Category Archives: Nihilism

This years 4th of July will feel more normal, whatever that is, from last years, at the height of the pandemic uncertainty. My days of lighting off bottle rockets and strings of firecrackers are past, sort of. I do maintain the habit of re-reading the Declaration of Independence.

The dated prose still cuts cleanly, especially the unmodified conclusion on the character of King George III: A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

I love that line.

So after the fireworks, parades and hot dogs, we celebrate not only freedom from, but freedom with purpose. For self government is not nihilism but the obligation for honesty, forbearance and a touch of modesty about the purposes and rightful boundaries of government. The pandemic and its aftermath have tested those.

After 30 years of covering the government in one medium or another, I do admire the touch of modesty and forbearance Ive seen in some of the most skilled public servants Ive known. And Ive known a lot of them. Although I cant say that, as a person, Ive had to face a zealous criminal prosecutor or an exacting environmental regulator.

Our latter day reality is a really big government, more extensive than the Founders could have imagined. For better or worse, its wound into the day-to-day life of Americans. Also true: The nation is richer, more technologically advanced, and more diverse than anyone could have reasonably imagined 245 years ago. If you said to old John Adams, Youll have to go through a millimeter wave advanced imaging scanner, and wear an anti-virus mask before boarding this airplane to Boston Logan, he wouldnt have understood a word you said. Maybe Boston.

As the largest employer, the federal government of today is an endlessly fascinating institution. Each year about now, along with the federal holiday of Independence Day, out come the rankings of Best Places To Work in the federal government a concept that would have puzzled the signers of the Declaration.

The most remarkable thing about the latest Best Places to Work in the federal government rankings? How unremarkable the results actually are. In fact, they nearly match last years, and the year before that.

A casual reading shows, gosh, engagement scores look way up across the board. Perennial top-ranked NASA, for instance, saw its 2020 score rise to 86.6%, from 81.5% a year before. Homeland Security rose from 52.3% to 61.1% in the same period. The Government Accountability Office, the usual topper among mid-sized agencies, saw its engagement score rise from 81.8% in 2019 to 89.4% in the latest edition.

So, did federal employees undergo an epiphany in the pandemic and find renewed gusto in their public service? Thats hard to tell.

The Partnership for Public Service, which produces the Best Place to Work listings, included this note on how it calculates the scores, which are derived from answers to certain question on the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey: Previously, we divided the number of positive responses (e.g., the number of respondents who answered agree or strongly agree) by the total number of people who completed the survey. Beginning in 2020, the Partnership divided the number of positive responses to each question by the number of people who answered that particular question. This change resulted in smaller denominators, filtering out respondents who skip questions, and slightly larger percent-positives [emphasis mine].

Therefore, how much of that engagement score uptick is attributable to people being happier at work versus attributable to the change in scoring methodology is impossible to know?

You can find evidence, though, that the pandemic did have a positive influence. Feds gave high marks to their agencies responses to the COVID pandemic. Satisfaction with pay, while middling, exceeds the average in the private sector.

The usual issues resurfaced. Too many employees dont think survey scores will spur much change. Leadership is seen as ineffective. And so on. One clear signal is that satisfaction ratings, perceptions of leadership, feelings about agency effectiveness or employee empowerment those arent related to whos in the White House. They have more to do with whos running individual agencies than whos running the political apparatus.

Well, one exception. For whatever reasons, the employee engagement index for the Office of Management and Budget sank like a stone in 2020, from a high of 76.3 to 54.6, or number 29 on the list. Swings of that magnitude are unusual in the rankings, even with smaller denominators. Sometimes its the numerator.

By Adrian Dannhauser

Bones found on Seymour Island indicate that 37 to 40 million years ago, penguins stood at a formidable 6 feet tall and weighed 250 pounds.

Source: Mental Floss

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Working through the pandemic how great was that! - Federal News Network

The left believes that the pandemic has exposed the worlds strong men. Trumps dethronement, it suggests, confirms that the very qualities that help populists seduce masses prevent them from delivering compassionate governance needed to handle a once-in-a-century humanitarian crisis. That the nationalists vision has proved to be too inward-looking, too conceited, to allow for a unified global response required to defeat a scourge that respects no geographies and afflicts all.

The left insists that voters around the world are now more inclined to support only those leaders who are visibly dedicated to making democracy great again.

Woke folk may have no regard for Johnson, Modi, Bolsonaro, Morrison, Putin, and Duterte, but are they themselves demonstrating an unswerving commitment to the liberal ideal?

Not quite. And certainly not if among their omissions one were to include the case of Afghanistan. This blighted country that straddles geo-strategic fault lines at the crossroads of Asia is back in the throes of an existential crisis.

In the most callous tradition of realpolitik the liberal establishment has simply abandoned Afghanistan to the ministrations of some of the worlds most notorious actors. Indeed, Joe Biden, the great hope of the liberal creed, has resolved to complete Americas troop pullout from Afghanistan. Nato forces that were allied to the American cause of delivering an enduring freedom from dysfunction for Afghanistan will also undoubtedly follow suit.

The departure date is just a few weeks away. Once the withdrawal happens Afghanistan will fall into a bottomless caldera of ignominy: The country led by the worst persecutors of human rights, the country with the most internal refugees, the country with the most terror groups, the country with the greatest number of orphaned children. The scenarios are too horrendous to contemplate. But far-fetched they are certainly not.

