Man is certainly not born, but made man. (Erasmus)

It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled. (Mark Twain)

Fixation exists across all levels of the biological hierarchy, from cells to behavior, and therefore constitutes a fundamental variable in all life. Fixations are an obsessive preoccupation with a single idea, impulse, or aim which interferes with normal behavior. In Freud, the id attaches to an object, leading to fetishism.

 

It is fundamental to human society; before capitalism as religious rituals, in our secular age, culminating in commodity fetishism, a fixation essential to capitalism, an economy defined by consumption. Where advertising is a form of behavioral conditioning, everybody will be perfectly pacified as long as their needs and wants are conflated in their own minds. No strife, no angst.

 

The most fundamental fixation of all is the male-female mutual sexual fixation,

The history of our Story

Firing the first shots: Honduras and odious debt

Out of control, permanent crisis, role of government

клин клином or Make love not war

Exercise: rethink the Story, demonetize

What you can do

Cold ugly cynicism or warm beautiful passion

This weighty tome by Andrew Solomon, "one of the ten best nonfiction books of 2012" according to the New York Times, is a fascinating read—chock full of gripping testimonials from a wide range of parents and their children, afflicted and/or blessed by their disabilities, describing how they struggled to adjust to the demands of society. At the same time, the author, a senior write for the NYT, has an agenda which on the surface looks quite innocent: to shape the reader’s view of disability towards greater tolerance of the ‘other’. A prominent liberal and gay public figure, his work is a kind of pinnacle of secular postmodernism, where everyone has a niche or slot, where all are equal and all lifestyles are equally valid, including families headed by 'two mommies', 'two daddies', or in the case of the author 'three mommies and two daddies'.

Review: Dan Steinbock, The Fall of Israel: The Degradation of Israel’s Politics, Economy & Military, 2025.

Interview with Opperman Report July 2024 -- Ames and Cold War then and now

Review: Scott Anderson, Four CIA spies at the dawn of the Cold War -- a tragedy in three acts (2021) 

Review: Diana Johnstone, Circle in the Darkness: Memoir of a World Watcher (2020) 

Review: Richard Falk, Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim, Clarity Press (2021)

Walberg's bike adventures in and around Toronto (ok, walking around Gaspe and some religion too)

Peterborough-Oshawa-Toronto by bike 14 July 2024

Biking the Grand: Reinventing tourism 06 July 2023

Shakespeare by bike 25 June 2022

Humpty Dumpty is ravenous but the world is watching.

http://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/131612

It took a genocide for Torontonians to commit themselves to the goal of defeating Israel. It turns out Iranian President Akhmedinejad was right after all. 'Israel' must be wiped off the map. It is an ugly cancer that could kill its Earthly host. But it will disappear only by the will of the people, Palestinian, Canadian, Jewish-Christian-Muslim united. 

Внезапно президент Трамп перестал быть дураком, марионеткой своих генералов. Его последние, исторические твиты взорвались как настоящие бомбы. «Уход из Сирии не был сюрпризом. Я выступал за это годами, и шесть месяцев назад, когда я об этом говорил публично, то согласился подождать. Россия, Иран, Сирия и другие — это локальные враги ИГИЛ. Мы выполняли там (так! опечатка, должно быть «их». — Э.В.) работу».