“
There can be no socialism without a state, and as long as there is a state there is socialism. The state, then, is the very institution that puts socialism into action; and as socialism rests on aggressive violence directed against innocent victims, aggressive violence is the nature of any state.
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Hans-Hermann Hoppe (A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism: Economics, Politics, and Ethics)
“
Conflict is not unavoidable. However, it is nonsensical to consider the institution of a state as a solution to the problem of possible conflict, because it is precisely the institution of a state which first makes conflict unavoidable and permanent.
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Hans-Hermann Hoppe
“
Growing economies are built by billions of actors behaving according to their own interests, coordinated through institutions that no one in particular created.
Realizing this requires humility, a trait that is in short supply among would-be dictators, politicians, and bureaucrats, which is precisely why these groups are the proven enemies of prosperity in all times and places.
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Jeffrey Tucker
“
Despite widespread misconceptions in the United States today that the institution of slavery was based on race, for most of the thousands of years in which slavery existed around the world, it was based on whoever was vulnerable to enslavement and within striking distance. Thus Europeans enslaved other Europeans, just as Asians enslaved other Asians and Africans enslaved other Africans, while Polynesians enslaved other Polynesians and the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere enslaved other indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. The very word “slave" derived from the word for Slavs, who were enslaved by fellow Europeans for centuries before Africans began to be brought in chains to the Western Hemisphere. Africans were not singled out by a race for ownership by Europeans, they were resorted to after the rise of nation-states with armies and navies in other parts of the world which reduced the number of places that could be raided for slaves without great costs and risks. Slave-raiding continued in Africa, primarily by Africans enslaving other Africans and then, in West Africa, selling some of their slaves to whites to take to the Western Hemisphere. Meanwhile, the growing range of ships and the growing wealth of nations eventually made economically feasible the transportation of vast numbers of slaves from one continent to another, creating racial differences between the enslaved and their owners as a dominant pattern in the Western Hemisphere. Such a pattern was by no means limited to Europeans owning non-Europeans, however. There were many examples of the reverse, quite aside from vast regions of the earth where neither the slaves nor their owners were either black or white.
”
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Thomas Sowell
“
To pay attention to the American political process, and what the
candidates for this nation’s highest office have to say and not say about the issues that are of importance to them and thus we are to presume importance to the Nation, you would get the impression that the issue of race, that the issue of racism, that the issue of discrimination, and certainly that the issue of white racial privilege were non existent issues; that they were of really no importance, or that of very little importance, because you will not hear and have not heard any of the candidates for the presidency of the United States, in either party, of whatever political ideology, make this an issue. Yes,they talk about poverty and occasionally they talk about schooling and education. They talk about healthcare. They talk about all of those things, but not once have any of those candidates tried to directly connect the role that racism, the role that racial
discrimination, the role that institutional racial oppression and white privilege play in regard to health care, in regard to housing, in regard to schooling. It is as if those issues exist in a vacuum and have no relationship to color, have no relationship to race, have
no relationship to a history of racial subordination.
”
”
Tim Wise
“
The right of self-determination of the peoples includes the right to a state of their own. However, the foundation of a state does not increase the freedom of a people. The system of the United Nations that is based on nation-states has remained inefficient. Meanwhile, nation-states have become serious obstacles for any social development. Democratic confederalism is the contrasting paradigm of the oppressed people. Democratic confederalism is a non-state social paradigm. It is not controlled by a state. At the same time, democratic confederalism is the cultural organizational blueprint of a democratic nation. Democratic confederalism is based on grassroots participation. Its decision-making processes lie with the communities. Higher levels only serve the coordination and implementation of the will of the communities that send their delegates to the general assemblies. For limited space of time they are both mouthpiece and executive institution. However, the basic power of decision rests with the local grassroots institutions.
”
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Abdullah Öcalan (Democratic Confederalism)
“
The fact is that libertarianism is not and does not pretend to be a complete moral or aesthetic theory; it is only a political theory, that is, the important subset of moral theory that deals with the proper role of violence in social life.
Political theory deals with what is proper or improper for government to do, and government is distinguished from every other group in society as being the institution of organized violence. Libertarianism holds that the only proper role of violence is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal. Libertarianism, therefore, is a theory which states that everyone should be free of violent invasion, should be free to do as he sees fit, except invade the person or property of another. What a person does with his or her life is vital and important, but is simply irrelevant to libertarianism.
It should not be surprising, therefore, that there are libertarians who are indeed hedonists and devotees of alternative lifestyles, and that there are also libertarians who are firm adherents of "bourgeois" conventional or religious morality. There are libertarian libertines and there are libertarians who cleave firmly to the disciplines of natural or religious law. There are other libertarians who have no moral theory at all apart from the imperative of non-violation of rights. That is because libertarianism per se has no general or personal moral theory.
Libertarianism does not offer a way of life; it offers liberty, so that each person is free to adopt and act upon his own values and moral principles. Libertarians agree with Lord Acton that "liberty is the highest political end" — not necessarily the highest end on everyone's personal scale of values.
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Murray N. Rothbard
“
In a state which is really articulated rationally all the laws and organizations are nothing but a realization of freedom in its essential characteristics. When this is the case, the individual’s reason finds in these institutions, only the actuality of his own essence, and if he obeys these laws, he coincides, not with something alien to himself, but simply with what is his own. Freedom of choice, of course, is often equally called ‘freedom’; but freedom of choice is only non-rational freedom, choice and self-determination issuing not from the rationality of the will but from fortuitous impulses and their dependence on sense and the external world.
”
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Lecciones de Estetica)
“
Regardless of whether one subscribes to the aims of the four movements whose stories we have told, there is much to appreciate about them as movements. They have overcome schisms; disbandment; leadership scandals; and/or the deaths of their founders. They have developed a highly innovative strategy—bypassing the state—to overcome the obstacles that their ideological strictness; ambitious agendas; and reluctance to compromise present. They have shown a strong entrepreneurial spirit in building effective social service agencies, medical facilities, schools, and businesses that often put the state’s efforts to shame. While they are not the Christian militias, al-Qaeda cells, or Jewish extremist groups whose terrorism has attracted much attention, the Muslim Brotherhood, Shas, Comunione e Liberazione, and the Salvation Army, with their strategy of rebuilding society, one institution at a time, may well prove more successful in sacralizing their societies than movements that use violence.
”
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Robert V. Robinson (Claiming Society for God: Religious Movements and Social Welfare)
“
We should not forget that before being inscribed in Western consciousness as the principle of quantification, harmony, and classical non-existence, Greek measurement was an immense social and polymorphous practice of assessment, quantification, establishing equivalences, and the search for appropriate proportions and distributions.
We can see how introducing measure is linked to a whole problem of peasant indebtedness, the transfer of agricultural properties, the settlement of debts, equivalence between foodstuff or manufactured objects, urbanization, and the establishment of a State form.
The institution of money appears at the heart of this practice of measurement.
”
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Michel Foucault (Lectures on the Will to Know: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1970-1971, & Oedipal Knowledge)
“
Western capitalism will decay, but non-Western capitalism will not take its place, certainly not on a global scale, and neither will Western non-capitalism. As to non-Western capitalism, China will for many reasons not be able to take over as capitalism’s historical host and provide an orderly global environment for its further progress. Nor will there be a co-directorate of China and the United States amicably dividing between them the task of making the world safe for capitalism. And concerning non-capitalism, there is no such thing today as a global socialist movement, comparable to the socialisms that in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries so successfully confronted capitalism in national power struggles. As long as the capitalist dynamism continues to outrun collective order-making and the building of non-market institutions, as it has for several decades now, it disempowers both capitalism’s government and its opposition, with the result that capitalism can be neither reborn nor replaced.
”
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Wolfgang Streeck (How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System)
“
I have often been asked why I maintained such a non-compromising antagonism to government and in what way I have found myself oppressed by it. In my opinion every individual is hampered by it. It exacts taxes from production. It creates tariffs, which prevent free exchange. It stands ever for the status quo and traditional conduct and belief. It comes into private lives and into most intimate personal relations, enabling the superstitious, puritanical, and distorted ones to impose their ignorant prejudice and moral servitudes upon the sensitive, the imaginative, and the free spirits. Government does this by its divorce laws, its moral censorships, and by a thousand petty persecutions of those who are too honest to wear the moral mask of respectability. In addition, government protects the strong at the expense of the weak, provides courts and laws which the rich may scorn and the poor must obey. It enables the predatory rich to make wars to provide foreign markets for the favored ones, with prosperity for the rulers and wholesale death for the ruled. However, it is not only government in the sense of the state which is destructive of every individual value and quality. It is the whole complex of authority and institutional domination which strangles life. It is the superstition, myth, pretense, evasions, and subservience which support authority and institutional domination. It is the reverence for these institutions instilled in the school, the church and the home in order that man may believe and obey without protest. Such a process of devitalizing and distorting personalities of the individual and of whole communities may have been a part of historical evolution; but it should be strenuously combated by every honest and independent mind in an age which has any pretense to enlightenment.
