The pilot responsible for crashing a Delta plane upside down at the Toronto Pearson International Airport on February 17, 2025, has been identified as 26-year-old First Officer Kendal Swanson.
A beauty pageant winner from Minnesota, Swanson had only completed her training in April and had logged fewer than 1,500 flight hours at the time of the incident.
The more experienced captain, James Henneman, was managing communications during the crash while Swanson piloted.
No one should want to be put in a job they are not able to do. Swanson should not have wanted this and should have refused to attempt the landing, especially considering the stormy conditions. DEI fails at every level. And it especially fails at the level of the person who is promoted above their skill level. Swanson got lucky as no one died but the risk she took should be a warning to her for the rest of her life and to all of us that ideologies like DEI are not just stupid and wrong but extremely dangerous. Under Biden and his ilk we have been betting our entire nation and civilization on DEI. That kind of thinking must go. We will destroy USA and the West if we persist and then, even immigrants will have nowhere to go. ABN
UPDATE: Thanks to pimacanyon for providing the video below in his comment, which is well-worth reading. The video is a sort of rebuttal of my post above, which I am going to leave up since the public has a right to know what happened and if they don’t tell us even the basics, we are going to talk anyway. If Swanson didn’t land the plane, who did? If she was ‘qualified’ in some way or other, she was also only minimally experienced, so why did the pilot have her land the plane in such bad weather? I have seen a video analysis of the landing which claims whoever landed the plane failed to do a mandatory maneuver, which raises the plane’s nose, thus causing the aircraft to slam onto to the runway and overturn. When was the last time we saw a plane slam onto a runway and overturn like that? ABN
I have written about the Trump Doctrine for several years; however, as we enter this critical inflection moment perhaps a revisit is worthwhile to consider.
What you will notice from President Trump’s responses to questions during foreign leader engagements is the unique nature of his honesty. In the most consequential of ways, President Trump is the most consequential foreign policy leader in generations. We forget that during Trump’s first term in office, the headlines about North and South Korea were not about conflict, but rather about the possibility of unification on the Korean peninsula.
President Trump executes a unique doctrine of sorts, where national security is achieved by leveraging U.S. economic power. It is a fundamental shift in approaching both allies and adversaries; summarized within the oft repeated phrase: “economic security is national security.”
The Trump Doctrine using economics to achieve national security objectives and global peace is a fundamental paradigm shift. Modern U.S. history provides no easy reference for the effective outcome.
President Trump doesn’t just represent an office or title, nor does he simply represent the majority of the American people; President Trump’s voice is the voice of every ordinary person, what the non-English speaking world defines as “simple people,” and he channels a global message from the majority to the top of the highest power structures.
[I highly recommend this article. It provides a clear summary of Trump’s politics and why they are the way they are; why he does what he does. ABN]
Therefore, totalitarianism is inevitable. Advances in technology are now and will continue to be used by KOBK players against each other and against any and all potential rivals, including the masses.
That’s all there is to it. Nothing can stop it.
The only options are better or worse totalitarianism. I can imagine a fairly decent state with very low crime and a thriving population. I can also imagine something really bad.
A really bad state would lobotomize any potential enemy within, even for minor disruption. Lobotomies are already being used to control populations in many parts of the world, including USA. There will be even more of it. There will be less need to cut off your digital dollars or monitor your face because it’s much easier to simply lobotomize you without your permission or knowledge.
Who will be in ultimate control? Whichever group is strongest, most cohesive, most ruthless. How will we know them? Secrecy is to their advantage, so it’s highly probable we will never know who they are.
Who was in control of the Biden administration? Who controls US IC, Five Eyes? How much power do Jews really have? How much power do European royal families really have? How much power does Putin or Xi have?
Empires are inevitable due to the basic reality of KOBK game theory — that players in KOBK conflicts do not know for certain how powerful they are vis-a-vis their adversaries or how powerful their adversaries are. Moreover they do not know for certain the aims, motivations, and/or methods of their adversaries.
This is why hierarchies always grow and always strive to become more powerful. There is not going to be a multipolar world in any other sense than more than one empire competing with the other(s). Within each empire, totalitarianism. Total control. ABN
The only people who say they are “beyond left and right” are people their opponents call “far right.” White advocacy is nominally on the Right because it defends hierarchy. Leftism is egalitarian. We defend the interests of our own race, and races are not equal.
However, if someone is not just a race realist but also a white advocate, there is a sense in which he is egalitarian and collectivist. Racial identity means that being part of a people has inherent worth. It means that every white person is important because he or she is white. All are our people. Race is our extended family.
Patriotism is similar. We owe more loyalty to countrymen than to foreigners. Patriotism grew out of racial or ethnic solidarity when European countries were homogenous, but today it is largely an abstraction.
