Milos Uzelac

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  1. Posted · Edited by Milos Uzelac

    Michael Hudson is a very critically oriented economist and has also real experience in consulting with American banks and his book "Superimperialism: The Origins and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance" first published in 1972., was also bought to be read by the Defense Department, State Department, White House, and CIA officials. He might not be the best start for novices in the topic of economics and politics (though I myself think that I am still one as well with my current knowledge and logic and learning capabilities) but I think his work is very important for illuminating better how the political and economic dimensions of the world work and he is, I think, worth the visit at some point at the learning curve. Here is an article and video within it where he discusses his concepts and the contents of his book.

    https://mronline.org/2021/02/09/michael-hudson-changes-in-super-imperialism/

    "The reason that I’m writing a new version of Super Imperialism is that I was asked to by China, and I thought, “As long as they want to bring out a new translation and basically an update of the book, I might as well do it in English too.” I bought the rights back from Pluto and in about two or three months I will be reissuing the English language edition. The context for de-dollarization today by China, Russia, and other countries is basically “How do you make an alternative to an international financial order that really was designed from the beginning to benefit the United States in its own self-interest?”

    Here is a more critically oriented towards the U.S. news source and article, where Michael Hudson also discusses his concepts and book.

    https://thegrayzone.com/2021/05/12/new-cold-war-super-imperialism-michael-hudson/

    "Well, I had originally wanted to call my book “Monetary Imperialism.” The publisher wanted to call it “Super Imperialism,” in 1972 because it was really the US moving towards a unipolar order, where it was not competing with other imperialisms; it wanted to absorb European colonialism, absorb European imperialism, and really be the single unipolar power.

    And of course, that is what really has come about. The United States is trying to become the only dominant power in the world. And in today’s Financial Times [on May 5], one of the reporters said, it’s as if the United States wants to be the world’s absentee landlord and rent collector. So we’re dealing with a monetary and a rentier phenomenon."

    "This new and completely revised edition of “Super Imperialism” describes the genesis of America’s political and financial domination.

    Michael Hudson’s in-depth and highly controversial study of U.S. financial diplomacy explores the faults built into the core of the World Bank and the IMF at their inception which — he argues — were intended to preserve the US’s financial hegemony. Difficult to detect at the time, these problems have since become explicit as the failure of the international economic system has become apparent; the IMF and World Bank were set up to give aid to developing countries, but instead many of the world’s poorest countries have been plunged into insurmountable debt crises.

    Hudson’s critique of the destructive course of the international economic system provides important insights into the real motivations at the heart of these institutions – and the increasing tide of opposition that they face around the world.

    Michael Hudson is an independent Wall Street financial economist. After working as a balance-of-payments economist for Chase Manhattan Bank and Arthur Anderson in the 1960s, he taught finance at the New School in New York and is presently Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri – Kansas City. He has published widely on the topic of US financial dominance, as well as “Trade, Development and Foreign Debt” (Pluto 1992) and has been an economic adviser to the Canadian, Mexican, Russian, and US governments, and to the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR).

    “Michael Hudson’s brilliant shattering book will leave orthodox economists spluttering. Classical economists don’t like to be reminded of the ugly realities of Imperialism. Hudson is one of the tiny handful of economic thinkers in today’s world who is forcing us to look at old questions in startling new ways.” — Alvin Toffler, best-selling author of “Future Shock” and “The Third Wave”

    ‘One of the most important books of this century. It is the first work to synthesize the new and different forms which capitalist imperialism has assumed since Lenin.’ — Terence McCarthy, Columbia University

    SuperImperialism Book cover.jpg

    Also, I have just found the 2003 re-published edition of the full book in pdf for free here:

    https://michael-hudson.com/books/super-imperialism/

  3. Posted · Edited by Milos Uzelac

    Quote

    "We must expel the Arabs and take their places"

       -- David Ben Gurion, Israel's First Prime Minister in 1948 before the planned expulsion of almost 800.000 Palestinians into the Gaza strip and ethnic cleansing and destruction of more than 500 Palestinian villages during the Palestinian Nakba.

    "Perhaps if we don't give them enough water, they won't have a choice; because the orchards will yellow and wither."

      -- Levi Eshkol, Israel's Prime Minister comments and suggestions for forcing Palestinians to leave Israel after the 1967 war.

