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Rick Santorum and the Anti Kitten-Burning Coalition - 0 views

www.patheos.com/...-anti-kitten-burning-coalition
shared by anonymous on 27 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • The happy truth, of course, is that this is all complete nonsense. Nothing like this is happening in the Netherlands. No such bracelets exist. Santorum’s nightmare is entirely false — it’s a fabricated delusion based on a fantasy apparently invented out of whole cloth by the Louisiana Right to Life Federation.
  • That’s the difference between you and Sen. Santorum. You both agree that the scenario he described would be a Very Bad Thing. But for you that means you don’t want it to be true while for him that’s reason to wish it were. He believed this story and promoted this story because he wanted to believe it was true. He needed to believe it was true.
  • 1. It’s exciting to believe in imaginary monsters.Santorum wants to imagine himself doing battle with Dutch death panels for the same reason that I spent hours as a teenager fighting dragons, trolls, goblins and orcs. It’s exciting to pretend that you’re a brave hero struggling against the forces of evil.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • 2. A fiendish foil for self-righteousness.Being good is hard. If I compare myself to Jesus or Harriet Tubman or St. Francis or Dorothy Day then I can’t help but see a vast amount of room for improvement on my part. But if, instead, I compare myself to Hannibal Lecter, then I come out looking pretty good.
  • If I compare myself to Hannibal Lecter, then I can tell myself that I am a saint and a hero and not just someone largely indistinct from everyone else, stumbling along in a self-absorbed routine of quiet desperation.
  • 3. If the monsters don’t exist, the theory isn’t true.The Big Theory presents an if-then equation to explain how society works. The theory offers a defense of something — “traditional morality,” sectarian privilege, patriarchy, ethnic superiority, cultural exceptionalism, nationalism, etc. — and says that if that something is not defended, then monstrous consequences will ensue.
  • 4. Imaginary monsters give our fears a face.We’re afraid. We’re afraid of difference, of financial insecurity, of forces beyond our control, of death. Our fears are amorphous, unsettling and overwhelming. We can’t get a handle on them. So we give them a name and a face and thus can pretend that we’re up against something we can fight.
  • anonymous on 27 Feb 12
     
    "...the central concern of the Anti Kitten-Burning Coalition is not a defense of kittens, but an accusation against most other people. They are not driven by their opposition to kitten-burning, but by their opposition to a make-believe faction of other people whom they imagine favor kitten-burning. That this vast bloc of pro kitten-burning people cannot be found and does not exist does nothing to dampen their enthusiastic campaign against these supposed monstrously cruel others. It is a delusion, but the AKBC enjoys this delusion." Thanks to Allen Cook for the pointer.
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Revisiting 'Zork': What We Lost in the Transition to Visual Games - 1 views

www.theatlantic.com/...241074 games technology
shared by anonymous on 24 Jan 12 - No Cached
Erik Hanson liked it
  • For a kid that wasn't into fantasy books, I didn't approach it as an adventurer. I approached the game as me: I'm standing in front of a house, not unlike my own, a wrapped gift that you have to figure out how to unwrap. It was like a Choose Your Own Adventure in which no other pages were suggested. Here's where you are, kid. Now what?
  • anonymous on 24 Jan 12
     
    Text-based adventures were written as much as they were designed, employing tantalizing adjectives to create a sense of the world.
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Why Mass Effect is the Most Important Science Fiction Universe of Our Generation - 3 views

