Tag: abn

How the Science of Memory Reconsolidation Advances the Effectiveness and Unification of Psychotherapy

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Abstract

Memory reconsolidation research by neuroscientists has demonstrated the erasure of emotional learnings. This article reviews these historic findings and how they translate directly into therapeutic application to provide the clinical field with an empirically confirmed process of transformational change. Psychotherapists’ early use of this new, transtheoretical knowledge indicates a strong potential for significant advances in both the effectiveness of psychotherapy and the unification of its many diverse systems. The erasure process consists of the creation of certain critical experiences required by the brain, and it neither dictates nor limits the experiential methods that therapists can use to facilitate the needed experiences. This article explains memory reconsolidation, delineates the empirically confirmed process, illustrates it in a case example of long-term depression, indicates the evidence supporting the hypothesis that this process is responsible for transformational change in any therapy sessions, describes the differing mechanisms underlying transformational change versus incremental change, and reports extensive clinical evidence that the basis and cause of most of the problems and symptoms presented by therapy clients are emotional learnings, that is, emotionally laden mental models, or schemas, in semantic memory.

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FIML practice works most of all because it focuses directly on memory formation and reconsolidation, thus allowing beneficial changes to be made quickly in real-time. Discussions of how this is done can be found here: Memory reconsolidation as key to psychological transformation and here: Disruption of neurotic response in FIML practice.

Below is an excerpt that explains how memory reconsolidation works. FIML does precisely what is described below in real-time, real-world situations as they arise between partners or when they are together and something else arises. ABN

The Erasure of an Emotional Learning

MR research by neuroscientists has demonstrated that an emotional learning is nullified by the following set of three experiences, which have therefore been termed the empirically confirmed process of erasure (ECPE) (Ecker 2018). Hundreds of MR research studies have used a vast range of different procedures and protocols to produce these experiences (reviewed by Ecker 2015, 2018), which means that what the brain requires for erasure of an emotional learning is not any particular external procedure, but rather the internal occurrence of these three subjective experiences, whatever may be the external procedures that create them. Therefore the ECPE does not dictate or favor the use of any particular therapeutic techniques, and psychotherapists are free to facilitate these critical experiences using any of the therapy field’s vast array of experiential methods.

