Waorani tribe: Bathing in the river

BBCWorldwide

Himba tribe: Unwanted Marriage

BBCWorldwide

La vida diaria de la Tribu Zoe

masDocumentales

Intelligence Agency Predicts 2030

MidweekPolitics

Intelligence Agency's 2030 projections outline a number of predictions about the state of world affairs over the next 18 years.

Neighborhood effects

huduser.org

Daniel Little

In Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect Robert Sampson provides a very different perspective on the "micro-macro" debate. He rejects the methodologies associated both poles of the debate: methodological individualism ("derive important social outcomes from the choices of rational individuals") and methodological structuralism ("derive important social outcomes from the features of large-scale structures like globalization"). Instead, he argues for the causal importance of a particular kind of "meso" -- the neighborhood. He takes the view that neither "bottom-up" or "top-down" sociology will suffice. Instead, we need to look at processes at the level of socially situated individuals.

In this book I proposed an alternative to these two perspectives by offering a unified framework on neighborhood effects, the larger social organization of urban life, and social causality in general…. Contrary to much received wisdom, the evidence presented in this book demands attention to life in the neighborhoods that shape it. (357)

I argue that we need to treat social context as an important unit of analysis in its own right.  This calls for new measurement strategies as well as a theoretical framework that do not treat the neighborhood simply as a "trait" of the individual. (60)

Sampson offers his own instantiation of Coleman's Boat to illustrate his thinking:

But unlike Coleman (and like the argument I offered in an earlier post about meso-level explanation; link), Sampson allows for the validity of type-4 causal mechanisms, from "neighborhood structure and culture" to "rates of social behavior". So neighborhoods are not simply outcomes of individual choices and behavior; they are social ensembles that exert their own causal powers.

Sampson offers an articulated methodology for the study of the social life of a city, in the form of ten principles. These include:

1. Focus on social context
2. Study contextual variations in their own right
3. focus on social-interactional, social psychological, organizational, and cultural mechanisms of social life
4. integrate a life-course focus on neighborhood change
5. look for processes and mechanisms that explain stability
6. embed in the study of neighborhood dynamics the role of individual selection decisions
7. go beyond the local
8. incorporate macro processes 
9. pay attention to human concerns with public affairs 
10. emphasize the integrative theme of theoretically interpretive empirical research while maintaining methodological pluralism (67-68)

The heart of "neighborhood sociology" can be summarized, Sampson asserts, in a few simple themes:

First, there is considerable social inequality between neighborhoods, especially in terms of socioeconomic position and racial/ethnic segregation.  

Second, these factors are connected in that concentrated disadvantage often coincides with the geographic isolation of racial minority and immigrant groups.  

Third, a number of crime- and health-related problems tend to come bundled together at the neighborhood level and are predicted by neighborhood characteristics such as the concentration of poverty, racial isolation, single-parent families, and to a lesser extent rates of residential and housing instability.  

Fourth, a number of social indicators at the upper end of what many would consider progress, such as affluence, computer literacy, and elite occupational attainment, are also clustered geographically. (46)

This set of themes asserts a series of important correlations between neighborhood features and social outcomes. The hard question is to identify the social mechanisms that underlie these correlations. "It is from this idea that in recent decades we have witnessed another turning point in the form of a renewed commitment to uncovering the social processes and mechanisms that account for neighborhood (or concentration) effects. Social mechanisms provide theoretically plausible accounts of how neighborhoods bring about change in a given phenomenon" (46).

This is a fascinating and methodologically innovative piece of urban sociology. Sampson's use of large data sets to establish some of the intriguing neighborhood patterns he identifies is highly proficient, and his efforts to place his reasoning within a more theoretically sophisticated framework of multi-level social mechanisms is admirable. In an interesting twist, Sampson shows how it is possible to expand on the very costly video-based methodology of the original PHDCN study by making use of Google Street View to do systematic observations of neighborhoods in Chicago and other cities (361).

(Here is an earlier post on Sampson's ideas about neighborhood effects.)

The Practice of Anarchy

In my previous three-part series on anarchy (available here, here and here) I argued, among other things, that anarchic (that is to say, non-hierarchical and self-organizing) systems are the norm in evolution and in nature and have also been the norm in human societies through much of their existence. They have a great deal to offer us as we attempt to navigate a landscape dominated by the failure of various centrally controlled, rigidly organized, explicitly codified hierarchical systems based on complex chains of command that have come to dominate human societies in recent centuries. I have also pointed out that, based on recent results from complexity theory, such hierarchical systems are collapse-prone. This is because they scale badly, increasing their metabolic cost per unit size as their size increases, which is just the opposite of how living organisms behave. This is also because, in order to continue to meet their internal maintenance requirements, they have to grow exponentially until they encounter physical limits.

But, as some astute readers have pointed out, what are we to do with all this excellent information? We live in a hierarchically structured society whose sometimes oppressive but always ever-present top-down authority we cannot escape. With many generations of people having become used to hearing anarchists vilified as terrorists, communist revolutionaries and having been conditioned to accept anarchy as a synonym for chaos and mayhem, any attempt at advocating anarchism as a political program is bound to go nowhere. We may be able to accept that anarchy is the way of nature, but we must also accept that it is no longer (at least for the time being) the way of human nature—or, if you like, not the way of man—or at least not the way of “the man”—the one who pays us a little something if we are helpful to him and orders us to be beat up or locked up if we are not. The advocate of anarchy is at best an amusing disembodied voice on the Internet (who must be dong something or other more practical to please the hierarchy in order to be able to afford the free time and the Internet connection). At worst, the compulsion to advocate anarchism as a program of political reform is a sign of mental illness.