    "It suits the IDF [the Israeli Defence Force] if Hamas takes full control of the Gaza strip because the IDF could then deal with Gaza as a hostile state if Hamas ruled." 

      -- paraphrase of the comment, obtained by Wikileaks cable, made by the then Israeli Intelligence and Security Cheif Yuval Dishkin to the US Ambassador in Israel shortly after the General Elections in Gaza in June 13, 2007

    extracted from Abby Martin's documentary Gaza Fights for Freedom 

     

  4. Posted

    From Abby Martin's documentary Gaza Fights for Freedom:

    "What would happen if thousands of Gazans attempted peacefully to cross the fence that separated them from their ancestral lands?"

    "I looked at the birds flying at the fences without being held by anyone. Birds decide to fly they fly. I have discovered the real reason for abhorring the occupation. I hate it because it contradicts the law of nature. It forbids me to be a flying bird."

    -- Ahmed Abu Artema, Palestinian 32-year-old poet and journalist and great march of return lead organizer in 2018.

  5. Posted · Edited by Milos Uzelac

    11 hours ago, Stovo said:

    First of all, the Daily Mail is a very low-grade newspaper. Take it with a pinch of salt, they are a tabloid and exaggerate everything.

     

    Thanks for the heads up I have forgotten which newspapers in the U.K. constitute as tabloids or have tabloidesque elements in their reporting, I could only remember the Sun and the Daily Sun, with the obvious aesthetic sign that they have a red top headline with white capital letters, hence the nickname for tabloids in the U.K. is, if I remember correctly, red tops contrasting more serious newspapers and press which is nicknamed broadsheets (The Guardian, The Observer, etc.).

    11 hours ago, Stovo said:

     

    Secondly, the US and China are engaged in a "war" to decide who becomes the dominant power on earth. This always occurs when a rising power threatens the existing power, Ray Dalio's "The Changing World Order" illustrates this very well.

    Yes, but what interested me in this dossier allegedly obtained by the U.S. State Department is the description of how the Chinese military officials and scientists connected with the PLA see how this war may be fought in the near future using these never deployed and unconventional means with bioweapons, in this case, genetically modified viral pathogens obtained from animals dispersed as aerosols in a given area and then spread like an epidemic and subsequently as a pandemic damaging the unprepared enemies medical system via the interconnectedness and codependence of the global economy. This suggests that this type of warfare done on a global level with the intent of crippling the other competing power's economy and medical system will take the highest toll and casualties on the domestic non-military civilian populace of the countries which I see as the most worrying aspect in the future if this type of warfare is seen as legitimate and effective means to pave the way for global economic leadership and supremacy.

    11 hours ago, Stovo said:

     

    Assuming you are from the US, or a US ally, you probably find this threatening because a dominant China may result in global rules that are different to the rules you are accustomed to under the current US-led order. 

    I am not, I am from Serbia in Europe which is strengthening its economic ties and dependence with China by allowing Chinese state companies to purchase and lease defunct or near-bankrupt state industries here in Serbia and employ only their workers and also undertakes infrastructural projects here in the country. The only thing I see as worrying is strengthening economic ties with a state such as China if biowarfare is their way of conducting international competition with other nations and which is also known to practice ''debt-trap diplomacy'' with developing nations in which its companies undertake these infrastructural projects.

  6. Posted · Edited by Milos Uzelac

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9556415/China-preparing-WW3-biological-weapons-six-years-investigators-say.html?ito=fbmessenger_share_article-top

    China was preparing for a Third World War with biological weapons - including coronavirus - SIX years ago, according to dossier produced by the People's Liberation Army in 2015 and uncovered by the US State Department. 

    Strong evidence of conflicts of interests  between Chinese scientists and PLA high-ranking military officials and scientists in joint scientific research's on viruses shown through the article. 

    "Chinese scientists have been preparing for a Third World War fought with biological and genetic weapons including coronavirus for the last six years, according to a document obtained by US investigators.

    The bombshell paper, accessed by the US State Department, insists they will be 'the core weapon for victory' in such a conflict, even outlining the perfect conditions to release a bioweapon, and documenting the impact it would have on 'the enemy's medical system'.

    This latest evidence that Beijing considered the military potential of SARS coronaviruses from as early as 2015 has also raised fresh fears over the cause of Covid-19, with some officials still believing the virus could have escaped from a Chinese lab.