For amongst the abominable who are primed to jump into the vacuum as soon as the Americans up sticks are the Taliban. They are the horsemen of a particularly degenerate nihilism that are currently waiting outside the gates of Kabul in a tactical limbo. The militia was bombed into the stone ages by Bushs America for harbouring the self-styled caliph: Osama bin Laden. The Saudi sheikh spent years in the caves of Tora Bora under the Talibans aegis weaning the menace that was the al-Qaida. His twisted machinations brought down the World Trade Centre in New York, very nearly triggering a clash of civilisations.

But unlike bin Laden and some of his generals who were hunted down and killed, the Taliban in a cruel irony have had a second life. Like Frankenstein, this monster has been resurrected. And even though the Taliban shocked the world by carrying out mass public floggings of women and girls for as little as venturing out of their homes unchaperoned, it is now part of the peace process in Afghanistan.

Scandalously, the Talibans legitimisation has sanction it has been promised a stake in Afghanistan through the instrument of a peace deal. The tragedy is that the Taliban has won a place on the Afghan peace talks high table without making any concessions. Not even on its medieval outlook.

The Chinese (the deprivations of its gulags in Xinjiang are barely hidden from the world) and the Pakistanis (arguably the headquarter of global terrorism) wont mind the Taliban either, so long as they can work in the shadows and manipulate the presiding Afghan worthies into doing their bidding. Both Beijing and Islamabad fancy a stake in Afghanistan for the strategic depth it affords against neighbours, in particular local hegemon India.

The inevitability of Afghanistan being carved up by a nexus of illiberal regimes portends a profound betrayal of the democratic cause. A cause that liberals committed themselves to in an era before Trump and now after his exit.

In the heady but traumatic days after Trump fell from his perch atop what was deemed to be a tower of political piffle, the liberal consensus asked us to cherish November 2020. It was billed as a moment in time marking not the defeat of a candidate, but the victory of idealism: a renewed appreciation for the fact that democracy is precious, it is fragile and that it has prevailed.

So how are we to now square the idealism that accompanied the democratic transition in Washington with the impending surrender in Kabul to barbaric medieval theocrats? Why is the left that seeks to fashion a post-Trump world into a rules-based order now going to walk away from the chance to prove what is possible when the right choices are made?

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

Continued here:

Bagram abandoned, soon all of Afghanistan to be left to Taliban, and where is the global lefts commitment t - The Times of India Blog

This column is the opinionof Cissy Suen, who is a first-generation Chinese Canadian living in Vancouver.For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

There have been many calls to boycott the 2022 Winter Beijing Olympics on the grounds of the Uighur genocide, breaches of international law in Hong Kong andthe arbitrary detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, among others.

The central issue of debate is not whether there are enough reasons to boycott, but how effective a boycott would be.

Take the 1980 US-led boycott against the Moscow Olympics; many countries joined America in protesting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, yet the invasion continued. However, what's forgotten in this argument: China is not Soviet Russia. Chinese culture is distinct and the role it plays in this debate cannot be understated.

My parents immigrated to Canada, my mother from Taiwan and my father from Hong Kong. While these islands are politically different, culturally they are similar to mainland China. Growing up, I was taught to respect my elders andwork hard.But above all, I was taught the importance of appearances.

For example, if a relative has terminal cancer, make sure everything appears normal so they can happily live the rest of their life, without knowledge of imminent death (see Lulu Wang's The Farewell for a cinematic depiction).

Or if you're treated unfairly at work, don't speak up, because you must appear hard working and respectful.

These cultural characteristics are still prominent within China. Which means they also affect the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Appearances are everything in this culture. As the CCPcelebrates 100 years of rule on July 1, it continues to paint an image of a powerful and successful China, all while jailing dissidents and censoring online posts that provoke "historical nihilism."

If China cannot appear as a country that can successfully host the Olympics, then it would be detrimental to that image of a successful and powerful country that the CCP wants to convey to both the Chinese people and the world.

The arbitrary detention of the Michaels makes the boycott a uniquely Canadian issue.

Kovrig and Spavor were detained in China on Dec. 10, 2018 nine days after Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, was arrested while changing planes in Vancouver. The arrests of Kovrig and Spavor are widely seen as acts of retaliation by Beijing for Meng's arrest, and they remain detained to this day.

If we want a diplomatic boycott, Canada must take the lead and start appealing to other countries immediately.

After seeing the show of solidarity from diplomats from 26 countries outside the courts of the Michaels' trials, I believe we wouldn't be alone in our action but if we are, we still take away China's ability to appear as a truly respected international player.

The Olympics are not apolitical.

John Carlos raised his fist on the podium of the 1968 Olympics to protest racial injustice, while Germany and Japan were not invited to the 1948 London Olympics following the Second World War. The 2008 Beijing Olympics, meanwhile,largely helped the world forget about the violent crackdown on Tibetan protests earlier that year.

The Canadian Olympic Committee has cited other "substantial tools" in lieu of a boycott, but it's not clear what these other tools are or how substantial they'd really be.

Perhaps our athletes could stage a protest in Beijing, wear a pin on their uniformsor mention the genocide in interviews. But Chinese state censorship is strict and there's a possibility the CCP could throw another Canadian in detention under falsified charges.

It's safer for our athletes to formally boycott the games.

The last time the Olympics were held in a country committing genocide was arguably the 1936 Berlin Games. This wasbefore the Holocaust but after the Nuremberg Laws had been enactedand the rights of Jews were substantially reduced.

Given that Uighurs have been locked in "re-education camps,"subject to forced labour, non-consensual sterilizationand prohibited from speaking their language and practising their religion, why hasn't the International Olympic Committee an organization that claims to promote peace taken a stronger stance?