Yes, the advocate of anarchist revolution is a sad sort of imbecile, but this is not to say that the theory that underpins anarchism is without any practical applications. It is just that such applications have nothing at all to do with politics. Just as anarchist thinking has at its source the scientific observation of nature, so must its applications to contemporary society start by observing the constructive role that anarchy normally plays within contemporary society, and then look for ways to extend it. Are there any examples of that? Yes, indeed there are. Whenever an existing hierarchically organized system becomes sufficiently ossified and dysfunctional to give an obvious edge to an improvised, anarchic, perhaps initially inferior alternative, there is a possibility that such an alternative will materialize out of nowhere, spread virally, become dominant, and then, in turn, become hierarchical and ossified. Let's list some obvious examples.

The Protestant revolution is an obvious one. Once the Catholic church—a hierarchical organization par excellence, though built on top of the wreckage of anarchic early Christianity—became sufficiently corrupt and obnoxious, putting up toll booths before the gates of heaven and so forth, a variety of new self-selected religious leaders led a revolt, providing a viable, though rather primitive, alternatives, which then took over in many parts of the world, and eventually sprouted their own hierarchical structures thanks to the efforts of Luther. The Russian revolution is another one: once the general senility and obsolescence of the Czarist ancien régime became compounded by its failed effort durng World War I to a point where it could no longer quell bread riots, a variety of new self-selected political leaders stepped into the breach and provided an alternative, until it, again, sprouted a hierarchical organization of its own thanks to the efforts of Lenin. Seventy years later the stiff and morbid hierarchy into which it evolved was also tipped into the dustbin. More recently, when the first efforts at trade liberalization provided advantages of economies of scale, as well as labor and jurisdictional arbitrage, with which national enterprises could not compete, the trend became unstoppable, until there is now a single transnational business environment which is beyond any one nation's control. If history is any guide (as it sometimes is) the inevitable result will be that a dangerously centralized global economic bureaucracy, conceived in an effort to control the forces of chaos globalization has unleashed, will briefly attempt to dominate the scene before crumbling into dust under its own weight. More on Club Orlov >>

Assemblage Theory Revisited/ Manuel DeLanda

egsvideo

http://www.egs.edu/ Manuel Delanda, contemporary philosopher, revisits assemblage theory and answers student questions. DeLanda discusses models, the state, state apparatus, Michel Foucault, and the virtual. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland. 2011 Manuel DeLanda.

Manuel DeLanda, (born 1952 in Mexico City), is a writer, artist and distinguished philosopher who has lived in New York since 1975. He is a professor and the Gilles Deleuze Chair of Contemporary Philosophy and Science at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, a professor at the Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, and professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. DeLanda was formerly an Adjunct Associate Professor at Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University (New York).

He is the author of War In the Age of Intelligent Machines (1991), A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (1997), Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (2002), A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity (2006), Deleuze: History and Science (2010), and Philosophy and Simulation: The Emergence of Synthetic Reason (2011). He has published many articles and essays and lectured extensively in Europe and in the United States. His work focuses on the theories of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze on one hand, and modern science, self-organizing matter, artificial life and intelligence, economics, architecture, chaos theory, history of science, nonlinear science, cellular automata on the other. De Landa became a principal figure in the "new materialism" based on his application of Deleuze's realist ontology. His universal research into "morphogenesis" - the production of the semi-stable structures out of material flows that are constitutive of the natural and social world - has been of interest to theorists across many academic and professional disciplines.

Assemblage theory

Understanding Society/ Daniel Little 

Deleuze's theory (metaphor?) of assemblage as a way of thinking about the social world is an intriguing one. Fundamentally the idea is that there does not exist a fixed and stable ontology for the social world that proceeds from "atoms" to "molecules" to "materials". Rather, social formations are assemblages of other complex configurations, and they in turn play roles in other, more extended configurations.

What is appealing to me about this way of talking about the social world is that it takes us away from the presuppositions we often bring about the social world as consisting of a range of discrete social objects or things. According to this static way of thinking, the state is a thing composed of other things; likewise Islam is an extended social thing; likewise Chicago; and so on. The assemblage approach suggests a different set of metaphors for the social world: mosaic, patchwork, heterogeneity, fluidity, transitory configuration. And this seems like a more realistic way of characterizing large extended social formation like states or regulatory agencies.

The downside of this way of talking and thinking about the social world is precisely the indefiniteness and indeterminacy it suggests for the composition relation. This poses a very hard problem for explanation. How are we to explain the properties and behavior of the composite entity if there is so much contingency in its parts and the ways in which they interact? The strategy of aggregative explanation seems to be a non-starter, since it is stipulated that composition is not a strongly rule-governed process. But so do the comparative and generalizing strategies. If the composites are indeed sui generis and unique configurations we can't generalize across instances and can't usefully compare them.

So how can we gain greater clarity? The concept of assemblage is expressed by Gilles Deleuze; but it is obscure. Here is a valuable blog post by Levi Bryant in LarvalSubjects that extracts several of Deleuze's statements about assemblage from an interview. This interview provides some description of the construct in Deleuze's own words.  Here is one of Bryant's efforts at clarifying Deleuze's meaning:

Assemblages are composed of heterogeneous elements or objects that enter into relations with one another. These objects are not all of the same type. Thus you have physical objects, happenings, events, and so on, but you also have signs, utterances, and so on. While there are assemblages that are composed entirely of bodies, there are no assemblages composed entirely of signs and utterances.

It isn't easy to paraphrase Deleuze's thinking into a more analytical formulation (though Bryant's efforts are helpful). But the language remains metaphorical, suggestive, and elusive, rather than analytical and discursive. For this reason it is difficult to determine whether the concept has value for sociological theory.

