Author Archives: marcia

Cults & Corporations

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The Cult of Trump

Mr. Fish / Truthdig

Cult leaders arise from decayed communities and societies in which people have been shorn of political, social and economic power. The disempowered, infantilized by a world they cannot control, gravitate to cult leaders who appear omnipotent and promise a return to a mythical golden age. The cult leaders vow to crush the forces, embodied in demonized groups and individuals, that are blamed for their misery. The more outrageous the cult leaders become, the more they flout law and social conventions, the more they gain in popularity. Cult leaders are immune to the norms of established society. This is their appeal. Cult leaders demand a God-like power. Those who follow them grant them this power in the hope that the cult leaders will save them.

Donald Trump has transformed the decayed carcass of the Republican Party into a cult. All cults are personality cults. They are extensions of the cult leaders. The cult reflects the leader’s prejudices, worldview, personal style and ideas. Trump did not create the yearning for a cult leader. Huge segments of the population, betrayed by the established elites, were conditioned for a cult leader. They were desperately looking for someone to rescue them and solve their problems. They found their cult leader in the New York real estate developer and reality television show star. Only when we recognize Trump as a cult leader, and many of those who support him as cult followers, will we understand where we are headed and how we must resist.

It was 40 years ago next month that a messianic preacher named Jim Jonesconvinced or forced more than 900 of his followers, including roughly 280 children, to die by ingesting a cyanide-laced drink. Trump’s refusal to acknowledge and address the impending crisis of ecocide and the massive mismanagement of the economy by kleptocrats, his bellicosity, his threats against Iran and China and the withdrawal from nuclear arms treaties, along with his demonization of all who oppose him, ensure our cultural and, if left unchecked, physical extinction. Cult leaders are driven, at their core, by the death instinct, the instinct to annihilate and destroy rather than nurture and create. Trump shares many of the characteristics of Jones as well as other cult leaders including Marshall Herff Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles, the founders of the Heaven’s Gate cult; the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who led the Unification Church; Credonia Mwerinde, who led the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God in Uganda; Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong; and David Koresh, who led the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas. Cult leaders are narcissists. They demand obsequious fawning and total obedience. They prize loyalty above competence. They wield absolute control. They do not tolerate criticism. They are deeply insecure, a trait they attempt to cover up with bombastic grandiosity. They are amoral and emotionally and physically abusive. They see those around them as objects to be manipulated for their own empowerment, enjoyment and often sadistic entertainment. All those outside the cult are branded as forces of evil, prompting an epic battle whose natural expression is violence.

“A cult is a mirror of what is inside the cult leader,” Margaret Thaler Singer wrote in “Cults in Our Midst.” “He has no restraints on him. He can make his fantasies and desires come alive in the world he creates around him. He can lead people to do his bidding. He can make the surrounding world really hisworld. What most cult leaders achieve is akin to the fantasies of a child at play, creating a world with toys and utensils. In that play world, the child feels omnipotent and creates a realm of his own for a few minutes or a few hours. He moves the toy dolls about. They do his bidding. They speak his words back to him. He punishes them any way he wants. He is all-powerful and makes his fantasy come alive. When I see the sand tables and the collections of toys some child therapists have in their offices, I think that a cult leader must look about and place people in his created world much as a child creates on the sand table a world that reflects his or her desires and fantasies. The difference is that the cult leader has actual humans doing his bidding as he makes a world around him that springs from inside his own head.”

George Orwell understood that cult leaders manipulate followers primarily through language, not force. This linguistic manipulation is a gradual process. It is rooted in continual mental chaos and verbal confusion. Lies, conspiracy theories, outlandish ideas and contradictory statements that defy reality and fact soon paralyze the opposition. The opposition, with every attempt to counter this absurdism with the rational—such as the decision by Barack Obama to make his birth certificate public or by Sen. Elizabeth Warren to release the results of her DNA test to prove she has Native American ancestry—plays to the cult leader. The cult leader does not take his or her statements seriously and often denies ever making them, even when they are documented. Lies and truth do not matter. The language of the cult leader is designed exclusively to appeal to the emotional needs of those in the cult.

“Hitler kept his enemies in a state of constant confusion and diplomatic upheaval,” Joost A.M. Meerloo wrote in “The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing.” “They never knew what this unpredictable madman was going to do next. Hitler was never logical, because he knew that that was what he was expected to be. Logic can be met with logic, while illogic cannot—it confuses those who think straight. The Big Lie and monotonously repeated nonsense have more emotional appeal in a cold war than logic and reason. While the enemy is still searching for a reasonable counter-argument to the first lie, the totalitarians can assault him with another.”

The cult leader grooms followers to speak in the language of hate and violence. The cult leader constantly paints a picture of an existential threat, often invented, that puts the cult followers in danger. Trump is doing this by demonizing the caravan of some 4,000 immigrants, most from Honduras, moving through southern Mexico. Caravans of immigrants, are, in fact, nothing new. The beleaguered and impoverished asylum seekers, including many families with children, are 1,000 miles from the Texas border. But Trump, aided by nearly nonstop coverage by Fox News and Christian broadcasting, is using the caravan to terrify his followers, just as he, along with these media outlets, portrayed the protesters who flooded the U.S. capital to oppose the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh as unruly mobs. Trump claims the Democrats want to open the border to these “criminals” and to “unknown Middle Easterners” who are, he suggests, radical jihadists. Christian broadcasting operations, such as Pat Robertson’s The 700 Club, splice pictures of marching jihadists in black uniforms cradling automatic weapons into the video shots of the caravan.

The fear mongering and rhetoric of hate and violence, as I saw in the former Yugoslavia, eventually lead to widespread acts of violence against those the cult leader defines as the enemy. The 13 explosive devices sent last week to Trump critics and leaders of the Democratic Party, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, along with George Soros, James Clapper and CNN, allegedly by Cesar Sayoc, an ex-stripper and fanatic Trump supporter who was living out of his van, herald more violence. Trump, tossing gasoline on the flames, used this assault against much of the leadership of the Democratic Party to again attack the press, or, as he calls it, “the enemy of the people.” “A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News,” he tweeted. “It has gotten so bad and hateful that is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its acts, FAST!”