  1. 1.Reactivated, Symptom-Generating Target Learning Experienced in AwarenessThis is the deliberate use of salient cues or contexts that reactivate the target emotional learning or schema underlying the client’s presenting symptom or problem. For example, a woman in therapy for depression and absence of motivation was cued into reactivation of her lifelong schema that had newly come into awareness and was verbalized as, “Mom sees and knows everything I ever care about or do, and then takes over and takes away everything I ever care about or do, which feels devastating for me, and my only way to be safe from her pillaging is for me to care about nothing and do nothing.” To assure that the schema is being directly accessed at its roots in the emotional learning and memory system and is not merely a cognitive insight, it is critically important that the emotions accompanying the reactivated schema are fully felt affectively and somatically while the schema also is cognized verbally and conceptually. Note that the schema is at core a mental model, from which are generated particular emotions, which in the example above would include helplessness, hopelessness, fear, desperation, despair, aloneness, and the deep pain of feeling used, pillaged and eclipsed in this way by her own mother. How that schema was found, brought into awareness, and then disconfirmed and unlearned is described in the case vignette in the next section.
  2. 2.Experience of Mismatch/Prediction Error Destabilizes the Target Learning’s Neural EncodingWhile the target schema is reactivated in awareness as described above, this is an additional, concurrent experience or knowing that contradicts what the client knows and expects according to the schema. This is termed a memory mismatch or prediction error experience by memory researchers. In response to this experience of the world differing from the target learning’s expectations, the client’s brain rapidly transforms the neural encoding of the target learning from its stable, consolidated state in long-term memory into a destabilized, de-consolidated, labile state, which is susceptible to being updated and re-encoded by any relevant new learning that may occur next. This destabilization, which requires and is triggered by the mismatch/prediction error experience, begins the reconsolidation process.Footnote2 The labile, destabilized condition persists for about 5 h, widely termed the reconsolidation window, after which the neural encoding automatically reconsolidates, that is, it returns to a stable state in long-term memory. The case vignette below describes how a contradictory knowing was found for the schema of the depressed woman, creating the needed mismatch experience.
  3. 3.Experience of Counter-Learning Drives Unlearning, Nullification, Re-encoding and Replacement of Target LearningThis experience consists of just a few repetitions, during the rest of the therapy session, of the same mismatch experience created in the previous step. Each mismatch is a juxtaposition experience, in the sense that the client experiences both reality according to the target learning and a contradictory perception or knowing, with both in the same single field of awareness. Two or three repetitions of that juxtaposition experience serve as counter-learning that functions as an experiential disconfirmation of the target learning. Because the counter-learning is occurring while the encoding of the target learning is labile, the counter-learning rewrites and replaces the encoding of the target schema in memory. As a result, the target learning no longer exists in memory, so it cannot be reactivated and cause a relapse. The target learning is a model of the world in semantic memory, not an episodic memory of specific events and experiences; the latter is not erased. The unlearning of the target learning’s version of reality is the profound resolution of a core emotional issue in the client’s life, as noted earlier.Footnote3 Successful erasure of the target learning is then verified by observing the markers of transformational change beginning to appear immediately: the symptom(s) driven by the target learning cease to occur; the target learning itself, which previously was felt as a potent and horrible truth of the world, no longer feels true or real and is not reactivated by situations that formerly did so, eliminating a problematic, distressed ego state; and those changes persist effortlessly and permanently. If the same counter-learning occurs without first finding, reactivating and destabilizing the target learning (steps 1 and 2 above), the counter-learning only creates its own encoding separate from that of the target learning. In that case, the two learnings compete for control of behavior and state of mind, producing at best only incremental change that is prone to relapse when the emotionally more intense target learning becomes newly retriggered by current circumstances.
ibid

An advantage of FIML as therapy for unwholesome or unwanted schema is FIML is mostly done in real-time, real-world situations so the schema is right there in front of you clear as a bell in your own mind. You can see it and see very clearly how it is distorting reality.

Therapies that work by recalling unwholesome schema in a professional settings have the advantage of: 1) relying on a professional; 2) avoiding doing this work with your spouse or best friend; and 3) aiming for wholesale erasure of the schema once and for all.

FIML practitioners could use a schema method to do this but generally FIML works by focusing on the unwholesome schema the moment it arises and whenever it arises in the real-world (conditions permitting). This method erases or extirpates the unwholesome schema by observing its maladaptive dysfunction as many times as needed.

FIML is also able to deal with more than one maladaptive schema, and in real-life there are many, without causing confusion because when unwholesome schemas are encounter in real-world, real-time, their structure and origins are generally easily seen for what they are.

Many unwanted schema can be extirpated with just a few FIML exchanges. Some are more stubborn and may require more time and multiple occurrences.

Another advantage FIML has is it prevents new schemas from arising and taking hold. Unwholesome schemas do not all come from the deep past or from childhood. Schemas also arise later in life and often are based on serious misinterpretations. FIML is very effective at stopping schemas of this sort immediately, before they can consolidate and cause harm.

I would add that unwholesome schemas exist in virtually everyone and often we are dealing not with our own schemas but those of others. FIML partners can eliminate problem schemas between themselves, but often do no more than recognize them in others. However, understanding ourselves through FIML practice does help us understand others much better, and how deal with them more compassionately due to that understanding. ABN

Climate models can’t explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly — we could be in uncharted territory

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When I took over as the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, I inherited a project that tracks temperature changes since 1880. Using this trove of data, I’ve made climate predictions at the start of every year since 2016. It’s humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded climate scientists’ predictive capabilities more than 2023 has.

…In general, the 2023 temperature anomaly has come out of the blue, revealing an unprecedented knowledge gap perhaps for the first time since about 40 years ago, when satellite data began offering modellers an unparalleled, real-time view of Earth’s climate system. If the anomaly does not stabilize by August — a reasonable expectation based on previous El Niño events — then the world will be in uncharted territory. It could imply that a warming planet is already fundamentally altering how the climate system operates, much sooner than scientists had anticipated. It could also mean that statistical inferences based on past events are less reliable than we thought, adding more uncertainty to seasonal predictions of droughts and rainfall patterns.

