Showing posts with label bushido. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bushido. Show all posts

Saturday, March 23, 2024

Candace Owens Demonstrates Testicular Fortitude To Punk-Azz Mens.....,

dailycaller  |  The Daily Wire co-founder Jeremy Boreing announced Friday that the outlet has severed ties with Candace Owens. Owens hosted a show on The Daily Wire after becoming a prominent name in the conservative movement. The outlet abruptly made the announcement of her departure for reasons currently unknown. “Daily Wire and Candace Owens have ended their relationship,” Boreing announced without an explanation.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Dr. Martin Kulldorf Did Nothing Wrong

childrenshealthdefense  |  Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., an epidemiologist and professor of Medicine at Harvard University, on Monday confirmed the university fired him.

Kulldorff has been a critic of lockdown policies, school closures and vaccine mandates since early in the COVID-19 pandemic. In October 2020, he published the Great Barrington Declaration, along with co-authors Oxford epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta, Ph.D., and Stanford epidemiologist and health economist Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D.

In an essay published Monday in City Journal, Kulldorff wrote that his anti-mandate position got him fired from the Mass General Brigham hospital system, where he also worked, and consequently from his Harvard faculty position.

Kulldorff detailed how his commitment to scientific inquiry put him at odds with a system that he alleged had “lost its way.”

“I am no longer a professor of medicine at Harvard,” Kulldorff wrote. “The Harvard motto is Veritas, Latin for truth. But, as I discovered, truth can get you fired.”

He noted that it was clear from early 2020 that lockdowns would be futile for controlling the pandemic.

“It was also clear that lockdowns would inflict enormous collateral damage, not only on education but also on public health, including treatment for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and mental health,” Kulldorff wrote.

“We will be dealing with the harm done for decades. Our children, the elderly, the middle class, the working class, and the poor around the world — all will suffer.”

That viewpoint got little debate in the mainstream media until the epidemiologist and his colleagues published the Great Barrington Declaration, signed by nearly 1 million public health professionals from across the world.

The document made clear that no scientific consensus existed for lockdown measures in a pandemic. It argued instead for a “focused protection” approach for pandemic management that would protect high-risk populations, such as elderly or medically compromised people, and otherwise allow the COVID-19 virus to circulate among the healthy population.

Although the declaration merely summed up what previously had been conventional wisdom in public health, it was subject to tremendous backlash. Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that Dr. Francis Collins, then-director of the National Institutes of Health called for a “devastating published takedown” of the declaration and of the authors, who were subsequently slandered in mainstream and social media.

 

 

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Aaron Bushnell...,

 

Saturday, November 12, 2022

The Day After Gen. Mark Milley Said It Would Take Weeks - Brandon Puts It In Iraq....,

kommersant |  The Ministry of Defense reported that at 5:00 Moscow time, the transfer of Russian troops to the left bank of the Dnieper was completed. As the department clarifies, not a single piece of military equipment and weapons was left on the right bank.

The official representative of the Ministry of Defense, Igor Konashenkov, said that the Armed Forces of Ukraine tried at night to disrupt the transportation of civilians and the transfer of troops to the left bank of the Dnieper. River crossings were hit five times by HIMARS rockets.

“All Russian military personnel crossed over, no losses of personnel, weapons, equipment and materiel of the Russian group were allowed,” Mr. Konashenkov said (quoted by TASS).

According to him, the Russian military stopped the enemy at a distance of 30-40 km from the area of ​​crossings across the Dnieper. The representative of the Ministry of Defense added that the advance of the Armed Forces of Ukraine over the past two days in certain areas in the Kherson region amounted to no more than 10 km.

On November 9, the Ministry of Defense decided to withdraw troops from Kherson to the left bank of the Dnieper. On the same day, the authorities of the Kherson region reported the beginning of heavy fighting in the Snigirevka area near Kherson. The Kremlin stated that the Kherson region remains a subject of the Russian Federation, and there can be no changes in this status.

About what happens on the 261st day after the entry of Russian troops into Ukraine - in the online broadcast "Kommersant".

Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Having Powerful Enemies - But Limited Resources - Focuses The Mind On Weak Spots To Exploit

What used to be called BDA . . . Bomb Damage Assessment, is now satellite reconnaissance imagery review. Based on what is seen, targets are identified as finished or in need of being hit again. This is why last weeks cruise missile attacks have been followed up with subsequent attacks at regular intervals. It takes only minutes to reload launchers. But it takes some hours to collect satellite imagery reflecting recent damage - and have those images reviewed for selecting the next targets.

Low Earth Orbit spacecraft have some memory aboard, but not very much. These are polar orbiting vehicles and the areas over the poles have higher radiation exposure, with memory being notoriously vulnerable to radiation. So, frequent and even perpetual downlinks for Russian assets, is the order of the day. 

Russian spacecraft traversing Ukraine sky north to south or south to north will have Russian receive stations line-of-sight for downlinks of imagery. Ground based jammers aren't heard by dishes pointed upwards from within Russia.

 It is clear that in-orbit assets have determined Russian tactics and strategy. Why Sergei Surovikin, commander of Russian Aerospace forces is now supreme commander of the mobilization to bring about Ukrainian capitulation.