    The authors of the document insist that a third world war 'will be biological', unlike the first two wars which were described as chemical and nuclear respectively. 

    Referencing research which suggested the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan forced them to surrender, and bringing about the end of WWII, they claim bioweapons will be 'the core weapon for victory' in a third world war. 

    The document also outlines the ideal conditions to release a bioweapon and cause maximum damage."

    À Red Scare and a New Cold War narrative propagated on unverified claims and evidence from a single dossier obtained by the U. S. State Department?

    I am not sure because if you read the Article the evidence presented in it of an existing conflict of interests between scientific researchers and high-ranking Chinese military officials is quite substantial and very visible. 

    I am of the opinion that no state should be let of the hook from an international bodies regulation and policing of suspected laboratories and institutes where such scientific research on viruses was conducted and an international commission and body of experts investigating the issue with no political pressure and conflict of interests attached to them. 

     

  7. Posted · Edited by Milos Uzelac

    "The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preffering to deify error; if error seduces them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever tries to destroy their illusions is always their victim."

    -- Gustave Le Bonn, The Crowd: The Study of the Popular Mind. 

    "Totalitarianism is a modern phenomenon of total centralized state power coupled with the obliteration of individual human rights: in the totalized state, there are those in power, and the objectified masses, the victims. 

    -- Arthur Versluis, The New Inquisitions

    "... there is in fact much that is comparable between the strange reactions of citizens of [totalitarianism] and their culture as a whole on the one hand and on the other the reactions of a sick schizophrenic..." 

    -- Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind

    "Menticide is an old crime against the human mind and spirit but systematized anew. It is an organized system of psychological intervention and judicial perversion by which a ruling class imprints their opportunistic thoughts on those they plan to use and destroy." 

    -- Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind

    "Totalitarianism is man's escape from the fearful realities of life into the virtual womb of leaders. The individual actions are directed from this womb - the inner sanctum.. man no longer needs to assume responsibility for his own life. The order and logic of the prenatal world reign. There is silence and peace, the peace of utter submission."

    -- Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind

    ''Each wave of terrorizing...creates its effects more easily - after a breathing spell - than the one that preceded it because people are still disturbed by their previous experiences. Morality becomes lower and lower, the psychological effects of each new propaganda campaign become stronger; it reaches a public already softened up."

    -- Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind

    "Logic can be met with logic, while illogic cannot - it confuses those who think straight. The Big Lie and monotonously repeated nonsense have more emotional appeal...than logic and reason. While the people are still searching for a reasonable counter-argument for the first lie, the totalitarians can assault them with another."

    -- Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind

    "Modern technology teaches man to take for granted the world he is looking at; he takes no time to retreat and reflect. Technology lures him on, dropping him into its wheels and movements and movements. No rest, no meditation, no reflection, no conversation - the senses are continually overloaded with stimuli. Man does not learn to question his world anymore; the screen offers him the answers ready-made."

    -- Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind

     

    "It is not for nothing that our age cries out for the redeemer personality, for the one who can emancipate himself from the grip of a collective psychosis and save at least his own soul, who lights the beacon of hope for others, proclaiming that here is at least one man who has succeeded in extricating himself from the fatal identity with the group psyche."

    -- Carl Gustav Jung, Civilization in Transition

    "We must learn to treat the demagogue and the aspirant dictators in our midst...with the weapon of ridicule. The demagogue himself is almost incapable of humor of any sort, and if we treat him with humor, he will begin to collapse."

    -- Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind

    "Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."

    -- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis

     

     

     

     

     

  9. Posted

    The desire for a new future order of things, substantially different from the present, is religious conviction at its core - the awaiting for the eventual coming of the Kingdom of God - in the external outside world rather than the internal personal sphere. Anti-capitalist sentiment, void of a precise and substantiated scientific analysis backed by empirical fact, becomes a religion in itself, a religion of opposition against an imagined external Other cause of evil and suffering seeking to rationalize and explain inner suffering within and caused by the self. It serves, paradoxically, as the opium for explaining to oneself the causes of his or her one's pervasive feeling of alienation from thy self, thy labor, and other's by numbing the actual inner and experiential alienation with a hyper-abstract extrapolation that sees the cause in an imagined imposed order of capitalism, in its perceived and imagined historical, societal and current economic form, while not being aware that it's a system you wilfully participate in everyday life via participation in capitalist exchange -

    as the author, Mark Fisher poignantly points out: ''accepting our insertion at the level of desire in the remorseless meat-grinder of Capital. What is being disavowed in the abjection of evil and ignorance onto fantasmatic Others is our own complicity in the planetary networks of oppression. What needs to be kept in mind is both that capitalism is a hyper-abstract impersonal structure and that it would be nothing without our cooperation.''

