Southern California Beaches and Coastal Towns

Southern California Beaches and Coastal Towns

The San Diego County coastline starts at the border with Mexico and runs north to Orange County. In between are over 100 named beaches with a lot of diversity.

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Orange County is sandwiched between the large urban metropolises of San Diego and LA. The OC coastal cities are smaller in size, but they compete in the quantity and quality of their beaches.

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Los Angeles County is home to about ten million people and on sunny days it seems like most are at the beach. Luckily there are many amazing beaches from Long Beach to Malibu to choose from.

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Catalina Island is a short ferry ride away from ports in Long Beach, Dana Point, and Los Angeles. Catalina's public beaches are yours to discover.

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Renting a vacation home in Malibu is one of the best ways to stay and enjoy this stretch of the California Coast. There are few hotels in Malibu and they []

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Rancho Palos Verdes has few hotels, but it has many vacation rentals available. Some of these vacation rentals by owner are located inside the Terranea Resort property, but others are []

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Solana Beach is one of those places on the California coast that doesnt have many hotels, yet it should be a considered for any Southern California vacation. There are several []

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The luxurious Omni La Costa Resort presents elegant accommodations with exceptional amenities to match. With around 600 modernly appointed guestrooms, villas and suites, the large resort also supplies two championship []

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The Las Americas Premium Outlets make up a large open-air outlet mall located on the US side of the Mexico Border south of San Diego. This is a huge mall []

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Take time to play Golf Gardens the 18-hole putt-putt miniature golf course that has been entertaining Catalina Island visitors for about 40 years. This is one of those things that []

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Bayview Park is a hidden gem on Coronado Island. It has one of the best views of the San Diego Skyline and yet this small pocket park is seldom visited []

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Southern California Beaches and Coastal Towns

What is CR? – critical rationalism blog

I like to think of CR (critical rationalism) as a kind of evolving philosophical tradition concerning how we should approach knowledge. It is the Socratic method only with a little bit of modern awareness. While most philosophical traditions regard knowledge as something that has to be certain and justified, CR takes the view that we dont have ultimate answers, but knowledge is nevertheless possible. Truth is an endless quest.

The modern founder of critical rationalism was Karl Popper. Popper pointed out we can never justify anything, we merely criticize and weed out bad ideas and work with whats left. Poppers initial emphasis was on empirical science, where he solved the problem of induction, something that had been haunting philosophers and scientists for centuries. The problem of induction is this. No matter how many times weve seen an apple fall to the ground after weve dropped it, do we have any way to prove the same thing will happen next time we drop it. The answer is no. What Popper pointed out is that you can never justify any scientific theory, but you can falsify it. If I were to claim that all swans were white, one black swan would falsify my theory. In this way, science moves forward by weeding out bad theories, so to speak.

Popper said that science moves forward through a method of conjecture and refutation. While Popper was primarily interested in science, he often commented on political problems as well. Popper liked to emphasize the need for an open society, a society where people can speak out and criticize. After all, if science progresses through refutations, criticizing becomes essential. We need to speak out and therefore we need the freedom to do so. Popper was against any form of government that didnt give people the chance to speak out. Poppers thinking could probably best be summed up in this quote, I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth.

Popper worked hard to expand his ideas, and so have several other people. CR should not be viewed as one mans philosophy, but as a growing philosophical tradition. One in which several people have contributed and are still contributing. One notable person was William Warren Bartley, III. Bartley worked towards expanding the idea of critical rationalism to cover all areas of knowledge, not just empirical science. Bartley felt that while in almost all areas of knowledge we seek justification, we should instead seek criticism. While nothing can ever be justified in any ultimate sense, certainly we can see error and weed it out. This is true whether we are dealing with empirical science and perhaps even knowledge of what is ethical. An important part of Bartleys thinking could probably best be summed up in this quote, How can our intellectual life and institutions, our tradition, and even our etiquette, sensibility, manners and customs, and behavior patterns, be arranged so as to expose our beliefs, conjectures, ideologies, policies, positions, programs, sources of ideas, traditions, and the like, to optimum criticism, so as at once to counteract and eliminate as much intellectual error as possible, and also so as to contribute to and insure the fertility of the intellectual econiche: to create an environment in which not only negative criticism but also positive creation of ideas, and the development of rationality, are truly inspired.

Neither Bartley or Popper have exhaustively explored the full potential of the CR philosophical tradition. Indeed, there are unlimited possibilities. While CR often emphasizes criticism, it also encourages new approaches and creative thinking. We need to come up with as many new ideas as we can, then let the process of criticism weed out the less workable ones. As CR accepts that the truth is out there and we are working towards it, it is actually a very optimistic philosophical tradition. Perhaps the most optimistic among the big three philosophical traditions. What are the big three traditions. Let me give you a quick summary.

One, dogmatism. Decide that you are privy to ultimate truth and then just follow that truth no matter what. Does such an attitude contribute to fanaticism? Perhaps.

Two, pessimism. Decide that truth is impossible, relative, random, meaningless. Just do whatever you want because nothing matters anyway. Does such an attitude contribute to random violence? Perhaps.

Three, critical rationalism, the truth is out there, but no one has a monopoly on it, so lets work together to try and get a little closer to it. Does such an attitude contribute to progress and mutual respect? More than likely.

If youd like more details than this then thats what this blog is for, please look around and explore.

Matt Dioguardi, blog administrator

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What is CR? - critical rationalism blog

The Luciferian next door A modern face of satanism and …

When I first walked away from this blog it was because I found myself at an impasse. With myself.

The systems I began resonating with and working within were seemingly at odds with one another. And it was around this point that my whole life crumbled. My health had started failing with no end in sight. Due to this I finally lost my job, yet couldnt get approved for disability, and wasnt seeing the improvement needed to land a new job I could sufficiently perform. I was out of prospects and hurtling toward inevitable homelessness. During this, my fianc left me, on my birthday of all days, while in a particularly private and vulnerable position. An intentional act of cruelty that took advantage of an altered state. This was the final straw. I broke.

The next 6-12 months were spent near suicidal. I would open my eyes upon waking in the morning then crumble into sobs because I wished I had died. I couldnt bear to face another day. Id lost my gods, my faith, my love, my job, my health, my sense of self, Id lost everything. I had ceased to be. I didnt care anymore. But the sun always rose, relentlessly, and I was convinced that something would be happy if I killed myself so I just endured out of spite. And so it repeated day after day after day.

I did not have context for much of what I had dabbled in. Like a kid in a candy store I was excited by all the options. It was all new to me and I tried my hand at almost everything. I trusted peoples word naively assuming they had to know better than me due to my lack of experience. I unknowingly said things I should not have, unknowingly posted things I should not have, and I didnt feel I understood my own practice any longer. There were others who I knew existed now, I had found them, seen their posts, read their books, listened to their musick, but I was still alone and isolated. My personal notes and myths crisscrossed with theirs in so many ways. I had no idea what to make of it. It was jarring, overwhelming, confusing, and I was completely lost.

Until their first manifestations in the form of this blog and the other (now closed) social media groups and sites, my beliefs and practice had always been hidden and in secret. My run ins with church authorities throughout my youth were never because I blabbed or spoke my mind about these practices. I had hiding spots for my notebooks. Even the symbols of my faith were hand designed between myself and the primary spirit I worked with so that I could have something to hold onto that others wouldnt violently react to if they saw it. All of my theories, notes, communications, etc., had been between only myself and the page. Often at least partially written in code and shorthand so that even if the notes were found they would be indecipherable to others. I denied everything. Always. After the Satanic accusations were started by my mother in my early teens I outwardly denied belief in anything at all and claimed to be an atheist who didnt believe in any gods or devils (despite my own continued private practicing), but it was to no avail. She just kept insisting that during prayer God, specifically Y-H in this case, had told her what I was involved with.

So after all of this, after reaching out to find anyone else, albeit virtually, I came to a point where I dejectedly thought, what the hell am I doing? What else but harm would possibly come from continuing to talk about this? Clearly, Ive gone massively wrong somewhere. What if I cast this information in a false light simply out of my own ignorance? Would that not be disrespectful to my own gods? To their systems? To their practitioners? Have I already done so? Is that why people are behaving as they are toward me? What if I point others in a bad or unsafe direction? This isnt to say my own writing stopped. Ive filled another 2-3 notebooks during the interim, but I did not feel it would benefit anyone to read those thoughts or theories.

***

Fast forward to current day. After having rebuilt my life on December 24th, while driving to a friends holiday dinner, I was victim of a hit and run collision. A drunk driver came tearing down the surface street I was on at freeway speeds. I was stopped at a red light waiting to turn into the neighborhood. I heard the squealing of brakes behind me and looked up at my rearview mirror to see white smoke billowing up from the tires of a truck skidding towards me. I gasped, and before I had time to do anything else BAM he slammed into the rear of my car. Then pulled up alongside me, looked straight at me, and sped off around the corner leaving a trail of radiator fluid from his smashed front end.

I mention this because in the aftermath of this event I found myself running in the same circles as I had when I had decided to walk away from my practice and realizing that has led me back to this blog.

Two days prior to the accident I had brought offerings to a protection spirit who I had called upon as a shield back when my practice and life were both crumbling. Recently, in hindsight, I was able to see footprints of this spirit and felt he was due an official thank-you for much that has occurred since then. I hoped to thank him for his previous unseen assistance. I wanted to hopefully build a working relationship with one another moving forward if he was open to it. I had been thinking up different offering ideas but not really feeling pulled to any one thing or another. I figured Id push it out of mind until something felt right.

With it being winter I decided to try my hand at making stew that day. Id let it cook in the crock-pot all day so the house would get all delicious smelling and cozy. Within a few hours the impression that he wanted stew was constant and impossible to ignore. So the next day when I had the house to myself and could do so unnoticed by the mundane I reheated it in the crock pot, built him an altar with fresh candles and his charged sigil, brought him a bloodstone in a silk bag as a symbol of his protection and brought him a big bowl of hot stew with a few slices of fresh bread. I laid this out, called to him and spoke a short but heartfelt message of thanks and of my intent to him then invited him to enjoy the offerings.

As human nature would have it, following the accident I was angry. Some protection I mumbled and kept thinking about how I was going to give him an earful once I was back home. As despite having insurance I could still be stuck in a bad situation.

I knew it! I thought. This system is at odds with my beliefs, these spirits wont ever protect me and I was stupid to think they would.

I started convincing myself that those footprints I had thanked him for were just me connecting dots that werent necessarily connected. Wishful thinking I told myself, You should know better than to believe anyone has your back.

Then as the night went on and I was better able to grasp what had just happened I stopped and took stock of the fact that physically, aside from some major soreness, I was fine. When the truck was barreling toward me in the rear view mirror I just knew my face was going to be smashed through my own windshield, yet it wasnt, I was fine. Not a scratch, not a broken bone, not a drop of blood on me. And suddenly it occurred to me, this could have been, and looked like it was going to be, a hell of a lot worse.

But this brings me to a strange place as a practitioner. The only context I have for these thoughts is my Evangelical (Pentecostal) Christian upbringing, where every bad event is explained away as God working in mysterious ways (or demonic influence) and every time things work out God is thanked as having helped. This is not a context I am comfortable with or willing to work within for obvious reasons. Aside from the fact that I dont share their God, it seems like an intellectually dishonest position to hold.

Despite working with entirely different gods in an entirely different manner, I came to think, am I not doing the exact same thing? When calling upon spirits for aid with specific issues or short-term projects its pretty easy to gauge their influence, if any. But with more broad concerns like protection, health, etc., how on earth can we ever know where to draw the line? How can we possibly quantify or measure their influence? I assume most mature adults understand that no one can be protected at all times. It seems more logical to assume all is chance a la Chaos Magick, but if were engaging with spirits, wouldnt this view disregard any work they actually are doing on our behalf?

Since this blog originally started as a place for discussions, to brainstorm, and just to talk with others who might function within similar worldviews I feel like this is a good topic to come back with. As most of you who will see this are practitioners yourselves, how do you walk that line? How do you avoid blaming spirits or magick for bad luck? How do you avoid giving them undo credit for good luck? Where and how do you find that balance?

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The Luciferian next door A modern face of satanism and ...

Justice League: Cyborg’s Movie Powers Explained

Now thatJustice League is in theaters, Cyborg has finally entered the DCEU but what exactly can this version of Victor Stone do? Last yearsBatman v Superman: Dawn of Justice offered fans a tease of Vic, but its been the lead-up toJustice League thats shown the full extent of the young hero and his abilities. While the proposedCyborg solo film will fully explore the character,Justice League does a good job getting fans up to speed on the cinematic take on the hero.