If the world's governments also won't take action and our businesses are too afraid of losing access to Chinese markets, then we, athletes and non-athletes, must do something.

A boycott of Beijing 2022 would completely destroy the appearance of the respected China the CCP wishes to portray. If we don't boycott, we will normalize a new level of atrocitythat has not been realized since the Second World War.

Do you have a compelling personal story that can bring understanding or help others? We want to hear from you.Here's more info on how to pitch to usat bcvoices@cbc.ca.

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Why boycotting the Beijing Olympics would strike a distinct cultural blow to the Chinese government - CBC.ca

Barely more than two weeks ago I listened live along with more than 20,000 others to President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador and his brother/campaign manager Karim discuss their countrys decision to officially make bitcoin legal tender. Celebrities, billionaires, developers, intellectuals, politicians and anonymous plebs alike listened in while the president answered questions from people with the niche expertise to know exactly what to ask and what to go on impassioned rants about.

It was living history on what was essentially a giant Twitter-enabled conference call. Those listening heard the floor debate in the background and cheers ringing out when the legislation passed with overwhelming support. As curious bitcoiners peppered him with questions, Karim Bukele was overwhelmed with the moment. The good and the bad, the opened possibilities for the people of El Salvador and the known-unknowns of an anticipated international reaction. The very real-life consequences of adopting open-source code designed by crypto-anarchists as money.

El Salvador is a country thats seen extremely difficult and violent times for several decades, now add to that the crises of 2020 and the pandemic. When President Bukele spoke about bitcoin, he didnt talk about the price. He contrasted the dystopian vision of the future that young Salvadorans (plus many nihilistic millennials and zoomers worldwide) believe will manifest a precarious future of decline, climate catastrophe, migration, war and poverty with a hopeful vision of a prosperous El Salvador built on the Bitcoin network.

A nation state legalized, embraced and mandated bitcoin as currency alongside the US dollar. Legislation is also planned promising permanent residency to anyone that invests three bitcoin in El Salvador. There will be no capital-gains tax on bitcoin and no property tax. Existing debts can be paid in bitcoin. Utilizing the Lightning Network, bitcoin will fulfill its potential as a true medium of exchange and unit of account. To pull it all together into a perfect meme sent from heaven, work is already beginning on infrastructure to use El Salvadors plentiful, 100% renewable geothermal energy from volcanoes for bitcoin mining. This is the opening shot of a Bitcoin Revolution. Or, thats at least how the revolutionaries see it.

This all sounds absolutely absurd.

Maybe the whole crypto thing is just a curiosity not worth any further thought? A corrupt wannabe Pinochet in a small, insignificant country using magic internet money to launder cash for local El Chapos and corrupt politicians. The tulip-bubble-ponzi found its next victims. Sure, some people got rich buying this thing while nearly everyone around them said they were an idiot. They got lucky. But really though, the idea that bitcoin can be a world reserve currency is insane. Bitcoin definitely is not the spark for revolution on the scale of the Renaissance, the French Revolution or the Industrial Revolution. Its a scam and all these dumb people who bought into it will learn a painful lesson, and to be honest they deserve it for being so dumb.

The idea of bitcoin. The existential question: What is bitcoin? What do you think bitcoin is? What does its existence mean for the world? For you and your family? For your neighbors and community? Because whatever diverse and contradictory answers individuals may have for those questions, there is at least one answer that everyone agrees on. Bitcoin exists, and there will only ever be 21 million.

Any idea is meaningless without human beings acting out its consequences in real life. Essentially all ideas are based on an absurdity, on meaningless ideals in some poor souls head, passed from generation to generation, peer-to-peer as our ancestors taught us. Ideologies systems of ideas are the highest form of absurdity. As clearly evidenced by the entire history of Church and State from the Oracle of Delphi to Donald Trump, from the Inquisition to the Gulag Archipelago.

The highest form of absurdity: Cult of the Supreme Being at the peak of the Reign of Terror, Thermidor Year 2.

Image source

Revolution is absurd, right up until the moment it happens. A true revolution is a paradigm shift in ideology, a change in the ideas which shape how human beings assign meaning to the situation we all find ourselves in. With this, social structures are shaken to the ground and rebuilt in entirely new forms or left to deteriorate and crumble. States are overthrown, reorganized and founded. Power is reshuffled and wealth redistributed among ethnicities, classes and cliques. Kings lose their l. Mobs lose their minds. The daily life of the common plebian is forever changed by a new sovereignty, and the old way of looking at the world no longer makes any sense. The old way falls back into total absurdity.

Bitcoin is absurd, right up until the moment of hyperbitcoinization. Bitcoin is meaningless without the involvement of people and the social consequences it has in the real world. Its often said that Bitcoin is a religion and its supporters are cult members. But a word that is more fitting is ideology. Bitcoin is an ideology still in its childhood, and the infamous toxic behavior of plebs resembles radical political activism as much as fundamentalist religion. For millions of millennials around the world Bitcoin is an attractive ideology. It just so happens one of those millennials is the popular young president of a small yet politically significant country to US interests.

20th century ideology has grown stale and discredited with nothing to offer the world.

Consider the alternatives. The previous century was dominated by warring ideologies: capitalism, socialism and nationalism. Old World empires collapsed worldwide. Dozens of new nation states were born. Two massive World Wars left the European continent a pile of bloody rubble. Multiple genocides happened at unprecedented speed and scale. Violent revolutions and civil wars shook the world. Hundreds of millions died.