The core ideas are spelled out in a somewhat more accessible form in Manuel DeLanda's A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. DeLanda tries to explain "assemblage" by saying what it is not.  First, assemblage theory is opposed to essentialism and reification (26ff.). DeLanda emphasizes that Deleuze's concept resists the "organismic" approach to conceptualizing the social, by which he means an approach that looks at the whole as an inextricable combination of interrelated parts. This implies that the parts are implicated in each other; the organismic perspective emphasizes the internal connectedness of a thing. (This has affinity to Bert Ollman's philosophy of internal relations in Alienation: Marx's Conception of Man in a Capitalist Society.) DeLanda distinguishes between "interiority" and "exteriority" in conceptualizing the components of a thing. For assemblage theory, the relations among the parts are contingent, not necessary. And, crucially, parts can be extracted from one whole and inserted into another. "These relations imply, first of all, that a component part of an assemblage may be detached from it and plugged into a different assemblage in which its interactions are different. In other words, the exteriority of relations implies a certain autonomy for the terms they relate" (10-11). Another aspect of the theory, according to DeLanda, is the fact that it does not privilege one level of organization over another. "Micro" is not more fundamental than "macro"; instead, social reality is "multiscaled" (38), with assemblages occurring at every level.

Truthfully, neither Deleuze nor DeLanda succeeds in making the concept of assemblage a very clear or analytically specific one. So let's consider a diluted version of assemblage theory that might nonetheless be useful for sociological theory while foregoing much of the metaphysical language characteristic of Deleuze's writings:

1. Social entities are composed of components and lesser systems.
2. The components of a social entity are heterogeneous.
3. The components include both material factors and meaningful expressions.
4. The components have their own characteristics and dynamics.
5. The components may have very different temporal and spatial scales.
6. The effects and interactions among components may be indeterminate because of complexity effects and probabilistic causal mechanisms.
7. The behavior of the whole is difficult or impossible to calculate even given extensive knowledge of the dynamics of the components.

To illustrate this set of ideas, consider a city as an assemblage.

1. A city consists of population, businesses, roads, organizations, government policies, political movements, disaffected youth, and slogans.
2. Population dynamics have a temporal scale of decades, while businesses have a temporal scale of months.
3. The interaction effects of gradual population change, the voting system, and gradual environmental change are difficult to calculate.
4. We can nonetheless make efforts to disentangle the effects of population change, institutional design, and environment on things like land use and effective taxation rates.

This reformulation suggests that large social entities are "messy" but still amenable to analysis and study; and this is what sociology requires.

(Daniel Smith's article on Deleuze in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a readable exposition of Deleuze's philosophy; link. Another useful resource on assemblage theory is Nick Srnicek's masters' thesis; link. )

Would Obama Incite Civil Unrest to Win?

By Daren Jonescu 

Is President Obama willing to incite civil unrest to win re-election?  As we have all been encouraged to wear our dog-whistle decoders these days, one can hardly be blamed for wondering.  Worse yet, we know the answer.  He is already doing it.

Please bear with me, as this topic requires considerable delicacy.

According to Rolling Stone, Barack Obama has now called Mitt Romney “a bull*******,” on the record.  His anger at the challenger was palpable — that is, carefully staged — during each of the last two presidential debates.  And he has made a central theme of his campaign the warning that a Romney presidency would erase all of the “equality” victories of the 1960s and ’70s.

Consider these typical words from his October 25 rally in Las Vegas:

You can choose to turn the clock back 50 years for women and immigrants and gays.  Or in this election you can stand up for the principle that America includes everybody. We’re all created equal — black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, abled, disabled — no matter who you are, no matter what you look like, no matter where you come from or who you love, in America you can make it if you try.

This, to restate, is his message down the stretch: before the revolutionary uprisings of the 1960s, America only "included" white men.  Romney is a white man who wants to return to that time.  So if you are a woman, an immigrant, gay, black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, or disabled, then you should not merely oppose Romney as a candidate who does not represent your interests; rather, you should fear him, as a man who wishes to eliminate you from the American portrait.

If Romney wins, and you are not an "abled" white male, America will no longer "include" you, according to Obama.  In less than two weeks, you are going to be reduced to second-class citizenship, your fortunes cast back to the bad old days of 1962, before radical feminism, the Nation of Islam, gay rights, the Black Panthers, free love, flag-burning, the "drug culture" -- and of course, before the days of America's first "gay," black, America-hating, drug-damaged, contraceptive-dispensing, progressive feminist Islamic-Christian president.

And now, after scowling at him through two debates, after his vice-president spent ninety minutes calling Paul Ryan a liar, and in the context of all this fear-mongering about the threat of a return to White Male America, Obama has branded his opponent a "bull*****er."

From Lyndon Johnson or Harry Truman, this kind of remark might have been regarded as innocuous, albeit unpresidential.  From Obama, the Harvard genius with the well-creased pant leg, the bestselling author and master of political oration, it is an expression of bitter rage and supreme disdain.  And in an era when representatives of Obama's base are flooding Twitter with threats to assassinate his opponent, such heated rhetoric could be dangerous.

Anyone who wonders whether perhaps Obama just does not want to be president anymore should think again.  He wants to be president.  What he does not want is to have to exert so much effort to retain the presidency.  What he does not want is what Hugo Chávez does not want, what Vladimir Putin does not want, what Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not want: a fair fight, an unobstructed challenger, an unintimidated electorate. 

It was so easy in the past.  Swept along on a wave of adulation and enthusiasm, protected by leftist media and academia, and helped out when necessary by an Axelrod-arranged scandal or two, Obama has barely had to lift a finger to gain political office and to climb the ladder.  Authoritarians do not understand why one should have to do so.

So he is angry.  And this anger has become central to his campaign strategy.  The fear he is seeking to inculcate among his base has an even uglier flip-side.  The Obama campaign is attempting to cast Romney and his supporters not as people with the wrong ideas, but as The Enemy.  In this circumstance, fear can easily give way to extreme outrage -- and perhaps to violence and intimidation.  This is particularly true when the target audience of this fear-inducing invective is ignorant, emotion-driven, and dominated in its thinking by entitlement greed, rather than by considerations of right and wrong.  Consider Sandra Fluke, Snoop Dogg, Occupy Wall Street, and student leftists (see examples).

