Following confirmation of the planned deployment of U.S. Air Force F-35A fighter aircraft to Puerto Rico to support ongoing operations near Venezuela, questions have increasingly been raised regarding how the fighters may be utilised to support an American offensive against its southern neighbour as tensions continue to escalate.
The deployment of F-35s was announced hours after an overflight by two Venezuelan Air Force F-16 fighters over the U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke Class destroyer USS Jason Dunham in the Caribbean Sea, and at a time when the United States is actively considering options to escalate hostilities to launch attacks on Venezuelan soil.
As part this escalation, the United States government has placed a higher bounty on the head of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, following years of sustained efforts to oust him from power including a failed kidnapping attempt in 2020.
The F-35 is the only fifth generation fighter class in production anywhere in the Western world, and is considered unrivalled in its sophistication by any non-Chinese fighter class.
The aircraft is heavily optimised for operations against advanced air defence networks, making it an ideal fighter to neutralise the S-300VM, BuK-M2 and S-125 systems guarding Venezuelan airspace, all of which are deployed in only relatively limited numbers.
F-35 (left) and Venezuelan Su-30MK2
With Venezuela’s F-16s being among the oldest and least capable in the world, the greatest challenge to any attempts to attack the country by air will come from its fleet of 22 Su-30MK2 fighter aircraft, which considered by far the most capable in Latin America.
A comparison of the capabilities of the rival fighter classes could thus provide valuable insight into how a potential engagement could play out.
A new study on post traumatic stress disorder shows that PTSD sufferers actually perceive meaning or emotional valence within fractions of a second.
This study bolsters the FIML claim that “psychological morphemes” (the smallest psychological unit) arise at discrete moments and that they affect whatever is perceived or thought about afterward.
The study has profound implications for all people (and I am sure animals, too) because all of us to some degree have experienced many small and some large traumas. These traumas induce a wide variety idiosyncratic “meaning and emotional valence” that affects how we perceive events happening around us, how we react to them, and how we think about them.
It is thus based on a clearly defined pool of people with “similar” extreme experiences and finds that:
…attentional biases in PTSD are [suggestively] linked to deficits in very rapid regulatory activation observed in healthy control subjects. Thus, sufferers with PTSD may literally see a world more populated by traumatic cues, contributing to a positive feedback loop that perpetuates the effects of trauma.
Of course all people are “traumatized” to some degree. And thus all people see “a world populated by traumatic cues, contributing to a positive feedback loop that perpetuates the effects of trauma.”
If we expand the word trauma to include “conditioned responses,” “learned responses,” “idiosyncratic responses,” or simply “training” or “experience” and then consider the aggregate all of those responses in any particular individual, we will have a fairly good picture of what an idiosyncratic individual (all of us are that) looks like, and how an idiosyncratic individual actually functions and responds to the world.
FIML theory claims that idiosyncratic responses happen very quickly (less than a second) and that these responses can be observed, analyzed, and extirpated (if they are detrimental) by doing FIML practice. Observing and analyzing idiosyncratic responses whether they are detrimental or not serves to optimize communication between partners by greatly enhancing partners’ ranges of emotion and understanding.
In an article about the linked study (whose main author is Rebecca Todd), Alva Noë says:
…Todd’s work shows that soldiers with PTSD “process” cues associated with their combat experience differently even than other combat veterans. But what seems to be driving the process that Todd and team uncovered is the meaningfulness or emotional valence of the cues themselves. Whether they are presented in very rapid serial display or in some other way, what matters is that those who have been badly traumatized think and feel. And surely we can modify how we think and feel through conversation?
Indeed, what makes this work so significant is the way it shows that we can only really make sense of the neural phenomena by setting them in the context of the perceptual-cognitive situation of the animal and, vice-versa, that the full-import of what perceivers say and do depends on what is going on in their heads. (Source)
I fully agree with the general sense of Noë’s words, but want to ask what is your technique for “modifying how we think and feel through conversation?” And does your technique comport well with your claim, which I also agree with, that “we can only really make sense of the neural phenomena by setting them in the context of the perceptual-cognitive situation of the animal”?
I would contend that you cannot make very good “sense of neural phenomena” by just talking about them in general ways or analyzing them based on general formulas. Some progress can be made, but it is slow and not so reliable because general ways of talking always fail to capture the idiosyncrasy of the “neural phenomenon” as it is actually functioning in real-time during a real “perceptual-cognitive situation of the animal.”
The FIML technique can capture “neural phenomena” in real-time and it can capture them during real “perceptual-cognitive situations.” It is precisely this that allows FIML practice to quickly extirpate unwholesome responses, both small and large, if desired.
Since all of us are complex individuals with a multitude of interconnected sensibilities, perceptions, and responses, FIML practice does not seek to “just” remove a single post traumatic response but rather to extirpate all unwholesome responses.
Since our complex responses and perceptions can be observed most clearly as they manifest in semiotics, the FIML “conversational” technique focuses on the signs and symbols of communication, the semiotics that comprise psychological morphemes.
FIML practice is not suited for everyone and a good partner must be found for it to work. But I would expect that combat veterans with PTSD who are able to do FIML and who do it regularly with a good partner will experience a gradual reduction in PTSD symptoms leading to eventual extirpation.
The same can be said for the rest of us with our myriad and various traumas and experiences. FIML done with a good partner will find and extirpate what you don’t want knocking around in your head anymore.
It’s too destabilizing for Egypt, Jordan, GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council], and the TPS [Transnational Private Sector].
So Israel resorts to incremental displacement; making areas unlivable so populations slowly filter out.
That’s Israel’s current state calculus.
In parallel to that, yes, flattening urban space creates a blank slate for reconstruction contracts.
Cycles of destruction/rebuilding feed into TPS projects tied to donor funds.
This ensures that while Israel secures its “security” objective, the TPS still gets entry points for capital deployment.
But the TPS doesn’t want total ethnic cleansing, because it risks blowing up the very donor funds from the GCC and sabotages Israel normalization with them.
So the TPS tolerates destruction as long as it leads to managed rebuilding under conditional frameworks.
Everyone thinks Palestinians will be exterminated / totally displaced.
It’s already a foregone conclusion that this will not happen.
I was a public school teacher in the hood for 11 years, and I know this type of kid.
The type that would smack the kid sitting in front of him, tell the teacher “IDGAF” when corrected, and ruin an entire year’s worth of learning for the entire class.
His special education teachers would describe him as “actually very smart with a lot of potential,” despite him failing every class and scoring a 9 on the ACT.
There would be countless meetings with him and his mom and the social workers, psychologists , and principal would speak in soft voices and nod and smile when the kid told them he wants to be a “doctor.”
They’d design all sorts of ridiculous accommodations that give him ample room to behave however he wanted and terrorize his teachers and peers with minimal consequences.
Teachers would spend the entire class trying to reign in his behavior, and when they called security to remove him, they’d have to evacuate the entire class first.
He’d rarely receive any consequences. The principal would reprimand the teachers for “not building a relationship with him” and accuse them of “singling him out because he was black.” As a result, they’d give up and his behavior would escalate.
If he was really bad, he’d get a time out in a special room where he’d sit on his phone and tell the supervisor to “shut the fuck up” if they said anything. Maybe he’d have to partake in a “peace circle” if he became violent.
He’d eventually get “socially promoted” to his senior year and there would be a massive effort to get his credits recovered, mostly by pressuring teachers to give him alternative assignments and 50% for the work he didn’t do.
He’d walk down the graduation stage and everyone would cheer, and he’d probably do something embarrassing like give the finger to the audience.
As a young adult, he’d walk the city behaving exactly as he did in school because he’d been socialized to learn there are zero consequences for his behavior. Depending on the city, he’d probably get similar treatment from the cops and public afraid of creating a public scene that would lead to riots in their city.
One day, he’d snap, and do something like this.
And only then, would everyone act surprised, as if this wasn’t largely in part due to how our public schools negatively socialize and enable the behavior of animals that should be locked up or institutionalized as teenagers.
American Buddhist Net 