io9.com/...ion-universe-of-our-generation
shared by anonymous on 21 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Think of the Big Issues in your favorite series. Whether it is realistic science explaining humanoid life throughout the galaxy, or dealing with FTL travel, or the ethical ambiguity of progress, or even the very purpose of the human race in our universe, Mass Effect has got it. By virtue of three simple traits – its medium, its message, and its philosophy – Mass Effect eclipses and engulfs all of science fiction's greatest universes. Let me show you how.
  • As a vessel for an epic science fiction narrative, the medium of action-adventure game affords three immediate advantages – setting, casting, and emotional involvement.
  • The first advantage, setting, involves the portrayal of alien species and alien worlds with ease.
  • ...41 more annotations...
  • Because they are filmed with human actors, series like Star Trek and Star Wars leverage mostly human and very humanoid (vulcan, bajoran, betazoid) characters. Even though we are told humans are only one race among many, we somehow always end up running the galaxy and living everywhere. All the important characters who get the most screen time are human beings.
  • Run around the Citadel and you'll be damned if you find more than two or three humans out of hundreds of citizens milling about, shopkeepers hocking their wares, and government officials eyeing you suspiciously. The entire government of the galaxy, known as the Council, is run by non-humans. The majority of characters on screen at any given time are alien.  Being able to render any race with equal ease means that as a human, you truly feel like the minority species we are.
  • Second, the ability to customize the cast of Mass Effect is only possible with a video game.
  • I can't very well rewatch all of Star Trek: The Next Generation with a female Picard of Middle Eastern descent who grew up on a space station. Mass Effect gives me that option with Shepard.
  • Third, and for the sake of narrative, perhaps the most intriguing, is the player involvement in ethical decision making.
  • The critical difference is the duration and scale of the consequences of the decisions made in Mass Effect.
  • First, decisions are not a function of gameplay but of narrative.
  • Second, decisions are persistent through each installment in the series.
  • Further, each decision is clouded by an insufficient amount of information. Players often act in the dark, evaluating and analyzing the he-said-she-said of characters whose motivations are rarely selfless or noble.
  • A prime example is that even during rousing speeches, the player is able to make on-the-fly decisions that alter the pathos of Shepard's rhetoric.
  • During an interview I had with Daniel Erickson, lead writer for Star Wars: The Old Republic, he revealed two key elements of BioWare's process that makes their games ideal for ethical exploration.
  • The first is that quality voice acting triggers complex emotional responses in players. The second is that allowing players to choose their next line in conversation based on emotion, not the precise words written down, creates a huge level of investment by the player in the main character.
  • Other media ask you to evaluate and observe the decisions of the main character. Mass Effect enables you to believe the world in which the story is told, to cast the major characters and to participate in the decisions and face the consequences of character choices. In short, one cannot help but become deeply invested in the universe and narrative Mass Effect builds.
  • Mass Effect has a simple message: human beings are delusional about their importance in the grand scheme of things.
  • Mass Effect starts with humanity in the galaxy where it should have been in the United Federation of Planets: unnoticed among the other minor species struggling to prove to the Council why they add anything of value to the civilization that is Citadel Space.
  • Star Wars and Star Trek start with the assumption that humans will be important in galactic civilization. Why? In part because the medium forced that decision, but more so because both universes assume that human beings add meaning to the universe. Mass Effect doesn't make such an assumption. Mass Effect never lets you forget that we might not add one jot of meaning or benefit to intelligent life beyond our solar system.
  • Humanity's minority and irrelevant status is underlined by the fact that on the Citadel we are not only new, but one among many second class species.
  • Mass Effect is colored by this message in three distinct ways.
  • First, the actions of many major human characters almost always have a subtle undercurrent of petulance or entitlement.
  • Mass Effect portrays our species from the perspective of the established species in the universe: we are fumbling neophytes with FTL drives.
  • Second, the lowering of human status diffuses any xenophobic urges a player might have.
  • The constant presence of other species on the Normandy, a human Alliance/Cerberus ship, is a perpetual reminder that we are out of our depth in the universe. No problem, no matter how much the player may want it to be, will be solved unilaterally by human gumption and know-how.
  • Ok, now imaging playing that character within a context whatever the player's gender, race, or orientation, that the simple humanity of the player is subjected to believable and, within the Mass Effect universe, true prejudice, insults, and scrutiny. The impact of the message on the player's interactions with other species is that, after facing what feels like unwarranted treatment, the player is forced to recognize the perspective of any species one might encounter along the way. Mass Effect makes you view the reflection of humanity in a mirror darkly.
  • Third, by undermining the player's sense of pride in being human, Mass Effect also opens doors to what would likely be highly controversial discussions were humanity "in charge."
  • In Star Trek (TOS, TNG, & DS9), those who are genetically engineered are seen as myopic elitists and supremacists, convinced of their own vaunted status, not wishing to allow their world to be "tainted" by those who are impure. In Mass Effect, Miranda and Grunt are rich and rounded characters who are genuinely superior in some aspects due to their modifications, but also reflect the increased self-awareness and contemplativeness we would hope to see in a superior being.
  • In Star Trek cyborgs (Borg) and androids (Data) are one of two things: a threat to humanity or desperate to emulate it. In Mass Effect, Shepard's resurrection leaves her largely cybernetic while EDI, the ship AI, and Legion, an autonomous mobile geth platform, are more interested in helping and understanding humans than they are attempting to become or obliterate human beings.
  • Shepard's constant discussions with, dependance upon, and similarities to her non-organic crew members is made more accessible to the player due to Mass Effect's questioning of human exceptionalism.
  • Mass Effect's message is designed to open up narrative complexity by destabilizing the player's sense of confidence in his or her own skin. By undermining the value of being human, threatening and novel lifeforms become relatable, minority aliens become allies, and human intentions become questionable.
  • In nearly great popular science fiction universe, there is a flaw. Born of systemic bias, the flaw is one that fundamentally undermines the narrative that carves its way through the characters, species, technologies and worlds that populate any given sci-fi story. Our greatest stories set in space often reference the flaw with oblique references to a long forgotten species, cataclysmic events, or godlike entities. Something is wrong with the universe, but we cannot place it.
  • The flaw in every science fiction series is that they shy from the deep horror of the existence of intelligent life in infinite spacetime – save for two: the one that brought first brought it to our attention and the one that sees this horror as the framework for reality.
  • The flaw is a simple one: the assumption that life has meaning, that intelligent life has a purpose, and that humanity contributes anything to the universe.
  • There is no recognizable divine presence, such as a god, in the universe, and humans are particularly insignificant in the larger scheme of intergalactic existence, and perhaps are just a small species projecting their own mental idolatries onto the vast cosmos, ever susceptible to being wiped from existence at any moment. This also suggests that the majority of undiscerning humanity are creatures with the same significance as insects in a much greater struggle between greater forces which, due to humanity's small, visionless and unimportant nature, it does not recognize.
  • Cosmicism is not merely the idea that there is no meaning in the universe. It's far worse. Instead, the argument is that there is meaning, but it is so far above and beyond human understanding that we can never attain meaningful existence.
  • Mass Effect forces the observant player to ask, "Why fight for survival in a meaningless universe?" From the answer stems a story that demands the player confront the purpose of human beings in the galaxy at every level. To play Mass Effect is to consider the value of the lives of other species, the meaning of life on a cosmic scale, and the importance of individual relationships in the face of cataclysm.
  • First, one must accept the premise that the technology to explore the universe is a trap and a structure that forces galactic civilization to follow an invariable path. Like Descartes' mischievous demon or Hume's apathetic creator, the universe is indeed the product of an intelligence, but a negligent one at best, a malicious one at worst.
  • Cosmicism underpins Mass Effect's ability to show the permutations of how the Drake Equation imagined intergalactic civilizations: warts and all.
  • Citadel Space is dominated by the same law as Dune's planetary empire: a ban on artificial intelligence.
  • The Reapers are biomechanical equivalents of the Elder Gods of H.P. Lovecraft. If the xenomorphs in Alien had a deity, it would be a Reaper. Inconceivable, immortal, uninvolved super-beings that are not divinities per se, but so far beyond our realm of existence as to drive insane those who encounter and worship them.
  • Mass Effect is the first blockbuster franchise in the postmodern era to directly confront a godless, meaningless universe indifferent to humanity. Amid the entertaining game play, the interspecies romance, and entertaining characters, cosmological questions about the value of existence influence every decision.
  • Therein the triple layered question – What value does galactic civilization bring to the universe; What value does humanity bring to galactic civilization, and What value do I bring to humanity – forces the player to recontextualize his or her participation in the experiment of existence.
  • The value of Mass Effect as a science fiction universe is that it is a critical starting point for discussion about the purpose of humanity in a materialistic universe. Without an answer to that question, there is no real reason for Ender to defeat the Buggers, or for humanity to seek out new life and new civilizations, or for us to not let non-organic life be the torch bearer for intelligence in the universe.
  • anonymous on 21 Feb 12
     