It should come as no surprise that on Saturday another enraged American white male, his fury and despair seemingly stoked by the diatribes and conspiracy theories of the far right, entered a Pittsburgh synagogue and massacred eight men and three women as he shouted anti-Semitic abuse. Shot by police and arrested at the scene was Robert Bowers, who believes that Jewish groups are aiding the caravan of immigrants in southern Mexico. He was armed with a military-style AR-15 assault rifle, plus three handguns. The proliferation of easily accessible high-caliber weapons, coupled with the division of the country into the blessed and the damned by Trump and his fellow cultists, threatens to turn the landscape of the United States into one that resembles Mexico, where at least 145 people in politics, including 48 candidates and pre-candidates, along with party leaders and campaign workers, have been assassinated over the last 12 months, according to Etellekt, a risk analysis firm in Mexico. There have been 627 incidents of violence against politicians, 206 threats and acts of intimidation, 57 firearm assaults and 52 attacks on family members that resulted in 50 fatalities. Trump’s response to the mass shooting at the synagogue was to say places of worship should have armed guards, a call for further proliferation of firearms. Look south if you want a vision of our future.

Domestic terrorism and nihilistic violence are the natural outcomes of the economic, social and political stagnation, the total seizure of power by a corporate cabal and oligarchic elite, and the contamination of civil discourse by cult leaders. The weaponization of language is proliferating, as seen in the vile rhetoric that characterizes many political campaigns for the midterm elections, including the racist robocall sent out against Andrew Gillum, an African-American candidate for the governorship of Florida. “Well, hello there. I is the negro Andrew Gillum and I’ll be askin’ you to make me governor of this here state of Florida,” a man speaking in a caricature of a black dialect accompanied by jungle noises said in the robocall. Cults externalize evil. Evil is embodied in the demonized other, whether desperate immigrants, black political candidates and voters, or the Democratic Party. The only way to purge this “evil” and restore America to “greatness” is to eradicate these human contaminants.

The cult leader, unlike a traditional politician, makes no effort to reach out to his opponents. The cult leader seeks to widen the divisions. The leader brands those outside the cult as irredeemable. The leader seeks the omnipotence to crush those who do not kneel in adoration. The followers, yearning to be protected and empowered by the cult leader, seek to give the cult leader omnipotence. Democratic norms, an impediment to the leader’s omnipotence, are attacked and abolished. Those in the cult seek to be surrounded by the cult leader’s magical aura. Reality is sacrificed for fantasy. Those who challenge the fantasy are not considered human. They are Satanic.

Meerloo wrote:

The dictator is not only a sick man, he is also a cruel opportunist. He sees no value in any other person and feels no gratitude for any help he may have received. He is suspicious and dishonest and believes that his personal ends justify any means he may use to achieve them. Peculiarly enough, every tyrant still searches for some self-justification. Without such a soothing device for his own conscience, he cannot live. His attitude toward other people is manipulative; to him, they are merely tools for the advancement of his own interests. He rejects the conception of doubt, of internal contradictions, or man’s inborn ambivalence. He denies the psychological fact that man grows to maturity through groping, through trial and error, through the interplay of contrasting feelings. Because he will not permit himself to grope, to learn through trial and error, the dictator can never become a mature person. … It is because the dictator is afraid, albeit unconsciously, of his own internal contradictions, that he is afraid of the same internal contradictions of his fellow man. He must purge and purge, terrorize and terrorize in order to still his own raging inner drives. He must kill every doubter, destroy every person who makes a mistake, imprison everyone who cannot be proved to be utterly single-minded.

Behavior that ensures the destruction of a public figure’s career does not affect a cult leader. It does not matter how many lies uttered by Trump are meticulously documented by The New York Times or The Washington Post. It does not matter that Trump’s personal financial interests, as we see in his relationship with the Saudis, take precedence over the rule of law, diplomatic protocols and national security. It does not matter that he is credibly charged by numerous women with being a sexual predator, a common characteristic of cult leaders. It does not matter that he is inept, lazy and ignorant. The establishment, whose credibility has been destroyed because of its complicity in empowering the ruling oligarchy and the corporate state, might as well be blowing soap bubbles at Trump. Their vitriol, to his followers, only justifies the hatred radiating from the cult.

The cult leader responds to only one emotion—fear. The cult leader, usually a coward, will react when he thinks he is in danger. The cult leader will bargain and compromise when afraid. The cult leader will give the appearance of being flexible and reasonable. But as soon as the cult leader is no longer afraid, the old patterns of behavior return, with a special venom directed at those who were able to momentarily impinge upon his power.

The removal of Trump from power would not remove the yearning of tens of millions of people, many conditioned by the Christian right, for a cult leader. Most of the leaders of the Christian right have built cult followings of their own. These Christian fascists embraced magical thinking, attacked their enemies as agents of Satan and denounced reality-based science and journalism long before Trump did. Cults are a product of social decay and despair, and our decay and despair are expanding, soon to explode in another financial crisis.

The efforts by the Democratic Party and much of the press, including CNN and The New York Times, to discredit Trump, as if our problems are embodied in him, are futile. The smug, self-righteousness of this crusade against Trump only contributes to the national reality television show that has replaced journalism and politics. This crusade attempts to reduce a social, economic and political crisis to the personality of Trump. It is accompanied by a refusal to confront and name the corporate forces responsible for our failed democracy. This collusion with the forces of corporate oppression neuters the press and Trump’s mainstream critics.

Our only hope is to organize the overthrow of the corporate state that vomited up Trump. Our democratic institutions, including the legislative bodies, the courts and the media, are hostage to corporate power. They are no longer democratic. We must, like liberation movements of the past, engage in acts of sustained mass civil disobedience and non-cooperation. By turning our ire on the corporate state, we name the true sources of power and abuse. We expose the absurdity of blaming our demise on demonized groups such as undocumented workers, Muslims, African-Americans, Latinos, liberals, feminists, gays and others. We give people an alternative to a Democratic Party that refuses to confront the corporate forces of oppression and cannot be rehabilitated. We make possible the restoration of an open society. If we fail to embrace this militancy, which alone has the ability to destroy cult leaders, we will continue the march toward tyranny.

from:   https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-cult-of-trump-2/

How Free is Speech Now?

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As always, do your research:

Big Tech Has Performed the “Greatest Bait-and-Switch in American History” As It Now Turns On Free Speech

Big tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube have performed “perhaps the greatest bait-and-switch in American history” as they now have committed to an about-face to the American value of free speech.