When Harry Truman's daughter, a singer, was panned by critic Paul Hume, the sitting president wrote a letter threatening to bust Hume's nose if they ever met.  In 1950, however, none of Truman's supporters would have been inclined to do the dirty work for him, or even to take the whole thing seriously.  Needless to say, Obama's supporters are quite different from Truman's. 

Could Obama really be reduced to attempting to win re-election through mob protests and intimidation -- i.e., through a climate of fear?

More on www.americanthinker.com >>

J.K. Rowling book and class war

Read >>

“Lo especial” que tiene “lo cubano”-Emanaciones1200/ Juan Abreu

Juan Abreu/

Llega a mis púdicos oídos que los cubanos jóvenes van de patriotas y de “lo especial” que tiene “lo cubano”. Es verdad. Hay que ser especial para aguantar una dictadura que te mata de hambre asesina a los mejores y te da de patadas en el culo durante cincuenta años. Muy especial hay que ser.

Después de apartar la diarrea patriótica porque la diarrea patriótica no vale la pena revolverla ya sabemos lo que es (estupidez y sentimentalismo), medito sobre el asunto. Locura colectiva, me digo. Falta de vergüenza endémica, aventuro. ¿Cara dura más allá de cualquier límite? Es posible.

Que gente que pertenece a un pueblo tan aguantón y cobarde tan servil y canalla tan oportunista y tan miserable un pueblo que lleva medio siglo revolcándose y regodeándose en la mierda del castrismo un pueblo ajeno a cualquier decencia y siempre dispuesto a aceptar callado cualquier bajeza presuma de ser especial es algo verdaderamente insólito.

Especiales. Dicen. Bueno. Creo que no ha existido un pueblo tan chivato y colaborador y tan arrastrado ante su opresor como el cubano. Si se refieren a eso, no me queda más remedio que estar de acuerdo con ellos.

The Fallacy of Redistribution [& Cuba]/ Thomas Sowell

thanks nelson

------------------------------ 

spectator.org

By Thomas Sowell

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The recently discovered tape on which Barack Obama said back in 1998 that he believes in redistribution is not really news. He said the same thing to Joe the Plumber four years ago. But the surfacing of this tape may serve a useful purpose if it gets people to thinking about what the consequences of redistribution are.

Those who talk glibly about redistribution often act as if people are just inert objects that can be placed here and there, like pieces on a chess board, to carry out some grand design. But if human beings have their own responses to government policies, then we cannot blithely assume that government policies will have the effect intended.

The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries that set out to redistribute wealth and ended up redistributing poverty. The communist nations were a classic example, but by no means the only example.

In theory, confiscating the wealth of the more successful people ought to make the rest of the society more prosperous. But when the Soviet Union confiscated the wealth of successful farmers, food became scarce. As many people died of starvation under Stalin in the 1930s as died in Hitler's Holocaust in the 1940s.

How can that be? It is not complicated. You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated. Farmers in the Soviet Union cut back on how much time and effort they invested in growing their crops, when they realized that the government was going to take a big part of the harvest. They slaughtered and ate young farm animals that they would normally keep tending and feeding while raising them to maturity.
People in industry are not inert objects either. Moreover, unlike farmers, industrialists are not tied to the land in a particular country.
Russian aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky could take his expertise to America and produce his planes and helicopters thousands of miles away from his native land. Financiers are even less tied down, especially today, when vast sums of money can be dispatched electronically to any part of the world.
If confiscatory policies can produce counterproductive repercussions in a dictatorship, they are even harder to carry out in a democracy. A dictatorship can suddenly swoop down and grab whatever it wants. But a democracy must first have public discussions and debates. Those who are targeted for confiscation can see the handwriting on the wall, and act accordingly.
Among the most valuable assets in any nation are the knowledge, skills and productive experience that economists call "human capital." When successful people with much human capital leave the country, either voluntarily or because of hostile governments or hostile mobs whipped up by demagogues exploiting envy, lasting damage can be done to the economy they leave behind.
Fidel Castro's confiscatory policies drove successful Cubans to flee to Florida, often leaving much of their physical wealth behind. But poverty-stricken refugees rose to prosperity again in Florida, while the wealth they left behind in Cuba did not prevent the people there from being poverty stricken under Castro. The lasting wealth the refugees took with them was their human capital.
We have all heard the old saying that giving a man a fish feeds him only for a day, while teaching him to fish feeds him for a lifetime. Redistributionists give him a fish and leave him dependent on the government for more fish in the future.
If the redistributionists were serious, what they would want to distribute is the ability to fish, or to be productive in other ways. Knowledge is one of the few things that can be distributed to people without reducing the amount held by others.
That would better serve the interests of the poor, but it would not serve the interests of politicians who want to exercise power, and to get the votes of people who are dependent on them.
Barack Obama can endlessly proclaim his slogan of "Forward," but what he is proposing is going backwards to policies that have failed repeatedly in countries around the world.
Yet, to many people who cannot be bothered to stop and think, redistribution sounds good.

Why Societies Develop Like Embryos: The God Problem

PJMedia/ By Howard Bloom

An exclusive excerpt from chapter 6 of the new science/history/philosophy nonfiction book The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates, the new offering from the author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century and The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism.

The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates is published on August 24 and is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

****

The Zygote Snabs Herbert Spencer

Meanwhile, in 1851, when he is thirty-one years old and walking, talking, and singing with Miss Evans, Herbert Spencer runs across an idea that will make him one of the biggest big-picture thinkers of all time. It is the idea that will keep Spencer a bachelor married to only one thing, his grand “synthesis.” Herbert Spencer will come across von Baer’s principle that cells in an embryo start out looking pretty much alike, then get more and more unique to their species. And more and more specialized in their function. Von Baer’s principle will change Spencer’s thinking. It will become the key to Spencer’s grand unification. And to his view of evolution. It will become Herbert Spencer’s equivalent to Newton’s gravity.

