Satyāgraha

Leave a comment

Satyāgraha (Sanskrit: सत्याग्रह) is a composite lexeme composed of the word satya (meaning “truth”) and agraha (“holding firmly to”). It also refers to a virtue in Indian philosophy, referring to being truthful and pure in thought, word and action. In Yoga philosophy, satya is one of five yamas (Sanskrit: यम).

Ahiṃsā (अहिंसा): Nonviolence
Satya (सत्य): Truthfulness
Asteya (अस्तेय): Not stealing
Brahmacharya (ब्रह्मचर्य): Chastity, marital fidelity, sexual restraint
Aparigraha (अपरिग्रहः): Non-avarice, non-possessiveness

 

“You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance.
Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul.”

~ Mahatma Gandhi

Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

Leave a comment

Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time is a work of history written by Carroll Quigley. The book covers the period of roughly 1880 to 1963 and is multidisciplinary in nature though perhaps focusing on the economic problems brought about by the First World War and the impact these had on subsequent events. While global in scope, the book focusses on Western civilization, because Quigley has more familiarity with the West.

The book has attracted the attention of those interested in geopolitics due to Quigley’s assertion that a secret society initially led by Cecil Rhodes, Alfred Milner and others had considerable influence over British and American foreign policy in the first half of the twentieth century. From 1909 to 1913, Milner organized the outer ring of this society as the semi-secret Round Table groups.


www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/Tragedy_and_Hope.pdf

On boiling frogs & bold men

Leave a comment

The boiling frog is an analogy describing a frog being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is thrown suddenly into boiling hot water, it will immediately jump out. However, if the frog is put in cold water which is then slowly and gradually brought to a boil, it will not perceive the danger, sit still, and will therefore be cooked to death. Applied to human cognition & behavior the analogy could be interpreted as follow: If the environment changes gradually in an incremental step-wise fashion, humans have great difficulty to recognize the change because each step in the evolution of the system (i.e., the change in the environment) is not drastic at all. However, over an elongated period of time the system changes significantly and the additive long-term effect of numerous small changes have extreme consequences. The question thus is: When does the system change from stable to chaotic, i.e., from “from lukewarm to boiling hot”. The demarcation criterion is not clear. In the cognitive sciences this is ambiguity is discussed under the header “vagueness of attributes”.1 In philosophy this is an ancient paradox known as Sôritês paradox (or the problem of the heap).2 The paradox is based on the seemingly simple question: When does a heap of sand become a heap? (When does the system “switch” from being life-supporting to deadly.) The Bald Man (phalakros) paradox is another allegory which illustrates the point:
A man with a full head of hair is not bald. The removal of a single hair will not turn him into a bold man. However, diachronically, continuous repeated removal of single hairs will necessarily result in baldness. However, it is unclear when the “critical boundary” has been transgressed. In the psychology of reasoning this is termed the “continuum fallacy”. The informal logical fallacy pertains the argument that two states (i.e., cold vs. hot) cannot be defined as distinct (and/or do not exist at all) because between them there exists a continuum of states (cf. fuzzy logic). The fundamental question whether any continua exist in the physical world is a deep question in physics (cf. atomism). Deterministic Newtonian physics stipulates that reality is continuous. Per contrast, contemporary quantum physics is based on the notion of discrete states (quanta) as the notion of continuity appears to be invalid at the smallest Planck scale of physical existence.

Origins of the “conspiracy meme”

Leave a comment

For more detailed information visit: conspiracy-theories.eu

The term “conspiracy theory” was invented and put into public discourse by the CIA in 1964 in order to discredit the many skeptics who challenged the Warren Commission’s conclusion that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald, who himself was assassinated while in police custody before he could be questioned. The CIA used its friends in the media to launch a campaign to make suspicion of the Warren Commission report a target of ridicule and hostility. This campaign was “one of the most successful propaganda initiatives of all time.”

This writes political science professor Lance deHaven-Smith, in his peer-reviewed book which was published by the University of Texas Press. He reports the story of how the CIA succeeded in creating in the public mind uncritical, reflexive, automatic, (System 1) stigmatization of those who challenge official government explanations (cf. ostracism).

Profile photo for


CIA Document #1035-960

RE: Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report

Note: Released in response to a 1976 FOIA request by the New York Times. The document shows how the term “conspiracy” is being utilised to prevent critical rational analysis and “dissenting” perspectives.

1. Our Concern. From the day of President Kennedy’s assassination on, there has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report, (which appeared at the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time to scan the Commission’s published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission’s findings. In most cases the critics have speculated as to the existence of some kind of conspiracy, and often they have implied that the Commission itself was involved. Presumably as a result of the increasing challenge to the Warren Commission‘s report, a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the American public did not think that Oswald acted alone, while more than half of those polled thought that the Commission had left some questions unresolved. Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse results.

2. This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization. The members of the Warren Commission were naturally chosen for their integrity, experience and prominence. They represented both major parties, and they and their staff were deliberately drawn from all sections of the country. Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society. Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint that President Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to have benefited, was in some way responsible for the assassination.

Innuendo of such seriousness affects not only the individual concerned, but also the whole reputation of the American government. Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation. Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments.

3. Action. We do not recommend that discussion of the assassination question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active [business] addresses are requested:

a. To discuss the publicity problem with [?] and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors), pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists. Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation.

b. To employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passing to assets. Our ploy should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (I) politically interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Epstein‘s theory for attack, using the attached Fletcher [?] article and Spectator piece for background. (Although Mark Lane’s book is much less convincing that Epstein‘s and comes off badly where confronted by knowledgeable critics, it is also much more difficult to answer as a whole, as one becomes lost in a morass of unrelated details.)

4. In private to media discussions not directed at any particular writer, or in attacking publications which may be yet forthcoming, the following arguments should be useful:

a. No significant new evidence has emerged which the Commission did not consider. The assassination is sometimes compared (e.g., by Joachim Joesten and Bertrand Russell) with the Dreyfus case; however, unlike that case, the attack on the Warren Commission have produced no new evidence, no new culprits have been convincingly identified, and there is no agreement among the critics. (A better parallel, though an imperfect one, might be with the Reichstag fire of 1933, which some competent historians (Fritz Tobias, AJ.P. Taylor, D.C. Watt) now believe was set by Vander Lubbe on his own initiative, without acting for either Nazis or Communists; the Nazis tried to pin the blame on the Communists, but the latter have been more successful in convincing the world that the Nazis were to blame.)

b. Critics usually overvalue particular items and ignore others. They tend to place more emphasis on the recollections of individual witnesses (which are less reliable and more divergent–and hence offer more hand-holds for criticism) and less on ballistics, autopsy, and photographic evidence. A close examination of the Commission’s records will usually show that the conflicting eyewitness accounts are quoted out of context, or were discarded by the Commission for good and sufficient reason.

c. Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States, esp. since informants could expect to receive large royalties, etc. Note that Robert Kennedy, Attorney General at the time and John F. Kennedy’s brother, would be the last man to overlook or conceal any conspiracy. And as one reviewer pointed out, Congressman Gerald R. Ford would hardly have held his tongue for the sake of the Democratic administration, and Senator Russell would have had every political interest in exposing any misdeeds on the part of Chief Justice Warren. A conspirator moreover would hardly choose a location for a shooting where so much depended on conditions beyond his control: the route, the speed of the cars, the moving target, the risk that the assassin would be discovered. A group of wealthy conspirators could have arranged much more secure conditions.

d. Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual pride: they light on some theory and fall in love with it; they also scoff at the Commission because it did not always answer every question with a flat decision one way or the other. Actually, the make-up of the Commission and its staff was an excellent safeguard against over-commitment to any one theory, or against the illicit transformation of probabilities into certainties.

e. Oswald would not have been any sensible person’s choice for a co-conspirator. He was a “loner,” mixed up, of questionable reliability and an unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service.

f. As to charges that the Commission’s report was a rush job, it emerged three months after the deadline originally set. But to the degree that the Commission tried to speed up its reporting, this was largely due to the pressure of irresponsible speculation already appearing, in some cases coming from the same critics who, refusing to admit their errors, are now putting out new criticisms.

g. Such vague accusations as that “more than ten people have died mysteriously” can always be explained in some natural way e.g.: the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes; the Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses (the FBI interviewed far more people, conduction 25,000 interviews and re interviews), and in such a large group, a certain number of deaths are to be expected. (When Penn Jones, one of the originators of the “ten mysterious deaths” line, appeared on television, it emerged that two of the deaths on his list were from heart attacks, one from cancer, one was from a head-on collision on a bridge, and one occurred when a driver drifted into a bridge abutment.)

5. Where possible, counter speculation by encouraging reference to the Commission’s Report itself. Open-minded foreign readers should still be impressed by the care, thoroughness, objectivity and speed with which the Commission worked. Reviewers of other books might be encouraged to add to their account the idea that, checking back with the report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its critics.

List of studies on conspiracy theories
(Source: conspiracytheories.eu)

92Wilson, Warner, Larry Dennis, and Allen P. Wadsworth Jr. “‘Authoritarianism’ of the Left and the Right.” Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, vol. 7, no. 3, 1976, pp. 271-74. SpringerLink, doi.org/10.3758/BF03337186.Winiewski, Mikolaj, Soral Viktor, and Michał Bilewicz. “Conspiracy Theories on the Map of Stereotype Content: Survey and Historical Evidence.” The Psychology of Conspiracy: A Festschrift for Miroslaw Kofta, edited by Michał Bilewicz, Aleksandra Cichocka, and Wiktor Soral, Routledge, 2015, pp. 23-42.Winston, Andrew S. “The ‘Hidden Hand’”: Notes on the Perpetuation of Jewish Conspiracy Theories.” Clio’s Psyche, vol. 7, no. 3, 2000, pp. 136-38.Winter, Aaron. “My Enemies Must Be Friends: The American Extreme Right, Conspiracy Theory, Islam, and the Middle East.” Conspiracy Theories in the United States and the Middle East: A Comparative Approach, edited by Michael Butter and Maurus Reinkowski, De Gruyter, 2014, pp. 35-58. Linguae & Litterae 29.Wippermann, Wolfgang. Agenten des Bösen: Verschwörungstheorien von Luther bis heute[Agents of Evil: Conspiracy Theories from Luther until Today]. be.bra-Verlag, 2007.Wisnicki, Adrian S. Conspiracy, Revolution, and Terrorism from Victorian Fiction to the Modern Novel. Routledge, 2008. Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory. Wood, C., and W. M. L. Finlay. “British National Party Representations of Muslims in the Month after the London Bombins: Homogeneity, Threat, and the Conspiracy Tradition.” The British Journal of Social Psychology, vol.47, no. 4, 2008, pp. 707-26. Wiley Online Library, doi.org/10.1348/014466607X264103.Wood, Gordon S. “Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol.39, no. 3, 1982, pp. 402-41. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1919580.—. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787. U of North Carolina P, 1998.Wood, Michael J. “Conspiracy Suspicions as a Proxy for Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories: Implications for Theory and Measurement.” British Journal of Psycholgy, vol.108, no. 3, 2017, pp. 507-27.Wiley Online Library, doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12231.—. “Some Dare Call It Conspiracy: Labeling Something a Conspiracy Theory Does Not Reduce Belief in It.” Political Psychologyvol. 37, no. 5, 2016, pp. 695-705. Wiley Online Library, doi.org/10.1111/pops.12285.Wood, Michael J., and Karen M. Douglas. “Online Communication as a Window to Conspiracist Worldviews.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol.6, art. 836, 2015, pp. 1-8. Frontiers in Psychology, doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00836.—. “‘What about Building 7?’ A Social Psychological Study of Online Discussion of 9/11 Conspiracy Theories.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol.4, art. 409, 2013, pp. 1-9. Frontiers in Psychology, doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00409.Wood, Michael. J., Karen M. Douglas, and Robbie. M. Sutton. “Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories.” Social Psychological and Personality Science, vol.3, no. 6, 2012, pp. 767-73. SAGE Journals, doi.org/10.1177/1948550611434786.Woods, Jeff R. Black Struggle, Red Scare: Segregation and Anti-Communism in the South, 1948-1968. Louisiana State UP, 2003. American History.Woodward, Mark. “Rumors, Religion, and Political Mobilization: Indonesian Cases, 1965-1998.” Rumor and Communication in Asia in the Internet Age, edited by Greg Dalziel, Routledge, 2013, pp. 94-106. Media, Culture and Social Change in Asia 32
93Wulff, Erich. “Paranoic Conspiratory Delusion.” Changing Conceptions of Conspiracy, edited by Carl F. Graumann and Serge Moscovici, Springer, 1987, pp. 171-89.Würgler, Andreas. “Conspiracy and Denunciation: A Local Affair and Its European Public (Bern, 1749).” Cultures of Communication from Reformation to Enlightenment: Constructing Publics in the Early Modern German Lands, edited by James van Horn Melton, Ashgate, 2002, pp. 119-31.Wyler, Helen, and Margit E. Oswald. “Why Misinformation Is Reported: Evidence from a Warning and a Source-Monitoring Task.” Memory, vol. 24, no. 10, 2016, pp. 1419-34. Taylor & Francis Online, doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2015.1117641.Yablokov, Ilya. “Conspiracy Theories as a Russian Public Diplomacy Tool: The Case of Russia Today(RT).” Politics, vol. 35, no. 3-4, 2015, pp. 301-15.SAGE Journals, doi.org/10.1111/1467-9256.12097.—. “Feinde, Verräter, fünfte Kolonnen: Verschwörungstheorien in Russland” [“Enemies, Traitors, Fifth Columns: Conspiracy Theories in Russia”]. Osteuropa, vol. 65, no. 4, 2015, pp. 99-114.—. Fortress Russia: Conspirac Theories in the Post-Soviet World. Polity, 2018.—. “Pussy Riot as Agent Provocateur: Conspiracy Theories and the Media Construction of Nation in Putin’s Russia.” Nationalities Papers, vol. 42, no. 4, 2015, pp. 622-36.Taylor & Francis Online, doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2014.923390. —. “Social Networks of Death: Conspiracy Panics and Professional Journalistic Ethics in the Post-Soviet Russia.” Les theories du complot à l’heure du numérique[Theories of Conspiracy in the Digital Age], special issue of Quaderni, vol. 94, pp. 53-62. OpenEdition, journals.openedition.org/quaderni/1113.—. “Why Are Russia’s Journalists So Prone to Conspiracy Theory?” Opendemocracy.net, 9 May 2016, www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/ilya-yablokov/why-are-russia-s-journalists-so-prone-to-conspiracy-theory. Yusuf, Huma. “Conspiracy Fever: The US, Pakistan and its Media.” Survival, vol.53, no. 4, 2011, pp. 95-118. Taylor & Francis Online, doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2011.603564.Zaller, John R. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge UP, 1992. Cambridge Studies in Public Opinion and Psychology.Zaller, John R., and Stanley Feldman. “A Simple Theory of the Survey Response: Answering Questions versus Revealing Preferences.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 36, no. 3, 1992, pp. 579-616. JSTOR, doi.org/10.2307/2111583.Zantides, Evripides. “Cyprus and Conspiracy Theories after the Troika Levy in 2013.” Complotto [Conspiracy], edited by Massimo Leone, special issue of Lexia: Revisita di Semiotica [Journal of Semiotics], vol. 23-24, 2016, pp. 245-56.Zdybel, Lech. Idea Spisku i Teorie Spiskowe w Świetle Analiz krytycznych i Badań Historycznych[Conspiracy and Conspiracy Theories in the Light of Critical Analyses and Historical Research]. UMCS, 2002.—. “Теорія Змови у Політичній Міфології Сучасності” [“The Conspiracy Theory in Political Mythological Modernity”]. Громадянське Суспільство як Здійснення Свободи, vol.3, 2006, pp. 169-83.Zeineddine, Fouad Bou, and Felicia Pratto. “Political Distrust: The Seed and Fruit of Popular Empowerment.” Power, Politics, and Paranoia: Why People Are Suspicious of Their Leaders, edited by Jan-Willem van Prooijen and Paul A. M. van Lange, Cambridge UP, 2014, pp. 106-29.Cambridge Core, doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139565417.010.Zelizer, Barbie. Covering the Body: The Kennedy Assassination, the Media, and the Shaping of Collective Memory. U of Chicago P, 1992.
94Zernike, Kate. “The Persistence of Conspiracy Theories.” The New York Times, 30 April 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/weekinreview/01conspiracy.html.Ziolkowski, Theodore. Lure of the Arcane: The Literature of Cult and Conspiracy. Johns Hopkins UP, 2013.Zollo, Fabiana, et al. “Debunking in a World of Tribes.” PLOS ONE, vol. 12, no. 7, 2017, pp. 1-27. PLOS ONE, doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0181821. —. “Emotional Dynamics in the Age of Misinformation.” PLOS ONE, vol. 10, no. 9, 2015, pp. 1-22. PLOS ONE, doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138740. Zonis, Marvin, and Craig M. Joseph. “Conspiracy Thinking in the Middle East.” Political Psychology, vol.15, no. 3, 1994, pp. 443-59. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3791566.Zukier, Henri. “The Conspiratorial Imperative: Medieval Jewry in Western Europe.” Changing Conceptions of Conspiracy, edited by Carl F. Graumann and Serge Moscovici, Springer, 1987, pp. 87-103.Zwierlein, Cornel. “Security Politics and Conspiracy Theories in the Emerging European State System (15th/16th c.).” Security and Conspiracy in History, 16th to 21st Century, special issue of Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, vol. 38, no. 1 (143), 2013, pp. 69-95. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23644491.Zwierlein, Cornel, and Beatrice de Graaf. “Security and Conspiracy in Modern History.” Security and Conspiracy in History, 16th to 21st Century, special issue of Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, vol. 38, no. 1 (143), 2013, pp. 7-45.JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23644489.

Parapsychology: CIA testing Uri Geller

Leave a comment

The CIA was very interested in various methods to manipulate and exploit the human mind. Besides illegal experiments which involved psychotropic drugs and torture, they were also interested in parapsychology as the document at hand shows.
The objective of this group of experimental sessions was to verify Geller’s apparent paranormal perception under carefully controlled conditions with the goal of understanding the physical and psychological variables underlying such ability.

The Analects of Confucius

Leave a comment
 “Cultivated persons seek harmony but not sameness.”
~ Confucius  (Analects 13. 23).

Harmony (和)

Confucian value of harmony:

子曰：“君子和而不同，小人同而不和。”
See uwaterloo.ca/community-and-professional-education/blog/post/confucian-values-and-characters-series-harmony



Further References

Waley, A.. (2012). The analects of confucius. The Analects of Confucius

Plain numerical DOI: 10.4324/9780203715246
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, J.. (1999). The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation. Classics of Ancient China

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.72.012329
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Tan, C.. (2015). Beyond Rote-Memorisation: Confucius’ Concept of Thinking. Educational Philosophy and Theory

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1080/00131857.2013.879693
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Woods, P. R., & Lamond, D. A.. (2011). What Would Confucius Do? – Confucian Ethics and Self-Regulation in Management. Journal of Business Ethics

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1007/s10551-011-0838-5
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Confucius, & Lau, D. C.. (1979). The analects (Lun yü). Penguin classics.
Chen, P., Tolmie, A. K., & Wang, H.. (2016). Growing the critical thinking of schoolchildren in Taiwan using the Analects of Confucius. International Journal of Educational Research

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.ijer.2017.02.002
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Brooks, E. B., & Brooks, A. T.. (1997). The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors. Translations from the Asian Classics
Li, C. C. N.-D. dur fil pau pau global china maig 07 encomanat F. abril 2008. (2007). An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy: From Ancient Philosophy to Chinese Buddhism – By JeeLoo Liu. Journal of Chinese Philosophy

Plain numerical DOI: doi:10.1111/j.1540-6253.2007.00432.x
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Sim, M.. (2013). CONFUCIAN VALUES AND HUMAN RIGHTS. The Review of Metaphysics
Kim, H. K.. (2003). Critical Thinking, Learning and Confucius: A Positive Assessment. Journal of Philosophy of Education

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/1467-9752.3701005
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Hasebe, Y.. (2003). Constitutional borrowing and political theory. International Journal of Constitutional Law

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1093/icon/1.2.224
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Cheang, A. W.. (2000). The master’s voice: On reading, translating and interpreting the analects of confucius. Review of Politics

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1017/S0034670500041693
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Romar, E. J.. (2004). Managerial harmony: The Confucian ethics of Peter F. Drucker. In Journal of Business Ethics

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1023/B:BUSI.0000033613.11761.7b
DOI URL
directSciHub download

The “Straw man fallacy”

Leave a comment

A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent’s argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be “attacking a straw man.”


Further References

Eemeren, F. H. Van, Amsterdam, F. V., & Walton, D.. (1996). The straw man fallacy. Logic and Argumentation

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139600187
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Talisse, R., & Aikin, S. F.. (2006). Two forms of the Straw Man. Argumentation

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1007/s10503-006-9017-8
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Lewiński, M.. (2011). Towards a Critique-Friendly Approach to the Straw Man Fallacy Evaluation. Argumentation

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1007/s10503-011-9227-6
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Lewiński, M., & Oswald, S.. (2013). When and how do we deal with straw men? A normative and cognitive pragmatic account. Journal of Pragmatics

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2013.05.001
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Ika, L. A.. (2018). Beneficial or Detrimental Ignorance: The Straw Man Fallacy of Flyvbjerg’s Test of Hirschman’s Hiding Hand. World Development

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.10.016
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Macagno, F., & Damele, G.. (2013). The dialogical force of implicit premises: Presumptions in enthymemes. Informal Logic

Plain numerical DOI: 10.22329/il.v33i3.3679
DOI URL
directSciHub download

The structure of power

Leave a comment

Vitali, S., Glattfelder, J. B., & Battiston, S.. (2011). The network of Global corporate control. PLoS ONE

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0025995
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Heemskerk, E. M., & Takes, F. W.. (2016). The Corporate Elite Community Structure of Global Capitalism. New Political Economy

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2015.1041483
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Testing Theories of American Politics

Leave a comment
When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.
(Gilens & Page, 2014, p.575)

www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B


Further References

Gilens, M., & Page, B. I.. (2014). Testing theories of American politics: Elites, interest groups, and average citizens. Perspectives on Politics

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1017/S1537592714001595
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Silvio Gesell and the monetary system

Leave a comment

Silvio Gesell (German: [ɡəˈzɛl]; 17 March 1862 – 11 March 1930) was a German merchant, theoretical economist, social activist, Georgist, anarchist, libertarian socialist,[1] and founder of Freiwirtschaft. In 1900 he founded the magazine Geld-und Bodenreform (Monetary and Land Reform), but it soon closed for financial reasons. During one of his stays in Argentina, where he lived in a vegetarian commune, Gesell started the magazine Der Physiokrat together with Georg Blumenthal. In 1914, it closed due to censorship.

The Bavarian Soviet Republic, in which he participated, had a violent end and Gesell was detained for several months on a charge of treason, but was acquitted by a Munich court after a speech he gave in his own defence.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Gesell


Further References

Preparata, G. G., & Elliott, J. E.. (2004). Free-economics: The vision of reformer Silvio Gesell. International Journal of Social Economics

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1108/03068290410555408
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Onken, W.. (2000). The political economy of Silvio Gesell: A century of activism. American Journal of Economics and Sociology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/1536-7150.00046
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Dillard, D.. (1942). Silvio Gesell’s Monetary Theory of Social Reform. American Economic Review
Blanc, J.. (1998). Free money for social progress: Theory and practice of Gesell’s accelerated money. American Journal of Economics and Sociology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/j.1536-7150.1998.tb03376.x
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Blanc, J.. (2002). Silvio Gesell socialiste proudhonien et reformateur monétaire. In Actes du colloque de la Société Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, 1e décembre 2001, « Le crédit, quel intérêt ? »
Ilgmann, C.. (2015). Silvio Gesell: “A strange, unduly neglected” monetary theorist. Journal of Post Keynesian Economics

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1080/01603477.2015.1099446
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Punceva, M., Rodero, I., Parashar, M., Rana, O. F., & Petri, I.. (2015). Incentivising resource sharing in social clouds. Concurrency Computation

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1002/cpe.3009
DOI URL
directSciHub download