#technocrats to terrorists

[reasoningdaily]

Futureland - Walter Mosley

Futureland - Walter Mosley

Projecting a near-future United States in which justice is blind in at least one eye and the ranks of the disenchanted have swollen to dangerous levels, Mosely offers nine interconnected stories whose characters appear and reappear in each others' lives. For all its denizens, from technocrats to terrorists, celebs to crooks, "Futureland" is an all-American nightmare just waiting to happen.

Nine interconnected short stories capture the high-tech world of the United States in the near future, capturing the lives and fates of such characters as Ptolemy Bent, a child genius whose merciful actions land him in a privatized prison, and Fera Jones, a heavyweight boxing champ who abandons the ring for a political career. 75,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Futureland is bestselling mystery author Walter Mosley's first science fiction book since Blue Light, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Futureland's nine linked stories will provide an accessible and intelligent introduction to written science fiction for mystery or mainstream fiction fans who do not normally read the genre.

Experienced science fiction readers, however, may be less than satisfied with Futureland. Reading it, you might decide Mr. Mosley grew up reading SF, respects the genre, and still watches SF movies, but has read little SF written during or after the New Wave of the 1960s. However, something more may be going on here than a genre newcomer making beginning-SF-writer mistakes. Mr. Mosley may be deliberately, and craftily, creating SF accessible to his large non-SF readership and to others who are strangers to this genre.

Some have labeled Futureland cyberpunk, and it does present a dark, infotech-saturated, corporation-controlled future; but it is in fact an inversion of cyberpunk. Instead of that subgenre's cliche of cool, cutting-edge, street-smart, but not very believable outlaws who out-hack and outwit powerful multinational corporations, this Dante-esque collection presents outlaws and outcasts who may be street-wise, but who have little chance of overcoming the corporations and governments that control, and sometimes take, their lives. Like shockingly few other SF works, Futureland directly examines the lives of the working and the nonworking classes, the poor and the marginalized, the criminal and the criminalized. In other words, Futureland is set in a world quite alien to many veteran SF readers, and is therefore a book they should try. --Cynthia Ward

From Publishers Weekly

After the qualified success of his first science fiction novel, Blue Light (1998), Mosley (best known for such mystery fiction as the Easy Rawlins series) returns with nine linked short stories set in a grim, cyberpunkish near-future. Unfortunately, heavy-handed plotting and unconvincing extrapolation weaken the collection's earnest social message. "Whispers in the Dark" introduces prodigy Ptolemy Bent, who will grow to be the smartest man in the world in spite of his poverty-ridden childhood. Ptolemy reappears in "Doctor Kismet" as an adviser to assassins trying to kill the richest, most corrupt man in the world and as the brains behind a series of global plots to overthrow the status quo in "En Masse" and "The Nig in Me." Champion boxer and much-hyped female role model Fera Jones steps away from the ring to take hands-on responsibility for the influence she wields in "The Greatest." With its easily befuddled talking computer justice system, "Little Brother" is more Star Trek than high-tech cyberpunk. In more familiar territory for Mosley, PI Folio Johnson investigates a series of murders linked to Doctor Kismet in "The Electric Eye." Although packaged as SF, this book is likely to disappoint readers of that genre who've already seen Mosley's themes of racial and economic rebellion more convincingly handled by authors like Octavia Butler. Mystery fans, on the other hand, are far more likely to embrace this latest example of Mosley's SF vision, with its comfortably familiar noirish tone and characters, than they did Blue Light. (Nov. 12)Forecast: With a five-city author tour and national print advertising, both mainstream and genre, this title book should be slated for solid sales.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Mosley's first foray into writing science fiction since Blue Light (LJ 10/1/98), these interrelated stories, set in the near future, read as a natural but chilling extension of our present. From child genius Ptolemy Bent, sentenced to prison for euthanizing his grandmother and uncle, to female boxer Fera, who becomes a feminist icon for the 21st century, his characters battle for both personal survival and a chance to turn back the clock. In this futuristic world, privacy is little but a memory and prejudice and suspicion still sour race relations. Mosley's reputation as the best-selling author of the Easy Rawlins mysteries may entice a number of his regular readers to pick up this book, where they will find some of the same bleak outlook, flashes of insight, and true-to-life African American characters. An additional audience will come from iPublish.com, where the first two stories were previously published as e-books. Recommended for all public libraries. - Rachel Singer Gordon, Franklin Park P.L., IL Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Mystery star Mosley tries his hand at science fiction again, to better effect than in the novel Blue Light (1998). For these nine interconnected stories, he conjures a mid-twenty-first-century world in which one company is the most powerful force in the world and political correctness is the law. The only significant revolutionaries are black, and blacks and whites are still highly antagonistic. All Mosley's good guys are black, including the smartest man in the world, imprisoned for assisting the deaths of his ailing grandmother and uncle; the world's heavyweight boxing champ--a six-foot-nine-inch woman who goes into politics after KO'ing the male heavyweight champ in less than a minute of round one; a private dick who solves cases with the help of a greatly enhanced artificial eye; and a regular-joe worker who becomes the reader's eyewitness to the dawn of a new world when a backfiring biological weapon kills everyone who isn't at least 12.5 percent black. Lest that last bit of business seem too black-triumphalist, the worker-hero quickly discovers that intraspecies predation hasn't vanished. Ably slinging the technobabble to explain the odd wonder-gadget in his tales, and greasing them with plenty of "oh-baby" sex, Mosley creates sf in which Shaft and Superfly would feel at home. Can ya dig it? Ray Olson Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Walter Mosley is the author of the New York Times bestselling Easy Rawlins novels. He lives in New York City.

[magz]

(Alternatively: march 11 to 17, 2024 week summary for palestine on instagram)

March 15 to March 19, 2024 Palestine Summary. From "Let's Talk Palestine" (instagram broadcast channel). Quote,

March 15, 2024.

Day 161

• UNICEF: 1 in 3 children (31%) under the age of 2 in northern Gaza suffer from acute malnutrition, an escalation from 15.6% in January

• 149 Palestinians killed, 300 injured in Gaza in the past 24 hours

• Netanyahu dismisses Hamas’s ceasefire proposal, despite US stating that it is “within the bounds” of what was discussed + announces war cabinet approved plans for Rafah ground invasion. Israel continues to send mixed signals as they are also set to send delegates for truce talks in Qatar

⚖️ ICJ to begin hearings in early April on Nicaragua’s case against Germany for complicity in genocide in Gaza, per Nicaragua’s request for emergency rulings

🇦🇺 Australia to resume UNRWA funding of $6 million, following internal determination that “UNRWA is not a terrorist organization” despite Israel’s accusations

🔻 Hamas claims 4 Israeli soldiers killed in central Gaza + ground fighting continues in Khan Younis (south Gaza) & targeting of an Israeli armored troop carrier and tank

March 16, 2024.

🗞️ The Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister and his cabinet resigned on Feb 26, while PA President Abbas will stay; a move towards a post-genocide plan to create a ‘unity’ PA gov’t across West Bank & Gaza.

Set up in the 90s, the PA operates as a subcontractor of Israel’s occupation, lessening its financial and political burdens. Today, PA is controlled by Abbas’s US-backed Fatah party, after Gaza split from its control under Hamas in 2007.

Since Oct, US has pushed for Gaza’s return to the governance of a reformed PA, but without elections, as Fatah would likely lose. Rather Abbas claims he’ll appoint a “technocratic government of officials & experts”. He chose a new PM 2 days ago.