Yes, differentiation and the metaphor of the embryo will enter Herbert Spencer’s thinking three years after he comes to the Economist and one year after he begins to frequent John Chapman’s soirees. Says Spencer, “In 1851, I became acquainted with von Baer’s statement that the development of every organism is a change from homogeneity to heterogeneity.” And that acquaintance will push Spencer to till the soil in which Charles Darwin will plant a seed.

Once Herbert Spencer is exposed to von Baer’s work, the embryologist’s influence will show up almost instantly in Spencer’s work. It is the grand unifying principle that Spencer has been hunting for. It is another unifying principle to add to what Spencer has taken from George Henry Lewes’s explanations of Comte—the principle of evolution, and the principle that evolution constantly churns out something that Spencer calls “progress.” So von Baer’s principle of differentiation becomes central to Spencer’s 1851 first book, Social Statistics. The bigger and the more advanced the society, Social Statistics says, the more differentiation, the more specialization. The more “‘distinct classes’ and ‘special occupations.’” Large-scale societies unfold like embryos. They evolve like zygotes in the womb. Spencer publishes Social Statistics eight years before the publication of the book in which Charles Darwin premiers his theory of evolution, the Origin of Species. But Spencer, like the other habitués of Chapman’s get togethers, is already an evolutionary thinker, and he portrays the differentiation of human societies as an evolutionary process. Again, the word evolution has not appeared even once in Darwin’s only published book, his Voyage of the Beagle. But it appears one hundred times in Spencer’s second book, his 1855 Principles of Psychology. A book that comes out four years before Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

Here’s how the combination of evolution and von Baer’s differentiation works. Says Spencer, in early societies, everyone did everything—hunting, fishing, and tool and weapon making. But as societies evolved, some men specialized in hunting and fishing and others became full-time tool or weapons makers—full-time spear and fishing hook experts. Way, way down the line, really advanced societies invented machines like railroad engines with hundreds of parts. So in an advanced society, there might be a specialist in Swindon who zeroed in on nothing but hand-making the setscrews for the steam engine, a task so exacting that one real-life machinist of Spencer’s day said “it almost made me sick.” Meanwhile other specialists assembled the engine, tested it, and ran it. And yet more specialists raised fruits, veg- etables, cows, and pigs and sent them into the city via railroad to feed the setscrew specialist. At the same time, even more specialists raised cotton in the American South, carded it and combed it in Manchester, then ran the resulting thread through Manchester’s weaving machines to make the set- screw maker’s clothes.

The result? Says Spencer, societies are like organisms. And their advance toward higher levels of complexity is like “the development of an embryo or the unfolding of a flower.” Yes, societies unfold like flowers or embryos:

Hence it happens that a tribe of savages may be divided and subdivided with little or no inconvenience to the several sections.

More >>

The End Of Civilization

jakevanek

Don Tapscott on The Theory of Wikinomics: Rethinking Civilization for an Age of Networked Intelligence

By AspenInstitute

EEUU - Rehenes del Diablo

Por Andrés Pascual

       El temblequante y pusilánimemente interesado Sistema Judicial de Estados Unidos, a instancias del FBI, casi instauran una causa que cierre las bocas de los ciudadanos de una vez, con igual efecto que la Propaganda Enemiga de la tiranía castrista sobre el pueblo cubano. Es la implantación del Terror a una población que no se diferencia en nada, una parte importante, de lo que llaman repúblicas bananeras.

       El país está “bien despachado”, por lo que no puede identificarse como el del cuento “El Sueño Americano”, tanto es así que, para verguenza de su historia, se informó hace poco que legiones de naturales o postizos están renunciando a su ciudadania para evitar el pago de impuestos. Yo creo que eso no se vio nunca aqui o, por lo menos, de la forma tan preocupante como sucede hoy.

       Se está merced del antiamericanismo de mil formas, por ejemplo, he escuchado a Giménez, alcalde de Miami y a Javier Souto, concejal, “condenar enérgicamente” lo que dijo un ex capitán de bomberos en Twitter sobre cómo ve ciertas detalles del caso Trayvon Martin, al tipo lo degradaron desde capitán a soldado raso y casi dan una fiesta por la complacencia colectiva para festejarlo; pero resulta que un oficial jefe del cuerpo está siendo investigado por el FBI por supuesto acoso sexual y a este señor también lo relacionan con el “crimen de odio racial” que es decir cómo uno ve el caso Trayvon, que debe ser como a uno le de la gana, como yo, que no me gusta la violencia, pero no soy quien la práctica diariamente matando infelices en las calles por un reloj, o metiéndole un tiro a una policía en la boca que, casualmente, intentó ayudar al negro asesino que la hirió por lo que, el caso del joven asesinado, no lo veo ni como la Media ni como los liberales ni como la mano de pendejos que están enterrando lo que queda de esta ayer gran nación.

       Para entender bien el peligro de perder al país, que nadie sabe si puede evitarse ya, entre políticas favorables a Castro, al Islam, al matrimonio gay o con promesas secretas para desproteger a Europa ante Rusia, ningún medio ha tomado en cuenta las amenazas de muerte del Black Panters contra George Zimmerman, que le pusieron precio a la cabeza del tipo al estilo bounty hunter de Dog en estos tiempos o de Clay Allison cuando el Wild West; no conformes, el grupo terrorista-progromista de Obama y los liberales comunicó la semana pasada que “los blancos se van a poner muy bravos en noviembre”. Por lo que se ve, nadie está a cargo de llamar a contar a estos delincuentes que, no sé si decir lamentablemente, son negros . Es la degradacion absoluta de valores, sin dudas, Estados Unidos está en las manos de lo peor posible y nadie sabe a dónde irá a parar…

       El miedo de los politicos de Miami y el contubernio interesado, ampliado al resto del país, de muchos blancos decadentes bajo la sombrilla demócrata, los ilegales y una porcion enorme de negros, han logrado hacer un Estados Unidos que, en lo socio-político, no tiene nada que envidiarle al castrismo.