Normal drones have a controller, since they are either surveillance drones or attack drones hunting particular targets.The so-called kamikaze drones do not have a controller and are subsequently immune to jamming. They are instead like low and slow miniature ballistic missiles. Flight path fixed at time of launch so as to hit a particular static target. 

They evade detection till they can be seen near the target because they are small, slow, and very low to the ground. They emit very little infrared so they can’t be detected that way. They don’t talk to the mother ship so they can’t be seen sending signals nor can they be signal jammed. They thus also take way less in the way of chips (simpler and fewer) and so can be made cheaply and quickly in large quantities.

 Kamikaze drones are far cheaper than but just as effective as high-cost precision missiles Best bit is that they follow one of the principles of war – economy of force – and they certainly get a lot of bang for the buck.

The kamikaze drone will bring old fashioned antiaircraft guns back. The ones Russia is using don’t produce enough heat for a MANPAD to lock to, small arms aren’t going to bring them down in most cases, and it sounds like they don’t show up very well on modern missile anti-air systems which is combined with the ridiculous cost of bringing down a $20K drone with a $100K+ missile.

The Ukrainian tactic of putting serious air defense systems inside populated areas is almost as kamikaze as the drones themselves. Having them on the White House or similar makes some sense, having them heavily used inside a city does not.

At the moment, the Ukrainian police, soldiers, militia, etc. are trying to shoot those drones down with rifles, pistols or anything else that shoots a bullet and the streets of Kiev are sounding like a firing range. Best to be inside or you might get hit by a falling bullet-the more real danger is a populated area getting hit by an exploding shot down drone rather than the drone hitting its energy infrastructure target. Except it’s not just bullets flying willy nilly. 

Ukraine has S300 and Buk missiles curving down trying to hit the drones and plowing into apartment blocks. The S300 packs 150kg of explosive to the Geran-2’s 50kg.

And on top of that, keen troopers with western-supplied ATGMs are trying to hit drones in the air. Often with unguided ATGMs. Even  with guided ones they’ve got a snowballs chance. All of those come down too.

Russia has begun flooding* Donbass with old, reliable S-60 anti-aircraft guns. They shoot 57mm shells with proximity fuses, and are mgreat against small drones – as per experience in Syria. They can also penetrate 90mm of steel, so work well also against an enemy largely down to APCs and civilian vehicles for mobility.

And being from the old Soviet stock, they can be easily integrated with the existing air-defense systems, like battalion/divisional radars for targeting information or even automatic targeting.

Designed in the late 40s, considered obsolete in the mid-60s, reinstated after Vietnamese experience in early 70s, finally removed from service to storage in 1990s only find a niche for use again today.

Anyway, once you do see the drone, the latest wisdom is that 57 mm ammo has longer reach (6000 m vs 4000 m), doesn’t rely on hitting the target directly (proximity fuse) and packs way more punch (3-4 times heavier shell) than a regular 30 mm (like Pantsir, Tunguska or BMP-2/3).

Which all apparently translate to a higher kill probability against drone type targets. Come to think of it, S-60 was designed 80 years ago to protect the troops against relatively low and slow flying, propeller driven aerial vehicles.

 

Wednesday, October 12, 2022

Mrs Surovikin: Well Honey. How Was Your First Day At Work?

Gen Surovikin: I oversaw the crippling of the Ukrainian electrical distribution and overran three cities.

Mrs Surovikin: that's nice honey.

Why don't you grab a cold one out of the fridge-dinner will be ready in 20 minutes.

The appointment of Commander of Aerospace Forces General Sergei Surovikin (aka “Severoviy”) as commander of the united group of troops has already borne serious fruit. Good management requires neither a ‘jack-of-all-trades’ (a military man, who emerged from civilian ranks) nor a ‘stormtrooper’ in the vanguard of an offensive – everyone has his tasks, and there is no need to put them in the wrong places. What is needed is a combat general who knows the specifics of combined arms combat as well as working with the various branches of troops to establish quality interaction.

As a result, on the first day of the new commander-in-chief:

Today's targeting depended upon precise latitude/longitude measurements, from orbit. Much cheaper to take measurements from imagery at 500 miles altitude than to send covert people with Garmin handhelds, waiting to be discovered, searched, and arrested.

Spacecraft imaging decides wars.

Over 200 cruise missile hits in Ukraine, which is quite a record. (By the way, the sorties are the same Kalibres that by all laws of military propaganda Russia should have run out of.)
️Massive power cuts in almost all of Ukraine
️Serious water supply outages
️Damage to critical wartime infrastructure – primarily repair factories where Ukrainian equipment was being   repaired
️Fuel and supply disruptions in virtually every region

Transport collapse at Ukrzaliznytsia: trains are stopped, and some routes are switched to diesel – which naturally leads to the aggravation of the fuel situation
️Ukrainian Security Service building struck, head of Cyber Police of Ukraine department Yuriy Zaskoka, who was responsible for coordinated telegram bot attacks, eliminated

It’s coming down hard. It’s going to continue to rain.

By evening, Ukraine is once again covered in air-raid alarms. The city goes to sleep – the Kalibres wake up.

Taken down the Starlink system (so Ukrainians can no longer communicate at the front lines properly), The vast majority of trains that are electric won't run, and the remainder will help use up the diesel supplies and therefore the troop and equipment transportation abilities, and display to the Ukrainian population how their leaders are completely useless in the face of serious attack.