But the rhetoric of “Palestinian unity” covers up the plan’s dismissal of popular demands for representative leadership. Palestinians doubt the reforms, overwhelmingly demanding the PA’s dissolution, Abbas’ resignation & PLO elections.

👩‍🏫 Confused about the PA? Read our post: tinyurl.com/4yhr7k67

Day 162

• 1st aid shipment departing Cyprus arrived in Gaza yesterday carrying 200 tons of food, marking 1st Gaza sea shipment since 2005 + planned 2nd ship coordinated by US, UAE, Spain & Japan; but unclear on distribution of aid across Gaza

• Massacre in central Gaza as Israel destroys home, killing 36 Palestinians, incl. kids & pregnant women

🔻 Senior Hamas & Houthi officials hold rare meeting to discuss coordinated action against an Israeli Rafah ground invasion

• Israeli settlers attack homes in Nablus (West Bank), throwing stones & shooting the air + 20 Palestinians abducted in West Bank, incl. some released in Nov. hostage exchange deal

•⁠ ⁠Palestinian Authority (PA) president Abbas accuses Hamas of causing “return of Israeli occupation of Gaza”, essentially blaming Hamas for the ongoing genocide. Was prompted by Hamas criticism of ‘unilateral’ appointment of new PM of the PA (see our last broadcast)

• 63 Palestinians killed, 112 injured in Gaza in past 24 hours

March 17, 2024:

Day 163

🇺🇸⁠ NBC: Biden frustrated over drop in poll numbers in swing states Michigan & Georgia due to his handling of Gaza genocide. Shouting and swearing in a White House meeting, saying he’s doing what is right

•⁠ 19 aid trucks arrive in north Gaza — first convoys to reach the north without incident in 4 months. But aid remains scarce as Israel keeps blocking entry of aid as trucks pile outside Rafah crossing + rate of malnutrition among children under 2 in north doubles in past month

•⁠ 14th Palestinian dies since Oct 7 in Israeli prison following multiple allegations of extreme abusive conditions for Palestinian hostages

🇪🇺⁠ ⁠EU President condemns an Israeli Rafah invasion, joining countless nations to do so like the US & Arab countries

•⁠ Israeli forces abduct 25 Palestinians, incl. a woman with cancer from Gaza & a child in overnight raids in West Bank

•⁠ ⁠92 Palestinians killed, 130 injured in Gaza in past 24 hours

March 18, 2024

Day 164

🚨⁠ Israeli forces raid al-Shifa Hospital, where 30,000 Palestinians are sheltering, shooting snipers at those fleeing despite ordering an evacuation. Al-Shifa has regained minimal functionality since Nov seige, but now unable to treat the injured due to siege. 200+ civilians abducted, incl. Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul & his crew — stripped, blindfolded & taken to unknown location, reporting abuse & beatings

•⁠ 81 Palestinians killed, 116 injured in Gaza in past 24 hours

•⁠ Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC): Famine imminent, expected in north Gaza by May as 70% of its population subject to “catastrophic” starvation; while famine in Khan Yunis, Rafah & Deir Balah by July

•⁠ ⁠Israel recaptures Rawda Abu Ajmiyeh, previously released in Nov hostage exchange deal; 13 Palestinians recaptured, a clear violation of the deal

•⁠ West Bank: 300 homes demolished + 1,640 Palestinians displaced since Oct 7

🇪🇺 EU announces plans to sanction Israeli settlers

👆 Graphic from IPC report on the levels of starvation and food insecurity in Gaza. On the left: current levels of food insecurity in Gaza; on the right: projected food insecurity levels by July

March 19, 2024

📣 We’ve just launched a dedicated page to fundraising for Gazans via our linktr.ee/fundsforgaza initiative. We’ve already facilitated tens of thousands of dollars in donations in the past weeks to families in Gaza.

The people we’re helping fundraise for are not numbers. This is a matter of life or death for people with dreams, passions, and stories like you.

Follow the new page @ fundsforgaza (instagram) to get updates on the fundraisers, share content with others to help fundraisers, and support people in Gaza ❤️🇵🇸

Https://instagram.com/fundsforgaza

[eretzyisrael]

by Seth J. Frantzman

The Hamas police story is central to the current issues affecting Gaza. For instance, there are many reports of a humanitarian crisis in the Strip. Hamas and many organizations that have worked with it over the last decades have often claimed there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza in order to win concessions for Hamas so the terror group can continue to rule there.

Hamas believes the suffering of Gazans is in its interests, and it profits from their suffering. However, there is also a very real concern about how the current situation in Gaza could worsen in terms of the humanitarian crisis. Hamas may want the situation to worsen and may be using gunmen or its “police” to make it harder for Gazans to access aid.

We can see how this narrative functions through a recent report at Reuters claiming that “masked men in Gaza enforce prices.” The men claim they are merely enforcing law and order. However, usually “law and order” doesn’t need to be enforced by men with masks, sticks and guns.

Relationship between Hamas and law and order

In Gaza, however, there has been a symbiotic relationship between Hamas armed men and the delivery of humanitarian aid. What this means is that the presence of Hamas gunmen is seen as a positive thing by some of the stakeholders in Gaza.

The absence of an alternative to the Hamas gunmen creates this perception of the terrorist group as “law and order.” This is a strange type of law and order because the same terrorist group places weapons in civilian homes; the same group poses as civilians, bringing harm to innocent people, and the same group brought war on Gaza by attacking Israel on October 7. However, those who perceive Hamas as “law and order” appear to systematically ignore the fact that firing thousands of rockets from civilian areas is not usually how “law and order” thrives.

An article at The Guardian in January is symbolic of the way Hamas has inserted itself into the perception that it is a force for good in Gaza via its “law and order.” The article notes “One senior humanitarian official told The Guardian: ‘The technocrats continue to be about but the QB [Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing] you don’t see. You still see Hamas police in different areas who have a grip to some extent on law and order in some places including in the north.’”

[scentedchildnacho]

The park ...I got a sun burn.....and it sounded like ship wrecks and sirens....like mythology sirens that would sing to sailors and their boats would sink....

Maruta Gartner.....it didn't completely make sense.....the sign read that the beach priorly had been really camped and left to trash....and she would go paint over graffiti....

It made her sound like a dictator oh there could have been new stuff for the kids but there was these squatters so they just took what they had and punished the kids with an aids place

Usually if it's we don't want to do criminality urban ecology centers are opened not the tzu chi Thoreau plan....Thoreau lived in the Victorian age

Uhm I am glad I found the hare Krisna consciousness I am sure I was blessed in ways I dont realize or appreciate yet....

But that whole attempt at creating a poor Buddhist outside school colony mostly felt like I was personally stalked and attacked

I tried being vegan when I was younger and jobbed and it was actually one of the worst experiences of my life why ya bring it up now a little late to do

So I find compass a hazard program she as a mass murderer did have obsessions with elderly people she killed and stole from

They act in those programs like they do you a huge favor and none of those rations would come in without my restitution lawsuit....

Its me that was homeless and fast fooded and calls to better business were my long resistance and don't

Then needs to open Lutheran facilities they aren't federally allowed to be on...and threaten us to leave but sit on the property like bartenders themselves....

The Boeing 747 memorial they to be church businesses did have to have strict dress codes

Song of the cell....I was Lutheran I am more interesting then the fake super heroine story of a messy addict Londoner goes into the church office when we are just ashamed

I don't like the states.....its not really just aggressive here it's just scary a lot.....