    "Mass Effect is the first blockbuster franchise in the postmodern era to directly confront a godless, meaningless universe indifferent to humanity. Amid the entertaining game play, the interspecies romance, and entertaining characters, cosmological questions about the value of existence influence every decision. The game is about justifying survival, not of mere intelligent life in the universe, the Reapers are that, but of a kind of intelligence. Therein the triple layered question - What value does galactic civilization bring to the universe; What value does humanity bring to galactic civilization, and What value do I bring to humanity - forces the player to recontextualize his or her participation in the experiment of existence."
  • Erik Hanson on 24 Feb 12
     
    Man, I would have liked to run this on GWJ.
  • anonymous on 24 Feb 12
     
    Yeah, it's very well written. I'm not in a position to, like, critique it or anything, but it's SO much fun to read. :)
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Quotations of Alex Kozinski - 1 views

www.jmitchell.me/...alex-kozinski-quotes
shared by anonymous on 14 Feb 12 - No Cached
Erik Hanson liked it
  • anonymous on 14 Feb 12
     
    "Private property, including intellectual property, is essential to our way of life. It provides an incentive for investment and innovation; it stimulates the flourishing of our culture; it protects the moral entitlements of people to the fruits of their labors. But reducing too much to private property can be bad medicine. Private land, for instance, is far more useful if separated from other private land by public streets, roads and highways. Public parks, utility rights-of-way and sewers reduce the amount of land in private hands, but vastly enhance the value of the property that remains. So too it is with intellectual property. Overprotecting intellectual property is as harmful as under protecting it. Creativity is impossible without a rich public domain. Nothing today, likely nothing since we tamed fire, is genuinely new: Culture, like science and technology, grows by accretion, each new creator building on the works of those who came before. Overprotection stifles the very creative forces it's supposed to nurture."
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Thirty More Years of Hell - 1 views

exiledonline.com/thirty-more-years-of-hell generations
shared by anonymous on 12 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • A Pew poll from a few weeks back asked Americans how they felt about capitalism versus socialism. The results said all you need to know about how much longer we’re going to have to wade through this misery. You guessed it: until the Boomers finally croak.
  • For maybe the first time in modern history, we now have a generation that actually has warmer feelings about socialism than it does capitalism: 49% to 46%.
  • And a few days later, amid a multi-billion dollar war on public sector workers, another poll was released demonstrating that a whopping 69% of Millennials think teachers are underpaid (compared to 56% for Americans of all ages).
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  • I first heard the “s”-word from by my sixth grade history teacher—this was in the early days of Yeltsin. She said socialism is when you have to wait in line for hours just for a Happy Meal.
  • Read the fine print: it’s 5% of wages, income from “investments” is excluded. Tax the poor wage-slave, spare the wealthy rentier. Americans still can’t see the play even with Buffett rubbing his secretary’s tax return in our faces.
  • And it’s a servitude from which we can never escape. Forget bankruptcy. Default on a student loan and the government will garnish your wages until they get it all back, plus interest. They can even go after your social security money, off limits for all other debts.
  • Mike Konczal sees this as just another sign of a “submerged state”—the unholy fertilizer that keeps the American libertarian discourse in full bloom. None of the “welfare,” but all of the “state.”
  • “After the Great Society program in the 1960s,” says Leo Panitch, “left-wing Democrats, rather than calling for more public housing to rebuild America’s cities instead called for the banks to lend money to poor black communities…one of the effects of winning those demands was a channeling of those communities more deeply into the structures of finance, the most dynamic sector of neoliberal capitalism.”
  • While a liberal looks upon the New Deal and Great Society generation as a pantheon of benevolent patriarchs, I see a bunch of technocrats who slapped together a crude simulacrum of social democracy and called it “free-enterprise.”
  • Unlike the nations of Western Europe, American workers failed to get a good deal of the social democratic compact written into law, which means it was all the easier to dismantle over here.
  • There are the wars, of course—now pretty much the only way for a good many of us to get a debt-free education.
  • Then there’s the ever-popular Drug War, always trolling for some fresh blood. The Millennials are, after all, the least white generation in U.S. history, making us perfect fodder for the country’s ongoing race war.
  • As The Wire’s David Simon has pointed out, it was Clinton—the first Boomer president—that passed some of the most draconian “anti-crime” laws. Even business in the for-profit juvenile prisons sector is a-boomin’. Same goes for our expanding network of privatized immigration detention centers—a direct beneficiary of the Tea Party campaign for a brutal crackdown on “illegals.”
  • Much of the Patriot Act itself was comprised of legislation creeping around the halls of powers well before 9/11, much of it written with the burgeoning “anti-globalization” movement
  • The fact is that being arrested is pretty much a rite of passage today—or the end-of-the-line for your hopes and dreams if you happen to be a darker shade of pale.
  • Which is why I love the Tea Party so much. They don’t dick around about any of this. It’s a full-scale generational war they’re after.
  • The Ryan Budget—and the GOP campaign around it—divides the American populace into “those who are 55 or older now, and those who are younger.” Meaning Boomers will receive Medicare and Social Security checks unchanged, whereas Millennials get the axe—despite the fact that many of us have been paying into these programs for the past 15 years. Let the record show that it was they who fired the first shot.
  • All of the hippies who skulked off into the world of children’s programming to ride out the counterrevolution have cursed us with both our potential salvation (respect for the commons) and our ultimate weakness (pacifist nonsense).
  • But mostly our decency stems from the fact that we’ve all been muzzled and defanged by student debt, slave wages and mass unemployment. Unlike our parents, we’ll never even get the chance to gobble up our own children and leave them with the tab.
  • Which is why, psychologically, this Great Depression of ours can never hurt us like it hurts them. I see it all the time: the unemployed Boomer thinks himself a loser. He’s spent his life watching his peers accumulate wealth and power. Now he feels like the rug has been pulled from under him. Something has gone terribly wrong. When he files for food-stamps, he feels exactly what the Ruling Class wants him to feel: shame and personal failing.
  • Whereas a Millennial shrugs and swipes the SNAP card at the farmer’s market for a quart of fresh cider and a pomegranate muffin. Why should she feel guilty?
  • We Millennials have all the same ludicrous delusions of grandeur as our parents, but now, we’re ready to shuck capitalist gospel out the window. The Boomers call us spoiled, and ask us to do more with less, telling us to tamper our dreams. But the best thing we Americans have going for us is our entitlement, sans the free-market faith.
  • Way back in 1892, Friedrich Engels knew that success was the real curse of the USA. And that a powerful, anti-capitalist left could never take off in this country until the game stopped paying out: “Only when there is a generation of native-born workers that cannot expect anything from speculation any more will we have a solid foothold in America.” Sound familiar? That’s what Occupy is for most of us—a guttural roar that capitalism will not do.
  • The Boomers are right that it all smacks of entitlement. We are entitled. The world, and this country in particular, is awash in capital. With the billions floating in and out of this city every day, it’s amazing that you can walk around Manhattan and not end up with at least a grand worth of cash sifting around in your shoes like beach sand. The big lie is that the coffers are empty and budgets must be balanced. What a fucking joke. American workers have spent hundreds of years building this country and amassing this wealth, and it’s about time we claimed the vast majority of it.
  • Conservative apostate David Frum recently characterized the contemporary GOP’s platform as “a going-out-of-business sale for the Baby Boomer generation.” Which is pretty much the Democrats’ platform too. They just have better table manners.
  • Boomers know what they’ve wrought. Climate change? Don’t believe the polls. They know it’s happening. Yeah, if you confront one of them, he might put up a denialist front for a couple of minutes. But keep pelting him and it all crumbles, giving way to “well, it’s too late.” Translated: “I’ll be on, or near, my deathbed when the shit really hits the fan. You, youngster, will be hauling your family across the country George Romero style, scavenging for orphans to sell off as catamites to the warlord chieftains.”
  • Documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis has spent the past few years chronicling this ghastly mutation step-by-step—unraveling the seemingly incongruous strands and the hideous parentage of Boomer ideology. Their embrace of American libertarianism—with all of its absurdities, vulgarities and utopianism—was the final cry for help.
  • anonymous on 12 Feb 12
     