      Yo creo que es hora de que se trate de hacer algo por los miembros del cuerpo de bomberos ante la injusticia salvaje que cometen con ellos, porque está en juego, empleando como justificacion engañosa por el FBI “la política de odio racial” para ultimarla, la soberanía individual del ciudadano común y corriente, a través de la sumisión por el terror de una población que, ahora mismo, tiene perdida y ni se ha dado cuenta, la libertad de expresion.

The planned re-election of Obama, revolutionary style

CFP/ Doug Hagmann

HomelandSecurityUs.com

The Contact

It was not the proverbial 3:00 a.m. phone call, but close enough. And it was not made to the White House, but to my house, which is not white, nor is it in DC. It was about 2:30 a.m. on 25 April 2012, and the call itself was somewhat unexpected. I had anticipated the telephone call from my DHS insider much earlier the previous day, but our schedules didn’t synch up. I was traveling on an investigative assignment, while my source was in meetings all day. I had just fallen asleep, and was slumbering no more than 20 minutes when the phone rang.

In most households, a ringing phone at that time of night causes concern for everyone who hears it. In my household, it seems to surprise only my surly, 140 pound light-sleeping German Shepherd. He let out an objective grunt as I stepped over him to take the call in another room. It was “Rosebud,” the code name given my insider source.

About Rosebud

Just a little bit here about my source and his “super-secret code name.” I’ve known this government insider since 1979, when he first became a municipal patrol officer. He took a job in a bigger city and had a very successful run as a cop. Before retirement and after the events of 9/11, he was tapped by the feds, where he worked in various capacities under the umbrella of DHS. He worked his way up, and suddenly found himself in what he terms the inner sanctum of the “TEC” building. TEC, he explains, is an acronym for what he calls “The Estrogen Challenged,” which houses the upper echelon of the Department of Homeland Security. I’ll leave it at that.

As far as his code name, it originates from an incident that occurred at the end of the disco era. It is something that we both privately laugh about, but rarely ever talk about. His “code name” is known to him, me, and at the time, a young woman who has since vanished amid the glitter of disco balls and constant replays of the Bee Gees in a dark nightclub some 32 years ago, and has no “cloak and dagger” origins.

But he is real, his position serious, and his knowledge vast. Unfortunately, that’s what makes the whole situation frightening and deadly serious.

The information

It began on Wednesday, 2 May 2012 with a 45-minute interview on TruNews with Rick Wiles when I first disclosed the information I received the previous week from my source. The information I relayed “went viral,” as they say, across the internet.

To support the statements I made during that interview, I am showing my handwritten notes taken contemporaneously during our conversation. My notes consist of two pages and are, at various points,  admittedly difficult to decipher. I ask that points not be deducted for my penmanship given the time of the morning which they were taken.

According to my source, there is talk among the highest levels of the uppermost echelon of the Department of Homeland Security, which he describes as effectively under the control of Barack Hussein Obama. During this call, he said that the DHS is actively preparing for massive social unrest inside the United States. He then corrected himself, stating that “a civil war” is the more appropriate term. Certain elements of the government are not only expecting and preparing for it, they are actually facilitating it,” stated my source.

“The DHS takes their marching orders from the Obama administration, from Obama himself, but mostly from his un-appointed czars. And Jarrett, especially Valerie Jarrett. Don’t think for a minute that the administration is doing anything to stabilize events in the U.S. They are revolutionaries, and revolutionaries thrive on chaos,” he added.

My source stated that he has not seen things this bad since he began working within DHS. “It’s like they [DHS agency heads] don’t care about what the American people see or feel about what the DHS agencies are doing. They figure that if the average American will put up with being “sexually groped and nuked” just to fly, they’ll accept almost anything. “That’s why their actions are becoming more overt.  “It’s in your face and the brass actually chuckle about it” said my source.

New Information

Astounded by the information my source provided “going viral,” I spoke to him again early Sunday morning. This was a scheduled telephone call (as noted on page 2 of my notes) based on a high level meeting of DHS personnel that was scheduled for and took place in Chantilly, Virginia, on Saturday, 5 May 2012.  He hoped to provide me with more information to supplement that which he already given. Although he was not personally present, his source was. While he would not say who was at the meeting on Saturday or give its precise location, he said that the many of the names would be recognizable. He spoke to his source late Saturday night.

I contacted him on his cellular phone early Sunday morning to get the promised update.

“Geez, nice job on getting the word out about what’s really going on at DHS and in this administration,” were the first words out of his mouth, followed by “thanks a lot.” I asked him why he would be thanking me. “I just wanna’ tell you that I’m going to have to hire someone to start my car, and I’m surely not going for any rides in small planes in the immediate future,” he said with a bit of nervous laughter. “I hope no one finds out who I am or it’s going to be more than my pension I’ll have to worry about.”

“I can tell you word is getting out that people are starting to wake up, which is causing a lot of ‘pissed off brass.’  I can’t tell if they are more desperate or upset about the exposure, but the tone is starting to become a lot more tense. I hope that we’re having something to do with that,” he added.

With that, he provided me with additional information to supplement that which he already given me on 25 April. For clarity purposes, I have combined the information together from both contacts. The following information includes the updated information provided to me Sunday morning.

Obama the revolutionary

Metaphorically speaking, there’s a revolution going on in the U.S., propped up by three legs. Economic chaos, chaos through racial division, and chaos through class division, all joined by one core element: Barack Hussein Obama and his stable of unelected czars. Obama is using the lessons learned in 1968 as the template for 2012, and many of those who were active in the late 1960s are now calling the shots for 2012.

“The Obama administration and many of the un-elected ‘czars,’ either directly or indirectly, are engaged in covert activities with the occupy movement, various labor protests, and other subversive activities inside the U.S.,” stated my source. Using untracked campaign funds, they are paying people to infiltrate the various movements to cause physical destruction of property and disrupt commerce. That began last year, but has increased ten-fold already this year,” stated this source. He added that they are using some lower level DHS agents to make the payments under the context of tracking subversives, but they are the unwitting subversives. “It’s like Fast & Furious” but in the social realm,” he added.