It is easy to sneer at it, but national loyalty is still the bedrock of the international system. Even the most decadent liberal democracy has stern penalties for treason. And — only when it suits them — liberals piously warn us we must protect our “sovereignty” from “foreign interference.”
Historically, nationalism has at least some left-wing elements. It assumes that the masses, or at least the middle class, will participate in politics. The true reactionary Right — philosophers such as Julius Evola and statesmen such as Metternich — were skeptical of nationalism and other movements that promised to give the masses a voice. In the 19th century, nationalists wanted to unite Germany in the name of the people, not to benefit local princes. The Risorgimento in Italy led to a constitutional monarchy with an elected lower house in parliament.
A major feature in language is the importance of asking and how you ask.
The impetus for all speech resides deeply in and around the imperative that we must want and ask for the spiritual development we are seeking. Frivolous asking and mundane desires do not count in this. They are outside of deep language use.
The Buddha only spoke on the Dharma when and if he was asked to do so.
The source and meaning of language and meaning itself can be glimpsed in this. Right Language is a soul-deep operation of the mind.
In this respect, FIML is a profound philosophical answer to what language is, what meaning is, what communication and communion are. FIML is this answer because it reveals and analyzes real-time, real-world speech between honest partners.
You cannot cut that close to the bone in any other way. Two people, true speech, true analysis — the source of linguistic being is revealed. The conundrums of psychology are healed.
FIML speaks to us within language, not from outside of language. With practice, FIML will move the source of your speech and meaning to your true experience. It will remove from you the need to understand yourself through extrinsic language and meaning.
In this sense, FIML is truly a philosopher’s stone. It will take you to the deepest levels you are capable of. ABN
Global workspace theory is a description of how our minds work. The word global refers to the whole mind or brain, not the world.
The central feature of this theory—the global workspace—is conscious working memory, or working memory that could be made conscious with minimal effort.
This global workspace is also what a great deal of Buddhist mindfulness attends to. If we focus our attention on what is coming in and out of our global workspace, we will gain many insights into how our minds operate.
The Buddha’s five skandhaexplanation of consciousness can be understood as a form (or percepta) entering the global workspace.
Consciousness is the fifth skandha in the chain of skandhas. It is very important to recognize that whatever we become conscious of is not necessarily right.
With this in mind, we can see that being mindful of what is entering and leaving our global workspace can help us forestall errors from forming and growing in our minds.
In the Buddhist tradition, ignorance (a kind of error) is the deep source of all delusion.
But how do I know if the percepta or bits of information entering my awareness are right or wrong?
Well, there is science and Bayesian thought processes to help us, and they are both very good, but is there anything else?
What about my actual mind? My psychology? My understanding of my being in the world? How do I become mindful and more right about these?
Besides science and Bayes, I can ask an honest friend who knows me well if the percepta I think I just received from them is right or wrong.
If my friend knows the game, they will be ready to answer me before my global workspace changes too much. If my friend confirms my interpretation of what they just did or said, I will know that my interpretation (or consciousness) is correct.
If they disconfirm, I will know that my interpretation was incorrect, a mistake.
This kind of information is wonderful!
We calibrate fine instruments to be sure we are getting accurate readings from them. Why not our own minds?
This kind of calibration can be done in a general way, but you will get a general answer in that case. If you want a precise reading, a mindfulness answer, you need to play the FIML communication game.
UPDATE: I’ve watched 45 minutes of this and, so far, it is a beautiful model of how to talk. These guys are both trained philosophers and act like it. They listen charitably (means use the best possible interpretation of what they hear) to each other, delight in rebuttals, and quickly and easily clear up misunderstandings with evident pleasure as they move almost seamlessly together deeper and deeper into their topic without losing sight of where they want to go. Maybe at minute 46 they are going to kill each other in a fit of anger, who knows? Up to minute 45, they provide an exquisite example of how to talk about philosophy. And what FIML can teach partners about how to talk to each other.
The field of FIML is not philosophy per se. It is the idiosyncratic intermeshed fields of the FIML partners themselves. I have often said FIML has no content save what partners bring to it. FIML is a technique which reveals what our content is, what we are bringing to our relationship. Once both partners see clearly through the eyes and ears of each other what both of you are bringing, you will also delight in the fun of being able to talk as well as Kastrup and Hawkins (but about much more than just philosophy). I doubt either one of them does FIML and both of them might find it difficult since so much of their psycholinguistic constellations are defined by academic philosophy, but I know they could do it if they tried. ABN
UPDATE: This is a very accessible philosophical discussion during which Kastrup lays out a clear argument for Analytical Idealism. What Kastrup describes is a very good way to understand Buddhist philosophy, which is based on similar thinking but takes it further. I highly recommend this discussion and other videos and essays by Kastrup. He is a perfect advocate for understanding Buddhism since he seems to be entirely unaware of Buddhist thought and entirely devoid of normative Buddhist cliches. ABN
The recent loophole-free verification of Bell’s inequalities [Hensen et al., 2015] has shown that no theory based on the joint assumptions of realism and locality is tenable. This already restricts the viability of realism — the view that there is an objective physical world; that is, a world (a) ontologically distinct from mentation that (b) exists independently of being observed — to nonlocal hidden-variables theories. More specifically, other recent experiments have shown that the physical world is contextual: its measurable physical properties do not exist before being observed [Grö blacher et al., 2007; Lapkiewicz et al., 2011; Manning et al., 2015]. Contextuality is a formidable challenge to the viability of realism.