    "Generational analysis is bullshit. Or so I'm told. Fit for netroots liberals and horoscope clippers, maybe. And to be fair, it's mostly thinktank types who've been profiting off that whole Millennials Rising genre. One of the authors of that book is a former writing partner of Pete G. Peterson's, the octogenarian billionaire who has spent the last couple of decades trying to kick over the Social Security ladder before us young'ns can scamper up and collect. Most of it reads like a debriefing after a recon mission-you can feel them sizing us up, drawing up blueprints for the generational counterrevolution that we're living through right now."
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Repulsive progressive hypocrisy - Salon.com - 2 views

www.salon.com/...singleton politics partisan hypocritical
shared by anonymous on 08 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 08 Feb 12
     
    "During the Bush years, Guantanamo was the core symbol of right-wing radicalism and what was back then referred to as the "assault on American values and the shredding of our Constitution": so much so then when Barack Obama ran for President, he featured these issues not as a secondary but as a central plank in his campaign. But now that there is a Democrat in office presiding over Guantanamo and these other polices - rather than a big, bad, scary Republican - all of that has changed, as a new Washington Post/ABC News poll today demonstrates" Thanks to Erik Hanson for the pointer.
  • Erik Hanson on 09 Feb 12
     
    I don't know that this was me. My take on this whole thing is that liberals mostly feel that Obama has let them down by being too centrist, but that they'll still vote for him over Rom-tor-rich anyday.
  • anonymous on 09 Feb 12
     
    I coulda sworn you did...sorry. And I share your sentiment. That's the kind of trap left-centrists and leftists have. I surely don't hate Obama. I think I understand that presidents make concessions. But when you made such a big, _big_ stink about it during the race, at the very least, don't... say... _increase_ drone strikes. The crux, though, doesn't have anything to do with this stuff. It's about rhetorical inconsistency. Someone yesterday remarked "This is why I think Obama is not the lesser of evils." Keeping Guantanamo open and increasing drone strikes is exactly the kind of thing that self-described Conservatives *supported* during G.W.'s administration. But, we're really not that different after all. Once 'our man' gets the office, we make retroactive justifications. Isn't it fun to be a human animal?
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The Next Stage of Russia's Resurgence: Introduction - 3 views

stratfor.com/...ussias-resurgence-introduction
shared by anonymous on 07 Feb 12 - Cached
  • In many ways, Russia's geopolitical strength is derived from its inherent geographic weaknesses. There are few natural barriers protecting Russia's core, and this has required Russia to expand into and consolidate territories around its core to acquire buffers from external powers.
  • this expansion created two fundamental problems for any Russian state:
  • It brought Moscow into conflict with numerous external powers and gave it the difficult task of ruling over conquered peoples (who were not necessarily happy to be ruled by Russia).
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 at the end of the Cold War and Moscow lost control of its constituent republics and fell into internal chaos, those circumstances did not guarantee that Russia was permanently removed from the international scene and that a unipolar world dominated by the United States would last forever
  • Russia has returned to its traditional status of legitimate regional power, and its influence is increasing in its historic geographic buffer zones, which are currently made up of more than a dozen independent states.
  • In the context of its resurgence, Russia's broad imperative has been to prevent foreign influence while building and ingraining its own.
  • anonymous on 07 Feb 12
     