”
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Emma Goldman (Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader (Contemporary Studies in Philosophy and the Human Sciences))
“
So the history of the modern state can also be read as the history of race, bringing together the stories of two kinds of victims of European political modernity: the internal victims of state building and the external victims of imperial expansion. Hannah Arendt noted this in her monumental study on the Holocaust, which stands apart for one reason: rather than talk about the uniqueness of the Holocaust, Arendt sited it in the imperial history of genocide. The history she sketched was that of European settlers killing off native populations. Arendt understood the history of imperialism through the workings of racism and bureaucracy, institutions forged in the course of European expansion into the non-European world: “Of the two main political devices of imperialist rule, race was discovered in South Africa, and bureaucracy in Algeria, Egypt and India.” Hannah Arendt’s blind spot was the New World. Both racism and genocide had occurred in the American colonies earlier than in South Africa. The near decimation of Native Americans through a combination of slaughter, disease, and dislocation was, after all, the first recorded genocide in modern history.
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Mahmood Mamdani (Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror)
“
Democracy provides the institutional framework for the reform of political institutions (other than this framework). It makes possible the reform of institutions without using violence, and thereby the use of reason in the designing of new institutions and the adjusting of old ones. It cannot provide reason. The question of the intellectual and moral standard of its citizens is to a large degree a personal problem. (The idea that this problem can be tackled, in turn, by an institutional eugenic and educational control is, I believe, mistaken ; some reasons for my belief will be given below.) It is quite wrong to blame democracy for the political shortcomings of a democratic state. We should rather blame ourselves. In a non-democratic state, the only way to achieve reasonable reforms is by the violent overthrow of the government, and the introduction of a democratic framework. Those who criticize democracy on any ' moral ' grounds fail to distinguish between personal and institutional problems. It rests with us to improve matters. The democratic institutions cannot improve themselves. The problem of improving them is always a problem of persons rather than of institutions.
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Karl Popper (The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato)
“
The charge that Anarchism is destructive, rather than constructive, and that, therefore, Anarchism is opposed to organization, is one of the many falsehoods spread by our opponents. They confound our present social institutions with organization; hence they fail to understand how we can oppose the former, and yet favor the latter. The fact, however, is that the two are not identical. “The State is commonly regarded as the highest form of organization. But is it in reality a true organization? Is it not rather an arbitrary institution, cunningly imposed upon the masses? “Industry, too, is called an organization; yet nothing is farther from the truth. Industry is the ceaseless piracy of the rich against the poor. “We are asked to believe that the Army is an organization, but a close investigation will show that it is nothing else than a cruel instrument of blind force. “The Public School! The colleges and other institutions of learning, are they not models of organization, offering the people fine opportunities for instruction? Far from it. The school, more than any other institution, is a veritable barrack, where the human mind is drilled and manipulated into submission to various social and moral spooks, and thus fitted to continue our system of exploitation and oppression. “Organization, as WE understand it, however, is a different thing. It is based, primarily, on freedom. It is a natural and voluntary grouping of energies to secure results beneficial to humanity. “It is the harmony of organic growth which produces variety of color and form, the complete whole we admire in the flower. Analogously will the organized activity of free human beings, imbued with the spirit of solidarity, result in the perfection of social harmony, which we call Anarchism. In fact, Anarchism alone makes non-authoritarian organization of common interests possible, since it abolishes the existing antagonism between individuals and classes. “Under present conditions the antagonism of economic and social interests results in relentless war among the social units, and creates an insurmountable obstacle in the way of a co-operative commonwealth. “There is a mistaken notion that organization does not foster individual freedom; that, on the contrary, it means the decay of individuality. In reality, however, the true function of organization is to aid the development and growth of personality. “Just as the animal cells, by mutual co-operation, express their latent powers in formation of the complete organism, so does the individual, by co-operative effort with other individuals, attain his highest form of development. “An organization, in the true sense, cannot result from the combination of mere nonentities. It must be composed of self-conscious, intelligent individualities. Indeed, the total of the possibilities and activities of an organization is represented in the expression of individual energies. “It therefore logically follows that the greater the number of strong, self-conscious personalities in an organization, the less danger of stagnation, and the more intense its life element. “Anarchism asserts the possibility of an organization without discipline, fear, or punishment, and without the pressure of poverty: a new social organism which will make an end to the terrible struggle for the means of existence,—the savage struggle which undermines the finest qualities in man, and ever widens the social abyss. In short, Anarchism strives towards a social organization which will establish well-being for all. “The germ of such an organization can be found in that form of trades unionism which has done away with centralization, bureaucracy, and discipline, and which favors independent and direct action on the part of its members.
”
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Emma Goldman (Anarchism and Other Essays)
“
[ Dr. Lois Jolyon West was cleared at Top Secret for his work on MKULTRA. ]
Dr. Michael Persinger [235], another FSMF Board Member, is the author of a paper entitled “Elicitation of 'Childhood Memories' in Hypnosis-Like Settings Is Associated With Complex Partial Epileptic-Like Signs For Women But Not for Men: the False Memory Syndrome.” In the paper Perceptual and Motor Skills,In the paper, Dr. Persinger writes:
On the day of the experiment each subject (not more than two were tested per day) was asked to sit quietly in an acoustic chamber and was told that the procedure was an experiment in relaxation. The subject wore goggles and a modified motorcycle helmet through which 10-milligauss (1 microTesla) magnetic fields were applied through the temporal plane. Except for a weak red (photographic developing) light, the room was dark. Dr. Persinger's research on the ability of magnetic fields to facilitate the creation of false memories and altered states of consciousness is apparently funded by the Defense Intelligence Agency through the project cryptonym SLEEPING BEAUTY. Freedom of Information Act requests concerning SLEEPING BEAUTY with a number of different intelligence agencies including the CIA and DEA has yielded denial that such a program exists. Certainly, such work would be of direct interest to BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA and other non-lethal weapons programs. Schnabel [280] lists Dr. Persinger as an Interview Source in his book on remote viewing operations conducted under Stargate, Grill Flame and other cryptonyms at Fort Meade and on contract to the Stanford Research Institute. Schnabel states (p. 220) that, “As one of the Pentagon's top scientists, Vorona was privy to some of the strangest, most secret research projects ever conceived. Grill Flame was just one. Another was code-named Sleeping Beauty; it was a Defense Department study of remote microwave mind-influencing techniques ... [...]
It appears from Schnabel's well-documented investigations that Sleeping Beauty is a real, but still classified mind control program. Schnabel [280] lists Dr. West as an Interview Source and says that West was a, “Member of medical oversight board for Science Applications International Corp. remote-viewing research in early 1990s.
”
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Colin A. Ross (The CIA Doctors: Human Rights Violations by American Psychiatrists)
“
How would a restored Islamic world order relate to the modern international system, built around states? A true Muslim’s loyalty, al-Banna argued, was to multiple, overlapping spheres, at the apex of which stood a unified Islamic system whose purview would eventually embrace the entire world. His homeland was first a “particular country”; “then it extends to the other Islamic countries, for all of them are a fatherland and an abode for the Muslim”; then it proceeds to an “Islamic Empire” on the model of that erected by the pious ancestors, for “the Muslim will be asked before God” what he had done “to restore it.” The final circle was global: “Then the fatherland of the Muslim expands to encompass the entire world. Do you not hear the words of God (Blessed and Almighty is He!): ‘Fight them until there is no more persecution, and worship is devoted to God’?” Where possible, this fight would be gradualist and peaceful. Toward non-Muslims, so long as they did not oppose the movement and paid it adequate respect, the early Muslim Brotherhood counseled “protection,” “moderation and deep-rooted equity.” Foreigners were to be treated with “peacefulness and sympathy, so long as they behave with rectitude and sincerity.” Therefore, it was “pure fantasy” to suggest that the implementation of “Islamic institutions in our modern life would create estrangement between us and the Western nations.