When we first meet the reborn Stone, the majority of his body has been replaced by cybernetic parts. As he explains to his father Silas, the failed experiment that led to Vics near-death is connected to the Change Engine otherwise known as one of the three Mother Boxes in the film. Augmenting his body with its tech, Cyborg is in a constant state of flux and learns new abilities each day. WhileJustice League never provides a full rundown, we know a number of Cyborgs powers thanks to what he does in the film and what he can do in the comics.

Care of Cyborgs upgrades, hes both super strong and incredibly durable. We even see him stitch his body back together after Steppenwolf literally rips him in half. Cyborg can also interface with any form of technology, from Batmans Knightcrawler to Supermans Kryptonian ship. We can also see him hack into the Batcave on autopilot, tap into military computers with a thought, and track systems all over the world. He can even project holograms to add a little flair to his abilities.

Along with his technopathy, Cyborg hasa slew of offensive and defensive capabilities. His body is constantly changing, and even adapts to threats as they appear. We see him at various points deploy an energy cannon, a rocket launcher, a freeze ray, and even a shield that can withstand Supermans heat vision.

Though Cyborg has been around since the 80s, often fighting alongside the Teen Titans, its his revised origin in the New 52 that the film takes inspiration from. There, his father Silas was experimenting on a Mother Box when his football-star son shows up. Their relationship is contentious, with Silas wanting Victor to use his vast intelligence to become a scientist as well. When an accident causes an explosion, Vic is torn to shreds and only saved once hes bonded with the Mother Box. Most of his movie abilities remain, but he also gains the power to summon Boom Tubes, the portals Steppenwolf uses to get around in the movie.

Like in the film, the New 52 version of Cyborg is similarly changing over time shifting his powers and appearanceas he further bonds with his technology.Justice League, however, pulls a little from the Jamie Reyes version of Blue Beetle. He too has an alien set of armor, but it adapts to situations into near-infinite combinations. It also has a mind of its own, something we see Cyborg struggle with when Superman appears. Still, these concepts fit nicely with Cyborgs alien connection and provide even more tragedy for the character inJustice League.

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Justice League: Cyborg's Movie Powers Explained

The Dharmasar Solution Enlightenment through Extropian …

pivoted, and restarted development of his teaching at least 3 or 4 times, depending on how you keep score. Immediately after forming the intention to benefit all conditioned beings by teaching the Noble Path, he concluded;

And what may be said to be subject to aging illness death sorrow defilement? Spouses & children men & women slaves goats & sheep fowl & pigs elephants, cattle, horses, & mares gold & silver [2] are subject to aging illness death sorrow defilement. Subject to aging illness death sorrow defilement are these acquisitions, and one who is tied to them, infatuated with them, who has totally fallen for them, being subject to birth, seeks what is likewise subject to aging illness death sorrow defilement. This is ignoble search.

So rejecting the household life, he went forth into the homeless life of a bhikkhu. That was the first pivot. Then he approachedAlara Kalama:

Having thus gone forth in search of what might be skillful, seeking the unexcelled state of sublime peace, I went to Alara Kalama and, on arrival, said to him: Friend Kalama, I want to practice in this doctrine & discipline.

When this was said, he replied to me, You may stay here, my friend. This doctrine is such that a wise person can soon enter & dwell in his own teachers knowledge, having realized it for himself through direct knowledge.It was not long before I quickly learned the doctrine. As far as mere lip-reciting & repetition, I could speak the words of knowledge, the words of the elders, and I could affirm that I knew & saw I, along with others

The Dhamma I know is the Dhamma you know; the Dhamma you know is the Dhamma I know. As I am, so are you; as you are, so am I. Come friend, let us now lead this community together.

But the Buddha was not satisfied with Alara Kalamas teaching and moved on to Uddaka Ramaputta. This was the second pivot.

In search of what might be skillful, seeking the unexcelled state of sublime peace, I went to Uddaka Ramaputta and, on arrival, said to him: Friend Uddaka, I want to practice in this doctrine & discipline.

When this was said, he replied to me, You may stay here, my friend. This doctrine is such that a wise person can soon enter & dwell in his own teachers knowledge, having realized it for himself through direct knowledge.

It was not long before I quickly learned the doctrine. As far as mere lip-reciting & repetition, I could speak the words of knowledge, the words of the elders, and I could affirm that I knew & saw I, along with others.

Finally the Buddha saw the limitations ofUddaka Ramaputtas teaching and left him to perform severe austerities alone in the forest. This was the third pivot.

In search of what might be skillful, seeking the unexcelled state of sublime peace, I wandered by stages in the Magadhan country and came to the military town of Uruvela. There I saw some delightful countryside, with an inspiring forest grove, a clear-flowing river with fine, delightful banks, and villages for alms-going on all sides. The thought occurred to me: How delightful is this countryside, with its inspiring forest grove, clear-flowing river with fine, delightful banks, and villages for alms-going on all sides. This is just right for the exertion of a clansman intent on exertion. So I sat down right there, thinking, This is just right for exertion.

But wracking austerities did not deliver the enlightenment the Buddha was seeking either. So, drawing on his childhood experiences of meditative pleasure in jhna, he pivoted again:

Then, monks, being subject myself to birth, seeing the drawbacks of birth, seeking the unborn, unexcelled rest from the yoke, Unbinding, I reached the unborn, unexcelled rest from the yoke: Unbinding. Being subject myself to aging illness death sorrow defilement, seeing the drawbacks of aging illness death sorrow defilement, seeking the aging-less, illness-less, deathless, sorrow-less, unexcelled rest from the yoke, Unbinding, I reached the aging-less, illness-less, deathless, sorrow-less, unexcelled rest from the yoke: Unbinding. Knowledge & vision arose in me: Unprovoked is my release. This is the last birth. There is now no further becoming.

Then the thought occurred to me, This Dhamma that I have attained is deep, hard to see, hard to realize, peaceful, refined, beyond the scope of conjecture, subtle, to-be-experienced by the wise. [3] But this generation delights in attachment, is excited by attachment, enjoys attachment. For a generation delighting in attachment, excited by attachment, enjoying attachment, this/that conditionality & dependent co-arising are hard to see. This state, too, is hard to see: the resolution of all fabrications, the relinquishment of all acquisitions, the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding. And if I were to teach the Dhamma and others would not understand me, that would be tiresome for me, troublesome for me.

Then Brahm appeared to him and begged him to teach for the welfare of the world. We could regard this as a sixth pivot:

Then, just as a strong man might extend his flexed arm or flex his extended arm, Brahma Sahampati disappeared from the Brahma-world and reappeared in front of me. Arranging his upper robe over one shoulder, he knelt down with his right knee on the ground, saluted me with his hands before his heart, and said to me: Lord, let the Blessed One teach the Dhamma! Let the One-Well-Gone teach the Dhamma! There are beings with little dust in their eyes who are falling away because they do not hear the Dhamma. There will be those who will understand the Dhamma.

That is what Brahma Sahampati said. Having said that, he further said this:

In the pastthere appeared among the Magadhansan impure Dhammadevised by the stained.

Throw open the door to the Deathless!Let them hear the Dhammarealized by the Stainless One! All quotes from: Ariyapariyesana Sutta

So if even the Buddha himself had to pivot and reorient his search several times, then what about us? We know enough about innovation to understand that it rarely succeeds on the first try. Thomas Edison trying thousands of formulas for the incandescent light bulb comes to mind.

And developing something like a light bulb or other piece of technology is simple compared with attaining enlightenment. So if you fail, fall down, make mistakes, switch methods, switch teachers, switch ontologies, you are in good company: the Buddha himself also pivoted several times before attaining his goal.

Im always suspicious when some monks bio reads that he found his teacher at an early age and stayed on for years or decades, finally becoming his successor. Its too neat; it doesnt sound like the way it really is; it sounds like they were set up, and he whole thing was planned out. Made men in the monastery.

When I was first starting out I sampled so many spiritual teachers available on the US West Coast, both eastern and western. Most I rejected immediately; it was clear they faking it. I kept those with a clear disciplic succession (parampar) who were faithful to their roots.

I joined several traditional organizations, large and small, Christian, Hindu, Budhist and so on; took the initiations, ordinations and empowerments they offered, and hung around long enough to find out what was really going on.

Sad to say, most were just money-making and power schemes. That doesnt mean there were no intelligent, truthful, pure-minded people with deep knowledge and profound practice. But they were very much in the minority. I made it my business to make friends with them and keep in touch over the years, as part of my valuable spiritual inheritance and fortune.

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The Dharmasar Solution Enlightenment through Extropian ...

Can the AltRight be a modern alternative? Immigration …

The American Alt-Right is at an important juncture in history. America is not that far from becoming majority-minority. It is difficult to map out a set of policies that could restore the historic American nation. One could suggest a complete end to all non-white immigration; a reversal of the incorrect interpretation of a constitutional amendment that gave rise to birthright citizenship; the encouragement of mass immigration from Europe; expulsion of Puerto Rico from US control; and an end to the reception of refugees in America. One could also add bringing in official English (with all states and cities prevented from providing services in other languages); an end to positive discrimination; an end to the collection of any data on racial disparities (which data are used in Left-wing agitation); the routine use of the death penalty (without years on Death Row) in all serious crimes; and the criminalisation of the promotion of multiculturalism in any company or educational establishment. Ultimately it would be desirable (but probably unfeasible) to remove citizenship from people without European ancestry.

None of these things would definitely produce a sustainable white majority. They might delay minority status. They might ensure that white identity survived minority status, so that the white minority was able to advance its own interests over the longer term in America. But one thing is for sure: there is a relatively limited window of time to implement any of this. The significance of Donald Trump and his presidency is that it has led to the rise of a genuine sense of white identity. At the moment, whites are a majority, and a majority ethnic group with a strong identity could achieve much to cement its position over the longer term. Yet there is little sign that the AltRight, centred on the AltRight.com website, is equipped to advance a white-identity movement that can seize the opportunity now presenting itself to them.

I want to examine the AltRights attitude towards homosexuality, and its inability to keep focus on the key issue of white identity. Some parts of the AltRight trace their origins to neo-fascist organisations or other organisations that openly admire central European leaders of the 1930s and 1940s. Others have seemed to project a more modern image. Richard Spencer, in particular, comes across as urbane, presentable, and aware of the need to be able to appeal to a broader sense of white identity than simply the assorted remnants of tiny fringe parties. I admire Spencer and the tone he has taken in all of his videos and podcasts on the Internet. He is hard to smear as simply a neo-Nazi. He has also on a number of occasion expressed a willingness to work with a number of non-traditional elements on the Right, such as the occasional homosexual. I think he had to row back pretty strongly after Milo Yiannopoulos comments on his (Milos) molestation by a older man as a teenager. But before that, Spencer did appear to see the value of the work being done by Milo.

I would like here to draw a distinction between a party with specific goals on the one hand and a broader counterculture that contains varying interests and disparate groups focusing on different issues on the other. The Left is a broad movement that includes a wide range of groups, from Communists to Greens to libertarians of various stripes. Racial, sexual, gay and now transgender groups are all present. These groups may not all see eye to eye on everything. The Muslims and the transgender activists are not really on the same page. But the Left has depth in that there are a wide range of groups that all advance their own causes. The Left is not just a political party or parties, but a thriving culture, including films, TV programmes, magazines, art, captured educational establishments, etc.

A Right counterculture appears to be in the very embryonic stages of being formed. Not all elements in the Right will support each other, and ultimately if some of the wilder elements of the Right got their way there would be something of a reckoning between them. A key issue is the AltRights disdain for the AltLite, people who dont go as far as them, but have in fact done much more to create the grounds for white identity than anyone around Richard Spencer has. Let us think of who these people might be. Milo Yiannopoulos is one: as a gay man, he can fly under radar to a certain extent, making comments that a straight, white male would not get away with. The fact that certain people can say more and get away with it reflects the dominant identity politics narrative on the Left and is a major problem for us. Ultimately, it shouldnt matter who says what; what should matter alone is the quality of the argumentation.

We are confronted with an absurdity. Milo would not be welcome in Richard Spencers ethnostate. Yet he opposes Black Lives Matter, controls on free speech and the nonsense of feminism much more effectively and with a much greater public profile than anyone on the AltRight. The AltLite and Milo in particular have played a vital role in expanding political space for wider discussion. One approach would be to accept the role of such people on certain issues as part of the wider counterculture, but not to accept that these people are or could be part of a white ethnostate. But Milo is white. Why wouldnt he be admitted to the white ethnostate if he chose to move within its bounds and submit to its regulations?

A number of other people with colourful sexual orientations are prominent in the counterculture. In the US context, you could cite Jack Donovan, a gay man who has rejected the gay culture. If I understand it correctly, he would still be someone who likes men (an androphile), but not someone who will be told which hairstyle and pop music he must like, and not someone who would approve of gay marriage either. Greg Johnson, the editor of Counter Currents, has come in for personal attacks by the AltRight for publishing on homosexuality, including the book The Homo and the Negro. It is stated on AltRight forms that he is gay, although Im not aware that he has put his sexuality into the public domain, and I cant think of a reason why he or anyone else should feel they have to do so. In Europe, there are analogues. The flamboyant gay politician Pim Fortuynmurdered for opposing the Islamisation of Hollanddid more to create a movement against Muslim immigration than any neo-Nazi, and ended up being smeared as far-right by all and sundry himself too. The English gay historian, David Starkey, has often upset black groups by making truthful comments on TV. Another English gay, Douglas Murray, is also personally doing much to oppose immigration and Islamisation as deputy editor of the Spectator. In Germany and France, Alternative fr Deutschland (AfD)and Le Front National receive considerable support from homosexuals reluctant to fall under Islamic shariah law. The AfD is led by a lesbian, and an Irish lesbian recently fairly narrowly failed to win the leadership of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) on an anti-Islam platform.

We can also cite involvement in Right-wing politics by those not classifiable as white Christians. Paul Gottfried, a Jewish academic, in fact invented the term alternative right, and has written many articles about the vindictive tone of organised Jewish groups (note: I do not say all individual Jews, and Im always careful to treat people as I find without prejudging them) towards white identity. The admirable Jewish speaker Ben Shapiro is one of the best speakers of the AltLite, making campus visits across the country and speaking out on issues such as gay rights, transgender rights, Black Lives Matter and gun control from a perspective that many Right-wingers could not fail to agree with. American Renaissance, led by the splendid Jared Taylor, also hosts Jewish speakers at its conferences. Other podcasters, such as Stefan Molyneux, appear to have to work overtime to conceal some Jewish ancestry to retain a hearing on the Right. The Jewish Stephen Miller is also doing what he can to defend Americas borders from within the Trump administration. Jared Taylor was recently interviewed by a great black lady, who goes by the name of Tree of Logic on Youtube. She appears favourable to white identity politics. An Iranian man, Jason Reza Jorjani, was until recently on the board of AltRight.com and argued for a bizarre plan to realign Iran with Europe.

It is in the nature of any broad counterculture that it will allow participation from many groups. I wouldnt reject allies where they can be found, particularly as there are only a certain number of years left in which to build support for policy changes that could reverse demographic transformation in America (and many other European nations). Nevertheless, the reality is that many of these AltLite figures will always cleave closer to the mainstream than much of the AltRight. Their participation may serve to dilute the Right or to wean it away from its principles. We saw this recently in the Jorjani episode, when the Iranian kept promising money from anonymous monied backers, before flouncing out and denouncing the whole thing because he was not allowed to control the AltRight corporation. I dont know whether Greg Johnson is gay or not, but an article on AltRight.com claimed he wanted to control Arktos media publishing, and attacked Daniel Friberg, who ended up in control. There seems to be a degree of turmoil in the cricle around Richard Spencer on AltRight.com, and Im not sure any account on that site will be accurate. If Johnson is gay, a Rightwinger could infer a gay hissy fit in his behaviour. Or possibly an attempt to recruit the AltRight and turn it into the AltLite. Certaintly, the argument in The Homo and the Negro that somehow gay men are central to the revival of the West appears aburdly overstated. Johnsons own views are not notably centrist (he appears more rightwing than the AltLite as such)he recently stated on camera that Jews in America should be deported en masse to Israeland his falling out with the AltRight may reflect, not an attempt to water down the AltRight, but rather frustration with the domination of the AltRight by people failing to focus on the key racial/demographic issue.

To varying degrees, the incorporation of non-traditional Rightists into the alternative right will rub up against an unwillingness of many on the Right to modernise their views on some issues in order to focus on the main task at hand. Here we face a difficult problem: what to do about more extreme groups that the media will realise are part of the Right, and whose presence simply holds everyone back. To a certain extent, everyone who is opposed to immigration will realise that extreme acts by some young Rightwingers are an inchoate response to a situation contrived by the Left, that of our national dispossession. We can think of people like Anders Behring Breivik in Norway and James Alexander Fields in the US (who knocked down a woman after the Charlottesville protest). But while these peoples crimes are a response to a situation the Left had no right to bring about, these people are poison to the movement. We have to face the fact that a small number of mentally imbalanced people can play an outsized role in discrediting opposition to immigration. If Richard Spencer and the AltRight want to accomplish anything at all, they have to focus on creating a movement that can realistically achieve something. This means rejecting the participation of the few real extremists. Yet their website has recently insisted that Fields may be innocent. AltRight commenters argue the woman he knocked down may have deserved it because she was obese. Against this background, it is understandable that more rational voices have sought to rein in the AltRight on to more defensible territory.

There is much discussion on the Right of the left-wing habit of refusing to punch left. The Left refuse to condemn Communists, or the Alt-Left, or Antifa. It is suggested that we should refuse to punch right, and thus not be cornered into condemning neo-Nazis and the like. I would argue refusal to draw a line at criminal acts such as murder is both bizarre and wrong. For a start, the Left is in power, and their refusal to punch left is glossed over by the authorities. A failure to be clear on our part that murder is not what we are seeking will only be seized upon with glee by the media and the courts. Some point out that multiculturalism may in fact be pushing us towards civil warEnoch Powell made this pointbut that is not to say that this is a desirable outcome. We need to be clear that we advance immigration restriction to prevent this outcome. In a real civil war, the extremists might make themselves useful, as a civil war becomes a thuggish free-for-all, but how much better to adopt policies that provide for long-term political stability!

This unwillingness to break with the (very, very small) groups of real extremists who hold the movement back marks something of a dividing point between the AltRight and the so-called AltLite. There are people on Gab and the Daily Stormer (Andrew Anglins Hitler-admiring organ) that openly celebrated the death of Heather Heyer at Charlottesville. I will agree the Unite the Right should have been allowed their rally, and that the Charlottesville police and Virginia governor conspired to foment violence on the day by pushing the AltRight into the arms of Antifa, waiting with baseball bats and pepper spray. As far as I know the AltRight gave the Antifa more than they bargained forand why not, in self-defence? But those who celebrate the knocking down of a woman have some kind of problem mentally or psychologically. Those who condemned the murder are not cucks or normies, but decent human beings.

I would argue the AltRight should not dally with extremism, and should welcome the contributions of all the groups I have mentioned above, including gay men, Jews, blacks and others. They are all part of a counterculture that can create space for a white identity. Whether, in the very unlikely event that an ethnostate were created, all of these groups would be welcomed to join in is another question, and really one that cannot be answered right now. For a start, should an ethnostate be 100% white? or would a small and stable minority of around 1% of traders and restaurant-owners be accepted? Would it be North Korea (with no interaction with the outside world) or somewhere like China (an ethnostate that trades globally, with small numbers of foreigners allowed in on extendable business visas)? It may be that small and stable numbers of well-disposed members of the ethnic minorities (enough to staff ethnic restaurants, teach language skills and facilitate international trade, and no more) would be allowed, but in any case we are not in the position to draw up the constitution of a state unlikely to ever be built. Even those on the Right who are obsessed with the role of organised Jewry should put their prejudices aside and accept any contribution by people like Ben Shapironot on every issue, but on specific issuesat least to the extent of being prepared to talk to the guy. Such people are proving useful, and that should be recognised. Right-wing websites like Vdare.com, which I greatly admire, also host articles by a variety of well-disposed minority writers, including Paul Gottfried and others (I recall an American Indian who used to write there). We should be clear that nationalism is about valuing our race and traditions, and not hating others as such.

When it comes to white homosexuals, the argument for seeing a role for them on the Right is even stronger, as they are part of the white race. Note that Im not ignoring the fact that homosexuals are said to be less than 2% of the population, with relatively few of even them willing to come all the way over to the Right. Yet individual gay men can prove rather impervious to strictures on speech, weaponising flamboyance in order to breach speech codes. As pointed out above many gay men do say the unsayable on cultural/racial issues. The few who are genuinely making a clear contribution in discrete areas (Milo et al) are often much more culturally significant than their numbers indicate. It doesnt make any sense to refuse to see such people as part of the wider culture were trying to create.

I have to agree that there is a problem with people like Milo, in that he fails to maintain public decorum and frequently speaks of his love for black cock. In my view, it is unpleasant to hear someone speaking in this smutty manner at public gatherings. The fact that he meets black men for sex is for me a non-issue; the fact that he loves to taunt audiences with this is. Although he may be accepted as part of a broad and deep counterculture along with the AltRightas a broad counterculture will include elements we dont fully agree withhe couldnt really be AltRight until he accepts that such smuttiness is not acceptable. His recent gay marriage also rules him out of the AltRight as such, although he can still serve as a useful idiot expanding the bounds of what is sayable on other issues. Important requirements for genuine membership of the AltRight ought to be opposition to gay marriage; opposition to gay adoption of children; and opposition to employment tribunals to police discrimination against gays. Children should not be exposed to gay propaganda in schools. There should be no sex-change operations. Toilets and other changing facilities should always be single-sex. If a homosexual man agrees with all of that, he is potentially AltRight. A white ethnostate ought not to be governed by a version of shariah law. Private behaviour in the bedroom should not be policed.

There is a good reason why the family has to be the centrepoint of national survival. We have a culture that doesnt wish to survive. Homosexuality, abortion, feminism and divorce work together to promote a culture of hedonism and low birth rates. While the English have less than 2 children, their Pakistani neighbours have 5 or 6. They have a culture that is set to survive and flourish and even overtake ours. For this reason, a man who can be straight would be best advised to be straight and to have English children. Im not sure it makes any sense to tell men who are strongly on the homosexual end of the spectrum to get married and have children: would that be fair to the wives? But those with ambiguous sexuality who could cope with a relationship with a wife should reproduce.

We understand male sexuality better than when we were under strict Christian laws. A recent survey in England showed that only 46% of 18-24-year-olds claim to be exclusively heterosexual. There is only a small number of exclusively gay men, but a continuum of bisexuality in between. While it is true to say that homosexuality is not the norm, neither is being exclusively heterosexual a statistical norm either. Most men are mainly attracted to women, with some limited degree of attraction to men: that is the norm. Having said that, there is much to be said for the view that homosexuality is a barren lifestyle that is a dead-end for the individuals concerned and for their nations. Anecdotal evidence shows that gay men in his 40s or 50s are likely to be single, often without ties to their biological families, without any connection to younger gay men, and with no children and grandchildren. Propaganda about gay pride aside, they will be aware of the essentially sad and unfulfilling nature of the sexuality they have espoused. Gay sexuality is a young mans culture, in other words, a culture whose negative side unfolds itself gradually over the decades of a mans life, until he is left in his old age in a nursing home with no visitors.

Homosexuality is thus a microcosm of what is happening to white culture more broadly, as our societies choose not to survive. Nevertheless, to the extent that a man with a colourful sexual past accepts the primacy of the family and chooses to work for the survival of his nation (albeit a nation that will survive without his descendants among them), it would be counterproductive to reject his service. particularly in the case of an individual who (unlike Milo) maintains decorum in public. This is because many gay men are highly motivated and intelligent propagandisers. Gay men are not normies in the sense that they have already stepped outside social norms, and are often willing to reject the liberal pieties on race and culture. A question arises as to the availability of leadership roles on the Right to men who dont have families. The role of Jorjani shows that non-traditional fraternisers of the Right can be a problem. What has been written of Greg Johnson by the AltRight is also presented as another example of the potentially disruptive nature of involvement by gay men. I think it only natural that gay men have to prove themselves in the nationalist movement.

However, none of us knows who the gay and bisexual men among us are. If they are truly 54% of the whole (when people who are marginally bisexual are included), then the idea of imposing a sexuality test on the right becomes absurd. The chances are greater than even that any individual member of the AltRight will have some degree of attraction to men. We have traditionally been able to provide social roles for homosexual men (e.g. as priests), suggesting there is something artificial about advocating a restoration of a form of white culture that never really existed. In mediaeval England, homosexuality faced penalties administered by the church, but some researchers have claimed the punishments were trivial, on a par with those handed out for being drunk. The reality is that this form of behaviour was largely regarded for centuries as a foible. In a moral sense, a man who cheats on his wife is risking an impact on the lives of his children, and if homosexuality is to be banned, then should not adultery/fornication be regarded as even more worthy of proscription? Adultery is much more nation-destroying than homosexuality. Yet we do not read of any attempt by the AltRight to drum fornicators out of their ranks. In fact, appetite for a restoration of Christian morality appears very low in all the European nations.

A much more sensible approach would be to focus on the main issue of demographic survival. All who are willing to work for that are genuinely part of the Alternative Right, if not part of AltRight.com. Those who oppose propaganda on feminism, sexuality and transgender issues are working for the survival of our nations. This amounts to a broader understanding of what it means to be Right than is common among the remnants of the Klan and tiny neo-Nazi grouplets, but one more likely to be able to take root in the newly more favourable environment for white identity. How can I emphasise the point? Gay rights is not an issue that is consistent with the survival of the Western nations, but in the end, white men are part of their white nations. Racial survival means exactly what is sounds like: all white men should be able to rally to that standard. If Richard Spencer, in a bid to deflect accusations that he has engaged in homosexual behaviour, cannot keep focus on the main demographic issue on AltRight.com, then I think he is failing to modernise the alternative right in a way that would be clearly marketable to a wider swathe of the American white population. The alternative right may be in danger of becoming large enough as a subculture to provide a comfort zone or zone of enjoyment for its leaders, a subculture large enough to allow its leadership to coast and enjoy their lives doing so. The trick now is to move the national question out of a subculture into the mainstream white population.

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Can the AltRight be a modern alternative? Immigration ...

Black Violence Against Whites: A Recent History past …

On January 4, 2017 in Chicago, a mentally disabled white man was abducted and tortured by a group of black teenagers, supposedly for being a Trump supporter. The young man was beaten, his mouth duct taped shut, his scalp cut and the wound used as an ashtray, while the black hooligans around him laughed, insulted him, and aped about, saying Fuck white people, fuck Trump. His evil idiot captors streamed his torment live to Facebook, resulting in their quick arrest. View the full, disturbing video here.

Its the same old story. Blacks engage in appallingacts of violence and depravity towards whites, and the media tries to smother the outrage instead of whipping into a frenzy like they would if the victim was black.

Amanda Blackburn, 28, mother, 3 months pregnant. Morgan Harrington, 20, student, artist. Jessica Chambers, 19, recent high school graduate, jewel of her fathers heart. These threebeautiful blonde women havea ghastly thing in common: they were all murdered by black thugs. Unless you were following local news or Internet fake news, you will not have heard ofthese tragic stories. They arent worthy of national conversations about race.

Amanda Blackburn, a pregnant mother, was shot in the head while her pastor husband was at the gym, byLarry Jo Taylor, Jr., 18, and Jalen Watson, 21, in 2015. Amanda fought back bravely, desperate to defend her three year old son who was also in the house, but Taylor and Jalen made short work of her.They shot her in the head, stripped her, and watched her bleed.Amanda died the next day, along with her and her husbandsunborn baby.

Morgan Harrington, a sensitive and talented young artist, was abductedon her taxi ride home from a Metallica concert in Charlottesville, VA, in 2009.The driver, Jesse Matthew, dragged Harrington into a field wherehebrutally raped and murdered her.Matthewlater went on torape and murder Hannah Graham, an 18 year old UVA student, before being caughtin 2014. Though Matthew was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences, Morgansparentsstruggle to proceed in a world devoid of joy.

Jessica Chambers, 19, was burned alive on the side of the road in her car. Her killer, Quentin Tellis, a 27 year old black thug who Chambers hadrecently broken upwith,doused her in gasoline, squirted it up her nose, and poured accelerant down her throat. Tellisthen set her ablaze inside of her car and left her to burn to death on the side of the road. Jessica was found wandering near her car, her body entirely covered in burns except for the bottoms of her feet. Jessicas father said of her, She was so bubbly. You never had a bad day around her. She was always cracking jokes. She was full of life and joy. She had no enemies. Today, I feel like I am in a dream.

17 black male criminals were arrestedas a result of theinvestigation into Chambers death (18 including her killer). Blacks in Panola County were remarkably uncooperative with law enforcement: We were all amazed at the total lack of information coming from our street sources, said Champion. In fact, moronic blacks in Panola County accused Chamberss father of her murder. Teanna Rudd, a black girl and one of Jessicas former classmates, expressed her general opinion on whiteson Facebook:

Somebody needs to rape all they kids in front of them then set them on fire there learn then white bitches need to be dead.

Whydoes the media cover up that living with blacks is so dangerous? Why are blacksso enthusiasticabout sadism against whites? Why do they hurt usfor fun?

You probably havent seen this videofrom Rowlett, Indiana, either:A young white woman sitson a park bench with her friend and three year oldniece, minding their own business, whenthey are accosted byagroupof black teenagers barking at them to leave. That they are in thewrong park. The ringleader black commands the girl holding the baby,toput down the baby and fight. The black boys filming snicker in the background: She keepin that baby cuz she dont wanna get her ass beat.

The black teen screechesGET UP!, before suddenly lunging forward and attacking the white girl, pulling her off of the bench and smashing the toddlerinto the concrete.The little girlthwacks her head on the stone, her wailsof terror and pain competing in the audio with the excited amusementof the videographer.The little girlflees desperately as her auntis flung around in midair by her hair and beaten savagely in front of her.

A black onlookerdoes a little jig as the girland toddlerscream.

All mainstream media coverage of the video carefullyomitted the race of the perpetrator and denied any possible racial motive for the crime, except to deny that it was racially motivated. In the interest of sacred equality, we must ask ourselves: If premature speculation on motives is kosher for some perpetrators, why is it not kosher for all?

The unnamed juvenileattacker, whose parents were initially not cooperating with law enforcement (big surprise there), was charged with misdemeanor assault and felony assault of a child. She is variously described as US girl (Daily Mail), Texas teen (New York Daily News), and girl (Fox News). Fox News quoted a detective who ruled out the possibility of racial motivation for the crime:

In the now viral video, two teenage girls are outside an elementary school when theyre confronted by some classmates. Its not clear why.

While the police and the media werein cahoots to deny racial motivation for the crime, the white public was not so easily fooled.The majority of the over 300respondentsto the Rowlett County Police Departments post on the matter (describing the girl and her family as having gone into hiding, rather than evading arrest), see the crime as clearly racially motivated. The comments sections attest to most white Americans having negative experiences with racially hostile blacks, and being outraged atthe glaringdouble standard of brushing the story under the rugwhen whitesare the victims.When the commentary isnt carefully controlled by the (((media))), the truth about race and crime comes out.

Dont take it from me that uncivilized behavior is canonizedin urbancommunities. Take it from Reverend Charles Harrison of the Ten Point Coalition:

This is glamorized, this is glorified, this brings them street cred, this brings them notoriety, ya know? Shes tough, shes going to beat somebody up, said Harrison. Its almost like they plan these fights, they want these fights to be on tape where they can put it on social media. This is horrible.(Fox News)

Its not horrible to them. Its entertainment.Abducting a mentally disabled white man, taping his mouth shut with duct tape, cutting his scalp and making him drink toilet water is how they get their kicks.

Violent tests of dominance and subjugation are integral to hood culture. Being skurred (scared) is grounds for, ironically, beatings. Anyone who has lived in the same area ashoodblacks,or gone to public schools they attend, has profited overabundantly from the delightful enrichment they offer to civic life. Those who dont adopt the affectations of hoodculture for self-defense are threatenedin the hallways, the cafeteria, and the classroom alike.Why would blacks observe a culturalimperative to subjugate white people? A dangerous question, with an even more dangerous, if patently obvious, answer. The New Black Panthers are here toenlighten you that white deaths arejustice, not tragedy:

We gonna have to kill some cracker babies. To hell with what National Geographic puttin out, Im tellin you to your face tonight, we gon have to kill some little Penelopes, and some little Robbies. You wanna be free, dont you?

In the link appendix at the bottom of this article, you will find three instances of blacks killing white babies and children, honoring theblack nationalist call to arms. The Confederate flag burns in South Carolina as Malik Shabazz calls for a white genocide in the capitol shadows. This is what we have to show for equal rights.

White Americans have been systemically brainwashedthat the underprivileged and underservedare a nobly oppressed group to whom they owe the fruits of their labor for the sins of their ancestors; that black rage is righteous; that it is racist to observe personal safety precautionsaround young black men,despite their record of being responsible for the majority of homicides in this country despite accountingfor only 13% of the population. Not only are blacks responsible almost exclusively for black homicides, they are responsiblefor the majority of interracial violence as well.

Here are the real HateFactson interracial violence, dropped by everyones favorite blonde bugbear, Ann Coulter,andcurated byKathy Shaidle:

In a country of more than 300 million people, everything will happen eventually. That doesnt make it a trend. Go up to any ordinary, sentient person and ask: Which race assaults the other race more? ()

Ask around. You might be surprised at how many whites you know have been physically attacked by a black person at least once in their lives. The FBIs crime victimization surveys tell a very different story, one more in line with a normal persons life experience.

In 2008, the most recent year for which such data seems to have been collected, FBI surveys show that, out of 520,161 interracial violent crimes, blacks committed 429,444 of them against whites, while whites committed 90,717 of them against blacks.

In other words, blacks commit more than 80 percent of all interracial violent crime.

Impromptu street assaults have increasingly been wielded as a racial weapon against non-black Americans. Polar bear hunting, that is, tracking down and beatingwhite people, is one popular pastime, as writers like Colin Flaherty and Thomas Sowell have revealed. An example can be found inthis disturbing Richmond, Virginia videoof a group of young black malessavagely beatingan unlucky single white male who made the mistake of walking home while white. The videos of the beatingsareposted to social media for bragging rights. Herea white teenage girl is assaulted on a bus ride by a group of blackteenagers to the excitement of those filming and participating. Trading fight videos gets blacksturnt up:

Had theyoung people whose grisly deaths I must reluctantly addressnot been kept purposefully in the dark about the realities of black crime and hatredof whites, they might have taken more precautions. If they had been encouraged by their parents and schoolteachersto discriminate white from blackinstead ofnot to see color,they may be alive today.You probably havent heard of these unsung young lives, prematurely ended in the name of righteous black rage (as Brittney Cooperat Salon, AKA Professor Crunk, would claim):

Texas A&M students Denton James Wardand Tanner Giesen were entertaining their lady friends on a date night on the town. They stopped at a McDonalds to use the restroom, and exited their vehicle and went inside despite the hundreds of milling black males congregated in the parking lot and inside the establishment. This would prove to be a fatal misjudgment. Ayoung black male threatened Ward and Glieson: Youre in the wrong neck of the woods, cowboys. The two young white menwere then both savagely attacked. Ward wascurb stomped within an inch of his life until the girlfriends managed todisentangle him from the mob and drag himback into their SUV.

The students fled the areain a panic, fatefully runninga red light. Wards girlfriend, Lauren Bailey Crisp, who was desperately trying to keep him upright in the backseat, was killed in the crash. Ward was declaredby multiple pathologists at trial to have died from the injuries sustained by his mass beating. Gieson and his girlfriend survived the crash with injuries.

Or have you heard about the cold-blooded rape and murder of Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian? I am loatheto evenwrite about it out of respect for their families. The young Tennessee lovebirds were walking to their friends apartment when they were attacked by a malicious gang of blacks. Newsom was bound, gagged with a sock, sodomized, beaten, shot in the neck and consequently paralyzed, and eventually murdered viaan execution-style shot in the head. Christian was brought back to a house, repeatedly raped and beaten for hours, force-fed bleach (this is how theythought they couldget their DNA off of her), and stowed away in a garbage can for hours, where she asphyxiated.

Theirtorture and deathsdid not receive (((mainstream media))) attention and weremostly covered by online bloggers and conservative news sites, with the unlikely defender the Daily Mail positing that political correctness was to blame for the cover-up. Leonard Pitts, a black syndicated columnist, callouslydeclaredof the shocking, ghastly case: Blacks and Latinos are underrepresented in news media as victims of crime and significantly overrepresented as perpetrators, and white Americans who felt victimized by the perceived underreporting could cry me a river. His sentiments are eerily similar to those of Nobel Prize Winner Toni Morrisons recent race comments: I want to see a cop shoot a white unarmed teenager in the back. The black literary genius doesnt stop there. Senselessly celebrated New Jersey Poet Laureate and black radical Amiri Baraka bloodthirstilywrote, Rape the white girls. Rape their fathers. Cut the mothers throats.

Black killers can explicitly state that hatred of whites is their criminal motivation, and self-styled tolerance warriors will not bat a steely eye. When Ferguson, MO burned, Bosnian immigrant Zemir Begins black assailants screamed, Fuck the white people, kill white people, as they bludgeoned him to death with hammers after dragging him out of his car ashis blonde fianc stood helplessly by in horror. The St. Louis Bosnian community furiouslyinsisted the racial hatred element of the crime was being deliberately covered upby the media. While nary a blasphemous peep shook the hollow chests of the (((media elites in New York))), even the normally well-trained BBC wondered,Are the media ignoring another St. Louis killing?

He loved America, his sister, Denisa Begic, 23, told the newspaper. We come from Bosnia because we were getting killed and our homes and families were getting destroyed. Never in my life did I think he would get murdered. (Huffington Post)

The Bosnians (and in general, everyone else who lives apart from blacks) underestimate the ethnic strife in the United States, becausethey have no experience of it and the issue is ferociously suppressed. The right is too afraid to lose elections over it, and the left is a moral cesspool. Both are to blame for the third world that the United States is becoming. The Bosnians thought they escapedbeing political targets in Bosnia, only tocome to the United States to remain political targets as whites.

White violence (usually self-defense) against blacks is over-reported and always a cause for a national conversation about so-called systemic racism against blacks. However, black violence against whites is seldom reported, though it is far more frequent, and more grotesque. The media that everyone despises is owned and operated not just by leftists, as is commonly thought, but by an ethnoreligious group, the Jews, who regard whites as their politicalenemies, and who use their control of the media as a weapon against us. The Jews use blacks as their shock troops, stirring them to violence using their media monopoly. It may sound shocking, but I challenge you to take thisinformation with an open mind. Im a millennialwoman who discovered all of this with disbeliefat first, just like you. Do your own research. Start asking yourself the ethnicity of the writer the next time you see anti-white propaganda in the media.

Follow the #altright for ways to protect yourself and your family from the deck that is stacked against us.

WHITES HAVE TO STICK TOGETHER.

For more HateFacts about black on white violence and media complicity, reference these:

>Group of 40 black Americans recorded jumping 5 white people; No national attention

>Mob of 60 black Americans recorded rioting in suburbs during Baltimore riots, targeting white Americans homes; No national attention

>Black mob of 30 beats white family in Alabama; No national attention

>Group of at least 20 black Americans during Baltimore riots recorded beating a 61 year old man man to an inch of his life; No national attention

>Group of five black Americans carjack, kidnap, rape, sodomize, torture and burn alive a white couple while the torment went on for days; No national attention

>White man stops a robber then a crowd of black Americans jump him, chanting Trayvon; Also recorded on tape, also no national attention

>9 black Americans attack a single white teenage girl on a bus; No national attention

>Black Americans murder a baby in stroller because he looked White; No national attention(Were still investigating the motive; were trying to turn every stone to make sure we get a motive)

>Manager for the Department of Homeland Security publicly says white people need to die in order for black people to live; No national attention

>Black American bus driver for a school coaxed the schoolchildren to attack a white family when they dropped her kid off, then allowed them back on the bus to escape; No national attention

>Black American kills 6-year-old white child, claims child was racist as his defense; No national attention (Child was murdered on Christmas Eve)

>Black American tortures and murders 2 white teenagers makes Black Lives Matter speech in court; No national attention

>White family attacked for being in the Wrong Neighborhood in Baton Rouge, La.; No national attention(Theres those words again: youre in the wrong park, youre in the wrong neck of the woods, youre in the wrong neighborhood)

>3 Black Amerians murder pregnant white woman in Detriot; No national attention

>Three black Americans are accused of tormenting an autistic child at a school bus stop; no national attention

>A 30 year old Black American, Naeem Davis, pushed a 58 year old Korean man into an oncoming train; No national attention

See the rest here:

Black Violence Against Whites: A Recent History past ...

Natural vs Synthetic Drugs & Entheogens | Animam Recro

I want to add something to my last post. And yes, I get this right from being a multi-dimensional transpersonal monochromatic knight of the inner realms. Or maybe its just because Im a geek.

The following point really merits more posts or more like its own book. I mention that the Viking Youth discuss various methods of trance induction that are not catalyzed by psychoactive chemicals and that dreams could be naturally induced non-ordinary states of consciousness.

The whole argument of synthetic drug (LSD) vs. natural drug (Morning Glory) and substance induced (drug) vs. naturally induced (meditation) altered states is riddled with misconceptions and ambiguities. If you listen to the Viking Youth Power Hour they mention a natural way to induce an altered state is by using pain to flood the brain with endorphins which are endogenous opioid biochemical compounds. Essentially, there is no way to avoid some sort of chemical process going on the brain that is not natural to the brains normal state, hence non-ordinary state of consciousness. Endogenous means that the compound originates naturally in the body but there are also synthesized drugs which are psychoactive by altering the level of endogenous compounds in the brain. There are even endogenous cannabinoids (from the word cannabis) found in the body.

When a shaman ingests magic mushrooms which contain psilocybin it is converted into psilocin in the body. There are only subtle differences in ingesting synthesized psilocin and naturally occuring mushrooms such as potency and whatever other chemicals can be found in the mushroom. It is possible that this subtle difference may make all the difference for shamanic a purpose, thats a complicated area of inquiry. But Albert Hofmann and Maria Sabina may offer some insight:

When I was in Mexico on an expedition with my friend Gordon Wasson in 1963, in search of a hallucinogenic plant, we also visited the famous curandera Maria Sabina in Huautla de Jimenez. We were invited to attend a nocturnal mushroom ceremony in her hut, but as it was late in the year and no more mushrooms were available, I supplied her with pills containing synthetic psilocybin. She took a rather strong dose corresponding to the number of mushrooms she usually ingests. It was a gala performance assisted by a number of people of Maria Sabinas clan. At dawn when we left the hut, our Mazateca interpreter told us that Maria Sabina had said there was no difference between the pills and the mushrooms. This was a final proof that our synthetic psilocybin was identical in every respect with the natural product.

-Albert Hofmann (discoverer of LSD)

In regards to dreaming there is an interesting assessment of DMT (Dimethyltryptamine) by Dr. Rick Strassman in DMT: The Spirit Molecule. The book is based on his project that took place for five years in which he administered approximately 400 doses of DMT to 60 human volunteers. This research took place at the University of New Mexicos School of Medicine in Albuquerque. Dr. Rick Strassman thinks Dimethyltryptamine may be connected to the hallucinogenic aspects of dreaming. It is an endogenous hallucinogenic tryptamine which is hypothesized to be produced by the pineal gland. This gland is also referred to as the third eye, the seat of the soul by the philosopher Rene Descartes, and Ajna or the sixth chakra in yoga. DMT is a schedule 1 drug even though we all have it in our brains. What is the fine line between experiencing the state after ingesting it for shamanic use, which is illegal in many countries, and simply going to bed?

To return to the topic of natural vs. synthetic:

I think the fear of synthetic chemicals is twofold. Our culture is at the point where its beginning to fear that which is not natural because of a number of reasons, specifically our environment being in decline and the partial responsibility of the synthetic for this. The idea of mimicking the ecstatic experience by ingesting something from a lab is somehow more threatening than something originating in the forest. However, this fear might not be completely unwarranted.

A method in assessing the toxicity of a substance or its potential harm to the body/mind when one doesnt have access to a lab is by focusing on the numbers of years and in what ways it was used through out history. Most, if not all entheogens (psychoactive substances taken in a religious or shamanic context) have been used for hundreds and thousands of years. If people have not been harmed by such use, its fairly safe to say that it wont be detrimental to your well being. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said by all synthesized substances, including some new pharmacological drugs which are used with modern psychotherapy. Please see the Mind vs. Body post and future posts on this topic. An example would be the withdrawal symptoms and addictive properties of Paxil.

I also mentioned the way entheogens are used for a specific reason as well. The ritual aspect of the use of psychoactive substances may have been an imbedded failsafe mechanism which prevented them from being used too frequently, the effects of which still need to be studied.

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Natural vs Synthetic Drugs & Entheogens | Animam Recro

Human Gene Therapy

Editor-in-Chief: Terence R. Flotte, MDDeputy Editors, Europe: Nathalie Cartier, MD and Thierry VandenDriessche, PhDDeputy Editors, U.S.: Barry J. Byrne, MD, PhD and Mark A. Kay, MD, PhDHuman Gene Therapy Editor: Guangping Gao, PhDMethods Editor: Hildegard Bning, PhDClinical Development Editor: James M. Wilson, MD, PhD

Latest Impact Factor* is 4.187 *2016 Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics, 2017)

Human Gene Therapy is the premier, multidisciplinary journal covering all aspects of gene therapy. The Journal publishes in-depth coverage of DNA, RNA, and cell therapies by delivering the latest breakthroughs in research and technologies. Human Gene Therapy provides a central forum for scientific and clinical information, including ethical, legal, regulatory, social, and commercial issues, which enables the advancement and progress of therapeutic procedures leading to improved patient outcomes, and ultimately, to curing diseases.

The Journal is divided into three parts. Human Gene Therapy, the flagship, is published 12 times per year. HGT Methods, a bimonthly journal, focuses on the applications of gene therapy to product testing and development. HGT Clinical Development, a quarterly journal, serves as a venue for publishing data relevant to the regulatory review and commercial development of cell and gene therapy products.

Human Gene Therapy was voted one of the most influential journals in Biology and Medicine over the last 100 years by the Biomedical & Life Sciences Division of the Special Libraries Association.

Human Gene Therapy, HGT Methods, and HGT Clinical Development are under the editorial leadership of Editor-in-Chief Terence R. Flotte, MD, University of Massachusetts Medical School; Deput Editors Europe Nathalie Cartier, MD, INSERM, andThierry VandenDriessche, PhD, Free University of Brussels (VUB); Deputy Editors U.S. Barry J. Byrne, MD, PhD,Powell Gene Therapy Center, University of Florida, College of Medicine and Mark A. Kay, MD, PhD, Stanford University School of Medicine; Human Gene Therapy Editor Guangping Gao, PhD, University of Massachusetts Medical School; Methods Editor Hildegard Bning, PhD, University of Cologne; Clinical Development Editor James M. Wilson, MD, PhD,University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Gene Therapy Program; and other leading investigators. View the entire editorial board.

Audience: Geneticists, medical geneticists, molecular biologists, virologists, experimental researchers, and experimental medicine specialists, among others.

Human Gene Therapy and HGT Methods provide Instant Online publication 72 hours after acceptance

Indexed/Abstracted in:MEDLINE;PubMed;PubMed Central;Current Contents/Life Sciences;Science Citation Index Expanded;Science Citation Index;Biotechnology Citation Index;Biological Abstracts;BIOSIS Previews;Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition;Derwent Drug File;EMBASE/Excerpta Medica;EMBiology;Scopus;Chemical Abstracts;ProQuest databases

The views, opinions, findings, conclusions and recommendations set forth in any Journal article are solely those of the authors of those articles and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy or position of the Journal, its Publisher, its editorial staff or any affiliated Societies and should not be attributed to any of them.

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Human Gene Therapy

nzmargarita | South Pacific cruise by catamaran

We arrived at Opua yesterday at 12.30 pm. 5 days from Fiji. Yeah! ( and 23.5 hours). On our way to Auckland now. Just caught the first fush of the trup. A kahawai and a trevally. We have re-stocked the potatoes you know whats for dinner.

Thanks for following this blog. It now goes into recess for its summer vacation. Just like politicians only longer.

Talk to you again next year.

Bruce & Dinah

We are about 100 miles north east of the Bay of Islands and should arrive tomorrow morning. Margarita is rolling along, all possible sail set, in a light northerly. The seas are calm, the moon is full but the water is cold after the spa pool temperatures of Fiji and the tenants are having toilet trouble again. Life is never perfect. Even so we all agree the sailing is rather pleasant. And we will beat that cold front to Opua.

Alls satisfactory onboard.

Da crew

Late on Sunday the wind will switch to the southwest so the race is on to reach Opua before the souwester. The cloud band ahead of the front is slowly advancing and getting lower bringing sense of gloom that could settle over us like a wet blanket if we let it.

Only 296 miles to go and still too fast for fishing.

Alls alright onboard

For the avoidance of doubt we have passed the half way point between Vuda Point and Opua and are due north of Opua. Its all down hill from here folks! The weather continues to be favourable if a little sporty. The days run to noon was 218 miles. Close to our pb of 225. The wind eased and backed a little in the pm and for a while we hoisted the screecher. The crew have their sea legs. Washing has been entertained (or even attempted) and a few rounds of Rummikub have been played. Sadly our speed prevents any fishing. Life is hard! ETA Opua is some time on Sunday.

The situation onboard? Well theres nothing wrong with it.

Within minutes of posting last night the long promised and long anticipated easterly arrived and looks set to speed us South for two more days. The wind has steadily increased to about 25 kts with occasional squalls. With the wind on the beam Margarita is honking along revelling in the fresh conditions and averaging 10 kts for much of today. In the interests of a good nights sleep have just put in the third reef. We are now abeam of the Minerva Reefs and If the forecast holds we will be in Opua on Sunday.

Alls well onboard

Bruce, Shaaron, Martin & Adrian

We continue to motor roughly in the direction of New Zealand snatching the occasional passing zephyr to help out. The promised wind seems to be retreating faster than we advance and our attempts to engage have so far come to nothing. Its still uncomfortably hot. Like the wind the temperature isnt as forecast. Oh well mustnt grumble. Better too little wind and too much heat than the other way round.

Alls well onboard

Da crew

We continue to motor roughly in the direction of New Zealand snatching the occasional passing zephyr to help out. The promised wind seems to be retreating faster than we advance and our attempts to engage have so far come to nothing. Its still uncomfortably hot. Like the wind the temperature isnt as forecast. Oh well mustnt grumble. Better too little wind and too much heat than the other way round.

Alls well onboard

Da crew

With all Fijian bureaucrats and reefs safely navigated we leave our shore crew (Dinah and Alan) to recover our tools from a Chinese interpreter who apparently doesnt understand lend and I must have them back tomorrow morning. Its keeping them from further liver damage while we head south.

We are now 23 miles south of the pass motoring slowly southward into a very gentle south westerly breeze on a calm sea. Tonight, once we are clear of Viti Levu, the wind should swing to the east and we can get moving

Alls well onboard

Martin, Shaaron, Adrian & Bruce

We have left Fiji for New Zealand. Onboard we have Adrian, Martin, Shaaron and me (Bruce). Dinahs flying. The weather is looking good for a quick passage, easterlies most of the way. Heres hoping! Its about 33 C and we are all hanging out for just slightly cooler conditions.

Alls well onboard.

On 30 September Bruces parents, Mary and Leon, were in a crash at their forest farm at Mercer, near Auckland. So sadly, Mary died and Leon was helicoptered to Auckland Hospital. He hung in there for four days, long enough for him to talk to all his children and grandchildren.So on Monday 9 October their joint funeral was held in Auckland. A fitting ceremony full of love and respect for Mary and Leon. We will miss them.Margarita was in Saweni Bay while we waited to get into Vuda Point Marina to fix the broken port engine. To pass the time Bruce had just pulled out the whole wiring system and was was reconfiguring it much more tidily and logically. He managed a temporary repair to get us going again. We worked until midnight to get it done. It was good to have a distraction from the terrible news.Vuda was very helpful when they heard our news. They found us a berth and we tied up there. We were back in Auckland by Sunday afternoon.Still reeling from what had happened we returned to the boat after two weeks.Engine fixed, wiring restored oh so neatly and we headed out to the Yasawas. First stop Navadra where we had a fire on the beach. Grilled crayfish, no less. Hand caught. Locals hand over crayfish, we hand over $25.We met up with Joao from Zazoo and his girlfriend, Kirsty. Good company as usual.On to Somo Somo where we did the walk over the island to snorkel on the sunken Spitfire. The highlight of this trip is always meeting the elderly couple with their traditional thatched hut. We had come to know them well and they used to greet us with warmth. The huts were all locked up and had been for some time. We wish them well.The weather looked a bit dodgy so we are now safely tucked up at Blue Lagoon.Tomorrow Martin arrives to sail with us. On Thursday Shaaron and her husband Allan arrive for the trip back to Vuda. Adrian, the remaining crew member will meet us in Vuda.The weather is definitely turning to summer here. Hot, windy and rain threatening. Time to head home.

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nzmargarita | South Pacific cruise by catamaran

The Imminent Death of Darwinism and the Rise of …

The Imminent Death of Darwinism and the Rise of Intelligent Design

"He will guide you into all truth" (John 16:13).

According to Darwinism, all life on earth arose by natural variation and selection of the most fit. But many questions raised by Darwin's contemporaries remain unanswered today. These problems are compounded by the unique DNA sequence information now in from the human genome project (Venter, 2001; Lander, 2001) and our understanding of the irreducibly complex function of biological systems (Behe, 1996). Intellectual honesty will soon force many scientists to abandon Darwin's theory of the evolution of species in exchange for intelligent design or outright Biblical creation.

Studies of outward appearances of organisms led Darwin and his successors to propose elaborate phylogenetic trees in which man was placed on a branch common to apes and monkeys. Major limbs in the animal trunk contained the fish, giving rise to reptiles, birds, and mammals. At the root are three major divisions of true bacteria: "old" bacteria (archaebacteria), and organisms with nuclei including plants, fungi, and animals. Discoveries in biology over the last half of the twentieth century at first seemed to support Darwinism. All organisms were found to contain the same building blocks for the genetic code in DNA. All used the DNA to transcribe RNA and all used ribosomes to make protein from the RNA. Many proteins and RNA's were similar from one life form to another, even between bacteria and man. However, these data support intelligent design by a single set of principles just as well. Furthermore, recent multi-gene comparisons of the amount of divergence between different organisms now provide better support for a complex relationship between different organisms, a relationship that first looked more like a shrub, with many more early branches. Now the trend seems to be toward nearly independent origins, a model more like grass. This model is consistent with the independent origins of major kinds of plants, sea life, and animals described in the Genesis account.

If Darwinian evolution applies at the molecular level, the gene sequences of all organisms should resemble each other because of descent. Closely related animals should have the most closely related gene sequences. On the other hand, if there were independent origins for major kinds of animals, then a large portion of the genome should be original, unique sequences not present in other kinds of organisms. In 1997 scientists reported the complete 4,639,221 base DNA sequence of E. coli (Blattner, et al., 1997), a common bacterium in our intestines. As each gene sequence is discovered, it is placed in the GenBank database. By comparison of a new gene to all others in the database using the BLAST program (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov), scientists can determine how similar one gene is to another. In comparison to Haemophilus, Synechocystis, and Mycoplasma bacteria, of the 4,288 coded proteins in E. coli, there are only 111 proteins (2.6%) in common with these three eubacteria. Sixty percent of the E. coli sequences are completely unique, with less than 30% common to the sequences of these other bacteria. Thirty-eight percent of the E. coli genes have no known function. Examining all the organisms in table 1 shows a surprisingly high percentage of genes with no match in other organisms. The average for bacteria is 29% unique. That's 29% unique genetic information with no known origin, no possible descent. In the case of a fly, a worm, and a human, 50-60% of the genes are unique or with no known function. Most of the emphasis has been on how similar genes are in man and bacteria, with little attention to the differences. Where did this unique genetic information come from? Unique genes do not come from small numbers of base changes that scientists routinely produce in the lab or by breeding or by gene rearrangements. These data provide better support for the alternative hypothesis of independent origin by intelligent design than for evolution by descent.

To begin life as we know it, cells would need to have a genetic program of DNA or RNA. They would need to protect their genome from degradation from outside with a lipid membrane, and they would need the machinery to transform chemical energy into metabolic energy to replicate. This machinery requires pre-existing proteins to catalyze the reactions of metabolism and replication. And the synthesis of proteins requires other pre-existing proteins and a small factory called the ribosome. Take away any of these components and life doesn't exist. All this complexity is required at the same time and place for the most simple single-celled life. Michael Behe (1996) has termed this requirement irreducible complexity. Life can't evolve by the gradual addition of one of these components at a time. Life and its requisite requirement for replication needs it all. Not only is irreducible complexity required for the start of life, but each complex system in our bodies: the eye, the kidney, blood coagulation, red blood cells . . . the list goes on and on. Though scientists are familiar with this complexity, they fail to realize and accept the requirement for intelligent design. Furthermore, decades of experiments have failed to demonstrate an origin of any life from organic molecules, much less evolution of protein synthesis or DNA replication. Also, decades of genetic manipulation of bacteria and other organisms have never produced a new species like Darwinism would require. Although the universal negative (that evolution of species is impossible) can never be proven, enough evidence has amassed that funding agencies will no longer support organic origin of life research, and those trying have moved on to other subjects. The death of Darwinism will be a hard pill to swallow because it requires replacement by intelligent design, a paradigm outside the box of naturalism that many scientists embrace.

Theories are to be modified or abandoned when they are inconsistent with one significant fact. Based on relationships of similar genes, large numbers of unrelated genes and irreducible complexity, Darwin's evolution of species needs to be replaced by intelligent design. According to the Bible, the Designer was God with more than adequate intelligence and power to create all the major kinds of life in a short period of time. While we will never be able to prove the singularity of creation by God, the evidence better supports faith in God, rather than faith in Darwinism.

* Dr. Brewer is Professor of Neurology and Medical Microbiology at Southern Illinois University.

Cite this article: Gregory J. Brewer, Ph.D. 2001. The Imminent Death of Darwinism and the Rise of Intelligent Design. Acts & Facts. 30 (11).

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The Imminent Death of Darwinism and the Rise of ...

Eugenics: the skeleton that rattles loudest in the left’s …

Does the past matter? When confronted by facts that are uncomfortable, but which relate to people long dead, should we put them aside and, to use a phrase very much of our time, move on? And there's a separate, but related, question: how should we treat the otherwise admirable thought or writings of people when we discover that those same people also held views we find repugnant?

Those questions are triggered in part by the early responses to Pantheon, my new novel published this week under the pseudonym Sam Bourne. The book is a thriller, set in the Oxford and Yale of 1940, but it rests on several true stories. Among those is one of the grisliest skeletons in the cupboard of the British intellectual elite, a skeleton that rattles especially loudly inside the closet of the left.

It is eugenics, the belief that society's fate rested on its ability to breed more of the strong and fewer of the weak. So-called positive eugenics meant encouraging those of greater intellectual ability and "moral worth" to have more children, while negative eugenics sought to urge, or even force, those deemed inferior to reproduce less often or not at all. The aim was to increase the overall quality of the national herd, multiplying the thoroughbreds and weeding out the runts.

Such talk repels us now, but in the prewar era it was the common sense of the age. Most alarming, many of its leading advocates were found among the luminaries of the Fabian and socialist left, men and women revered to this day. Thus George Bernard Shaw could insist that "the only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man", even suggesting, in a phrase that chills the blood, that defectives be dealt with by means of a "lethal chamber".

Such thinking was not alien to the great Liberal titan and mastermind of the welfare state, William Beveridge, who argued that those with "general defects" should be denied not only the vote, but "civil freedom and fatherhood". Indeed, a desire to limit the numbers of the inferior was written into modern notions of birth control from the start. That great pioneer of contraception, Marie Stopes honoured with a postage stamp in 2008 was a hardline eugenicist, determined that the "hordes of defectives" be reduced in number, thereby placing less of a burden on "the fit". Stopes later disinherited her son because he had married a short-sighted woman, thereby risking a less-than-perfect grandchild.

Yet what looks kooky or sinister in 2012 struck the prewar British left as solid and sensible. Harold Laski, stellar LSE professor, co-founder of the Left Book Club and one-time chairman of the Labour party, cautioned that: "The time is surely coming when society will look upon the production of a weakling as a crime against itself." Meanwhile, JBS Haldane, admired scientist and socialist, warned that: "Civilisation stands in real danger from over-production of 'undermen'." That's Untermenschen in German.

I'm afraid even the Manchester Guardian was not immune. When a parliamentary report in 1934 backed voluntary sterilisation of the unfit, a Guardian editorial offered warm support, endorsing the sterilisation campaign "the eugenists soundly urge". If it's any comfort, the New Statesman was in the same camp.

According to Dennis Sewell, whose book The Political Gene charts the impact of Darwinian ideas on politics, the eugenics movement's definition of "unfit" was not limited to the physically or mentally impaired. It held, he writes, "that most of the behavioural traits that led to poverty were inherited. In short, that the poor were genetically inferior to the educated middle class." It was not poverty that had to be reduced or even eliminated: it was the poor.

Hence the enthusiasm of John Maynard Keynes, director of the Eugenics Society from 1937 to 1944, for contraception, essential because the working class was too "drunken and ignorant" to keep its numbers down.

We could respond to all this the way we react when reading of Churchill's dismissal of Gandhi as a "half-naked fakir" or indeed of his own attraction to eugenics, by saying it was all a long time ago, when different norms applied. That is a common response when today's left-liberals are confronted by the eugenicist record of their forebears, reacting as if it were all an accident of time, a slip-up by creatures of their era who should not be judged by today's standards.

Except this was no accident. The Fabians, Sidney and Beatrice Webb and their ilk were not attracted to eugenics because they briefly forgot their leftwing principles. The harder truth is that they were drawn to eugenics for what were then good, leftwing reasons.

They believed in science and progress, and nothing was more cutting edge and modern than social Darwinism. Man now had the ability to intervene in his own evolution. Instead of natural selection and the law of the jungle, there would be planned selection. And what could be more socialist than planning, the Fabian faith that the gentlemen in Whitehall really did know best? If the state was going to plan the production of motor cars in the national interest, why should it not do the same for the production of babies? The aim was to do what was best for society, and society would clearly be better off if there were more of the strong to carry fewer of the weak.

What was missing was any value placed on individual freedom, even the most basic freedom of a human being to have a child. The middle class and privileged felt quite ready to remove that right from those they deemed unworthy of it.

Eugenics went into steep decline after 1945. Most recoiled from it once they saw where it led to the gates of Auschwitz. The infatuation with an ideahorribly close to nazism was steadily forgotten. But we need a reckoning with this shaming past. Such a reckoning would focus less on today's advances in selective embryology, and the ability to screen out genetic diseases, than on the kind of loose talk about the "underclass" that recently enabled the prime minister to speak of "neighbours from hell" and the poor as if the two groups were synonymous.

Progressives face a particular challenge, to cast off a mentality that can too easily regard people as means rather than ends. For in this respect a movement is just like a person: it never entirely escapes its roots.

Twitter: @j_freedland

This article was edited on 18 February 2012 to amend the final paragraph.

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Eugenics: the skeleton that rattles loudest in the left's ...

With precision medicine heating up, Genome Medical …

Precision medicine is gaining steamas consumers and healthcare organizations get up to speed with what promises to be a new paradigm in wellness care delivery. Consider the genetic testing startup 23andMe, which just landed $250 million in funding this past September. That financing brings the total capital raised by the company to $491 million as the kits become more popular.

And just this week, both Google and Microsoft participated in a $58 million funding round into precision medicine upstart DNAnexus and its cloud-based platform for machine learning and the sharing of biomedical and genomics data.

With this sort of momentum industry-wide, another startup, Genome Medical, has just launched programs designed to enable employer groups to offer genetic services and physician-guided genetic testing to their employees through its national network of clinical genetic experts. Employees can consult independently with Genome Medical providers includingtelemedicine consultations to ensure confidentiality and privacy of employee health information.

With more than 5,000 inherited genetic disorders and only about 6,000 practicing genetic experts in the United States, finding and accessing the right professional can be a challenge, and wait times for an appointment can be long. Further, research shows that non-genetic specialist doctors have an order error rate for genetic testing that is three times the error rate of genetic specialists, according to Genome Medical.

"Many individuals have a family history suggestive of an inherited condition such as cancer or heart disease, but lack guidance from their own providers about how to evaluate these risks," said Robert Green, MD, a medical geneticist at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Genome Medical. "Employer programs that provide their employees with confidential access to independent genetics experts can help these individuals and their families benefit from evaluation and testing that meet established recommendations.

Genome Medical now offers employer groups four genetic programs. The first is genetic medical services. Genome Medical can help identify individuals at risk for an inherited disease or condition who would qualify for genetic testing under current medical guidelines and insurance coverage. Services include genetic counseling, genetic test ordering when indicated, simplified sample collection, medical case management and referrals as needed.

Proactive health programs, meanwhile, offer preemptive genetic screening for actionable genetic conditions to help individuals learn of genetic risks and take appropriate action. The program includes: detection of changes in genes associated with inheritable cancers, cardiovascular diseases and blood disorders; how genes affect response to anesthesia and other medications; and carrier testing for family planning and reproductive health.

The companys Genetics Resource Center offers a national network of genetic experts to employees. Using interactive tools, real-time chat services and a telehealth platform, individuals can ask questions and explore options across the full spectrum of genetic topics and conditions.

And the second opinion program provides a resource for employees to get an expert opinion on any genetic-related diagnosis or treatment plan. Genome Medicals network includes physicians across multiple specialties at top medical institutions who can provide expert second opinions.

"Recent studies suggest that many patients who meet guidelines for genetic testing are not receiving appropriate genetic services," said Lisa Alderson, co-founder and CEO of Genome Medical. "Genome Medical employer programs can help accelerate access to the standard of care in genetics by providing another avenue to identify individuals for whom a genetic test might be beneficial. Employees gain access to information that helps them be proactive about their health, and having healthier employees is in the interest of all employers."

Twitter:@SiwickiHealthITEmail the writer: bill.siwicki@himssmedia.com

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With precision medicine heating up, Genome Medical ...

My Journey to Escape Wage Slavery | Just another WordPress …

Forward, ho!

Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the call sounded imperiously deep in the forest.- Jack London- Call of the Wild

I have this quote stuck up at my desk at eye level and I read it several times during my work day. Call of the Wild is one of my favourite books and when things seem not quite right in life, I can pick it up and read it to soothe whatever angst I am feeling. I love the style of Londons writing as much as the content and themes of the book- his colourful characters and perfectly abbreviated descriptions of nature can lead me to a land of daydreams and lustful desire for wilderness and wildness. The books central theme of heeding the call within reminds me of what I love and why I do it. I dont believe in fate, pre-destined paths and soul mates but I do think each of us has something, or even several things, that feel like home to us. The thing that when we do it or perhaps even think about it, brings us a sense of calmness, completeness and dispels that gnawing feeling in the gut that accompanies those tasks, thoughts and people that are not innately right for us. The best (and probably least imaginative) explanation I have is that it comes from the big formative years of our lives- our childhood and youth. I think that finding what this call is within ourselves is one of the first steps to reclaiming our happiness and taking responsibility for it.

My call that is sounding is of the soil, seeds and leaves which makes my horticulture course feels right. One by one all of the aspects of my life are shifting into place and I truly believe that it is because I am doing what I am meant to be. The happiness and confidence that is coming from doing what nourishes me is overflowing into other areas. The biggest difference by far is that I feel awake. And being awake means feeling alive. Being alive means not being another loser going through the motions on autopilot, thinking about, but never acting on those niggling thoughts that something is out of place and there must be more to life.

Its only been about eight months since the inception of this blog and the main themes of escaping wage slavery and living a more deliberate and meaningful life are already coming to fruition. I use the word fruition in a loose sense, as I am coming to learn my major goals are ongoing and unlikely to ever cease in my life. I currently dont need to earn a full time income to support my needs (although saving money is not an easy task) and virtually all of my time is spent on activities that I find meaningful and add value to my life and hopefully others. Im busy but my days and nights are not loaded with useless busyness, tasks to fill in gaps, doing things to kill time.

Killing time. The thought inspires a horrible sense of dread in me. We all have the same number of hours in the day and life is way too open handed with opportunities to comfortably entertain the idea of killing time. Wasted time, money and food used to be my top personal criticisms and it is the economy and salvation of those in between and once passive moments of time that have been the biggest beast to conquer. If you finding you are killing time waiting for someone or something find ways to use that time. Creatively daydream, write, read, listen to a podcast- please, please, please dont kill your time.

The main problem with this great obsession for saving time is very simple: you cant save time. You can only spend it. But you can spend it wisely or foolishly. Benjamin Hoff- The Tao of Pooh

My 40 Before 40 list feels like it is going slowly, but this is only because so many of the items on the list are really, really big and require a long term commitment (something I have never excelled at). In the last week alone I have worked on the following items:

I have also adjusted the list to better fit me by changing Run a half marathon (I actually dont enjoy running at all) to Hitchhike 10,000kms and Visit Every Continent (this is implicit in the other items) to Attend Burning Man. I figure a couple of changes as I grow is not only permissible but something to be encouraged. Having strict goals and ideals often puts blinkers on life and prevents us from seeing the other opportunities that arise.

Be flexible and spend your time wisely.

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Futurism – Android Apps on Google Play

am utterly dissatisfied. The idea and the design is good, but the app itself is a chaos. For the first thing, I can't imagine how you can just shove a 100 minute long youtube video there and sell it as a product. The description says it is designed for the top daily scientific breakthroughs/innovations, but it's impossible to watch videos of that detail and length daily - I would have liked a concluded version or at least some level of journalism. So in this sense it already fails for me as a news app. But even if I happen to have the time and lust to watch videos of that length, it's impossible - the in-app video player is slow to respond and doesn't respond to the full-screen mode button. Also couldn't increase the size of the vid with rotating my phone. When I noticed the problem, I would have liked to make a bug report or something but couldn't find anything like that in the app. Thus, I'm here. Also, the app often crashes when reopened.

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Futurism - Android Apps on Google Play

Cubism and Futurism Abstract Art – imodern.com

These are the two movements, with more or less abstract tendencies, that first influenced the majority ofexperimental artists in this country, beginning about 1913 when both movements were at their height.

Cubism and Futurism, both of which had a great influence in the United States derives from the researches ofCezanne and Seurat. The beginnings of Cubism date back to about 1908 under the twin aegis of Picasso andBraque.

In the case of Cubism, the primitivist, instinctual content of Gauguin's and van Goh's paintings and the laterdiscovery of the barbaric, expressive power of Negro sculpture played an important part in such an early cubistpicture of Picasso's as his Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. And however much Picasso and his cubist followers tended tolimit their researches to the still life, they never divorced themselves completely from the sentimental, evenromantic, implications of their chosen subject matters the paraphernalia of the studio, musical instruments, theguitar, mandolin and violin and the characters out of the old commedia dell'arte associated with such instruments,Harlequin, Columbine and Pierrot.

Despite such emotional or non-rational elements in cubist painting, however, its rational motivation must stillbe said to have remained uppermQst. It consisted in a process of analytical abstraction of several planes of anobject to present a synthetic, simultaneous view of it.

And by directing the formal planes of this synthetic view towards the observer rather than making them retreatby traditional perspective principles into an illusionistic space, the picture frame no longer acted as a windowleading the eye into the distance but as a boundary enclosing a limited area of canvas or panel. In the so-calledanalytical phase of Cubism, painting tended also to be monochromatic, presumably to avoid as much as possible anysensuous or naturalistic reference to color.

The leading Cubists, Picasso and Braque, refused to take abstraction further than this point and actually intime climbed down from their pinnacle of analytical experiment to a more decorative, sensuous plateau. They leftthe final step of total geometrical abstraction to others.

Another proto-abstract movement, an anti-rational offshoot of Cubism, Futurism was launched by the ItalianFuturists about 1910. Rebelling against the cubist analysis of static form, the Futurists were above all inspiredby the dynamism of the machine, which they proceeded to glorify and to make a central tenet in their artisticcredo. Man to the Futurist must accept the machine and emulate its ruthless power. By way of emulation theyattempted to paint movement by indicating abstract lines of force and schematic stages in the progress of a movingimage. And furthermore, in some instances they sought to involve the observer in their pictures by viewing movementfrom an interior position-the inside of a trolley car, for example-thus denying, as the Cubists did, formal laws ofperspective.

Where the Cubists strove to eliminate three-dimensional space and thus bring the image in the picture closer tothe observer, although still at a distance, the Futurists attempted to suck the observer into a pictorial vortex.The greatest difference between these two proto-abstract movements, however, is that the one, Cubism, is concernedwith forms in static relationships while Futurism is concerned with them in a kinetic state.

Furthermore, the Cubists, with few exceptions, paid no attention to the machine, as such, while the Futurists,as we have said, glorified it.

The cubist movement, significantly, had no overt political implications and indulged in no manifestoes.

The Futurists, on the other hand, worshipped naked energy for its own sake and in their writings pointed forwardto the power-drunk ideology of Fascism.

The Cubists, it may be said, immured themselves from any contact with the public by shutting themselves up intheir studio laboratories.

The Futurists came out into the market place and demagogically attempted to appeal to the man in the trolleycar. If their pictures today seem dry and doctrinaire to some of us, the ideological appeal of Futurism and itspolitical partner, Fascism, was, we are all uncomfortably aware, quite the reverse.

Furthermore, the generally rational-minded Cubist contented himself as we have noted with the still-lifematerials of his studio for subject matter and abstract dissection, whereas the futurist picture falls mainly intothe category of landscape and figure compositions, however urban and mechanical the emphasis.

Davis' Lucky Strike abstract art from 1921 is a good exampleof Cubism.

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Cubism and Futurism Abstract Art - imodern.com

Futurism – Art for Kids!

Futurism Futurism was an art movementof 20th century Italy. Usingvarious types of medium, futurist artists usedemphasized themes of thecontemporary social issues of the time connecting specifically with the future. These themes included ideas based in the increasing speed of technology, automobiles and airplanes of the industrial revolution as well as youth and violence. Futurism focuses on the movement of the object within the piece, manipulating and overlaying an image several times to understand the motion and movement it creates. Colour, line and shape become very important in Futurist works, for the importance is on how the object moves throughout the canvas. Many futurist works appear abstract. Giacomo BallaUmberto Boccioni Gino Severini

Year 12 Observational Drawing Transformation to Futurist PaintingsUsing an observational drawing you've created. Think about movement and your lines. If your objects were in motion, what would they look like? What colours, shapes and lines would they product? What blocks of colour and abstracted shapes would be created? Use the above artists as an influence to your work and re-create your observational drawings as futurist works of art.

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Futurism - Art for Kids!

Review: Stylish cyberpunk series tells a scattered story …

This review contains spoilers for Altered Carbon.

If Blade Runner posed the question What does it mean to be human? then Netflixs latest series, Altered Carbon, asks, What does it mean to live? Or, at least it tries to.

In the distant future, humanity has beaten death sort of. Human consciousness is stored in a cortical stack, a biomechanical disk implanted at the base of the neck. These stacks enable humans to transfer their consciousness into any body, provided they have the money. The result is a dystopian cyberpunk intergalactic system that grants the rich immortality. The immortals are called meths after Methuselah, a biblical figure said to have lived 969 years.

Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman) is a disgraced member of a military sect and was put in stasis for 250 years after joining a pro-death revolutionary group. Hes reawakened in Bay City to solve the murder of Laurens Bancroft (James Purefoy), a powerful meth. Along the way, he encounters a sentient hotel, biomodded mutants, a religious zealot, a flying sex fortress, clones, androids, alien trees, gang leaders, virtual torture, fight clubs and a convoluted conspiracy.

Overwhelmed yet?

Thats the fundamental flaw with Altered Carbon it tries to cram too much plot into too few episodes. The first half of the show has a singular vision; it centers on Laurens death and Takeshis mission to find the killer. But as the show progresses, it loses this focus and starts exploring pointless, plodding tangents. By the final episode, the characters are so far from where they started that Takeshi and friends feel like theyve stepped into another show thats more like a soap opera than a cyberdrama.

The conclusion is built around Takeshis relationship with his sister, Reileen (Dichen Lachman), their rocky past and her attempts to win his loveby murdering everyone he cares about. Not only is her motivation downright cartoonish, but her actions are inconsistent and often work against her end goal to secure a stable life for herself and her brother. She tries to save Takeshi as often as she tries to kill him.

But Takeshi himself isnt worth caring about. His character is styled after a noir detective, but he does less sleuthing than whining. It takes 10 episodes for Takeshi to understand the simple idea that some people actually like him and can help him on his journey. In seemingly every episode, he casts his friends aside, tries to isolate himself and then runs, desperate, to their aid when his negligence puts them in danger. Its an exhausting cycle that repeats and repeats and eventually becomes dull.

Equally frustrating is the contrived romance between Takeshi and police Officer Kristin Ortega (Martha Higareda). The show builds their relationship and establishes the trust between them, only to undermine it entirely in the final episode. It feels cheap, manipulative and disrespectful of the viewers time. The problem isnt that they dont end up together spoilers, they dont but that the reason for their split serves only to fuel a second season.

Even the visuals feel hectic and overdone. The streets look like rough approximations of Blade Runner. A neon glow casts the crowds of prostitutes and degenerates in shadow. Holographic women advertise sex shops, while musclebound monstrosities promote fight rings. For a television series, it certainly has a cinematic scope, but, like the story, the aesthetic lacks consistency. The show bounds from grimy streets to glittering castles above the clouds without pausing to acknowledge the change in tone.

The only unquestionable joy in Altered Carbon is Poe (Chris Conner), an AI in charge of a long-abandoned hotel. Poe is charismatic, sympathetic and ultimately more human than the rest of the cast.

Altered Carbon suffers from tonal whiplash. It jolts viewers back and forth between a military drama, a sci-fi philosophy piece, a revolutionary adventure and a family drama. Its difficult for a viewer to invest in any one facet of the story because the moment their interest is piqued, the show gets sidetracked.

Theres enough material for a second season, but Altered Carbon is better off dead.

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Review: Stylish cyberpunk series tells a scattered story ...

Cyberpunk Noir | Author Jacey Holbrand

SINthetic

The New Lyons Sequence #1

by J.T. Nicholas

Genre: Science Fiction Cyberpunk Noir

Pub Date: 1/23/2018

The Artificial Evolution

They look like us. Act like us. Butthey are not human. Created to perform the menial tasks real humansdetest, Synths were designed with only a basic intelligence andminimal emotional response. It stands to reason that they have norights. Like any technology, they are designed for human convenience.Disposable.

In the city of New Lyons, DetectiveJason Campbell is investigating a vicious crime: a female body foundmutilated and left in the streets. Once the victim is identified as aSynth, the crime is designated no more than the destruction ofproperty, and Campbell is pulled from the case.

But when a mysterious strangerapproaches Campbell and asks him to continue his investigation insecret, Campbell is dragged into a dark world of unimaginablecorruption. One that leaves him questioning the true nature ofhumanity.

And what he discovers is only the beginning . . .

J.T. Nicholas was born inLexington, Virginia, though within six months he moved (or was moved,rather) to Stuttgart, Germany. Thus began the long journey of themilitary brat, hopping from state to state and country to countryuntil, at present, he has accumulated nearly thirty relocations. Thisexperience taught him that, regardless of where one found oneself,people were largely the same. When not writing, Nick spends his timepracticing a variety of martial arts, playing games (video, tabletop,and otherwise), and reading everything he can get his hands on. Nickcurrently resides in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife, a pair ofindifferent cats, a neurotic Papillion, and an Australian Shepherdwho (rightly) believes he is in charge of the day-to-day affairs.

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Cyberpunk Noir | Author Jacey Holbrand

Netflixs Altered Carbon misses the point of cyberpunk …

Netflixs new science fiction TV series Altered Carbon ticks all the boxes for a modern-day cyberpunk series. Based on a 2002 novel by Richard K. Morgan, its about a hardboiled investigator named Takeshi Kovacs who lives in a world where human consciousness can be stored on a chip called a stack, and transferred between bodies (now known as sleeves.) The rich have effectively become immortal, sequestering themselves far above the gritty streets of futuristic San Francisco. The masses use flashing holograms to sell copious sex, drugs, and violence, beneath a perpetually dark and rainy sky. The series offers a Blade Runner-tinged aesthetic that many people adore, me included.

But that aesthetic, paradoxically, is why Altered Carbon fails, as both good television and good cyberpunk.

Films like Blade Runner and classic cyberpunk novels like Neuromancer, helped transform science fiction by imagining how new inventions would intersect with existing culture, particularly outside respectable bourgeois society. Early cyberpunk posits that technology will shape humanity, but that ordinary people will also shape technology, and that much of the future will simply be a remixed version of the present. The specific tropes its associated with like city streets inspired by Tokyo and Hong Kong, omnipresent advertising, and hardboiled mystery plots emerged from these larger philosophical underpinnings.

As Gavia Baker-Whitelaw at The Daily Dot and Ryan Britt at Inverse have pointed out, though, modern cyberpunk is basically a kind of retro-futurism. Its an often predictable genre that meticulously copies 30-year-old ideas of what tomorrow might look like including dated gender roles; an ARPANET-era vision of computer use; and perhaps most importantly, a culture that hasnt spent several decades imagining a cyberpunk future. Blade Runners groundbreaking visual style has been sanded down into a gorgeous prefab kit thats applied to futures without any consideration for what makes a given science fiction society unique or distinctive. And in Altered Carbons case, that kit isnt just derivative. It sabotages the genres truly timeless aspects, stretching out surface-level tropes like an ill-fitting skin.

Altered Carbon is a far future that looks inexplicably near. The exact date is ambiguous, but a description puts it at over 300 years from now, compared to a few decades in Blade Runner. Humans have colonized other planets, discovered the remnants of an alien civilization, and conquered death. They also favor fashion that looks like a noir-inspired H&M collection, back-alley brothels with tacky holographic signs, distinctly 20th-century skinhead tattoos, and grimy urban architecture. (Morgans novel Altered Carbon takes place even later. But as a book, it has the freedom to leave these kinds of details to the imagination, or pause to explain their backstory.) Kovacs wakes from a 250-year stint in a disembodied stack prison the equivalent of a Revolutionary War prisoner jumping forward to 2018 and his flashbacks are barely distinguishable from the main setting.

Altered Carbon seems basically uninterested in its own premise

That choice could have been used for compelling worldbuilding. Altered Carbons neo-San Francisco is ruled by multi-centenarian Methuselahs or Meths, and it would make sense if theyd held onto nostalgic relics like some nightmare version of the Baby Boomers. But the show seems basically uninterested in the implications of body-swapping and immortality, unless it directly affects Kovacs journey, or advances simplistic social commentary. Altered Carbon doesnt use anachronistic details to explore how we got from the present day to the 24th century. Theyre just convenient narrative shorthand for downtrodden prostitute or street tough, or more generally, dark and gritty future.

This undercuts the themes of social division and class consciousness that Altered Carbon is supposedly exploring, and cyberpunks general penchant for vibrant, complex settings. The rich and poor seem so completely divided in this series that theres no reason for all culture to freeze just because the rich are living in amber or if there is a reason, Altered Carbon doesnt make a case for it. In fact, the series would be much stronger if a high-tech but stagnant society of immortals periodically appropriated fresh pop culture from a short-lived underclass. It would combine present-day social concerns with strange new technology, while still letting Altered Carbon indulge in retro-futurism.

But instead of treating stacks and sleeves as unpredictable forces, Altered Carbon depicts them as a cudgel that decadent immortals use against the helpless poor in dully predictable ways. Theres one piece of uniquely creepy depravity in the series: a woman whose pet snake apparently contains a human mind. Otherwise, after several hundred years of life, Altered Carbons Meths have settled on two hobbies: admiring the middlebrow neoclassical decor of their private sky mansions, and killing poor people. Theyre not even particularly creative about it apparently low-budget snuff scenarios and clumsy zero-gravity death matches never get old.

Technology isnt an unexpected force, its a predictable cudgel

These temporary deaths are all horrible, of course, as is the Meths overall callousness. But theres such a monotonous, unimaginative tread of cruelty that it loses any shock value or allegorical heft. Beneath its serious grown-up science fiction trappings of nudity and sexual violence, Altered Carbon is less incisive than the equally heavy-handed young adult series The Hunger Games, which mixed on-the-nose class commentary with genuine futuristic weirdness.

Part of the problem is that unlike many cyberpunk protagonists, Kovacs isnt really part of Altered Carbons world hes a newcomer being handsomely paid to investigate a Meths (temporary, but mysterious) murder. Actual members of the underclass are rarely given goals or agency, unless theyve been personally liberated by Kovacs and his infinite expense account. Theyre doll-like bodies waiting to be smashed up, so Kovacs can either justify his rage or establish his good-guy status with paternalistic advice. (You shouldnt let anyone hurt you. Youre worth more than that, he helpfully tells one brothel worker.) We know more about how the poor people of this society die than how they live.

A couple of running subplots delve into Altered Carbons specific vision of the future, and unsurprisingly, theyre the best parts of the series. A sentient Edgar Allan Poe-themed hotel which interacts with guests using an avatar based on Poe himself offers a window into an intriguing AI service economy, including virtual poker nights with a labor union. Poe strikes up a friendship with a sleeveless woman, which emphasizes the fuzzy line between an artificial personality and a human who only exists on a chip. And Kovacs police officer partner Kristen Ortega has a neo-Catholic family thats split over Gods view of resurrecting a loved one. In these cases, Altered Carbon pushes past its Blade Runner fetish and reflexive cynicism to find something human.

But when the larger world is so thin, its hard to put something like neo-Catholicism in a larger context. Characters have had centuries to get used to the idea of stacks. Why do so many still seem blindsided by their existence? And why do so few people, including the dour Meths, seem to be doing anything interesting with the technology?

Altered Carbon trades thoughtful writing and design for a blinkered focus on polemic and prefab dystopia. Instead of imagining what a future full of body-shifters would look like, the series seemingly starts with an aging visual style, adds the premise that rich immortals enjoy hurting people, and work backward from there. It has all the superficial hallmarks of a cyberpunk classic like Blade Runner, but it would have been far better cyberpunk without them.

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Netflixs Altered Carbon misses the point of cyberpunk ...