This needs to be not just a "retaliatory warning" but a continuing process for the next days and weeks, grinding down the Ukrainians as the cold weather and rain set in. Together with the continued military grinding in Bakhmut etc. to make Ukrainian soldiers lives really awful (plus propaganda wins as Bakhmut etc. taken). Then major attacks in late November as the ground freezes, the leaves are gone and the skies clear. The job needs to get finished (the south and east taken, including Odessa) before the Spring arrives and while Europe sits freezing with power blackouts.

Then Europe can look forward to the next year of horrendous energy prices, a following winter with much lower levels of gas reserves, a deep recession and an extremely unruly population, plus a hopeless position in Ukraine. Ukraine without the Black Sea coast and Odessa is a greatly degraded position for the US and NATO, plus there will be many, many more millions of Ukrainians flowing across the Polish border into Europe.

P.S. The taking out of the electricity supply to the manufacturer of the parts required for the French nuclear power station maintenance was pure genius. So now many of those power stations won't be running at full tilt to keep French electricity prices down during the winter. 
 
And the most important thing in this whole story is that the Ukrainian authorities have warned of the consequences, of not playing with fire and poking a stick in the den. Back in the summer, Dmitriy Medvedev promised that in the event of a strike on Crimea, the Ukrainians would face “Judgment Day”. Well, 10.10.2022 was that day for the Ukrainians.

 

Monday, February 07, 2022

Are Protestors With Semi Tractor Trailers Sufficiently Organized And Funded To Hold Firm And Prevail?

france24  |  An occupation of Canada's capital by truckers opposed to vaccine mandates gained steam as it entered its second week on Saturday, with more demonstrators piling onto the clogged streets of Ottawa, while protests kicked off in several other cities.

In the capital, protesters huddled around campfires in bone-chilling temperatures and erected bouncy castles for kids outside Parliament, while waving Canadian flags and shouting anti-government slogans.

The atmosphere appeared more festive than a week earlier, when several protesters waved Confederate flags and Nazi symbols and clashed with locals.

Police, who were out in force and put up barriers overnight to limit vehicle access to the city center, said they were bracing for up to 2,000 protesters -- as well as 1,000 counterprotesters -- to join hundreds of truckers already jamming Ottawa streets.

But organizers of the so-called Freedom Convoy told AFP they expected their numbers to swell into the tens of thousands.

Similar protests were happening in Toronto, Quebec City and Winnipeg. And in southern Alberta province, truckers blocked a major border crossing to the US state of Montana.

"This remains an increasingly volatile and increasingly dangerous demonstration," Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly told a news conference Friday.

With public anger rising -- thousands of residents have complained of harassment by protesters, and an online petition demanding action has drawn 40,000 signatures -- Sloly vowed to crack down on what he called an "unlawful" occupation of the city.

But he offered no timeline.

Joe Rogan, Call Julie Ponesse And Sign Up For Some Manhood Lessons...,

brownstone |   Dr. Julie Ponesse was a professor of ethics who has taught at Ontario’s Huron University College for 20 years. She was placed on leave and banned from accessing her campus due to the vaccine mandate. This is her speech during the weekend when the Canadian truckers arrived in Ottawa to protest pandemic restrictions and mandates that have been so harmful to so many. Dr. Ponesse has now taken on a role with The Democracy Fund, a registered Canadian charity aimed at advancing civil liberties, where she serves as the pandemic ethics scholar.

But our true moral failure is that we did this to ourselves. We allowed it. And some of us embraced it. We forgot for a while that freedom needs to be lived every day and that, some days, we need to fight for it. We forgot that, as Premier Brian Peckford said, “Even in the best of times we are only a heartbeat away from tyranny.”

We took our freedom for granted and now we are in danger of losing it.

But we are waking up and we won’t so easily be seduced or coerced again.

To our governments, the cracks are showing. The dam is breaking. The facts are not on your side. You can’t keep this up any longer. The pandemic is over. Enough is enough. You are our servants; we are not your subjects.

You have tried to mold us into hateful, terrified, demoralized people. 

But you underestimated the challenge. We aren’t so easily broken. Our strength comes from the bonds of family and friendship, of history, of our home and native land.

You didn’t realize the strength of our doctors and nurses on the front lines in Alberta, our RCMP and provincial police officers, the ferocity of a mother fighting for her child, and my goodness the truckers who rolled courage into Ottawa on 18 wheels.  18 wheels times tens of thousands of trucks.

To the families of those who have lost children, your tears will be a stain on our nation forever. But you can rest now. You have done enough, lost enough. It’s time for us, your fellow citizens, to take up this battle for you. 

To the truckers who drove across Canada, to stand up for all of us, to defend all our rights, I have never felt so much gratitude or pride for perfect strangers. You are electrifying this moment in history, and you are awakening a passion and a love for our country that we thought we had lost. You are the leaders all of Canada has been waiting for.  

Driving from all corners of the country — from Prince Rupert to Charlottetown, on icy roads, past waving flags and under packed overpasses, you are taking all the brokenness, all the hate, all the division, and weaving us back together again. In this one simple, united, powerful action, you are the leaders we so desperately need.

You are giving grandmothers who have been isolated and abandoned a reason to smile again.