Much of the world’s climate is driven by intricate, long-distance links — known as teleconnections — fuelled by sea and atmospheric currents. If their behaviour is in flux or markedly diverging from previous observations, we need to know about such changes in real time. We need answers for why 2023 turned out to be the warmest year in possibly the past 100,000 years. And we need them quickly.

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This article is weird as it discusses all the usual possibilities for the temperature anomaly of 2023, but ignores the less usual but eminently possible explanation that thermal transmission from earth’s core via abyssal ocean depths is the cause. The author is none other than the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. ABN

Cybernetics — (the basic theory underlying woke/ totalitarian control of language and behavior today)

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Cybernetics, control theory as it is applied to complex systems. Cybernetics is associated with models in which a monitor compares what is happening to a system at various sampling times with some standard of what should be happening, and a controller adjusts the system’s behaviour accordingly.

The term cybernetics comes from the ancient Greek word kybernetikos (“good at steering”), referring to the art of the helmsman. In the first half of the 19th century, the French physicist André-Marie Ampère, in his classification of the sciences, suggested that the still nonexistent science of the control of governments be called cybernetics. The term was soon forgotten, however, and it was not used again until the American mathematician Norbert Wiener published his book Cybernetics in 1948. In that book Wiener made reference to an 1868 article by the British physicist James Clerk Maxwell on governors and pointed out that the term governor is derived, via Latin, from the same Greek word that gives rise to cybernetics. The date of Wiener’s publication is generally accepted as marking the birth of cybernetics as an independent science.

Wiener defined cybernetics as “the science of control and communications in the animal and machine.” This definition relates cybernetics closely with the theory of automatic control and also with physiology, particularly the physiology of the nervous system. For instance, a “controller” might be the human brain, which might receive signals from a “monitor” (the eyes) regarding the distance between a reaching hand and an object to be picked up. The information sent by the monitor to the controller is called feedback, and on the basis of this feedback the controller might issue instructions to bring the observed behaviour (the reach of the hand) closer to the desired behaviour (the picking up of the object). Indeed, some of the earliest work done in cybernetics was the study of control rules by which human action takes place, with the goal of constructing artificial limbs that could be tied in with the brain.

In subsequent years the computer and the areas of mathematics related to it (e.g., mathematical logic) had a great influence on the development of cybernetics—for the simple reason that computers can be used not only for automatic calculation but also for all conversions of information, including the various types of information processing used in control systems. This enhanced ability of computers has made possible two different views of cybernetics. The narrower view, common in Western countries, defines cybernetics as the science of the control of complex systems of various types—technical, biological, or social. In many Western countries particular emphasis is given to aspects of cybernetics used in the generation of control systems in technology and in living organisms. A broader view of cybernetics arose in Russia and the other Soviet republics and prevailed there for many years. In this broader definition, cybernetics includes not only the science of control but all forms of information processing as well. In this way computer science, considered a separate discipline in the West, is included as one of the component parts of cybernetics.

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By seizing control of the psycholinguistic constellation of words and concepts within societies and fractally within individuals, societies and individuals are controlled by a cybernetic feedback loop that is self-sustaining.

This fully explains the why of speech controls (censorship, shaming, invention of new terms, etc) and how this leads very quickly to formation of a control mechanism for all of society.

The algorithms that control search engines and social media posts are extremely powerful cybernetic control mechanisms. As of today and probably well into whatever future arises, everything depends on the people (and their digital machines) that control societal cybernetics. As of today, there is no way to control those people.

It will probably always be easy for independent thinkers to see what is happening but never possible for them to effect change unless they are at the very top of the hierarchy which controls the cybernetics.

At the same time, it will always be all but impossible for independent thinkers lower down in the hierarchy to bring enough of the population to see what is happening and effect change from the bottom.