    Stratfor has long followed and chronicled Russia's resurgence, which has included bolder foreign policy moves and resuming the role of regional power. In particular, Moscow has focused its energy in its former Soviet periphery: the Eastern European states of Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova; the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; the Caucasus states of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan; and the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. In recent years, Russia has increased its influence in many of these states politically, economically, militarily and in the area of security, with the most obvious sign of its return to power coming in the August 2008 war with Georgia. Now, Moscow is preparing for the next stage of its resurgence. This new phase will include the institutionalization of Russia's position as the regional hub, but will also include the use of more subtle levers and influence in areas Moscow wants to bring into its fold -- though not all of these efforts will go unchallenged.
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Erik Hanson on 08 Feb 12
     
    Again with the "geographic weakness." I maintain that the biggest geographic strength that still counts is simply space, which Russia has plenty of. They could build a massive Maginot Line across the entire border and be no more secure for it. If Russia is being characterized as geographically vulnerable, it's by someone who's trying to leverage that notion or who hasn't realized that war has changed since WWI.
  • anonymous on 08 Feb 12
     
    I have to disagree with you, there. While the term "geographic weakness" can be flexible, I think that it applies to a lot more than just missile ranges. It also applies to things like how almost all the arable land in Russia is as far to the west as possible, or how the Russian interior is mostly inaccessible. Or think how the southmost end of its reach is so cut-up that we actually use the term "Balkanization." If you plopped that kind of geography in the center of north America, we likely wouldn't have extended from sea to shining sea. Russia proper doesn't have many geographic buffers. They surely don't have two oceans, like we do. This matters. We don't have a host of uneasy neighbors, either. You're right that a line wouldn't help. That's kind of the point, actually. By putting more miles between itself and any possibly hostile state - by charm or by threat - the entity increases its security.
  • Erik Hanson on 08 Feb 12
     
    I think that the way "geographic weakness" usually is used, it's not in reference to what I might call "infrastructural weakness." Even there, I think that there is a very real geographic similarity you're overlooking in your "sea to shining sea" comparison: The Great Plains of North America are a steppe, followed by one of the more troublesome mountain ranges in the world. How the two nations crossed and filled their steppes is I think part of what makes the two so different. I might also argue that Russia's interior is naturally richer in resources--we put a lot (financially and chemically) into the "Great Desert" to make it viable for farming, and now we still daydream about swapping that into a source of energy. Russia's backyard is built for industrial exploitation, not agricultural, and I think that's probably worth more. As for actual physical buffers, It's been a while, but the US certainly has had to mess around militarily along and within its land borders over the years. Russia does have ocean on the north and east ends, and that ain't nothing. I'd like to know what percent of both our borders are sea borders. I'd guess we're within 10% of each other.
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Possible Russian Counters to U.S. BMD in Poland - 2 views

stratfor.com/...russian-counters-us-bmd-poland
shared by anonymous on 07 Feb 12 - Cached
  • anonymous on 07 Feb 12
     
    BMD means a physical U.S. military presence in the region, showing Washington's security commitment to Central Europe against a strengthening Russia. The United States claimed that the systems are intended to counter the rising threat from Iran, so in response, Russia offered to integrate its BMD system with NATO's system. According to Moscow, such integration would strengthen Western defenses across Eurasia -- indeed, all the way to East Asia. However, Washington rejected the offer, thereby confirming Moscow's suspicions that the BMD system is more about Russia than the Iranian threat. Accordingly, Russia made threatening gestures against the United States and its allies, ranging from support for Iran to the deployment of missiles on the borders of Central European countries. 
  • Erik Hanson on 08 Feb 12
     
    Side note: Poland maintains that it is in "central Europe," via geospatial calculations that put the dead-center of the continent within Poland's borders. There's always a little rhetorical charge to characterizations one way or the other.
  • anonymous on 08 Feb 12
     
    You ain't kidding. I'd imagine that whether it's a part of _central_ or _eastern_ Europe depends upon what a major power wants to frame (and do to) it.
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Russia's Shifting Political Landscape, Part 1: An Overview of Political Changes - 6 views

stratfor.com/...t-1-overview-political-changes
shared by anonymous on 01 Feb 12 - Cached
  • When Putin came to power in 1999, he ruled a country that was in utter political disarray, economically broken and threatened by internal and external forces. He aggressively consolidated the country politically, economically and socially and quashed the security threats. The country rallied around him as Russia's "savior," a sentiment that in recent years evolved into a cult based on the belief that Putin is the sole heartbeat of the country.
  • The first shift in Russia's political landscape occurred because Putin's complex network of clans inside the Kremlin has utterly collapsed.
  • Anti-Kremlin sentiment stems from many issues. Years of relative stability have led to a sense of political, social and economic security, which has fostered a belief among some Russians that the country no longer needs a "savior" like Putin. Prolonged periods of high energy prices and a strengthening Russian economy have created a new growing middle class, something not really seen in Russia before. Furthermore, much of the generation now coming of age was not raised under the Soviet Union or during the chaotic years immediately following its collapse. An extremist brand of nationalism has also risen across the country, leading more Russians to have no interest in a balanced government. Putin's government did not anticipate these shifts in recent years, and that failure has fed into dissent from within United Russia and the further rise of anti-Kremlin sentiment.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • This kind of adjustment has occurred cyclically throughout Russian history as the country has shifted between stability and chaos.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 01 Feb 12
       
      See also: Dark horse and light horse concepts.
  • the longer Putin takes to resolve these crises, the weaker he will appear to the rest of the world.
  • Other countries, especially the United States, have taken advantage of the instability inside Russia and are attempting to exploit the image that Moscow is not as strong or powerful as it claims to be. As Russia continues to pressure Central Europe and Washington's interests in the region, Moscow cannot allow internal issues to erode its position.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 07 Feb 12
       