When the Berlin Wall fell, the end of history was declared with capitalism triumphant. Time continued to progress anyway. Socialism maintained a precarious but real position as ideological opposition to Pax Americana, notably in community activism, academic institutions and importantly, Latin American countries. Nationalism and traditional religious movements claimed space amongst the abandoned working classes and many former Soviet Bloc countries. As regional conflict, migration, economic inequality and financial crises escalated in the new millennium, reactionaries reacted and varying degrees of what could be categorized as neofascism reappeared.

Salvadoran history is filled with neoliberal military dictatorships, communist guerrillas, right-wing death squads and corrupt politicians. Its a microcosm of 20th century ideological conflict. On top of that, El Salvador also exemplifies major challenges of the 21st century: the continued sociopolitical reckoning of decolonization, globalization, mass migration, lack of opportunity, climate instability, economic inequality and access to technologically-enabled abundance.

President Bukele disrupting the global financial system with a prominently displayed painting of martyred Catholic saint scar Romero behind him.

Image source

El Salvadors sudden move to make bitcoin legal tender might be the seed that grows into a major ideological camp in global politics. A new frame of reference to measure the world against and try to make sense out of it. A world in which the battles of capitalism and socialism are transcended by a competing system built on Bitcoin. A system providing historically unique property rights, capabilities and power to the individual as well as communities alienated by centuries of colonization and imperialism. And doing so while at the same time strengthening the hard-fought gains of the Enlightenment currently under attack from both the radical left and right.

If bitcoin is hope it needs to prove it in the developing world, not on Wall Street.

Creating new property rights that do not require a State to enforce is a revolutionary act. What impact such a revolution can have on politics, economics and the daily lives of people is to be determined. Developing nations around the world will be watching to see if the Bitcoin experiment in El Salvador is successful. If it is, a spark may well be lit that leads to an upending of the financial system as we all know it. It is the Bitcoin domino theory.

Nothing about the future can be predicted with certainty. Just like the price of bitcoin, revolutions are unpredictable and volatile events with drastic moves in all directions. When revolutions happen its often the revolutionaries themselves that are most surprised by where, when, why and how the spark is lit, and just how far things go.

In 1789, Maximilien Robespierre was a 31 year-old provincial lawyer that carried a copy of The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau with him at all times. He was vocally against the death penalty and supported a constitutional monarchy. As a 36 year-old kingslayer in 1794, he declared terror is the order of the day, executing his political opposition on both the left and right, chopping heads off counter-revolutionaries by the tens of thousands and was finally shot in the face and met Madame la Guillotine as a tyrant. The tipping point was not the blood-drenched streets of Paris or the quarter-million dead in the Vende. It was the absurdity of the Festival of the Supreme Being.

If events such as the fall of Robespierre seem far outside the possibilities of magic internet money, consider the impacts of a protocol that Bitcoin is often compared to: the internet itself. Only a decade ago the Arab Spring began and the concept of the Twitter Revolution was born. Protests raged, regimes fell and civil wars ignited as images of rebellion were liked, shared and retweeted. Social media disrupted the status quo. The social media of money and Bitcoin could have impacts just as profound.

It wasnt only dank memes that rocked the Arab world. Still in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, food prices in the region were rising fast. The spark was lit when a Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire in a suicidal act of desperation against petty local corruption destroying his business. Social media and the internet gave regular people new power to organize and change their circumstances. Within months, decades-old authoritarian regimes were overthrown.

In a similar way, a Bitcoin Revolution will be shaped by the new power available to the individual and the circumstances it exists in. Instead of rising food prices, it could be inflation. Instead of a crisis in mortgage-backed securities, it could be a war in Taiwan or Ukraine, or a global pandemic. Circumstances in some countries will lead to attempts to ban, criminalize and control bitcoin. Other countries will make another choice.

El Salvador chose to embrace the Bitcoin whirlwind. And others will follow.

The reason this series is titled Bitcoin is Absurd is simply that the idea of bitcoin becoming a world reserve currency seems ridiculous, fanciful and totally absurd. Certainly not something to be thought out and debated as an inevitable outcome. Writing tomes on the revolutionary political implications of magic internet money could turn out to be a meaningless waste of time based on pure Moonism. That doubt will persist until the very last moment before a Bitcoin Revolution. Then it will just be common sense.

Post-World War I and II philosophy hit a giant brick wall of nihilism and despair that made Nietzsche seem downright optimistic. The Great Wars revealed any appeals to civilized behavior and human progress as illusory. Then came another revelation: lOn the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, a speech by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev denouncing Stalin and his regime of terror.

For many intellectuals, philosophers, revolutionaries and idealists in the first half of the 20th century, a glimpse of hope existed in socialism and the Russian Revolution. Tales of repression, starvation, show trials and concentration camps were easily brushed aside as imperialist propaganda until Khrushchevs not-so-secret speech. The illusion of a workers paradise became a nightmare, and the last ideological hope for an idealist concerned with the truth was exposed as a fraud. Everything people could believe in was exposed for the absurdity it was.

One of those disillusioned intellectuals fought in the French Resistance against the Nazis and subsequently became a famous writer. Albert Camus thought long and hard about his experiences during the war and watched as the Soviet Union was exposed. His conclusion: life is absurd and if any meaning exists its clearest manifestation is the rebel. A rebel who decides they will no longer accept the conditions of their life and creates meaning in the act of rebellion itself. The individual rebel not only acts in defense of their own human dignity, but implicitly for the dignity of all people.