Independents and a responsive base of people at the bottom may occasionally effect some change, but the top has so much more control none of those bottom-up changes will matter for long if they matter at all. Everything we see in the world today supports this view. ABN

Swedish politician regrets ‘refugees welcome’ policy: ‘We were fundamentally wrong on the immigration issue’

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Louise Meijer, an MP for Sweden’s centrist Moderate party, apologised to voters for her previous position on open borders. She regrets “making mistakes” by “pleading for openness and refugees [being] welcome”, she says.

Meijer says she “changed her mind” over her views, in an opinion piece for Expressen this week.

“Now, instead, I am advocating an even stricter migration policy than the one I opposed at the time,” she says.

Political sentiments around migration have shifted swiftly in Sweden, with now even leaders of the Social Democrats saying they favour more strict migration policies.

Sweden today is a “completely different country than it was at the end of the 20th century”. Per capita, it has “received the most immigrants in the Western world” in modern times, Meijer writes.

Today, “more than a third of Sweden’s population has a foreign background. In 1987, the corresponding figure was 11 per cent.”

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She should be forgiven her mistake because she has admitted it and wants to make amends. We need much more of this in Western politics, particularly in USA. ABN

Samadhi in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra

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  1. Dhāraṇā ― In dhāraṇā, the mind learns to focus on a single object of thought. The object of focus is called a pratyaya. In dhāraṇā, the yogi learns to prevent other thoughts from intruding on focusing awareness on the pratyaya.
  2. Dhyāna ― Over time and with practice, the yogin learns to sustain awareness of only the pratyaya, thereby dhāraṇā transforms into dhyāna. In dhyāna, the yogin comes to realize the triplicity of perceiver (the yogin), perceived (the pratyaya) and the act of perceiving. The new element added to the practice of dhyāna, that distinguish it from dhāraṇā is the yogi learns to minimize the perceiver element of this triplicity. In this fashion, dhyāna is the gradual minimization of the perceiver, or the fusion of the observer with the observed (the pratyaya).
  3. Samādhi ― When the yogin can: (1) sustain focus on the pratyaya for an extended period of time, and (2) minimize their self-consciousness during the practice, then dhyāna transforms into samādhi. In this fashion, then, the yogin becomes fused with the pratyaya. Patanjali compares this to placing a transparent jewel on a coloured surface: the jewel takes on the colour of the surface. Similarly, in samādhi, the consciousness of the yogin fuses with the object of thought, the pratyaya. The pratyaya is like the coloured surface, and the yogin’s consciousness is like the transparent jewel.

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Samadhi states can be variously understood and also are fundamental to successful Buddhist practice. We can learn a lot from the many ways these meditative states have been understood in the past and how they are understood today. I would like to emphasize that samadhi and jhana meditative states are eminently achievable and practical. In a deep sense they should be seen as ordinary, something everyone can do. They are fundamental to Buddhist practice and can be thought of as the culmination of the Noble Eightfold Path, the last element of which is Right Samadhi. Samadhi is both a deep internalization of non-sensory experience and a reformation of how we think and perceive. Samadhi both leads to and is a profound transformation of all mental, emotional, and physical tendencies. Basking often in samadhi or jhana states inclines the mind toward enlightenment. Samadhi is a core experiential aspect of Buddhist philosophy, without which Buddhist thought does not make much sense. ABN

Gangsters, Money and Murder: How Chinese Organized Crime Is Dominating America’s Illegal Marijuana Market

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A quadruple murder in Oklahoma shows how the Chinese underworld has come to dominate the booming illicit trade, fortifying its rise as a global powerhouse with alleged ties to China’s authoritarian regime.

It seemed an unlikely spot for a showdown between Chinese gangsters: a marijuana farm on the prairie in Kingfisher County, Oklahoma.

On a Sunday evening in late November 2022, a blue Toyota Corolla sped down a dirt-and-gravel road in the twilight, passing hay meadows and columns of giant wind turbines spinning on the horizon. The Corolla braked and turned, headlights sweeping across prairie grass, and entered the driveway of a 10-acre compound filled with circular huts and row after row of greenhouses. Past a ranch house, the sedan stopped outside a large detached garage.

