U.S. Senator Susan Collins sharply criticized on Monday morning the handling of ballots found improperly delivered to a residence in Newburgh, calling for an independent investigation and raising serious questions about election integrity in Maine.
“It’s alarming that these ballots just showed up,” Collins told the Maine Wire. “How did they get there, who sent them, what in the world are ballots being delivered to a house in Newburgh and are there more out there?”
The senator’s comments preceded Secretary of State Shenna Bellows hastily calling a news conference in Augusta that afternoon.
Highlighting the urgency of the matter, Collins continued: “We need independent law enforcement to take a look into this. I think the FBI should be involved, ballot security is extremely important.”
She further questioned the role of state officials in managing the inquiry. “There should never be absentee ballots floating around out there, what in the world?” she said. “The Secretary of State should step aside. We need an independent investigation. We need to find out how this happened.”
Former FBI Director James Comey is appearing in court on Wednesday for a dramatic arraignment on charges of making false statements and obstructing a congressional investigation.
James Comey is appearing as a defendant in a court where he previously brought cases as FBI Director
According to an indictment brought by Lindsey Halligan, the recently appointed U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Comey faces two counts.
The first is ‘making false statements within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch of the United States Government.’
It is alleged that on September 30, 2020 he ‘willfully and knowingly made a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement’ while testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The statement was that he had not ‘authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation concerning PERSON 1.’
Prosecutors allege that, contrary to that statement, he did authorize someone else to ‘serve as an anonymous source in news reports.’
‘PERSON 1’ in the indictment is believed to be Hillary Clinton, with Comey’s statement relating to an investigation into her private email server.
In the second count, Comey is charged with obstruction of a Congressional proceeding.
It is alleged he ‘did corruptly endeavor to influence, obstruct and impede ‘ a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation by ‘making false and misleading statements.’
If convicted Comey faces up to five years in prison, although actual sentences for similar crimes are typically less than the maximum.
The indictment against him has been brought by Lindsey Halligan, the new U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia
Fetish can be defined as “a part standing for the whole” or “one thing being made bigger than it is by having become a psychological fixation.”
A good example of what I mean is pornography. Insofar as a mere image can stand for or replace instinctual sexual objectives, it is a fetish.
A sign (pornographic image) is as strong or stronger than the animal instinct. Or a sign can direct or redirect the animal instinct. That is a fetish.
Secondary sex characteristics do the same thing. You could call them nature’s fetishes but that would be stretching the concept. Human utilizations of makeup, clothing, and grooming could be said to stand “halfway” between the basic sexual instinct and the fetishized porno image.
Let’s apply that reasoning to status.
Two social psychologist I respect—Jordan Peterson and Kevin MacDonald—have both claimed many times that status is a fundamental human instinct and that it drives human behavior in many ways.
…I do not believe that social status is any more fundamental to human nature than murder is. Humans also possess reason and spiritual inclinations both of which can guide us away from status competition if we decide to do that and/or our conditions allow.
I still think that but over the past day or two a new understanding of the importance of status and human hierarchy has dawned on me. In essence, I think I have come to see that status really is a huge deal for many people; a much bigger deal than I had ever realized.
My explanation for that is people like me (and there are many of us) during childhood and adolescence see the “status game” as a choice. And we decide not to play it.
My SO made that choice. When we talked about this subject this morning, she said people like us are more open to art (in a broad sense) and less concerned with social hierarchies. I think that’s true. One good friend years ago used to call me a “now person,” meaning I am always living in the here and now and not doing a lot of planning for the future. I think she also meant or implied that I am not doing any thinking about my social status or the human hierarchies that surround me.
A Buddhist nun who is a close friend has often described mundane human behaviors as being motivated by jealousy. I have often disagreed with her, believing that her emphasis on jealousy was influenced too much by her culture (Chinese) or by the innocence of her monastic lifestyle.
Today, I think she was influenced by the status-conscious world she had grown up in and as a young adult renounced for Buddhism. But I also think she was able to see something I have been almost completely blind to. For me status has always been a very small cloud on the edge of the sky, not a major thunderstorm in human motivation. For her it is, or was, a storm in the human mind.