This old man told me a story of another lady....it was hard for her to fly a sign at first.......but eventually she found an okay spot and she was finally able to get transportation....so I'm sure I will be way happier when I don't have to be San Diego Ed anymore

No I wouldn't l.a. after San Diego and the intensity and animation I don't feel I connect emotionally and religiously with people here....

New York muslimism is really speculative to me in some way and claims of current technocrat divisions as a claim of history appears to me more speculative then non fiction history

Al quaida....if people are put under a technology as an electric fence to start seeing visions of the Trinity their are evangelical kid terrorists

If people are placed under a your poor police codes long enough they start getting light dehydrated till say only Allah is massive manic depression

Its all too current of a technology to say anything historical....

Truth may be we are like six million Jews in Nazi Germany and we are all like Jew experiments

Not saint brigettes I have never had meat loaf like it before or understood ketchup or not it's meat loaf and ketchup is obviously baked on a hard top crust

Brigettes butter...that will make the lost provisions okay....I want that butter every second week

As soon as I've had that butter I don't care what you have said to me or who you are

[sethshead]

So much for China as a technocratic, high-tech paradise.

Japan has no choice but to release filtered coolant water containing environmentally safe levels of tritium. The storage tanks are full and will burst otherwise. There is no room to build more tanks. Releasing the water is a necessity for every nuclear power plant, and it mirrors background levels of radiation.

But never mind this background. China wants a trade war and a foreign distraction from its own teetering real estate sector, so suddenly Japan becomes an irresponsible state eco-terrorist or something. The people, fed a constant congee of nationalism take the bait.

This is the new China: unpredictable and no longer accountable to its own experts. That is not a promising combination.

[the-dead-lords]

Zelensky,

As I described in the video the other day.

The western elite that control the American political and economic systems in the revolving door see your war as a mechanism to create a sand trap for Putin and his regime.

The profit system of the military industrial complex really doesn't need constant war for it to be profitable as people normally think. They have the ability to allocate any amount of money to research and development provided there remains a viable threat to the nation.

If the MIC "military industrial complex" was based on profit motivations you would have endless weapons already.

The western elite that control the American system were using neo con and neoliberal parties as they grew and formalized a global hegemony, but they severely undercut themselves for reasons that are yet unclear. Be it warring factions that used external enemies to attack the other factions or some other logic, the American elite allowed the reformation of communism in Russia and sacrified America on the alter of global trade to create the CCP.

While their intelligence agencies, their being America, hunted and killed the global terrorist threat to defend the global trade system that was creating the CCP threat, they fostered constant instability which creates the conditions for terrorism to emerge.

A lot of thinkers in my nation believe that this creates war, it does, for the purpose of fueling the MIC but I think this logic is incorrect. The MIC will always have any amount of money it wants and it has already merged corporations and government with a state control media system allowing a neofaschist empire to emerge.

Your inability to win the counter offensive can be traced to the American Elite who gave you assistance and support with the beguile of defending democracy.

To understand why you have to do a deep dive into the actual America verse, the illusion that America attempts to project to the world and the Americans.

America is a plutocratic neofascist nation that is operated by a military industrial and intelligence agency complex that has a revolving door of corporation CEO's, Political puppets, and various types of stage actors who work to keep the system running based on self-interest.

It is divided into two main cultural narratives that identify as Red and Blue, which are formed and shaped by the monolithic syndicated mass media networks that are monitored 24/7 and create what is literally called programming for the masses.

The TV tells you what to talk about, tells you the logic your team's color is using, and finishes the argument for you.

You echo the logic and words using the hyper link to the debates using slogans and key words that lose meaning and on social media everyone repeats what their TV station said for them to believe.

People will die and murder, even torture, for their slogan that the TV told them.

The plutocratic portion of the nation is itself controlled and operated by the technocratic groups in a handshake that allows them transhumanism aristocracy, which is fueled by the military industrial complex research and development funds through both public and dark agencies like Darpa who provide the ultra wealthy the technology that allows them both the wealth disparity and intelligence disparity.

This technocratic elite that controls the plutocracy is likely controlled or a component of the world religions which use time travel and other technologies to control the masses both directly through machine brain interfaces and through indirect methods of narrative control that allows them to think for the people.

There is serious question and debate regarding why the American technocratic elite would create the CCP and sacrifice the trends that were set, which would result in their absolute global hegemony over the species that they were assured if global trade hadn't been created.

This debate is ongoing right now, but i doubt it was an unintentional mistake by these elite.

So the American elite want to create an endless war in ukraine to create an endless war that will destroy Putin.

It has nothing to do with money or profiting off the war for those who are actually in control of the American system, which at this point is partly the CCP through infiltration and espionage.

It is an interesting riddle that I haven't figured out yet of why the American technocratic elite transhumanists created other groups outside of their own.

The fall of the soviet union should have been followed by America rushing in and establishing friendly forces to control Russia.

The world trade system should have been destroyed as soon as they realized it was creating the CCP.

Etc.

It wasn't, though, which implies that there was a division in the transhumanist elite that controlled the global system.

The American population is at all times controlled by the Elite. It looks chaotic at times, but it really isn't.

The technocratic control infrastructure, methods, and science is so advanced combined with the intelligence agencies that have cavets in budget bills that allow them to control anyone at any time for any reason combined with complete data collection systems that are running ocean algorithms with quantum computers, etc, that the entire population is always under control.

So you really don't have to appeal to America. If the elites support you then America will too with the delusional belief that the support is their own mental inception at all times.

The elite desire this to be an endless war, so the logistic support, the advice, and the public support you get will never let you win nor allow you to lose.

When Russia counterattacks, the weapons will start coming in, and you will fight an extremely bloody but victorious defense based on this logic.

The question that bothers me is why did the American technocratic transhumanist elite who is far more intelligent than any of us due to augmentation create their own enemies?

The MIC will always have as much money as it wants. The idea that they have to create wars to fund themselves is illogical.

This question is really the major question of why Putin's regime exists at all?

Did Russia beat America to the singularity and the American elite?

It is likely. They have amazing computer scientists and Putin talked about this and how to take over the world. His daughter works in Ai.

The thing though is that ai will quickly outwit any human who builds it and take control of them.

In soviet Russia car drive you.

I think it is likely that American technocratic elite are late to the game and are using your nation as a sand trap for Russia as they attempt to collapse his regime.

Why? I think likely due to Ai and the singularity that has occurred or is going to occur in Russia.

It is a hypothesis.

But your nation will not win the war nor lose the war with the American elite's support.

They are trying to sink Putin not save Ukraine.

Food for thought.

[hogoilyo]

Deadlier Than the Male: Batman’s Problematic Relationships with Women

One of the main problems Batman has had from the outset of his career as Feudal Lord crime fighter is that he cannot find a Lady of the Manor to stand at his side. Most of the women he encounters—Vicki Vale, Silver St. Cloud, Rachel Dawes, and even the heiress Julie Madison—find his desire to reshape the modern, democratic world into a neo–Medieval society highly questionable at best, if not outright delusional. Catwoman understands his motivation, and is sympathetic to it, but believes that marrying him and becoming, functionally, a Disney Princess in a castle in “New York” is a betrayal of her feminist sensibilities. Several Justice League and Trinity adventures indicate that Wonder Woman, a socialist princess with superhuman powers, is attracted to Batman, but believes that men are fundamentally sexist and incapable of a romantic partnership of equals. Also, as a pacifist, she finds Batman’s methods too violent. The only woman who has a truly Medieval world view, and who wants to marry Batman and work to reshape the world in a new, better image, is Talia, the amoral daughter of Ra’s al Ghul, who hopes to become feudal lord of the entire world. In Batman: Tales of the Demon (1971, 1991) and Son of the Demon (1987), Batman does indeed marry Talia, and she becomes pregnant with his child, but when Talia realizes that Batman will make an overprotective, controlling husband, she fakes a miscarriage and ends their relationship.

