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The decision to employ military commissions to try conspirators in Indiana in 1864 was more complicated than historians have previously understood. Many persons contributed over a long period, but President Abraham Lincoln made the decision based on his calculations about his chances of being reelected. Fearing that he would lose the fall election, Lincoln took the expedient step to try conspirators by military commission.

International audience This paper introduces the concept of business-related conspiracy theories (BrCTs). Drawing on Aristotelian virtue ethics and undertaking a narratological and ethical analysis of 28 BrCTs found online, I emphasize that BrCTs are narratives with structures rooted in other latent macro- and meta-narratives, including centuries-old myths. In particular, I reconstruct the fictional world (diegesis) of BrCTs – one in which CSR and social contracts have failed – before identifying eight different types of actors as which people can morally situate themselves in their relationships with business. Finally, I elaborate on the actors' performances and their use of external and legitimate forces to end the story. The paper concludes with a discussion of potential future research to help combat BrCTs, as well as a call for the critical study of political CSR.

International audience Through an empirical approach of several conspiracy theories (Knight Templars, Jesuits, Illuminati, Freemasons or Jewish conspiracy), I have noticed they develop six main characteristics. First, the conspiratorial myth points out scapegoats in a non-aleatory way. They usually belong to ethnical or religious minorities. Secondly, those scapegoats try to acquire an overwhelming power in all fields. Thirdly, to achieve this goal, they corrupt the whole society, especially on mores and sexuality. Fourthly, to set up their domination the scapegoats use the art of simulation and dissimulation. They yield a cult of secrecy. Fifthly, the scapegoats are consistently portrayed through symbolic morphological types, frequently as animals. Finally, conspiratorial myths undergo a process of hybridization and creolization. They go through transformations, alterations and medleys. Every conspiracy theories mix up into one another.

Violence in the Far North of Cameroon: conspiracy as a tool for interpretation and political struggle since 2013, Cameroon's Far North region, which borders Nigeria and Chad, has experienced unprecedented violence. Although many of them have been explicitly claimed by Boko Haram, they do raise many questions. Cameroonian media outlets that are very popular as well as well-known intellectuals refer, often in questioning or allusions, to the complicity of elites in the region and to 'France' in this 'destabilisation' of the regime. Geographical distance, lack of information and knowledge about events and their context alone do not explain the prosperity of this conspiracy theory. The article takes these conspiracy theories and rumours seriously by trying to understand their articulation with available political imaginaries, their dissemination channels and their meaning at a time of widespread political uncertainty. As a result of political struggles, these interpretations can also be seen as a way to avoid real reflection on the social and political causes of this violence. In December 2014, in Yaoundé, there are two completely different versions of the violence that has ravaged the Far North of Cameroon in recent months. Located close to a thousand kilometres from the hotspot, the capital hosts two stories that do not clash or cross. On the one hand, the few journalists from the only Bio-madary with real local relays expose to the rest of the world the attacks on villages close to the Nigerian border and the security forces present in Region 1. On the other hand, on popu-lar waves, among students, in the huppated restaurants as in the 1. Only one biweekly newspaper, L'oeil du Sahel, focuses specifically on the north of the country and has a network of correspondents. Other newspapers, in particular daily newspapers, have very little information about the region and have hardly published it since the beginning of the violence. ; International audience ; Violence in the Far North of Cameroon: conspiracy as a tool ...

Why do individuals adhere to conspiracy theories? The ability of conspiracy leaders to persuade or the alleged credulity of conspiracy followers is insufficient to report on this. Membership is based, in the minds of individuals, on 'good reasons for believing' (Raymond Boudon). Two types of causes can be distinguished. On the one hand, general, structural causes that explain our contemporary more receptiveness to conspiracy ideas: firstly, the loss of trust in 'official information', whether political, scientific or media, but also the role of the Internet in disseminating alternative knowledge. On the other hand, specific, ideological causes explain that individuals adhere to one rather than another conspiracy theory. Rumours and superstitious beliefs will be reconciled. ; International audience ; Why do individuals adhere to conspiracy theories? The ability of conspiracy leaders to persuade or the alleged credulity of conspiracy followers is insufficient to report on this. Membership is based, in the minds of individuals, on 'good reasons for believing' (Raymond Boudon). Two types of causes can be distinguished. On the one hand, general, structural causes that explain our contemporary more receptiveness to conspiracy ideas: firstly, the loss of trust in 'official information', whether political, scientific or media, but also the role of the Internet in disseminating alternative knowledge. On the other hand, specific, ideological causes explain that individuals adhere to one rather than another conspiracy theory. Rumours and superstitious beliefs will be reconciled. ; Pourquoi des individus adhèrent-ils à des théories du complot ? La capacité de persuasion des leaders conspirationnistes ou la prétendue crédulité des adeptes du complotisme sont insuffisantes à rendre compte de cette adhésion. L'adhésion s'appuie, dans l'esprit des individus, sur de « bonnes raisons de croire » (Raymond Boudon). On peut distinguer deux types de causes. D'une part, des causes générales, structurelles, qui expliquent une ...