Status is a fetish. And fetishization does explain a lot about it. But if lots of people have that fetish or have that strong understanding of status, that’s how it is. As a social construct the status fetish can be even bigger and more imposing than the basic instinct it rests upon.
I hope this post helps people who see status as important understand people like me and my SO, and vice versa.
From a Buddhist point of view, I think it is important to fully understand the entire status spectrum—from instinct to fetishized sign—and to understand where you are on that spectrum and where the people you deal with are on that spectrum.
My guess is that most people reading this blog do not think of status as being very important. People like us need to appreciate that status is probably largely what motivates good people like Jordan Peterson as well as bad people like Bernie Madoff.
Might also be good if status-conscious people would understand that people like us are not all slackers or losers, nor are we seething with envy over your status. We mostly do not even see the game you are playing.
UPDATE: I am not as respecting of Peterson as I was when the above was written. He is ill right now, so that’s all I’m gonna say on that. This post is just six years old and even that short time can date it a bit, but the plandemic has intervened and slight time shifts can be interesting in and of themselves. ABN
I said on the day of the Qatari strike that the attack will be great for Palestine. Since then we’ve seen an aggressive systematic overturn on Israel’s interests.
This is a great article. Everyone should read it.
I’ve copy pasted here as its behind a paywall;
Two weeks before he went to the US to discuss a Donald Trump-backed plan to end the war in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood in front of his far-right followers in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank and made a vow. “There will be no Palestinian state,” he said. “This place is ours.” Now, sitting in a hotel room in New York with his closest advisers and US interlocutors, he was looking at a draft document for a peace plan that ended with the exact opposite: a “credible pathway”, however vague, to a future Palestinian state. “The sting was in the tail,” said a person briefed on the meeting, which took place in late September. “It felt like a final betrayal.”
It wasn’t the only sting. Trump’s draft document was the result of a frantic round of lobbying by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other influential Arab and Muslim countries, that also tapped into the president’s anger over Israel’s September 9 strike targeting Hamas’s political negotiators in Doha. The diplomatic push was also aided by the renewed influence of Trump’s son-in-law and former Middle East envoy, Jared Kushner. Their goal, said people involved in the process, was to deliver for the US president twin political and personal ambitions. Trump wanted to secure the release of the 48 Israeli hostages held by Hamas, end the war in Gaza and also keep alive his dream of brokering a grand rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The timing was not arbitrary, said two Israeli officials involved in the talks. Trump made clear that he wanted the war to end by the second anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the conflict. The Nobel Peace Prize, which Trump covets, will also be announced this month.
“From very early on, Trump understood that the hostages are the keys that open all doors in the Middle East,” said a former Israeli diplomat who liaised with Washington on behalf of the captives’ families.
Trump had met with released hostages, knew some by name, and followed their recovery from months in captivity — a personal connection far surpassing that of Netanyahu. Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, texts regularly with the families waiting for their loved ones. But to get all the hostages out at once, and set his grand plan for the Middle East in motion, Trump needed Netanyahu to make concessions and a postwar plan. This was necessary not just to convince Hamas — for whom the hostages are the only real source of leverage — but also to appease Washington’s Gulf allies, who Netanyahu had alienated with Israel’s belligerence across the Middle East.
Among the most influential was Qatar, which hosts Hamas’s political office and has been central to two years of mediation efforts, said people involved in the negotiations. Israel’s attack on Doha, a US ally, just as Hamas was studying a ceasefire proposal from Witkoff, infuriated Trump. Indeed, when Netanyahu finally made it to the White House on September 29 — days after Trump had already presented his peace plan to Arab leaders — the president handed him a phone receiver and listened in as Netanyahu humbly apologised to Qatar’s prime minister. The strike on Qatar “actually opened the door for all of this,” said a former US official who maintains contact with leaders in the Middle East. The strike was humiliating for Trump, but “it allowed him to say, ‘you guys fucked up, and I’m bailing you out here, and I’m done,’” the official said, satirically characterising Netanyahu’s subsequent Oval Office apology to Qatar as “a hostage video”.