    ''The most Gothic description of Capital is also the most accurate. Capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and zombie-maker; but the living flesh it converts into dead labor is ours, and the zombies it makes are us."

    Capitalist realism, as the author Mark Fisher notes, in his book of the same title, is very far from precluding a certain anti-capitalism. As Zizek has provocatively pointed out, anti-capitalism is widely disseminated in capitalism. Far from undermining capitalist realism, this gestural anti-capitalism actually reinforces it.

    What we have here is a vision of control and communication much as Jean Baudrillard understood it, in which subjugation no longer takes the form of subordination to an extrinsic spectacle, but rather invites us to interact and participate. But this kind of irony feeds rather than challenges capitalist realism.

    A film like Wall-E exemplifies what Robert Pfaller has called "interpassivity": the film performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity.

    "The role of capitalist ideology is not to make an explicit case for something in the way that propaganda does, but to conceal the fact that the operations of capital do not depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief."

    "Capitalist ideology", in general, Zizek maintains, "consists precisely in the overvaluing of belief - in the sense of the inner subjective attitude - at the expense of the beliefs we exhibit and externalize in our behavior. So long as we believe (in our hearts) that capitalism is bad, we are free to continue to participate in capitalist exchange."

    According to Zizek, "capitalism, in general, relies on this structure of disavowal."

    "We believe money is only a meaningless token of no intrinsic worth, yet we act as if it has a holy value. Moreover, this behavior precisely depends upon the prior disavowal - we are able to fetishize money in our actions only because we have already taken an ironic distance towards money in our heads.

    Corporate anti-capitalism wouldn't matter if it could be differentiated from an authentic anti-capitalist movement. The so-called anti-capitalist movement seemed also to have conceded too much to capitalist realism

    Since it was unable to posit a coherent alternative political-economic model to capitalism, the suspicion was that the actual aim was not to replace capitalism but to mitigate its worst excesses; and, since the form of its activities tended to be the staging of protests rather than a political organization, there's a sense that the anti-capitalism movement consisted of making a series of hysterical demands which it didn't expect to be met.

    Protests have formed a kind of carnivalesque background noise to capitalist realism."

  11. Posted

    Chapter Two, Neoliberal Mindfulness.

    "Mindfulness is hostage to the neoliberal mindset: 1. it must be put to use, 2. it must be proved that it "works", 3. it must deliver the desired results.

    This prevents it from being offered as a tool of resistance, restricting it instead to a technique for "self-care". It becomes a  therapeutic solvent - a universal elixir - for dissolving the mental and emotional obstacles to better performance and increased efficiency."

    "This logic pervades most institutions, from public services to large corporations, the quest for resilience is driven by the dictum: "Adapt - or perish."

    "The result is an obsessive self-monitoring of inner states, inducing social myopia. Self-absorption trumps concerns about the outside world. As Byung-Chul Han observes, this reinvents the Puritan work ethic:

    "Endlessly working at self-improvement resembles the self-examination and self-monitoring of Protestantism, which represents a technology of subjectivization and domination in its own right. Now, instead of searching out sins, one hunts down negative thoughts."

    "This inevitably appeals to consumers who value spirituality as a way of enhancing their mental and physical health. Not only has mindfulness been repackaged as a novel technique of psychotherapy, but its utility is commercially marketed as self-help. This branding reinforces the notion that spiritual practices are indeed an individual's private concern. And once privatized, these practices are easily co-opted for social, economic and political control."

    Ronald Purser argument in his original article "Beyond McMindfulness" which inspired him into writing this book:

    "Decontextualizing mindfulness from its original liberative and transformative purpose, as well as its foundation in social ethics, amounts to a Faustian bargain. Rather than applying mindfulness as a means to awaken individuals and organizations from the unwholesome roots of greed, ill will, and delusion, it is usually being refashioned into a banal, therapeutic, self-help technique that can actually reinforce those roots."