The driver, Chen Wu, burst out of the car with a 9 mm pistol in his hand. Balding and muscular, he had worked at the farm and invested in the illegal marijuana operation.

Charging into the garage, Wu confronted the five men and one woman working inside. Like him, they were immigrants from China. Piles of marijuana leaves cluttered the brightly lit room, covering a table and stuffed into plastic bins and cardboard boxes.

Wu aimed his gun at He Qiang Chen, a 56-year-old ex-convict known at the farm as “the Boss.” Chen had a temper; he was awaiting trial in the beating and shooting of a man two years earlier at a Chinese community center in Oklahoma City.

Before Chen could make a move, Wu shot him in the right knee. The boss fell to the floor, writhing in pain.

Wu held the others at gunpoint. He said Chen owed him $300,000 and told his hostages they had half an hour to get him the money.

If they didn’t, he said, he would kill them all.

Both the shooter and his victim were from Fujian, a coastal province known for mafias, immigration and corruption. They had come to America and joined a wave of new players rushing into the nation’s billion-dollar marijuana boom: Chinese mobsters who roam from state to state, harvesting drugs and cash and overwhelming law enforcement with their resources and elusiveness.

…Chinese organized crime “has taken over marijuana in Oklahoma and the United States,” said Donnie Anderson, the director of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, in an interview.

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UPDATE: This is a good article in and of itself and also because it shows how easily a well-organized criminal enterprise supported by a powerful nation-state can evade American law enforcement and operate without being detected inside USA. Sad to say, USA is riddled with criminal gangs of this type, some going back centuries, engaged in many other enterprises besides drugs and human trafficking. It pains me that so few realize that our nation has already been entirely infiltrated by gangs backed by nation-states who have penetrated and now control the highest levels of power in America. We can see this phenomenon at the state level in Arizona, New Mexico and Southern California and at the national level in Washington, DC where politicians eagerly do the bidding of foreign governments and even kowtow to their leaders when they visit Congress. ABN

The Lost Years of Jesus

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…as skepticism about Jesus was gaining ground in the nineteenth century, new evidence emerged in support of the historical Jesus. In the 1880s, a Russian explorer, Nicolas Notovitch made an extensive journey through central Asia, and on his return to Europe went public with sensational claims that rocked the Christian world. Notovitch said he had visited a Buddhist monastery in northern Kashmir where he was shown ancient manuscripts about Jesus who was known as “Issa”. Incidentally, this just happens to be the name for Jesus in the Koran. Assuming Notovitch was telling the truth, this new evidence strongly supported the historical underpinnings of Christianity. But was he on the level?

Notovitch was born in Crimea in 1858, the son of Jewish parents. However, in his younger years he converted to the Eastern Orthodox Church after an extensive study of religion. On returning from Asia, he attempted to interest Vatican officials in a preliminary draft for a book he had written about his trip that included a translation of the alleged Buddhist manuscripts. However, in Rome, a cardinal whom Notovitch describes as “very close to the Holy Father” was less than enthusiastic, and replied: “What good would it do to print this? Nobody will attach to it any great importance and you will create a number of enemies.” The cardinal offered to reimburse him for his time and trouble; but Notovitch refused. In Paris, he also discussed a book project with Cardinal Rotelli who also tried to dissuade him.

Although I was not surprised to learn about this resistance from the Roman Church, I was disappointed nonetheless. One might have hoped for a more open-minded attitude given that the four gospels have absolutely nothing to say about the so called “lost years,” the roughly 17-year period in the life of Jesus between the ages of thirteen and thirty when his public ministry began in Palestine. Over many centuries, the lost years have remained a historical void and a question mark. Surely the issue qualifies as a mystery, and one deserving of a serious investigation.

