Great Wall of Silence About Tibetan Protests

"China has begun to fight back against criticism of its handling of the Tibetan protests," during which protesters have been killed, with a "sustained publicity offensive as well as blocking foreign broadcasters and websites and denying journalists access to areas of unrest," reports The Guardian. "After days of ignoring and then playing down protests," Chinese television stations "aired hours of Friday's anti-Chinese riots in Lhasa." China's English-language TV service was told "to keep broadcasting footage of burned-out shops and Chinese wounded in attacks. No peaceful demonstrators were shown." An international reporter remarked that while the images of injured Chinese are "genuine," they're "not put in context." The Chinese government has also blacked out international TV broadcasts, blocked online videos and censored Internet searches about the protests, reports BBC News. In response, the U.S. government is increasing its international radio broadcasts into Tibet. "Our audience clearly will benefit from these trustworthy sources of news and information, which differ sharply from Chinese government sanctioned broadcasts," said U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors chair James Glassman.

~ source: Center for Media and Democracy ~

On the importance of philosophical knowledge

From Transcendental Philosophy and Its Specific Demands

" ... To make himself more directly intelligible Fichte used to begin his lessons with an invitation to fulfil an action. It should be a mental action, and an action of great simplicity: "Think the wall." Though this is (what could not adequately be seen at that very moment) ultimately a free action, it is almost completely tended to an object and seems to depend entirely on that very "thing", the wall. Sentences of that kind are imperatives of normal pedagogy, and they are still common sense. The philosophical education commences with the following order: "Now, think that one, who has thought the wall." At first glance this seems to be another teacher-induced empirical action, belonging to inner observation instead of outer. But Fichte wants to show something totally different from that, in fact: no-thing  at all, no more "representation", but a special quality of action: the acting  of action itself, real spontaneity, concrete freedom. His verbal sign for it is since 1793/94: "Thathandlung".

For Fichte the reflexivity of the I means nothing else than acting in its spontaneous return in itself. The action that seizes immediately its own self lits, in doing so, the non-sensible "light" that proves the certainty of that principle: intellectual intuition. In the same moment it is qualified as founding every kind of knowledge, as it determines the very structure of knowing as such. Insofar as these theorems conceptually contain "action" and "spontaneity" they can only be understood through spontaneously grasping them. Such an act even transcends the cognitive value of any concept of the I. For its legitimation any conceptualization (and in the narrow sense: any "theory") of the self depends on fulfilling that supreme act. For Fichte, this is what makes philosophical education so important and so difficult all the same. In ordinary life we are not familiar with acting but only with its results (products and institutions) to which belongs also the external, empirical side of acting.

[ ... ]

The modest or tender beginnings of Fichte's paideia, as we have briefly described them above, are bound to lead to the insight that acting (as practical reflexitiy) does not only explain pure self-consciousness in its narrow sense. By means of that very acting Fichte accounts for the status of objectivity of the possible judgements, and he deduces the relation of a singular "you" to another sigular "I". If we call Fichte's highest theorem of acting Fichte's "self" ("Pono me existentem, ergo existo. Nicht cogito, ergo sum."), we can say that subject-objectivity and interpersonality are analytical developments of the "I". Paideia  therefore has to be busy with the original insight in acting itself (the student has to enter the very grounding of the whole architecture) as well as the two immediately following tasks, i. e. to make particular objective knowledge and personal relations (as constitutive for such knowledge acts!) intelligible. From that it has to be shown that empirical self-consciousness is merely an object of (rather insecure) knowledge and has relatively little to do with the certain reflexivity of acting itself. Fichte's I therefore does not belong to the private. It is not responsible for individuality, but for the universality of the universal. The essence of interpersonality is therefore primarily the entire structure of action or, to put it in another word, reason. The acting condition of reflexivity immediately proves the underlying unity of all those who are, each for himself, able to identify themselves as an "I".  Nevertheless, as the transcendental I opens itself positively to the empirical (and so to the accidental), paideia must also try to rationally integrate the individual in the interpersonal relation as such.

[ ... ]

V. The more concrete aspects of Fichte's paideia (and among them its idea of perfection) depend no less on that I- or reflexitiy-conception of interpersonality. In a time of political crisis (in October 1806 Napoleon had defeated Germany's most powerful state, Prussia), Fichte developed a plan of reorganizing and fully initiating public education. Concerning the empirical side, his main purpose was to strengthen political common sense and commonwealth. The means for it was "knowledge". The people and politicians should become acquainted with Reason's own unbroken and undistorted "image" to be able to judge and decide rightly in the particular situation of life. As the university is no school for "Wissenschaftslehre" only, Fichte does not propound a direct path to the transcendental kowledge itself (which is to be seen as containing the principles for all specific sciences, as for instance politics and jurisprudence), but a general formation of the understanding. This formation is no mechanical training, either. It means free exercising. Fichte's word for it is "Kunst" — the "art" of learning how to judge consciously (in other words: how to grasp the modes of reflexivity of judging). The forming of the art of understanding is an intersubjective preparation for the step into pure kowledge itself. From both "activities" the rather immediate benefits on political life and public opinion are evident. ... "

From A Global Theory of Knowledge for the Future

" ... Spiritual: Intuitive knowledge. The antithesis of sensual.

Rational: Logical knowledge. The synthesis of the spiritual and sensual.

Sensual: Sensory knowledge. The antithesis of the spiritual.

Progressive Ranges: Hierarchical social levels, like person, group, nation, civilization.

There is too much factual knowledge to grasp even a speck of the whole. This makes for an excessive diversity that lacks in coherent unity. With no coherency in the parts, there will be no coherent truth in the whole. Without coherent truth there is only a relative truth. Relative truth makes for contradiction from different viewpoints, perceptions, and perspectives. Contradictions deny a common definition and meaning of truth, morality, justice, and beauty. They also deny common standards, values, principles, and virtues. Uncommon values lead to personal and social conflict and confusion; to the blocking of learning in education, to the disintegration of social unity.

[ ... ]

Dynamic trinities of value coherently extend between the microcosmos-macrocosmos-cosmos, from quark to man to the Ultimate Beginning. These balancing trinities, as changing diversities in an unchanging unity, are a means to resolving conflicts, contradictions, paradoxes, dilemmas, and inconsistencies of truth on any range of perspective or society. In terms of principles, trinities deny these mentally blocking problems by enabling almost instant general answers to most questions of "Why?". By so doing they give answers to resolve many of today's "unsolvable" problems. Because of its dynamic, systematic flexibility, Trinityism could resolves inconsistencies and conflicts in knowledge by its unchanging principles that are in harmony with changing facts; that are parts of a dynamic, systematic, unified whole of knowledge. ... "

This Time Next Year, You Could Be Posthuman

Pundits from Bill McKibben to Susan Greenfield have written scare manifestos about the horrors of a posthuman future where everybody has souped-up DNA and can change their sexes like changing clothes. ... If you want to be posthuman too, or transhuman or cyborgian, you'll be waiting a long time. But we've got five things you can put on your to-do list today to make all of us more posthuman by this time next year.

[ ... ]

4. This month: Get a high-tech implant. Want to feel electro-magnetic waves? Get a magnet implanted in your finger. Want to be machine-readable? Get an RFID implanted under your skin. You can save all kinds of useful data on that RFID, but just be sure you keep it encrypted!...

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'A press release only Philip K. Dick could love'

From The Video Surveillance Market Is About to Explode!

Video surveillance is the hot new thing. Tech market think tank ABI Research has just come out with a new study predicting that the global video surveillance market will "expand from revenue of about $13.5 billion in 2006 to a remarkable $46 billion in 2013." In a press release only Philip K. Dick could love, ABI gushes excitedly about all the fun new uses of the vidcams and databases you could be manufacturing, buying, and selling to the surveillance-craving masses.

Carlyle Group May Buy Major CIA Contractor: Booz Allen Hamilton

The Carlyle Group, one of the world's largest private equity funds, may soon acquire the $2 billion government contracting business of consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the biggest suppliers of technology and personnel to the U.S. government's spy agencies. Carlyle manages more than $75 billion in assets and has bought and sold a long string of military contractors since the early 1990s. But in recent years it has significantly reduced its investments in that industry. If it goes ahead with the widely reported plan to buy Booz Allen, it will re-emerge as the owner of one of America's largest private intelligence armies.

Reports of a potential Carlyle acquisition of Booz Allen's government unit began circulating among U.S. military contractors in December 2007, after Booz Allen's senior partners and board members -- a group of 300 vice presidents who own the privately-held firm -- gathered at company headquarters in McLean, Virginia, for an extraordinary two-day meeting.

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