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Henry Kissinger (World Order)
“
The consumption of wine was, thus, like the production of figural painting discussed above, prohibited in legal discourse, but positively valued in non-legal discourse—especially amongst those social and political elites who instituted and secured the structures of the state and the very legal institutions that regulated society. Thus, the Mughal Emperor, Bābur, writes disarmingly in his autobiography about his life-long struggle with the bottle,166 the diplomatic gifts of the
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Shahab Ahmed (What Is Islam?: The Importance of Being Islamic)
“
There are two inevitable conditions of life, confronting all of us, which destroy its whole meaning; (1) death, which may at any moment pounce upon each of us; and (2) the transitoriness of all our works, which so soon pass away and leave no trace. Whatever we may do--found companies, build palaces and monuments, write songs and poems--it is all not for long time. Soon it passes away, leaving no trace. And therefore, however we may conceal it from ourselves, we cannot help seeing that the significance of our life cannot lie in our personal fleshly existence, the prey of incurable suffering and inevitable death, nor in any social institution or organization. Whoever you may be who are reading these lines, think of your position and of your duties--not of your position as landowner, merchant, judge, emperor, president, minister, priest, soldier, which has been temporarily allotted you by men, and not of the imaginary duties laid on you by those positions, but of your real positions in eternity as a creature who at the will of Someone has been called out of unconsciousness after an eternity of non-existence to which you may return at any moment at his will. Think of your duties-- not your supposed duties as a landowner to your estate, as a merchant to your business, as emperor, minister, or official to the state, but of your real duties, the duties that follow from your real position as a being called into life and endowed with reason and love.
”
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Leo Tolstoy (The Kingdom of God Is Within You)
“
After World War II, the United States, triumphant abroad and undamaged at home, saw a door wide open for world supremacy. Only the thing called ‘communism’ stood in the way, politically, militarily, economically, and ideologically. Thus it was that the entire US foreign policy establishment was mobilized to confront this ‘enemy’, and the Marshall Plan was an integral part of this campaign. How could it be otherwise? Anti-communism had been the principal pillar of US foreign policy from the Russian Revolution up to World War II, pausing for the war until the closing months of the Pacific campaign when Washington put challenging communism ahead of fighting the Japanese. Even the dropping of the atom bomb on Japan – when the Japanese had already been defeated – can be seen as more a warning to the Soviets than a military action against the Japanese.19 After the war, anti-communism continued as the leitmotif of American foreign policy as naturally as if World War II and the alliance with the Soviet Union had not happened. Along with the CIA, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Council on Foreign Relations, certain corporations, and a few other private institutions, the Marshall Plan was one more arrow in the quiver of those striving to remake Europe to suit Washington’s desires: 1. Spreading the capitalist gospel – to counter strong postwar tendencies toward socialism. 2. Opening markets to provide new customers for US corporations – a major reason for helping to rebuild the European economies; e.g. a billion dollars (at twenty-first-century prices) of tobacco, spurred by US tobacco interests. 3. Pushing for the creation of the Common Market (the future European Union) and NATO as integral parts of the West European bulwark against the alleged Soviet threat. 4. Suppressing the left all over Western Europe, most notably sabotaging the Communist parties in France and Italy in their bids for legal, non-violent, electoral victory. Marshall Plan funds were secretly siphoned off to finance this endeavor, and the promise of aid to a country, or the threat of its cutoff, was used as a bullying club; indeed, France and Italy would certainly have been exempted from receiving aid if they had not gone along with the plots to exclude the Communists from any kind of influential role.
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William Blum (America's Deadliest Export: Democracy The Truth about US Foreign Policy and Everything Else)
“
The nuclear thing is harder to figure. The United States, according to a 1998 study by the Brookings Institution, spent nearly eight trillion in today’s dollars on nukes in the last half of the twentieth century, which represents something like a third of our total military spending in the Cold War. Just the nuke budget was more than that half-century’s federal spending on Medicare, education, social services, disaster relief, scientific research (of the non-nuclear stripe), environmental protection, food safety inspectors, highway maintenance, cops, prosecutors, judges, and prisons … combined.
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Rachel Maddow (Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power)
“
The media squabble over Shchepotin’s final day at the Cancer Institute, and the doubts it raised over the motivation of all concerned, were appropriate, because the most corrosive aspect of corruption is the way that it undermines trust. When corruption is widespread, it becomes impossible to know whom to believe, since the money infects every aspect of state and society. Every newspaper article can be criticized as paid for, every politician can be called corrupt, every court decision can be called into question. Charities are set up by oligarchs to lobby for their interests, and those then provoke doubts about every other non-governmental organization. If even doctors are on the take, can you trust their diagnoses? Are they claiming a patient needs treatment only because that would be to their profit? If policemen are crooked, and courts are paid for, are criminals really criminals? Or are they honest people who interfered in criminals’ business? Not knowing whom to believe, you retreat into trusting only those closest to you—your oldest friends, and your relatives—and that reinforces the divisions in society that corruption thrives on. It is impossible to build a thriving economy, or a healthy democracy, without a society whose members fundamentally trust each other. If you take that away, you are left with something far darker and more mercenary.
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Oliver Bullough (Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World)
“
The necessity of the experimental method in scientific investigation of the third-person properties of matter and energy has been recognised since Galileo. The intellectual achievements of physical science, as traditionally conceived, are widely celebrated. By contrast, experimental investigation of the great majority of intrinsic, first-person properties of matter and energy is stigmatised and even criminalised. States of sentience as different as waking from dreaming consciousness are outlawed. Instead of Nobel laureates, research grants and lavish institutional funding, an empirically-driven exploration of the first-person properties of matter and energy plays out mainly within the scientific counterculture.
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David Pearce (Non-Materialist Physicalism: An experimentally testable conjecture)
“
Great speech to the German Reichstag
Berlin, January 30, 1939
Once again I will be a prophet: should the international Jewry of finance (Finanzjudentum) succeed, both within and beyond Europe, in plunging mankind into yet another world war, then the result will not be a Bolshevization of the earth and the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation (Vernichtung) of the Jewish race in Europe. Thus, the days of propagandist impotence of the non-Jewish peoples are over.
National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy possess institutions which, if necessary, permit opening the eyes of the world to the true nature of this problem.
Many a people is instinctively aware of this, albeit not scientifically versed in it.
At this moment, the Jews are still propagating their campaign of hatred in certain states under the cover of press, film, radio, theater, and literature, which are all in their hands. Should indeed this one Volk attain its goal of prodding masses of millions from other peoples to enter into a war devoid of all sense for them, and serving the interests of the Jews exclusively, then the effectiveness of an enlightenment will once more display its might. Within Germany, this enlightenment conquered Jewry utterly in the span of a few years.
Peoples desire not to perish on the battlefield just so that this rootless, internationalist race can profit financially from this war and thereby gratify its lust for vengeance derived from the Old Testament. The Jewish watchword “Proletarians of the world, unite!” will be conquered by a far more lofty realization, namely: “Creative men of all nations, recognize your common foe!
”
”
Adolf Hitler
“
So, to summarise: Science is the search for explanation. Religion is the search for meaning. Meaning is not accidental to the human condition because we are the meaning-seeking animal. To believe on the basis of science that the universe has no meaning is to confuse two disciplines of thought: explanation and interpretation. The search for meaning, though it begins with science, must go beyond it. Science does not yield meanings, nor does it prove the absence of meanings. The meaning of a system lies outside the system. Therefore the meaning of the universe lies outside the universe. The belief in a God who transcends the universe was the discovery of Abrahamic monotheism, which transformed the human condition, endowing it with meaning and thereby rescuing it from tragedy in the name of hope. For if God created the physical universe, then God is free, and if God made us in his image, we are free. If we are free, then history is not a matter of eternal recurrences. Because we can change ourselves, we can change the world. That is the religious basis of hope. There are cultures that do not share these beliefs. They are, ultimately, tragic cultures, for whatever shape they give the powers they name, those powers are fundamentally indifferent to human fate. They may be natural forces. They may be human institutions: the empire, the state, the political system, or the economy. They may be human collectivities: the tribe, the nation, the race. But all end in tragedy because none attaches ultimate significance to the individual as individual. All end by sacrificing the individual, which is why, in the end, such cultures die. There is only one thing capable of defeating tragedy, which is the belief in God who in love sets his image on the human person, thus endowing each of us with non-negotiable, unconditional dignity.
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Jonathan Sacks (The Great Partnership: God, Science and the Search for Meaning)
“
I look around and see many shelters and services for survivors of domestic violence, but no large-scale movement to end male violence. I see many batterer intervention programs, but few men involved in challenging sexism. The loss of vision that narrowed the focus of men's work reflects a change that occurred in other parts of the movement to end violence, as activists who set out to change the institutions perpetrating violence settled into service jobs helping people cope.
[...]