 A few days ago, the Washington Post had a story titled "Survey finds 'classical fascist' antisemitic views widespread in U.S."  Moreover, it suggested that anti-semitic views were becoming more common, although it cautioned:  "It is difficult to assess whether antisemitic views have increased over time, given changes in the survey's response options as well as how respondents were sampled."  I looked at the report on the survey, which was sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League and carried out by NORC, and found that it was more confident in claiming an increase in anti-semitic views--specifically an increase between 2019 and 2022.  The key figure:The survey was the fifth in a series going back to 1964, and its measure of antisemitism was based on questions that had been included in all five surveys.  The figure suggests that anti-semitic views generally declined from 1964 to 2019, and then rose sharply between 2019 and 2022.  There have been other stories on the survey in the last few days, and many of them emphasize this  apparent change:  for example, Reuters has a story called "Americans' belief in antisemitic conspiracies, tropes doubles since 2019, ADL survey shows."  The "doubled" is based on a comparison of the number who believe six or more of the anti-semitic opinions:  11% in 2019 and 20% in 2022.   Of course, that's an arbitrary cutoff, but no matter how you look at it, there seems to be a large increase:  average agreement with the statements shown in the figure was 17% in 2019 and 29% in 2022.A large change in the last three years seemed unlikely to me--opinions on this sort of thing don't usually change rapidly.   However, NORC is a well-regarded survey organization, so you can't just dismiss the survey.  After looking at the report, I have a hypothesis.  The 1964, 1981, and 1992 surveys were conducted in person or over the phone; the 2019 and 2022 surveys were online.  But there was a change between 2019 and 2022:  "for the current survey, researchers opted to remove the 'Unsure/Don't Know' option for anti-Jewish tropes..."  The figure shows the percent agreeing out off all respondents, not just those who had an opinion.  For example, in 1964, 48% agreed that "Jews in business to out of their way to hire other Jews," 33% disagreed, and 19% had no opinion.  I couldn't find the "no opinion" rate for the 2019 survey--it doesn't seem to be archived--but my guess is that it was higher than in previous surveys.  With an interviewer, you are asked whether you agree or disagree--you have to volunteer a "no opinion."  Most people probably also want to cooperate with the interviewer and don't want to seem ignorant, so overall there is some push towards giving an answer.  In contrast, with an online survey that includes a no opinion box, it's on the same footing as any other answer.  So my hypothesis is that they had a large number of "don't knows" in 2019 and that a lot (maybe all) of the apparent increase in anti-semitic sentiments between 2019 and 2022 was a result of the elimination of that option.  I looked for other survey questions that could shed light on changes in anti-semitism.  There weren't many, but since 1964, the ANES has sometimes included a "feeling thermometer" for Jews, and the GSS has also included it a number of times.  The mean scores (on a 0-100 scale, with higher meaning more favorable):  There was no clear trend between 1964 and 2008, but the 2016 score was the highest ever, and 2020 set a new record.  So this question suggests a decline in antisemitism in recent years.  Despite the difficulty of interpretation resulting from the change in response options, the 2019 and 2022 data provide valuable information--the ADL ought to deposit them in one of the data archives.  [Some data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

The Cossack environment of the XVIII century in the framework of the first political emigration and within the framework of the Hetmanate in the Russian Empire, views and political and legal projects aimed at the organization of state relations by division of powers and overcoming of power contradictions between leading politicians is explored.The thesis is based on the fact that the main way of solving these problems was the orientation of the Cossack environment to constitutionalism, that is, the purposeful elaboration with the help of socio-political institutions of such legal norms that would regulate the relations between the representatives of power and society, between representatives of various authorities and levels.It is noted that Mazepa's political emigration, free from the military and administrative influence of the Russian imperial administration, was able to propose conceptual ways of resolving the issue of organizing state relations of the projected Cossack state of the Zaporozhian Army with the support of the constitutional norm. In particular, known «Covenants and the Constitution of the rights and freedoms of the Zaporozhian Army.» of April 5, 1710 primarily focused on limiting the powers of the hetman, considering them as a means of preventing tyranny in political life. Thus, the Hetman's institution was subordinate to the constitutional norms in the administration of justice, the leading role of law in the open political competition of the Hetman and the elders was asserted, when the latter received legal protection in all cases of private or public criticism of the hetman regarding the shortcomings of his policy, etc. It is argued that the very fact of the existence in the document of the norms aimed at limiting the powers of the first person in the state should be a warning against preventing arbitrariness in the political life of the projected «Zaporozhian Army» and one way to overcome the contradictions between its leading authorities.At that time, on the Left-Bank Ukraine-Hetmanate, under the influence of the Russian factor, the problem of separation of powers between the leading its subjects was reduced to the settlement of power contradictions and struggle between hetmans and general officers. The main struggle around this issue was in the context of limiting/strengthening their powers.On the basis of the analysis of two mutually exclusive tendencies in the development of the Hetmanate's political and legal thought regarding the solution of this problem, it is proved that even though such a struggle took place as a civilized one (the development of compromise political and legal norms, elements of state-representative democracy), and illegal (denunciations, conspiracies), it became a component of the orientations of the Cossack environment on constitutionalism. ; Досліджено вироблені у козацькому середовищі XVIII століття – в межах першої політичної еміграції та в межах Гетьманщини у складі Російської імперії – погляди й політико-правові проекти, спрямовані на організацію державних відносин за поділом повноважень та подолання владних суперечностей між провідними суб'єктами політики. Обґрунтовано тезу про те, що основним способом вирішення окреслених проблем стала орієнтація козацького середовища на конституціоналізм, себто на цілеспрямоване вироблення за допомогою суспільно-політичних інституцій таких правових норм, які б регулювали відносини між репрезентантами влади і суспільством, між представниками різних владних інституцій та рівнів. Наголошено на тому, що вільна від військового та адміністративного впливу російської імперської адміністрації мазепинська політична еміграція мала змогу запропонувати концептуальні шляхи вирішення питання організації державних відносин проектованої козацької держави – Війська Запорозького з опертям на конституційну норму. У той час на Лівобережній Україні-Гетьманщині під впливом російсь­кого чинника проблему поділу влади між провідними її суб'єктами було зведено до врегулювання владних суперечностей та боротьби між гетьманами та генеральною стар­шиною. На підставі аналізу двох взаємовиключних тенденцій розвитку політико-право­вої думки Гетьманщини щодо вирішення зазначеної проблеми доведено, що навіть попри те, що така боротьба відбувалася як цивілізованим (вироблення компромісних політичних та правових норм, елементів станово-представницької демократії), так і неправовим (доноси, змови) шляхами, вона стала складовою установок орієнтацій козацького середовища на конституціоналізм.

