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aksquestionson How Moving Is Linked to Losing Friends

Over the same time period, the US population has been increasing in diversity. Among other negative aspects, increased diversity increases social alienation. It reduces social cohesion and trust not just between groups but within them.

[.] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam#Diversity_and...

[#] http://politicalscience.ku.dk/staff/Academic_staff/?pure=fil...

aksquestionson Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

The central role Jews played in the ideological formation and implementation of Bolshevism cannot be denied. Hand-waving about a "conspiracy theory" will not change the ethnicity of Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Sokolnikov, or Zinoviev (five of the seven members of the first Politburo) nor that of Sverdlov (first Communist party leader and progenitor of the Red Terror) nor of the many Jews who rushed to join the Cheka (the majority in certain regions) to carry out atrocities against the Russian and then Soviet populace. (Not to mention the significance of, oh, Marx.) The financial contribution of financiers like Jacob Schiff, likely though it seems, is the only aspect that lies in the realm of the unproven. Referring to those who point out the facts as "conspiracy theorists" is a disingenuous response solely intended to deflect attention from reality and again marginalize and dismiss the Nazis as "irrational" moustache-twirling villains. You don't have to prove a "conspiracy" among the participants every time you apprehend a trend among a given population group for the trend to be true in a heuristic sense.

aksquestionson Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

And just today there's a clickbait story making the rounds (again) about how Hitler had a tiny penis and only one testicle. Because that explains... everything?

aksquestionson Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

Even when specifically attempting to refrain from doing so, it's impossible to speak of Nazi Germany without resorting to simplifying them into cartoon evil or as a moral object lesson from which to derive meaningful instruction and insight. The terrible truth is they were entirely normal people who followed an entirely normal path of self-interest. There is nothing remarkable about them and no special insight into human nature to be learned. The Nazis were a reaction against the rise of Marxist Communism, a terrifying spectre already responsible for genocide at the time of the party's founding, and with whom many party members had engaged with directly during the turmoil after WWI.

That Marxist Communism had taken hold of Russia largely through the efforts of outsiders was not lost on the Nazis and their distrust and fear of anyone not truly German was entirely sensible. That among these outsiders Jews played an inordinately large role was a commonly understood meme of the day. (And when looking at the Bolshevik leadership and financial backers, it is an unassailable fact, though it's currently heresy to say so.) German Jews during the party's rise were also an inordinately powerful group in German industry, finance, and media. Given the context, it was not irrational to seek to remove a minority group with questionable loyalties from such positions and prevent them from retaking them.

Throw in a Weimar period of social degeneracy and economic upheaval along with the rest of the world laying blame upon your people as being solely responsible for one of the greatest calamities experienced by western civilization and a nationalistic party that emphasized the inherent strength and value of the nation's ethnic stock was exactly what the German people needed to regain their dignity. The only lesson to be learned from the Nazis is that war should be avoided at all costs. The corollary being that if you are to fight a war, make sure you will prevail else your nation will be raped and split up and your people will be treated for the next century as though they were the greatest evil that has ever been visited upon the Earth. (And no one will learn anything from it.)

aksquestionson Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

Yes, that is the conclusion pushed in the usual organs. But the New Yorker had already published a bin-Laden assassination piece that supported the official narrative. Hersh himself says they (i.e. David Remnick) simply weren't interested in revisiting the story. Hersh further claims that he warned Remnick soon after the bin-Laden raid that the official story was being disputed by his sources and suggested he write a story, which Remnick countered with the suggestion of a blog article. (A blow-off?) If it's true that Hersh personally warned Remnick that the official story was problematic, the New Yorker publishing Nicholas Schmidle's story and passing on Hersh's looks to have less to do with fact-checking and more to do with editorial position. Since the New Yorker didn't want to buy, Hersh shopped the story elsewhere, which is simply how freelancers go about business. (It was actually the Washington Post that allegedly passed on the story because of "sourcing" standards.)

Hersh claims to have sold the story to LRB for the "politics" of it, the meaning of which is uncertain. But as he hopes to have a book published on the "war on terror", it is not out of the question that he selected them to establish rapport. And that he chose them, instead of resorting to them out of some kind of desperation owing to defects in the work itself, seems pretty clear.

[*] http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/05/sy-hersh-bin-la...

[.] http://fpif.org/seymour-hersh-draws-even-criticism-lrb-new-y...

- edit -

The Obama administration is widely claimed by non-partisan journalists and journalist groups as being openly hostile toward the press and has used espionage provisions to prosecute officials deemed to have "leaked" inside information via the types of conversations that would previously have been considered business-as-usual. (Despite opening his presidency with rhetoric about being the most "open" and "transparent" administration in history.) This has resulted in administration staffers & officials being paralyzed and fearful of speaking with the press at all, stymieing journalists' attempts at effectively covering the government and acting as the fourth estate. While it is unfortunate that we cannot quantify whether one administration has experienced more or less scrutiny than others, blithely asserting to the contrary is not a reasonable position in this context.

[:] https://cpj.org/reports/2013/10/obama-and-the-press-us-leaks...

aksquestionson Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

Why is Hersh having to publish some stories at LRB not more of an indictment of the New Yorker (et al) than Hersh? Hasn't the Obama administration been subject to curiously little investigative journalism?

aksquestionson Judge Rules FBI Must Reveal Malware It Used to Hack Over 1,000 Computers

Well biologically the person has inherited some genes that function in such a way as to lead to their obsession with younger people.

That includes everyone. Women with the most neotenous traits are considered the most attractive in every human society.

[*] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny#In_humans

aksquestionson The secret lives of Tumblr teens

I think tumblr excels because, lacking a front page like reddit, the user's that hate each other never interact. And I'm increasingly sure that this is the only method for obtaining non-dysfunctional societies online- non-overlapping tribes of users.

The same is true for offline societies.

[*] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam#Diversity_and...

aksquestionson Japanese firm to open world’s first robot-run farm

They prefer to build robots and retain their homogenous culture than import and nurture a slave class.

aksquestionson Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science

Ethnic Russian from Kazakhstan.

aksquestionson Feds nail webcam on utility pole for 10 weeks to spy on suspect

Isn't the real story here that this guy was acquitted of murdering a police officer and was thus targeted by law enforcement for retribution? His 2010 felony conviction was for "evading arrest", which is what led to him being deprived of his 2nd amendment rights and thus set the tripwire for this violation. But what would you do if you knew law enforcement had it out for you for killing one of their own?