That is the assessment of Breitbart New‘s Allum Bokhari who exclusively presented a leaked Google internal briefing titled “The Good Censor” to the public on October 9th, exposing the world once again to major tech companies’ attitude towards the bedrock of traditional American attitude.

“The Good Censor” is an 85-page briefing that openly admits that Google and other tech platforms are undertaking a “shift towards censorship” in response to unwelcome political events around the world. Unsurprisingly – especially after leaked video showed google employees in an emotional meltdown after the election victory of Donald J. Trump – The Good Censor cites the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the rise of the populist Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party in Germany as unwelcomed events.

While admitting the shift away from free speech it is also simultaneously admitted that those select few giants “control the majority of online conversations.”

The briefing goes into how Google, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are stuck in a position of going along with the “unmediated marketplace of ideas” (free speech and free markets) vs. “well-ordered spaces for safety and civility” (censorship). These two directions are also described as the “American tradition” which “prioritizes free speech for democracy, not civility” and the “European tradition,” which “favors dignity over liberty and civility over freedom.” The internal pages claim that all tech platforms are now moving toward the European tradition.

Perhaps the most significant part of the brief, as Breitbart’s Bokhari reports, is when it associates Google’s new role as the guarantor of “civility” with the categories of “editor” and “publisher.”

This is significant, given that Google, YouTube, and other tech giants publicly claim they are not publishers but rather neutral platforms — a categorization that grants them special legal immunities under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Elsewhere in the document, Google admits that Section 230 was designed to ensure they can remain neutral platforms for free expression.

Bokhari wrote on Wednesday:

What ordinary Americans long suspected, The Good Censor has proven beyond doubt. According to Google’s own analysis, tech companies have performed perhaps the greatest bait-and-switch in American history, promising their users free speech while they were taking over the market, only to go back on their word once they came to “control the majority of online conversations.”

What better example to prove this bait-and-switch than the statement given by Sinead McSweeney, Twitter’s vice president for public policy and communications in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa who told British politicians at the end of last year that it’s “no longer possible to stand up for all speech.”

Just 5 years prior, Twitter’s first executive in the UK, Tony Wang, described the company as “the free-speech wing of the free-speech party.”

The once acceptance and defense of free speech by these big tech players is discussed in The Good Censor, as the document reads: “This free speech ideal was instilled in the DNA of the Silicon Valley startups that now control the majority of our online conversations.”

And while Google hubrisly boasts that its free speech bait-and-switch has placed them and a few other giants as controllers of “the majority of online conversations” (aka the majority of all conversation happening on earth) the company has come out and finally admitted directly that it has a censored Chinese search engine project in the works. What better guarantor of “civility”, “publisher, “editor” could the masses of internet users wish to oversee the majority of online conversation?

See more at PlanetFreeWill.com.

For more on this from Mke Adams, see text from:   https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-10-17-tech-giants-pull-off-epic-bait-and-switch-in-turning-against-free-speech.html

Tornado Alley Moving East

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Tornadoes Are Spinning Up Farther East in U.S.

WASHINGTON — Over the past few decades, tornadoes have been shifting — decreasing in Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas but spinning up more in states along the Mississippi River and farther east, a new study shows. Scientists aren’t quite certain why.

Tornado activity is increasing most in Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa and parts of Ohio and Michigan, according to a study in Wednesday’s journal Climate and Atmospheric Science. There has been a slight decrease in the Great Plains, with the biggest drop in central and eastern Texas. Even with the decline, Texas still gets the most tornadoes of any state.

The shift could be deadly because the area with increasing tornado activity is bigger and home to more people, said study lead author Victor Gensini, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Northern Illinois University. Also more people live in vulnerable mobile homes and tornadoes are more likely to happen at night in those places, he said.

Even though Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma get many more tornadoes, the four deadliest states for tornadoes are Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“More folks are generally at risk because of that eastward shift,” Gensini said.

Because tornadoes sometimes go undercounted, especially in the past and in less populous areas, scientists don’t like to study trends by using counts of tornadoes. Gensini and tornado scientist Harold Brooks of the National Severe Storms Lab looked at “significant tornado parameters,” a measurement of the key ingredients of tornado conditions. It looks at differences between wind speed and direction at different altitudes, how unstable the air is and humidity. The more of those three ingredients, the more likely tornadoes will form.

The increases in this measurement mirrored slightly smaller increases found in number of twisters.

The study looked at changes since 1979. Everywhere east of the Mississippi, except the west coast of Florida, is seeing some increase in tornado activity. The biggest increase occurred in states bordering the Mississippi River.

Overall there is a slight increase in tornado activity, but it’s not too much and not nearly like what’s happening in the east, Gensini said.

Why is this happening?

“We don’t know,” Gensini said. “This is super consistent with climate change.”

As the Great Plains dry out, there’s less moisture to have the type of storms that spawn tornadoes, Gensini said. Tornadoes form along the “dry line” where there are more thunderstorms because there’s dry air to the west and moist air from the Gulf of Mexico to the east.

That dry line is moving east.

“This is what you would expect in a climate change scenario, we just have no way of confirming it at the moment,” Gensini said.

Gensini said unless there are specific detailed studies, he and others cannot say this is caused by global warming, just that it looks like what is expected.

Pennsylvania State University meteorology professor Paul Markowski, who wasn’t part of the research, praised the study as careful and well done.

____

The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

SETH BORENSTEIN / The Associated Press

from:    https://www.truthdig.com/articles/tornadoes-are-spinning-up-farther-east-in-u-s/

What’s In Your DNA?

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  • Scientists have a new computational method that expands the way commercial and public gene databases can be used by law enforcement to catch criminals
  • While police still need a warrant to access data on sites like 23andMe and Ancestry.com, the new findings make it easier for them to track down criminals
  • The development raises privacy concerns, as criminals can be tracked down through family members who submitted their DNA through commercial sites 

By VALERIE BAUMAN SOCIAL AFFAIRS REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 14:11 EDT, 11 October 2018 | UPDATED: 09:44 EDT, 12 October 2018

Scientists are expanding the methods by which law enforcement can use DNA information gathered through sites like Ancestry.com and 23andMe to solve crimes – and they’re raising ethical questions along the way.

California detectives have already used DNA obtained through public databases to track down and arrest Joseph James DeAngelo, suspected of being the Golden State Killer, who police say committed at least 13 murders, more than 50 rapes, and more than 100 burglaries in California from 1974 to 1986.