This book offers a truly interdisciplinary exploration of our patterns of engagement with politics, news, and information in current high-choice information environments. Putting forth the notion that high-choice information environments may contribute to increasing misperceptions and knowledge resistance rather than greater public knowledge, the book offers insights into the processes that influence the supply of misinformation and factors influencing how and why people expose themselves to and process information that may support or contradict their beliefs and attitudes. A team of authors from across a range of disciplines address the phenomena of knowledge resistance and its causes and consequences at the macro- as well as the micro-level. The chapters take a philosophical look at the notion of knowledge resistance, before moving on to discuss issues such as misinformation and fake news, psychological mechanisms such as motivated reasoning in processes of selective exposure and attention, how people respond to evidence and fact-checking, the role of political partisanship, political polarization over factual beliefs, and how knowledge resistance might be counteracted. This book will have a broad appeal to scholars and students interested in knowledge resistance, primarily within philosophy, psychology, media and communication, and political science, as well as journalists and policymakers.

Abstract: Although he is the most prolific writer of the Greek Anthology, Palladas' life is almost unknown. But, in spite of the limited biographical data, his work has fortunately been preserved in the GA. Because of his literary creation, the old times rewarded him with the nickname Μετέωρος, high, since the literary merits of a hundred poems of his authorship was recognized (others are discussed by critics). A dozen of them contains invaluable information about the political, religious and social situation in Alexandria immediately after the victory of the bishop Theophilus, Cyril's predecessor and uncle, during the conflict between Christians and Gentiles, each sector backed up by an Alexandrian population segment (cfr. 9.528, 10.82, 10.85) . Resigned at times, constantly demanding, Palladas complains about the decline of the belief professed by him due to the increasing penetration of the new faith. Therefore, four epigrams record the conversion of the temple of Tyche into a tavern (9.180-183) and 10.90 seems to attack the doctrine of the Resurrection. When religion and politics go hand-in-hand, when religious conspiracies link up with palace intrigues, consequences are predictable: a man called Doroteo denounced him for his negative response to the new dogma, which caused him the loss of his teacher paid work. His annoyance was even greater with further sufferings, chiefly economic, and he had to sell his books (9.171 and 9.175) among other desperate decisions Forewarned about his radical bitterness against Church, it is just to make clear that he is not fully acquiescent with ancient gods and heroes. Thus, in 5.257 he questions Zeus' ars amandi, in 9.377 refutes Tantalus' possibility of thirst and hunger in Hades and 9.773 mischievously points out that Eros has been changed into a pan. The work begins with the selection, personal translation and comprehensive analysis of twenty two epigrams. Through such philological aid, we attempt to verify the frictions and the main perceptible factors in his poetic creation to justify his worldview, according to the pagan sentiment widespread in that time before the twilight already overwhelming of its ailing traditions ; Resumen: Aunque es el escritor más prolífico de la AP, la vida de Páladas es prácticamente desconocida. Pero, a pesar de los escasos datos biográficos, ha quedado afortunadamente la obra. Por ella, los antiguos lo premiaron con el apodo de Μετέωρος, el elevado, ya que reconocieron los méritos literarios de sus ciento cincuenta poemas (más otros discutidos por la crítica). Una docena de ellos contiene inestimable información sobre la situación política, religiosa y social en Alejandría inmediatamente después del triunfo del obispo Teófilo, antecesor y tío de Cirilo, durante el conflicto entre cristianos y gentiles, cada sector respaldado por un segmento de la población alejandrina (cfr. 9.528, 10.82, 10.85). Resignado a veces, constantemente enérgico, Páladas se lamenta ante la declinación de las creencias por él profesadas a causa de la penetración creciente de la nueva fe. Así, cuatro epigramas suyos documentan la arbitraria transformación del templo de Tyche en una taberna (9.180 a 183) y 10.90 pareciera atacar la doctrina de la Resurrección. Siempre que religión y política van de la mano, cuando a las intrigas palaciegas se unen las confabulaciones religiosas, las consecuencias son previsibles: cierto Doroteo lo denunció por su rechazo del nuevo dogma, lo que le valió la pérdida de su trabajo remunerado como maestro. Su disgusto fue aún mayor ante los padecimientos que se agregaron, especialmente económicos, y entre otras medidas desesperadas debió vender sus libros (9.171 y 9.175). Prevenidos entonces sobre su radical resentimiento contra la Iglesia, es justo aclarar que tampoco resulta del todo complaciente con los dioses y héroes antiguos. Así, en 5.257 cuestiona el ars amandi de Zeus; en 9.377 rebate la posibilidad de sed y hambre de Tántalo en el Hades y en 9.773 indica pícaramente que Eros ha sido transformado en una sartén. El trabajo parte de la selección, traducción personal de la fuente griega y análisis integral de veintidós epigramas. Mediante tal apoyo filológico, se intenta verificar las tensiones y los principales factores perceptibles en su creación poética que justifican su cosmovisión, acorde con el sentimiento pagano generalizado de la época ante el crepúsculo ya insalvable de sus abatidas tradiciones

"conspiracy theories" are receiving increasing attention, they have a political and also educational concern, especially since the January and November 2015 attacks, where conspirationist readings of the events were tried on social media even before the first elements of the survey were gathered. it seems to me that conspiracy theories also pose interesting questions to epistemology, understood both as a general theory of knowledge, in the anglosaxon sense, and as a philosophy of science. The conspiracy theories — which might be better termed 'conspiracy arguments' to avoid relentless use of the technical term 'theory' — seem to mimic the scientific investigation, by their insistence on the elucidation of hidden causes to explain visible phenomena, whereas they often offer only a dubious confatar. ; International audience ; "conspiracy theories" are receiving increasing attention, they have a political and also educational concern, especially since the January and November 2015 attacks, where conspirationist readings of the events were tried on social media even before the first elements of the survey were gathered. it seems to me that conspiracy theories also pose interesting questions to epistemology, understood both as a general theory of knowledge, in the anglosaxon sense, and as a philosophy of science. The conspiracy theories — which might be better termed 'conspiracy arguments' to avoid relentless use of the technical term 'theory' — seem to mimic the scientific investigation, by their insistence on the elucidation of hidden causes to explain visible phenomena, whereas they often offer only a dubious confatar. ; Les « théories du complot » font l'objet d'une attention croissante, elles nourrissent une préoccupation politique, et également pédagogique, tout particulièrement depuis les attentats de janvier et de novembre 2015, où des lectures conspirationnistes des événements ont essaimé sur les réseaux sociaux avant même que les premiers éléments d'enquête n'aient été rassemblés.Quelle que soit ...