“Obama is using some high profile people as pawns to foment the revolution. I heard several times through very credible sources that [Louis] Farrakhan is on the CIA payroll. Other have been named as well, but I’m not prepared to identify them yet. Farrakhan is to coordinate the Blacks and the Muslims to prepare for riots this summer, using any means necessary.”

“Mentioned at the meeting Saturday were methods to use pawns to simulate the rioting in the Arab Spring countries, but to the benefit of this administration. A controlled chaos thing,” stated my source. They envision rioting starting in the urban areas first, such as New York and other major cities, followed by a disruption of business and commerce. This will allow the DHS to mobilize their various teams into the streets of America without objection of the people,” stated my source.

“They want to restrict travel, if not through high energy prices, then by checkpoints and curfews mandated by rioting and unrest. They understand we are the most well-armed nation in the world, yet they are aware of our vulnerabilities and intend to fully exploit them,” he added. The whole purpose is to keep Obama in office for another term, no matter how unpopular he is, as he is not finished changing our country from a Constitutional Republic. This is the run-up to the 2012 elections, or perhaps causing enough chaos to delay them - indefinitely.”

One statement that rattled me more than anything was that a great number of those already in power, whether in appointed or elected positions, actually want to see Obama stay in power, according to this source. “This is what we’ve been working toward and we’re closer now than we’ve ever been. If we lose now, we might not have another chance.”

This chilling common goal also explains the lack of interest in the Constitutional legitimacy of Obama. It is common knowledge that Obama is not an American, and neither is his agenda. Of course, criticism of his bona-fides feeds into the cries of racism, despite the massive fraud perpetrated on the American people. Party lines are meaningless when the common objective is the revolutionary overtaking of America.

Obama, the professor of Keynesian economics

“The Obama administration is working closely with Bernanke, Geithner and others not to save our economy, but to outright destroy it. He is not the first or only one to try this, but the most effective and most vetted for that purpose. Do you actually think that the fact that Timothy Geithner’s father worked with Obama’s mother in Indonesia was coincidental,” stated my source rhetorically. “What we’re seeing now is the fourth quarter of a game that started long ago, which also currently involves the Clintons. Obama would not be where he is if it were not for the Clintons, and to a lesser extent, Bush, but that’s for other reasons.  Don’t be fooled, the Clintons never left or lost power,” he added.

“There are file drawers full of papers, heavily guarded papers at the ‘TEC building’  so I can only imagine what’s in them, about international financial dealings going back decades. I do know, or at least I was told, that they involve organizations that are the so-called conspiracy fringe groups, such as the Bilderberg group, the Trilateral Commission, and people including George Soros, Henry Kissinger, and current leaders of big industry. Some are fossils. They’ve been around a long time. Others are up-and-coming. They’ve got one thing in common, though, and that is to put in place a global system of governance, including a common currency. Economics is a huge part of this revolution, and they want to replace the dollar, to see it collapse. They expect, that is, they are working toward this very goal, and when this happens, it will cause chaos like never seen before in the history of this country.”

“Why do you think Jon Corzine is not only walking around, but heavily involved in Obama fundraising? They know it’s just a matter of time that Europe will implode economically, and when it does, start counting the days before we see massive hyperinflation and the ultimate collapse of the U.S. dollar,” stated this insider.  “What will it look like in the streets of America when the general population realizes that there is no money? That’s right, chaos.”

Obama & the planned racial divide

According to this insider, the Trayvon Martin case is just the tip of the iceberg. “You certainly don’t have to be a genius to understand how Obama and his team played the public on this issue, and it’s far from over. But that’s not the sole element of what we’ll see this summer.”

“Remember the shots fired at the White House not too long ago?” asked my source. There was an element of outrage that was squandered, according to ‘team Obama.’  In fact, Obama and some of his closest advisors, especially [Valerie] Jarrett were incredibly angered that the outrage was seemingly tempered. It should have been an opportunity to use our force against the Tea Parties, the gun clingers, the Constitutionalists, and everyone who has complained about Obama. DHS should have stepped in right then, and used that event to start the clampdown,” this source stated about White House comments.

This source stated that from that point on, the DHS must become more responsive and aggressive.

Watch for a false flag event against Obama or his family, something that will outrage ‘black America.’ It will be carefully choreographed, but executed in a manner that will evoke the ugliest of reactions and create racial chaos in this country that will make the Watts riots, 1968 and the Rodney King riots pale in comparison. That’s the third leg in this.”

The planned end-game

Does Obama look worried about the upcoming elections? Look at his lavish vacations, his limited work schedule, and those with whom he is working.  This is a very dangerous man who has, as his closest advisors, people who have orchestrated the revolutions of the 1960s. They know the “trigger points” in America.

The Obama administration, including his czars and along with his closets Progressive supporters, are planning a manufactured insurgency against America. He is using the media to his advantage to garner both sympathy and support for his unfinished goals. He is desperately seeking a way to remain in office, even if it means the surreal prospect of an indefinite postponement of elections - if it can be pulled off. So far, he’s got the support of the majority of the DHS “brass” behind him, according to my source.

“They’re power hungry, and they want to remain in charge,” stated this source.

The “surreal” aspect of suspended elections won’t look so surreal when you see any or all of the “trigger points” take place in the not-so-distant future.

“The end-game plan for America is its destruction as a Constitutional Republic, with the assistance of the agencies under the umbrella of the DHS.”

My sourced stated one more thing that seemed to tie things together. He urged me to recall the quote by Henry Kissinger who was speaking at a Bilderberg meeting at Evian, France, on 21 May 1992:

Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government.

That threat need not be from beyond. All it might take is a world of starving, broke and desperate people.

