recursal/Fanatic-Fandom huggingface dataset:
"Non-aligned" states

**Definition:**

States that attempt to “walk”
the narrow edge between socialism and capitalism.

1. Guatemala, a coup in 1953
2. Egypt, coups in 1950's
3. Sudan(s) - a civil war since 1955
4. Iraq, coups in 1960's
5. Lybia, coup in 1960's
6. Syria, coups in 1960's
7. Somalia, a coup in 1969
8. Yemen, a coup in 1969
9. Congo, a coup in 1970
10. Chile, a coup in 1973
11. Afghanistan - civil coups in 1970's, followed by civil wars, on-going
12. Argentian, 1970's
13. Brazil - a movement of landless peasants, since 1970's, protests against world championship in 2014
14. Iran, 1979
15. Sri Lanka - a civil war between 1983 and 2009
16. Bolivia - a “socialist” leader since 2006, a mix of “socialist” rhetoric and capitalist policies
17. Thailand - an on-going class struggle between “Red Shirts” and “Yellow Shirts” (workers and bourgeoisie), strongest protests in 2010
3D-принтеры

**Определение:**

Индустриальный робот создающий 3-х мерный предмет.

**Новости:**

* В Киеве, в сентябре 2015 г. пройдет конференция по 3D-печати

**Полезные сайты:**

* Российское сообщество посвященное 3D печати.
* Украинский магазин по продаже наборов для сборки и готовых 3D принтеров
* Еще один магазин в Киеве для 3Д принтеров
"China from the Insdie. PBS Documentary"

(Watch here )

Tibet – a place of radical nationalism, seeking independence from China in a cloak of religion

   Formalistic approach to “helping women” – a woman propagandist visits another woman in the fields and tells her to study more political writings.

China remains Stalinist – portraits of Lenin and Stalin in a village

Corruption in elections – “vote for me, and I’ll give you 100 yuan”

Embezzling public money

Officials as profiteers – corruption

Power+money+intellect – bandit society

Theft of state property

##### Part 2: women of the country

corruption is everywhere

paid education

a woman is treated as a man’s possession, her duty is to look after man

a shift of 12 hours at an electronics factory, salary of a worker – 26 U.S. dollars/week, with ovetime!

Next

Treating waste eats into profits. Similarly for airplane safety, work safety (mines), etc. Can capitalism pass to China today?

Problem with water – 1) dirty, 2) not enough in the North

Next

“slave mentality”

“Rich people’s dogs do better than the peasants”

1959 – Tibet revolted from China, defeated.

West uses Tibet to split China

Protest against government paternalism in religious form: “independent worship”

Issues: farmers and miners, corruption, environment

Embezzlement of central government funds

Most of the poor in the countryside, growing “underclass”

“Re-education through labor” is aimed at protesters, first of all

Villagers see themselves as defending the law, and the corrupt government as breaking the law
Gregor Mendel

1822-1884

He is the founder of the modern science of genetics. Though farmers had known for centuries that crossbreeding of animals and plants could favor certain desirable traits, Mendel's pea plant experiments conducted between 1856 and 1863 established many of the rules of heredity.

**Video:**

* A popular explanation of the essence of Mendel's discovery
Henry David Thoreau

1817-1862

He was a friend and, initially, a follower of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Later, it seems they split.

He went to a shore of a pond, Walden, where he built himself a small cottage, and started the experiment of living alone in the woods. After 2 years, he went back to the civilization. He described his experience in a book of the same name as the pond.

   It seems that his form of rebellion is popular among the American public today, as we see movies such as "Captain Fantastic" , where a whole family takes to the woods to escape the negative pressure of capitalist society.

Taking to the woods for 2 years was ok in XIX century, just like running away to the steppes was ok for cossacks in feudal Russia, but it is obviously no good today. But this shows that we're continually looking for a way out of the present predicament. This also hints that there are uniform steps according to which the struggle for liberation and self-organization proceeds.

* "Walden", audio, 1854
Contact with another civilization

**Ideas:**

* Isaac Asimov - "Youth". A story of young kids "catching" aliens and trying to hide that from their parents. Available in audio at "librivox.org"
* "Close Encounters of the Third Kind " - a 1977 Steven Spielberg film
* "ET" - a 1982 Steven Spielberg film
* "Hard to be a God ", 1989 - a Soviet-German science-fiction film about people from Earth observing and getting involved in struggles of another civilization, read Wikipedia intro
* Carl Sagan in episode 12 of "Cosmos" on encounters with UFO and contacting other civilizations

**Questions:**

* A possible future source of knowledge may be a contact with another civilization. What is a possible impact of contacting and interacting with that civilization?

**Other languages:**

* Контакт с внеземными цивилизациями
69, Вис Виталис

Лучший альбом который я слышал - это "В Белом Гетто" , 2003 г.