      No, you are quite right. There is no threat (yet) to Russia's core. But since Russia has such indefensible geography, they extend their reach to create buffer zones. Even with the U.S./Islamic world diversion, the U.S. is still aggressively planting itself in Central Asia. Russia wants the U.S. and the rest of Europe to concede that *Eastern* Europe be considered their playground. With that recognized - the thinking goes - Russia will breathe easier.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 07 Feb 12
       
      Oh yes, geography is still quite relevant. In order to fly planes over a place, you have to have supply lines and obey flight range constraints. One aspect of geography that is perennially overlooked is: rivers. Russia's one of the best examples. Look at the major river systems of the U.S. and Russia and two things become quite clear: 1) Russia has only one navigable river and it doesn't empty to the ocean, but rather a mostly landlocked sea. 2) America has a complex, navigable river system that meanders through the center of the land mass. We couldn't ask for better rivers. Using those rivers, as we do, we are able to save substantially on shipping costs. Russia, by contrast, has a sparsely populated interior precisely because there are no river systems that can be used in such a manner. Everything's imported over rail and truck. I need to find a graphic, but there's a great one which highlights why Russia wants to keep, say, Ukraine in its sphere of influence. Basically, you could position tons of short range missiles to threaten Moscow quite easily. I would pose that the only reason that we can't imagine that large-scale combat is a thing anymore (I share a bit of that in my gut) is simply because we have not lived through a conflict with anything near the scope of World War II. But just because it hasn't happened, doesn't mean it won't.
    • Erik Hanson
      Erik Hanson on 07 Feb 12
       
      I'm saying that were such a thing to happen, the only tactical elements of geography would be range and infrastructure. It's no longer important to hold the high ground or worry about "defensible positions" unless you're taking to bunkers.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 07 Feb 12
       
      Ah. I got you. Yes. I'd agree with that. Russian planners' fear has to do with American troops stationed in a nation, not necessarily what hill they're on. :)
  • anonymous on 01 Feb 12
     
    Russia's political landscape has been relatively calm and consolidated for the past decade under former President and current Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. However, recent months have seen instability rise sharply, with a purge in the government, a shift in parliamentary election results and large protests in the streets. None of these is new to Russia, but these and other factors are converging and creating changes in Russia's political landscape.
  • Erik Hanson on 06 Feb 12
     
    I know that Russia was threatened internally when Putin came to power, but I feel that the "external" threats were more threats on Russia's external claims. Am I missing something?
  • Erik Hanson on 07 Feb 12
     
    Is defensibility of terrain really that important anymore? It seems that beyond small-scale, local-level action, most geography is flown over or sailed around these days, and Russia has plenty of space between where they'd be able to pick up a threat and where that threat could actually do damage. Seriously. Are large-scale land (vs. marine/air) invasions even a thing anymore?
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The Word - American History X'd - The Colbert Report - 0 views

www.colbertnation.com/...he-word---american-history-x-d colbertreport
shared by anonymous on 07 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 07 Feb 12
     
    The Tennessee Tea Party demands that textbooks remove references to the Founding Fathers' slave ownership and violence against Native Americans. 2012-31-01 - Video Clip | Comedy Central
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Russia and the United States: Pushing Tensions to the Limit? - 0 views

stratfor.com/...-states-pushing-tensions-limit
shared by anonymous on 07 Feb 12 - Cached
  • Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States got involved in the region intending to create a cordon around Russia to prevent it from ever becoming a global threat again.
  • Russia wants to limit the influence of external powers in the former Soviet Union and be recognized as the dominant player there.
  • Russia is not looking to control Central Europe, but it does not want the region to be a base of U.S. power in Eurasia.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Tensions between Moscow and Washington can be attributed to one primary issue: ballistic missile defense (BMD).
  • The United States claimed that the systems are intended to counter the rising threat from Iran. In response to this claim, Russia offered to integrate its BMD system with NATO's system. According to Moscow, such integration would strengthen Western defenses across Eurasia -- indeed, all the way to East Asia. However, Washington rejected the offer, thereby confirming Moscow's suspicions that the BMD system is more about Russia than the Iranian threat.
  • In December, Russia gained a new and much more effective card to use against the United States in the BMD debate when a U.S. helicopter strike on the Afghan-Pakistani border caused the U.S.-Pakistani relationship to deteriorate.
  • Cutting the NDN would lead to an official break in relations between Russia and the United States because it would put at risk more than 130,000 U.S. and allied troops. Whereas Russia's previous threats against the United States went unheeded, Washington may not be able to ignore this new threat.
  • At the end of 2011, it seemed that Russia was going to threaten to cut off the NDN to compel United States to change its position on BMD. But then something occurred that could give the United States more leverage against the Kremlin: Russian protests.
  • The stress of a shift in Kremlin policy, the rise of anti-Kremlin groups and personal feuds have also led to the utter breakdown of the Kremlin clan system Putin emplaced a decade ago to manage Russia.
  • Such instability is not new to Russia under Putin, but the present situation differs from previous ones in that several crises occurred at once.
  • should the various protest groups suddenly receive cash and organizational help, Putin could have a much harder time maintaining his usual level of control.
  • Washington has hinted that it is willing to back the protesters if prompted. Following Russia's parliamentary elections in December, reports circulated that the election watchdog accusing the Russian government of election fraud had U.S. funding.
  • newly appointed U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul arrived in Russia in January. On just his second day at his post, McFaul spent several hours meeting with representatives of various protest groups at the U.S. Embassy.
  • After the election, Putin will have more time and resources to devote to other large issues facing Russia, such as its standoff with the United States. Another important event is on the horizon in May: the first NATO-Russia summit since 2008, to be held in Chicago.
  • Russia has said that if Moscow and Washington do not reach an agreement on BMD by May, then Russia will not attend the summit.
  • Moscow might want to make the Europeans uncomfortable during the U.S.-Russian standoff, but it does not want to create a backlash and prompt the Europeans to unify with the United States over regional security.
  • Moreover, Russia does not want Afghanistan to spin out of control, since unrest in the country most likely would spill over into Central Asia. Russia also cannot compete with the United States when it comes to a military buildup.
  • anonymous on 07 Feb 12
     