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Details the story that Jesus survived his crucifixion and went to Kashmir where he lived out the rest of his long life. The linked article is panned by many readers in the comments, but I found it interesting and appreciate the author’s work. ABN

Heroic doctor dies days after exposing deadly COVID-Vax component

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Four days after German chemist Dr. Andreas Noack released his final video on graphene hydroxide, he was seized by a sudden unexplained attack that caused paralysis, weakness, profound disorientation (like he was drunk), and collapse with loss of breathing. His pregnant wife described the event in two videos. In the first video, her description led early listeners to assume that Dr. Noack was physically attacked, but that was not the case. In the second video, Dr. Noack’s partner further explained that she suspected he was struck by some kind of directed energy weapon (and reported at one point that the electricity went out just before he was incapacitated.)

2020 police raid and arrest of Dr Andreas Noack. One year later, he would die under mysterious circumstances three days after exposing graphene hydroxide in the Covid vaccines.  [continue reading below]

This would not be the first time that Dr. Noack was attacked prior to his sudden and unexpected death, as he was assaulted by police the year before in Nov. 2020. During live filming, Dr. Noack suddenly interrupted his discussion, and pounding and yelling could be heard from the next room. Even without translation, the video is extraordinarily chilling. Police, yelling in German, barge into Dr. Noack’s studio, wearing face masks and bulletproof vests, all in black and carrying weapons. They wrestle the doctor to the floor, and eventually, one of the police, himself panting with anxiety, disables the camera as raised voices continue off-camera.  I had to locate this video in archives as it had been erased from internet links.

We are being controlled, steered, managed, stifled, misdirected, propagandized, lied to, frightened, restrained, repressed, and generally bamboozled at every turn.

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Politically, virtually everything we see throughout the West entails rapidly increasing totalitarianism, total state-control of the human mind. What is not yet widely recognized among those who can see what is happening is totalitarianism is often violent at precise individual levels. It is very plausible that Noack was murdered with a directed energy weapon. His violent death was meant to send a signal to others.

At less conspicuous levels, totalitarian violence is employed not to kill individuals but to to weaken or destroy them, thereby also weakening their communities. Typically, violence of this nature is done clandestinely against promising children and young adults to disable them before they can cause the totalitarians any trouble. Poison, psychosurgery, sensory damage, psychological isolation and more are the tactics used. By weaking or disabling the young, they weaken their entire community.

Israel has used this tactic for decades against Palestinians. Shooting children in the eyes or ears with rubber bullets or the knees with real ones can disable individuals for life. Random arrests and torture, psychological or otherwise, can be as harmful as psychosurgery or accompany it. ABN

‘Pleasure that has nothing to do with sensuality, nothing to do with unskillful mental qualities’ — The Buddha

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I entered & remained in the first jhana: rapture & pleasure born from seclusion, accompanied by directed thought & evaluation. Could that be the path to Awakening?’ Then following on that memory came the realization: ‘That is the path to Awakening.’ I thought: ‘So why am I afraid of that pleasure that has nothing to do with sensuality, nothing to do with unskillful mental qualities?’ I thought: ‘I am no longer afraid of that pleasure that has nothing to do with sensuality, nothing to do with unskillful mental qualities

source and context

Too many people only understand bits of Buddhist philosophy and misunderstand the joyful, blissful experiential basis of Buddhist practice. Right samadhi (or jhana) is a ‘pleasure that has nothing to do with sensuality, nothing to do with unskillful mental qualities.’ Samadhi states are normal, achievable states. All human beings have the capacity to experience samadhi states. Right Samadhi is the eighth element of the Noble Eightfold Path. Buddhism is a profound philosophy and also a profound experience, a joyful experience. ABN

SCOTLAND: Hate Crime and Public Order Bill starts April 1… meaning ‘misogyny’ and ‘stirring up hatred’ will be treated as criminal offences

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The Scottish Government confirmed today that the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act will take effect on April 1, bringing with it some of the most draconian curbs on freedom of speech and expression in any free democracy on earth. It has taken 40 years longer than Orwell predicted… but we have finally arrived in the totalitarian nightmare that he feared.

If somebody breaks into your garden shed and steals your bike, for example, or if your car is vandalized, then no action will be taken unless there is a witness or other evidence such as CCTV footage. However, if you were to say that you wouldn’t want an adult transgender female with male genitalia to share a changing room at the swimming pool with your daughter, then you may risk prosecution.