Social service work addresses the needs of individuals reeling from the personal and devastating impact of institutional systems of exploitation and violence. Social change work challenges the root causes of the exploitation and violence. In my travels throughout the United States, I talk with many service providers, more and more of whom are saying to me, "We could continue doing what we are doing for another hundred years and the levels of violence would not change. I meet more and more people who are running programs for batterers who say ,"We are only dealing with a minute number of the men who are violent and are having little impact on the systems which perpetuate male violence."
[...]
While there is some overlap between social service provision and social change work, the two do not necessarily go readily together. In our violent world, the needs and numbers of survivors are never ending, and the tasks of funding, staffing, and developing resources for our organizations to meet those needs are difficult, poorly supported, and even actively undermined by those with power and wealth in our society. Although some groups are both working for social change and providing social services, there are many more groups providing social services that are not working for social change. In fact, many social service agencies may be intentionally or inadvertently working to maintain the status quo. After all, the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC) wouldn't exist without a lot of people in desperate straits. The NPIC provides jobs; it provides opportunities for professional development. It enables those who do the work to feel good about what we do and about our ability to help individuals survive in the system. It gives a patina of caring and concern to the ruling class which funds the work.
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Paul Kivel (The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex)
“
The imperialist found it useful to incorporate the credible and seemingly unimpeachable wisdom of science to create a racial classification to be used in the appropriation and organization of lesser cultures. The works of Carolus Linnaeus, Georges Buffon, and Georges Cuvier, organized races in terms of a civilized us and a paradigmatic other. The other was uncivilized, barbaric, and wholly lower than the advanced races of Europe. This paradigm of imaginatively constructing a world predicated upon race was grounded in science, and expressed as philosophical axioms by John Locke and David Hume, offered compelling justification that Europe always ought to rule non-Europeans. This doctrine of cultural superiority had a direct bearing on Zionist practice and vision in Palestine.
A civilized man, it was believed, could cultivate the land because it meant something to him; on it, accordingly, he produced useful arts and crafts, he created, he accomplished, he built. For uncivilized people, land was either farmed badly or it was left to rot. This was
imperialism as theory and colonialism was the practice of changing the uselessly unoccupied territories of the world into useful new versions of Europe. It was this epistemic framework that shaped and informed Zionist attitudes towards the Arab Palestinian natives. This is the intellectual background that Zionism emerged from. Zionism saw Palestine through the same prism as the European did, as an empty territory paradoxically filled with ignoble or, better yet, dispensable natives. It allied itself, as Chaim Weizmann said, with the imperial powers in carrying out its plans for establishing a Jewish state in Palestine.
The so-called natives did not take well to the idea of Jewish colonizers in Palestine. As the Zionist historians, Yehoshua Porath and Neville Mandel, have empirically shown, the ideas of Jewish colonizers in Palestine, this was well before World War I, were always met with resistance, not because the natives thought Jews were evil, but because most natives do not take kindly to having their territory settled by foreigners. Zionism not only accepted the unflattering and generic concepts of European culture, it also banked on the fact that Palestine was actually populated not by an advanced civilization, but by a backward people, over which it ought to be dominated. Zionism, therefore, developed with a unique consciousness of itself, but with little or nothing left over for the unfortunate natives. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if Palestine had been occupied by one of the well-established industrialized nations that ruled the world, then the problem of displacing German, French, or English inhabitants and introducing a new,
nationally coherent element into the middle of their homeland would have been in the forefront of the consciousness of even the most ignorant and destitute Zionists.
In short, all the constitutive energies of Zionism were premised on the excluded presence, that is, the functional absence of native people in Palestine; institutions were built deliberately shutting out the natives, laws were drafted when Israel came into being that made sure the natives would remain in their non-place, Jews in theirs, and so on. It is no wonder that today the one issue that electrifies Israel as a society is the problem of the Palestinians, whose negation is the consistent thread running through Zionism. And it is this perhaps unfortunate aspect of Zionism that ties it ineluctably to imperialism- at least so far as the Palestinian is concerned. In conclusion, I cannot affirm that Zionism is colonialism, but I can tell you the process by which Zionism flourished; the dialectic under which it became a reality was heavily influenced by the imperialist mindset of Europe. Thank you.
-Fictional debate between Edward Said and Abba Eban.
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R.F. Georgy (Absolution: A Palestinian Israeli Love Story)
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The intolerance and cancel culture have spread to outright discrimination in hiring, promotion, grants, and publication of professors and graduate students who do not abide the ideology demanded by the campus revolutionaries. A March 1, 2021, study by Eric Kaufmann of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology found, among other things: “Over 4 in 10 US and Canadian academics would not hire a Trump supporter… ; only 1 in 10 academics support firing controversial professors, nonetheless, while most do not back cancellation, many are not opposed to it, remaining non-committal; right-leaning academics experience a high level of institutional authoritarianism and peer pressure; in the US, over a third of conservative academics and PhD students have been threatened with disciplinary action for their views, while 70% of conservative academics report a hostile departmental climate for their beliefs; in the social sciences and humanities, over 9 in 10 Trump-supporting academics… say they would not feel comfortable expressing their views to a colleague; more than half of North American and British conservative academics admit self-censoring in research and teaching; younger academics and PhD students, especially in the United States, are significantly more willing than older academics to support dismissing controversial scholars from their posts, indicating that the problem of progressive authoritarianism is likely to get worse in the coming years; [and] a hostile climate plays a part in deterring conservative graduate students from pursuing careers in academia….
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Mark R. Levin (American Marxism)
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Equity financing, on the other hand, is unappealing to cooperators because it may mean relinquishing control to outside investors, which is a distinctly capitalist practice. Investors are not likely to buy non-voting shares; they will probably require representation on the board of directors because otherwise their money could potentially be expropriated. “For example, if the directors of the firm were workers, they might embezzle equity funds, refrain from paying dividends in order to raise wages, or dissipate resources on projects of dubious value.”105 In any case, the very idea of even partial outside ownership is contrary to the cooperative ethos. A general reason for traditional institutions’ reluctance to lend to cooperatives, and indeed for the rarity of cooperatives whether related to the difficulty of securing capital or not, is simply that a society’s history, culture, and ideologies might be hostile to the “co-op” idea. Needless to say, this is the case in most industrialized countries, especially the United States. The very notion of a workers’ cooperative might be viscerally unappealing and mysterious to bank officials, as it is to people of many walks of life. Stereotypes about inefficiency, unprofitability, inexperience, incompetence, and anti-capitalism might dispose officials to reject out of hand appeals for financial assistance from co-ops. Similarly, such cultural preconceptions may be an element in the widespread reluctance on the part of working people to try to start a cooperative. They simply have a “visceral aversion” to, and unfamiliarity with, the idea—which is also surely a function of the rarity of co-ops itself. Their rarity reinforces itself, in that it fosters a general ignorance of co-ops and the perception that they’re risky endeavors. Additionally, insofar as an anti-democratic passivity, a civic fragmentedness, a half-conscious sense of collective disempowerment, and a diffuse interpersonal alienation saturate society, this militates against initiating cooperative projects. It is simply taken for granted among many people that such things cannot be done. And they are assumed to require sophisticated entrepreneurial instincts. In most places, the cooperative idea is not even in the public consciousness; it has barely been heard of. Business propaganda has done its job well.106 But propaganda can be fought with propaganda. In fact, this is one of the most important things that activists can do, this elevation of cooperativism into the public consciousness. The more that people hear about it, know about it, learn of its successes and potentials, the more they’ll be open to it rather than instinctively thinking it’s “foreign,” “socialist,” “idealistic,” or “hippyish.” If successful cooperatives advertise their business form, that in itself performs a useful service for the movement. It cannot be overemphasized that the most important thing is to create a climate in which it is considered normal to try to form a co-op, in which that is seen as a perfectly legitimate and predictable option for a group of intelligent and capable unemployed workers. Lenders themselves will become less skeptical of the business form as it seeps into the culture’s consciousness.
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Chris Wright (Worker Cooperatives and Revolution: History and Possibilities in the United States)
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Only one thing was wanting: an institution which not only secured the newly acquired riches of individuals against the communistic traditions of the gentile order, which not only sanctified the private property formerly so little valued and declared this sanctification to be the highest purpose of all human society; but, an institution which set the seal of general social recognition on each new method of acquiring property and thus amassing wealth at continually increasing speed; an institution which perpetuated not only this growing cleavage of society into classes but also the right of the possessing class to exploit the non-possessing, and the rule of the former over the latter.
And this institution came. The state was invented.