You are giving those who have lost their livelihoods reason to hope; the families who have lost loved ones a reason to believe in justice.

Monday, October 18, 2021

Elite Capture Moral Cowardice And Epistemic Deference

thephilosopher |  A fuller and fairer assessment of what is going on with deference and standpoint epistemology would go beyond technical argument, and contend with the emotional appeals of this strategy of deference. Those in powerful rooms may be “elites” relative to the larger group they represent, but this guarantees nothing about how they are treated in the rooms they are in. After all, a person privileged in an absolute sense (a person belonging to, say, the half of the world that has secure access to “basic needs”) may nevertheless feel themselves to be consistently on the low end of the power dynamics they actually experience. Deference epistemology responds to real, morally weighty experiences of being put down, ignored, sidelined, or silenced. It thus has an important non-epistemic appeal to members of stigmatized or marginalized groups: it intervenes directly in morally consequential practices of giving attention and respect. 

The social dynamics we experience have an outsize role in developing and refining our political subjectivity, and our sense of ourselves. But this very strength of standpoint epistemology – its recognition of the importance of perspective – becomes its weakness when combined with deferential practical norms. Emphasis on the ways we are marginalized often matches the world as we have experienced it. But, from a structural perspective, the rooms we never needed to enter (and the explanations of why we can avoid these rooms) might have more to teach us about the world and our place in it. If so, the deferential approach to standpoint epistemology actually prevents “centring” or even hearing from the most marginalized; it focuses us on the interaction of the rooms we occupy, rather than calling us to account for the interactions we don’t experience. This fact about who is in the room, combined with the fact that speaking for others generates its own set of important problems (particularly when they are not there to advocate for themselves), eliminates pressures that might otherwise trouble the centrality of our own suffering – and of the suffering of the marginalized people that do happen to make it into rooms with us.

The dangers with this feature of deference politics are grave, as are the risks for those outside of the most powerful rooms. For those who are deferred to, it can supercharge group-undermining norms. In Conflict is Not Abuse, Sarah Schulman makes a provocative observation about the psychological effects of both trauma and felt superiority: while these often come about for different reasons and have very different moral statuses, they result in similar behavioural patterns. Chief among these are misrepresenting the stakes of conflict (often by overstating harm) or representing others’ independence as a hostile threat (such as failures to “centre” the right topics or people). These behaviours, whatever their causal history, have corrosive effects on individuals who perform them as well as the groups around them, especially when a community’s norms magnify or multiply these behaviours rather than constraining or metabolizing them.

For those who defer, the habit can supercharge moral cowardice. The norms provide social cover for the abdication of responsibility: it displaces onto individual heroes, a hero class, or a mythicized past the work that is ours to do now in the present. Their perspective may be clearer on this or that specific matter, but their overall point of view isn’t any less particular or constrained by history than ours. More importantly, deference places the accountability that is all of ours to bear onto select people – and, more often than not, a hyper-sanitized and thoroughly fictional caricature of them.

The same tactics of deference that insulate us from criticism also insulate us from connection and transformation. They prevent us from engaging empathetically and authentically with the struggles of other people – prerequisites of coalitional politics. As identities become more and more fine-grained and disagreements sharper, we come to realize that “coalitional politics” (understood as struggle across difference) is, simply, politics. Thus, the deferential orientation, like that fragmentation of political collectivity it enables, is ultimately anti-political.

Deference rather than interdependence may soothe short-term psychological wounds. But it does so at a steep cost: it can undermine the epistemic goals that motivate the project, and it entrenches a politics unbefitting of anyone fighting for freedom rather than for privilege, for collective liberation rather than mere parochial advantage.

Friday, October 15, 2021

Kyrie Irving Speaks On His Mandate Stance - Stephen A. Smith Coons....,

theathletic |  Kyrie Irving believes he is fighting for something bigger than basketball — and the unintended consequences are that his mission is conflicting with his career and his franchise, the Brooklyn Nets.

Irving remains ineligible to play in NBA home games at Barclays Center in Brooklyn because he has not fulfilled New York City’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement, and the Nets announced Tuesday that Irving will not play or practice with the team until he is eligible to be a full participant. The Athletic has learned through multiple sources what has been behind his stance and decision to not take the vaccine, reasoning which has not been made public to date.

Nets general manager Sean Marks acknowledged Tuesday that Irving is not vaccinated for COVID-19. The All-NBA star and the Nets had received some good news on Friday when New York City Hall ruled that the team’s practice facility, HSS Training Center, is a public office building — clearing Irving to return to practice on Sunday. But as of now, Irving has no plans to be vaccinated, sources say. Within the franchise and the players in the locker room, it is understood that Irving’s decision is what it is.

Coonius McCoonibus Got So Much Things To Say...,

All this has left the Nets to account for how to handle the unprecedented situation and led to a bevy of questions: Is Irving anti-vax and what is really behind his choice? Will City Hall change the vaccine mandate? How will the Nets handle having Irving banished from the team instead of in and out of the lineup and available for road games and home practices?

Multiple sources with direct knowledge of Irving’s decision have told The Athletic that Irving is not anti-vaccine and that his stance is that he is upset that people are losing their jobs due to vaccine mandates. It’s a stance that Irving has explained to close teammates. To him, this is about a grander fight than the one on the court and Irving is challenging a perceived control of society and people’s livelihood, according to sources with knowledge of Irving’s mindset. It is a decision that he believes he is capable to make given his current life dynamics. “Kyrie wants to be a voice for the voiceless,” one source said.