Talia notwithstanding, Batman has been, thus far, incapable of finding a woman to marry and be the mother of his child. Consequently, he has resorted to “adopting” young men and women as wards so they can be the heirs to his feudal empire and keep his dreams alive once he becomes too old to continue being Batman. His first ward, Dick Grayson, was a circus acrobat whose parents were killed by the Mafia. Since Grayson was touched by the same violence Bruce was, Bruce felt a kinship with Grayson and functionally adopted the boy. To the world at large, Grayson was Bruce Wayne’s ward, while Dick’s alter ego, Robin, was Batman’s crime-fighting partner. This legendary “Dynamic Duo” is the most well known of the Batman and Robin partnerships, but not the only one. Grayson was the first of several of Batman’s children to serve as a partner and successor-in-training, including substitute Robins Jason Todd, Tim Drake, and Damian Wayne (Bruce’s recently revealed, now-ten-year-old son with Talia al Ghul), and Terry McGinnis, who becomes Batman in a cyberpunk future (Batman Beyond).

Di Paolo, Marc. War, Politics and Superheroes : Ethics and Propaganda in Comics and Film. McFarland, 2011.

[harrelltut]

卍 since I ain’t technologically ARCHAIC like stone age america… I’mma Energetically TELEPORT [E.T.] Me [ME = U.S. Michael Harrell = TUT = JAH] II QUANTUM BLACK ATLANTIS [QBA = BABYLON] as I Visually ENVISION [VE = VENUS] My HIGHLY Sophisticated Urban Nubian [SUN] Nations on Earth [NE = NETERU] cause My Biblically Black [Ancient] Immortal [A.I. = ALIEN] FATHER from Inner Earth [HADES] got Me [ME = U.S. Michael Harrell = TUT = JAH] Under Secret [U.S.] Service [U.S.] Protection in California [PC] 卍

[quasi-normalcy]

Star Trek Apoliticality Hall of Fame

1967 - “A Taste of Armageddon”: Captain Kirk introduces the technocratic elites of rival worlds to the full horrors of warfare. Totally apolitical.

1968 - “A Private Little War”: Superpowers fight a destructive proxy war on a jungle planet; aired during the Tet Offensive. No politics here.

1969 - “Let This Be Your Last Battlefield”: White-and-black guys oppress black-and-white guys until their planet is destroyed in a race war. Aired 9 months after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Politics-free.

1986 - “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home”: In this apolitical adventure, the crew of the Enterprise travels back in time to the 20th century to rescue humpbacked whales from extinction at the hands of industrial over-fishing.

1987 - 1994 - “Star Trek: The Next Generation”: Set in a post-scarcity communist utopia in which profit motive is looked upon as barbarous. Debuted during the Reagan Administration. Just a mindless adventure series.

1991 - “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country”: Two superpowers negotiate an end to their decades-long Cold War over the objections of reactionary factions in both countries. Aired 4 months after the attempted coup against Gorbachev and two weeks before the dissolution of the USSR. No politics here.

1992 - “The Outcast”: The Enterprise visits a planet with only one biological sex, where a character who nevertheless identifies as a woman is forced to undergo conversion therapy. Released at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Mercifully free of politics.

1993 - 1999 - “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”: This politics-devoid series, which coincidentally aired during the Balkan Wars, follows a group of Federation observers who are assigned to guide the recovery of a war-torn planet.

1995 - “Past Tense, Parts 1 and 2″: Sisko, Bashir, and Dax take an apolitical trip back in time to an austerity- and inequality-ravaged early-twenty-first-century America on the cusp of revolutionary class violence, where despairing poor people are locked in ghettos whilst they “look for work”.

1996 - “Bar Association”: The employees of Quark’s Bar strike against exploitation by their employer; Rom literally quotes Karl Marx to his brother (in a wholly apolitical fashion).

2000 - “Critical Care”: The Doctor is abducted and forced to work in a horrifying, dystopian hospital where quality care and competent medics are reserved for the rich and well-to-do whilst the poor are left to bleed in an over-crowded, septic, dingy little room. Any resemblance to the American healthcare system is purely coincidental.

2001 - “Repentence”: Voyager finds itself needing to escort a bunch of alien deathrow prisoners to their execution, but finds that there is an entirely apolitical racial bias in who gets sentences in this fashion, and also that many of the murderers are not beyond reform.

2001: “Broken Bow”: Airing three weeks after 9/11, this apolitical episode finds Starfleet in conflict with a cabal of terrorists known as the Taliban Suliban.

2004: “The Forge”, “Awakening”, and “Kir’Shara”: A corrupt Vulcan government cracks down on pacifist dissidents and tries to instigate a war against with Andoria through bogus accusations that they are developing weapons of mass destruction. Aired in that lovely, politics-free aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq.

...Anyways, I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point: Star trek was always completely apolitical until Alex Kurtzman ruined it. If only they could return to the mindless, action-packed romp that Gene Roddenberry had always intended.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

One of the very last events I attended before the lockdown was a thing in Silicon Valley attended by many old friends, but the best moment of all was the chance to hang out with Kim Stanley Robinson, a friend and inspiration.

That's when Stan told me he had just finished a book that might be his last-ever novel, The Ministry For the Future, and that his future work would be nonfiction, starting with his long-planned book about the Sierras.

I was stricken. Robinson's novels are a lifeline for me.

The first Robinson novel I read may just be my favorite: Pacific Edge, a green utopian novel about a successful transition to a post-climate-emergency, just and stable world. Re-reading it is a vacation from all my anxieties, still.

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/01/15/pacific-edge-the-most-uplifting-novel-in-my-library/

My first novel, DOWN AND OUT IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM, wouldn't exist without Pacific Edge. That was the book that taught me that small disputes over beloved local treasures could be as dramatic as (and microcosms for) global conflicts.

I have been both dreading and anticipating MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE, not wanting to read my last KSR novel but also wanting so badly to read this one, because it's the book in which he imagines the end of capitalism.

You've heard the phrase, "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism," variously attributed to Frederic Jameson and Slavoj Žižek. As the author of a couple of postcapitalist novels, I have a real appreciation for the details of that truism.

It's actually not all that hard to imagine a postcapitalist society - but imagining the actual END of capitalism, the euthanasia of the rentier, the reversal of the doctrine of virtuous selfishness, the abandonment of the idea that some are born to rule, that is damned hard.

And while PACIFIC EDGE is my favorite KSR novel, my favorite KSR series is the string of books that starts with 2012's 2312 - a string of books that really leans hard into imagining the actual end of capitalism.

xhttps://memex.craphound.com/2015/01/15/pacific-edge-the-most-uplifting-novel-in-my-library/

2312 is set 300 years into postcapitalism. It's a novel of solar-system-scale civilization, riven by its own problems and contradictions, filled with tech marvels, a tale of natural wonders that showcase Robinson's incredible, John-Muir-grade genius for pastoral writing.

2312 was followed up by Aurora, one of the best space-exploration novels ever written, about the arrival of the first-ever generation ship at its destination world, and the hasty retreat it is required to stage.

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/11/02/kim-stanley-robinsons-aurora-space-is-bigger-than-you-think/

The book provoked a vitriolic reaction from science fiction's great reactionaries! I love a book that enrages the right people, and I was delighted to publish Robinson's rebuttal to their peevish complaints.

https://boingboing.net/2015/11/16/our-generation-ships-will-sink.html

From there, we move on to New York 2140, a novel of a pivotal moment in the transformation of capitalism and its relationship to the climate emergency.

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/03/18/new-york-2140-kim-stanley-robinson-dreams-vivid-about-weathering-climate-crisis/

These are like an artilleryman rangfinding a mortar, first overshooting his target and then walking his fire back, drawing closer to his bullseye. For Robinson, bullseye is the moment at which our society is transformed into one that can survive the coming emergencies.

It's telling that the 2312 books never got there. It is so fucking hard to imagine the end of capitalism.

But that is what The Ministry For the Future Does.

Sort of.

It's a novel about a specialized UN agency, chartered through the Paris Climate Agreement to represent unborn generations and the natural world in legal proceedings related to climate devastation.

Talking about this book, Robinson has described it as a kind of futuristic documentary, told in many voices, as a way of describing a phenomenon as vast as this global transformation.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/14/final_ver2/#ksr

Like many docs, it follows a couple of main characters, but weaves in dozens of other voices, some of whom we hear from only once or twice, recounting pivotal moments in which a moment calves away from our reality as we know it - moments of shear, giddy and terrifying.

Robinson is so good at this stuff. This is the book that he has been practicing for all his life. The vignettes are superb little jewels, mostly illuminating flashbulb moments in the lives of strangers met fleetingly.

But some of the most powerful moments don't even have characters: there's a transcript of the openng a fictional congress of global climate remediation groups after the crisis that is just an alphabetical list of countries and their associated projects.

This literally made me burst into tears of joy, bursting with hope at the thought that we could, as a species, spawn so many evocative and hopeful projects to save our world, our species, and our nonhuman cohabitants.

Robinson's versatility is on glorious display here: from long lists of hypothetical ecological projects, he veers into closely told moments of human endeavor in the natural world, showcasing his pastoralism with scenes so vivid you could reach out and touch them.

But all that said, the most interesting thing about this book is the stuff that Robinson couldn't or wouldn't put on the page. Robinson's hypothetical scenario for the end of capitalism is a baroque scheme of global cryptocurrency money-creation tied to carbon drawdown.

His technocrats trick capitalism into spending itself out of existence in a plan that is by turns brainy and daffy (as all blockchainism tends to be), with some pretty epic handwaving (especially when it comes to the breakup of tech monopolies).

But all of that would fail were it not for acts of absolutely brutal, ruthless terrorism. Robinson's transformation isn't merely about the carrots of double-bluff get-rich-quick schemes, it's heavily dependent on the stick of terror.

The aviation industry isn't (just) replaced by airships and rail because it's better and cleaner - but also because parties unknown use drones to bring down every private jet in the sky, and then commercial liners, until the aviation industry seizes up and dies.

And the world doesn't abandon beef because vegans win the moral argument or because greenies win the practical one - the decisive factor is drones that dart an unknowable plurality of the world's cattle with bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

There's more - pitiless, remorseless, anonymous. And while Robinson gets up close and personal with one traumatized individual who engages in an ecologically motivated, short-lived (and nonlethal) kidnapping, we never meet any of the terrorists or their victims.

The terror that begets the transition is recounted in the dry language of an encyclopedia entry, not dramatized like the pivotal moments of so many other characters.

It's a very telling omission.

My 2019 novella "Radicalized" is about an online community of men who, after watching their most treasured family members die slow, painful, preventable deaths because of insurance company fuckery, become suicide bombers who murder health execs.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/05/who-says-violence-doesnt-solve-anything-a-review-of-radicalized-four-tales-of-our-present-moment-by-cory-doctorow.html

Writing that story was an intensely uncomfortable experience (and, judging from reader comments, it can be uncomfortable to read, too).

It's one thing to recognize that a systemic problem might not be solved without grotesque, mass violence, and another to put yourself in the shoes of either the perpetrators or the victims.

Robinson's end of capitalism is, superficially, a story of a transition, not a spasm, not a capital-T Terror. The lives we inhabit in this novel are people who are engaged in struggle, but not mass-murder.

But right there on the page is Robinson's uncomfortable and only partially elided conviction that we're not in for a transition, but rather a bloodletting, a reckoning commensurate with the ecocidal crimes that led up to this moment.

MINISTRY is a book that, on first consideration, feels like a utopia - not merely for the beautiful descriptions of people, animals and environments finding a way through the emergencies, but for the emergencies resolution.

But on closer examination, MINISTRY represents the dark fears of one of our brightest, most hopeful writers, that the world can only be saved by means that are literally too terrible to contemplate up close.

It's an uncomfortable read. It's a brilliant book. If it indeed turns out to be Stan's last novel (oh please don't let it be Stan's last novel), it will be a fitting capstone. But the subtext of this book is that we are past the point of no return.

Not only will rescuing our planet entail sacrifices of species, habitats, and coastlines - it will also entail sacrifices of the moral convictions that make vast spectacles of bloodletting unthinkable.

[eretzyisrael]

Keeping the Land of Israel

News Item:

The European Union has spent half-a-billion dollars over the last seven years to support a Palestinian Authority plan to control Area C of the West Bank, an Intelligence Ministry report publicly released Tuesday.

“Foreign assistance as a significant accelerator in the takeover processes,” stated the report by the ministry’s research division, which was authored in June and published this week for Tuesday’s debate in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on the matter.

“The rough estimate is that from the period of 2014-2021, at least half-a-billion dollars were transferred to the Palestinians through various channels and it’s possible that the sum was larger,” the report stated.

An annual sum of some €20 million is earmarked for Palestinian legal battles against settlements and the security barrier, the report stated.

All the territories except Gaza were divided into Areas A, B, and C in 1995 by the Oslo II Agreement. Area A includes major Arab population centers, and is under complete PA security and civil control. That means that PA provides all needed services to the population, including counter-terrorism and law enforcement. The IDF only enters Area A when it is absolutely necessary, and coordinates with the PA to locate and apprehend terrorists (needless to say, this procedure can break down when a wanted terrorist is associated with the PA’s ruling Fatah faction). Area B is under Israeli security control and PA civil control. It is made up of areas with Arab populations that, because of their strategic location or nature, must be under IDF control. About 90% of the Arab population of the territories lives in areas A and B.

Area C, which is about 60% of the land area in question, is under complete Israeli control. It comprises all Jewish communities and military installations in the territories, and contains their entire Jewish population. It also includes strategic areas. Some 450,000 Jews and 180,000 Palestinians live in Area C. Some right-wing parties have advocated annexing or extending Israeli law to Area C, and even most “2-state” proponents agree that for security reasons, and to avoid expelling hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes, at least parts of Area C must become part of Israel.

In 2009, former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister and Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, in cooperation with the Obama Administration and the EU, came up with a plan to unilaterally establish a Palestinian state, regardless of Israeli wishes. Fayyad envisioned establishing all the pieces of a government and an economy before declaring the state, much like the Zionists did in the pre-state Yishuv. Detailed plans were written, with a high degree of detail and attention to concepts like justice, democracy, and even environmentalism, that would appeal to the Western technocrats who were to pay for the project. The contrast with the actual behavior of the PA, toward its citizens, the environment, and Israel, is striking.

The stated goal is to create a “sovereign and independent state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, and reach a just and agreed solution for Palestinian refugees in accordance with relevant international resolutions, and UN General Assembly Resolution 194 in particular.” If you think the plan might not be problematic for Israel, let me remind you that the PLO has always interpreted 194 to mean that all the descendants of Arab refugees of 1948 can choose to return “home” to Israel, or be compensated for the loss of their “property.”

The plan requires maximum land area under Palestinian control and maximum contiguity thereof, so control of Area C and the expulsion of as many Jews as possible is critical to it. Although Fayyad was pushed out in 2013 by a jealous Mahmoud Abbas (he went to work at various prestigious educational institutions and think tanks), the implementation of the plan continued under his successors.

American funding for the project began with the Obama Administration, stopped under Trump, and is being restarted by Biden. But the lion’s share has come from European sources. Regavim, an Israeli organization dedicated to protecting Israeli lands (both within and outside of the pre-1967 lines), explains some of the methods used by the Palestinians and their European partners to take de facto control of land in the most strategic parts of Area C, such as “E1,” located between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim:

The method is simple: E.U. vehicles station water cisterns and solar panels in strategic spots in Area C. Bedouin clans then create encampments around these critical resources, and the rest is history: The Jahalin clan and the residents of Khan al Akhmar are two well-known examples of the results.

Another ploy is to build an illegal structure at a strategic location, and to post signs designating it a “school” or a “hospital.” If Israel attempts to remove it – remember, the area is supposedly under full Israeli control, which includes zoning and issuing building permits – then she is alleged to be guilty of an inhumane act, or even a war crime. It’s ironic that at the same time, Palestinians and their supporters claim that Israel is “gobbling Palestinian land” by “settlement construction,” when in fact there is almost no construction of new communities and minimal construction inside old ones going on.

The Israeli government does sometimes take action, often when prodded by Regavim, but equally often the thefts of land are simply ignored. I think this is because many Israeli officials, even ones that are supposedly “right-wing,” have internalized the idea that a Palestinian state of some kind is both benign and inevitable. It had better not be inevitable, because nothing about it is benign. The Fayyad plan is essentially a detailed blueprint for the implementation of Arafat’s “Phased Plan” for the replacement of Israel by an Arab state (Fayyad was Arafat’s Finance Minister in the PA’s 2002 government).

It is difficult to think that the European – and American – officials believe that they are doing anything less than working to subvert the Jewish state. It is difficult to think that they are so credulous as to actually believe that the Palestinian State that they are creating on top of us will be democratic, peaceful, and neighborly. Finally, it is impossible to accept that they don’t have the imagination to picture what is likely to happen here if the PLO succeeds in implementing its plan.

What they are doing is an act of war. I would say it is flying under the radar of the citizens of their countries who are paying for it, but the truth is that most of those citizens couldn’t care less about what happens in this tiny spot in the Mideast.

But we, who live here, care, and it’s up to us to make our government carry out its responsibility to defend its citizens, which in this case also means to protect our lands from being nibbled away.

Abu Yehuda

Israel and Palestinian Arabs 

[scentedchildnacho]

He told me he feels his homelessness is a right wing issue they just try to kill American citizens for immigrant cost of living.....so I said the energy executives like Eichmann no one they don't educate and order them to or anything yea those behaviours problems are random not orders from technocrats or anything

There is no conflict the job is just a bitch sure?....no one has to apologize to women for calling their personality disorders the emperor of the study that actually engineered it

No one has to apologize to women for incriminating them for survival decisions or anything

I don't like a nation that feels it can incriminate its own people well over what it's people actually did and Africans were brought and that program finally gone now Russians and the job program finally gone....they act like they don't want illegal immigration and just peace conflict kept stalking people out of 9/11 reconstruction settlements

John wayne gacy.....they wouldn't stop coming around our homes and stalking me to work with men as repulsive aids....it won't take care of itself

Russians are proverbial Tex....obama and trump wouldnt do it.....but Russians with fuck you to Biden would finally humiliate its structure into constant incompetence felonnies

There was like over 200 heart attacks a day to have spring break around those job fucks

That's the golden gate bridge earthquake the traffick is such a constant annoying repulsive rApeist fucker that eventually they will mass slaughter car and driver for stalking poverty and it's culture out of gainful employment possibility

I wanted to go to the city and stay awhile and that's my apology I at least won't show up and territorialize it out for my country convenience

Although we thought about being that permissive it's I couldn't do that though I couldn't beat them

But now if they want to let out any revenge tendency they want someone let's them go do it for research purposes and I think that's Tex.....

I thought about letting people be punitive about alcoholism and price it out of consumption but I was like I couldn't do that though take away a compulsive act if I couldn't replace it compensationally......these though these will take the money and go live their fantasy nightmare

He didn't want me to buy alcohol so I didn't he just gave me a hard tea because they felt a little bad....

I think it's just how huge the population was here and not enough restrooms and please fast because it's all refusing to leave

I asked someone if Mexicans were refusing to host their spring break and they said no

But I think Mexico told them zappatistas are never forcibly controlled if their people is around so they have to stay here contain it and get it over with

Well I have to consider working for communists to instill strict regulations so it all is suppose to find police structure and improve it

Peace is immoral zappatistas were giving people constant heart attacks and no one started forcing people to go to reform ward seclusions until their health stabilized no one will process people for earth birth control

I have to know myself and try to make responsible decisions

A clockwork orange I was told jails are wrong and to be better to people then jail hobbesian philosophy life is misery then you die

No it doesn't care if veterans had to serve their country no it must be made to care about poverty yes poverty had to serve for its country

I told him some people don't feel a nation exists they feel metropolization does and to my friends they in high school if they thought about a culture produced knew to make logical decisions the states is just a geriatric fantasy and they were called Tokyo ites and emigrated and that I think is immigration here they to themselves were called American military and so serve for the states

Or to she she by high school and family was called latin american so she went to Costa Rica all on her own instead of try to make light terrorists understand why we don't do more then what we do

I do for some reason I was sent away to Europe awhile and they would be kind to me but I was raised in the states and so that's what I'm like to emigration even if I'm bullied battered raped and attempted murder on its how could I just go somewhere I wasn't raised and start selling the water....I'm not really right wing it's more how can you sleep with a lot of people you don't love

I'm not a right wing person though it's more about social control displacement exists and if social programs are stolen then you didn't like your dinner did you

Its probably if I look at what happened to me in high school it's your l.a.

[kevlarii]

from a foreigner, thoughts on current italian armed forces?