    As Russia and the United States prepare for their respective presidential elections, tensions between the countries are growing. The central point of contention is U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) plans. Russia has several levers, including its ability to cut off supply lines to the NATO-led war effort in Afghanistan, to use in the standoff over BMD, but the United States could retaliate by supporting the current protests in Russia. Moscow is willing to escalate tensions with Washington but will not push the crisis to the point where relations could formally break.
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The Next Transitions in the Technium - 0 views

www.kk.org/...the_next_transi.php
shared by anonymous on 03 Feb 12 - Cached
  • anonymous on 03 Feb 12
     
    "What kinds of developmental thresholds would any planet of sentient beings pass through? The creation of writing would be a huge one. The unleashing of cheap non-biological energy is another. The invention of the scientific method is a giant leap. And the fine control of energy (as in electricity) for long-distant communications is significant as well, enabling all kinds of other achievements. Our civilization has passed through all these stages; what are some future transitions we can expect -- no matter the fashions and fads of the day? What are the emergent thresholds of information and energy organization that our civilization can look forward to? Most of these thresholds are gradual, so we can't assign dates, but each of these structures seem to be a natural transition that any civilization must reach sooner or later."
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What happened before the Big Bang? - 0 views

io9.com/...t-happened-before-the-big-bang
shared by anonymous on 02 Feb 12 - Cached
  • Standard Answer: Nothing. So please don't ask.
  • In the normal general relativity picture of things, the moment of creation produced not only space, but time; the two are incredibly intermixed, after all. To Einstein, talking about what happened before the Big Bang is just as nonsensical as asking what happens if you travel north of the North Pole. There just isn't just a place, or consequently such a time.
  • Our knowledge of physics in the first 10^-44 seconds after the beginning (which, admittedly, is a pretty damn short time) is virtually non-existent. This instant is known as the Planck Time, and since we don't know what happened before the Planck time with anything even remotely resembling certainty, we absolutely don't know what happened before the Big Bang. Regardless, logic dictates that we're left with one of two possibilities: The universe had some sort of beginning, in which case we're left with the very unsettling problem of what caused the universe in the first place. The universe has been around forever, in which case there's literally an infinite amount of history, both before and after us.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Model #1: The Universe out of Nothing
  • You know what we call something with no size? Nothing.
  • It's troubling to think that the physics existed before the universe did, or, for that matter, before time did.
  • Model #2: The Universe gave birth to itself
  • Gott and Li showed that it was possible to solve Einstein's equations of general relativity in such a way that a universe started off going around and around in a continuous loop, and that that loop could serve as the "trunk" of a tree that sprouted, giving rise to our own universe.
  • Model #3: This Is Not the First Universe
  • The problem with this (besides the fact that there is too little stuff in our universe to make it collapse again) is one of disorder. As we've discussed previously, the universe loves disorder.
  • Looking back, our universe was very smooth, and in a very high state of order. This wouldn't solve the problem at all.
  • And there are even more models, some including extra dimensions, some include concepts like "loop quantum gravity," some infinite in time, and some with a definite duration. At the end of the day, the Big Bang theory has the same basic problem as evolutionary theory. Both do a nearly perfect job in explaining how the universe (or life) changed when it first came about, but neither can explain how things really got started in the first place.
  • anonymous on 02 Feb 12
     
    We spend a lot of time thinking about futurism, but the past is pretty interesting, too. In this week's "Ask a Physicist" we get extra speculative and think about what things may have been like before the beginning of time. What was there before the Big Bang? Did anything exist before our current universe? Here's what we know.
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5 Myths About the Chinese Communist Party - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...ut_the_chinese_communist_party china government communism
shared by anonymous on 02 Feb 12 - Cached
  • "China Is Communist in Name Only." Wrong. If Vladimir Lenin were reincarnated in 21st-century Beijing and managed to avert his eyes from the city's glittering skyscrapers and conspicuous consumption, he would instantly recognize in the ruling Chinese Communist Party a replica of the system he designed nearly a century ago for the victors of the Bolshevik Revolution. One need only look at the party's structure to see how communist -- and Leninist -- China's political system remains.
  • As in the Soviet Union, the party controls the media through its Propaganda Department, which issues daily directives, both formally on paper and in emails and text messages, and informally over the phone, to the media. The directives set out, often in detail, how news considered sensitive by the party -- such as the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo -- should be handled or whether it should be run at all.
  • Perhaps most importantly, the party dictates all senior personnel appointments in ministries and companies, universities and the media, through a shadowy and little-known body called the Organization Department. Through the department, the party oversees just about every significant position in every field in the country. Clearly, the Chinese remember Stalin's dictate that the cadres decide everything.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • "The Party Controls All Aspects of Life in China." Not anymore. No question, China was a totalitarian state under Mao Zedong's rule from 1949 until his death in 1976. In those bad old days, ordinary workers had to ask their supervisors' permission not only to get married, but to move in with their spouses. Even the precise timing for starting a family relied on a nod from on high.
  • "The Internet Will Topple the Party." Nope. Bill Clinton famously remarked a decade ago that the efforts of Chinese leaders to control the Internet were doomed, akin to "nailing Jell-O to a wall." It turns out the former president was right, but not in the way he thought. Far from being a conveyor belt for Western democratic values, the Internet in China has largely done the opposite. The "Great Firewall" works well in keeping out or at least filtering Western ideas. Behind the firewall, however, hypernationalist netizens have a much freer hand.
  • "Other Countries Want to Follow the China Model." Good Luck. Of course, many developing countries are envious of China's rise. Which poor country wouldn't want three decades of 10 percent annual growth? And which despot wouldn't want 10 percent growth and an assurance that he or she would meanwhile stay in power for the long haul? China undoubtedly has important lessons to teach other countries about how to manage development, from fine-tuning reforms by testing them in different parts of the country to managing urbanization so that large cities are not overrun by slums and shantytowns.
  • "The Party Can't Rule Forever." Yes it can. Or at least for the foreseeable future. Unlike in Taiwan and South Korea, China's middle class has not emerged with any clear demand for Western-style democracy. There are some obvious reasons why. All three of China's close Asian neighbors, including Japan, became democracies at different times and in different circumstances. But all were effectively U.S. protectorates, and Washington was crucial in forcing through democratic change or institutionalizing it.
  • anonymous on 02 Feb 12
     