However, the nation’s top doctors and scientists have cleared the vaccine as safe and effective. The Center for Disease Control (CDC), American Medical Association (AMA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) state clearly that COVID-19 vaccines are effective at helping protect against severe disease and death, including from variants of the virus, while also being safe. In fact, multiple studies showed that 99 percent of people who are in intensive care units in hospitals are unvaccinated. Sources say 96 percent of NBA players are currently vaccinated. More than 3.75 billion people worldwide have received a vaccine dose. To be clear, Irving’s stance is not believed to be anti-science, according to sources.

Irving has made more than $160 million over his NBA contracts and has a massive Nike shoe endorsement deal, so those who know Irving understand he is not driven right now by money, nor cares for inheriting more, but rather the stand for larger issues in his mind that need his support. He’s a seven-time All-Star, two-time All-NBA member and former Rookie of the Year who now stands to lose over $200 million by deciding to use his platform to stand up for his stance of each and every person being able to decide for themselves on whether they should take the vaccine without impacts on job statuses. However, the fact of the matter is there are consequences for being unvaccinated in some industries and municipalities. Just as Irving wants to stick with his principle belief on the matter, policies and requirements are subject to local and federal governments.

Saturday, October 09, 2021

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty Puts Everything On The Line In Defense Of Truth And Principles

aaronkheriaty  |  Here is the latest move by the University of California in response to my lawsuit in Federal court challenging their vaccine mandate on behalf of Covid-recovered individuals with natural immunity. Last Thursday Sept 30th at 5:03 PM I received this letter from the University informing me that, as of the following morning, I was being placed on “Investigatory Leave” for my failure to comply with the vaccine mandate. I was given no opportunity to contact my patients, students, residents, or colleagues and let them know I would disappear for a month. Rather than waiting for the court to make a ruling on my case, the University has taken preemptive action:

You might be thinking, a month of paid leave doesn’t sound so bad. But the language is misleading here, since half of my income from the University comes from clinical revenues generated from seeing my patients, supervising resident clinics, and engaging in weekend and holiday on-call duties. So while on leave my salary is significantly cut. Furthermore, my contract stipulates that I am not able to conduct any patient care outside the University: to see my current patients, or to recoup my losses by moonlighting as a physician elsewhere, would violate the terms of my contract.

It came as no surprise that, since my request for a preliminary injunction was not granted by the court, the University would immediately begin procedures to dismiss me. However, in the complicated legal game of three-dimensional chess I did not anticipate this particular development: the current administrative designation, where I am neither able to work at the University nor permitted to pursue work elsewhere, was not a development I had anticipated. The University may be hoping this pressure will lead me to resign “voluntarily,” which would remove grounds for my lawsuit: if I resign prior to being terminated by the University, I have no legal claim of harm.

I have no intention at this time of resigning, withdrawing my lawsuit, or having an unnecessary medical intervention forced on me, in spite of these challenging circumstances. You may be wondering about the CA Department of Public Health vaccine mandate mentioned in the University’s letter above: yes, I am subject to two mandates, the UC mandate as a faculty member and the CA State mandate as a healthcare provider. Regarding the latter mandate, I filed a similar lawsuit in Federal court last Friday against the State Public Health Department. I will post more later on that case as it develops.

Although this is a challenging time for me and my family, at this time I remain convinced that this course of action is worthwhile. I am grateful for your ongoing encouragement, prayers, and support. I want my readers to know that am taking legal action not primarily for myself, but for all those who have no voice and whose Constitutional rights are being steamrolled by these mandates. As I wrote in my first post:

Tuesday, June 01, 2021

MUCH MORE Impressed With Naomi Osaka Than I Am With Myself...,

guardian |  Naomi Osaka has surprised the tennis world by declaring days before the start of the French Open that she will not conduct her mandatory media assignments during the tournament. Osaka, the world No 2, cited the effects of reporters’ questions in press conferences on her mental health.

“I’m writing this to say I’m not going to do any press during Roland Garros,” said Osaka in a statement posted to her social media accounts. “I’ve often felt that people have no regard for athletes’ mental health and this rings true whenever I see a press conference or partake in one. We are often sat there and asked questions that we’ve been asked multiple times before or asked questions that bring doubt into our minds and I’m just not going to subject myself to people that doubt me.”

Osaka’s announcement has forced the French Tennis Federation (FFT) to conduct discussions regarding how to handle her intended rule breach. The four-time grand slam champion further explained her reason for foregoing press conferences and she acknowledged the “considerable fine” she may receive after each match.

“Me not doing press is nothing personal to the tournament and a couple journalists have interviewed me since I was young so I have a friendly relationship with most of them,” she wrote. “However, if the organisations think that they can just keep saying, ‘do press or you’re gonna be fined’ and continue to ignore the mental health of the athletes that are the centerpiece of their cooperation then I just gotta laugh.”

Gilles Moretton, the president of the FFT responded firmly to Osaka’s statement on Thursday by saying that she will be fined if she does not attend her mandatory press conferences.