     

  12. Posted

    Chapter One, subchapter four: A Capitalist Spirituality Part 2

    ''Leaders of the mindfulness movement believe that capitalism and spirituality can be reconciled; they want to relieve the stress of individuals without having to look deeper and more broadly at social, economic, and political causes."

    "A truly revolutionary mindfulness would challenge the Western sense of entitlement to happiness irrespective of ethical conduct. However, mindfulness programs do not ask executives to examine how their managerial decisions and corporate policies have institutionalized greed, ill will, and delusion, which Buddhist mindfulness seeks to eradicate."

    "Instead the practice is being sold to executives as a way to de-stress, improve productivity and focus, and bounce back from working eighty-hour weeks. They may well be "meditating", but it works like taking an aspirin for a headache. Once the pain goes away, it is business as usual.

    Even if individuals become nicer people, the corporate agenda for maximizing profits does not change.

    Trickle down-mindfulness, like trickle-down economics, is a cover for the maintenance of power.

     

     

  13. Posted · Edited by Milos Uzelac

    1 hour ago, Display_Name said:

    In Germany we haven't even gotten to the middle aged people yet

    Well that's unexpected and unfortunate.

    I haven't researched much what's the vaccination rate by demographic in other countries but a lot middle-aged adults here already got vaccinated though by various sorts of vaccine producers from China, Russia, through Britain and America (Sinopharm, Sputnik V, Astra Zeneca and Phyzer). 

    Though some of the used vaccines (most notably the Chinese Sinopharm) were in phases of testing in some countries like mine and Pakistan, so it was a sort of guinea pig deal between the the government of a poorer country and the company that produces vaccines to test their vaccine patch on their populations (mostly older and middle aged Serbian adults agreed to take them as far as I am aware of here) in exchange for having lots of those vaccines available for the general population. 

    So maybe it is good that they haven't started the vaccination of middle-aged adults in Germany if the patches of the vaccine producer haven't gone through a thorough testing process. 

  14. Posted · Edited by Milos Uzelac

    50 minutes ago, Opo said:

     

    Maybe where you live the outburst was bigger so it was more important for the vaccines to get to you first. 

    Well Belgrade is quite densely populated and perhaps they wanted to make available the most diverse set of vaccine producers (one's that would guarantee viability of travel into the EU if Covid passports or certificates of vaccination by certain vaccine producers became a mandatory thing) for the large student population from all parts of the country residing here in the various dorms through out the city. 

  18. Posted · Edited by Milos Uzelac

    Chapter One, subchapter four: A Capitalist Spirituality.

    "This has come about partly because proponents of mindfulness believe that the practice is apolitical, and so the avoidance of moral inquiry and the reluctance to consider a vision of the social good are intertwined

    Laissez-faire mindfulness lets dominant systems decide such questions as "the good".

    It is simply assumed that ethical behavior will arise "naturally" from practice and the teacher's "embodiment" of soft-spoken niceness, or through the happenstance of inductive self-discovery.

    However, the claim that "major ethical changes come intrinsically from paying attention to the present moment, non-judgementally" is patently flawed.

    The emphasis on "non-judgmental awareness" can just as easily disable one's moral intelligence.

    It is unlikely that the Pentagon would invest in mindfulness if more mindful soldiers refused en masse to go to war.

    Mindfulness is the latest iteration of a capitalist spirituality whose lineage dates back to the privatization of religion in Western societies. This began a few hundred years ago as a way of reconciling faith with modern scientific knowledge. The private experience could not be measured by science, so religion was internalized.

    Important figures in the process include the nineteenth-century philosopher William James, who was instrumental in psychologizing religion, as well as Abraham Maslow, whose humanistic psychology provided the impetus for the New Age movement.

    In Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion,  Jeremy Carrete, and Richard King argue that Asian wisdom traditions have been subject to colonization and commodification since the eighteenth century, producing a highly individualistic spirituality, perfectly accommodated to dominant cultural values and requiring no substantive changes in lifestyle.

    Such individualistic spirituality is clearly linked to the neoliberal agenda of privatization, especially when masked by the ambiguous language used in mindfulness.

    Market forces are already exploiting the momentum of the mindfulness movement, reorienting its goals to a highly circumscribed individual realm.

    Privatized mindfulness practice is easily coopted and confined to what Carrette and King describe as an "accommodationist orientation" that seeks to "pacify feelings of anxiety and disquiet at the individual level rather than seeking to challenge the social, political and economic inequalities that cause such distress."

    "However", as Ron Purser points out, "the commitment to a privatized and psychologized mindfulness is political."

    "It amounts to what Byung-Chul Han calls "psycho-politics", in which contemporary capitalism seeks to harness the psyche as a productive force.

    Mindfulness-based interventions fulfill this purpose by therapeutically optimizing individuals to make them "mentally fit", attentive and resilient so they may keep functioning within the system. Such capitulation seems like the farthest thing from a revolution and more like a quietist surrender.

    Mindfulness is positioned as a force that can help us cope with the noxious influence of capitalism. But because what it offers is so easily assimilated by the market, its potential for social and political transformation is neutered."

     

     

     

  19. Posted · Edited by Milos Uzelac

    Chapter One, subchapter three: The Commodification of Mindfulness. 

    "The term "McMindfulness was coined by Miles Neale, a Buddhist teacher, and psychotherapist, who described "a feeding frenzy of spiritual practices that provide immediate nutrition but no long term sustenance." 

    Although this label is apt, it has deeper connotations. The contemporary mindfulness fad is the entrepreneurial equal of McDonald's. The founder of the latter, Ray Kroc, created the fast-food industry." 

    "Very early on, when selling milkshakes, Kroc saw the franchising potential of a restaurant chain in San Bernandino, California. He made a deal to serve as a franchising agent for the McDonald's brothers. Soon afterward, he bought them out and grew the restaurant chain into a global empire.

    Both Kroc and Kabat-Zinn had a remarkable capacity for opportunity recognition: the ability to perceive an untapped market need, create new openings for business, and perceive innovative ways for delivering products and services.

    Kroc saw his chance to provide busy Americans instant access to food that would be delivered consistently through automation, standardization, and discipline. He recruited ambitious and driven franchise owners and continued to expand the reach of McDonald's by identifying new markets that would be drawn to fast food at bargain prices."

    "Similarly, Kabat-Zinn perceived an opportunity to give stressed-out Americans easy access to mindfulness vis-a-vis MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction), his masterstroke was the branding of mindfulness as a secular crypto-Buddhist spirituality."

    Ronald Purser concludes the chapter by stating:

    "Since the publication of, "Beyond McMindfulness", I have observed with great trepidation how mindfulness has been oversold and commodified, reduced to a technique for just about any instrumental purpose."

    "Void of a moral compass or ethical commitments, unmoored from a vision of the social good, the commodification of mindfulness keeps it anchored in the ethos of the market."

     

     

     

  20. Posted · Edited by Milos Uzelac

    Chapter One, subchapter two: À Private Freedom Part 2.

    "Mindfulness like positive psychology and the broader happiness industry has depoliticized and privatized stress. 

    If we are unhappy about being unemployed, losing our health insurance, and seeing our children incur massive debt through college loans, it is our responsibility to learn to be more mindful. 

    Jon Kabat-Zinn assures us that "happiness is an inside job" that simply requires us to attend to the present moment mindfully and purposely without judgment. 

    Purser concludes:

    "Guided by the therapeutic ethos aimed at enhancing the mental and emotional resilience of individuals, it endorses neoliberal assumptions that everyone is free to choose their responses, manage negative emotions, and "flourish" through various modes of self-care."

    "If this version of mindfulness had a mantra, its adherents would be chanting " I, me and mine. "

    As Ron Purser's college C. W. Huntington observes:

    "The first question most Westerners ask when considering the practice is: "What's in it for me?"

    Mindfulness is sold and marketed as a vehicle for personal gain and gratification. The so-called mindfulness revolution meekly accepts the dictates of the marketplace."

    Purser sums up the chapter, from a quote from another fellow skeptic David Forbes, who sums this up in his book Mindfulness and Its Discontents:

    "Which self wants to be de-stressed and happy? Mine! The Minefulness Industrial Complex wants to help you be happy, promote your personal brand - and of course, make and take some bucks (yours and mine) along the way. The simple premise is that by practicing mindfulness, by being more mindful, you will be happy, regardless of what thoughts and feelings you have, or your actions in the world. 

    Of course, this is a reflection of capitalist norms, which distort many things in the modern world. However, the mindfulness movement actively embraces them, dismissing critics who ask if it really needs to be this way."

  21. Posted · Edited by Milos Uzelac

    Chapter One, subchapter two: À Private Freedom. 

    "The fundamental message of the mindfulness movement is that the underlying cause of dissatisfaction and distress is in our heads. 

    By failing to pay attention to what actually happens in each moment, we get lost in regrets about the past and fears for the future, which make us unhappy. 

    The man often labeled as the father of modern mindfulness, Jon Kabat-Zinn, calls this a "thinking disease." 

    Learning to focus turns down the volume on circular thought, so Kabat-Zinn's diagnosis is that our "entire society is suffering from attention deficit disorder - big time."

    But as Ron Purser points out:

    "Other sources of cultural malaise are not discussed. 

    Mindfulness advocates perhaps unwittingly are providing support for the status quo. 

    Rather than discussing how attention is monetized and manipulated by corporations such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Apple, they locate the crisis in our minds. It is not the nature of the capitalist system that is inherently problematic; rather, it is the failure of individuals to be mindful and resilient in a precarious and uncertain economy."

    Ron Purser's points of criticism of the underlying assumptions of the movement:

    "The political naiveté involved is stunning. The revolution being touted occurs not through protests and collective struggle but in the heads of atomized individuals.

    "It is not the revolution of the desperate and disenfranchised in society," notes Chris-Goto Jones, a scholarly critic of the movement's ideas, "but rather a 'peaceful revolution' being led by white, middle-class Americans." 

    The goals are unclear, beyond peace of mind in our own private worlds. 

    By practicing mindfulness, individual freedom is supposedly found within "pure awareness", undistracted by external corrupting influences.

    All we need to do is close our eyes and watch our breath. And that's the crux of the supposed revolution the world is slowly changed - one mindful individual at the time. "

    But as the author comments:

    "This political philosophy is oddly reminiscent of George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism." With the retreat to the private sphere, mindfulness becomes a religion of the self. The idea of a public sphere is being eroded, and any trickle-down effect of compassion is by chance. 

    As a result, notes the political theorist Wendy Brown," the body politic ceases to be a body, but is, rather, a group of individual entrepreneurs and consumers." 

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  22. Posted · Edited by Milos Uzelac

    The full title of the book:

    McMindfulness - How Mindfulness became the New Capitalist Spirituality by Ronald Purser. 

    Chapter One: What Mindfulness Revolution?

    "Mindfulness is mainstream endorsed by celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Goldie Hawn, and Ruby Wax. While meditation coaches, monks, and neuroscientists rub shoulders with CEOs at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the founders of this movement have grown evangelical. 

    Prophesying that it's a hybrid of science and meditative discipline "has the potential to ignite a universal or global renaissance", the inventor of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Jon Kabat-Zinn, has bigger ambitions than conquering stress. 

    Mindfulness, he proclaims, "may actually be the only promise the species and the planet have for making it through the next couple of hundred years." 

    The Author, Ronald Purser:

    "I am skeptical. Anything that offers success in our unjust society without trying to change it is not revolutionary - it just helps people cope. However, it could be making things worse. Instead of encouraging radical action, it says that the causes of suffering are disproportionately inside us, not in the political and economic framework that shapes how we live.

    And yet mindfulness zealots believe that paying closer attention to the present moment without passing judgment has the revolutionary power to transform the whole world. 

    Don't get me wrong. There are certainly worthy dimensions to mindfulness practice. Turning out mental rumination does help reduce stress, as well as chronic anxiety and other maladies. Becoming more aware of automatic reactions can make people calmer and potentially kinder. 

    But that isn't the issue here. 

    The problem is the product they're selling, and how it's been packaged. Mindfulness is nothing more than basic concentration training.

    Although derived from Buddhism, it's been stripped of the teachings on ethics that accompanied it, as well as the liberating aim of dissolving attachment to a false sense of self while enacting compassion for all other beings. 

    What remains is a tool of self-discipline, disguised as self-help. Instead of setting practitioners free, it helps them adjust to the very conditions that caused their suffering. A truly revolutionary movement would seek to overthrow this dysfunctional system, but mindfulness only serves to reinforce it's destructive logic. 