These developments seem to corroborate Richard Conn Henry’s assertion in his 2005 Nature essay that “The Universe is entirely mental” [Henry, 2005: 29]. After all, in a mental universe (a) observation necessarily boils down to perceptual experience — what else? — and (b) the physical properties of the world exist only insofar as they are perceptually experienced. There is no ontological ground outside mind where these properties could otherwise reside before being represented in mind. Indeed, in a mental universe observation is the physical world — not merely a representation of the world — which not only echoes but makes sense of contextuality.
Theise provides a good description of Right Samadhi at 6:02 min, prompted.
Buddhist philosophy and practice is founded on samadhi states, which might be described as the doors which open to the temple of Deepest Reality. Samadhi states are available to all people. They are the experiential part of Buddhism. They have to be experienced to make sense, and once experienced all of Buddhism will make sense.
Western civilization has almost no traditional awareness of samadhi. We have scores of philosophers and religious thinkers, but no samadhi. It is a glaring omission, one that has led us astray in many ways. Fortunately, today more people are beginning to see what samadhi states are, as Theise illustrates. Be sure to watch the whole clip as it will provide context to what he says about samadhi.
Buddhism is sort of implicitly ‘panpsychist’ or based on consciousness as a primary aspect of reality. Mind Only or Yogacara Buddhism makes this claim more explicitly. Samadhi is beautiful, joyful, wonderful. It will change you very deeply for the better or make you realize you don’t need to be changed at all. ABN
UPDATE: This is a very good discussion which can be understood within a Buddhist ‘mind only’ framework (or not). I have posted it especially because it seems to conform very well with what the Buddha might have thought and/or how later Buddhists came to understand Buddhist enlightenment, the cessation of all suffering through fully understanding all of reality. This video is the first part of a planned two-part discussion. The second part has not yet been posted. The second part is going to start with the question why the universal mind itself does not experience metacognition. I have some idea how Kastrup will answer that question, but will wait for his take before commenting further. Kastrup’s work in general seems to me to be a good way to consider Buddhist practice and thought from a modern point of view, using vocabularies and concepts we are familiar with or which can be readily accessed. It is important to know that the captions for the above video rarely correctly render the term Markov Blanket. This is an important term for understanding Kastrup’s ideas. More information can be found here: Markov Blanket. ABN
UPDATE 2: Near the end of the discussion linked above, Kastrup says he is incapable of meditation. I hope he reads this because I want to point out to him and others that meditation, or samadhi in Buddhism, is the method for the ‘small self’, which resides inside its Markov Blanket, to commune with the One Mind (Kastrup’s term, which works well with Buddhist thought). Samadhi is a natural state. When you take your attention away from Kastrup’s ‘dashboard’ and open the windows (let’s ignore the wind in his metaphor), your ‘small self’ perceives and experiences One Mind. Like all experience, samadhi states become richer and richer the more we experience and appreciate them. I would like to also encourage Kastrup and others to read this description of the Five Skandhas. The ‘consciousness’ which arises out of the first four skandhas is the consciousness of the small self, the self ensconced in its Markov Blanket. Whether he knows it or not, Kastrup has done an excellent job of describing Buddhist thought and practice in modern terms. I particularly like his work because, as far as I know, he has never mentioned Buddhism. For this reason, he provides a very refreshing take on the Dharma very clearly explicated and coming from a different angle from all others. ABN
I agree with a lot of what Kastrup says in this discussion. One important thing he seems to be missing or misunderstanding (or chose not to discuss) is the fundamental dramatic nature of consciousness, of conscious life, which as with everything else is fundamental to nature itself as he describes it. Nature is not just impersonal forces or impersonal thought or impersonal anything but also drama. The dramas are bigger than us, just as all of nature is. And there are more beings than just humans who participate in these dramas. And we are all touched at many levels and in many ways by drama. We are not just traveling on an impersonal road only able at best to feel contented, well situated, in tune. We are also actors in dramas, some of which are our own making, some not. I like the way he says motives or intentions flow through him but are not his; they are elements of impersonal nature. I think he is inkling the dramas when he senses that. ABN
American Buddhist Net 