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Friedrich Engels (The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State)
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In a short essay called ‘Liberating Life: Women’s Revolution’, Öcalan (2013) outlines the core tenets of his sociological/historico-philosophical writings. Öcalan’s fundamental claim is that ‘mainstream civilisation’, commences with the enslavement of ‘Woman’, through what he calls ‘Housewifisation’ (2013). As such, it is only through a ‘struggle against the foundations of this ruling system’ (2013), that not only women, but also men can achieve freedom, and slavery can be destroyed. Any liberation of life, for Öcalan, can only be achieved through a Woman’s revolution. In his own words: ‘If I am to be a freedom fighter, I cannot just ignore this: woman’s revolution is a revolution within a revolution’ (2013).
For Öcalan, the Neolithic era is crucial, as the heyday of the matricentric social order. The figure of the Woman is quite interesting, and is not just female gender, but rather a condensation of all that is ‘equal’ and ‘natural’ and ‘social’, and its true significance is seen as a mode of social governance, which is non-hierarchical, non-statist, and not premised upon accumulation (2013). This can only be fully seen, through the critique of ‘civilisation’ which is equally gendered and equated with the rise of what he calls the ‘dominant male’ and hegemonic sexuality. These forms of power as coercive are embodied in the institution of masculine civilisation. And power in the matriarchal structures are understood more as authority, they are natural/organic. What further characterised the Neolithic era is the ways through which society was based upon solidarity and sharing – no surplus in production, and a respect for nature. In such a social order, Öcalan finds through his archaeology of ‘sociality’ the traces of an ecological ontology, in which nature is ‘alive and animated’, and thus no different from the people themselves.
The ways in which Öcalan figures ‘Woman’, serves as metaphor for the Kurdish nation-as-people (not nation-state). In short, if one manages to liberate woman, from the hegemonic ‘civilisation’ of ‘the dominant male’, one manages to liberate, not only the Kurds, but the world. It is only on this basis that the conditions of possibility for a genuine global democratic confederalism, and a solution to the conflicts of the Middle East can be thinkable. Once it is thinkable, then we can imagine a freedom to organise, to be free from any conception of ownership (of property, persons, or the self), a freedom to show solidarity, to restore balance to life, nature, and other humans through ‘love’, not power.
In Rojava, The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, Öcalan’s political thoughts are being implemented, negotiated and practised. Such a radical experiment, which connects theory with practice has not been seen on this scale, ever before, and although the Rojava administration, the Democratic Union Party, is different from the PKK, they share the same political leader, Öcalan. Central to this experiment are commitments to feminism, ecology and justice.
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Abdullah ocalan
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At its heart, neoliberalism is a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual—not collective, please note—individual entrepreneurial freedoms defined in very particular ways, and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, so-called “free markets,” and so-called “free” trade. If I could just have my hands doing air quotes, I’d be doing it continuously, but you can see that in your imagination. The role of the state under neoliberal philosophy is to create and preserve an institutional framework that’s appropriate to these kinds of practices. It must guarantee the quality and integrity of money. Also set up those military defense, police, and legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights, and to guarantee, by force if need be (and we’ve seen some of this already in the conversation about militarism; we’ll see more of it), by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets. That’s the role of the state. If markets do not exist in areas such as land, water, education, health care, social security, or environmental pollution, then they must be created by state action if necessary. You can see these things immediately as either prior public goods or public resources, these are all to be brought under the rubrics of the market through privatization, an essential feature of neoliberalism. Any other actions by the state are deemed then to be illegitimate, but you can tell already that the state has a very significant role to play here, even though proponents of neoliberalism and their rhetoric constantly downplay both the role and the necessity of the state. It should also be quite clear, immediately and despite this rhetoric, that neoliberalism is not really an unencumbered, non-state-mediated enterprise.
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Noam Chomsky (Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance)
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The cathexis of male identity, fascistic politics, woman-hatred, violence, and religious institutions is an infamous alliance. In the 1930s, the German National Socialists—the Nazis—agitated against employed women, contraception and abortion, and homosexuality, and revived the ideal of Kinder, Kirche, Kiiche (children, church, and kitchen) for German womanhood. A working coalition of misogyny between the Nazi party and the religious establishment served long enough for Hitler to consolidate his power. Feminist groups and publications were closed down, as were contraception clinics. In 1933, the year Hitler became chancellor, feminists, along with “non-Aryans,” were forced out of their jobs in teaching and other public positions. Women were barred from political office and from the judicial bench. In 1934, abortion was banned and made a criminal offense against the State, punishable by hard labor or the death penalty.
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Robin Morgan (The Demon Lover)
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Back in those days, banks did not lend money to stock speculators. That business was left to the trust companies. Trust companies were not banks. In one way, they were the original non-bank financial institutions, the original shadow banks. They were officially financial institutions that were state chartered, and the state charter had much lighter regulatory requirements, including lower reserve requirements and the ability to write uncollateralized loans. Since banks did not write uncollateralized loans, the New York Stock Exchange brokers went to the trust companies. It was a good business for everyone. Brokers were able to get loans to leverage both their own trading positions and the positions of their clients.
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Scott E.D. Skyrm (The Repo Market, Shorts, Shortages, and Squeezes)
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Neither nature nor history can tell us what we ought to do. Facts, whether those of nature or those of history, cannot make the decision for us, they cannot determine the ends we are going to choose. It is we who introduce purpose and meaning into nature and into history. Men are not equal; but we can decide to fight for equality. Human institutions such as the state are not rational, but we can decide to fight to make them more rational. We ourselves and our ordinary language are, on the whole, emotional rather than rational; but we can try to become a little more rational, and we can train ourselves to use our language as an instrument not of self-expression (as our romantic educationists would say) but of rational communication. History itself I mean the history of power politics, of course, not the non-existent story of the development of mankind has no end nor meaning, but we can decide to give it both. We can make it our fight for the open society and against its antagonists (who, when in a corner, always protest their humanitarian sentiments, in accordance with Pareto's advice) and we can interpret it accordingly. Ultimately, we may say the same about the 'meaning of life'. It is up to us to decide what shall be our purpose in life, to determine our ends. This dualism of facts and decisions is, I believe, fundamental. Facts as such have no meaning; they can gain it only through our decisions. Historicism is only one of many attempts to get over this dualism; it is born of fear, for it shrinks from realizing that we bear the ultimate responsibility even for the standards we choose. But such an attempt seems to me to represent precisely what is usually described as superstition. For it assumes that we can reap where we have not sown; it tries to persuade us that if we merely fall into step with history everything will and must go right, and that no fundamental decision on our part is required; it tries to shift our responsibility on to history, and thereby on to the play of demoniac powers beyond ourselves; it tries to base our actions upon the hidden intentions of these powers, which can be revealed to us only in mystical inspirations and intuitions; and it thus puts these actions and decisions on the moral level of one who, inspired by horoscopes and dreams, chooses his lucky number in a lottery.
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Karl Popper (The Open society & its enemies: Vol 2 Hegel & Marx)
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Sitting through a classroom lecture is painful for most people most of the time. We all know this, yet so many deny it or view it as a personal failing. When human beings are required to sit and listen, we squirm. We watch the clock tick slowly. Minutes can seem like hours. We escape into our own head. We invent activities to either occupy or numb ourselves. The most talented classroom sitters create micro-tasks to busy their hands and the other 80 percent of their minds. The pain is cumulative. The first hour of lecture in a day is bearable. The second is hard. The third is white-hot excruciating. The highly engaging presenter who periodically arises in the classroom does little to soften the physiological impact of the subsequent dull one. This reality goes beyond a power thing, or even an interest thing, or a quality of the teacher thing. Even when corporate leaders and heads of state attend highly relevant daylong events at which they listen to the highest-tier speakers, they are suppressing their own body ticks 90 minutes into the lecture. The lunch break becomes an oasis. Students are psychologically ravished daily by this onslaught. And it is costly on all involved—teachers, administrators, parents, siblings. Although this recommendation subverts most industrial business and logistics models, 2 non-adjacent hours of lecture a day should be the greatest number for any institution or program. And the most successful will have even less than that. This requires an alternative approach.