But now, according to a study published Thursday in the scientific journal Cell, researchers say they have developed a new computational method that expands the way commercial and public gene databases can be cross-referenced with those used by law enforcement.

The result: More crimes solved and countless ethical concerns raised, as many people could be linked to crimes simply because a relative submitted DNA to find out more about their family’s ancestry. Warrants are required to obtain such information from private companies like Ancestry.com and 23andMe.

‘We think when we upload DNA that it’s our information, but it’s not. It’s the information of everyone who is biologically related to us,’ said Julia Creet, a Toronto-based researcher focused on the family history industry, in an interview with DailyMail.com.

Researchers at Stanford University have found a new computational method that expands teh way commercial and public gene databases can be cross-referenced with those used by law enforcement to solve crimes (file photo)

Researchers at Stanford University have found a new computational method that expands teh way commercial and public gene databases can be cross-referenced with those used by law enforcement to solve crimes (file photo)

The goal of using public and commercial databases to solve crimes is more technically challenging than it may seem, as they tend to rely on completely different genetic markers than those used by law enforcement to identify potential criminals.

‘There’s a legacy problem in that so many DNA profiles have been collected with this older genetic marker system that’s been used by law enforcement since the 1990s,’ said senior author Noah Rosenberg, of Stanford University. ‘The system is not designed for the more challenging queries that are currently of interest, such as identifying people represented in a DNA mixture or identifying relatives of the contributor of a DNA sample.’

 This is a kind of Wild West of privacy protection and we’re dealing with the most personal type of information.                             – Julia Creet, director of Data Mining the Deceased

Researchers set out to see if they could use the newer, more modern system of genetic markers used in commercial methods and test those against the older law enforcement system to obtain matches and find relatives.

The FBI and police departments across the U.S. use a DNA database known as the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS. It relies on 20 DNA markers, which are different from those used in common ancestry databases – which scan across hundreds of thousands of sites in the genome.

Rosenberg and his team previously found that software could match people found in both databases even when there were no overlapping, or shared, markers between the two sets of data.

In their new research, the team found that the same approach could be applied to track down close family members – roughly 31 percent of the time in cases of parent-offspring pairs and 36 percent were linked among sibling pairs.

‘We wanted to examine to what extent these different types of databases can communicate with each other,’ Rosenberg said. ‘It’s important for the public to be aware that information between these two types of genetic data can be connected, often in unexpected ways.’

This means that law enforcement can more easily track down criminals even when the actual perpetrator has not submitted any DNA, as was the case in the Golden State Killer investigation.

In that instance, detectives submitted DNA collected from a crime scene for the traditional law enforcement genotyping, then used an open-source ancestry database called GEDmatch to link that profile to people who had voluntarily submitted their information into the database.

Many people who obtain their genetic data through commercial sites like Ancestry.com and 23andMe later upload that information into GEDmatch in an effort to connect with other family members around the globe.

Police found relatives who had overlapping DNA markers and through a process of elimination tracked down DeAngelo.

 These are decisions that society can make. We need to have a robust conversation.                           – Dr. Ellen Clayton, Vanderbilt University

Police were able to access the information on GEDmatch because it was a public database, but law enforcement has successfully used warrants to obtain similar data directly from sites like Ancestry.com. Ancestry.com has 10 million customers, while 23andMe has more than 5 million.

A spokesman for 23andMe said the company uses strong security and privacy protocols to protect customer data – and that it warns customers that those guarantees don’t extend to any third-party sites where they choose to share their personal information.

A spokesman for Ancestry.com said the company prioritizes customer privacy and gives people a chance to opt out of sharing their information with other users. He added that the company will fight any efforts by law enforcement to obtain its data.

For those who have sought to learn more about their own background, the news could raise serious privacy concerns, said Creet, who directed and produced Data Mining the Deceased, a documentary about the industry of DNA and geneology.

‘Once your results have been uploaded into a collective database there is no way to extract them because other people have picked up on them,’ she said.

Joseph James DeAngelo. Police say DeAngelo is a suspected California serial killer known as the Golden State Killer who committed at least 13 homicides and 45 rapes throughout the state in the 1970s and '80s.

Joseph James DeAngelo. Police say DeAngelo is a suspected California serial killer known as the Golden State Killer who committed at least 13 homicides and 45 rapes throughout the state in the 1970s and ’80s.

Creet said anytime a person submits their DNA to a company to learn more about their heritage, it’s worth considering that they are also submitting 50 percent of their parents’ and children’s DNA, and 25 percent of their grandparents’ or grandchildren’s DNA.

‘Your results aren’t just about you,’ Creet added. ‘They’re about everyone you’re related to, which is how the police can use your results to track down a criminal who is distantly related to you. We’re not just talking about personal privacy; we’re talking about relational privacy.’

Experts are also concerned about how private companies are using genetic information they obtain. Ancestry.com is partnered with Calico, which is a Google spinoff, in an effort to analyze anonymized data from more than 1 million genetic samples.

Creet said that – given data breaches at other types of tech companies – there is significant cause for concern that even anonymized data could fall into the wrong hands and be re-identified.

Other issues could arise if health insurance companies were ever able to obtain genetic data on their customers and use that to discriminate against those with predispositions for certain diseases, she added.

‘This is a kind of Wild West of privacy protection and we’re dealing with the most personal type of information,’ Creet said.

Key Ethical Questions When Using DNA in Law Enforcement

DNA isn’t just personal: Do I want to share my sister’s DNA? Anyone who submits their own DNA for testing is also providing genetic info about any of their family members, which could later be accessed by law enforcement or for other unforeseen purposes.

Who owns the data: Who will get access to my DNA? A Google-spinoff company is partnering with Ancestry.com to analyze anonymized genetic data, which many users did not know at the time they submitted their DNA samples. Hacking is also a concern.

Regulation: How should lawmakers limit the usage of genetic data in solving crimes? Should health insurers have access to the information and be allowed to use it to charge more for people with predispositions to expensive health problems? Very little regulation currently exists defining how this data can be used.

Ultimately, society will have to decide if it’s worth losing a great deal of genetic privacy to solve violent crimes, said Dr. Ellen Clayton, a professor at Vanderbilt University’s Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society.