“It’s a deep regret, for you journalists, for her [Osaka] personally and for tennis in general,” he said, according to l’Equipe. “I think this is a phenomenal mistake. It shows to what extent today there is strong governance in tennis. What is happening there is, in my opinion, not acceptable. There are rules, laws. We will stick to the laws and rules for penalties and fines.”

Moretton continued: “It is very detrimental to sport, to tennis, to her probably. She hits the game, she hurts tennis. This is a real problem.”

Tuesday, December 08, 2020

Fin D'Siecle American Male Identity?

patrickwyman |  The assumed subject of this culture is a straight, young-ish (18-40) dude who’s kind of into fitness of some kind, whether that’s lifting weights, a little jiu-jitsu, or what have you. He probably played sports and currently enjoys watching them. He’s familiar with but not super dedicated to video games and likes beer and maybe some weed from time to time. He may or may not have a college degree, but either way has a solid but not extremely high-paying job. He probably lives in the suburbs, exurbs, or a rural area, rather than a dense metro. He’s probably but not necessarily white. He’s disproportionately likely to have served in the military, and if he hasn’t, he knows people - family or friends - who do or did.

These various demographic, and therefore cultural and social affiliations, don’t exist in isolation from one another. Put together, they form a relatively stable melange, an ecosystem with its own influencers and heroes, values and principles, and connections to other social, cultural, and political phenomena.

It’s rooted in physicality and the body, self-ownership through activity. While it doesn’t necessarily eschew the life of the mind - Jocko Willink, for example, constantly discusses and advocates the reading of books on his podcast - that’s simply not the main focus for self-actualization or identity. If you want to talk about intellectual pursuits, you can do it while pulling 500 pounds or beating the hell out of a heavy bag.

Some aspects of this are obviously new, like social media and the role of influencers. But others aren’t. Fitness culture, one of Bro Culture’s constituent pieces, has been around in various guises for a long time; weightlifting came to prominence in the 1960s and 70s, Crossfit in the 2000s, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in the last decade, but other manifestations - like respectable men’s Muscular Christianity around the beginning of the 20th century - have been around for much longer. Bare-knuckle boxing was a manifestation of rough-and-tumble, working-class manhood in later 19th century America. That working-class manhood revolved around taverns and drinking, gambling on fights and races, a combination of activities familiar to any self-respecting Bro today whether he participates in them or not.

One parallel that’s particularly striking to me, though I wouldn’t take the comparison too far, is with medieval chivalry.

Hear me out.

The popular conception of chivalry, as a moral code guiding the behavior of honorable knights, is flat-out, laughably wrong. That’s a creation of 19th-century authors like Walter Scott, and the popular fantasy authors (basically up until George R.R. Martin) who built on their worldview in the 20th.

In reality, chivalry was all about one particular version of Guys Being Dudes. Chivalry could refer to a few different things, but the most common meaning was simply battlefield deeds, executed with some style. This, what knights referred to as “prowess,” was at the core of the broader ideology of chivalry: raw, bloody, physical performance, violence done effectively and to an agreed-upon aesthetic standard. The second major concern of chivalry, honor, grew directly out of the first. Honor wasn’t an abstract concept to medieval knights; it was a possession, a recognition of their particular status and place in the social hierarchy, which they were well within their rights to violently defend and assert through their prowess. Piety was the icing on the cake, but no knight really doubted that God approved of their actions.

 

Sunday, October 11, 2020

Kampf der Nibelungen: Combat Sports Undermine The State's Monopoly On Violence?!?!

al-jazeera  |  “Kampf der Nibelungen” or “Battle of the Nibelungs,” a reference to old Germanic and Norse legends, is beloved by white supremacists from across Europe and beyond – they are both fans and fighters.

With German authorities keeping a close eye on them after banning their previous event in 2019, organisers are planning to stream their far-right fight-night of boxing, kickboxing and mixed martial arts (MMA) online this Saturday.

Observers warn Al Jazeera that Europe’s far-right groups are using combat sports to recruit young men and train them for literal battle in the streets.

“They are violent neo-Nazis training for physical violence,” said Robert Claus, a German journalist and author of a new book on combat sports and the European far right.

The individuals behind Kampf der Nibelungen are violent and “dangerous”, he added.

There is “a very long list of racist attacks which comes out of the network of Kampf der Nibelungen”.

Moreover, Claus is concerned about the longer-term consequences if Kampf der Nibelungen goes ahead as planned.

“They’re showing a middle finger to German authorities,” he said. “If they manage to go ahead and broadcast this event in defiance of German authorities, it undermines the state’s monopoly on violence and the authority of the state.”

 

Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Anti-Fauci NIH Covert "Troll" Gets Popped Like Q-Map Author Got Popped Last Week...,


thedailybeast |  The managing editor of the prominent conservative website RedState has spent months trashing U.S. officials tasked with combating COVID-19, dubbing White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci a “mask nazi,” and intimating that government officials responsible for the pandemic response should be executed.

But that writer, who goes by the pseudonym “streiff,” isn’t just another political blogger. The Daily Beast has discovered that he actually works in the public affairs shop of the very agency that Fauci leads.

William B. Crews is, by day, a public affairs specialist for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. But for years he has been writing for RedState under the streiff pseudonym. And in that capacity he has been contributing to the very same disinformation campaign that his superiors at the NIAID say is a major challenge to widespread efforts to control a pandemic that has claimed roughly 200,000 U.S. lives.