Другие песни которые мне нравятся:

* "Война все спишет"
* "And he's goin' to kill'ya"
* "Мне нужно оружие"
* "В белом гетто 2"
* "Я не умею делать деньги"
* "Выживу - стану крепче"

В общем, это музыка бунта. Левая. В отличии от правого бунта, как то например группа "Контрреволюция".
Albert Einstein

1879-1955

Created the Theory of Relativity , one of the founding theories of our age.

* "The World As I See It " by A. Einstein, audio
* Albert Einstein on love

Simplified his life, to be busy with his work. Few other pleasures: sailing and violin.

Progress of Einstein’s thought: from special to general.

Photoelectric effect -> Brownian motion -> special theory of relativity -> general theory -> unified theory

In "My Credo ", he writes: «All theories should be presented to children. If a child cannot understand it, it’s worthless”. (Maybe this is from another work of his)

**Other languages:**

Альберт Эйнштейн
FARC-EP

Stanford U. - DoD project

The FARC is a Marxist-Leninst guerrilla group founded in the 1960s to overthrow the Colombian government and seize control of the country. Today, the FARC’s goal is territorial gain and control within Colombia. [50][51] Additionally, the FARC opposes American imperialism and financial capital monopolies. [52] Therefore, the FARC opposes U.S. activity and influence in Colombia. [53]

Many FARC leaders sought inspiration from leftist social movements around the world. In a 2008 interview, Jaime Guaracas, a former FARC leader, said that, during the FARC’s formative years, leader Manuel Marulanda read and was influenced heavily by the work of Lenin, Marx, Bolívar, and Mao. [54]

In the FARC’s early years, to pay for the camps and social service provision, the FARC kidnapped for ransom, primarily targeting politicians, and elites. [7] [8]

In addition to kidnapping, in the late 1970s, the FARC began trafficking cocaine to fund its activities, a practice that facilitated its rapid growth throughout the 1980s. The FARC’s newfound wealth, from kidnappings and the drug trade, and its provision of social services attracted a large number of new members who sought to escape the increasing poverty levels in Colombia. [9] [10] Together, the increase in profit and new members marked the beginning of the FARC’s exponential growth and rise in power. [11] [12]  However, the FARC’s reliance on the drug trade also harmed its reputation; reports on the FARC by the United States government, the Colombian government, and news sources quickly started referring to the group as a drug cartel and its leaders as drug traffickers. [13]

(What is our attitude to drug trafficking? Is is allowed, for the purpose of financing a revolutionary fight?)

The Human Rights Watch estimates that somewhere between 20% and 30% of all members are under 18 years of age, and El Tiempo reports that about 50% of FARC members are under 18 at the time of joining.

Following the AUC’s demobilization in 2006, the FARC started working closely with BACRIM (Bandas Criminales, in English, “Criminal Bands”), a criminal organization of mid-level, former AUC commanders involved in illegal activities from drug trafficking to gold mining.
Extinction of dinousaurs

The **Cretaceous–Paleogene** (**K–Pg**) **extinction event**,[a] formerly known as the **Cretaceous–Tertiary** (**K–T**) **extinction**,[b] was a mass extinction of some three-quarters of plant and animal species on Earth—including all non-avian dinosaurs—that occurred over a geologically short period of time, 66 million years ago.

This is attributed to an asteroid hitting the Earth.

* Video illustration
Emerging technologies in transport

Airless tire - tires that are not supported by air pressure.

Artificial Passenger - a telematic device, developed by IBM, that interacts verbally with a driver to reduce the likelihood of them falling asleep at the controls of a vehicle.[1] The Artificial Passenger is equipped to engage a vehicle operator by carrying on conversations, playing verbal games, controlling the vehicle's stereo system, and so on. It also monitors the driver's speech patterns to detect fatigue, and in response can suggest that the driver take a break or get some sleep.[3][4] The Artificial Passenger may also be integrated with wireless services to provide weather and road information, driving directions, and other such notifications systems.

Alternative fuel vehicle -

   includes Electric vehicle, Hydrogen vehicle, Compressed air vehicle.

Driverless car - an autonomous vehicle capable of fulfilling the human

   transportation capabilities of a traditional car. As an autonomous vehicle, it is capable of sensing its environment and navigating without human input. Robotic cars exist mainly as prototypes and demonstration systems, but are likely to become more widespread in the near future.

Flying car - a hypothetical personal aircraft that provides door-to-door aerial transportation.Examples of such cars:Terrafugia Transition, Moller M400 Skycar, Urban Aeronautics X-Hawk.

    See a TED presentation.

Maglev train -

    a vehicle is levitated a short distance away from a guide way using magnets to create both lift and thrust. Most significant developments: in China.

Vactrain - a maglev line run through evacuated (air-less) or partly evacuated tubes or tunnels. The lack of air resistance could permit vactrains to use little power and to move at extremely high speeds, up to 4000–5000 mph (6400–8000 km/h, 2 km/s), or 5–6 times the speed of sound (Mach 1) at standard conditions.[1] Though the technology is currently being investigated for development of regional networks, advocates have suggested establishing vactrains for transcontinental routes to form a global network.