La desobediencia civil/ H. D. Thoreau

ElCato.org

Por Henry David Thoreau

H. D. Thoreau (1817-1862) demostró con sus obras cómo el libertarianismo y el individualismo pueden aplicarse efectivamente en la vida de una persona. Reconocido como uno de los autores, filósofos y naturalistas estadounidenses más influyentes, optó por ir a la carcel antes que pagar un impuesto que apoyara la guerra de Estados Unidos contra México. Escribió varios libros y ensayos, entre los que destacan "Walden, or Life in the Woods"; (1854) y "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"; (1849). Lo que aquí presentamos son los párrafos seminales de su famoso ensayo "Civil Disobedience" (1849).

---

Asumo el lema "el mejor gobierno es el que menos gobierna" y deseo verlo en acción. Viene a ser lo mismo que "el mejor Estado sería aquel donde no se gobierna en absoluto, y, cuando los hombres estén preparados, ése será el Estado que tendrán."

(...) Debemos ser primero hombres y después súbditos. Las masas sirven al Estado como máquinas, con sus cuerpos. En eso consisten el ejército, los funcionarios, los ayudantes del alguacil, etc. No tienen libre ejercicio del juicio ni del sentido común, sino que actúan como la madera, la tierra, las piedras, y quizá fabriquemos algún día hombres de madera que sirvan igual ese propósito. Tales hombres no merecen más respeto que una pila de estiércol, pero generalmente son considerados buenos ciudadanos. Los héroes, los patriotas y los reformadores actúan con su conciencia, por lo que se suelen oponer al Estado y éste les trata como enemigos. ¿Cómo debemos comportarnos con este Estado norteamericano de hoy? No podemos asociarnos con él sin deshonra. No puedo reconocer como mi Estado a esa organización que permite la esclavitud (...) Cuando la sexta parte de la nación son esclavos, y el ejército invade y conquista injustamente todo un país (México) sometiéndolo a la ley marcial, no es demasiado pronto para que los hombres honestos se rebelen y subleven. Que el país invadido no sea el nuestro, sino que nuestro sea el ejército invasor, hace más urgente este deber.

Existen leyes injustas. ¿Nos contentaremos con obedecerlas? ¿Nos esforzaremos en enmendarlas, obedeciéndolas mientras tanto? ¿O las transgredimos de una vez? Si la injusticia requiere de tu colaboración, rompe la ley. Sé una contra fricción para detener la máquina (...) Bajo un Estado que encarcela injustamente, el lugar del hombre justo es también la cárcel. Hoy el único lugar que el gobierno ha provisto para sus espíritus más libres está en sus prisiones, para encerrarlos y separarlos del Estado, tal y como ellos mismos ya se han separado de él por principios. Allí se encontrarán el esclavo fugitivo, el prisionero mexicano y el indio. Es la única casa en la que se puede permanecer con honor.

No pagar impuestos sería menos sangriento que pagarlos, capacitando al Estado para derramar sangre inocente. Si niego la autoridad al Estado cuando me exige sus impuestos, tomará y arrasará mi propiedad, y nos acosará sin tregua a mí y a mis hijos. Es duro, pero me cuesta menos el castigo que llegar a obedecer. Me sentiría de mucho menos valor. El Estado no tiene mayor honestidad o juicio, sino fuerza bruta. Y yo no nací para ser forzado. Respiraré a mi manera. Veamos quién es más fuerte. Cuando el Estado me dice "la bolsa o la vida", ¿por qué debo apresurarme a pagar? Deseo simplemente negarle mi lealtad y vivir lejos de él. De hecho, le declaro tranquilamente la guerra al Estado, a mi manera.

La autoridad del Estado debe tener el consentimiento de cada gobernado. No tiene más derechos sobre mi persona y propiedad que los que yo le conceda. No habrá una nación realmente libre hasta que el Estado reconozca al individuo como ente superior del que deriva toda su autoridad, y le trate en consecuencia.

Global Guerrillas: US Military + Gangs

Global Guerrillas

As of 2011, there were 1.4 m people in US gangs.  That's 40% higher than 2009 (FBI: 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment).  Why the rapid growth?  Lots of little factors, but the big driver: 17% unemployment (with treble that in areas where gangs are prevalent) and the decaying legitimacy of current power structures.  With the ongoing deterioration of the US system, young people are going to increasingly opt to give their primary loyalty to any organization (i.e. gang) that will take care of them.
NOTE:  a primary loyalty is any loyalty that takes precedence over patriotic loyalty. It can be family, church/religion, gang, tribe, money, etc.

Something more interesting than simple gang growth/spread, is the increasing presence of gang members in the military (primarily the Army) and the transfer of combat skills gained in Iraq/Afghanistan to the street.  The FBI report states that 100 police jurisdictions have reported coming into contact with gang members with recent military experience. This training, gained on the battlegrounds of Iraq and Afghanistan, is extremely good (and for some people, extremely addicting).  As we have seen in the recent past, even a single man with combat experience and some weaponry can be a HUGE problem for local police.    Here's a handy chart on gangs in each branch of service.

What to worry about...

The big worry about gangs in the US military is a repeat of what happened in Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed.  When the Soviet Union collapsed economically, hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers with fresh combat experience in Afghanistan (and little to offer in terms of skills) were dumped onto the street and into the waiting arms of criminal organizations.  This process quickly turned Russian economics into a shooting sport.   A place where wealth and firepower became synonymous.
The US, currently running a $1.5 trillion a year deficit with the spectre of HUGE cuts in the military (reduction in force) as an absolute certainty, will dump hundreds of thousands of combat vets onto the street w/o an economy able to absorb them.  This is particularly true with the US economy about to start its next contraction w/o even recovering from the last one.  Guess what happens next...
Let's get resilient communities going, before the gangs get our kids.

The Coming Cashless Society According to author John B. Wells

John B. Wells is an accomplished composer, musician, writer, actor, martial arts instructor, and aviator best know for his work as a voice artist.