‘The question is: How do you control the downstream users?’ Clayton told DailyMail.com. ‘Do you want to say that law enforcement should only use these kinds of data to find people who you suspect are perpetrators of very heinous violent crimes: rape, murder, etc.?’

Society can reach an answer to that question through legislation that prohibits the use of genetic data for other purposes, such as immigration enforcement, employment discrimination, or to solve minor, nonviolent crimes, she said.

‘These are decisions that society can make. We need to have a robust conversation about that,’ she said.

Clayton also noted that the vast majority of DNA data in law enforcement’s CODIS is disproportionately representative of racial and ethnic minorities. At the same time, the people using private companies to find out their genetic identities tend to be white and of Northern European descent.

‘One reason that really matters is that they couldn’t find the Golden State Killer in CODIS because he was a police man. He was a white police man,’ Clayton said.

from:    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6266115/New-technology-enables-police-use-DNA-sites-like-Ancestry-com-track-criminals.html

Another Sphinx is Found

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Archaeologists Discover Another Buried Sphinx at the Kom Ombo Temple Near Aswan

Ivan
by Ivan8

Egyptian archaeologists working on a groundwater reduction project at the Kom Ombo Temple in Aswan have discovered a sandstone sphinx, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities on Sunday.

The discovery comes as a surprise as in the last few months, archaeologists working in Egypt have uncovered the remains of two Sphinx statues.

Kom Ombo Sphinx
The unearthed Sphinx after it was restored. Image Credit: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about how construction workers working near the Luxor Temple Complex stumbled across the remains of a buried Sphinx statue.

Initial reports by the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquity suggested that the Sphinx uncovered at Luxor is similar in design to the Great Sphinx of Giza: It has the body of a lion and the head of a human.

The most famous Sphinx in Egypt is without a doubt the massive statue located at the Giza plateau

The Great Sphinx of Giza is considered an ancient marvel not only because of its size and confusing design but because of the countless mysteries that surround this ancient structure.

Together with the three pyramids, the Great Sphinx found on the plateau of Giza – about 500 km from the place where the new statue was found – is one of the most emblematic monuments of Egypt.

Now, archeologists near Aswan mad another stunning discovery finding another Sphinx statue.

The Great Sphinx found near the Kom Ombo Temple.

Mostafa Waziri, general secretary of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt, explained that the piece probably dates from the Ptolemaic dynasty, as the Sphinx statue was found in the southeast side of the temple, in the same place where two sandstone reliefs of King Ptolemy V were discovered two months ago.

The Ptolemaic Dynasty ruled over Egypt for 275 years, from 305 to 30 BC, and they were the last dynasty of ancient Egypt.

The Kom Ombo temple complex was constructed during the Ptolemaic Dynasty.

Kom Ombo Temple before reconstruction
Kom Ombo Temple before reconstruction. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain

Ptolemy V was the fifth ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty from 204 to 181 BC. He inherited the throne at the age of five, and under a series of regents, the kingdom was paralyzed. It is noteworthy to mention that to famous Rosetta Stone was produced during his reign as an adult.

The sculpture, discovery at the Kom Ombo Temple in Aswan bears hieroglyphic and demotic inscriptions and has already been transported to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Fustat, where it will be carefully studied and restored by the archaeological mission to obtain more information about its origin. After restoration, the newly-found Sphinx will be exhibited to the public.

from:    https://www.ancient-code.com/archaeologists-discover-another-buried-sphinx-at-the-kom-ombo-temple-near-aswan/

ROBOTS!!!!!

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Humanoid Robot Atlas Can Now Do Parkour and That’s Not at All Terrifying (Oh, Yes, It Is)

By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer |

Remember Atlas, the robot that can run like a person? It can now do a lot more than that.

Yesterday, (Oct. 11) robotics company Boston Dynamics posted a new video on YouTube showcasing the robot’s latest progress, carrying it past its prior agility goals in leaps and bounds — literally.

“Atlas does parkour,” Boston Dynamics wrote in the video description. Footage shows Atlas nimbly leaping over a log and skipping between platforms of different heights “without breaking its pace,” according to the description.

As Atlas navigates the challenges of the obstacle course, a slow-motion sequence emphasizes the precision in its movements as it leaps between platforms, each one measuring about 16 inches (40 centimeters) high. Software and vision sensors control Atlas’s navigation, according to the video description — nevertheless, the robot’s coordination seem remarkably humanlike for a machine.

Described on the Boston Dynamics website as “the world’s most dynamic humanoid,” Atlas has a four-limbed, bipedal frame that would invite comparison to the human body regardless of how the robot moved. But in a series of videos released over the last few years, Atlas demonstrates mobility this is uncannily human: recovering after being shoved, performing backflips, jogging over a grassy field and practicing robot parkour.

The prospect of a humanoid robot that can leap, backflip and bound after you over rugged terrain is unsettling enough, but Atlas’s creators at Boston Dynamics keep pushing the bot toward ever more ambitious gymnastic achievements.

What’s next for the nimble Atlas? Only its designers know for sure.

Originally published on Live Science.

from:    https://www.livescience.com/63817-atlas-robot-parkour.html

Embrace Your Power

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HOW TO REWIRE YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS AND MAKE CONTACT WITH THE FIELD

October 4, 2018

Vic Bishop, Staff
Waking Times

One of the most beautiful aspects of today’s highly connected technological world is that we have access to an extraordinary amount of ideas and information, which can forever change your life for the better, if only you would apply them toward your personal evolution.

Think about it. For the first time, any philosophy is at your our fingertips, you can parse through infinite volumes of medical and scientific research, read the documented personal experiences and stories of people from all walks of life, and read nearly any book on a whim. Even biology, genetics and quantum physics can be studied anytime, anywhere.

Couple this with the fact that science is finally beginning to merge with spirituality, and you have an unbelieveable opportunity to evolve into something that has never before been possible. If we want to become superhuman, we can.

At the center of all this lies the human capacity to make contact with ‘the field,’ which is a way of referring to the energy of the universe that pervades all things. The Chinese hint at something similar when they describe chi. The Jedi refer to this field as ‘the force.’

Make no mistake, this is real, and we have the science now that confirms it. We now know for sure that what we think of as matter is actually just energy, vibrating at whatever frequency needed to create an object, being, or thought. And our mind has the ability to organize this energy into material things, which is something we are just now beginning to grasp.