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Clark Aldrich (Unschooling Rules: 55 Ways to Unlearn What We Know About Schools and Rediscover Education)
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André Beaufre captured the interactive nature, the dueling character of strategic behavior when he states that strategy is the art of the dialectic of two opposing wills using force to resolve their dispute.37 A recently posited definition emphasizes the dynamic nature of this process, and of strategy, stating that strategy is a process, a constant adaptation to shifting conditions and circumstances in a world where chance, uncertainty and ambiguity dominate, a view that is very much in line with Boyd’s idea.38 Strategy has also widespread application beyond the military sphere. Since World War II civil institutions – businesses, corporations, non-military government departments, universities – have come to develop strategies, by which they usually mean policy planning of any kind.39 But here too there are various opinions of what strategy is and does.40 The following viewpoints enjoy agreement among experts:41 Strategy concerns both organization and environment: the organization uses strategy to deal with changing environments; Strategy affects overall welfare of the organization: strategic decisions are considered important enough to affect the overall welfare of the organization; Strategy involves issues of both content and process: the study of strategy includes both the actions taken, or the content of strategy, and the processes by which actions are decided and implemented; Strategies exist on different levels: firms have corporate strategy (what business shall we be in?) and business strategy (how shall we compete in each business?); Strategy involves various thought processes: strategy involves conceptual as well as analytical exercises.
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Frans P.B. Osinga (Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd (Strategy and History))
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Compared to many other prominent conservatives, Nisbet was more consistent in his condemnation of a unitary, powerful, and centralized state. Specifically, he abhorred the centralizing effect of war and its impact on families and communities. During war, institutions that stand between the individual and the state represent a dangerous source of inefficiency, and states thus have a compelling interest to weaken them. Wars also lead to drastic social dislocations. He lamented the fact that hawks on the right were categorized as conservative and reminded readers that before World War II, “conservatives had been steadfastly the voices of non-inflationary military budgets, and of an emphasis on trade in the world instead of American nationalism.
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George Hawley (Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism)
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A party, or any institution that is in power or opposition, does all things to get only its own goal and interests, no matter in a legal way or through illegal resources, like forces, print and electronic media, and negative propaganda among the people, spending the millions of money for this. It is called dirty politics by the support of evil spirits.
Most of the political parties criticize the party in power, not for the best of the people, but to get the power for themselves.
Political parties are national and democratic assets, not leaders; don’t destroy them; however, remove corrupt and criminal ones from them. Undoubtedly, political parties constitute the key mother pillar of all pillars of democracy; no state can achieve its goals and interests without them.
The day you vote is an opportunity to vote not for a leader but for a party manifesto and constructive thoughts and plans. Indeed, you will have good fortune, a bright and joyful social status, and prosperity will always be a part of your society and life.
Political parties in every society are a convenient avenue and beneficial wager for those donors who donate and rule the world, not through bona fide democracy and its genuine process. As a result, the people of the world remain slaves even in a civilized environment in their societies.”
A coalition, in a political term, defines a conditional and non-significant journey that starts risking the collapse without notice, whereas it also mirrors a hollow and unstable organ to decide and solve wide-scale subjects and issues.
In the third world, political leaders run political parties in the frame of their factory management.
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Ehsan Sehgal
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Actions Summary The following list of new institutions, policies and actions is my best effort at envisaging what is required for Australia to survive the climate emergency. • A National Target and Plan for 95% or more of electricity to be supplied by renewables by 2030. • State plans to electrify all transport, beginning with the swift retirement of non-electric buses and including a plan for 50% of all new car sales to be EVs by 2030. • Implement planned changes to how we work and live so as to minimise unnecessary travel. • A plan for clean hydrogen to replace bunker fuel in shipping. • A plan for the adoption of e-fuels for aviation, with an aim to have all domestic flights running on e-fuel by 2030. • A National Commission for Climate Adaptation, with a Coastal Defence Fund and a Commission for Primary Production operating under its umbrella. • A National Initiative on Drawdown Innovation to provide leadership in early stage research and fund some on-ground projects. • The Federal Government to help convene a Global Working Group on Geoengineering.
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Tim Flannery (The Climate Cure: Solving the Climate Emergency in the Era of COVID-19)
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New global financial system Precisely for that same reason in August of 2011, Neil Keenan set up a meeting attended by a group of finance representatives from 57 different nations that came together off the coast of Monaco to discuss the foundation of a new global financial system, as a way of bringing down these Khazarians with their Central Banking and NWO-plans. Countries attending included Russia, China, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Brazil, Venezuela and many others, including various large power players; such as the ‘white hat’ faction (non-NWO) from The Pentagon and CIA. The East has most of the world’s gold and the documentation to legally bring down the corrupt institutions that have been illegally using the global collateral accounts. This ‘alliance’ decided to begin creating the new gold and asset-backed financial system. With this meeting heralded as the “shot heard around the world” for those “in the know”, several other nations joined later and have signed the Memorandum of Acknowledgment of this Agreement, which brought the alliance to a total of 182 participating countries. The Alliance Now, it should be clear that indeed there is a growing ‘alliance’ that is taking down the fraudulent banking cabal. Neil Keenan is about to open the global collateral accounts, which indeed is what all of the financial and political happenings on this planet have been about along– that is, ensuring complete control and the attempt to maintain secrecy over the global collateral accounts. Neil Keenan is about to do what JFK and Sukarno were close to accomplishing in 1963: the release of the global collateral accounts to completely transform the world for the better. The collateral gold assets lent to Kennedy, would have allowed him to use these assets /accounts to issue America’s own gold-backed currency ‘Treasury Notes,” that would have allowed America to break away from the false US Corporation and Federal Reserve - crime cartel - and further dismantle the rogue FBI, CIA agencies. If Kennedy and Sukarno had been successful, America would have been freed from the debt-based bondage system and the secret, Deep State government in 1963. This would also have freed the G20 nations that were being controlled by their respective central banking systems. And it also would have cancelled the unfair Bretton Woods Agreement.
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Peter B. Mayer (THE GREAT AWAKENING (PART TWO): AN ENLIGHTENING ANALYSIS ABOUT WHAT IS WRONG IN OUR SOCIETY)
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Both Ukrainian and Russian historians treat Kievan Rus' as an integral part of their respective national histories. As might be expected, the question of who has the greater right to claim its heritage often arises. Traditional Russian historians, especially those influenced by the 19th-century Juridical School, argued that because Russians were the only East Slavs to create a state in modern times (the evolution of statehood was viewed by them as the pinnacle of the historical process), the Muscovite-Russian state's link with the earliest East Slavic state was the most consistent and significant. By implication, because Ukrainians and Belorussians had no modern state of their own, their histories had no institutional bonds with the Kievan period. The influential 19th-century Russian historian Mikhail Pogodin went even further and claimed that Russian ties with Kiev were not only institutional, but also ethnic.3 According to his theory, after the Mongol destruction of Kiev in 1240, much of the surviving populace migrated from the south to the northeast, the heartland of modern Russia. Although this theory has long since been discredited, it still enjoys support among many Russian and non-Russian historians.
As the national consciousness of Ukrainians grew in the 19th century, so too did their resentment of Russian monopolization of the "glory that was Kiev." The most forceful argument against the "traditional scheme of Russian history" was advanced in 1906 by Hrushevsky, Ukraine's most eminent historian. Thoroughgoing populist that he was, Hrushevsky questioned the study of history primarily in terms of the state-building process… Just as Gaul, once a Roman province and now modern-day France, borrowed much of its sociopolitical organization, laws, and culture from Rome, so too did Moscow with regard to Kiev. But Moscow was not a continuation, or a second stage in the historical process begun in Kiev…
Soviet historians take what appears to be a compromise position on the issue of the Kievan legacy. They argue that Kiev was the creation of all three East Slavic peoples - the Ukrainians, Russians, and Belorussians.
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Orest Subtelny (Ukraine: A History)
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The fascist solution of the impasse reached by liberal capitalism can be described as a reform of market economy achieved at the price of the extirpation of all democratic institutions, both in the industrial and the political realm. ... The appearance of such a movement in the industrial countries of the globe, and even in a number of only slightly industrialized ones, should never have been ascribed to local causes, national mentalities, or historical backgrounds as was so consistently done by contemporaries. Fascism had as little to do with the Great War as with the Versailles Treaty, with Junker militarism as with the Italian temperament. The movement appeared in defeated countries like Bulgaria and in victorious ones like Jugoslavia, in countries of Northern temperament like Finland and Norway and of Southern temperament like Italy and Spain, in countries of Aryan race like England, Ireland or Belgium and non-Aryan race like Japan, Hungary, or Palestine, in countries of Catholic traditions like Portugal and in Protestant ones like Holland, in soldierly communities like Prussia and civilian ones like Austria, in old cultures like France and new ones like the United States and the Latin-American countries. In fact, there was no type of background -- of religious, cultural, or national tradition -- that made a country immune to fascism, once the conditions for its emergence were given.