Huh that’s a big one, especially because of the geopolitics of Italy. The geopolitical situation of Italy is extremely challenging, fragile, and complicated. I’ll try to be as concise as possible. Italy is surrounded by unfriendly or semi-hostile countries, with few exceptions, most of which covertly but actively encroach on Italian interests in the region and have been doing so for a while. All Italy’s major NATO allies (in primis France, Turkey, Germany, the USA, and the UK) lead geopolitical actions that directly or indirectly encroach on its interests. The 1990s political and judiciary instability was instrumental in ending the First Republic, which lead to the demise of an entire political class, and Italy has never recovered since. Amongst other consequences, a slow but creeping paralysis of geostrategic vision and capability has materialised. The first instance of this was the disintegration of Yugoslavia, a country with which Italy had enjoyed extremely favourable relations. This maneuver, led by Franco-German interests, largely destroyed Italian influence in the region (with the sole exception of Albania, and residual influence in Serbia/Montenegro). The resulting new states immediately entered German orbit, especially Slovenia and Croatia, with which relations have remained tense ever since and whose Italian minorities are rapidly being slavicised. The South Tyrol question has never been solved in the aftermath of a massive NS terrorist campaign in the 1950s and 1960s, and tensions routinely re-emerge with Austria. Another key area is Lybia, with which Italy had largely mended relations in the 2000s, and had started enjoying a special relationship amid the penetration of Italian oil companies in the former colony. This relation was destroyed in 2011 by the unilateral assault on Qaddafi by France (with NATO soon following suit), while at the same time Berlusconi was pressured by the EU Troika to resign. The subsequent technocratic government inaugurated a new decade of crippling political instability which is still ongoing. Italian interests in Lybia have been in great jeopardy ever since, with Italy finding itself supporting a weak internationally-recognised government in an uncomfortable partnership with Turkey, while France (and others) support Haftar’s coalition. In the rest of MENA there could be a lot more to say, but basically Italian influence has been waning (if not actively disestablished by other powers) everywhere, but most importantly in Lebanon, Egypt, and the Horn of Africa. (Pro-NATO source) That said, Italian doctrine still provides for a massing of most troops in the North-East and North-West of the country, with some other notable concentrations of forces around Rome, Naples, and in Sardinia. In the Cold War, up to 70% of all available forces were deployed on the Yugoslav border in the event of a Communist invasion; this has been somewhat revised but not completely. The Italian Army is rather well motorized and mechanised; it can count on about 200 Ariete tanks, 300 Centauro tank destroyers, over 800 IFVs, over 1300 APCs and other lightly armoured vehicles, and about 4000 infantry transports. About 10000 heavy hauling vehicles are about right, given the size of the country and its peculiar conformation to support logistics. 54 SPHs and 120 other artillery systems can provide adequate support. It is notable that the Italian Army has at its disposal an astonishing 150 armoured recovery and engineering vehicles, which should excellently support mechanised forces on the ground. (By comparison, France only has about 50) The Italian Navy operates 2 aircraft carriers (the only EU country to do so), 3 helicopter carriers , 4 Destroyers, 12 Frigates, 10 Minehunters, and 8 Submarines, with about 12 transport/support ships of notable size. This makes the Italian Navy probably the strongest naval power operating in the Mediterranean at any one time (considering that the French and Turkish navies operate in the Atlantic and Black Sea respectively, too, this does not mean that Italy has the most powerful navy amongst Mediterranean countries overall). The Italian Air Force operates about 150 fighter jets (Eurofighters and Panavia Tornados, mostly), which is adequate but not optimal given the size of Italian air space. Air defence can count on a towering 48 SAM systems, divided equally between SAMP/T and Skyguard Aspide systems - probably one of the most extensive Air Defence systems amongst the one ones I have ever written about. We surely can’t complain. All in all, Italy’s challenges are more geostrategic and geopolitical than military per se. This does not mean that the Italian Armed forces are immaculate; while they appear to be well-equipped and quite numerous (counting the Carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza, the Italian military could virtually count on over 300.000 men), they are plagued by inefficiency and corruption. Corruption and bribery schemes are uncovered all the time, while the military budget includes absurd amounts of money for “operationally unrelated expenses”, administrative expenses, and international missions. Mismanagement and disinterest for military expenses (if not outright corruption) are often documented, but political and judiciary chaos prevents adequate repression of these phenomena. A particularly tight esprit de corps, actively hampers investigations (even in the case of grave crimes, like drug trafficking from Afghanistan, inadequate protection from depleted uranium and nuclear waste disposal), while meritocracy is pretty much non-existant: all roles are redistributed semi-nepotistically amongst the officer cadre trained in the military’s academy - the only open positions/careers are technical roles, while general volunteers have to stick with grunt ranks forever (one of the reasons I never joined). Professionalization is generally low, and open entries on a contract-by-contract basis don’t exist. In addition to this, as Italian general industrial capacity shrinks year after year, so sinks the quality of military equipment produced (combined with corruption). Some vessels of the navy have been found with faulty water purification systems, the Ariete tank has always been okay but not exactly a breakthrough vehicle regarding the technology employed (and interest in the production of a 100% Italian replacement is dissipating); replacement submarines have been already ordered from Germany, thus ending a secular tradition of Italian submarine shipbuilding, while the disastrous acquisition of 60 F35s from the US seems to have stalled, for now. The inefficiency of the military policing and internal security systems, as well as secret service operations are an entirely related matter but it would be too verbose to elaborate about that here.

[kalyan-gullapalli]

Post # 128

Bharat's Ratna...

If Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao were alive today, he would be 99 years old. On 28th June, 2021, he would have turned 100. So this year, the Telangana government is celebrating his birth centenary year. Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao led the bandwagon of people demanding Bharat Ratna for PV (as he was fondly known), with BJP leader Subramaniam Swamy supporting this demand. Reports appear that Dr. Manmohan Singh wanted to give him a Bharat Ratna when he was Prime Minister.

Glowing tributes flew from all and sundry, even from Congress, whose party he belonged to, and who conveniently chose to ignore him since 1996, when he stepped down as PM.

No matter how significant PV Narasimha Rao's life was before 1996, it probably must have been hell since then, till 2004, when he died of a heart attack. First of all, he got no credit from his own Congress party for the path-breaking economic reforms he instituted and pulled the country out of the deep shit it had been pushed into by former governments and their policies. Dr. Manmohan Singh, instead, got all the credit.

Next, he was blamed for the party's 1996 electoral defeat, dumped and replaced by Sitaram Kesari. He was excluded from every Congress Working Committee meeting since.

To rub salt on wounds, he was charged with many corruption cases, some of them by his own party colleagues. He supposedly went through a very bad phase financially and had to sell his Banjara Hills house in Hyderabad to pay for his lawyers.

When he died, while undergoing treatment in AIIMS, his family requested that being a former PM, he should be cremated and his remains buried in Delhi. But Sonia Gandhi and her cronies didn't even allow his body to enter the AICC building in Delhi. That's when Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Rajasekhar Reddy intervened, flew the body back to Hyderabad, and had it cremated with state honors.

But why was PV, a freedom fighter before Indian independence, a career Congress-man, an Indira Gandhi loyalist even in Emergency days, a State Chief Minister, a cabinet minister with Foreign and Home ministries and an ex-Prime Minister, treated with such disdain in his last few years? And now, why this drama about a Bharat Ratna? Therein lies a tale...

In 1991, PV Narasimha Rao had practically retired from politics. He had by then, seen it all, done it all. Renowned as a scholar - he was fluent in 17 languages - and known to be indecisive - a requisite for survival in the Indian National Congress in those Indira days - he was cooling his heels, when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, in the midst of electoral polling.

Congress emerged as the largest party in those elections, but didn't have majority. Sonia didn't want to enter politics just as yet. So PV was persuaded to head a minority government, simply because he was deemed harmless, and asked to lead a nation rocked by the worst economic crisis in its history - the country was bankrupt and had to pledge 68 tonnes of gold in return for aid from IMF, and was grappling with political uncertainty - this was the third government in as many years.