But how do you put it all together in a cohesive way of being that allows you to actually experience the most extraordinary possibilities in your life? How do you bring all this knowledge together to actually elevate your consciousness?

It all happens in your mind, as quantum physics proves. What you do inside of your mind creates the outcomes you see in the world. Whatever it is you are ‘being’ in your mind, is what you will be in our shared reality.

The key to getting this and to putting it to use in your life lies first and foremost in your beliefs about the nature of reality. That is, do you see reality as being a fixed stage where you are merely playing along with what is presented before you? Or do you see reality as an ongoing creation of the imagination of human beings, where our beliefs and thoughts shape the contents and form of the stage?

If you want to shift your consciousness and make contact with the field, you apply your attention, energy, thought and imagination to doing so. The tools of the mind are the workbench for creating anything, and without an understanding of how to properly use it, it is easy to squander or never fully take advantage of ability to create. To live in chronic mediocrity.

This presentation by consciousness researcher Dr. Joe Dispenza is an excellent primer on this idea, explaining how the power of the mind is used by people with terminal diagnoses who somehow are able to enter spontaneous remission of disease.

If you believe that this is possible, then it is possible. If you don’t believe that it is possible, then you only have to rewrite your beliefs, which is something any of us can do. What do you think? Is there an intelligence within you that is capable of affecting matter and reality?

from:    https://www.wakingtimes.com/2018/10/04/how-to-rewire-your-consciousness-and-make-contact-with-the-field/

Actually, It Is Less Than.a Carbon Thumbprint!

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Can You Guess How Much CO2 is Mankind Responsible For?

Global warming and climate change alarmists harp on about “dangerously high” manmade CO2 output levels. So how much are they? The answer will shock you.
by Makia Freeman, guest writer,
HumansAreFree.com

You would think manmade CO2 output levels must be sky-high, given all the relentless guilt-tripping propaganda we are fed about how humanity is the cause of global warming. The agenda to push AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) or manmade global warming started around the 1980s and has been gaining momentum for decades, fooling many people along the way.

Yet, despite all the publicity it has gotten, it has still failed to make clear a very fundamental point: exactly how much and what percentage of carbon or specifically CO2 (carbon dioxide) does humanity contribute to the atmosphere?

If man is really driving global warming (now conveniently called “climate change”), surely this level must be pretty high or at least significant, right? The answer may shock you … and give new meaning to the term global warming hoax.

Manmade CO2 Output Levels … Straight out of the IPCC’s Mouth

One of the difficult things about ascertaining the truth in the climate change debate is that there are so many different sets of measurements. Which one do you trust? How can you tell the truth when one side uses one set of data to prove its point, and the other side uses another set of data to prove its (diametrically opposed) point?

To bypass this dilemma, we are going to get the figures straight of the horse’s mouth so to speak by using data from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). The IPCC is not a scientific body as you may imagine but rather a political one with a very clear bias towards promoting AGW and climate change alarmism.

It’s their job to push the AGW agenda onto the public, even though they disguise that with claims that they “provide rigorous and balanced scientific information.”

Here’s what Wim Rost had to say in his article IPCC ≠ SCIENCE ↔ IPCC = GOVERNMENT:

“IPCC is government and not science. And the workers of the IPCC prepare the work in accordance with the rules and procedures established by the IPCC.

“In order to be scientific the scientific method has to be adhered. The use of many scientists to fill important parts of IPCC reports does not mean that everything is science. A report is just a report. In this case, a report from the IPCC. And the IPCC is (inter-) government.

“Scientists involved can produce their own scientific papers about their own specialised part of science, but a small group of writers writes the summaries and the conclusions – for the IPCC. And IPCC is government. …

“The IPCC’s stated mission is not to discover what accounts for climate change, but to assess “the risk of human-induced climate change.”

“Consequently, there is almost no discussion in its lengthy reports of other theories of climate change. Policymakers and journalists took this to mean the AGW theory was the only credible theory of climate change, and the IPCC’s sponsors and spokespersons had no incentive to correct the mistake.”

CO2 in the Atmosphere

Here are the simple facts. Earth’s atmosphere consists of the following gases at the following levels:

Nitrogen (N) – 78%

Oxygen (O) – 21%

Argon (Ar) – 0.9%

Trace Gases – 0.1%

So far, so good. CO2 is a gas in such small concentrations that it hasn’t yet entered the picture. So, the next step is to break down the composition of trace gases (which are also the greenhouse gases) in our atmosphere:

Water Vapor (H2O) – 95% of trace gases / 0.95% of overall atmosphere

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) – 3-4% of trace gases / 0.03 or 0.04% of overall atmosphere

Neon (Ne) – 0.1% of trace gases / 0.001% of overall atmosphere

There are also some gases at tiny concentrations, including helium (He), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and ozone (O3), as well as halogenated gases (CFCs) released by mankind which have damaged ozone.

Water vapor is far and away the largest greenhouse gas, but the IPCC chooses to ignore it! Check out these tables below where you can see that water vapor is excluded from the percentages. The IPCC and other AGW proponents claim they need to exclude water vapor from their calculations because it varies so much from region to region.

Yes, it does vary greatly all over the Earth, but to just exclude the largest greenhouse gas (and a massive driver of temperature too) from your calculations because it’s inconvenient or varies too much is grossly misleading and unscientific.

A pie chart typical of one used by the IPCC and AGW proponents. Water vapor, despite being the overwhelmingly largest greeenhouse and trace gas, is simply ignored and omitted.

Humanity’s Contribution to CO2 Levels

To recap: trace gases are 0.1% of the atmosphere, and carbon dioxide makes up 3-4% of these trace gases, so therefore CO2 is 3-4% of 0.1%. For simplicity’s sake, let’s call it 3%, so CO2 comprises 0.003% of the atmosphere.

That’s pretty damn small, but we can’t stop there, because the next question to ask is: how much of this is caused by human activity? The IPCC has conflicting sets of data here, but both are within a small range of each other, either 3.0% (using the 2007 figures) or 3.6% (using the 2001 figures):

Manmade CO2 output levels (IPCC data from 2001)
Manmade CO2 output levels (IPCC data from AR4, 2007)

No matter which set of data you use, the IPCC data shows that manmade CO2 output levels are ~3%. How do you figure this out? The 2001 data shows the total amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere (119 + 88 + 6.3 = 213.3) and the human portion as 6.3. Divide 6.3 by 213.3 and you get 2.95%.