Under his pseudonym, Crews has derided his own colleagues as part of a left-wing anti-Trump conspiracy and vehemently criticized the man who leads his agency, whom he described as the “attention-grubbing and media-whoring Anthony Fauci.” He has gone after other public health officials at the state and federal levels, as well—“the public health Karenwaffen,'' as he’s called them—over measures such as the closures of businesses and other public establishments and the promotion of social distancing and mask-wearing. Those policies, Crews insists, have no basis in science and are simply surreptitious efforts to usurp Americans’ rights, destroy the U.S. economy, and damage President Donald Trump’s reelection effort.

“I think we’re at the point where it is safe to say that the entire Wuhan virus scare was nothing more or less than a massive fraud perpetrated upon the American people by ‘experts’ who were determined to fundamentally change the way the country lives and is organized and governed,” Crews wrote in a June post on RedState.

“If there were justice,” he added, “we’d send and [sic] few dozen of these fascists to the gallows and gibbet their tarred bodies in chains until they fall apart.”

After The Daily Beast brought those and other quotes from Crews to NIAID’s attention, the agency said in an emailed statement that Crews would “retire” from his position. “NIAID first learned of this matter this morning, and Mr. Crews has informed us of his intention to retire,” the spokesperson, Kathy Stover, wrote. “We have no further comments on this as it is a personnel matter.”

Saturday, September 19, 2020

Dignity Is Something You TAKE!!! NOT Something You Whine And Beg For...,


NPR  |  In the mid-'80s, just as his career as a writer was reaching its first ascent, Stanley Crouch presided over an attempted, unexpected, coup d'etat. Crouch wanted to return to a time when the serious Black practitioners participated in the gatekeeping. (The title of a 2000 Crouch piece in the New York Times says it all: "Don't Ask the Critics. Ask Wallace Roney's Peers.") That was all to the good, but another, more reactionary and perhaps even more commercial aspect of his proposed revolution proved impossible to implement: defining jazz as a fixed object made up of conventional swing, blues, romantic ballads, a Latin tinge... and not too much else. While executing this maneuver, Crouch rejected — by some lights, betrayed — his original peer group of Murray, Blythe and Newton, and instead embraced the latest musicians intrigued by a comparatively straight-ahead approach. (Newton complained, "A stylistically dominant agenda in jazz is like bringing Coca-Cola to a five-star dinner!")

It was an artificial conceit to begin with, and Crouch was too contrarian and combative to lead a movement. However, he did have one important acolyte: Wynton Marsalis, the man anointed as the biggest new jazz star of the era. Marsalis studied the texts of Stanley Crouch and Albert Murray the way he did the music of Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong. In what may have been an unprecedented event, a major jazz artist actually read critics, and let those critics inform his music. (Crouch also contributed liner notes to the first run of excellent Marsalis LPs.)

Between them, Marsalis and Crouch kicked off the jazz wars of the '80s and '90s, an argument about tradition versus innovation, a tempest in a teacup that played out in all the major jazz magazines, in many mainstream publications, in bars and clubs everywhere – and in the end did very little good to anybody. (The day Keith Jarrett angrily invited Wynton Marsalis to a "blues duel" in the New York Times was a notable low point.) The 2001 Ken Burns documentary Jazz, which featured Marsalis and Crouch as both off-screen advisors and on-screen commentators, was the climactic battleground. People who love post-1959 styles connected to funk, fusion and the avant-garde are still very upset about Ken Burns' Jazz

Still. When he started assembling the repertory institution Jazz at Lincoln Center in 1987, Wynton Marsalis was advocating for the primacy of the Black aesthetic at a time when the white, Stan Kenton-to-Gary Burton lineage dominated major organizations like the Berklee College of Music and the International Association of Jazz Educators. The music of Kenton and Burton has tremendous value, but their vast institutional sway and undue influence in jazz education is part of this discussion. We needed less North Texas State (Kenton's first pedagogical initiative) and more Duke Ellington in the mix, and Marsalis almost single-handedly corrected our course – although Marsalis himself would give Crouch a lot of the credit. Indeed, Crouch's long-running internal mandate to get Ellington seen as "Artist of the Century" had finally paid off on a macro level, and the free high school program "Essentially Ellington" is one of JALC's most noble achievements.

Crouch and Marsalis also strove to bury the once-prevalent idea that Louis Armstrong was an Uncle Tom, and encouraged the Black working class to reclaim the jazz greats as crucial to their heritage. (Those ready to hate on Ken Burns's Jazz should keep that perspective in mind.)

There was some bad, a lot of good, and plenty to argue about. What can be said for sure: JALC never quite pulled off Crouch's proposed coup. All these years later, JALC remains merely a part of what makes jazz interesting today. Younger practitioners and listeners comfortably see the music as a continuum that can contain anything from the avant-garde harp musings of Alice Coltrane to the electric fusion of John McLaughlin to hip-hop stylings of Robert Glasper. Crouch's definition of jazz does not dominate the conversation the way he intended, perhaps paradoxically proving the original point that jazz musicians and critics don't really have much to do with each other.

Saturday, July 21, 2018

Putin Has Made Many of His Critics Look Like Fools, Thus the Rage and Hysteria


straightlinelogic |  Vladimir Putin is a black belt in judo, the only Russian and one of the few people in the world to be awarded the rank of eighth dan. He also practices karate.