The Hate Crime Act was pushed through the Scottish Parliament by the current First Minister Humza Yousaf during his stint as Justice Secretary, although much like almost everything else he has ever been involved with (barring his deeply held convictions over Israel and Gaza) it wasn’t actually his idea.

Indeed, it was the brainchild of his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon, who hoped to leave as a “legacy” the Gender Recognition Reform Act that would allow people in Scotland to legally change their gender after just three months and without any medical grounds for doing so.

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The basis of these laws is totalitarian mind-control and nothing more or less. Laws like this ‘work’ by frightening people into silence and self-censorship; their absurdity is a feature not a bug as irrational controls produce stronger internal submission than rational ones. The underlying psychological mechanism of this species of legalistic mind-control is to seize control of a community’s psycholinguistic constellation of words and thought. Once major words and concepts have been commandeered, only the most thoughtful and intelligent will understand what is happening, and only if they pay attention. The other 50-90% of the population can be expected to blithely ride this ever-changing lexical conveyor belt straight to totalitarian hell. ABN

AI ‘hate speech’ breakdown

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click image for larger

Firstly, ‘hate speech’ is not illegal in USA and neither is hate. Let’s hope they never will be. Today, however, ‘hate speech’ is effectively illegal or close to illegal because ordinary people as well as AI will flag or punish you for it. Secondly, what does the graph above even mean? Does it mean that AI is more sensitive to ‘hate speech’ at the top of the graph or that ‘hate speech’ is more often directed against groups at the top? I do not recall anyone hating on disabled people, so probably the algorithm is dialed to be more sensitive for groups at the top. The AI could also use a wide variety of ways to determine what gets flagged. The graph was Xed by Elon Musk along with his statement that we should be concerned with how AI is programmed. X is still using ‘freedom of speech but not reach’, which Musk must know is total bs. The algorithm at X is horrible. You lose ‘reach’ if you follow accounts with low numbers of followers, or ‘like’ one of their Xweets, or repost it. This forces everyone into narrow silos that favor cunning over content. The excuse is always advertisers and money, which means we are controlled by the products sold in shopping malls and the hatred of whomever controls the AI. Reddit has a better format than X. Maybe Musk will consider buying Reddit and fixing it’s algorithm which would allow X-like censorship to be tailored to precise subreddits and thus not ruin the entire site. ABN

The Case for Building Wealth with Richard Werner

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link to video, 77 min, w audio file

This interview is from CA Fitts Solari Report, and is available to the public for free. ABN

UPDATE: Just finished watching this. It’s a terrific discussion, very informative. Don’t miss it! Essential for understanding what the basic banking/ economic problem in USA is, how to fix it, and why Central Bank Digital Currency will be a disaster for everyone except the central bankers who will control everything. ABN

Defining Antisemitism: 2024 South Dakota Legislature House Bill 1076

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In reviewing, investigating, or deciding whether an alleged violation of this chapter is antisemitic, the Division of Human Rights must consider the definition of antisemitism. For the purposes of this chapter, the term “antisemitism” has the same meaning as the working definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance on May 26, 2016, including the contemporary examples of antisemitism identified therein.

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The working definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance on May 26, 2016:

  1. Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
  2. Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.
  3. Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).
  4. Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
  5. Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
  6. Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
  7. Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
  8. Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
  9. Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
  10. Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

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Ensuring the Security of God’s Chosen People

Noem proves she is pathetic, a lackey ‘protecting’ her masters who need no protection but rather will use it for continued aggression. Is she signaling obeisance to gain the VP slot or just looking for money? One thing about Gaza is the moral ripple effect into America and Europe is horrifying. Noem is but one example of many. ABN

Stupid of Trump to play this shit-stained card

~ ABN ~ 1 Comment

He should have distanced himself from the vaxxes two years ago. Maybe there is a political calculus where this is a good move but I don’t see it. That said, and bad as this position is, it is in no way a deal-breaker. The vax is a nasty issue but wars, borders, trade, economy, fuel, laws, USA Constitution & sociology are much bigger issues. AND, there is no other candidate who has anywhere near Trump’s potential to actually help USA. ABN