While Netanyahu and his team tried watering down some elements of what became Trump’s 20-point peace plan — especially the reference to a Palestinian state — a Qatari technical team sat not far away in the White House, said a person familiar with the events.
“It was impossible to change more than a few words here and there,” said a second person who read drafts of the plan. For instance, Netanyahu and his negotiators had sought one major concession — an opportunity to return to fighting if Israel decided Hamas had broken some clause of the agreement. The team was told, in no uncertain terms, “to stop looking for loopholes”. “Trump himself had guaranteed [to the Arabs] that Israel would not start the war again,” the person said. This pledge was verified by a second person familiar with conversations between the White House and Arab officials. And so nestled between the dry legalese of the peace plan were proposals that would be anathema to the far-right and messianic parties that prop up Netanyahu’s coalition, and who have vowed to expel Palestinians from Gaza and resettle it with Jews. Now, the document ruled out forced displacement and said Gazans would be free to leave the besieged enclave, and to return when they wanted. Hamas fighters could be granted amnesty if they gave up their weapons and agreed to “peaceful coexistence”, instead of being hunted to death. Not only would Israel not be allowed to occupy or annex Gaza, it could not build settlements there. The UN, reviled by Netanyahu, would be allowed back to feed Palestinians starved by Israel’s blockade. Still, there was enough in the document for Netanyahu to save face. Hamas would be barred from Palestinian governance. Its fighters would be disarmed and the strip demilitarised.
A committee of Palestinian technocrats and an international supervisory body chaired by Trump would run Gaza temporarily, not the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank. An international force would provide security. But most important, said two Israeli officials, was the language Trump used when announcing it — if Hamas rejected the deal, he said, “Israel would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas”. Standing next to him, Netanyahu looked subdued. He had grappled with and outmanoeuvred three American presidents — Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Now he faced intense pressure from the president he had confidently declared to be “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House”. Though Trump has long unnerved US allies with his transactional approach to politics and mercurial decision-making, Netanyahu had seen the US leader and his fervently pro-Israel political base as reliable sources of support. But earlier this year Trump surprised him with the announcement that the US had been holding indirect talks with Iran, then embarrassed him by reminding him that Israel was propped up by billions of dollars in US aid. “The rule of thumb is Donald Trump’s interests come first,” said Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the US. Before Trump, Netanyahu expanded settlements over Obama’s objections, and slow-rolled peace talks under Clinton. Referring to demands from Biden on the conduct of the Gaza war, Oren added: “And with president Biden who famously said don’t, don’t, don’t — and Israel did.” “But with Donald Trump, when he says don’t, then you don’t,” said Oren. “And now that’s the rule [even for] Israel.” He pointed out the expletive-laden public scolding the president administered when Israel bombed eastern Iran after Trump declared a ceasefire that ended a 12-day war between the regional enemies in June.
Days after his White House visit, where Netanyahu stood alongside Trump and said he supported the plan, the mood turned sour for the Israeli prime minister again. Back home, he had sold the Trump proposals as a victory for Israel — a “take it or leave it” option for Hamas, with US blessing for Israel to annihilate the militant group as the cost of rejection.
But on Friday, when Hamas cherry-picked the part of the deal that appealed the most to Trump — the release within 72 hours of all the remaining captives, alive and dead — while sidestepping the more contentious elements, Netanyahu found himself cornered. “Suddenly, there was a fundamental change in the situation. Earlier, Hamas had three choices — it could surrender, it could abjure terror, or it could die,” said Oren. “Now, it has a fourth choice — to negotiate. And while they negotiate, Israel has a red light.” Shortly after Hamas’s statement, Trump ordered Israel to “immediately” cease military operations in Gaza while talks continued. In a phone call with Trump, first reported by Axios and confirmed by an Israeli official, Netanyahu tried to convince Trump that Hamas’s qualified acceptance was a delaying tactic. Trump snapped back: “Why are you so fucking negative?” Axios reported. Days later, Trump publicly hammered the point home, telling an Israeli reporter that it did not take much to convince Netanyahu to accept the situation. “He was fine with it. He’s got to be fine with it. He has no choice,” Trump told Israel’s Channel 12 news. “With me, you got to be fine.”