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Karl Polanyi (The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time)
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American Express employees were told in mandatory trainings to create an “identity map” by writing their “race, sexual orientation, body type, religion, disability status, age, gender identity, citizenship” in circles surrounding the words “Who am I?” 71 Verizon employees were taught about intersectionality, microaggressions, and institutional racism, and asked to write a reflection on questions like “What is my cultural identity?” with “race/ ethnicity, gender/ gender identity, religion, education, profession, sexual orientation” beneath. 72 CVS Health hourly employees were sent to a mandatory training where keynote speaker Ibram X. Kendi explained that “to be born in [The United States] is to literally have racist ideas rain on our head consistently and constantly … We're just walking through society completely soaked in racist ideas believing we're dry.” 73 Employees were asked to fill out a “Reflect on Privilege” checklist and told they should “commit to holding yourself and colleagues accountable to consistently celebrate diversity and take swift action against non-inclusive behaviors.” 74
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Tim Urban (What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies)
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Dr. Ferris smiled. “No private businessman or greedy industrialist would have financed Project X,” he said softly, in the tone of an idle, informal discussion. “He couldn’t have afforded it. It’s an enormous investment, with no prospect of material gain. What profit could he expect from it? There are no profits henceforth to be derived from that farm.” He pointed at the dark strip in the distance. “But, as you have so well observed, Project X had to be a non-profit venture. Contrary to a business firm, the State Science Institute had no trouble in obtaining funds for the Project. You have not heard of the Institute having any financial difficulties in the past two years, have you? And it used to be such a problem—getting them to vote the funds necessary for the advancement of science. They always demanded gadgets for their cash, as you used to say. Well, here was a gadget which some people in power could fully appreciate. They got the others to vote for it. It wasn’t difficult. In fact, a great many of those others felt safe in voting money for a project that was secret— they felt certain it was important, since they were not considered important enough to be let in on it. There were, of course, a few skeptics and doubters. But they gave in when they were reminded that the head of the State Science Institute was Dr. Robert Stadler—whose judgment and integrity they could not doubt.
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Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
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the ideal symbolic order which sustains individual subjects, for the public space of institutional state authority which makes us subjects in the double meaning of the term (autonomous subject and an individual subjected to the Law).
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Slavoj Žižek (Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide For The Non-Perplexed)
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Jennifer Wolch’s notion of a “shadow state” crystallizes this symbiosis between the state and social change organizations, gesturing toward a broader conception of the state’s disciplinary power and surveillance capacities. According to Wolch, the structural and political interaction between the state and the non-profit industrial complex manifests as more than a relation of patronage, ideological repression, or institutional subordination. In excess of the expected organizational deference to state rules and regulations, social change groups are constituted by the operational paradigms of conventional state institutions, generating a reflection of state power in the same organizations that originally emerged to resist the very same state.
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Incite! Women of Color Against Violence (The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex)
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Should the NPIC itself be conceptualized as a fundamental target of radical social transformation (whether it is to be seized, abolished, or some combination of both)? Can people struggling for survival, radical transformation, and liberation (including and beyond those who identify themselves as “activists”) outside the tentacles of the NPIC generate new grassroots, community-based, or even “underground” structures and institutions capable of sustaining movements against the US racist state and white supremacist civil society?
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Incite! Women of Color Against Violence (The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex)
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While the PIC overtly represses dissent the NPIC manages and controls dissent by incorporating it into the state apparatus, functioning as a “shadow state” constituted by a network of institutions that do much of what government agencies are supposed to do with tax money in the areas of education and social services. The NPIC functions as an alibi that allows government to make war, expand punishment, and proliferate market economies under the veil of partnership between the public and private sectors.
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Incite! Women of Color Against Violence (The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex)
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One of the underpinnings of this assumption is the popular truism that today's teenagers and younger children are all now harmoniously inhabiting the incluse and seamless intelligibility of their technological worlds. This generational characterization supposedly confirms that, within another few decades or less, a transitional phase will have ended and there will be billions of individuals with a similar level of technological competences and basic intellectual assumptions. With a new paradigm fully in place, there will be innovation, but in this scenario it will occurwithin the stable and endring conceptual and funcitonal parameters of this "digital" epoch. However, the very different actuality of our time is the calculated maintenance of an ongoing state of transition. There never will be a "catching up" on either a social or individual basis in relation to continually changing technological requirements. For the vast majority o f people our perceptual and cognitive relationship to communication and information technology will continue to be estranged and disempowered because of the velocity wat which new products emerge and at which arbitrary reconfigurations of entire systems take place. This intensified rhythm precludes the possibility of becoming familiar with any given arrangement. Certain cultural theorists insist that such condition can easily be the basis for neutralizing institutional power, but actual evidence supporting this view is non-existent.
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Jonathan Crary (24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep)
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Russia31 and China approach Western INGOs with the assumption that their performance and work product are directed by and directly serve the state. This assumption matches the assumption in the West that non-Western NGOs are surely engaged in state-sponsored and underwritten activities, and nearly always include intelligence gathering in their operations.
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Markos Kounalakis (Spin Wars and Spy Games: Global Media and Intelligence Gathering (Hoover Institution Press Publication Book 693))
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The push for diversity can lead to absurd results. Bone marrow donations almost never work unless donor and recipient are the same race, so non-white patients suffer because almost all the people who register as donors are white. In 2008, the National Marrow Donor Program announced that all marrow registries would be required to meet quotas for minority donors. Officials at St. Luke’s Mountain States Tumor Institute in Boise, Idaho said they would have to shut down their donor registry because the demographics of the region made it impossible to find more than a handful of non-white donors.
Likewise, the largely white Amity Regional School District that serves the eastern suburbs of New Haven, Connecticut, stood to lose tens of thousands of dollars in federal money because it did not have enough non-white autistic students. The district had no control over who was diagnosed with the condition, but federal officials said a ratio of 38 whites, one black, and one Asian was “significantly disproportionate,” and threatened to withhold $67,000.
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Jared Taylor (White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century)
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To end its march of folly, Pakistan needs to reassess its core beliefs about a religion-based polity, reconsider the notion of permanent conflict with its larger neighbour, recreate political institutions to reflect its ethnic diversity and rebuild its economy without reliance on the largesse of others. Only then would it be able to reliably get rid of the spectre of failure or fragility and low international standing by all non-military benchmarks.
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Husain Haqqani (Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State)
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Financialization is neither finance-nor enterprise-driven; rather, it emerges due to the spontaneous interactions among non-financial enterprises, banks and households. These interactions occur within an institutional context influenced by state policymaking, resulting in systemic change that reflects the peculiarities of each country.
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Costas Lapavitsas (Profiting Without Producing: How Finance Exploits Us All)
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In all countries ethnic diversity reduces trust. In Peruvian credit-sharing cooperatives, members default more often on loans when there is ethnic diversity among co-op members. Likewise, in Kenyan school districts, fundraising is easier in tribally homogenous areas.
Dutch researchers found that immigrants to Holland were more likely to develop schizophrenia if they lived in mixed neighborhoods with Dutch people than if they lived in purely immigrant areas. Surinamese and Turks had twice the chance of getting schizophrenia if they had to deal with Dutch neighbors; for Moroccans, the likelihood quadrupled.
Dora Costa of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Matthew Kahn of Tufts University analyzed 15 recent studies of the impact of diversity on social cohesion. They found that every study had “the same punch line: heterogeneity reduces civic engagement.”
James Poterba of MIT has found that public spending on education falls as the percentage of elderly people without children rises. He notes, however, that the effect “is particularly large when the elderly residents and the school-age population are from different racial groups.” This unwillingness of taxpayers to fund public projects if the beneficiaries are from a different group is so consistent it has its own name—“the Florida effect”—from the fact that old, white Floridians are reluctant to pay taxes or vote for bond issues to support schools attended by blacks and Hispanics. Maine, Vermont, and West Virginia are the most racially homogeneous states, and spend the highest proportion of gross state product on public education.
Most people believe charity begins with their own people. A study of begging in Moscow, for example, found that Russians are more likely to give money to fellow Russians than to Central Asians or others who do not look like them.
Researchers in Australia have found that immigrants from countries racially and culturally similar to Australia—Britain, the United States, New Zealand, and South Africa—fit in and become involved in volunteer work at the same level as native-born Australians. Immigrants from non white countries volunteer at just over half that rate. At the same time, the more racially diverse the neighborhood in which immigrants live, the less likely native Australians themselves are to do volunteer work. Sydney has the most diversity of any Australian city—and also the lowest level of volunteerism. People want their efforts to benefit people like themselves.
It has long been theorized that welfare programs are more generous in Europe because European countries have traditionally been more homogeneous than the United States, and that people are less resistant to paying for welfare if the beneficiaries are of the same race. Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser have used statistical regression techniques to conclude that about half the difference in welfare levels is explained by greater American diversity, and the other half by weaker leftist political parties.