The 2007 data shows the total amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere (29 + 439 + 332 = 800) and the human portion as 29. Divide 29 by 800 and you get 3.63%.

Manmade CO2: 3% of 3% of 0.1%

So here’s the bottom line. According to the IPCC’s own data, manmade CO2 output levels are 3% of 3% of 0.1% of the total Earth’s atmosphere. That’s 0.000009%! That’s 9 millionths.

CO2 is measured in ppm (parts per million) because it is such a tiny and insignificant gas, yet somehow, the propaganda has been so successful that is has sprouted into what some state is a US$1.5 trillion industry.

The IPCC Can’t Deal with Water Vapor

The IPCC is basically stuck on water vapor. It can’t actually measure it, since the variability across the world is so high, H2O vapor changes so quickly, and it takes place above a variety of different landscapes/topographies. There are too many variables to calculate to produce a good model. So it just shuffles it to the side and states it has no “confidence.”

Here’s exactly what the IPCC says:

“Modelling the vertical structure of water vapour is subject to greater uncertainty since the humidity profile is governed by a variety of processes … because of large variability and relatively short data records, confidence in stratospheric H2O vapour trends is low.”

It doesn’t suit the IPCC’s agenda to really dive in and better understand the role of water vapor as the key greenhouse gas driving climate temperature. It’s far easier to just pretend it doesn’t exist and only focus on the tiny amount of CO2 in the atmosphere instead.

Manmade CO2: A Massive Diversion

The idea that manmade CO2 output levels is a big problem, in the scheme of all of Earth’s eco problems, is a giant hoax. It diverts environmentalists’ attention away from the true issues that need addressing. Does it make any logical sense to spend so much money, energy and attention on 0.000009% of CO2, when there are very palpable, tangible and dangerous threats to our environment?

What about geoengineering, the aerial chemtrail spraying of barium, aluminum and strontium all over us, and the flora and fauna of the Earth? What about the release of synthetic self-aware fibers that cause Morgellons’ Disease, in line with the NWO synthetic agenda? What about unstoppable environmental genetic pollution caused by the release of GMOs?

What about the contamination of waterways with industrial chemicals, pesticides like glyphosate and atrazine, poisons like dioxin and DDT, heavy metals and pharmaceutical residues? Why are people wasting their energy on 3% of 3% of 0.1% when we have real MASSIVE ENVIRONMENTAL issues facing us as a species?

Respected theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson said:

“The possibly harmful climatic effects of carbon dioxide have been greatly exaggerated … the benefits clearly outweigh the possible damage.”

Final Thoughts

Despite all the politicians, celebrities and soul-for-sale scientists AGW has recruited to its cause, there is no real basis for the fearmongering.

At the very top, those pushing the manmade global warming hoax know that it’s a scam, so rather than focusing on the facts, they appeal to emotion with fake images of starving polar bears (to arouse anger) and underwater cities (to arouse fear).

The truth is that the green movement has long been hijacked by the very same NWO manipulators who helped to ruin the environment in the first place, through their ownership of oil, chemical and pharmaceutical multinational corporations.

These manipulators rely on the average person being too busy or lazy to check the facts or think critically. They promote scientific illiteracy via their control of the MSM, the educational curriculum and their numerous think tanks.

Finally – if you dare – dig into the birth of the modern environmental movement, and you may be shocked to find how deeply it is steeped in eugenics and depopulation. It’s time to realize that those pushing this gigantic scam aren’t interesting in saving the environment – but rather depopulating it.

From:    http://humansarefree.com/2018/10/can-you-guess-how-much-co2-is-mankind.html

Taking Back Your Internet Data

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ALTERNATIVE NEWS

WWW Inventor’s New Internet OS Would Allow Users To Control Their Personal Data

By.  

IN BRIEF
  • The Facts:Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the ‘World Wide Web,’ has created a new startup company named Inrupt which is poised to ‘interrupt’ the data domination and invasion of privacy of big internet companies like Facebook and Google.
  • Reflect On:Can you envision an internet in which each one of us is the gatekeeper of our own data and we can all operate on the internet in an equitable way?

Facebook, Google, and the rest of the censorship and data mining cabal–you have now officially been put on notice.

Something that I hinted at in a previous article ‘Anti-Defamation League, Facebook, Google & Youtube Appoint Themselves As Official Internet Censor‘ has taken on new significance. When I said that I’m not sure the “censorship cabal” led by Facebook should really be messing with an Awakening Community, it turns out we have some pretty powerful people in the Awakening Community.

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the ‘World Wide Web’ and one of Time magazine’s ‘100 most important people of the 20th century,’ had the noblest intentions when he turned the keys of the internet over to the world for free in 1989. This awakened genius saw the potential for increased openness, connectivity, and productivity on the platform which was fundamentally designed as a medium for positive change and human empowerment.

The Emergence Of  A Frankenstein

Instead, Berners-Lee has seen his creation turn into some kind of Frankenstein, as noted in this Zero Hedge article:

“For people who want to make sure the Web serves humanity, we have to concern ourselves with what people are building on top of it,” Tim Berners-Lee told Vanity Fair last month. “I was devastated,” he said, while going through a litany of harmful and dangerous developments of the past three decades of the web. He lamented that his creation has been abused by powerful entities for everything from mass surveillance to fake news to psychological manipulation to corporations commodifying individuals’ information.

Berners-Lee has worked in recent years in and out of different companies and advocacy groups trying to preserve the sanctity of the internet and retain its initial purpose and vision, but despite his efforts, he has seen its gradual takeover by powerful entities who have been able to centralize much of the internet’s activities, and along with this have been able to horde much of its valuable information.

Dreams Of Freedom And Openness

In the face of this, Berners-Lee and other internet activists have long been dreaming of a digital utopia where individuals control their own data and the internet remains free and open. But for Berners-Lee, the time for dreaming is over. “We have to do it now. It’s a historical moment,” he has said. Ever since revelations emerged that Facebook had allowed people’s data to be misused by political operatives, Berners-Lee has felt an imperative to get this digital idyll into the real world.

And so, Berners-Lee has launched a start-up that intends to end the dominance of Facebook, Google, and Amazon, while in the process letting individuals take back control of their own data.

Solid and Inrupt

This began with ‘Solid,’ which is a decentralized web platform that Berners-Lee designed and built with a small team at MIT over several years. It can be considered as a kind of operating system for the internet that will serve as the foundation for applications which support the decentralization of information.

On Solid, all of one’s information is under the user’s control. Every bit of data he or she creates or adds on Solid exists within a Solid ‘pod’–which is an acronym for personal online data store. These pods are what give Solid users control over their applications and information on the web. Anyone using the platform will get a Solid identity and Solid pod. This is how people, Berners-Lee says, will take back the power of the web from corporations.

He then created Inrupt, Berners-Lee’s new online platform and companythat serves as a user interface to these pods, where everything from messages, music, contacts or other personal data will be stored in one place overseen by the user instead of an array of platforms and apps run by corporations seeking to profit off personal information. The project seeks “personal empowerment through data” and aims to “take back” the web, according to company statements.

Inrupt Will Just Be One Of Many

Once again, as per the Zerohedge article,

Unlike Facebook or Twitter where all user information ultimately resides in centralized data centers and servers under control of the companies, applications on Inrupt will compete for users based on the services they can offer, and only the users can grant these apps “views” into their data, making personal data instantly portable between similar applications.

“The main enhancement is that the web becomes a collaborative read-write space, passing control from owners of a server, to the users of that system. The Solid specification provides this functionality,” the Solid website says.

If all goes as planned, Inrupt will be to Solid what Netscape once was for many first-time users of the web: an easy way in. And like with Netscape, Berners-Lee hopes Inrupt will be just the first of many companies to emerge from Solid. In this way, creative developers will be able to compete with their latest and greatest interfaces to internet information, but unlike the opportunity seized by the likes of Facebook and Google, these new interfaces will never be able to ‘own’ or ‘house’ people’s personal data, and therefore the corrupt and fraudulent abuse of that data by big corporations will disappear from the internet. This failsafe is now built into the architecture of the Solid operating system.

The Takeaway

Many of us in the Awakening Community have been upset by the assault on our privacy and our freedom by the large internet corporations, but we can take solace in the fact that sometimes these very acts of injustice are what triggers consciousness to move us forward, and enables awakened humans to fulfill their dreams of creating the next great thing that will truly empower humanity.

from:    https://www.collective-evolution.com/2018/10/06/tim-berners-lee-internet-os-control-personal-data/

Lao Tzu Speaks for Today

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ESSENTIAL TAOIST WISDOM FOR LIVING IN POLITICALLY CHARGED AND CHAOTIC TIMES

August 29, 2018

Dylan Charles, Editor
Waking Times

There’s an old saying, rumored to be an ancient Chinese curse, but it’s been a favorite in the West for some time now.

“May you live in interesting times.” 

Political figures like to use it when they want to emphasize just how screwed up things are. For example, Robert Kennedy is quoted here from a speech in 1966:

Sounds pretty much like today, as the times are indeed interesting. Shocking and unbelievable things are happening all around us, and with information technologies we can choose to internalize struggles, tragedies and disasters that are far outside of our sphere of personal experience or control. It’s easier than ever to take on the weight of the world.

The burden of doing so is quite heavy, though, manifesting as stress, anxiety, depression, self-abuse or the abuse of nature, conflict big and small, anger, disease, uneasiness, unhappiness, and most insidious of all, fear. In short, absorbing the world’s problems is self-destructive. To resolve this within ourselves, however, it most often only takes a shift in perspective.

Lao-Tzu, the Old Master of Taoism, condensed the human struggle into the prose of the Tao Te Ching. It’s not a religious text, as it doesn’t hail a deity or command you to construct a belief system on its behalf. It’s a simple book of observations about the nature of nature, something that after 2500+ years still manages to serve as a salient guide to living well. For those who understand it, it offers a way of being that helps keep the madness of change at bay.

In times such as these, when uncertainty and chaos seem to be rising against the established order, and when so much discourse is focused on politics and untouchable events and circumstances, it really is up to the individual to create peace, harmony and balance within themselves.

But as humans, we have a tendency to try to control that which is beyond our control, in turn contributing evermore to the development of chaos and disorder. In truth, it is far easier to navigate such discord than we believe, and the way is far simpler than we imagine it to be. Consider for a moment the Taoist view regarding such interesting times.

From verse 16:

When society changes
from its natural state of flux,
to that which seems like chaos,
the inner world of the superior man
remains uncluttered and at peace.
By remaining still, his self detached,
he aids society in its return
to the way of nature and of peace.
The value of his insight may be clearly seen
when chaos ceases.

Here we are informed of the value of tending to the inner world first, which requires the gumption to detach and allow things to be as they are. We are encouraged to let go of personal expectations in order for muddled waters to clear.

From verse 17:

The sage does not expect that others
use his criteria as their own.

It is virtuous to allow others to hold whatever insane beliefs and ideas they choose to, and disengage from the struggle to enforce our opinions and values onto others.

From verse 18:

When intellectualism arises,
hypocrisy is close behind…

When the country falls into chaos,
politicians talk about ‘patriotism’.

From verse 57:

Govern your country with integrity,
Weapons of war can be used with great cunning,
but loyalty is only won by not-doing.
How do I know the way things are?

By these:

The more prohibitions you make,
the poorer people will be.
The more weapons you possess,
the greater the chaos in your country.
The more knowledge that is acquired,
the stranger the world will become.
The more laws that you make,
the greater the number of criminals.

Therefore the Master says:

I do nothing,
and people become good by themselves.
I seek peace,
and people take care of their own problems.
I do not meddle in their personal lives,
and the people become prosperous.
I let go of all my desires,
and the people return to the Uncarved Block.

Doing nothing, as advised in the Tao Te Ching, runs in opposition to the cultural zeitgeist, but just imagine how quickly things would change if more people chose to withdraw and not participate in the insanity all around us.

Final Thoughts

As individuals we face the same challenges as all of those who’ve come before us. We’ve always had to survive and procreate while striving for progress. That’s the human journey in nutshell, and while it isn’t always pretty, it’s always the same story, no matter how complex things become.

Our role, then, is the role of the sage, which is to act in accordance with nature rather than to resist nature.

from:    https://www.wakingtimes.com/2018/08/29/essential-taoist-wisdom-for-living-in-politically-charged-and-chaotic-times/