Hyperloop -  "an

     elevated, reduced-pressure tube that contains pressurized capsules driven within the tube by a number of linear electric motors." A designed has been proposed for California in 2013

More here
A brief glance at Roman history through pictures

The founders of Rome were Romulus and Remus. Romulus killed Remus. The statue is from 5 century B.C.

Lucius Junus Brutus was one of the founders of the Roman republic in 509 B.C. He participated in a plot to overthrow Tarquin the Proud, an Etruscan king.

Scipio Africanus the Elder has defeated Hannibal at the battle of Zama in 202 b.c., thus ending the Second Punic War.

The Appian way, commissioned in 300 B.C., was a military road from Rome to Greece. Greece became a Roman colony 150 years later.

A Roman couch.

Gladiators. The practice lasted from 264 B.C. to 500 A.D. The most famous gladiator was Spartacus, who has led an uprising against Rome from 73 to 71 B.C. There is a movie by Stanley Kubrick "Spartacus" .

A Roman aqueduct in Spain, built in 1st century A.D., length 17 km.

The Pantheon, built by Hadrian from 118 to 128 A.D.

Gaius Marius, a leader of the Populares, a party opposed to Optimates (headed by Sulla). A civil war between the two parties has led to Sulla’s party gaining control of Rome in 83 B.C.

Despite his aristocratic background, Caesar established himself as a leader of the lower classes. "Caesarism" todays means an equilibrium between interests of "plebs" and "patricians" and has found sequel in the phenomena of "Stalinism", "Maoism", etc.

After the civil war, sparked by the assassination of Caesar, Rome reverted to the institute of kings, under the new name of "an emperor". The first emperor was Augustus.

The Roman Empire reached the peak of territorial expansion around 300 A.D., after which it started to decline due to internal problems caused by slave labor, as the basic mode of production (similarly as the former USSR has fallen apart due to the rule by bureaucracy). The Empire has split into 2 parts, the Western and Eastern Roman Empire, with the capital of the later in Constantinople (as it was founded by the emperor Konstantin). This became known as "the Byzantine Empire". Rome was taken several times by the barbarians in V century A.D. Constantinople has fallen to the Turks around 1450 A.D.
Emerging technologies in neuroscience

Abolition of Suffering -  the bioethical school
and movement that endorses the use of biotechnology to
maximize happiness and
eliminate suffering...
Abolitionists propose **paradise engineering**,[1][2] i,e.,
the use of technologies like psychopharmaceuticals and genetic
engineering to replace the signalling role of pain as it
exists today with information-signalling gradients of well-being.

  Transhumanism - an international cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.

Artificial brain -A serious long term project to create machines with strong AI. Strong AI is hypothetical artificial intelligence that matches or exceeds human intelligence

IBM Blue Brain project - an attempt to create a synthetic brain by reverse-engineering the mammalian brain down to the molecular level. The aim of the project, founded in May 2005 by the Brain and Mind Institute of the *École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne* (EPFL) in Switzerland, is to study the brain's architectural and functional principles

Brain-computer interface - a direct communication pathway between the brain and an external device...  neuroprosthetics applications that aim at restoring damaged hearing, sight and movement. Thanks to the remarkable cortical p

lasticity of the brain, signals from implanted prostheses can, after adaptation, be handled by the brain like natural sensor or effector channels

Mind uploading -  the hypothetical process of copying or transferring a conscious mind from a brain to another storage me

dium by scanning and mapping a biological brain

Neuroprosthetics - series of devices that can substitute a motor, sensory or cognitive modality that might have been damaged as a result of an injury or a disease

Retinal implant -  restores useful vision to people who have lost their vision due to degenerative eye conditions.

Head translplant

More here
Art of Global Crisis

Rough Seas - The sculpture of a sinking boat which sits in London's Thames river in front of the city's business center, seemed an apt metaphor for state of the global economic and social crisis.

This sculpture reminds us of the movie "Titanic".

"Titanic" was a movie made in German "Reich" in 1943, predicting its near collapse. The movie blames the British avarice (greed) for sinking of the ship (a German officer is a hero).

   "Titanic" was a movie made in 1997 in the USA, also foreboding a doom.
Other movies that predict doom and end of the USA:
1) "2012" - showing a black American president and sleazy Russian oligarch, among other "historical" characters. Produced in 2009.

2) "The Tree of Life" - won "Palm d'Or" at the 2011 Cannes festival.

The global crisis in transitional states (former USSR, China, etc.) takes a different perspective. It's not "the end of the world", but rather (and what is more progressive) a critique of religion, social, political and sexual     mores. An example of religious and social critique is an exhibition of "The Forbidden Art".
Look at how similar and how different are the two graffiti from Kiev and New York. The first, from Kiev, expresses the feeling that the global civilization is "dancing" on a cannon ball to which a fire is set. Explosion is just a matter of time. The second, from New York, expresses the feeling that the whole of our civlization has "hit the ceiling", i.e. cannot develop, cannot "dance" within the existing confines. We must first break the walls and the ceiling, to be able to breath freely.
Edwin Hubble

1889-1953

An American astronomer who discovered the first galaxies outside the Milky Way.