Americans are not stingy—they give more to charity than Europeans do—but they prefer to give to specific groups. Many Jews and blacks give largely or even exclusively to ethnic charities. There are no specifically white charities, but much church giving is essentially ethnic. Church congregations are usually homogeneous, which means that offerings for aid within the congregation stay within the ethnic group.
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Jared Taylor (White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century)
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From a literary crazy, for a political crazy
An Open Letter
Your Excellency,
Donald John Trump,
President of the United States
An ability of vision is a gift of God that no one can acquire in educational institutions or the White House.
I neither fall in frustration and anger nor notice seriously fake and false news that whenever one tries to paste on my character.
Virtually, a responsible print and electronic media whenever publish and deliver the news as publicly; indeed, it carries reliable sources; however, the media cannot reveal that for journalistic reasons. It neither means the news is fake nor personal blames for political motives, nor media become obliged to prove that. Whereas, a figure, who declares that as fake and false news; honestly, as a denier, it has to prove such claim or adopt legal proceedings against the media. Thundering vociferous remarks upon media; precisely, exhibit the conduct of leaders of non-developed countries; thus, behave wisely as a civilized leader and President of the United States, not as the international comic and inelegant. Please focus on the pandemic of coronavirus disease around the world rather than fake news and personal interests. Thanks.
Yours sincerely
Ehsan Sehgal
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Ehsan Sehgal
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When condominiums don’t meet government-backed lenders’ standards they become non-warrantable. This means that buyers cannot get standard loans for these properties. They will have to pay cash or pay exorbitant rates through private lenders. When a building is full of non-warrantable condos, the pool of buyers shrinks and lowers the condo’s value. One might think that newer projects would have lower maintenance costs than older projects. But this isn’t always true. Some builders set monthly fees low while they advertise the project. This attracts bargain buyers, but owners soon discover they have inadequate reserves. The monthly fees then skyrocket. Even if the homeowners successfully sue the builder, it is hard to sell any properties while litigation is pending, and values drop. Most states have specific forms for condominium transactions in which the association discloses finances and reserves. Buyers must sign and verify they have examined the financial condition of the project. Pay attention to past history. How old is the roof? When were improvements last made? How often do association dues increase? Even though many people don’t investigate these issues, a home’s value depends on them. CHAPTER 7 BANK FINANCING Banks have a new image. Now you have ‘a friend,’ your friendly banker. If the banks are so friendly, how come they chain down the pens?
— Alan King Bank lending standards and terms change daily. This chapter provides general principles that should prove useful over the long term. We will examine how to borrow from banks to acquire or refinance a home. Please note the term “banks” as used here includes credit unions and other major financial institutions. There’s another chapter on non-bank lending to help those who don’t meet the criteria set by major lending institutions.
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Alex Goldstein (No Nonsense Real Estate: What Everyone Should Know Before Buying or Selling a Home)
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Note; Someone succeeded, to remove the previous image of a false prophet, or managed to remove that through the Facebook team, misusing the freedom of press and speech. Added another image. Admin- 26-06-2019
The Islam states, No One Reborn
The followers of the Ahmadiyya movement are active in Pakistani media, and all institutions of the state, pretending as non-Ahmadiyya, even they abuse Ahmadiyya followers so that they can practice their fake role within the real Muslims. The same practices display in other countries, with all resources.
I avoid, to dig into the details of the topic that I am going to execute in its reality. Ahmadis or such ones, who have understood the Quran as they wanted, and as their knowledge. Jesus and Khatam an-Nabiyyin, Muhammad; (PBUH). The ending of the prophecy is visible as;
"These hadith reports are to be found in the most reliable of the Hadith collections, i.e. Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmizi, Nisa'i, Ibn Maja, etc.
It may be noted that in these hadith reports, the Prophet Muhammad has used several different ways to explain that he is the Last Prophet."
In the authentic reports that the last prophet Muhamad declares as saying, La Nabiyya Ba`di, means, There is no prophet after me. Such a verdict is beyond, for discussion.
Besides that, when I understand, as a true Muslim that,
"According to Islam and all divinely revealed religions, when a person dies on earth he will not be reborn until the Day of Resurrection."
Quran says,
"How can ye reject the faith in Allah?- seeing that ye were without life, and He gave you life; then will He cause you to die, and will again bring you to life, and again to Him will ye return." [Quran 2:28]
Ahmadis’ ideology is that Jesus lived and died, the question is that they reject the Quran since the Quran states when a person dies on earth, he will not be reborn until the Day of Resurrection. How it possible was that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was reborn, as Jesus?
As a fact, Jesus will raise and reappear, having no father, brother, or sister. Ahmadis falsify not only Islam but also Christianity.
Ehsan Sehgal
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Ehsan Sehgal
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The Right Intake Protein, protein, protein. Is there any other food group that causes so much angst? Have too little and you may be in trouble, have too much and you may be in greater trouble. Proteins are the main building blocks of the body making muscles, organs, skin and also enzymes. Thus, a lack of protein in your diet affects not only your health (think muscle deficiency and immune deficiency) but also your looks (poor skin and hair). On the other hand, excess protein can be harmful. “High protein intake can lead to dehydration and also increase the risk of gout, kidney afflictions, osteoporosis as well as some forms of cancer,” says Taranjeet Kaur, metabolic balance coach and senior nutritionist at AktivOrtho. However, there are others who disagree with her. "In normal people a high-protein natural diet is not harmful. In people who are taking artificial protien supplements , the level of harm depends upon the kind of protein and other elements in the supplement (for example, caffiene, etc.) For people with a pre- existing, intestinal, kidney or liver disease, a high-protein diet can be harmful," says leading nutritionist Shikha Sharma, managing director of Nutri-Health. However, since too much of anything can never be good, the trick is to have just the right amount of protein in your diet. But how much is the right amount? As a ballpark figure, the US Institute of Medicine recommends 0.8 gm of protein per kilogram of body weight. This amounts to 56 gm per day for a 70 kg man and 48 gm per day for a 60 kg woman. However, the ‘right’ amount of protein for you will depend upon many factors including your activity levels, age, muscle mass, physical goals and the current state of health. A teenager, for example, needs more protein than a middle-aged sedentary man. Similarly, if you work out five times a day for an hour or so, your protein requirement will go up to 1.2-1.5 gm per kg of body weight. So if you are a 70kg man who works out actively, you will need nearly 105 gm of protein daily. Proteins are crucial, even when you are trying to lose weight. As you know, in order to lose weight you need to consume fewer calories than what you burn. Proteins do that in two ways. First, they curb your hunger and make you feel full. In fact, proteins have a greater and prolonged satiating effect as compared to carbohydrates and fats. “If you have proteins in each of your meals, you have lesser cravings for snacks and other such food items,” says Kaur. By dulling your hunger, proteins can help prevent obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Second, eating proteins boosts your metabolism by up to 80-100 calories per day, helping you lose weight. In a study conducted in the US, women who increased protein intake to 30 per cent of calories, ended up eating 441 fewer calories per day, leading to weight loss. Kaur recommends having one type of protein per meal and three different types of proteins each day to comply with the varied amino acid requirements of the body. She suggests that proteins should be well distributed at each meal instead of concentrating on a high protein diet only at dinner or lunch. “Moreover, having one protein at a time helps the body absorb it better and it helps us decide which protein suits our system and how much of it is required by us individually. For example, milk may not be good for everyone; it may help one person but can produce digestive problems in the other,” explains Kaur. So what all should you eat to get your daily dose of protein? Generally speaking, animal protein provides all the essential amino acids in the right ratio for us to make full use of them. For instance, 100 gm of chicken has 30 gm of protein while 75gm of cottage cheese (paneer) has only 8 gm of proteins (see chart). But that doesn’t mean you need to convert to a non-vegetarian in order to eat more proteins, clarifies Sharma. There are plenty of vegetarian options such as soya, tofu, sprouts, pulses, cu
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Anonymous
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in short, riches praised and respected as the highest good and the old gentile order misused to justify the violent seizure of riches. Only one thing was wanting: an institution which not only secured the newly acquired riches of individuals against the communistic traditions of the gentile order, which not only sanctified the private property formerly so little valued and declared this sanctification to be the highest purpose of all human society; but, an institution which set the seal of general social recognition on each new method of acquiring property and thus amassing wealth at continually increasing speed; an institution which perpetuated not only this growing cleavage of society into classes but also the right of the possessing class to exploit the non-possessing, and the rule of the former over the latter. And this institution came. The state was invented.
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Friedrich Engels (The Origin of the Family Private Property and the State)