The new rise of Babylon is reported and its domination of the old world is described; when two dynasties ruled Neo- Babylonia from 612 BC to 330 BC. First, the Chaldeans had taken over from the Assyrians whom they had defeated and established their empire, which lasted for 77 years followed by the Achaemenid dynasty, which was to rule Babylonia for the remaining period as part of their empire. Out of the 77 years of the Chaldean period king, Nebuchadnezzar II ruled for 43 years, which were full of military achievements and construction works and organization. Apart from extending the borders of the empire, he had managed to construct large-scale hydraulic works which were intended for irrigation, navigation and even for defensive purposes. He excavated, re-excavated, and maintained four large feeder canals taking off from the Euphrates, which served the agriculture in the whole area between the Euphrates and the Tigris in the middle and lower Euphrates regions. Moreover, he was concerned with flood protection and so he constructed one large reservoir near Sippar at 60 km north of Babylon to be filled by the Euphrates excess water during floods and to be returned back to the river during low flow season in summer. His works involved river training projects, so he trained the Euphrates by digging artificial meanders to reduce the velocity of the flow and improving navigation and allow the construction of the canal intakes in a less turbulent flows. It seems also that he had diverted the river during the building of Babylon Bridge and trained the Euphrates River penetrating Babylon by constructing riverside revetments. Nebuchadnezzar II had the foresight for building extensive defensive fortifications to secure the country against possible enemy attacks from the north and adding to the walls and fortifications deep moats filled with water for higher security. This was the case with the wall he built north of Sippar. It extended over the whole distance between the two rivers, and the wall around Sippar itself. Similarly, he had dug a great moat alongside the wall of Babylon, which he supplied with water from the Euphrates. Moreover, he had introduced improvements on the four large feeder canals and the extensive canal networks that belonged to them to be used as water barriers against the advance of any enemy troops. Building temples and grand royal palaces and the Babylon Bridge took part of Nebuchadnezzar's attention and his name was linked with the "Babylon Hanging Gardens", one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, which he had built to please his wife. Description of the gardens according to historians is given in this book in addition to reporting the results of archeological digging of the supposed site, which can shed light on the irrigation method used to irrigate these elevated gardens. The flourishing agriculture and wealth and prosperity it had brought to Babylon during Nebuchadnezzar's reign is described in details, and the active trading and commercial dealing it had generated is also treated. The first banking services in history related to this period, which was linked to one Jewish family known as "House of Êigibi" is described. This family continued to serve for very long time by collecting the land rents and water taxes for canals use for the government, in addition to concluding contracts and ratifying transactions for the public. As bankers, they gave farmers loans to invest in all types of agrarian operations and practiced money transfers between various cities which helped trading especially with large scale export and imports of the various crops. The Chaldeans rule of Babylon came to an end in 539 BC when Babylon fell to the Achaemenids attacks that were already established in Persia led by Cyrus II. Babylon, however, kept a special position between the various capitols of this empire due to its splendor and wealth. It served therefore as the economical capitol and the winter residence of the kings Achaemenid Empire for most of this period while its agriculture continued to generate a great portion of the empire's revenue. The archive gave us information on the agrarian relations and the agricultural outputs in Babylonia at that period. During the Achaemenid times, as it was the case during the Chaldean times, irrigation systems in Babylonia were kept under close observation and good maintenance which kept agriculture at its best. The inevitable decline of this empire came in the end due to the rule of weak kings, conspiracies and palace intrigues, and finally the bitter defeat came on the hands of Alexander the Great who entered Babylon in 331 BC and kept it as the Jewel of his new empire. ; Validerad;2020;Nivå 1;2020-04-24 (alebob)

2017 Summer. ; Includes bibliographical references. ; The number and lethality of violent extremist plots motivated by the Salafi-jihadist ideology have been growing for nearly the last decade in both the U.S and Western Europe. While detecting the radicalization of violent extremists is a key component in preventing future terrorist attacks, it remains a significant challenge to law enforcement due to the issues of both scale and dynamics. Recent terrorist attack successes highlight the real possibility of missed signals from, or continued radicalization by, individuals whom the authorities had formerly investigated and even interviewed. Additionally, beyond considering just the behavioral dynamics of a person of interest is the need for investigators to consider the behaviors and activities of social ties vis-à-vis the person of interest. We undertake a fundamentally systems approach in addressing these challenges by investigating the need and feasibility of a radicalization detection system, a risk assessment assistance technology for law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The proposed system first mines public data and government databases for individuals who exhibit risk indicators for extremist violence, and then enables law enforcement to monitor those individuals at the scope and scale that is lawful, and account for the dynamic indicative behaviors of the individuals and their associates rigorously and automatically. In this thesis, we first identify the operational deficiencies of current law enforcement and intelligence agency efforts, investigate the environmental conditions and stakeholders most salient to the development and operation of the proposed system, and address both programmatic and technical risks with several initial mitigating strategies. We codify this large effort into a radicalization detection system framework. The main thrust of this effort is the investigation of the technological opportunities for the identification of individuals matching a radicalization pattern of behaviors in the proposed radicalization detection system. We frame our technical approach as a unique dynamic graph pattern matching problem, and develop a technology called INSiGHT (Investigative Search for Graph Trajectories) to help identify individuals or small groups with conforming subgraphs to a radicalization query pattern, and follow the match trajectories over time. INSiGHT is aimed at assisting law enforcement and intelligence agencies in monitoring and screening for those individuals whose behaviors indicate a significant risk for violence, and allow for the better prioritization of limited investigative resources. We demonstrated the performance of INSiGHT on a variety of datasets, to include small synthetic radicalization-specific data sets, a real behavioral dataset of time-stamped radicalization indicators of recent U.S. violent extremists, and a large, real-world BlogCatalog dataset serving as a proxy for the type of intelligence or law enforcement data networks that could be utilized to track the radicalization of violent extremists. We also extended INSiGHT by developing a non-combinatorial neighbor matching technique to enable analysts to maintain visibility of potential collective threats and conspiracies and account for the role close social ties have in an individual's radicalization. This enhancement was validated on small, synthetic radicalization-specific datasets as well as the large BlogCatalog dataset with real social network connections and tagging behaviors for over 80K accounts. The results showed that our algorithm returned whole and partial subgraph matches that enabled analysts to gain and maintain visibility on neighbors' activities. Overall, INSiGHT led to consistent, informed, and reliable assessments about those who pose a significant risk for some latent behavior in a variety of settings. Based upon these results, we maintain that INSiGHT is a feasible and useful supporting technology with the potential to optimize law enforcement investigative efforts and ultimately enable the prevention of individuals from carrying out extremist violence. Although the prime motivation of this research is the detection of violent extremist radicalization, we found that INSiGHT is applicable in detecting latent behaviors in other domains such as on-line student assessment and consumer analytics. This utility was demonstrated through experiments with real data. For on-line student assessment, we tested INSiGHT on a MOOC dataset of students and time-stamped on-line course activities to predict those students who persisted in the course. For consumer analytics, we tested the performance on a real, large proprietary consumer activities dataset from a home improvement retailer. Lastly, motivated by the desire to validate INSiGHT as a screening technology when ground truth is known, we developed a synthetic data generator of large population, time-stamped, individual-level consumer activities data consistent with an a priori project set designation (latent behavior). This contribution also sets the stage for future work in developing an analogous synthetic data generator for radicalization indicators to serve as a testbed for INSiGHT and other data mining algorithms.

The paper is devoted to a comparative analysis of the popular culture of the Cold War in the United States and in the USSR, namely, to the genres, which were stimulated by the public moods of the Cold War (noir, spy detective, etc.). It is argued that despite the refusal of Soviet critics to use Western terminology, the genres of noir and spy detective existed in the Soviet literature and cinema, but had their own national and cultural content. In particular, the images of "fatal women" and "female adventurers", who were central in the noir poetics, were not typical in the Soviet popular culture, excluding works devoted to the life abroad (in particular, novels by A. Tolstoy "Emigrants", "Hyperboloid of engineer Garin", etc.), however, noir motifs have appeared in the Soviet literature and cinema since the mid-1950s, when the official optimism of the Soviet public culture has been replaced by emotions of disappointment and tragic past (after J. Stalin's death and denunciation of his personality cult). The novels of the little-studied writers L. Ovalov ("The Copper Button") and H.-M. Muguev ("Doll of Mrs. Bark", "The Quiet City", "Fire Paw") were analyzed in the context of the biographies of their authors, gender politics of the novels and the Soviet concepts of "freedom" and the opposition of "friend" and "enemy". It is proved that the images of "adventurers" and style in the spy novels by Ovalov and Muguev reproduce the poetics of "noir" in the Soviet literature, which looked as authentic view in depicting war, emigration, espionage, captivity, conspiracies, and other existential situations. It was argued that the noir motifs in the late Soviet cinema were used in depicting the bipolar and hostile world in the spy genre ("The Secret Agent's Blunder", "17 Moments of Spring"), and also in depicting the postwar period of Soviet culture, losses of ideals and destroying a large number of people' destinies. It was argued that the "Soviet project" was not separated from the cultural mainstream of the 20th century, it experienced the influences of Western popular culture and its values. ; Статья посвящена сравнительному анализу популярной культуры в США и в СССР периода Холодной войны, а именно жанрам, расцвет которых был стимулирован общественными настроениями Холодной войны (нуар, шпионский детектив, др.). Утверждается, что несмотря на отказ советской критики использовать западную терминологию жанров, нуар и шпионский детектив существовали в советской литературе и кино, однако обладали собственным национально-культурным содержанием. В частности, образы «роковых женщин» и «авантюристок», центральные для стиля нуар, были не характерны для советской популярной культуры, исключая произведения, посвященные заграничной жизни (в частности, А. Толстой «Эмигранты», «Гиперболоид инженера Гарина», др), однако мотивы нуар появляются в советской литературе и кино с середины 1950х, когда на смену официальному оптимизму советской публичной культуры приходят эмоции разочарования, трагизма (после смерти И. Сталина и разоблачения его культа личности). В статье проанализированы романы малоисследованных писателей Л. Овалова («Медная пуговица») и Х.-М. Мугуева («Кукла госпожи Барк», «В тихом городе», «Огненная лапа») в контексте биографий их авторов, гендерных политик романов и советских концептуализаций «свободы» и оппозиции «свой-чужой». Доказывается, что образы «авантюристок» и стиль шпионских романов Овалова и Мугуева воспроизводит поэтику «нуар» в советской литературе, которая оказывается востребованной при изображении экзистенциальных состояний войны, эмиграции, шпионажа, плена, заговоров, и т.д. Показано, что в позднесоветской культуре мотивы нуар используются в кино при изображении биполярного и враждебного мира в произведениях шпионского жанра («Ошибка резидента», «17 мгновений весны»), а также при изображении поствоенного периода советской культуры с точки зрения потери идеалов и разрушенных судеб большого количества людей. Утверждается, что «советский проект» не был отделен от культурного мейнстрима ХХ века, он испытывал культурно-стилевые и ценностные влияния западной популярной культуры, и сам оказывал определенные влияния на нее. ; Стаття присвячена порівняльному аналізу популярної культури в США і в СРСР періоду Холодної війни, а саме жанрам, розквіт яких був стимульований соціальними настроями Холодної війни (нуар, шпигунський детектив, ін.). Стверджується, що незважаючи на відмову радянської критики використовувати західну термінологію жанрів, нуар і шпигунський детектив існували в радянській літературі і кіно, проте мали власний національно-культурний зміст. Зокрема, образи «фатальних жінок» і «авантюристок», центральні для стилю нуар, були не характерні для радянської популярної культури, виключаючи твори, присвячені закордонному життю (наприклад, романи А. Толстого «Емігранти», «Гіперболоїд інженера Гаріна», ін ), проте мотиви нуару з'являються в радянській літературі і кіно з середини 1950х, коли на зміну офіційному оптимізму радянської публічної культури приходять емоції розчарування, трагізму життя (після смерті Й. Сталіна і викриття його культу особистості). У статті проаналізовано романи малодосліджених письменників Л. Овалова («Мідний гудзик») і Х.-М. Мугуева («Лялька пані Барк», «В тихому місті», «Вогняна лапа») в контексті біографій їх авторів, гендерних політик романів і радянських концептуалізацій «свободи» і опозиції «свій-чужий». Доводиться, що образи «авантюристок» і поетика шпигунських романів Овалова і Мугуева відтворює поетику «нуар» в радянській літературі, яка виявляється затребуваною при зображенні екзистенційних станів війни, еміграції, шпигунства, полону, і подібне. Доводиться, що в позднярадянській культурі мотиви нуару використовуються в кіно при зображенні біполярного і ворожого світу в фільмах шпигунському жанрі («Помилка резидента», «17 миттєвостей весни»), а також при зображенні поствоєнного періоду радянської культури з точки зору втрати ідеалів і зруйнованих доль великої кількості людей. Стверджується, що «радянський проект» не був відділений від культурного мейнстріму ХХ століття, він відчував культурно-стильові і ціннісні впливу західної популярної культури, і сам надавав певні впливи на неї.

This has been an unusually tough year. The SARS-CoV-2, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, emerged in January 2020. The World Health Organization announced "covid-19" as the name of this new disease on 11 February 2020 while the world kept looking to China. Within weeks, the virus managed to circumvent the globe and engulfed the world into a pandemic unlike any seen for generations (Platto et al. 2020). To date, more than 73 million people have been infected and some 1.6 million people have died according to the World Health Organization (WHO 2020).Science has been issuing warnings of looming pandemics for decades. "The single biggest threat to man's continued dominance on the planet is the virus." A punching quote from the Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg in the 1990s. Previous epidemics and outbreaks like SARS in 2003, bird flu H5N1 in 2005, and Ebola (2014–2016), were alarm bells (Servigne et al. 2020). Yet, we went about our business ignoring those early warning signs. It seems that our immediate priorities are more pressing, our collective memory short and the Spanish flu—the last global pandemic caused by the HiN1 influenza that killed more than 50 million people or more than 2.5% of the World population, within the span of 2 years—too distant in time to create concern.The global society came to a quasi-standstill. Travelling dropped to almost zero during the first wave experienced in March and April this year. The skies were almost free of airplanes. Oceans free of boats. Streets almost empty. Many national borders closed. People forced to stay in their houses. Only Nature took a moment to breathe (Corlette et al. 2020). This situation of reduced human activities, coined "anthropause" by some scientists (Rutz et al. 2020, Stockstad 2020), led to dramatic drops in air pollution, and for example whales being seen in waters that usually are noisy and full of boats.Impacts of this ongoing pandemic are devastating on several levels. The tragic loss of so many human lives due to this new disease risks leading us forgetting about HIV, Malaria, Tuberculosis, and other diseases, causing annually millions of casualties. The Pandemic has battered the economy, disrupted supply chains and slowed international trade. It has disrupted the livelihoods of most of humanity. Many governments are struggling with the devastating economic costs. Already unlikely to be reached by 2030 before the pandemic, the Sustainable Development Goals now need to be carefully reassessed, as the pandemic's impacts likely further threaten many of the 169 SDGs targets (Naidoo and Fisher 2020).So far, Africa remains one of the least affected regions worldwide by the virus despite an announced disaster (Nordling 2020). In Madagascar, a scientific study carried out over nine months by the Institute Pasteur and the Ministry of Health suggests a covid-19 prevalence level of close to 40% (Tétaud and Spiegel 2020). This means considerable spreading of the virus within the population, which is trending towards a level experts would label as herd immunity (but see Fontanet and Cauchemez 2020). Madagascar has officially accounted for less than 300 deaths. Taking this number with a grain of salt, the reason may be found in its demographic profile: some 60% of 27 million inhabitants are of age 25 or younger, while the higher covid-19 risk groups (>55 years) comprise less than 10% of the population. Science still needs to find the answer to this question and many more (e.g., Nordling 2020, Zeberg and Pääbo 2020).A rare positive note emerging from this pandemic: Science emerges as a winner. Never in human history was the development of vaccines—a global race leading to some +150 candidates, some with >90% effectiveness—so fast and efficient. It took science less than 11 months from the discovery of this new virus to the distribution of the vaccines. This is truly remarkable and a result of international collaborations. Now that first candidates are already on the market, it remains to be seen how distribution of these vaccines will play out. How collaborative will human society actually be? Who will get a shot first? Who will have to pay for it and how much? More importantly, who will likely never get a chance to be vaccinated against covid-19? We refrain from conspiracies, but politics has shown in this spectral year of 2020, that, if anything, it can be extremely disruptive and divisive—take the USA as a sully example. To date, 7.48 billion vaccine doses have been pre-purchased. Some 40% may go to middle- and low-income countries that account for some 85% of the world population (So and Woo 2020). Nine out of 10 people from 67 low- and middle-income countries are set to miss out on the covid-19 vaccination in 2021. Madagascar is one of those (Oxfam 2020). Sadly, maybe herd immunity—through exposure to the virus, not vaccination—might be a more realistic strategy after all for some countries.A number of factors can come into play and potentially pave the way for the emergence of infectious diseases like covid-19. (1) The globe has become a village. Increased mobility allowed more than 4.5 billion passengers to fly in 2019. Within a day, one can hop around half the globe, and so can a virus. (2) Over half of the human population lives in urban areas. Increasingly high-density cities are an ideal habitat for a virus to jump from host to host. (3) Climate defines the biophysical boundaries that allow species or populations to thrive. Climate change—leading to increased temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, increased frequency of extreme weather events—are shifting these boundaries (Ceballos et al. 2020, Watsa et al. 2020) and laying grounds for vectors—insects, bats, people—and their diseases to spread and establish. (4) Digging deeper into natural habitats by ways of agricultural expansion, infrastructure, and wood extraction—to mention the most salient direct drivers of deforestation—are increasingly exposing humans to zoonotic diseases. Wildlife trade is yet another means to bring humans directly in contact with animals—while calls for bans only risk undermining their purpose (Roe et al. 2020)—potentially further opening the doors to viruses spreading (McCleery et al. 2020).A tough year to say the least. The years to come, however, will only become more challenging. While we will eventually overcome this pandemic, the virus will likely remain amongst us, similarly to the flu viruses. A global economic depression is looming and recovering from this will be a gargantuan task, while the pandemic may have revealed that our economic system is sick and not adapted to the survival of our species. The biggest threat to all life on Earth is already underway and will only grow in severity—the climate crisis. All in all, the perfect storm.

 Enter the DragonWhen I first read that Naomi Klein wrote a book about being confused for her doppelgänger, Naomi Wolf, I was initially amused. I had written earlier about the doppelgänger as the monster of our times, and it seemed that Klein was confirming that thesis. Klein dealing with Wolf seemed like it might be a fun distraction, but as I read the book, I was immediately struck with the fact that Klein is taking on more than a particular case of mistaken identity. Her book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, is in some sense an attempt to make sense of the world we are living in a world dominated by social media doppelgangers in which the work of political and social criticism has its own dark doppelganger in the world of conspiracy theories. It is not just that Naomi Wolf gets confused with Naomi Klein, both are women who wrote mainstream "big idea" books, The Beauty Myth and No Logo, have similar physical appearances, and their husbands are even both named Avi, but that this confusion reveals another doppelgänger, another double, our online or virtual self. As Klein writes, we live in "a culture crowded with various forms of doubling, in which all of us who maintain a persona or avatar online create our own doppelgängers--virtual versions of ourselves that represent us to others. A culture in which many of us have come to think of ourselves as personal brands, forging a partitioned identity that is both us and not us, a doppelgänger we perform ceaselessly in the digital ether as the price of admission in a rapacious attention economy." Klein's struggle with being confused with Wolf is also a recognition, that Klein, the author of No Logo, has another double, her "brand." This is what most people know her as, the author of critical books on the culture, politics, and economy of capitalism. Klein is aware that it is ironic to point out that the author of No Logo has a brand, but such a brand, an identity, are increasingly indispensable factors of living and working as a writer. As she puts it, the idea of a personal brand seemed like a dystopian future when it was proposed in the late nineties, but now it is a dystopian reality, anyone with a social media account has a double, a brand, that they can manage, and some need this brand to survive. The Lady From Shanghai Klein's book is not just about Wolf usurping her digital identity, but about Wolf's own descent into what Klein calls the "mirror world." the world of conspiracy theories, especially those that have metastasized in American culture since Trump and Covid. Wolf's descent into this world is very much a dive of the deep end. Wolf has tweeted about vaccinated people losing their smell, they no longer smell human, about the risk of the feces of the vaccinated contaminating drinking water, and most famously about vaccine passports and contact tracing being the end of human freedom. It is easy to mock all of this, but Klein does not play this for the laughs, she tries to understand the causes and crises underlying the paranoid fantasies. One common retort to the paranoid fears of contact tracing, vaccine passports, and even microchips hidden in vaccines is to simply say, "wait until they hear about cellphones," to point out that the surveillance that is feared is already here and for the most part broadly accepted. Klein supposes instead that they, those who spread such theories, already know about cellphones, already know about surveillance and the loss of a certain kind of anonymity and freedom. It is this awareness that appears backwards and distorted in the fears of vaccines laden with nanotechnology to monitor and control us. Their fears about vaccines, about being tracked and monitored, is in some sense a fantasy that they can do something about this increase of surveillance. They can refuse the vaccine, and thus opt out of what many of us find it impossible to opt out of, a world where our every motion, every transaction, is monitored. Klein's concept of a mirror world is both a reflection and refraction of our existing world. In some sense it reflects our world, but through a kind of distortion, shaped by our illusions and fantasies. Conspiracy theories are right to point to the control of a powerful elite, but wrong in thinking that this elite is secret, or that its motives are anything other than daily life under capitalism.  As Klein writes, "There was no need for histrionics about how unvaccinated people were experiencing "apartheid" when there was a real vaccine apartheid between rich and poor countries, no need to cook up fantasies about Covid "internment camps" when the virus was being left to rip through prisons, meat packing plants, and Amazon warehouses as if the people's lives inside had no value at all."The fears of the Covid alarmists of a dark future to come are the reality of existing life under Covid. What Klein proposes is in some sense a symptomatic reading of conspiracy theories, finding their points of reflection and refraction of the existing world. The Man With the Golden Gun(In case it is not clear I am illustrating this with Hall of Mirrors scenes from films)With respect to the latter, the refractions and distortions, reading Doppelganger  it is possible to find three causes or conditions underlying the distortions of the mirror world. Three aspects of existing ideology that distort and warp the way that this world responds to actual crises and problems. First, is idea of the individual, of the autonomous individual. This belief in autonomy and self reliance is the common core that connects the "wellness industry," yoga instructors, gym gurus, etc., who deny the need for vaccines and even masks for healthy people, with survivalists, who see them as an imposition by the state. Both insist on a purely individual response to a collective condition. Of course in doing so they are only acting on the basic premise of a capitalist society, which privatizes every social problem into a commodity.  During Covid many doubled down on this, insisting that one could get through the pandemic with everything from Vitamin D supplements and essential oils to horse medicine. Yoga instructors, vegans, and Fox News audiences might seem to be politically opposed, but they all are different expressions of what Klein calls hyper-individualism, responding to social collapse with individual responses of wellness and self-protection. As absurd as all of these homegrown cures and remedies were they were perhaps not as absurd as the notion that the US as a society could shift its entire economy and ethics, transforming all of those people we do not think about, the people who grow, ship, make, and deliver our food into essential workers. As Klein writes, "With no warning, the message from much of our political and corporate classes change diametrically. It turned out that we were a society after all, that the young and healthy should make sacrifices for the old and ill; that we should wear masks as an act of solidarity with them, if not for ourselves; and that we should all applaud and thank the very people--many of them Black, many of them women, many of them born in poorer countries--whose lives and labor had been most systematically devalued, discounted and demeaned before the pandemic."Many embraced conspiracies rather than adjust to this new concern for essential workers, the elderly, and the sick, but in doing so they followed to the letter the dominant image of our society, a society founded on isolation, self-interest, and competition. As Klein details, often suspicion of things like free vaccines stemmed from a deeper internalization of the fundamental idea of capitalism. Why would a society that charges for a visit to the emergency room give away a life saving vaccine?This idea of the individual has its own little doppelgänger, the child. A great deal of the opposition to vaccines, mask mandates, and shutdowns was framed as protecting children from the supposed threats these things supposedly represent, spectres like "learning loss" rather than the reality of a pandemic. These threats all stem from a particular idea of a child, a child as extension of the self, and possession of their parents. "So many of the battles waged in the Mirror World--the "anti-woke" laws, the "don't say gay" bills, the blanket bans on gender-affirming medical care, the school board wars over vaccines and masks--come down to the same question: What are children for? Are they their own people, and our job, as parents is to support and protect them as they find their paths? Or are they our appendages, our extensions, our spin-offs, our doubles, to shape and mold and ultimately benefit from? So many of these parents seem convinced that they have a right to exert absolute control over their children without any interference or input: control over their bodies (by casting masks and vaccines as a kind of child rape or poisoning); control over their bodies (by casting masks and vaccines as a kind of child rape or poisoning); control over their minds (by casting anti-racist eductions as the injection of foreign ideas into their minds of their offspring); control over their gender and sexuality (by casting any attempt to discuss the range of possible gender expressions and sexual orientations as "grooming")."If the focus on individual health and the wellbeing of one's offspring sounds like eugenics, that is not accidental. This brings us to the third condition for distortion, race. As Klein argues Naomi Wolf, like many of the anti-vaccination movement,  regularly invoke the holocaust or the civil rights struggle in their rhetoric. Wolf has even had her own sit-ins opposing vaccine mandates at lunch counters, her term, even as she singles out Black owned businesses for her protests. Throughout the mirror world there is a desire to appropriate the signs and images of ethnic exclusion, (remember the store that sold yellow stars that said "Not Vaccinated?" ) and racial justice, from sitting in at lunch counters to using Eric Garner's famous cry "I can't breathe" to protest mask mandates. In the mirror world it is white people who are both the true victims of discrimination and the real protagonists of social justice.Us This appropriation of the terms and history of racial justice is coupled with an absolute indifference to its current status. The year of shutdowns and mandates was also the summer of some of the largest protests of the "Black Lives Matter" movement. "If you were a person concerned that Covid marked the dawn of a new age of CCP inspired mass obedience, surely it would be worth mentioning that the largest protests in the history of the United States happened in the Covid era, with millions of people willing to face clouds of tear gas and streams of pepper spray to exercise their rights to speech, assembly and dissent. Come to think of it, if you were a person concerned with tyrannical state actions, you would also be concerned about the murders and mass denials of freedom to incarcerated people that drove the uprising. Yet in all the videos Wolf has put out issuing her dire warnings about how the United States was turning into a nation of sheeple, I have seen her acknowledge neither the existence of this racial justice reckoning nor the reality that if a Black person had pulled the same stunt that she did at the Blue Bottle or Grand Central Station, they very likely would have ended up face down in cuffs--not because vaccine rules were tyrannical, but because of systemic anti-Black racism in policing, the issue that sparked the protests she has so studiously ignored. I would argue that while Naomi Wolf might not have mentioned Black Lives Matter, she definitely noticed it. Her "lunch counter sit in" at a Blue Bottle Cafe would seem to reveal that. It was definitely noticed by the larger mirror world for which the site of millions of people in the streets protesting racism  when they could not go to the gym or to a restaurant was a wrong, a violation of the order of the world, that they could not tolerate. As Klein argues much Mirror World thinking is an attempt for white people to rewrite the history of the present--making them the true victims of repression and the true heroes. The real struggle was not in the streets fighting against police repression but screaming at the hostess at the restaurant asking for proof of vaccination. As much as Klein draws the lines of demarcation between "mirror world" thinking, between conspiracies and critical thought, any such division is going to be an unstable one. In the end it is not just that Naomi Wolf is confused for Naomi Klein but that theories about microchips in vaccines or vaccines rewriting our DNA are confused for criticisms of contemporary surveillance and the pharmaceutical industry. Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine has been appropriated and reappropriated by everyone from Second Amendment activists arguing about "false flags" to those that argue that global warming will produce a new global surveillance state. Klein's book ultimately is not just about her own struggle with a doppelgänger, but how any critical thinker, anyone on "the left," for lack of a better word, will always confront a doppelgänger. Every critic of the invasion of Iraq has to deal with "truthers" who claim that 9/11 was an inside job, every critic of the failure of the US to respond to the pandemic will ultimately have to deal with claims of microchips and genetic engineering. What starts out as one persons struggle with a very singular condition of mistaken identity ultimately is a story about all of us. We are all in the hall of mirrors now. Klein has also charted something of a path out, by showing the ideologies of individualism, the family, and the race, that distort any awareness of our conditions into its mirror world opposite. Lastly, Klein like Bruce Lee before her knew that you have to smash a few mirrors to escape a hall of mirrors, and this includes, for Klein, giving up on one's own image, one's brand, learning to think and act collectively rather than individually.