    "5 Myths About the Chinese Communist Party" - an interesting look at some assumptions that Westerners tend to make, and how they are classically wrong (like so many things we take a magnifying glass to).
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Hang The Pirates - But Start With The Movie Moguls And Record Execs - 0 views

blogs.canoe.ca/...-movie-moguls-and-record-execs
shared by anonymous on 30 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 30 Jan 12
     
    The first list is the membership of Edison's MPPC cross-licensing trust group: Biograph, American Vitagraph Company, Selig Polyscope Company, Lubin, American Star Films, American Pathe Pictures, Essanay Studios, and Kalem Company. Those companies ruled the motion picture world 100 years ago. How many of them exist now? How many of their names even ring a bell except in some antique, ghostly corner of our brains? Now here's a list of the "pirate" film companies that were formed by the "outlaws" who fled to California to escape the legal constraints of Thomas Edison back in the eastern U.S.: 20th Century-Fox, Paramount Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Universal Studios (successor company to Laemmle's IMP) and Warner Bros.
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Polarization and Sustained Violence in Mexico's Cartel War - 0 views

stratfor.com/...ed-violence-mexicos-cartel-war
shared by anonymous on 30 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 30 Jan 12
     
    In this annual report on Mexico's drug cartels, we assess the most significant developments of 2011 and provide updated profiles of the country's powerful criminal cartels as well as a forecast for 2012. The report is a product of the coverage we maintain through our Mexico Security Memo, quarterly updates and other analyses we produce throughout the year.
2More

Remarkable Editorial Bias on Climate Science at the Wall Street Journal - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...nce-at-the-wall-street-journal
shared by anonymous on 29 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • the most amazing and telling evidence of the bias of the Wall Street Journal in this field is the fact that 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences wrote a comparable (but scientifically accurate) essay on the realities of climate change and on the need for improved and serious public debate around the issue, offered it to the Wall Street Journal, and were turned down.
  • anonymous on 29 Jan 12
     
    The Wall Street Journal's editorial board has long been understood to be not only antagonistic to the facts of climate science, but hostile. But in a remarkable example of their unabashed bias, on Friday they published an opinion piece that not only repeats many of the flawed and misleading arguments about climate science, but purports to be of special significance because it was signed by 16 "scientists."
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Two incontrovertible things: Anthropogenic Global Warming is Real, and the Wall Street ... - 0 views

scienceblogs.com/...incontrovertible_things_an.php
shared by anonymous on 29 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • That second list of scientists, much longer than the first, is attached to a letter about the shoddy and ignorant ways in which science is being treated by the press and by climate change denialists. That letter was sent to the Wall Street Journal but rejected. The letter was later published in Science.
  • anonymous on 29 Jan 12
     
    The Wall Street Journal has published one of the most offensive, untruthful, twisted reviews of what scientists think of climate change; the WSJ Lies about the facts and twists the story to accommodate the needs of head-in-the-sand industrialists and 1%ers; The most compelling part of their argument, according to them, is that the editorial has been signed by 16 scientists.
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Taking care of your back at home - 1 views

www.nlm.nih.gov/...002119.htm
shared by anonymous on 27 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 27 Jan 12
     
    A common myth about back pain is that you need to rest and avoid activity for a long time. In fact, bed rest is NOT recommended. If you have no sign of a serious cause for your back pain (such as loss of bowel or bladder control, weakness, weight loss, or fever), then you should stay as active as possible. Here are some tips for how to handle back pain and activity early on:
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Charles Murray on the New American Divide - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...4301404577170733817181646.html
shared by anonymous on 27 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • When Americans used to brag about "the American way of life"—a phrase still in common use in 1960—they were talking about a civic culture that swept an extremely large proportion of Americans of all classes into its embrace.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 27 Jan 12
       
      Like during, say, the postwar high period. It's that horrid time that Republicans idealize and which Democrats appear to want. Among other things, the high taxes, strong safety net, and unparalleled economic position that seems pretty unlikely. 
  • a new upper class with advanced educations
  • a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America's core cultural institutions
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • And the isolation is only going to get worse. Increasingly, the people who run the country were born into that world. Unlike the typical member of the elite in 1960, they have never known anything but the new upper-class culture. We are now seeing more and more third-generation members of the elite. Not even their grandparents have been able to give them a window into life in the rest of America.
  • Meanwhile, the formation of the new upper class has been driven by forces that are nobody's fault and resist manipulation. The economic value of brains in the marketplace will continue to increase no matter what, and the most successful of each generation will tend to marry each other no matter what.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 27 Jan 12
       
      Ha ha ha
  • The only thing that can make a difference is the recognition among Americans of all classes that a problem of cultural inequality exists and that something has to be done about it. That "something" has nothing to do with new government programs or regulations.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 27 Jan 12
       
      Please 'splain better than you did. K thanx.
  • There remains a core of civic virtue and involvement in working-class America that could make headway against its problems if the people who are trying to do the right things get the reinforcement they need—not in the form of government assistance, but in validation of the values and standards they continue to uphold. The best thing that the new upper class can do to provide that reinforcement is to drop its condescending "nonjudgmentalism."
  • anonymous on 27 Jan 12
     
    People are starting to notice the great divide. The tea party sees the aloofness in a political elite that thinks it knows best and orders the rest of America to fall in line. The Occupy movement sees it in an economic elite that lives in mansions and flies on private jets. Each is right about an aspect of the problem, but that problem is more pervasive than either political or economic inequality. What we now face is a problem of cultural inequality.
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