    The neoliberal order has imposed itself by stealth in the past few decades, widening inequality in the pursuit of corporate wealth. People are expected to adapt to what this model demands of them. 

    Stress has been pathologized and privatized, and the burden of managing it outsourced to individuals."

    Author's conclusion in the chapter:

    "Reducing suffering is a noble aim and it should be encouraged. But to do this effectively teachers of mindfulness need to acknowledge that personal stress has societal causes. 

    By failing to address collective suffering and systemic change that might remove it, they rob mindfulness of its revolutionary potential, reducing it to something banal that keeps people focused on themselves."

     

     

     

  23. Posted

    27 minutes ago, Tetcher said:

    It's a meme on the internet to taunt the CCP (Chinese Communist Party). Historically Taiwan was established by a Ming general during the Ming-Qing transition (change of dynasties in the 1660s). His goal was to use the Taiwanese Island (called Formose at that time) as a base to retake mainland China from the Qing dynasty. As the soldiers stayed on the island and established a society over the centuries they called themselves China, they had their democracy, their passport, their currency, their army. They considered themselves as the real China and had in mind to retake the continental land of China. It didn't happened and won't anymore but to taunt the CCP people like to call Taiwan "China" and China mainland "West China".

    Very interesting!

    Thanks a lot for explaining to me in short the history of Taiwan and the historical origin and political context behind the term. 

    And thanks for explaining and punctuating the  crucial importance of Taiwanese Semi-Conducteurs Manufacturing Company for the global high-tech market! 

    I had no clue about their existence and importance for manufacturing the crucial components for the functioning of graphic cards on computers, laptops and smartphones!

    Great share here and thanks once again for the very useful information ! ??

  24. Posted · Edited by Milos Uzelac

    1 hour ago, Tetcher said:

    Fun fact Taiwan is the host to TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) which is the largest microprocessor foundry in the world, and the most advanced as only TSMC (Samsung also now to a much smaller extent) is able mass produce the 7nm chips that are in shortage everywhere (AMD and Nvidia chips). Who would have thought that people on a such small island would be so fierce as to have created the only company in the world supplying the entire world in the latest generation semiconductors. TSMC net revenue in 2020 was 47B USD and it is so important in the Taiwanese economy that the latter will fluctuate alongside TSMC performance.

    Another fun fact is that the company supplying the production machines to TSMC is ASML and it is based in Netherlands. For the 7nm lithography process the ASML machines create extreme UV (EUV) at 14nm by hitting a droplet of tin mid air with a powerful laser vaporizing it and creating the EUV which has to be directed in vacuum with a complex set of mirrors as such small wave length will be stopped by glass and even air.

    So presently the most important companies in the world are arguably ASML and TSMC and none are American, instead they are based in quite unexpected countries. Both America and west China tried to build such capabilities for themselves injecting billions and failed so far given the extreme complexity of this industry.

    Now will Taiwan fall to west China ? If we're being honest west China has the power to increase the pressure on many fronts, it will depend on the US which became much weaker on that point now that the presidency was denied to Trump to the benefit of Biden. However as we just saw Taiwanese people are fierce people, they made it that far so we can hope they won't lose their identity anytime soon.

    There is a great youtube channel called asianometry that dives interestingly into asian topics, for instance if you want to know how TSMC was created : 

    For something closer to the topic the current president of Taiwan was interviewed a year ago by western media, she's careful as to say anything that would provoke west China but clearly states that Taiwan is an independant country : 

     

    Quick question unrelated to the main subject of the topic you posted.

    Why do use the geographical term West China and not Mainland China when reffering to the PRC?

    BTW Taiwan is mostly used as geographical marker by the Mainland Chinese when reffering to it implicitly as part of their geographical territory under the One Country Two Systems Principle. 

    Taiwan calls it itself the Republic of China and the people there reffer to themselves as Chinese not Taiwanese as far as I know. 

  25. Posted

    2 hours ago, Danioover9000 said:

    @Milos Uzelac

       This is likely China's strategy going forward with Taiwan.

    Most likely if the author of the video is to be trusted as a learned and impartial source on the topic. 

    I've seen his videos where he has demonstrated in his narration and presentation clear nationalist bias with an detectable undertone of triumphalism and jingoism as an Azeri and for the Azeri side in the conflict when covering the war over the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces.