Wednesday, July 6, 2022

Is Zionism / Jewish Nationalism a Political Cult?



By Juan Cole

Liberal politics in the broad sense, in the tradition of Locke, Voltaire, Madison, Jefferson and John Stuart Mill, is rooted in a conviction that vigorous debate clarifies issues and makes for better public policy over time. This principle is often misunderstood by political partisans, who confuse analytical disagreement with simply being contrarian and hurling insults.

The opposite of liberal debate and analytical argument is the cult. Sociologists of religion sometimes shy away from that word nowadays, feeling that it has been appropriated by the tabloids and become pejorative. But it has an important place in the history of the modern sociology of religion and I think it should be used, but defined carefully.

I define a cult as an organization characterized by very high demands for obedience by the leaders, complete intolerance of dissent, secretive whisper campaigns against dissidents, dishonest destruction of reputations, and shunning and excommunication as social control mechanisms. It will be objected that all churches have some of these characteristics. But cultness is on a spectrum. Some organizations are high on a cult scale, some are much lower.

There are also political cults. Stalinism and Baathism are both political cults in this sense.

And, it is clear to me that some devotees of Jewish nationalism or Zionism practice their politics in a cult-like manner. I am not a fan of nationalism. I think most of its premises are frankly stupid. There are no “peoples” in the sense that romantic nationalists used the term. No “peoples” are tied to a land or territory. There is no such thing as a national character. People switch out their languages (the ancestors of most Americans did not speak English; the Mongolians of central Afghanistan, the Hazaras, are now Persian-speaking Shiites). I don’t think making Judaism the basis for nationalist zealotry is a good idea, and most American Jews were appalled by the idea for most of the first half of the twentieth century. It isn’t worse than other nationalisms. It mostly isn’t much better. But when it is practiced as a political cult it is truly objectionable.

In Liberal politics (which includes modern conservatism of the William Buckley sort), if you make an argument, you can expect a counter-argument and a debate. In a political cult, if you make an argument you can expect to be smeared, undermined, and if possible destroyed professionally. Cults are extremely destructive, whether religious or political. They insist that the leader and the organization be exempt from criticism.

That so many Jewish nationalists insist that it is not legitimate ever to criticize anything Israel does is a clear sign of political cultism. It is the same mindset that American Communists had in the 1930s about Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union.

So a considered examination of the Israeli government’s Gaza War might conclude that disproportionate force was deployed, and that the army showed reckless disregard for civilian life.

By no means, all Jewish nationalists would be unwilling to debate these points rationally. But very large numbers are not willing, and they respond to this perfectly legitimate argument with abuse. The author of the argument is, they allege, a racialist bigot. He or she is purveying a Protocols of the Elders of Zion conspiracy theory. Others contradict without arguing. Or he or she is questioning the right of Israel to exist (they don’t specify the national borders). They mouth slogans such as that the Israeli army is the most humane in the world, or that Hamas is to blame for civilian deaths even when Israeli bombs do the killing. Some even hint at violence (a Jewish dissident wrote me recently, fearful of thuggish tactics of the Jewish Defense League– an organization classed by the FBI as having been the major source of domestic terrorism in the US 1965-1980). And perhaps worst of all, they secretly compile and send around a dossier to the employer of the author of the argument, seeking to have the person fired.

Of course, all nationalism is somewhat intolerant. The Dixie Chicks got into trouble for disavowing the Bush administration and its war of aggression in Iraq. But in a Liberal society, nationalism’s worst excesses are curbed by a rule of law. People are not punished for making arguments in public in a free society, assuming they are not libelous (and a truly free society needs to avoid having political libel on the books).

All this is prelude to my condemnation of of the University of Illinois for firing Steven Salaita, apparently for his Twitter feed! Professor Salaita said some provocative things during the war, but none of them are indefensible in rational debate. When asked about organized religion, Voltaire said “Crush the infamous thing!” Jefferson advocated an American revolution every 25 years, which would have gotten him in trouble with today’s FBI. Etc. Are there lines that shouldn’t be crossed? Sure, but they should bad arguments based on shoddy research that people in the field have a consensus as being bad.

Vijay Prashad, now at the American University of Beirut but previously at Trinity, wrote on Facebook:

“But I do know that twice, the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation came to see my college president to have me removed from some administrative positions I held because they argued that I was an anti-Semite based on my role in the BDS movement (I am fortunate that the outgoing president at Trinity sent me all the emails before he left). I’ve been slowing reading through them — it is astounding how these organizations held private meetings with the president about my role on campus, and the administration at no point asked me to meet with them, or at no point did they wish to meet with me. It was an attempt to get me out behind closed doors.”

He later saw emails detailing the skullduggery.

I strongly suspect that Zionist organizations pressured the university to fire Professor Salaita. But note that they did not engage him in a public debate. They went into the halls of power behind the scenes. We saw this a few years ago with Norman Finkelstein. This behavior is undemocratic and cult-like, and it is unacceptable in a Liberal society. We also see Jewish nationalists on the bench, in public office, and in high administrative positions who misuse their public position to engage in a sectarian vendetta so as to protect Israel from criticism or to punish its critics. That behavior is unethical. US law and the US constitution should guide the decision-making of public servants, not narrow and idiosyncratic commitments. Would it be all right for a judge of Serbian ancestry to throw the book at a Croatian-American defendant?

Universities are places for argument and debate. If Salaita says challenging things, he should be debated on them. He has been saying such things for a long time, so they should have been known when he was hired. But academic hiring and firing in any case should be based on academic writing, not on Twitter! Will we next be promoting people to academic positions because they sent out flattering tweets about their president or dean?

Issues in decorum are legitimately taken account of in decisions about whether to promote someone to an administrative post at a university. But professors should argue, and sometimes they may argue provocatively, deploying rhetorical devices like hyperbole. We have a tenure system to make sure that academic debate is not punished, and I believe that it is important to the republic and its democratic values that this be so. Our journalists are often muzzled by the corporations for which they work. Likewise, businesses often maintain that they can fire employees for taking political stances that embarrass the business. Much of America cannot in fact exercise free speech, for fear of economic reprisals, despite constitutional guarantees. That is not right, but at least in academia it is difficult to just fire someone for making a public argument. But sometimes the dirty deed can be done, with regard to the untenured or to those with an outside offer who are moving between tenured positions. It is a shameful business.



Sunday, May 22, 2022

What is a Wireless Body Area Network?

Body Area Network is being used to torture people. Implants are Radio Frequency Devices (RFID), GPS Chips and Ultrasound ID Chips, accelerometers, motion sensors, pressure sensors and neuromuscular stimulators which are stimulated by High Frequency Ultrasound which has 7 times the power limits of electromagnetic frequencies and travel 100 times faster through body tissues. This medical surveillance system can be triggered with an app on a mobile phone.  Once connected, anyone who has the MAC address of your implants can turn them on and connect you with the implanted sensors.

See here for the Wikipedia article. Also see this article "Slavery by Satellite" a must read article from academics. 

A wireless body area network (WBAN)  is a wireless network of wearable computing devices which may be implanted inside the body, worn or carried.  Implanted devices are networks consisting of several miniaturized body sensor units (BSUs) together with a single body central unit (BCU). Smart devices or cell phones act as a data hub, data gateway, providing a user interface to view and manage BAN applications.  A WBAN system can use WPAN wireless technologies as gateways to reach longer ranges. Through gateway devices, it is possible to connect the devices in the human body to the internet. This way, medical professionals can access patient data online using the internet independent of the patient location.. 

The system is touted as being healthcare, but in reality it is being used as an illegal surveillance which takes away the individuality, the privacy, the dignity and independence of a human being. Every activity is recorded. Someone watches every activity, including bathroom activities and having sex.  Every heartbeat and breath can be monitored and recorded. Note that they can communicate using satellites and drones.

TORTURE AND DEATH CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED WITH THIS SYSTEM AND THE MURDERERS WILL NEVER BE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE.

​What is Biotelemetry?

Biotelemetry (or medical telemetry) involves the application of telemetry in biologymedicine, and other health care to remotely monitor various vital signs of ambulatory patients. Virtually any physiological signal could be transmitted.

 

A typical biotelemetry system is comprised of (1) sensors appropriate for the particular signals to be monitored, (2) a battery but some do not require batteries because they are stimulated with frequency or light (3) a radio antenna and receiver, and (4) a display unit or monitor to display information from patients.


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A Very Low Power MAC (VLPM) Protocol for Wireless Body Area Networks

by Niamat Ullah *, Pervez Khan and Kyung Sup Kwak

Published: 25 March 2011

Abstract: Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) consist of a limited number of battery operated nodes that are used to monitor the vital signs of a patient over long periods of time without restricting the patient’s movements. They are an easy and fast way to diagnose the patient’s status and to consult the doctor. Device as well as network lifetime are among the most important factors in a WBAN. Prolonging the lifetime of the WBAN strongly depends on controlling the energy consumption of sensor nodes. To achieve energy efficiency, low duty cycle MAC protocols are used, but for medical applications, especially in the case of pacemakers where data have time-limited relevance, these protocols increase latency which is highly undesirable and leads to system instability. In this paper, we propose a low power MAC protocol (VLPM) based on existing wakeup radio approaches which reduce energy consumption as well as improving the response time of a node. We categorize the traffic into uplink and downlink traffic. The nodes are equipped with both a low power wake-up transmitter and receiver. The low power wake-up receiver monitors the activity on channel all the time with a very low power and keeps the MCU (Micro Controller Unit) along with main radio in sleep mode. When a node [BN or BNC (BAN Coordinator)] wants to communicate with another node, it uses the low-power radio to send a wakeup packet, which will prompt the receiver to power up its primary radio to listen for the message that follows shortly. The wake-up packet contains the desired node’s ID along with some other information to let the targeted node to wake-up and take part in communication and let all other nodes to go to sleep mode quickly. The VLPM protocol is proposed for applications having low traffic conditions. For high traffic rates, optimization is needed. Analytical results show that the proposed protocol outperforms both synchronized and unsynchronized MAC protocols like T-MAC, SCP-MAC, B-MAC and X-MAC in terms of energy consumption and response time.


Survey of WBSNs for Pre-Hospital Assistance: Trends to Maximize the Network Lifetime and Video Transmission Techniques

by Enrique Gonzalez, Published: 22 May 2015

Abstract: This survey aims to encourage the multidisciplinary communities to join forces for innovation in the mobile health monitoring area. Specifically, multidisciplinary innovations in medical emergency scenarios can have a significant impact on the effectiveness and quality of the procedures and practices in the delivery of medical care. Wireless body sensor networks (WBSNs) are a promising technology capable of improving the existing practices in condition assessment and care delivery for a patient in a medical emergency. This technology can also facilitate the early interventions of a specialist physician during the pre-hospital period. WBSNs make possible these early interventions by establishing remote communication links with video/audio support and by providing medical information such as vital signs, electrocardiograms, etc. in real time. This survey focuses on relevant issues needed to understand how to setup a WBSN for medical emergencies. These issues are: monitoring vital signs and video transmission, energy efficient protocols, scheduling, optimization and energy consumption on a WBSN.


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The challenge of designing in-body communications

https://www.embedded.com/the-challenge-of-designing-in-body-communications/

October 26, 2004 Embedded Staff

The range of medical devices and systems being implanted into the human body is increasing rapidly. Evolving from the first implanted pacemaker in the late 1950s, today's in-body devices are now being used to regulate bodily functions, stimulate nerves, and treat diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and epilepsy.

Figure 1: Almost every aspect of a patient's health can now be monitored or regulated by an implanted device.

As Figure 1 shows, almost every aspect of a patient's health can now be monitored or regulated by an implanted device. These range of devices pose unique power, signal processing, and communication challenges for designers.

The 402- to 405-MHz band is well suited for in-body communications networks, due to signal propagation characteristics in the human body, compatibility with the incumbent users of the band (meteorological aids, such as weather balloons), and its international availability. The MICS standard allows 10 channels of 300kHz each and limits the output power to 25μW.

Medical devices can be categorized into those that use an internal non-rechargeable battery (such as pacemakers) and those that couple power inductively (such as cochlear implants). The former employs a duty-cycling operating system to conserve power. The transceiver is “off” most of the time, meaning the off-state current and the current required to periodically look for a communicating device must be extremely low (less than 1μA).


Sensors (Basel). 2011; 11(6): 5561–5595.

Published online 2011 May 26. doi: 10.3390/s110605561

PMCID: PMC3231450

PMID: 22163914

Wearable and Implantable Wireless Sensor

Network Solutions for Healthcare Monitoring

Ashraf Darwish1,* and Aboul Ella Hassanien2

Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer

This article has been corrected. See Sensors (Basel). 2012; 12(9): 12375.


Abstract: Wireless sensor network (WSN) technologies are considered one of the key research areas in computer science and the healthcare application industries for improving the quality of life. The purpose of this paper is to provide a snapshot of current developments and future direction of research on wearable and implantable body area network systems for continuous monitoring of patients. This paper explains the important role of body sensor networks in medicine to minimize the need for caregivers and help the chronically ill and elderly people live an independent life, besides providing people with quality care. The paper provides several examples of state of the art technology together with the design considerations like unobtrusiveness, scalability, energy efficiency, security and also provides a comprehensive analysis of the various benefits and drawbacks of these systems.



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IMPLANTS FOR MEDICAL USE AND FOR TORTURE

 

Above and below, you will see diagrams of a person who has been implanted with medical devices in what is called a Wireless Body Area Network (BAN). Implants are sensors that are connected with computers by means of a cell phone which communicates to medical, law enforcement and Homeland Securty. Also sensors in humans can be connected to implants in other humans and to the sensors in homes, furniture, vehicles, buildings, electrical wiring, roads, etc.

 

The implants in a BAN are very similar to a diagram of a person called a Targeted Individual who has been implanted with medical devices for the purposes of tracking, stalking, harassing, surveilling, torturing and killing them. They are tortured in their home, vehicle and public places outside and inside. This indicates that the infrastructure in the Smart Grid is being used against them instead of for medical purposes. Organized stalking is carried on by contractors, including police, firemen, medical EVAC personnel, veterans and others. See COPS program. Smart phones are being used to stimulate the implants in TI's.


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