He noticed that these galaxies are flying away from us, and hence his work is a pre-condition for the theory of Big Bang .

Hubble was quite a man, accomplished in many fields. Wikipedia writes:

"

In his younger days, he was noted more for his athletic prowess than his intellectual abilities, although he did earn good grades in every subject except for spelling. Edwin was a gifted athlete playing baseball, football, basketball, and he ran track in both high school and college. He played a variety of positions on the basketball court from center to shooting guard. In fact Hubble    even led the University of Chicago's basketball team to their first conference title in 1907.He won seven first places and a third place in a single high school track and field meet in 1906."

First telescope in space is named after Edwin Hubble.
John Lennon on love

(Listen to song “Love ”)

Lennon says love is a reality, not a fairy tale, and in fact, all that is reality is love.

And yes, love is a feeling, but a feeling of what? It is a feeling of itself, a feeling of the ultimate reality and answer.

Love is a desire for this feeling to be returned, to be mirrored back to its source.

Love is all physical actions that we do, such as touching. Through this action, we express our love, love manifests itself as reality.

Again, love is a supplication, asking to be loved back, for the feeling to reflect back on its source.

Love is the object of love, the couple participating in love. It is the ground on which all material being exists.

Love cannot be bought or sold; the essence of love is freedom, and freedom is another face of love.

Love is life in all its variety. Life and love are two words that mean the same thing.

Again: love is a need to be loved back, as one loves the other. Love, like hate, is self-replicating.
Alan Turing

1912-1954

* Movie about Turing: "The Imitation Game" - trailer , complete movie (torrent)
* A two part documentary about the life and work of Alan Turing - part 1 , part 2

Turing was an excellent runner: "occasionally ran the 40 miles (64 km) to London when he was needed for high-level meetings, and he was capable of world-class marathon standards. Turing tried out for the 1948 British Olympic team, hampered by an injury. His tryout time for the marathon was only 11 minutes slower than British silver medalist Thomas Richards' Olympic race time of 2 hours 35 minutes."

in "Computing machinery and intelligence" (*Mind*, October 1950), Turing addressed the problem of artificial intelligence, and proposed an experiment which became known as the Turing test, an attempt to define a standard for a machine to be called "intelligent". The idea was that a computer could be said to "think" if a human interrogator could not tell it apart, through conversation, from a human being. In the paper, Turing suggested that rather than building a program to simulate the adult mind, it would be better rather to produce a simpler one to simulate a child's mind and then to subject it to a course of education. A reversed form of the Turing test is widely used on the Internet; the CAPTCHA test is intended to determine whether the user is a human or a computer.

**See also:**

* An article in "The Guardian" about a machine that passed the Turing test with 1/3 of judges
Karl Korsch

1886-1961

# Ten Theses on Marxism Today, 1950

№2: "all attempts to re-establish the Marxist doctrine as a whole in its original function as a theory of the working classes social revolution are reactionary utopias"

N4: "The first step in re-establishing a revolutionary theory and practice consists in breaking with that Marxism which claims to monopolize revolutionary initiative as well as theoretical and practical direction".
J.S. Bach

1685-1750

Born in a musical family. His father was a director of town musicians. He himself begot children who went on to become musicians, composers.

J.S. Bach is best liked for:

1. Air on G-string
2. Ave-Maria
	1. My experiment with Bach's "Ave Maria"
3. Oboe concerto in D-minor, second movement
4. Concerto in C-minor, after B. Marcello, BWV 981
5. St. John's passion, BWV 245
A history of Al-Qaeda (Al-Jazeera documentary)

(Watch here )

**Said Qutb** – ideologist of Al-Qaeda. Religious books about decadence of the U.S. society. Critique of U.S. capitalism. His brother continues writing in the same reign.

“Islamic Utopia” – anti-Western, conservative society based on Sharia law, e.g. Afghanistan under Taliban.

What is behind this Arab radicalism? Why Arab?

Bin-Laden – close to Saudi royal family. A son of one of the minor wives of …

Idea of “fake Moslims” – “takfir” – can kill these. A fake Muslim is anyone who doesn’t share the same view on Islam as the guys like Taliban

Ben Ladin angry at Saudi government inviting the U.S. army, i.e. making Saudi Arabia a colonial country (1991).
Christian Rakovsky

1873-1941

Rakovsky was an international revolutionary and a Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of Ukraine in 1919-1923.

In A Letter on “The Professional Dangers of Power”, 1928, he notes that if political power is taken in the name of proletariat, but the proletariat is not involved in the function of management, then a differentiation takes place: one section of proletariat becomes professional managers, and other silently executes what the former ordered. This is similar to what happens with the cells in a body: some specialize in functioning as a brain, and others as hands. Functional differentiation in a society leads to a social one, as those who govern set up privileges for themselves. A journalist of the times, Sosnovsky, called it "the automobile-harem factor".

We believe that the process of specialization is necessary in a society in transition to industrial economy. Witness the testomony of Adam Smith in "The Wealth of Nations", when he discusses the production of needles, and how specialization of the workers increases the productivity of the process, in comparison to craftsmen who used to do the whole process.

However, already after World War II the role of the working class in the production started to decline. Today, the industrial working class is being replaced by robots in all spheres of life: from steering ships (autopilot) to cleaning houses. The role of people is in overseeing these machines, programming  them, creating them.
History of People's Republic of China. 2002-Present. From Wikipedia

In 2010, China

became the world's second largest economy.

Hu and Wen
have both taken a number of high profile trips to the poorer areas of China
with the stated goal of understanding these areas better

because of the
clear slant towards more capitalist elements under a one-party system, it has
been contested that the government has an unclear ideological direction

general
internet censorship involving sites such as Google and Wikipedia
persist. Moreover, the news media from Hong Kong, protected by Basic Law, has become increasingly involved in
news reporting in China, and have become increasingly accessible to a Mainland
public hungry for "real news"

Hu and Wen's
egalitarian focus began with more favourable policies towards China's farmers,
who continue to occupy over half of the Chinese population. In 2005, the
Chinese government abolished all form of taxation on farming, the first such
policy in Chinese history. Rural poverty has also been significantly reduced,
as the government aims for a *xiaokang* society. Rural regions surrounding the Yangtze River Delta have become some of the
most prosperous places in China. According to official estimates, by 2006
China's poverty rate has fallen below 10%, while literacy rates exceeded 95%,
with few lacking basic amenities such as food, shelter, and health care. In addition,
life expectancy is now over 72 years of age, well above the average of
developing countries.

Corruption:

the Communist
Party of China still asserts a monopoly on exposing corrupt officials and
businessmen, and critics accuse the party of selective punishment. Analysts say
the authorities are reluctant to pursue senior figures and their allies and
punishment comes in the form of political purges rather than genuine law
enforcement. – it’s a method of struggle within the ruling caste

North Korea's
nuclear test in October 2006 came as a major embarrassment to the Chinese
government's policies, and marked the beginning to an eventual split between
China and Kim
Jong-il's regime, who was unwilling to pursue a road of economic reform and
opening up. – North Korea – a more Stalinist state

In 1996 the
Shanghai Five grouping was created, comprising China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Russia, and Tajikistan. When Uzbekistan joined the group in 2001 it was renamed
to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
(SCO).

Western
analysts note that the SCO may serve as a balance against US and NATO
advancement in the region. Some have even called it a new Warsaw Pact.
Education in ancient Rome

"From my great-grandfather (I have learned) not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally". - Marcus Aurelius, 121-180 A.D., "Meditations"

Wikipedia:

Most important... were the moral and civic responsibilities that would be expected of citizens of the Republic, the inculcation of the qualities of the *vir bonus*, "good man".

The military arts were all that Rome could afford to spend time studying. When not waging war, the Romans devoted what time remained to agriculture. The concern of Rome was that of survival, whether through defense or dominion. It was not until the appearance of Ennius (239-169 BCE), the father of Roman poetry, that any sort of national literature surfaced.

To the Greeks, the ability to play an instrument was the mark of a civilized, educated man, and through an education in all areas of *mousike* it was thought that the soul could become more moderate and cultivated

Whereas Greek boys primarily received their education from the community, a Roman child's first and most important educators were almost always his or her parents. Parents taught their children the skills necessary for living in the early republic, which included agricultural, domestic and military skills as well as the moral and civil

   responsibilities that would be expected from them as citizens.

Cato the Elder not only made his children hardworking, good citizens and responsible Romans, but "he was his (son's) reading teacher, his law professor, his athletic coach. He taught his son not only to hurl a javelin, to fight in armor, and to ride a horse, but also to box, to endure both heat and cold, and to swim strongly".[10]
Introduction to the first essay on education

Thinking and relating to any subject seems to follow this model:

1) we ask "what is our goal?", in other words, we want to define what a subject is;

2) we attempt to define the method by which we can reach that goal.

3) After marching in the direction of the goal, we again return to the question: what really is the subject?

And so the cycle of thinking repeats, as our understanding of the subject becomes more concrete and, at the same time, more general. Eventually, we may find out that the subject with which we originally started has changed its form so much that we're forced to give it a new name, to define it anew, to take a whole different attitude towards it. This is because we're on a new level of knowing.

Hence, if we take up the subject of education, two questions immediately come up:

1) what do we mean by education?

2) how to go about obtaining it?

Learning to think about anything - in this instance, education -  involves learning to see what others previously thought and did on the subject. Hence, it is necessary to become familiar with a large body of material. Absorbing that involves not merely recounting what was said or done, but commenting on that, and hence a start to a development of our own ideas. New ideas always start from the criticism of the old.

In the process of presenting thoughts of others there lies hidden a danger. In particular, my previous attempt at thinking was characterized by writing down quotes from some authors which I have read, and trying to elaborate or comment on them. This is fine and dandy, as a learning stage in old-fashioned schools. However, once we start thinking on our own, old style of working won't do. Ideas of an author that we have read are connected to each other in an organic fashion. Meanwhile, if we try to fish out separate ideas from our notes, and comment on them, that organic development which we see in original works disappears. And hence, we're left with stale generalizations, unconnected with each other.

   Ideas of others are like crutches that one learns to use, for a while. If one spends too much time walking on crutches, one doesn't learn to walk on one's own. Hence, after the previous efforts of civilization and culture have been absorbed, it becomes necessary to throw away these crutches - ideas of others - and start treading on ones' own.
My own thinking on the subject of education is enriched by the particular educational practice in which I am engaged, which is teaching English in Ukraine. Another source of inspiration for this study of education is the attempt to educate myself and my son. If a teacher is not a student, s/he is not a teacher.

The problem of education leads to the problem of a general view of knowledge. And knowledge is the main productive force in the modern global revolution that is taking place.
Isaac Asimov

1920-1992

Wikipedia:

He was known for his works of science fiction and popular science...His books have been published in 9 of the 10 major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification

Asimov's most famous work is the *Foundation* Series

Scientific works: "*Guide to Science*, the three-volume set*Understanding Physics*, and *Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery*, as well as works on astronomy, mathematics, history, William Shakespeare's writing, and chemistry."

"Asimov began reading science fiction pulp magazines at a young age. His father, as a matter of principle, forbade reading the pulps, as he considered them to be trash, but Asimov persuaded him that the science fiction magazines had "Science" in the title, so they were educational. Around the age of 11, he began to write his own stories, and by age 19, after he discovered science fiction fandom, he was selling stories to the science fiction magazines".

In "Foundation" we see how superiority in knowledge allows citizens of the Foundation to dominate and take over the Galaxy. "Using its scientific advantage, Terminus develops trade routes with nearby planets, eventually taking them over when its technology becomes a much-needed commodity."

* Listen to audiobook "Foundation", 1951
* "Profession ", 1957
* "The Future of Humanity ", 1974
Ice Age

**Definition:**

   A period of long-term reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers.

I*ce age* implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres.[1] By this definition, we are in an interglacial period—the Holocene—of the ice age that began 2.6 million years ago at the start of the Pleistocene epoch, because the Greenland, Arctic, and Antarctic ice sheets still exist.
Guanxi

the basic dynamic in personalized networks of influence, and is a central idea in Chinese society. In Western media, the pinyin romanization of this Chinese word is becoming more widely used instead of the two common translations—"connections" and "relationships"

*guanxi* can also form the basis of patron–client relations – блат

* *Blat* in Russian culture
* *Wasta* in Middle Eastern culture
* *Sociolismo* in Cuban culture
* Old boy network
* Good ol' boy network in the USA
* *Dignitas* in Roman culture

This is an evidence of corruption of the Chinese society.

China's modern power house

All have tried and failed to get justice in their home towns and villages. Coming to Beijing is their last hope.

Each morning they form a long snaking queue outside the petitions office.

They wait patiently for hours.

Finally when their turn comes, they hand their documents through a small window.

Time and time again these innocents from China's countryside will tell you that if only the central government gets to hear about their case, justice will be done.

Sadly they are wrong.

These people have no guanxi.

They are just part of China's seething mass. Their cases will not get heard.
Karl Kautsky

1854-1938

"The Social Revolution", 1902

Kautsky separates social revolution from revolution of the productive forces. However, in reality a social revolution and a scientific-technological revolution form one whole, as the latter forms the deeper foundation, or is the cause, of the former. Hence, if we desire to understand the deeper causes of a social revolution, we need to look at the revolution in knowledge, knowledge being today the principal productive force.

There are no "peaceful" social revolutions, as there are no "peaceful" social counterrevolutions. Kautsky pretends that there are peaceful revolutons by looking at one separate episode of, for example, the French revolution, e.g. the delegates of the Third Estate declaring themselves "The National Assembly", 17 June, 1789. However, thus he ignores the whole of the story, for this declaration has led to violent storming of the Bastille, 14 July, 1789, and other violent events that followed.

Those who pretend that there are peaceful counterrevolutions - as many say about the former USSR and Eastern Europe - ignore the mistakes of Kautsky.

Kautsky certainly represents a degradation of Marxism, as he was a heir to the writings of Engels (and hence Marx).

Marxism we see as one in a series of attempts at a unified theory and practice of knowledge, a revolutionary one at that. A decline of that knowledge, since the death of Trotsky, suggests that a new formulation of a such a theory and practice is due.
"Trotsky's Struggle for the Fourth International" by John G. Wright

Building the new International is
the basic task of our epoch.

The world party of revolution is
first of all a system of ideas, “a program”. On this basis, it is possible to
develop organizational forms and train people.

Ideas – the greatest power in the
world. “It is not the party that makes a program, but the program makes the
party”

A national program can be properly
built only on international program.

“The class nature” of the USSR is
one of the principled points to this day.

«Французский
поворот» Троцкого – в 1934 г., вхождение троцкистов в социалистическую партию –
вызвало раскол среди троцкистов. Затем, на этом сыграл Пабло… Мыслимо ли чтобы
Ленин повел маленькую партию большевиков в большую партию СР с целью
приобретения кадров? Это явно оппортунистская ошибка Троцкого. Принципиальная
ошибка.

Организация
не может вмещать в себя противоположные тенденция, ради «объединения». Нужно
четко обозначить ключевые вопросы, и сформулировать принципиальное отношение к
ним. В конечном счете подобные «объединения» заканчиваются ничем.

It's a question of a judgement on compromises. Compromises with the world as it is are sometimes necessary, and sometimes not. Sometimes, such compromises can go against our very principles of existence, then we can not, should not make them. Sometimes,  they are of trivial nature. Then we should compromise.
Bulgaria: news

**2016**

Bulgaria joined NATO Black Sea exercise against Russia

**2015**

Crimes against ethnic minorities and refugees are on the rise in Bulgaria

Refugees face extortion and violence passing through Bulgaria
Bulgaria denies air space to Russian planes bound for Syria: U.S. pressure
**2014**

Professionals from Bulgaria prefer to leave their country for Germany and similar countries.

24/4/14 – protests in Bulgaria over corruption and oligarchs.

**2013**

Corruption in Bulgarian politics
Emerging technologies in military

Airborne laser - a megawatt-class chemical oxygen

iodine laser (COIL)
mounted inside a modified Boeing 747-400F. It is primarily designed as
a missile defense system to destroy tactical ballistic
missiles (TBMs),
while in boost phase (picture).

Antimatter weapon - a hypothetical device using antimatter as a power source, a propellant, or an explosive for a weapon. Antimatter weapons do not currently exist due to the cost of production and the limited technology available to produce and contain antimatter in sufficient quantities for it to be a useful weapon. The United States Air Force, however, has been interested in military uses — including destructive applications — of antimatter since the Cold War, when it began funding antimatter-related physics research. The primary theoretical advantage of such a weapon is that antimatter and matter collisions convert a greater fraction of the weapon's mass into explosive energy when compared to a fusion reaction, which is only on the order of 0.4%

Directed energy weapon - emits energy in an aimed direction without the means of a projectile. It transfers energy to a target for a desired effect.

Plasma weapon -  any theoretical firearm designed to use plasma (high-energy ionized gas) as a weapon.

Pure fusion weapon - a hypothetical hydrogen bomb design that does not need a fission "primary" explosive to ignite the fusion of deuterium and tritium, two heavy isotopes of hydrogen (see thermonuclear weapon for more information about fission-fusion weapons). Such a weapon would require no fissile material and would therefore be much easier to build in secret than existing weapons. The necessity of separating high-quality fissile material requires a substantial industrial investment, and blocking the sale and transfer of the needed machinery has been the primary mechanism to control nuclear proliferation to date.

  Sonic weapon - weapons of various types that use sound to injure, incapacitate, or kill an opponent. Some sonic weapons are currently in limited use or in research and development by military and police forces. This weapons is used against demonstrations, e.g. in Georgia, former USSR, picture (Long Range Acoustic Device, LRAD).

Stealth technology -  a range of techniques used with personnel, aircraft, ships, submarines, missiles andsatellites to make them less visible (ideally invisible) to radar, infrared,[2] sonar and other detection methods. It corresponds tocamouflage for these parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Vortex ring gun -  an experimental non-lethal weapon for crowd control that uses high-energy vortex rings of gas to knock down people or spray them with marking ink or other chemicals.

More here
General Intellect, by Paolo Virno

source

Marx’s ‘Fragment on Machines’, a section of the Grundrisse, is a crucial text for the analysis and definition of the Postfordist mode of production.

Marx defends what can hardly be called a ‘Marxian’ thesis. He claims that, due to its autonomy from it, abstract knowledge – primarily yet not only of a scientific nature - is in the process of becoming no less than the main force of production and will soon relegate the repetitious labour of the assembly line to the fringes. This is the knowledge objectified in fixed capital and embedded in the automated system of machinery

‘The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it’.

the main lacerating contradiction outlined here is that between productive processes that now directly and exclusively rely on science and a unit of measure of wealth that still coincides with the quantity of labour embodied in the product. According to Marx, the development of this contradiction leads to the ‘breakdown of production based on exchange value’

the disproportion between the role of the knowledge objectified in machines and the decreasing relevance of labour time

It seems that according to Marx, the general intellect – i.e. knowledge as the main productive force – fully coincides with fixed capital – i.e. the ‘scientific power’ objectified in the system of machinery. If so, then Marx thus neglects the way in which the general intellect manifests itself as living labour. “Know-how”, knowledge, skills, are just as important as the machinery.

The ‘general intellect’ includes formal and informal knowledge, imagination, ethical tendencies, games, etc.
"Оккупируй"

**Определение:**

Глобальное протестное движение осенью 2011 г., выросшее из "Арабской весны" 2010-11 г., и протестов в Португалии, Испании и Греции весной 2011 г.

Появилось в Киеве в ноябре 2011 г.

* Видео о встрече, 11.11.11
* Вопросы к движению, 20.11.11
* Письмо к движению, 23.11.11
* Олег о цели движения, 25.11.11
* Предложение о семинаре, 27.11.11
* Письмо о встрече за 3.12.11
* Движение тут же попытались перехватить те, кто имеют деньги и информацию. Письмо к движению за 4.12.11
* Ответ со стороны движения, переписка от 5.12.11
* Выход из движения, письмо от 6.12.11
* Обращение Миши к движению, 6.12.11

Выводы которые можно сделать из движения:

Любое протестное движение находится под "колпаком" у властей. Они попытаются сразу же внедрить своих людей в этой движения, подкупая кого можно, используя деньги, связи, и т.д. Также, они сразу же попытаются удалить из движения радикальные элементы, как то например сделали в Нью-Йорке, отрезав "Black block".

**Другие языки:**

* Occupy
First Congress of the Communist International, V.I. Lenin

V. I. Lenin

# First Congress of the Communist International

History teaches us that no oppressed class ever did, or could, achieve power without going through a period of dictatorship, i.e., the conquest of political power and forceable suppression of the resistance always offered by the exploiters—the resistance that is most desperate, most furious, and that stops at nothing.

We responded to the bourgeois war with the proletarian war—there can be no other way. How should we reply to the bandit war, e.g. in Donbass? «Брат»?

The founding of an international Soviet republic is on the way. The International is a step towards an international Soviet, anti-capitalist republic.
Evgeny Preobrazhensky

1886-1937

"The New Economy. Theory and Practice. 1922-1928"

Preobrazhensky shows that in the Soviet society there is a struggle between two contradictory laws: the law of value and "the law of primitive socialist accumulation". In effect, this means denying a single controller of the economy, and instead placing the burden upon the struggle of these two opposite tendencies. One is the tendency towards restoration of the capitalism economy and social relations; the other is the tendency towards socialism.

The law of value means that the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity, and quality, of labor necessary for its production. The law of primitive socialist accumulation means that in a society that is economically relatively backward, accumulation of value for accelerated industrial development takes place due to the unequal exchange between the industrial sector (mostly owned by the state) and the agricultural sector (mostly in private hands of the peasants).

In the process of “primitive socialist accumulation”, both the peasants and the city workers get hurt. The state forces the peasants to pay more for industrial articles than they would paid for them, if they bought them on the world market. The state also pays less to the city workers than is the real cost of their labor power, for the sake of transferring the value for buying the machines, building factories, etc.

The Soviet society is involved in a whole series of contradictions.

A. There is a contradiction between the need for an unequal exchange between the town and the country, and the need to develop agriculture in order to erase the differences between the town and the country.

B. There is a contradiction between paying to the workers less than is the real cost of their labor power, and the need to increase the wages in order to improve the cultural level of the workers.

C. There is a contradiction between isolating the Soviet society from the rest of the world, and the need to integrate into the world economy with the goal of a rapid industrial development.

Preobrazhensky sees a solution to these contradictions in a world socialist revolution. This was one of the reasons which led Preobrazhensky into the camp of the Left (Trotskyist) Opposition in the USSR, and later into the underground organization of I.N. Smirnov, one of the former leaders of the Left Opposition.

After the break-up of the Soviet Union, the contradiction between the law of value and the need for a planned socialist development has continued. One example of this is the state control over the prices of bread, sugar, buckwheat, and other staples. Another example is the state control over education, medicine, the prices for gas, electricity, etc.

see Longer version of the article on Evgeny Preobrazhensky

**Other languages:**

Евгений Преображенский
I. Asimov on creativity

"How do people get new ideas? ", 1959

* what is needed is not only people with a good background in a particular field, but also people capable of making a connection between item 1 and item 2 which might not ordinarily seem connected
* A person willing to fly in the face of reason, authority, and common sense must be a person of considerable self-assurance. Since he occurs only rarely, he must seem eccentric (in at least that respect) to the rest of us. A person eccentric in one respect is often eccentric in others.
* creation is embarrassing. For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones, which you naturally do not care to display. (Hence, creation is akin to sex.)
* First and foremost, there must be ease, relaxation, and a general sense of permissiveness. The world in general disapproves of creativity, and to be creative in public is particularly bad. Even to speculate in public is rather worrisome. The individuals must, therefore, have the feeling that the others won’t object. (Great ideas are never a result of economic activity.)
* there should be a feeling of informality. Joviality, the use of first names, joking, relaxed kidding are, I think, of the essence—not in themselves, but because they encourage a willingness to be involved in the folly of creativeness. For this purpose I think a meeting in someone’s home or over a dinner table at some restaurant is perhaps more useful than one in a conference room.
* The great ideas of the ages have come from people who weren’t paid to have great ideas, but were paid to be teachers or patent clerks or petty officials, or were not paid at all. The great ideas came as side issues.