Albert Camus: Embracing the Absurd

Image source

Bitcoin may be absurd but it is also an act of rebellion against the global monetary system. It is already the decentralized central bank of the internet, and in less than three months it will also be legal tender in a sovereign nation. During the Twitter Spaces with President Bukele, he responded to a question about criminals using bitcoin and said: Weapons are bought in US dollars right now. Money laundering is done in US Dollars. The drug cartels use US Dollars.

The contrast could not be greater. In President Bukeles mind the US dollar is the worn-out, violent status quo and Bitcoin is a tool to create a new path forward for the country he leads. A rebellious push through the decades of tragedy that have befallen El Salvador. A counter-narrative to the dystopic future many young Salvadorans accept as inevitable. Life is absurd, no matter the narrative. Camus saw that and chose to rebel, because rebellion in the face of oppression is the only real choice. President Bukele, whether he knows it or not, chose to rebel, and brought a nation along with him.

This is a guest post by Demi Pop. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC, Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.

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Bitcoin Is Absurd, Part I: Volcano Mining And The Banana Republic - Bitcoin Magazine

Haley Joel Osment in A.I. Artificial Intelligence.(Warner Bros.)

Spielbergs prescient epic of faith remains miraculous.

Its the 20th anniversary of the best film of the 21st century, Steven Spielbergs A.I. Artificial Intelligence, which opened June 29, 2001. The title suggests the opposite of mindfulness. It points to soul, the spirit an unexpected theme for a movie that gestated from Spielbergs collaboration with Stanley Kubrick, popularly considered the most cerebral of all filmmakers. Each man exchanges his sentiments and alarms. Its the toymakers and the intellectuals private joke made public.

No other millennial movie went so deep as A.I. into universal experience the secret needs of childhood that are forgotten in adulthood. Although based on the short story Supertoys Last All Summer Long, by Brian Aldiss, it most significantly re-creates the 1883 Carlo Collodi classic Pinocchio. Walt Disneys 1940 animated version is a touchstone for Spielberg and his special regard for childhood innocence. He updates the story of a puppet who longs to be a real boy into a modern tale about sensitivity-equipped robot David (perfectly acted by The Sixth Senses Haley Joel Osment), who desires to achieve human fulfillment. It combines dark sci-fi futuristic fantasy with the emotional amplitude of classic fairy tales. Spielberg-Kubricks conceit confronts pop nihilism and resolves it, which is why stupid reviewers castigated a film that demands reconsideration today.

Ian Simmons and I, on his Kicking the Seat podcast, recently discussed A.I.s prophetic aspects specifically the storys class divide, according to which rich citizens of the post-diluvian world enjoy the profligate luxuries of technological human simulation (robot David is used as substitute for the ailing child of a wealthy couple, Monica and Henry), while the unrefined working class objects to the upper classs inhumane domination. (Simmons made a Silicon Valley association that helps reveal A.I.s sociological prescience.)

Spielbergs Flesh Fair sequence shows the rowdy class waving American flags and cheering crude heavy-metal music during a Luddite demolition derby against the fiber-optic, cybertronic metallic toys artifacts of leisure-class decadence. The carnival uncannily resembles the Save America rallies that todays corporate media either mock or ignore.

When A.I. debuted just three months before 9/11, no one imagined that America would become a nation where citizens liberties were curtailed by Silicon Valley overlords through methods of artificial intelligence and virtual-reality substitutes for humanity. But this extraordinary sequence predicts the conditions of emotional totalitarianism the visceral hatred, the lack of love that amounts to political persecution.

It resonates in two ways: panic among humans, and also among mechanicals (Mechas) such as David and the fugitive adult robot Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), who are fleeing the threat of roundups, witch hunts, and capture. A charred Flesh Fair robot (voiced by comedian Chris Rock) grins at the audience. Symbolizing historical lynchings, this image evokes todays twisted political rhetoric in which media elites use race victimization to further a bifurcated class culture. Who could have guessed, in 2001, that this powerfully disturbing sequence could be reversed or that Spielberg and Kubrick knew that Jim Crow rhetoric and race exploitation would be revived? A.I.s speculative fiction shows us the terror that has come true.

When David escapes the Flesh Fair, scenes of his woodland wandering recall the fairy-tale splendor and menace of Bambi and Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood, followed by the sexual extremes of Rouge City from childhood innocence to adult corruption that David must traverse while seeking transformation. David is the opposite of Hal 9000, the murderous automaton of 2001: A Space Odyssey that was the ultimate product of self-annihilating egotism. David moves toward religiosity through ideation, quizzing Rouge Citys computer guru Dr. Know for the whereabouts of the Blue Fairy. Davids adventure, a search for ineffable love, touches on the sublime.

After the apocalypse, A.I.s Pinocchio figure uses self-motivated reasoning in pursuit of love and the meaning of creation. Spielberg redeems and transcends Kubricks nihilistic sniggerings about human existence and the spiritual void. Kubricks brainy sarcasm, admired by adolescents, is also the cynical despair that propels Davids suicide attempt. Depicted as a simulated tear over Gigolo Joes mock-human face, Davids leap into the abyss is this centurys single greatest movie image. Its closest match is equally significant: the clear, profound evangelism expressed by the Day of the Dead seekers reaching for salvation in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence surpasses Spielbergs other entertainments by extrapolating fantasy to reveal the recesses of memory and Mariology like no other movie. Davids faith challenges our despondent present. The conscience that Disney represented as Pinocchios Jiminy Cricket is embodied here by the animatronic toy bear Teddy (a Spielberg motif I discuss in Make Spielberg Great Again), who gives the films powerful conclusion a breathtaking grace note. It remains miraculous, especially following 20 years of pop-culture decline.

Since A.I.s release, only Mohsen Makhmalbafs The President, Marco Bellocchios Vincere, Alain Resnaiss Wild Grass, Zack Snyders Man of Steel, S. Craig Zahlers Dragged Aaross Concrete, Brian Taylors Mom and Dad, and a few other movies have defied the trend of insisting that moral questions are moot. Most millennial movies substitute the question of existence, and the significance of love and faith, with darkness, disbelief, and trashy formulaic political distraction. A.I. shines out in Hollywoods Dark Ages.

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A.I. Is the Best Film of the 21st Century - National Review

CGTN Insight | Published: July 01, 2021 13:23:09 | Updated: July 01, 2021 13:41:28

After the Cold War, Samuel Huntington, Professor of Political Science at Harvard University, put forward the "Clash of Civilizations" theory, arguing that the fault lines between cultures would replace the political and ideological boundaries of the Cold War as the main flashpoints for crises and bloodshed.

Huntington forecast that the paramount axis of world politics would be conflicts between "the West and the Rest," requiring the West to contain the expansion of military strength among non-Western civilizations.

Decades on, does Huntington's thesis reflect how the world works?

The answer from China is no. You can get a glimpse of how diversified cultures peacefully coexist in China through this simple question: What is authentic "Chinese food"? Sichuan hotpot, Cantonese Wonton soup, Peking duck, Hunan's stinky tofu? All of these and more. Diverse cuisine from different regions of China can be found in one city, and sometimes even in the same block.

A typical Sichuan hotpot, with two choices of flavors spicy and non-spicy VCG

The nation's inclusiveness has made this happen.

This is also reflected in dozens of dialects, the traces of diverse philosophies that can be found in a single style of Chinese architecture, the popularity of traditional ethnic clothing across ethnicities, to name just a few cultural expressions.

China's stability is a result of its open attitude to diversity and not stifling minorities for a land of sameness.

The risk of identity-based conflicts does exist but can be avoided by smart policymaking. Religious and ethnic differences can sometimes lead to chaos and even violence, but China, a multi-ethnic country, has endeavoured to build a diversified and cohesive community, respecting differences while promoting underlying unity.

There is no ethnic or cultural discrimination in China. People's ethnic identities are recognised by law. While some ethnic groups in certain countries, out of fear of discrimination, choose not to reveal their racial identity in public life, all ethnic minorities in China have actively participated in the country's political and social life.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has stressed on several occasions that cultural inclusiveness, economic independence, and emotional closeness are the bonds that unify China's ethnic groups. Every achievement by the country is a product of the collective wisdom and sweat of the Chinese people. Indeed, their common identity as a unified national community has become a powerful driving force for the country's growth.

The balance between "differences" and "unity" is vital to China's stability and development.

The relevance of an open and inclusive culture is evident not only in China's ethnic relations, but also in the exchanges between China and the rest of the world. Globalisation may have intensified identity conflicts in some cases, but China has embraced foreign cultures with an open mind.

An autonomous aircraft on display at an exhibition during the "China 5G + Industrial Internet Conference" in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province on November 19, 2020 Xinhua

Some advanced foreign cultural and technological products, after being introduced to China, have developed by leaps and bounds in the Chinese market, further enhancing and enriching Chinese culture.

For many years, China was an importer and imitator of foreign technologies. According to the Xinhua News Agency, up to the year 2000, China's patent applications accounted for only 3.77 percent of the world total, well below the US and Japan.

Yet over the past decade, China has turned from an imitator, follower and traditional manufacturer into an innovator, leader, and smart manufacturer. Its annual patent filings have surpassed Japan's and were double those of the US in 2016. The country is now a global innovation powerhouse and the engine for an increase in the world's intellectual property assets.

China's openness towards foreign cultures and technologies has been a catalyst for the transformation.

Undeniably though, the emergence of "historical nihilism" and "cultural nihilism" in recent years has posed a major challenge to Chinese culture. Therefore, boosting cultural confidence is also an integral part of enhancing cultural identity.

Burying one's head in the sand is not the right way forward. In response to the "clash of civilizations" scenario, China's open and inclusive culture is a solution.

Editor's note:This article is part of a special series from CGTN and its international media partners marking the centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC). The author, Gao Lei, is an associate professor at the School of Marxism, University of International Business and Economics, and a research fellow at the Research Institute of Globalization and Chinas Modernization. You can contact her directly at:

[emailprotected]

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China's response to the 'Clash of Civilizations' - The Financial Express

1. Chinese academic under fire over historical nihilism remarks  South China Morning Post
2. Tourists flock to celebrate the history of the Chinese Communist Party  The Economist
3. OPINION: Understanding the Chinese Communist Party at 100  THE WEEK
4. 100 years of Chinese Communist Party: As Xi Jinping consolidates power, softening of stance at LAC unlikely  Firstpost
5. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Chinese academic under fire over historical nihilism remarks - South China Morning Post

SHANGHAI, June 29 (Reuters) - At the house where Mao Zedong and 12 others met 100 years ago to found the Chinese Communist Party, President Xi Jinping recently led his politburo in reciting an oath to uphold principles and "sacrifice everything" for the party and the people.

The obscure Shanghai courtyard of 1921 is now a lavish memorial hall, a focal point as China celebrates the centenary on Thursday of the party that controls the world's most populous nation and second-biggest economy.

The site of that first party congress now chronicles China's "humiliation" at the hands of warlords and imperialists, its "awakening" in the early 20th century and its revival after the party's 1949 victory in a civil war that sent Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists into exile in Taiwan.

The commemorations in what has become an upscale neighbourhood of boutiques and restaurants reflect something broader: a myth-making project to amplify China's message at home and abroad, aligning with Xi's call this month to tell more positive stories about China.

But even as China celebrates, it erases.

A stirring video montage highlights China's proudest achievements, including its first atomic bomb, the construction of prestige infrastructure and the recent unmanned mission to Mars.

Ignored are the major tumults of the 20th century that historians reckon killed millions: the "Great Leap Forward" famine of 1958-1960, the decade of chaos in the "Cultural Revolution" from 1966 and the crackdown that killed hundreds or even thousands of pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

"There's a lot of its history (the party) needs to forget," said Robert Bickers, a historian of the party at Britain's University of Bristol. "It has devoted a great deal of effort throughout the course of its 100 years ensuring that there is an agreed text of a history that needs to be celebrated."

Neither the State Council Information Office nor the CCP's Party History and Literature Research Office responded to faxed requests for comment.

'HISTORICAL NIHILISM'

The party has long sought to control history. That effort has intensified under Xi, who has spearheaded a campaign against "historical nihilism", defined as any attempt to use the past to question the party's leading role or the "inevitability" of Chinese socialism.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has established a specialist history unit to propagate the official version of the past. This year Beijing set up a hotline for citizens to report historical nihilism to authorities.

Glenn Tiffert, a historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, said this campaign reflects the party's insecurity and is rooted in Xi's fears that it could collapse like its Soviet counterpart, ousted in 1991.

"It seems to be a particular preoccupation of his from the very beginning," he said. "It is part of a more systematic, integrated approach to re-establishing the authority of the party and ensuring it does not go the way of the Soviet Communist Party."

Despite Xi's efforts to emphasise the continuity of the party's century-long efforts to rejuvenate China, the new memorial hall shows that the party has moved far from its roots.

While it describes its first decades as a triumph of Marxist ideas, there is no mention of the theoretical contortions that allowed the party to jettison the collectivism of the Maoist era and launch market reforms that transformed its economy into the world's second-largest and also one of its most unequal.

A list of party "facts and figures" published by the official Shanghai Daily this month barely mentions ideology, saying the party's mission is "to seek happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation".

"It's not about the belief in communism anymore, it's about delivering the goods," said Tiffert. "And in order to sustain that, they want to cover up all of the missteps."

Yang Xuzhen, an 89-year-old visiting the memorial hall in a wheelchair, was happy to remember the party's achievements, saying the organisation she joined seven decades ago had rescued her from hard labour and servitude.

The Communist Party "has helped change so much in this country, especially for people in the countryside, the poor people and all of the minorities," she said.

Reporting by David Stanway; Additional reporting by Xihao Jiang; Editing by William Mallard

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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China's ruling party censors its past as centenary nears - Reuters

A person receives a dose of Sputnik V (Gam-COVID-Vac) vaccine against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at a vaccination centre in a shopping mall in Saint Petersburg, Russia February 24, 2021. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov

MOSCOW, June 22 (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Tuesday that people who were not vaccinated against COVID-19 or did not have immunity would be unable to work in all workplaces in Russia and that those people could be discriminated against.

"The reality is such that discrimination will inevitably set in. People without vaccination or immunity will not be able to work everywhere. It is not possible. It will pose a threat to those around them," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

President Vladimir Putin warned on Monday that the coronavirus situation in some Russian regions was getting worse as authorities began promoting the idea of regular revaccinations to try to halt a surge in new cases.

Russia reported 546 coronavirus-related deaths on Tuesday, the most confirmed in a single day since February, and 16,715 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, the continuation of a dramatic rise authorities have blamed on the new Delta variant.

The authorities are trying to coax and compel people to get vaccinated, offering those who do the chance to win new cars and flats, while threatening others who dont with loss of earnings and dismissal.

The Kremlin on Friday blamed the increase in cases on peoples reluctance to have vaccinations and nihilism.

Russia has approved four domestically-made vaccines and sold its flagship Sputnik V vaccine to many foreign countries.

Reporting by Dmitry Antonov; Writing by Alexander MarrowEditing by Katya Golubkova

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Kremlin says people without vaccine or immunity in Russia will have limited work options - Reuters

Positivity

The only disability in life is a bad attitude. - Attributed to figure skater Scott Hamilton.

When you search this quote on Google the first thing you will see is a collection of pictorial memes, featuring the quote, most of them alongside images of visibly disabled people in some impressive activity usually some kind of athletics or physical feat. Whether or not it was originally meant as a comment about disability and disabled people, the quote has been widely used to promote the idea that adopting a positive attitude can overcome a disability or the problems of having a disability.

On the other hand

You know, no amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp. Never. Smiling at a television screen isnt going to make closed captions appear for people who are deaf. No amount of standing in the middle of a bookshop and radiating a positive attitude is going to turn all those books into Braille. - April 2014 TED Talk, Im not your inspiration, thank you very much, by Stella Young.

One of the hardest things for disabled people to explain to people who arent disabled is our frequently negative reactions to positive sentiments and approaches.

There is already a more general objection that the common-sense values of optimism and everyday kindness too often become a more explicit and specific system of magical thinking like the idea of manifesting what you want or need in life purely through thought exercises. You dont have to be disabled to take some of the more extreme wellness and motivational fads with a shaker full of salt.

But for disabled people in particular, positivity is an especially mixed bag.

Of course, the advantages of positivity are obvious next to the implied alternative.

