I should actually just skip the whole ‘personal blog’ part, and jump straight to the articles I read today. So many! About ten articles. I hope you folks will enjoy it. OK, one thing I will do for sure going forward. I will look at the links before I post them. It will probably still be most of the links, because this is the closest I come to having an intellectual conversation. And I will try to jot down some thoughts I have when I read the articles too. But then, that is in itself a problem. For so many reasons. Well, I will see what happens tomorrow. One thing I should do is definitely not take my blog seriously at all. After all, it is a babble!
And despite the best efforts of the Default-Knowledge Doctors and the Plagiarist-Little-Massas, I am still making some progress in my cognitive performances. I remember two of my cognitive areas were severely diminished by the traumatic brain injury (TBI) – my memory and my attention. Of course, they do not measure other things, like my temper, my mood-swings, or the profitability from my condition! But I know for a fact that they are also far more normalized now. I scored 1494 in Memory (up one point) and 1522 in Attention (down three points). But of course, look at who is smirking! ‘So what? Slave and Prisoner! We already did our jobs, and met our goals!’
I was thinking I will write my thoughts about Michel Foucault, a philosopher who has had a profound influence on me. Well, I don’t know if you could call it that! But he definitely gave the justifications for my beliefs. And I might have already talked about Discipline and Punish before, his magnum opus. Well, at least that is the book that I read, and that influenced me. But his other books are also cool: Madness and Civilization, The History of Sexuality, The Birth of the Clinic, to name the ones where the title conveys the essence most. I must have said often that I consider myself an anarchist because I dislike the system. Well, thanks to Foucault, you could say! Because he explains the rationale about so many thing – prisons, hospitals, schools etc. If one really thinks about the complexities extensively, one would indeed be an anarchist! As in against all systems!
Well, it is a little more complicated than that. But some contradictions are simply too stark! Totally fake social workers who believe in slavery and merely seek pennies even from a man’s mental health! But of course, he has the grace to call himself the Chief Enslavement Officer, while enjoying the monetary-lovemaking with the police! The History of Social Work as Profiteering!
(by Benjamin Schwartz in The New Yorker.——>)
Actually, that would be a cool study. Of course it would be too tedious if it delved too much on the history part. But only look at the rationale behind the how social work is so often practiced for plain old fashioned profiteering. It would be a really exciting study. Of course, it would require more than merely babbling! But if I actually think of it as a book-project, something might come out of it! In the long run, that is. Maybe five years from now. 2 years at the very minimum! But I will try to do some research about it, and see where it goes from the first few papers I read.
They idea is definitely set now! I am genuinely excited about it! It would tackle so many issues. Profound geopolitical issues! And of course philosophical issues. How come we settled on these particular beliefs about charity? And about how we can alleviate it? First ethics: pose heads on walls to scare away intruders or lure some people! But pose prominently!
(Still learning many things about blogging. Copyright issues. How to write credits or captions on images.)
Articles for 06-05: My nephew’s pet research project: Reviving Endangered Scripts: Samrat Jha https://www.endangeredalphabets.com/2021/05/27/reviving-endangered-scripts-samrat-jha/
Aeon: (Dedicated to Herr Clifford) Exit the Fatherland [Shaking off Nazism was no simple matter: the work to create a plural and peacable Germany was prolonged and painful] https://aeon.co/essays/germany-became-a-tolerant-nation-only-by-painful-small-steps
(I think I have already said that I really like Foucault’s philosophy, and how he approaches issues. Well, rethink necessary! And I do not think of him as absolutely correct, just that his way of seeing the world is pretty cool, to say the least.) “Do Not Ask Me Who I Am” [Foucault and neoliberalism] by Samuel Clowes Huneke (new book: ‘The Last Man Takes LSD: Foucault and the End of Revolution’ by Mitchell Dean and Daniel Zamora… a greater gap in Foucauldian thought: the absence of a well-developed theory of the state.) https://thepointmag.com/politics/do-not-ask-me-who-i-am/
BBC: China allows three children in major policy shift https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57303592 (“Governments have no business regulating how many children people have.” – China Amnesty International head Joshua Rosenzweig)
Foreign Policy: Chinese Women Have Already Voted Against Beijing’s Natalist Hopes [Government efforts to force the birth rate up are met with stubborn resistance.] by Mei Fong, a Pulitzer-winning former China correspondent and author of One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment. ([the third-child policy] had middle-sibling syndrome written all over it: overlooked, insufficiently resourced, and easily forgotten.) https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/06/04/china-women-two-child-policy-birth-rates/
Foreign Policy: (should note here that Jumla is also one of the most remote districts in Nepal) The Art of the Jumla [Why India’s Narendra Modi keeps getting away with failure.] by Nikhil Kumar (The jumla phenomenon offers a guide to understanding not just how India’s reigning populist campaigns but also how he governs—and why he keeps winning despite a series of major policy failures.) https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/20/india-modi-jumla-election-campaign-promise-decoder/
Foreign Affairs: COVID’s Haves and Have-Nots [To End the Pandemic, Rich Countries Must Pay to Vaccinate Poor Ones] by Rajiv J. Shah (Brazil (11 percent), Colombia (seven percent), and Nepal (three percent)) https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2021-06-04/covids-haves-and-have-nots
Foreign Affairs: The Starving State [Why Capitalism’s Salvation Depends on Taxation] by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Todd N. Tucker, and Gabriel Zucman https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2019-12-10/starving-state
Can We End the Pandemic? [The emergence of dangerous new coronavirus variants is threatening the progress that we have made with the help of COVID-19 vaccines. It is now clear that our pharmaceutical research efforts and public-health interventions will need to be redoubled – and without any sunset clauses.] by William A. Haseltine https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/can-we-end-the-pandemic-by-william-a-haseltine-2021-06
New Yorker: Protests in Colombia, Elections in Peru, and Other Chaos in the Andes [Hopes for a sustained democratic rebirth in the seven Andean nations have waned, again.] by Jon Lee Anderson https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/protests-in-colombia-elections-in-peru-and-other-chaos-in-the-andes
Words Dissemble, Words Be Quick 