If this account is true, Israel does not control Trump. Great read. ABN
Much of the work done in human semiotics involves analyses of semiotic codes.
Semiotics and semiotic codes are often treated like language or languages for which a grammar can be found.
One obvious problem with this sort of approach is semiotics indicates a set that is much broader than language. Stated another way, language is a subset of semiotics.
Human semiotics also include music, imagery, gesture, facial expression, emotion, and anything else that can communicate either within one mind or between two or more minds.
It is very helpful to analyze semiotic codes and it is very helpful to try to figure out how cultures, groups, and individuals use them. We can compare the semiotics of heroism in Chinese culture to that of French culture. Or the semiotics of gift-giving in American culture to that of Mexican culture. We can analyze movies, literature, science, and even engineering based on semiotic codes we have abstracted out of them.
We can do something similar for human psychology.
Analyses of this type are, in my view, general in that they involve schema or paradigms or grammars that say general things about how semiotic systems work or how individuals (or semiotic signs themselves) fit into those systems.
This is all good and general analyses of this sort can be indispensable aids to understanding.
General semiotic analyses are limited, however, in their application to human psychology because such analyses cannot effectively grasp the semiotic codes of the individual. Indeed general analyses are liable to conceal individual codes and interpretations more than usefully reveal them.
This is so because all individuals are always complex repositories of many general semiotic codes as well as many individual ones. And these codes are always changing, responding, being conditioned by new circumstances and many kinds of feedback.
Individuals as repositories of many codes, both external and internal, are complex and always changing and there is no general analysis that will ever fully capture that complexity.
For somewhat similar reasons, no individual acting alone can possibly perform a self-analysis that captures the full complexity of the many and always-changing semiotic codes that exist within them.
Self-analysis is far too subject to selection bias, memory, and even delusion to be considered accurate or objective. The individual is also far too complex for the individual to grasp alone. How can an individual possibly stand outside itself and see itself as it is? Where would the extra brain-space come from?
How can a system of complex semiotic codes use yet another code to successfully analyze itself?
Clearly, no individual human semiotic system can ever fully know itself.
To recap, 1) there is no general semiotic analysis that will ever capture the complexity of individual psychology, and 2) no individual acting alone can ever capture the complexity of the semiotic codes that exist within them.
Concerning point two, we could just as well say that no individual acting alone can ever capture the complexity of their own psychology.
We are thus prevented from finding a complex analysis of human psychology through a general analysis of semiotics and also through an individual’s self-analysis when acting alone.
This suggests, however, that two individuals acting together might be able to glimpse, if not grasp, how their complex semiotic codes are actually functioning when they interact with each other. If two individuals working together can honestly observe and discuss moments of dynamic real-time semiotic interaction between them, they should be able to begin to understand how their immensely complex and always-changing psycho-semiotic codes are actually functioning.
An approach of this type ought to work better for psychological understanding of the individuals involved than any mix of general semiotic analyses applied to them. Indeed, prefabricated, general semiotic analyses will tend to conceal the actual functioning of the idiosyncratic semiotics and semiotic codes used by those individuals.
The FIMLmethod does not apply a general semiotic analysis to human psychology. Rather it uses a method or technique to allow two individuals working together to see and understand how their semiotics and semiotic codes are actually functioning. ABN
Imagine what DARPA and the like already have, 20-50 years more advanced than this.
It is plausible a super-fast mini-drone, possibly silent, was the actual shooter in Charlie Kirk’s murder.
If so, a wealthy group or government killed Kirk.
And if that is true, they will have the means and knowhow to cover their deed up from many angles, including mind-control prompts telling us to stop caring. ABN
I put this video up last night after only watching parts of it. Later on, I watched the whole thing. It is very good. Candace analyzes a morass of ambiguity very well and makes a clear case that Kirk’s murder demands continued investigation. ABN
American Buddhist Net 