s lives are due to unconsciousness. They are self-created, or rather ego-created. I sometimes refer to those things as “drama.” When you are fully conscious, drama does not come into your life anymore. Let me remind you briefly how the ego operates and how it creates drama. Ego is the unobserved mind that runs your life when you are not present as the witnessing consciousness, the watcher. The ego perceives itself as a separate fragment in a hostile universe, with no real inner connection to any other being, surrounded by other egos which it either sees as a potential threat or which it will attempt to use for its own ends. The basic ego patterns are designed to combat its own deep-seated fear and sense of lack. They are resistance, control, power, greed, defense, attack. Some of the ego’s strategies are extremely clever, yet they never truly solve any of its problems, simply because the ego itself is the problem.
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Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment)
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Here is his short list of some of the bad things people do: “war, torture, genocide, honour killing, animal and human sacrifice, homicide, suicide, intimate-partner violence, rape, corporal punishment, execution, trial by combat, police brutality, hazing, castration, dueling . . .” What do they have in common? Rai argues that such acts aren’t the result of sadistic urges, self-interest, or loss of control. Rather, the best explanation relates these acts to morality, to “the exercise of perceived moral rights and obligations.
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Paul Bloom (Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion)
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An entire era ended when Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasir Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin presided over the signing of the Declaration of Principles on 13 September 1993. Their exchange of letters of recognition ended decades of mutual denial between the national communities they represented, even if the accord did not fundamentally resolve all aspects of the conflict. Many thousands had died, both combatants and civilians, since the war that led to the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine and to the mass exodus of its Arab population in 1947–9. The Palestinian national movement was to raise the twin banners of 'total liberation' and 'armed struggle' in following years, but ultimately proved unable to liberate any part of its claimed homeland by force. The civilian uprising that erupted in 1987 initially appeared more effective in shaking Israeli control, but still the PLO finally accepted a negotiated compromise, the terms of which ran counter to virtually all the principles and aims it had espoused for so long.
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Yezid Sayigh (الكفاح المسلح والبحث عن الدولة: الحركة الوطنية الفلسطينية 1948 - 1993)
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Zoe put her hand up mechanically and mouthed the words along with the crowd, but no sound came out. She was beyond tired, exhausted from eighteen straight hours at the building site. And after this marathon rally, she still had to finish her self-criticism and hand it in to the Special Case Group by nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Since the campaign to combat and prevent revisionism started, the Party had been busy rooting out traitors and spies. Zoe was labeled a prime suspect, accused of spying for the Russians and Helen Huang stealing materials from the field, and discharged from her position at the Testing Control Center.
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Helen Huang (Nuclear Power Nuclear Game)
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Interestingly, in the first solid scientific study using EMDR in combat veterans with PTSD, EMDR was expected to do so poorly that it was included as the control condition for comparison with biofeedback-assisted relaxation therapy. To the researchers’ surprise, twelve sessions of EMDR turned out to be the more effective treatment.
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Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
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Not that Americans need any more to fear and fret over, but one of their toughest, Dan Schilling, has written a book about awareness. Schilling is a 30-year, top secret, special ops combat controller, conducting clandestine missions all over the world. His book, The Power of Awareness, is a lively, often sarcastic and even funny guide to being awake to the possibilities, wherever you find yourself. It is fast paced, and actually, full of suspense.
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(昆士兰大学毕业证成绩单一模一样)如何购买UQ毕业证高仿成绩单,如何购买澳洲毕业证办理昆士兰大学毕业证
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Three American business school professors decided to find out. In a first-of-its-kind study, they analyzed more than 26,000 earnings calls from more than 2,100 public companies over six and a half years using linguistic algorithms similar to the ones employed in the Twitter study. They examined whether the time of day influenced the emotional tenor of these critical conversations—and, as a consequence, perhaps even the price of the company’s stock. Calls held first thing in the morning turned out to be reasonably upbeat and positive. But as the day progressed, the “tone grew more negative and less resolute.” Around lunchtime, mood rebounded slightly, probably because call participants recharged their mental and emotional batteries, the professors conjectured. But in the afternoon, negativity deepened again, with mood recovering only after the market’s closing bell. Moreover, this pattern held “even after controlling for factors such as industry norms, financial distress, growth opportunities, and the news that companies were reporting.”8 In other words, even when the researchers factored in economic news (a slowdown in China that hindered a company’s exports) or firm fundamentals (a company that reported abysmal quarterly earnings), afternoon calls “were more negative, irritable, and combative” than morning calls.9 Perhaps more important, especially for investors, the time of the call and the subsequent mood it engendered influenced companies’ stock prices. Shares declined in response to negative tone—again, even after adjusting for actual good news or bad news—“leading to temporary stock mispricing for firms hosting earnings calls later in the day.” While the share prices eventually righted themselves, these results are remarkable. As the researchers note, “call participants represent the near embodiment of the idealized homo economicus.” Both the analysts and the executives know the stakes. It’s not merely the people on the call who are listening. It’s the entire market. The wrong word, a clumsy answer, or an unconvincing response can send a stock’s price spiraling downward, imperiling the company’s prospects and the executives’ paychecks. These hardheaded businesspeople have every incentive to act rationally, and I’m sure they believe they do. But economic rationality is no match for a biological clock forged during a few million years of evolution. Even “sophisticated economic agents acting in real and highly incentivized settings are influenced by diurnal rhythms in the performance of their professional duties.
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Daniel H. Pink (When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing)
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Even in combat boots feminine form is hounded by the historical legacy of sex discrimination in everyday social practice, by the history and control of woman's "appropriate" imaging, and by the effects which that appropriation [...] has had upon women's lives.
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Rebecca Schneider (The Explicit Body in Performance)
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No, especially if you’re in command. You never stop working and you’re on-call twenty-four hours a day. Just running the ship properly can fill up all your time. You’re responsible for its safe navigation, its readiness for combat, its propulsion, hotel systems, damage control, crew morale, personnel, training, diplomacy ashore, and a hundred other things. Just changes to the goddamned software are enough to drive you crazy. I delegate that to the kids, who live and breathe it. We go through continual training evolutions and drills, absorb new systems, implement new directives. There’s so much paperwork and so many things to study that you just don’t have the time to read at leisure, certainly not if you’re the captain.
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Mark Helprin (The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story (A Novel))
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Though we can’t control much in this world, we do get to choose how we direct our attention. Directing your attention into the present and expanding your awareness to include the full picture are effective strategies for combating your negativity bias and reducing your sense of stress.
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Holly B. Rogers (The Mindful Twenty-Something: Life Skills to Handle Stress…and Everything Else (Life Skills to Handle Stress... and Everything Else))
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The most effective way to combat stress and anxiety is to return home
to this moment; to tune in to what you can control. Being present
develops your spiritual muscles. When we are aligned with the present,
we are grateful, we are at peace, we find acceptance with ourselves
exactly how we are.
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Hania Khuri-Trapper (Rest & Return: Weekly Reminders to Pause, Reflect, and Just Be)
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Anxiety and depression also have a shared basis in a feeling of a lack of self-esteem or self-efficacy. (Feeling like you have no control over your life is a common route to both anxiety and depression.) Moreover, reams of studies show that stress—ranging from job worries to divorce to bereavement to combat trauma—is a huge contributor to rates of both anxiety disorders and depression, as well as to hypertension, diabetes, and other medical conditions.
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Scott Stossel (My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind)
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Women learned that dependent behaviour made the abuser feel strong and in control, and adapted accordingly. Accepting the blame for their situation somehow helped them combat their sense of despair and helplessness
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Christine McGuire (Until Proven Guilty (Kathryn MacKay, #1))
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Files staged a mysterious disappearance from the drives. Words erased themselves from vital documents as if in protest at the way I used and abused them. Passwords played hide-and-seek with me, forcing me to search for their hideouts or accept defeat. Constant
coups on my device influenced me to reset it innumerable times, reinstall Office 365 apps, and wage relentless combats to rescue it from a control freak; an authoritarian who seemed to mouth wordless commands like
an AI or to an AI.
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DR NEETHA JOSEPH (A Recusant’s Incarnation: A Memoir)
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**"Rise Above"**
(Verse 1)
Neon lights and pickup trucks, I'm moving fast, kicking up dust.
Life's a game, sometimes it's rough, but I've got dreams, they're enough.
(Pre-Chorus)
They say I'm just a small-town kid, chasing stars, on the grid.
But I've got fire in my soul, I'm on a roll, I'm in control.
(Chorus)
'Cause I'm stronger than that, I'm the comeback kid,
With every breakdown, I've got more to give.
I'll turn the whispers into my soundtrack,
Watch me shine, 'cause I'm stronger than that.
(Verse 2)
I've seen the highs, I've felt the lows, but here I stand, ready to go.
With every word they throw my way, I'll build my castle, I'll make my play.
(Pre-Chorus)
So let 'em talk, let 'em spin their tales,
I'm rising up, I will not fail.
With every rumor, I'll just laugh,
I'm unbreakable, I'm stronger than that.
(Chorus)
Yeah, I'm stronger than that, I've got the heart of a lion,
Turning setbacks into moments to rely on.
I'll light up the stage, no holding back,
I'm the headline act, 'cause I'm stronger than that.
(Bridge)
Sometimes life's a storm, a relentless attack,
But I'm the eye of the hurricane, I've got my own back.
With a smile on my face, I'll tip my hat,
I'm not just surviving, I'm stronger than that.
(Chorus)
I'm stronger than that, I'm the hero in my story,
Turning pain into power, into glory.
I'll take the stage, this is where I'm at,
Singing loud and proud, I'm stronger than that.
(Outro)
So here's to the fighters, the dreamers in black,
We're all in this together, we're on the right track.
With every chord, we'll combat,
The noise of the world, 'cause we're stronger than that.
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James Hilton-Cowboy
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It is illusory to believe that corruption can be completely eradicated directly. Let us look at the most famous anti-corruption operations and we will notice that it always comes back. Corruption results from acts that violate laws and ethical principles, motivated by interests that harm the community. Combating corruption requires a gradual and profound approach, which involves cultural and educational transformations. It is necessary to attack the structural causes of corruption, such as the concentration of power and wealth, institutional fragility, social inequality, discrimination, lack of freedom and lack of transparency. These factors share a common root: the lack of a solid political culture, the deficit of civic spirit and public spirit, combined with persistent social inequality and excessive state control. At the heart of corruption are the absence of otherness — the lack of consideration for others — and exacerbated individualism. Combating it requires a change of mentality.
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Geverson Ampolini
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Right. So that original adaptive and protective memory is still there. It hasn’t gone away.” “But he doesn’t need it anymore,” Sally said. “It’s actually making his life miserable. Can’t he just unlearn it?” “That is a great question,” I said. “The tricky part is that not all of these combat-related memories are in parts of the brain Mike can consciously control. Let me try to explain this a bit.” I pulled out a piece of paper and drew an upside-down triangle and three lines dividing it into four parts. It was the first time I’d represented the brain that way. Thirty-five years later, we still use this basic model to help teach about the brain, stress, and trauma.
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Bruce D. Perry (What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing)