Perhaps there haven't been the coinciding historical stars on the female side because societies have been literally repressing what's expected of them for Millenia? Unless you're going to suggest some pseudo-scientific biological concoctions for why history turned out for them so differently. The only question worth considering is can we as members of a society evaluate philosophy (or science and mathematics) by its content when we look at it? If someone has something worth discussing, so be it, whoever they are, and we should aim towards creating a society that is inclusive to the variations in human creativity available and be hostile to any shallow considerations that plague prejudices against such appreciation. I'm not really sure what's the point about being round about about the idea that there weren't any original and creative women philosophers. Just be honest and up front that you think that women can never be as good at philosophy.

Hi welcome to PF, changing your paradigm of thinking when you're stuck in a cult takes a lot of honesty and courage so there's a lot of potential ahead of you once you succeed in independently developing your intuitions. This just from my perspective from the side lines.

The role of advertisement is less to persuade consumers about so-and-so but bring consumer awareness to gain some degree of marketshare.

To get some hard data here...

"Media messages about the political realm can cancel each other out, mute the effects of other
messages, or, by failing to present another perspective or new idea, prevent its spread. If this seems counterintuitive, it should not. This is precisely the situation that obtains in another, perhaps more familiar area of media effects: advertising.

Practitioners of advertising and marketing would be a very hard sell for the “minimal effects” approach to media. Advertising had a humble role in the 19th century, essentially providing simple price and product information to consumers (in the way that neoclassical economic theory still assumes obtains today). But by the early 20th century, advertising began to resemble propaganda rather than price- and-product information, its effectiveness became widely acknowledged, and total advertising spending ballooned to 2% of GDP by 1920. From then until the present, total annual advertising expenditure has averaged 2.2% of GDP, with current annual spending hovering around $300 billion. That is quite a price tag for a “minimal” effect.

A recent meta-analysis of studies of advertising on children and adolescents reveals that expo- sure to advertising results in more positive associations with the brands advertised, increased brand comprehension, and leads to selection of the products advertised. The effects were small, but this is what would be expected in a market already saturated with advertising. (Also, 70% of consumers report skepticism about advertising, further reducing its effect.) A review of research on advertising to adults found mixed results, with similarly small effects. These results might lead to questions about the viability of the $300 billion a year advertising industry, but such doubts are answered in the same way as are doubts about the effects of media in the political realm: commercial messages, like political messages, often cancel each other out. But try to sell a new product without advertising – or a new political idea or without media exposure – and the power of the media enters clearly into view. Maxwell McCombs summarizes this commonsense view: if the media did not “yield significant outcomes, the vast advertising industry would not exist.”

- Crooked Timber and the Broken Branch The Invisible Hand in the Marketplace of Ideas

I remember you saying that you liked Zizek before, but his political opinions are given wide public attention and they're often really ill-thought out (the past few years have been particularly embarassing). I get the sense that once "some" intellectuals become public stars, they start to get lazy.

The approval/disapproval ratings was nice sport when you agreed with someone on one side of the debate, so I understand why you miss it. It also feels nice when intelligent people agree with what you say (and disagree with your opponent) But admittingly, its as Agustino says.

A lot of the same people and some new ones I think.

I can't find any proper biographies or works on the historical Laozi.....

Hey Ying, wuliheron, I was wondering how much importance you think one needs in reading Zhuangzi in order to understand Tao Te Ching?

I found this book, "Negative Math: How Mathematical Rules Can Be Positively Bent" by Albert Martinez intriguing..... I'm still working it out and it can be really enlightening for philosophy of mathematics, not sure why I haven't seen this book widely promoted before.

_______

https://www.amazon.com/Negative-Math-Mathematical-Rules-Positively/dp/0691133913/ref=cm_rdp_product

"A student in class asks the math teacher: "Shouldn't minus times minus make minus?" Teachers soon convince most students that it does not. Yet the innocent question brings with it a germ of mathematical creativity. What happens if we encourage that thought, odd and ungrounded though it may seem?

Few books in the field of mathematics encourage such creative thinking. Fewer still are engagingly written and fun to read. This book succeeds on both counts. Alberto Martinez shows us how many of the mathematical concepts that we take for granted were once considered contrived, imaginary, absurd, or just plain wrong. Even today, he writes, not all parts of math correspond to things, relations, or operations that we can actually observe or carry out in everyday life.

Negative Math ponders such issues by exploring controversies in the history of numbers, especially the so-called negative and "impossible" numbers. It uses history, puzzles, and lively debates to demonstrate how it is still possible to devise new artificial systems of mathematical rules. In fact, the book contends, departures from traditional rules can even be the basis for new applications. For example, by using an algebra in which minus times minus makes minus, mathematicians can describe curves or trajectories that are not represented by traditional coordinate geometry.

Clear and accessible, Negative Math expects from its readers only a passing acquaintance with basic high school algebra. It will prove pleasurable reading not only for those who enjoy popular math, but also for historians, philosophers, and educators."

Three articles that I found that are helpful in understanding what Trump may lead to if anyone is interested:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/

http://journal-neo.org/2016/03/26/president-trump-us-war-machine-rolls-on/

https://thecolossus.co/2016/06/01/an-interview-with-noam-chomsky/

I suppose the concern of religions when approaching this question is if it's denoting a certain "metaphysical meaningfulness" as if there is some special quality life is supposed to have that contrasts to the apparent cold & empty natural world.

I honestly don't know what such a thing is supposed to be or what it actually adds to life as we know it (with all its joys and sorrows, which is what I really find important), I suppose it's supposed to be a comforting feeling for people who feel empty about their lives that they can reach out to something beyond what they already have within grasp.

I personally think there's a degree of narcissism to it, that one has to be part of something grand and mysterious for their lives to feel special. Sort of like those who pursue celebrity status instead of just not being recorded history and enjoying your life as it is. Why does there have to be something beyond? Why can't we just live humbly on this "empty" physical world until we disappear?

The best way to understand is to study the "middle Wittgenstein" to show the connections between the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations project, which I think is missing from a lot of people's Wittgenstein studies and I think is quite awful.

Philosophical Remarks and Big Typescript are the first recommended works that pretty much outlines in Wittgenstein's words what he was trying to get at in Philosophical Investigations based on his earlier ideas in the Tractatus.

There are plenty of other notebooks and lectures from Wittgenstein that were found and published that helps.

I found this helpful:

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/11/17/falling-into-the-isis-trap/

____

Falling into the ISIS Trap:


Special Report: The Islamic State has entered into “phase two” of its plan. After establishing a rudimentary “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq (phase one), it is now seeking to provoke the West into a self-defeating overreaction, a trap that “tough” politicians are falling into, as historian William R. Polk describes.

By William R. Polk

The terrorist outrage in Paris has brought the reaction that “the ISIS strategist” assuming there is such a singular person expected and wanted, a massive, retaliatory bombing raid.

The strategist knows that such military action by the West has proven self-defeating in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere. These predictable reactions and overreactions not only did not stop the insurgents, but helped them recruit more supporters by hurting a lot of uncommitted bystanders. ISIS learned the lesson; our leaders apparently have not.

Anger and revenge are emotionally satisfying but not productive. The issue we face is not just how to retaliate against ISIS, which is easy, but how to achieve affordable world security. The first steps are to understand where these extremists come from, why some people support them and what they want. Only then can we cope with them.

But, as I read the press, listen to the statements of world leaders and watch the takeoff of fighter-bombers, I see little sign our leaders have found the road toward security. I do not find the satisfactory beginnings of a careful and sophisticated analysis in what is now being said or done. So, drawing on many years of observation, discussions and research, I here offer a few notes on terrorism and our counterinsurgency policies and will focus on ISIS (also known as ISIL, Daesh or the Islamic State).

I cast my comments in five areas: (1) our assets and those of our opponents; (2) their strategies and ours; (3) what drives their actions; (4) the results of our actions; and (5) our options. I begin with our advantages and weaknesses and theirs:

—The United States, the major West European states and Russia employ large intelligence services that are informed by a variety of surveillance devices (telephone tapping, radio intercepts, code breaking, aerial and satellite imagery and other, even more esoteric, means of tracking, observing and identifying people).

In addition, our security services continue to employ traditional covert activities and have virtually unlimited funds to buy information, encourage defection and “rent” temporary loyalty. Plus, the bulk of the community from which the attacks are mounted wish the attacks would stop. Thus, our most important asset is the desire among the vast majority of people in all societies who simply do not want their lives deranged. They want to live in peace.

Picking Sides

–Resident populations in rebel-held areas are probably neutral. But they are caught between two dangers: ISIS and us. What we do and what we do not do will sway them in one direction or the other. The “ISIS strategist” understands this and seeks to get us to harm or frighten the bystanders. When and where they can, many will run away from the near danger (as hundreds of thousands have).

But, in today’s counterinsurgency weapon of choice aerial bombing there is little difference between “near” and “far.” Targeted killings may kill leaders (and people in close proximity), but aerial bombings are more massive and less discriminating. The “ISIS strategist” knows that the heavier our attacks the more they will rally support to the ISIS banner.

—ISIS’s major asset is the asymmetrical nature of the targets that the two sides expose to one another: modern industrial states like ours are highly articulated and are, necessarily, complex whereas ISIS’s organization is loose, inexpensive and scattered. We saw this contrast clearly, even before the rise of ISIS, in the Sept. 11, 2001 al-Qaeda attack on America. The attack cost the lives of only a couple of dozen terrorists and probably less than $100,000 but killed several thousand victims and cost the American economy perhaps $100 billion (a cost compounded by the long-running follow-on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In addition, there were the psychological, legal and political costs. Al-Qaeda had little to lose in terms of law and morality, but it pushed the United States into activities that weakened its traditional values and created distrust among its citizens. For al-Qaeda, it was a very cheap victory.

–ISIS’s vulnerability is that the vast majority of Muslims want, as people everywhere have always wanted, to go about “mundane affairs,” gathering and consuming, working and playing, competing and procreating. They are not fanatics and do not want to be martyrs or heroes.

Indeed, the “ISIS strategist” takes a dim view of these common people. In the document that forecast ISIS strategy Idarah at-Tawhish· (The Management of Savagery) the strategist or strategists wrote:

“Notice that we say that the masses are the difficult factor. We know that they not generally dependable on account of [how the foreign imperialists and native turncoats have shaped them and we realize that there will be] no improvement for the general public until there is victory. [Consequently, our strategy] is to gain their sympathy, or at the very least neutralize them.”

How does the “ISIS strategist” propose to do that? His answer is a socio-political program aimed at “uniting the hearts of the people” by means of money, food and medical services and by providing a functioning system of justice to replace the corrupt system of its domestic rivals. That program has had some success but is vitiated or potentially undermined by ISIS violence and the terror it projects.

(Sayyid Qutb, an Islamic theorist who was executed in Egypt in 1966, may be taken as the philosopher behind Muslim Fundamentalism, and Abu Bakr Naji, perhaps a nom de guerre or even a committee, may be — or may have been — what I call “the strategist.” For more details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Understanding Islamic Fundamentalism.”)

Ill-Advised Wars

–The American-European and Russian strategies against guerrillas and terrorists have both relied primarily on military action. This was obvious in our campaigns in Afghanistan. The Russians are now at least in part repeating in Syria the strategy they employed in Afghanistan just as we repeated much of our Vietnam war strategy in our engagement in Afghanistan. The U.S., our allies and Russia are now apparently embarked on the same general strategy in Syria and Iraq.

The supposedly more sophisticated strategies (such as encouraging training, anti-corruption campaigns, “security” programs, jobs creation, various forms of bribery and other economic activities) are given relatively minor attention. Least attended is the political dimension of insurgency.

Yet, at least by my calculation, the reality of insurgency is the reverse of how we are spending our money and devoting our efforts. I have calculated that in insurgency politics accounts for perhaps 80 percent of the challenge; administration is about 15 percent; and the military-paramilitary component is only about 5 percent. A look at the program numbers shows that our allocations of money, political savvy, administrative know-how and military power are in reverse order.

–Three reasons explain why these allocations which, although proven ineffective, are still employed: the first is failure to understand the political dimension of insurgency as I believe most of the counterinsurgency “experts” fail to do; the second is that “standing tall,” beating the drum and calling for military action win plaudits for political leaders; and the third is that arms manufacturers and the workers who make the weapons want to make money.

On that last point, President Dwight Eisenhower was right: the military-industrial complex (to which we have added the lobby-corrupted Congress) is “the tail that wags the dog” of American politics.

We don’t have to guess what the strategy of ISIS is. Their leaders have told us what it is. The Management of Savagery (using the Arabic word tawhish, which evokes a sense of dread and is applied to a desolate area, the haunt of wild beasts, where there is no humanity or softness but only savagery, terror or cruelty) specified the long-term campaign to destroy the power of those societies and states that ISIS calls “the Crusaders,” i.e., the Western powers, which ISIS identifies as imperialists, and to cleanse Islamic society of the turncoats who support them.

The Three Stages

–The ISIS campaign falls into three stages:

The first stage is “vexation” of the enemy aimed at creating chaos in which the forces of the foreign powers and their local proxies are distracted and exhausted while Muslim terrorists and guerrillas learn how to use their power effectively.

The second stage is the “spread of savagery,” which begins locally with small-scale attacks and metastasizes. Individuals and local groups take up the cause and act either on their own or with limited coordination. Those who carry out ISIS programs will do so because they have adopted its ideas not because they are directed by any central authority.

As their campaigns spread, ISIS’s enemies, and particularly the United States, will seek to retaliate but will be frustrated. “America will not find a state on which it can take its revenge, because the remaining [states] are its clients,” according to the plan. “It has no choice but to [occupy] the region and set up military bases. [This will put it at] war with the population in the region. It is obvious at this very moment that it stirs up movements that increase the jihadi expansion and create legions among the youth who contemplate and plan for resistance.”

“So,” the “ISIS strategist” writes, the correct tactic is to “diversify and widen the vexation strikes in every place in the Islamic world, and even outside of it if possible, so as to disperse the efforts of the alliance of the enemy and thus drain it [of energy, will and money] to the greatest extent possible.

“For example: If a tourist resort that the Crusaders patronize in Indonesia is hit, all of the tourist resorts in all of the states of the world will have to be secured by the work of additional forces, which [will cause] a huge increase in spending.”

As though implementing this plan, ISIS claimed that its supporters downed a Russian airliner in recent days in the Sinai Peninsula as it returned from the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Shaikh.

The plan continues: “If a usurious bank belonging to the Crusaders is struck in Turkey, all of the banks belonging to the Crusaders will have to be secured in all of the countries and the draining [that is, the costs of security] will increase.

“If an oil interest is hit near the port of Aden, there will have to be intensive security measures put in place for all of the oil companies, and their tankers, and the oil pipelines in order to protect them and draining will increase. If two of the apostate authors are killed in a simultaneous operation in two different countries, they will have to secure thousands of writers in other Islamic countries.

“In this way, there is a diversification and widening of the circle of targets and vexation strikes which are accomplished by small, separate groups. Moreover, repeatedly (striking) the same kind of target two or three times will make it clear to them that this kind (of target) will continue to be vulnerable.”

The attack on Paris was not, as The New York Times announced on Nov. 16, a change of ISIS tactics; it was an event that fit exactly into the second stage of the long-range strategy.

‘Fighting Society’

The third stage is the “administration of savagery” to establish “a fighting society.” To minimize the air power of its enemies, ISIS has turned itself into an almost nomadic state, virtually without frontiers. But within the areas it controls, it has set out a socio-political program that aims at “uniting the hearts of the people by means of money, food and medical services and by providing a functioning system of justice under Sharia [Islamic] governance. From this base it will become possible to create a rudimentary state.”

The “ISIS strategist” draws a lesson from the defeat of the Russians in Afghanistan. Since the Afghans could not defeat the Russians in formal battles, they aimed to provoke the Russians so that their forces over-extended themselves and they were caught in a wasting, unwinnable conflict. This conflict bankrupted the Soviet economy while the harsh tactics the Russian army employed cost the Soviet Union the support both of their own people and the Afghans. America and Europe, the “ISIS strategist” believes, can be lured into a similar trap.

In this struggle, the “ISIS strategist” believes, violence is the key. It weakens the enemy while it performs as the school almost the social “hospital” needed to transform corrupt societies into tomorrow’s Islamic “true believers.” In this policy, ISIS may have been inspired by Frantz Fanon, the Afro-French-Caribbean psychiatrist, whose book, The Wretched of the Earth, reached a vast audience in the Third World.

As Fanon wrote, violence is a “cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.”

The “ISIS strategist” thought of violence both in those terms and in the impact of violence on its opponents, writing: Jihad “is naught but violence, crudeness, terrorism, frightening (others), and massacring.”

It also must be conducted ruthlessly: “Jihad cannot be carried out with softness. Softness is one of the ingredients of failure for any jihadi action. Regardless of whether we use harshness or softness, our enemies will not be merciful to us if they seize us. Thus, it behooves us to make them think one thousand times before attacking us.

“Consequently, there is nothing preventing us from spilling their blood; rather, we see that this is one of the most important obligations since they do not repent, undertake prayer, and give alms [as required in Islam]. All religion belongs to God.”

Making the enemy “pay the price” can occur anywhere: “if the apostate Egyptian regime undertakes an action to kill or capture a group of mujahids [combatants] mujahids in Algeria or Morocco can direct a strike against the Egyptian embassy and issue a statement of justification, or they can kidnap Egyptian diplomats as hostages until the group of mujahids is freed.

“The policy of violence must also be followed such that if the demands are not met, the hostages should be liquidated in a terrifying manner, which will send fear into the hearts of the enemy and his supporters.”

As we know, liquidating captives in a terrifying manner is an ISIS specialty. But, as we look over guerrilla wars, we see it to have been generally practiced.

Guerrilla Playbook

–The ISIS politico-military doctrine that the “strategist” lays out can be described as a religious version of what Mao Zedong and Ho Chi-minh proclaimed as their kind of war: a combination of terrorism when that is the only means of operation, guerrilla warfare when that becomes possible as areas of operation are secured, and ultimately — when the conflict “matures” — the creation of a warlike but minimal state. This sequence often has played out in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries all over the world as I have reported in my book Violent Politics. It is ugly, brutal and costly, but it has nearly always eventually succeeded. ISIS has adopted it.

As ISIS leaders tells us, they regard their struggle “not as an economic, political, or social battle” with state-like opponents for territory but “a battle for minds,” underwritten by a determined proclamation of Islam. Nothing quite like it has been on the world stage since the great wars of religion in Europe some 400 years ago.

Why would Western nations today plunge into the kind of battle? If we cannot answer that question and ultimately cope with the answer we have many painful years ahead of us.

–The ISIS guidebook, Management of Savagery, begins with an interpretation of the world Muslims inherited from imperialism and colonialism. Not only Muslims but most of the peoples of the Third World suffered grievously. And their descendants harbor painful memories of “the ghastly destruction of souls.” According to ISIS, the great powers and their native proxies “killed more people than have been killed in all of the wars of the jihadis in this century.”

Is this just hyperbole, designed to inflame hatred of us? Unfortunately, it is not. Whether we remember these events or not, the descendants of the victims do.

Memories of the years beginning after Columbus led the way across the Atlantic become increasingly bitter. As first the Europeans, then the Russians and later the Americans — the world’s “North” — gained in relative power, they thrust into the “South,” destroying native states, upending societies and suppressing religious orders. Imperialism, with the resulting humiliation and wholesale massacres of populations, although largely forgotten by the perpetrators, remains today vivid to the victims.

The numbers are staggering: in one relatively small part of Africa, the Congo, where one in ten is a Muslim, the Belgians are estimated to have killed about twice as many natives as the Nazis killed Jews and Roma — some 10 million to 15 million people.

Hardly any society in what I call “the South” lacks memories of similar events inflicted by “the North.” Look at just the more recent military record:

In Java, the Dutch imposed a colonial regime on the natives and, when they tried to reassert their independence, killed about 300,000 “rebels” between 1835 and 1840; they similarly suppressed Sumatra “rebels” between 1873 and 1914.

In Algeria, after a bitter 15-year-long war that began in 1830, the French stole the lands of the natives, razed hundreds of villages, massacred untold numbers of natives and imposed an apartheid regime on the survivors.

In Central Asia, the Russians and Chinese impoverished or drove away previously thriving populations. While in a bitter war in the Caucasus, as Tolstoy recounts, the Russians virtually wiped out whole societies.

In India, after the attempted revolt of 1857, the British destroyed the Mughal Empire and killed hundreds of thousands of Indians. In Libya, the Italians killed about two-thirds of the population of Cyrenaica.

Old Grievances and New

One may reasonably say that these things are long in the past and should be forgotten. Perhaps, but there are other slaughter, just in the last few decades, that cannot be so excused. In the American campaign in Vietnam (a non-Muslim society), napalm, cluster bombs and machineguns were followed by defoliation, cancer-causing chemicals and assassination programs that, in total, killed perhaps 2 million civilians.

In Afghanistan, the numbers are smaller because the population was smaller but, in addition to about half a million deaths, a whole generation of Afghan children have been “stunted” and will never grow to their normal size or, perhaps, mental abilities. Afghan casualties in the Russian war are unknown but could not be less than half a million. In Iraq, as a result of the U.S. invasion in 2003, estimates run up to about a million Iraqi deaths.

Death is only one result of war; the survivors face continuing terror, starvation, humiliation and misery. As the structure of societies is severely damaged or destroyed, civic life has often been replaced by gang warfare, torture, kidnapping, rape and desperate fear.

Studying these events, I am reminded of Thomas Hobbes’s description of mankind before civilization, “poore, nasty, brutish and short.”

Collectively these and other results of imperialism, colonialism and military intrusions into “the South” of the world constitute a holocaust as formative to current Muslim action as the German holocaust has been to Jewish action.

The scars still have not healed in many societies. We see the legacy in the fragility or complete destruction of civic organizations, the corruption of governments and the ugliness of violence.

As the “ISIS strategist” writes, and as I have heard from many informants in Africa and Asia, we of the “North” practice racial and religious double standards. When “they” kill a European, we rightly react with horror. Any killing is abominable. But when “we” kill an African or Asian, or even large numbers of Africans or Asians are killed by ISIS or another terror group, we hardly notice.

On Nov. 13, the day before the attack on Paris, a similar attack was carried out in Beirut, Lebanon, in which 41 people were killed and about 200 were injured. Almost no one in Europe or America even noticed. This is not merely a moral issue although it is certainly also that but cuts to the quick of the issue of terrorism.

Memories of events such as these go far to explain why young men and women, even those from relatively affluent and secure societies are joining ISIS. To “airbrush” the record, as an English journalist with wide experience in Asia has recently written, is to fail to understand what we are up against and what we might be able to do to gain affordable world security.

Successful Insurgencies

–The results of insurgency are described in my book Violent Politics. There I have shown that in a variety of societies over the last two centuries in various parts of Africa, Asia and Europe, guerrillas have nearly always accomplished their objectives despite even the most draconian counterinsurgency tactics.

Consider just one example, Afghanistan: the Russians and then the United States deployed hundreds of thousands of soldiers, large numbers of mercenaries and native troops and used unprecedented amounts of lethal force over nearly half a century of warfare.

While the outcome is not yet definite, it is obvious that, at minimum, the guerrillas have not been defeated. Afghanistan has been called “the graveyard of imperialism.” Its role in destroying the Soviet Union has been well-documented. It is not through with us yet.

Consider also results in those parts of the world where hostilities have been relatively subdued. When I was a young man, in the 1940s and 1950s, I could go into villages practically anywhere in Africa or Asia and been received cordially, fed and protected. Today, in virtually all of those places, I would be in danger of being shot.

So what are our options in this increasingly dangerous world? Let us be honest and admit that none is attractive. Public anger and fear will certainly make some of them difficult or impossible to effect. But I will here put them all “on the table” and evaluate them in terms of cost and potential effectiveness.

The first response, which was announced by both Presidents François Hollande and Barack Obama in the first hours after the Paris attacks is to engage in all-out war. The French Air Force immediately bombed areas where ISIS is believed to have training camps.

The next step, presumably, although neither leader was specific, will probably include the sending of ground troops to fight in Syria and Iraq in addition to the bombing campaigns now being mounted by both countries and Russia. This is an extension and intensification of current policy rather than a new venture, and, to judge by the Russian experience in Afghanistan and ours in Afghanistan and Iraq, the chances for destroying ISIS are small. Those chances will be lessened if we also attempt to “regime change” in Syria.

A second option, which I assume is being broached in Washington as I write, is for Israel to volunteer to invade Syria and Iraq as well as using its air force to supplement or replace the other air forces operating there. This option would be militarily painful for ISIS but would fit exactly into its long-range strategy.

Moreover, it would play havoc with the emerging anti-ISIS bloc of Iran, Russia and Syria. If Israel advances this idea, as I think likely, it will probably be rejected while Israel will be “compensated” with a large new grant.

A third option is for the United States to reverse its anti-Assad policy and join with his regime and with Russia and Iran in a coordinated campaign against ISIS. While this policy would be more rational than either of the first two options, and might be initially more successful, I do not believe that alone it will accomplish its objective.

Drone and special forces strikes are already being employed and will almost certainly be continued as an adjunct to whatever is adopted as the main thrust, but they have not proven decisive where tried elsewhere. Indeed, at least in Afghanistan, they have proven to be self-defeating.

As the “ISIS strategist” predicted, such attacks will increase local hostility to the foreigner while, if the ISIS combatants are wise, they will simply melt away to return another day. Worse, by “decapitating” scattered guerrilla units, they will open the way for younger, more aggressive and ambitious leaders to emerge.

Domestic Repression

Coordinated with any of the above three options, I think it is almost certain that the United States and the European powers will tighten their domestic security programs. Controls on movement, expulsion (particularly in France) of alien or quasi-alien populations, mounting of raids on poorer urban areas, increased monitoring and other activities will increase.

These tactics are what ISIS hoped would happen. Outlays for “security” will rise and populations will be “vexed.” But these policies are unlikely to provide complete security. When terrorists are prepared, as those in the Paris attack were, to blow themselves up or be killed, attacks can be expected regardless how tight security measures are.

So what about non-military and non-police measures? What are the options that could be considered? Two combinations of economics and psychology come to mind:

The first is amelioration of the conditions in which the North African Muslim community now lives in France. The slums circling Paris are a breeding ground for supporters of ISIS. Improvement of living conditions might make a significant difference, but experience in America and also in France suggests that “urban renewal” is far from a panacea.

Even if it were, it would be hard for any French administration to undertake. It would be expensive when the French government believes itself to be already overburdened, and French anti-Muslim feeling was strong long before the Paris attacks. Now, the public mode is swinging away from social welfare toward repression.

As in other European nations, the combination of fear of terrorism and the influx of refugees will make implementation of what will be described as a pro-Muslim program unlikely.

Perhaps even more unlikely is one that I think ISIS would most fear. The “ISIS strategist” has told us that the major resource of the movement is the community, but he recognized that, despite horrific memories of imperialism, the public has remained relatively passive.

This attitude could change dramatically as a consequence of invasion and intensification of aerial bombing. ISIS believes it will, turning increased numbers of now “neutral” civilians into active supporters of the jihadis or into jihadis themselves.

Obviously, it would be to the advantage of other countries to prevent this happening.

Some prevention of ISIS violence can be accomplished, perhaps, with increased security measures, but I suggest that a multinational, welfare-oriented and psychologically satisfying program could be designed that would make the hatred that ISIS relies upon less virulent.

Inadvertently, ISIS has identified the elements for us: meeting communal needs, compensation for previous transgressions, and calls for a new beginning. Such a program need not be massive and could be limited, for example, just to children by establishing public health measures, vitamins and food supplements.

Organizations (such as Médecins Sans Frontières, the Rostropovich Foundation, the Red Cross and Red Crescent) already exist to carry it out and indeed much is already being done. The adjustment is mainly in psychology the unwillingness for nations to admit wrongdoing as we have seen in the German “apology” for the Holocaust and the failure of the Japanese to apologize for the Rape of Nanking. It would cost little and do much, but, in these times, it is almost certainly a non-starter.

So, sadly, I fear that we are beginning to move toward a decade or more of fear, anger, misery and loss of basic freedoms.

I'm not voting for Hillary (largely because I don't live in a swing state. I strongly dislike her so no point in calculating the lesser of two evils.) but there's hardly a reason to suspect that Trump is any less a liar or flip flopper than Hillary is.[1] They have the same or similar financial & foreign policy advisors.[2] Trump wants to build a border wall, Hillary wants to build a border fence.[3] Trump is likely to also support the TPP because his connection with TPP lobbyists despite his previous rhetoric.[4]

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnpO_RTSNmQ

2.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/trump-names-former-partner-at-goldman-sachs-as-new-national-finance-chairman/

https://theintercept.com/2015/12/18/beacon-global-strategies/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/30/president-trump-us-war-machine-rolls-on/

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE8DD6q6EF0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uXJ1mgkyF0

4. https://theintercept.com/2016/06/29/trump-team-tpp/

Eh, I disagree very strongly some of what you said. I think a far better account of what really happened is that there has more recently been a collapse of the neo-liberal consensus and that has what resulted in the resurgence of the new left movement as well a friend has called neo-nationalism from the right regarding Trump. I think you're ignoring the rise of Corbyn, and the treatment of Sanders I find very unconvincing. Sanders' plan is to create a massive jobs program in response to deindustrialization, and is absolutely about "[the] provision of services, worker's rights, [and] protecting the economic means of the working person" His comments about Democratic Socialism were marginal and off to the side in most of his speeches if hardly mentioned, except when the media brings it up. In any case, his version of Democratic Socialism was more like Social Democratic Reform rather than Socialism as it pertains to Leftist's concerns about Capitalism.

If you were talking primarily about the decline of the labor movement, I think there would be more truth, but even there the story is more complicated. Labor is weakened, but it's not dead yet.

How did you get to the conclusion that the rise of Trump lead to the Left to die? I have the opposite perception with regards to the election, largely due to the Sanders phenomenon. Trump only brought to the surface what was always there, which is why if you look at the other Republican candidates, they're all similar or worse than he is. They just use rhetoric that doesn't appear as offensive to the mainstream press.

Well those in power always use concern for security scenarios for near non-existent cases for justification for policies that take away the civil rights & democratic principles of the public. But my take from history is that the harm done is far greater from whatever small measure it achieved.

Just because racial matters aren't explicitly written in the legislation doesn't mean it's not a racist policy if it has that intention behind it's execution. The same way how Nixon's initiation of the War on Drugs had fundamentally racist intentions (the whole purpose was to target the black population and anti-war Left) despite not being explicitly written that way in its measures.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nixon-drug-war-racist_us_56f16a0ae4b03a640a6bbda1

Also there is this confusion here that the terrorist watch list is about simply preventing people on the list from buying guns. It's about legitimizing and expanding a practice (putting people on the terrorist watch list) that allows the FBI and Surveillance State to harass innocent people. Have you read the other articles I linked? I'm also not very sympathetic with the supposed "right to have guns"

The rest is just a repetition of points I made before. I don't think it's wise to support a piece of legislation that has negligible effect on the progress of one issue and what will be for certain backwards effect on another issue, when there are other pieces of legislation for the former issue that will be more effective plus without the negative parts. Not sure how to say it in a way that'll allow you to make the leap to my side, but we'll have to leave it at that for now.

The idea of a terrorist watch list with respect to gun reform in of itself is strange. If someone is really suspected and identified as being a terrorist, the government will do much more than simply putting them on a list for them not to be able to buy guns. They'll be constantly monitored and of course, they'll be forcefully handled if they're observed to buy guns in preparation to use them.

It's a racial discriminatory measure, not a security one.

And no, I wouldn't support a bill that leads to questionable progress in one area (I suspect almost none) and lead to a regression in another area. It's not a question for me of not supporting progress in gun reform, because I listed many examples of gun reforms above that I support which would have much more significant effects without the negative parts.

The terrorist watch list is overwhelmingly used by those in power for their own interests. You have to think about the consequences that it will likely lead towards rather than the effects we'd ideally like to imagine it to have. The manner in which "terrorist" is used in legislation is very loosely defined (or else America would technically be considered a terrorist state) which is why half the people on the list have no designated terrorist affiliation and are just on the list because they're Muslim. And once you're on the list, it's very hard to get off it.

I would support universal background checks, mandatory waiting periods, licensing requirements, magazine shortening regulations, banning of semi-automatic weapons, and others. This bill I would guess would have minimal effects on actually curtailing gun violence unlike the other policies I just mentioned and would do more to expand the power of the FBI and the Surveillance State to harass minorities.

Some articles on the matter:

http://gawker.com/the-democrats-are-boldly-fighting-for-a-bad-stupid-bil-1782449026

https://theintercept.com/2016/06/22/dramatic-house-sit-in-on-guns-is-undercut-by-focus-on-secret-racist-watchlist/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/22/gun-control-terror-watchlists-muslims-discrimination

From what I understand, the bill does little to regulate guns and will more or less effectively expand the ability of the FBI and Surveillance State to harass Muslims.

I'm all for gun control. Some good immediate measures may be universal background checks, legally required waiting periods, magazine length regulations, licensing requirements, banning of semi-automatic rifles, etc. Anything but the current bill.

"Gore Vidal, the American writer, once described the American economic system as 'free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich'. Macroeconomic policy on the global scale is a bit like that. It is Keynesianism for the rich countries and monetarism for the poor." - Ha-Joon Chang

Well, while apologists for the corporate sector justify policies based on conservative principles (what's called conservatism at least), the opposite is often really the case in practice. I mean the idea that there's this clash between the market and the state is really the sickest joke in social theory. The rich wants a very powerful state that intervenes in the economy, just for their interests and not for others. It's the hypocritical nature of neoliberalism.

(delete comment please)

I understand your reaction quite well because I've had similar lines of thoughts myself. I still don't really understand how the fear of death (and in general, the relation between anxiety & rationale) works.

The relation between how reason, emotion, and agency is a very tricky one to me. So my rant that I'm soon going to write below has limited perspectives and easily seen gaps. =\

Note that I actually don't think that the power of arguments is so ineffective in all cases regarding anxiety. It can prevent people from drifting into a train of irrational thoughts that can become the fuel for anxiety to take place. (I mean the reason why people are afraid of death in the first place was because they were able to reason out the fact about their mortality and what it means to them)

Also, I'm not quite sure that I was "convinced by its reason yet it didn't move my character" more like there were different sides of me that were convinced and another side that was unconvinced. It's sort of like that experience you have with Procrastination. Part of you know it's irrational and another voice in your mind becomes louder and convinces you into it.

I think that certain deep anxious states (like common anxieties about their appearance and death) tends to not just be about the object of anxiety, but something rooted elsewhere. So the Epicurean Arguments that are laid out don't really serve as a good framework to the people who are grappling with those problems. It's the self's relation to the objects of their thoughts & emotions that's often more important. I think this relation between to the self and the object tends to mean something unique to the experience for each person (a narrative) which is why I think you can often learn more insight from people who can empathize with your experiences (or can analyze them to a high degree) than from general practitioners who just happens to know a lot about how the mind works.

Kierkegaard's Psychology was pretty insightful for me in understanding the problem from this perspective (His "Subjectivity is Truth" is more about this, one's personal narrative, than a framework of metaphysics or fideism, which I find most people mistake to be the emphasis. A bit like Nietzsche's philosophy of truth.)

Not sure about Epicurus' particular position or framing or Molier's interpretation, but is it possible that can be part of the mental trick Epicurus noted? People who are disciplined to endure pain experience the same type of pain as those who are undisciplined but that discipline may be due to them being able to take their moments of pain in perspective better. They have a mental trick. It's just that perhaps developing a mental trick is the "hard part" which I have noted in my response above.

I think the problem with the inability to endure pain or anxiety is largely due to "being too absorbed" whether it be in the moment, concerns about the future, or concerns for the self. Pain becomes unbearable because we are consumed by the moment. This attention to the present prevents us from appreciating memories of the past or to properly realize that the present is soon to pass and that there is much to the future to look forward to. I'm not sure about Epicurus' framing of the matter or that we should apply that to every moment of pain, but I can see how there is some truth to following this type of advice at times.

I think the limits with applying Epicureanism (& Stoicism) by itself is that it gives very valuable advice but it doesn't really guide us how to get to that state of mind. That's because human beings are masters of self-deception and thus we often fail to become the type of people we want to through rational deliberation, we fail to notice the hidden motives that underly the emotions and rationales that inhabit our contemplation (Kierkegaard) So the roots of our anxieties aren't always quite what they appear to be.

Like take the fear of death for an example (something I've struggled through for long time). I and many others stubbornly refused the Epicurean argument while in angst. I mean we find it largely convincing in ways (in fact, we want to believe it and live by it) but somehow it doesn't appease us and we fight back fiercely why the Epicurus' reasoning doesn't work. And strangely, many of us have these strange contradictory urges towards suicidal thoughts despite our supposed fear of death.

Now that I largely escaped death anxiety, I can really understand better what was driving those anxieties. Although I'm much less anxious of death now, the Epicurean argument wasn't really more compelling than it was before. Rather that now I'm in a different state of mind, I'm free from the fetters that prevented me from experiencing life properly. It was much less that I was afraid of death itself, but rather I was too absorbed in the far future. I wasn't satisfied with the present and had extreme anxieties about future concerns & failures, so I was really looking too far ahead (to divert myself of what bothered me) and only saw death rather than long uncertain years of life to look forward to. And if death is the only thing you see, you start becoming obsessed with it. It was really the fear of life that was the root of it all, but it's difficult to perceive that when the concept of death is the immediate occupant of your thoughts.

(I can't say this for all individuals who experience death anxiety because our experiences are different case by case, but from talking to another friend who suffered the same anxieties, I suspect that the roots are similar.)

But in my anxious state of mind, I couldn't really see that and apply Epicurus' principles properly. I can come up with other parallel examples. Like say, a friend who had a skin condition that caused his face to become crimson and no amount of rational argument could convince him that he isn't the ugliest person in the world (in comparison to people who had even much more severe problems with their appearance) He got out of it by applying make up and it struck him how strange he found his rationalization back then, that his condition wasn't even such a big deal never got to him until now.

Basically, human rationalizations are complex and fucks with your mind. I take Epicureanism seriously, but for setting goals to achieve rather than advice to simply follow by somehow forcefully convincing myself of it. Just being "convinced of the arguments" doesn't get me there. I think the less emotional barriers one has, the easier it is for people to simply follow the advice directly, but I suspect most people will fail to do that for the reasons mentioned. Clearer self awareness is needed, and that's usually achieved not by rational deliberation of the moment but placing yourself in a state of mind where these barriers weaken so life in context is easier to see.

I found Wolfman's words long time ago helpful:

http://forums.philosophyforums.com/comments.php?id=65083&findpost=1172736#post1172736

I don't take anything he says as the source for what I expect from him (though it's a window to how far he will possibly go). Rather I look at the people tied to him and the party base underneath him to make a good guess what interests he's likely to support in the future.

I mean for instance, he flips flops all the time on foreign policy. One moment he's spouting isolationist policies that are to left of Sanders and then later he reveals himself to be a hyper aggressive war monger. He started off saying he doesn't want to support Israel and later goes to give a speech at AIPAC and says he wants to support Israel settlement expansion.

Is he really going to support policies that help the working class like he suggests to his base regarding taxing hedge fund managers and stopping "trade deals?" I mean, he appointed someone who worked at Goldman Sachs as his finance chairman.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/trump-names-former-partner-at-goldman-sachs-as-new-national-finance-chairman/

This is a pretty good piece that does away with the myth that he's somehow less militant than Hillary Clinton on foreign policy, a myth that I've been hearing among progressives and the Left for a long time now and still persisting:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/30/president-trump-us-war-machine-rolls-on/

As for whether Sanders still has a chance, I seriously doubt he'll end up winning, though he should continue to organize people and get as many delegates as he can to influence future policy of the Democratic Party by the time of the convention. But then again, what were usually reliable pundits were completely wrong with how much Sanders would succeed in this campaign from the very beginning over and over again as the election went on. So if I were to be honest, I shouldn't make any firm claims. He's basically always had a slim chance for overcoming odds since the beginning and he's done it. Doesn't mean he will now and I doubt it but who knows?

I'm most worried about its potential effects on the internet... what I read so far is disastrous.

Of course I agree, but part of the fight to open the path of letting an ideal situation to come to fruition is to politically strategize in taking as much power as possible, it's just debatable for each circumstance about what that strategy should be. And of course, the lives of today's citizens matter.

I discussed that with a friend and this is what we concluded on:

The problem with that argument is that sometimes lesser evils can be transformed to something better- we would not have had OWS, BLM, or Sanders if not for Obama.

The election of Obama, a lesser evil if there ever one was, created the conditions that allowed for more radical social movements to arise. When there are Republicans in power, it becomes much easier for any left-wing opposition to get sucked into the Democratic Party, which is viewed as a potential real alternative by the population. It's when the Democrats are in power, and expectations go unmet, that serious challenges to the bipartisan consensus can emerge.

I've seen people argue the contrary before, that when the Democratic Party are in power, their abuses are usually left unmitigated by mainstream liberals. Paul Street once made that argument, he mused that "if it was Bush who was President when Snowden revealed the surveillance policies, how many more Democrats would be protesting the streets?"

I used to have that position too. But I don't think it's born out. It wasn't exactly the case that there were massive protests against the Patriot Act, either. It's no accident, I think, that if you look at the past 100 years, the decades most characterized by radical social movements: the 30's, the 60's, and the 2010's, all were under Democratic presidents.

There are multiple factors; I think in some cases it might help to have Republicans in office. Nonetheless, if those social movements are going to go beyond the Democratic Party, there needs to be Democrats who are also targets of the movement, otherwise it will just be co-opted by the Democrats and die. See the Iraq war protests as an example. And yeah with as many cases like the NsA there are also cases like Afganistan where there weren't protests under either party's presidents. So it's complicated

With regards to your first point:

If voting for an alternative candidate or not voting at all can actually make a difference in fighting against oppressive systems, I'm all for it. But frequently, it won't. You have to take into account the consequences of the decisions of "not voting" as well as "voting" which is the argument I was trying to make in my OP. Both actions have consequences in future policy differences from whatever candidate comes out as a result.

If I'm a citizen who is unable to have access to health insurance and I have a serious physical disorder, even if the only difference between Romney and Obama is the repeal of Obamacare and they're equally bad in almost everything else, then a Romney Presidency could lead to me losing my life. Me losing my life from a Romney Presidency would therefore, be a direct result of people not voting for Obama. Just because they didn't vote for Romney doesn't mean their actions didn't have consequences that resulted in bad policies that have effects on people's lives.

Or let's take that in principle between an actual really "good" candidate, who's not a neoliberal war hawk, and a bad candidate (instead of between two bad candidates with some differences like in the example above). If a segment of the population was too lazy to vote (or refrained from voting for another intended reason) and resulted in the bad candidate winning an election, they would be responsible for the bad candidate being in power.

The argument you started out with the principle "you are not responsible for an evil you did not vote for" is unconvincing. Refraining from voting is a form of political engagement that has consequences just like voting. Much of what you said afterwards is somewhat contingent on that first principle.

But the point you did make that was interesting to me was outlined here:

It's one vote. And you've just sacrificed your principles for what? (And if you want to make the "But if everyone thought that way..." argument, you could just as easily make that as a reason for voting for the good candidate over the lesser-evil candidate). In short, no matter what line of reasoning you follow, it almost never makes any sense to use your vote on a candidate you consider a bad candidate over one you consider a good candidate.

I never thought of it in that line of reasoning, thanks for that. I'll have to think about it, but I have a suspicion there's something wrong with it.


But I want to say this, and I'm tying this to my OP, which I felt like you didn't take full consideration of. I just don't think what you're suggesting is the necessary essence of voting. I think our relation to national elections should be (at the current moment if not the ideal) is to limit the damage they do to our credibility and to use them, in so far as possible, to help build the foundation for the kinds of protest and independent political organizing (electoral and otherwise) which will need to be directed against whichever corporate candidate wins. (see the post below for my response to Sapientia)

Some more news:

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/04/03/panama-papers-biggest-leak-history-exposes-global-web-corruption

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/04/corporate-media-gatekeepers-protect-western-1-from-panama-leak/

____________________

Quote:

Whoever leaked the Mossack Fonseca papers appears motivated by a genuine desire to expose the system that enables the ultra wealthy to hide their massive stashes, often corruptly obtained and all involved in tax avoidance. These Panamanian lawyers hide the wealth of a significant proportion of the 1%, and the massive leak of their documents ought to be a wonderful thing

......."What do you expect? The leak is being managed by the grandly but laughably named “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists”, which is funded and organised entirely by the USA’s Center for Public Integrity. Their funders include

Ford Foundation
Carnegie Endowment
Rockefeller Family Fund
W K Kellogg Foundation
Open Society Foundation (Soros)"

I provided an argument in the OP for why we should. Because abstaining from voting is the same as a half-vote for the greater of two evils, even if that greater evilism is by a very small margin, but that small margin has tremendous impact on people's lives.



I provided an argument in the OP for why we should. You ignored it, so your post doesn't really add anything to discussion.

Well I agree with what you said about Al Gore, that's the nature of the Democratic Party, a party of liars. They're all neoliberals who don't care much about Global Warming but they still compromise to a degree, even if it's only a little. It really is up to the people to make the change but things like sustaining regulations and agreeing to international demands to curb down on fossil fuel emissions has importance with regards to government, and the Republican Party absolutely never compromises on that. Look at what they were doing to the Paris Climate Agreements.

I would favor Hillary (I hate her with a passion but just in "contrast") over the other Republicans by a small margin. More because of the Democratic Party backing her Presidency and the framework to which she'll have to pass policy than anything to do with her personally.

Cruz is definitely worse than Trump and this has been reiterated by many others (you can simply google that statement and you'll get a bunch of good analysis out there). Rubio might be worse than Trump. In fact, many left activists say Trump was one of the best things that happened to the Republican Party because he's not really worse than the other candidates but he's more obvious to the public about what he's proposing, thus lifting the veil off what the Republican Party and its supporters are really like to the whole world.

What I'm trying to say is probably not that far from what you believe (and what you're trying to say to me) I'm probably just having a hard time communicating what I mean by incentives and reactions as a result of Western Imperialism and who they belong to. I'm not saying that the emotions and rationales that occupy their minds are in the narrative that you criticize.

I said the incentives that drove the proliferation of the terrorist organizations and surge in terrorist attacks. If we're talking the incentives of the organizations, Jason Burke convincingly goes through the research that Islamic militancy in organizations like Al-Qaeda is not centrally controlled, except that one organized attack by Osama Bin Laden. It was never more than a collaboration of twenty or thirty militants that were indirectly associated to each other with many of the terrorist acts attributed to them.

Oh I wouldn't go far to completely deny that, I thought you were talking mostly about the incentives that initially drove the proliferation of terrorist organizations and attacks on Western cities, to which the mainstream media highly distorts the truth of. The alternative narrative to the truth behind that is not equally shallow in my opinion.

I think it was because I didn't make sure what you meant by "acts" of the terrorist organizations.

Hmm? Maybe I misunderstood the intentions of your words then (if so, I apologize for coming to rash assumptions) or the way your words were constructed were misleading (before you clarify yourself, this is what appears to me).

Since you argued that the alternative narratives to the mainstream media were equally shallow seemed to me to suggest that much of terrorism has its roots in Islam more or as deeply than as an outraged reaction to Western invasion & occupation. I think this is empirically false. The willingness of peasants in remote villages who formerly refused to join terrorist groups to partake in terrorism only after Drone Attacks lead to casualties in their families and communities (over 90% of the casualties Drone Attacks consist of killing innocent civilians that are not even the designated targets) is one illustration of such a case. For these people I think it's true. It has little to nothing to do with Islam but Western Oppression that has made them participate in Terrorist Organizations. Even if Islam tends to fit in somehow, how is such a narrative "equally shallow"

Again I might have misunderstood your intentions or you may be wrong, so I'll just wait for your explanation.

Well maybe you consider it shallow because you don't understand the specific circumstances in the Middle East. If you actually read the scholarship on the relation between Western intervention and the Islamic Terrorist groups (respected scholars like William Polk, Robert Pape, and Scott Attran for instance, along with many others) you wouldn't think that the so-called alternative narratives are shallow at all but backed by significant empirical evidence and analysis, and their analysis is not ideological but scientific in essence.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/u-s-war-on-terror-has-increased-terrorism.html

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/11/17/falling-into-the-isis-trap/

It went quite severe in Arizona this time though.

Which is that people registered as Democrats and had proof of that, but when they went to the polls were told they were not registered as Democrats but as Independents or PND (Party Not Designated). People even went back to get their registration cards and confirmation emails. The Electronic Pollbooks had their registrations messed up and so they were turned away and/or given provisional ballots which didn't count because their registrations were not Democrat in the [E-BOOKS]. This "error" heavily disenfranchised Sanders supporters, who switched to Democrat so they could vote for him, and even many who were Democrats for DECADES found their registrations SWITCHED.