While persistent pessimism can easily lead to depression and a debilitating sense of futility and nihilism, optimism can be energizing and motivating. When enough of your goals come to seem impossible, its easy to lapse into emotional depression, and even nihilism, the belief that nothing really matters. If you believe you can accomplish something, its easier to work through the efforts needed to succeed. If you fundamentally feel that your efforts are futile, its harder to maintain the effort.

Positivity is also just a more pleasant mindset to have, at least superficially and temporarily.

Most people prefer a positive, hopeful mood over depression, hopelessness, or unhappiness. And some people do find that they can will themselves into a more positive mindset, or at least fortify their mood to better face hard tasks or difficult situations.

Its also usually easier to get along with people, and be accepted and liked, if you have a positive outlook and cheerful demeanor.

Just as people generally prefer to be happy, most find it more pleasant to be around other people who are happy, or at least kind, upbeat, and easygoing. And one way a disabled person can put non-disabled people who are uncomfortable with disability at ease is to come across as least superficially nice and unbothered.

Finally, some disabled people coming from especially dire and debilitating situations do find a conscious philosophy of positivity to be liberating, even life-saving.

If you have been ridiculed, bullied, and abused for much of your life, adopting positive thinking as a conscious strategy can be an effective lifeline. If you are coping with a new and sudden disability like spinal cord injury or the onset of vision or hearing loss then it can be essential to keep your spirits up and, if necessary, force yourself to envision a happy and independent life ahead.

But despite all of these advantages, the limitations and drawbacks of making positivity a deliberate stance are significant. The limitations and possible harms of certain kinds of positivity have even acquired a name: toxic positivity. When twisted and elevated over all other values and approaches, relentless positivity can be especially insidious for people with disabilities.

Most obviously, positive thinking and self-affirmation does little to confront the uniquely concrete, physical barriers people with disabilities face.

This is the root of Stella Youngs TED Talk assertion. Disabled people face barriers that are physical, not just emotional or attitudinal. We face stairs, curbs and narrow doorways, speech we cannot hear, text we cannot read, information we cant fully decipher. Positivity and optimism may sometimes help remove these barriers, but the right attitude alone is never enough. Barrier removal and accommodations require expertise, collaboration, technical means, legal backing, and resources.

Positivity is also often entirely inadequate in the face of serious material deprivation, discrimination, and abuse.

Beyond more obvious physical barriers, many disabled people also experience severe poverty, loss of opportunity, and both physical and emotional abuse. Such circumstances make it exponentially harder to cultivate and maintain a positive outlook. And even when a disabled person in situations like this does manage to muster some hope and optimism, they are unlikely to alter the underlying circumstances.

Even worse, overzealous pursuit of positivity places too much responsibility on the individual disabled person, and takes it off other people and unjust systems.

One of the most toxic side effects of a philosophy of positivity is that when it fails, the implication is that you are to blame. If your positivity didnt bring positive results, then you werent being positive enough. If, for instance, tending to your mental health and consciously choosing a more healthy mindset doesnt cure your chronic illness, then there is a strong implication that you have failed. This feeds into one of the core elements of ableism that people with disabilities are somehow to blame for their conditions, for not sufficiently fixing themselves.

The problem is that many of the people who tout positivity and similar ideas most aggressively seem to take it much too literally. For them its more than a reminder to guard against despair. It is a discipline, a prescription for wellness. And for disabled people it takes on the rigidity of a moral mandate, and the false promise of snake oil.

If youre disabled and dont maintain that positive attitude, you wont succeed. And if your condition is at all ambiguous or emotional in nature and you dont adopt some specific and detailed version of positivity and wellness, then you are malingering and therefore less deserving of compassion or accommodation. It doesnt even have to be explicitly said. Once you believe that positive thinking will fix your problems, then still having problems means you have failed.

Positivity can also be a distraction from necessary and more consistently effective approaches.

If you take the power of positive thinking too literally, you may overlook or even disdain more concrete and immediate steps to improve things, for yourself and others. Sometimes, a bit of seemingly negative advocacy can make a real, positive difference. Sometimes, holding back judgement and being nice means giving up real opportunities to do some good. Its almost always better to treat people with care and basic human respect. But thats not the same thing as tolerating ableism, especially when pointing it out has the potential to correct it.

Finally, positivity is often weaponized to shame and discredit disability advocates and activists.

Almost every disabled person who has ever called out problematic behavior or engaged in advocacy knows what it means to be labeled as angry or negative. Disabled people are especially vulnerable to this. Anger and criticism of inaccessibility, ableism, and injustice is often dismissed not only as counterproductive, but as coming from grief and resentment of our disabilities themselves. In addition to being fundamentally wrong in most cases, branding a disabled person angry and critical, and urging them to be more positive instead is an effective way to silence disabled people and doge the problems we rightly complain about.

So while positivity can certainly be an asset, it isnt a superpower. It cannot by itself create positive outcomes. Disabled people know this better than most. How then should disabled people and our allies approach the allure of positivity and the almost evangelical fervor of its adherents?

1. Be wary of any approach to disability that amounts to little more than a slogan or simplistic meme.

2. Remember that a disabled persons negativity is often a rational response to real problems.

3. Be aware that telling a disabled person they should look on the bright side, stay positive, or even just smile more may actually be more debilitating than encouraging.

3. Dont take ideas like the power of positive thinking too literally, especially when so many of the barriers disabled people face can only be removed with wood, concrete, and persistent advocacy.

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People With Disabilities Have A Complicated Relationship With Positivity - Forbes