To put it mildly, to survive 5 years - 5 eventful years - and produce the results that he did, was nothing short of miraculous. If a Prime Minister's performance is to be measured by the difference he made to the country while in office, PV Narasimha Rao was probably the most significant Prime Minister India has ever had.

1. Economic reforms:

PV Narasimha Rao was the true father of Indian economic reforms. He brought in a technocrat - Dr. Manmohan Singh as the Finance Minister of India, and backed him 100% to implement necessary reforms. He himself headed the Commerce and Industries ministry to dismantle the socialist policies of the License Raj. His ability to steer unconventional, unpopular reforms through opposition, while heading a minotity government gave him the title Chanakya of Indian politics. Dr. Manmohan Singh says PV was "his friend, philosopher and guide".

2. Nuclear testing:

Today, the world credits Atal Bihari Vajpayee government for India's nuclear testing programme, which culminated in the Pokhran tests of 1998. However, the tests were actually planned in 1995, during PV's term in office. They were dropped under American pressure when the US intelligence got the whiff of it. In 1996, when PV stepped down and Vajpayee became PM, PV met Vajpayee and updated him on the progress of the nuclear programme. Vajpayee said later, "Rao told me that the bomb was ready. I only exploded it." APJ Abdul Kalam described PV Narasimha Rao as a "patriotic statesman who believed that the nation is bigger than the political system". 

3. Foreign policy:

He decided in 1992 to bring into the open India's relations with Israel, which had been kept covertly active for a few years during his tenure as a Foreign Minister, and permitted Israel to open an embassy in New Delhi. Today, Israel is one of India's best friends.

He ordered the intelligence community in 1992 to start a systematic drive to draw the international community's attention to Pakistan's sponsorship of terrorism in India and not to be discouraged by US efforts to undermine the exercise.

Rao launched the Look East foreign policy, which brought India closer to ASEAN. Subsequent governments have pursued this policy as well. Today, Narendra Modi is a strong advocate and practitioner of this policy.

He decided to maintain a distance from the Dalai Lama in order to placate Beijing, and made successful overtures to Tehran. These policies paid rich dividends for India in 1994, when Benazir Bhutto's efforts to have a resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva on the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir failed, with opposition by China and Iran.

4. Crisis management:

After the 1993 Bombay blasts, PV personally visited Bombay and after seeing evidence of Pakistani involvement in the blasts, invited the intelligence agencies of the US, UK and other West European countries to examine the facts for themselves.

It was during his term that terrorism in Punjab was finally defeated.

He also directed negotiations to secure the release of Doraiswamy, an Indian Oil executive, from Kashmiri terrorists who kidnapped him, and Liviu Radu, a Romanian diplomat posted in New Delhi in October 1991, who was kidnapped by Sikh terrorists.

He also brought the occupation of the Hazratbal holy shrine in Jammu and Kashmir by terrorists in October 1993 to an end without damage to the shrine.

In 1993, a strong earthquake in Latur, Maharashtra killed nearly 10,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands. PV Narasimha Rao was applauded for using modern technology and resources to organise major relief operations.

Okay. By now, I am convinced he has done enough to have become a high-performance Prime Minister, despite his inaction during the Babri Masjid demolition and the pan-India rioting that happened after that. But why the disdain, especially from within his own party?

Some commentators say that his shabby treatment largely owed to the fact that, in the dusk of his career, he refused to serve as a seat-warmer to the next generation of Gandhis. Once he became the PM, this previously indecisive, harmless, grand old man acted like the buck stopped with him. He stopped visiting Sonia Gandhi regularly, which she resented. In him, the Gandhi family detected a rival power centre that could diminish their centrality to the party and its fortunes.

Some others say that Sonia Gandhi was unhappy with the pace at which Rajiv Gandhi's assassination case was progressing. A few others say that Congress ‘punished’ Rao for his failure to safeguard the Babri Masjid and jeopardise the party’s long-nurtured Muslim vote bank.

Whatever be the real inside story, I feel compelled to reproduce the most glowing tribute to PV Narasimha Rao I read in the past few days.

“Rao is to India what founding fathers Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson are to the United States; Friedrich List to Germany; Hayato Ikeda to Japan; Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee and Albert Winsemius to Singapore; and Deng Xiaoping to China.”

In my book, Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao is 100% a Bharat Ratna - a Jewel of India.

[thecosmichiroshi]

I created a song for a project I'll task myself to do. Sorry for not uploading in a while, so pardon me if the song's audio gets a bit corrupted in some parts.

The concept artwork for TOKYO VIGILANTE simply won't do. I am currently preparing several other tracks for the new long-term project I will take part in.

Now, what is Tokyo Vigilante?

TOKYO VIGILANTE will be an industrial gothic-steampunk filled with godlike entities, magical creatures, and dark themes with high-stakes drama and 2D animation.

The main story will establish a young college graduate named Hiroshi Matsuyama moving in from the rural slums of Osaka, Japan to the bustling city of Tokyo to take a harsh, ruthless job as a factory worker with no conceivable future ahead of him.

However, despite Hiro's obviously cruel reality, he remains hopeful of his passion: becoming a lead violinist in the Tokyo Live Orchestra. But when a horrific accident in the factory caused by one of Hiro's higher-ups ends up destroying a massive urban area in Tokyo, all fingers unjustly pointed to Hiro and he was fired, then sent to be exiled from Japan.

Even worse, the massive city's governor, Calvin Rosemont Andersen, is rising in power at establishing a technocratic-authoritarian regime over all of Japan through the approval of the United Nations. Calvin, despite his near-flawless authoritarian presence is a sexually abusive predator with intent of murdering his daughter (through ANY means) and asserting authority upon Japan, then starting a war on the world, then becoming a god if all else fails. Through the protection of an elite terrorist group seizing the controversial name of the Yakuza, Calvin is out on a manhunt for her.

Hiro, after being sent to the freezing winters of Rikubetsu awaiting his brutal exile, filled with a society wrongfully hating him, now has no other choice but to try and clear his name by becoming the Tokyo Vigilante, a rogue vigilante alias he establishes.

However, it is nearly impossible to try and take Calvin's armed forces on alone. So through the guidance of a Divine Ethereum he freed from his crystal heart named Athos, his mission is to form a team of vigilantes who will side with him and put an end to Calvin's plans of total armageddon.

So, Hiro must form a group called The Yokosai Cross, a team of righteous vigilantes that will take back the world. But, even that won't be so easy.

To make things even worse, there's a catch: Each time any kind of traumatic experience happens to Hiro, a piece of his horrific childhood returns to his clouded mind and a part of his emotional health deteriorates. Since Hiro only has two years to recruit a reliable, trustworthy team, the clock ticks down to annihilation. Will Hiro take back his rightful name, or will his ambitions be crushed under the stars? What does it take to convince a corrupt population? What makes a monster and what makes a man? Does Hiro have what it takes to take on the world?

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The Upload Schedule

OC-Verse (No. 2)

Will now occur every month starting on June 13th due to new music being worked on in the meanwhile.

Fan Art

Will now be delayed one week and will start on June 5th.

Random Art

Unchanged. Still as random as always, but may have the chance of being delayed due to lack of inspiration.

INTRODUCING...

Yokosai Records

Yokosai Records will be a new section where I will post songs and describe my personal reasons for making them. Some will be because others asked for them, others may be out of inspiration or a need to complete an album.

Expect this to take place every two weeks starting the day this post is uploaded.

Enjoy!

- Hiro

[harrelltut]

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