A fundamental principle of martial arts is using an opponent’s size and momentum against him. This is Putin’s strategic approach. Westerners demonize Putin, but few try to understand him. Trying to understand someone else is regarded as a pointless in narcissistic America, selfie-land. Perhaps 90 percent of the populace is incapable of grasping anything more subtle than a political cartoon.
That’s a pity, because Putin has accomplished a geopolitical triumph worthy of study. He’s catalyzing the downfall of the American empire, and it has nothing to do with subverting elections or suborning Trump.

Putin became acting prime minister in 1999, then president in 2000. The Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse devastated Russia. The economy shrunk and life expectancies fell. A group of rapacious oligarchs, many with Western backing, acquired Soviet industrial and commercial assets at fire sale prices.

Putin coopted the most important oligarchs, letting them hold on to their loot and power in exchange for their allegiance. This bargain has been a bulwark of both his continuing political support and his reportedly immense personal fortune. He quelled a long-running insurrection in Chechnya and stabilized the situation there, exchanging a measure of autonomy for a declaration in the Chechen constitution that it was part of Russia. During his first two terms, from 2000-2008, the economy began recovering from the 1990s. Projecting a law and order image while stifling critics, he solidified what has become his unwavering support, winning 72 percent of the vote in the 2004 presidential election.

A coterie of highly placed idiots in the US and Europe insist that Putin’s ultimate goal is to reconstitute the former Soviet Union on his way to global domination. Russia’s GDP, after 18 years of recovery, is $1.4 trillion, compared to almost $20 trillion for the US and over $17 trillion for the European Union. Russia’s military budget is $61 billion, versus $250 billion for NATO nations (excluding the US) and over $700 billion for the US. The scaremongering screeds never say where Russia will get the money to invade and conquer former Soviet provinces, much less conquer the world. Putin, unlike America’s high and mighty, realizes from Soviet experience that empires drain rather than augment an empire’s resources.

Conquering the world is one thing, throwing the American empire to the mat another. Putin must have smiled when George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan in pursuit of Osama bin Laden, purported mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. The US’s hubristic rage led it into what has been a quagmire at best, a graveyard at worst, for a string of invaders, including the Soviet Union.

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Oliver Stone Interviews Vladimir Putin: Accept No Substitutes


cbsnews |  Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone is known for such films as "Born on the Fourth of July," "Platoon," "Wall Street" and "JFK." He also wrote the screenplays for "Midnight Express" and "Scarface." Over his career he has also interviewed controversial figures like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.

For his latest documentary, the Showtime series "The Putin Interviews," Stone was granted extensive access to the Russian president. Stone interviewed Putin more than a dozen times over two years. No topic was off limits. 

In one conversation from February 2016, Stone asked Putin about the candidates in the United States' presidential election:
Stone: "You do realize how powerful your answer could be; if you said subtly that you preferred X candidate, he would go like that [indicates nosedive] tomorrow, and if you said you didn't like Trump or something, right, what would happen? He would win. You have that amount of power in the U.S."
Putin: "Unlike many partners of ours, we never interfere within the domestic affairs of other countries. That is one of the principles we stick to in our work."
On "CBS This Morning" Monday, Stone said he first got to know Putin during production of his film about Edward Snowden, released in 2016, for which he interviewed the former NSA analyst in Moscow nine times. Stone also asked Putin about the Snowden affair and his point of view on it, "and one thing led to another."

Stone said he was invited by Putin to conduct the interviews. 

"I think he needed to be heard fairly because I'm not going to be an editor; I'm going to let him speak," Stone said. "And his point of view is not heard; you don't hear him in Russian in the West; you hear a dubbed voice, and sometimes a dubbed voice can be very harsh."
The four-part documentary series debuts on Showtime June 12.

Thursday, April 20, 2017

America Cannot Be Great Until the Military and Police Uphold Their Oaths


washingtonsblog |  People around the world view the US as the greatest threat to peace; voted three times more dangerous than any other country. The data confirm this conclusion:
Rather than “drain the swamp” and focus US resources on US upgrades, President Trump joins our opponents with violating war law from two US treaties that armed attack is only lawful if, and only if, the US is under attack by another nation’s government.

Waiting for military honor
The ordinary US military are the used/abused pawns of the .01% psychopathic class. They enlist from economic need, desire to serve ideals within our Declaration of Independence and US Constitution, or from attraction to ideals within this profession. Although they’re trained to recognize unlawful orders within military duty, they are not trained to recognize unlawful Wars of Aggression. Of course, there are no lawful orders for unlawful war. Their Oaths of Enlistment swear them to protect and defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. There is no greater domestic enemy than .01% “leaders” who lie them into unlawful Wars of Aggression.

Because US military are the ones applying War Crimes onto the world, with all risk and suffering at their immediate experience, one would imagine growing factions refusing to obey lying “leaders” and dishonorable illegal armed attacks.

One would imagine, except We the People see no evidence.


Master Arbitrageur Nancy Pelosi Is At It Again....,

🇺🇸TUCKER: HOW DID NANCY PELOSI GET SO RICH? Tucker: "I have no clue at all how Nancy Pelosi is just so rich or how her stock picks ar...