Lawrence R. Spencer's Blog, page 67
August 8, 2023
SHEEP NATION
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Sheep Nation a series of photographic works by New York-based contemporary artist Davide Luciano, whom explores this fertile ground through a characteristically satirical yet compassionate lens. http://www.davideluciano.com/sheepnation
AGE ADAGES
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An adage is a short, usually philosophical, but memorable saying which holds some important fact of experience that is considered true by many people.
August 7, 2023
KARAKURI
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INTERDIMENSIONAL CURRENCY
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“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.”
— Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of The United States of America (1743 – 1826)
Image credit: Interdimensional currency – ink + illustrator and photoshop © Matei Apostolescu/ 013a.com
(CLICK IMAGE TO VIEW ON ARTISTS WEBSITE)
August 6, 2023
WARFARE TACTIC: FLOOD THE ENEMY WITH REFUGEES
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The current “refugee crisis” in Europe is a planned attack against European countries. Refugees are an ancient “weapon of war”. Like using a “human shield” to “defend” oneself from attack, it is a strategy and weapon of cowards and criminals: international bankers and the military / industrial minions of the New World Order. This strategy is described in detail in the book Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy, by think-tank scholar Kelly M. Greenhill.
“At first glance, the U.S. decision to escalate the war in Vietnam in the mid-1960s, China’s position on North Korea’s nuclear program in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the EU resolution to lift what remained of the arms embargo against Libya in the mid-2000s would appear to share little in common. Yet each of these seemingly unconnected and far-reaching foreign policy decisions resulted at least in part from the exercise of a unique kind of coercion, one predicated on the intentional creation, manipulation, and exploitation of real or threatened mass population movements.
In Weapons of Mass Migration, Kelly M. Greenhill offers the first systematic examination of this widely deployed but largely unrecognized instrument of state influence. She shows both how often this unorthodox brand of coercion has been attempted (more than fifty times in the last half century) and how successful it has been (well over half the time). She also tackles the questions of who employs this policy tool, to what ends, and how and why it ever works. Coercers aim to affect target states’ behavior by exploiting the existence of competing political interests and groups, Greenhill argues, and by manipulating the costs or risks imposed on target state populations.
This “coercion by punishment” strategy can be effected in two ways: the first relies on straightforward threats to overwhelm a target’s capacity to accommodate a refugee or migrant influx; the second, on a kind of norms-enhanced political blackmail that exploits the existence of legal and normative commitments to those fleeing violence, persecution, or privation. The theory is further illustrated and tested in a variety of case studies from Europe, East Asia, and North America. To help potential targets better respond to―and protect themselves against―this kind of unconventional predation, Weapons of Mass Migration also offers practicable policy recommendations for scholars, government officials, and anyone concerned about the true victims of this kind of coercion―the displaced themselves.”
LISTEN TO THE PODCAST BY THE AUTHOR, Kelly M. Greenhill
August 3, 2023
DOLPHINESE
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“It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English — up to fifty words used in correct context — no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.” — Carl Sagan
WHERE DID THE TIME GO?
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Even though I’m a “Child of The 60’s” I never heard the magnificent voice until today. Where does the time go, indeed? The decades since then have passed in the blink of an eye. The centuries that have passed since 1960 BCE may have well have been yesterday. The past is present in the ‘eternal now’ of our soul and only a memory of away from our senses.
Sandy Denny (6 January 1947 – 21 April 1978), born Alexandra Elene Maclean Denny, was an English singer and songwriter, perhaps best known as the lead singer for the folk rock band Fairport Convention. She has been described by Allmusic‘s Richie Unterberger as “the pre-eminent British folk rock singer”.
After briefly working with British folk band the Strawbs, Denny joined Fairport Convention in 1968, remaining with that band until the end of 1969. She formed the short-lived band Fotheringay in 1970, releasing one album with them (another unreleased album would surface some three decades later), before focusing on a solo career. Between 1971 and 1977, Denny released four solo albums: The North Star Grassman and the Ravens, Sandy, Like an Old Fashioned Waltz, and Rendezvous. She is also noted as the only guest vocalist on a Led Zeppelin studio album, when she shared a duet with Robert Plant for “The Battle of Evermore” on Led Zeppelin IV (1971).
Music publications Sunday Express, Uncut and Mojo have each called Denny Britain’s finest female singer-songwriter. Her composition “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” has been recorded by many artists as diverse as Judy Collins, Nina Simone and Cat Power. Unfortunately, Sandy was afflicted by drug addiction and died in 1978 after falling down a flight of stairs.
Although Denny had a devoted cult following in her lifetime, she did not achieve the mass market success that she sought. In the years since her death, her reputation has grown. A four-album box set entitled Who Knows Where the Time Goes? (1985) was produced by her widower Trevor Lucas and Joe Boyd and included many rare and previously unreleased tracks. (from Wikipedia.org)
August 2, 2023
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on STUPIDITY
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer — (4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945) was a German pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident. Bonhoeffer was known for his staunch resistance to Nazi dictatorship, including vocal opposition to Hitler’s euthanasia program. He was arrested in April 1943 by the Gestapo. After being accused of being associated with the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, he was quickly tried and then executed by hanging on 9 April 1945 as the Nazi regime was collapsing.
(Read more about Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer
The following statements about “STUPIDITY” are taken from a circular letter, addressing many topics, written to three friends and co-workers in the conspiracy against Hitler, on the tenth anniversary of Hitler’s accession to the chancellorship of Germany.
“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
‘If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain; that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations.
The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect, but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who lives in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem.
It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.
The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances.
The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.
‘Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person. This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what ‘the people’ really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly.
The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.
‘But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from people’s stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.”
August 1, 2023
July 30, 2023
ELECTRICITY ~ DEATH OR DELIVERANCE
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HUMAN BEINGS HAVE INHABITED EARTH FOR AT LEAST 10,000 YEARS ~ WITHOUT ELECTRICITY: UNTIL NOW, FIRE WAS THE ONLY COMMON SOURCE OF POWER. THANKS TO NIKOLA TESLA, BY THE 192OS, HALF OF AMERICAN HOUSES HAD ELECTRICAL POWER.BEFORE ELECTRICITY THERE WERE NO ELECTRONIC OR ELECTRO-MECHANICAL DEVICES ON EARTH.ONLY 100 YEARS LATER (the blink of an eye, historically) THE ENTIRE PLANET AND HUMAN CIVILIZATION HAS BEEN TOTALLY TRANSFORMED. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY THE ABILITY TO CONTROL, OR DESTROY, EVERY LIFE FORM ON EARTH IS POSSIBLE WITH DEVICES POWERED BY ELECTRICITY, INCLUDING THE ATOMIC BOMB, SATELLITES, TELEVISION, THE INTERNET OR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COMPUTERS and SURVEILLANCE DEVICES.ELECTRICITY MAY BE THE ULTIMATE FRIEND OF LIFE, USED WITH BENEVOLENCE, OR THE DEADLIEST ENEMY IN THE HANDS OF PSYCHOPATHS.“YOU MAY LIVE TO SEE MAN-MADE HORRORS BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION.”~ Nikola Tesla, (Madison Square Garden, 1898)(READ MORE ABOUT THE HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY) ~ https://mrelectric.com/…/the-history-of-electricity…
