This is a great forum devoted to the notion of communication. Personally, for me, it will be useful because I can share my individual experience with others. I had some difficulties when I was at college until one moment when I found one useful source which helped me to write my discussion task and other stuff. I'm sure it will be interesting for other people.

Court: Silence can be used against suspects 
 
“It’s a very dangerous ruling,” Zilversmit said. “If you say anything to the police, that can be used against you. Now, if you don’t say anything before you are warned of your rights, that too can be used against you.”
 
The state Supreme Court in a 4-3 ruling said Tom needed to explicitly assert his right to remain silent — before he was read his Miranda rights — for the silence to be inadmissible in court.
 
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/15/court_si..._suspects/
 
 

China is widely regarded as a millennia-old nation-state, but this is a misconception, journalist Bill Hayton claims in his new book. He spoke to DW about the nation-building process in China.

In his new book, The Invention of China, journalist Bill Hayton reconstructs the nation-building process of modern China. He shows how nationalist-minded intellectuals and activists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries took up Western concepts of people, language, territory and history, among other things, to paint a picture of a millennia-old nation-state that, in fact, never existed.     

In an interview with DW, Hayton explains China's nation-building process, how it affects other countries and how democratic nations should react to an increasingly nationalistic Beijing.

DW: When did the nation-building process in China take place?

Bill Hayton: I would say it's an ongoing process. For example, after the victory of the Communists (in the Chinese civil war from 1945-49), Marxism was the most important factor. But it divided the nation into those who were against and those who fought for the revolution.

After the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and killings, there was an attempt to redefine the Chinese nation, and to bring the Taiwanese and the people who were on the losing side of the civil war back into the nation.

Recently, President Xi Jinping added a new layer, by trying to bring in all of them who are considered ethnic minorities — like the Tibetans, the Uighurs and so on — into a single Chinese nation. And that again has been a redefinition of what the Chinese nation is.
Bill Hayton, journalist and associate fellow at the UK think tank Chatham House

Hayton: 'Xi now seems committed to the idea that there has to be a single way of being Chinese, a single way of being part of the Chinese nation'

The idea of the Chinese nation has changed quite a lot. One of the core things, and obviously this is what Xi Jinping is trying to wrestle with at the moment, is this idea of whether there is a single Chinese nation, a single Zhonghua minzu, or whether there are 56 different nations, i.e. ethnic groups within the country — the word minzu is used for both.

And Xi now seems committed to the idea that there has to be a single way of being Chinese, a single way of being part of the Chinese nation, and he's going to impose that with a very heavy hand.

Most people worldwide view China as a nation with a millennia-old roots. What would you say is wrong about this perception?

How does China's nation-building process affect other countries dealing with the People's Republic?

What the People's Republic wants to do is to cut down discussion, make the price of diplomatic and trading relations with China as the acceptance of Chinese definitions of its nation and territory and so forth.

Companies are penalized if they, for example, mention Taiwan as a separate place on their websites. Universities get into trouble if they allow the Dalai Lama to come and speak on their campus.

China uses its economic leverage to stifle perfectly legitimate discussions or statements about reality, like the fact that Taiwan has been governed as a separate state for decades.

And they are trying to stop discussion of alternatives not just in their own country, but also in other countries. We've seen it in Australia where the Chinese embassy presented its list of 14 complaints. Among them was the fact that the media and think tanks had been expressing views that the Chinese government didn't like.

https://www.dw.com/en/china-history-and-...a-56136222

“Princes of the Yen: Central Banks and the Transformation of the Economy” reveals how Japanese society was transformed to suit the agenda and desire of powerful interest groups, and how citizens were kept entirely in the dark about this.
 
 
https://youtu.be/p5Ac7ap_MAY
 
 
 

i dreamed i was living on mars and all i had was a tarp to put over head. it was windy on mars. so i dug a hole and collected rocks to build a wall around it to keep the weather out. i used the tarp as a roof over my hole. an angel gave me bacon and eggs and coffee every morning. i also had a blanket. later on in the dream the weather got rougher and i looked around and found a cave. that was ok.

Seventy percent of American adults — and three of every four men 25 and older — were overweight or obese from 2007 to 2012, representing even more weight problems than estimated.
 
A study by the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, published online Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that 75 percent of men and 67 percent of women during that five-year span were overweight or obese, with the highest percentages among Mexican men at 80.9 percent and non-Hispanic African-American women at 82.6 percent.
 
Read more at http://www.toledoblade.com/Food/2015/06/...finds.html

John Dee (July 13, 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was a noted British mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, occultist, and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I. He also devoted much of his life to alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy.
 
:candleflame:   :candleflame:   :candleflame:
 
Dr. Dee straddled the worlds of science and magic just as they were becoming distinguishable. One of the most learned men of his time, he had lectured to crowded halls at the University of Paris when still in his early twenties. He was an ardent promoter of mathematics, a respected astronomer and a leading expert in navigation, having trained many of those who would conduct England’s voyages of discovery. (He coined the term “British Empire.”) At the same time, he immersed himself deeply in Judeo-Christian magic and Hermetic philosophy, devoting the last third of his life almost exclusively to these pursuits. For Dee, as with many of his contemporaries, these activities were not contradictory, but particular aspects of a consistent world-view.
 
http://www.faust.com/legend/john-dee/
 
 

 
 
Dr. John Dee, despite his apparent delusions, was one of the keenest minds of his time. He his credited for making the calculations that would enable England to use the Gregorian calendar, he championed the preservation and the collection of historic documents and he was very well known for being a great astronomer and mathematician. It could be said that Dr. Dee was the one of the first modern scientists, although he was one of the last serious alchemists, necromancers and crystal gazers.
 
http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articl..._john.html
 
 
:butterfly:
 
 
:)
 

 
 
 
 

On the Wind River Indian Reservation, two animals slip between the cracks of what is wild and what isn’t.

Across Indian Country, tribes are working to restore one species and sustainably manage the other. Both buffalo and horses have troubled places in the American West, mirror images of wildness, colonialism and Indigeneity. Two ungulates occupy the same physical territory — but on seemingly different maps. Each testifies to the unresolved questions of what, and who, the West is for.

WHEN ASKED HOW MANY WILD HORSES are on the Wind River Reservation, Art Lawson, the Shoshone and Arapaho Fish and Game director, couldn’t say. “We really don’t have a clue,” said Lawson. “We have 2.2 million acres that we cover, and I only have three wardens and two U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologists.” But he thinks 10,000 might be a reasonable estimate: “We’ve got to be close to that.”

Whatever the population is, Lawson says that it’s growing fast, doubling every four years. Now, because of the added grazing pressure, mule deer no longer migrate through the reservation, and bighorn sheep are growing scarce. “There’s no feed — there’s nothing but horse trails,” Lawson said.

To the untrained eye, wild horses are indistinguishable from captive ones. They’re lively, well-fed, and colorful enough to fill out a glossary of horse terms: palominos, roans, sorrels, pintos. They look more comfortable on the open range than the skittish pronghorn antelope loping through the same sagebrush. They gather in small herds of about 10, with a single male orbiting the rest, as if to maintain order. When humans approach, the horses form a neat line, like mismatched dominoes staggered behind the stallion.

They range over vast stretches of unirrigated sagebrush steppe, up to the dense groves of aspen that begin above 7,000 feet. Their watering areas and crisscrossing trails are worn to powder. In places, 4-foot-wide heaps of manure known as “stud piles” mark the stallions’ territorial claims. They’re so numerous now that they rival cattle for the distinction of being the dominant animal in the landscape.

The reservation was established in the 1860s and overseen by the Bureau of Indian Affairs with the goal of assimilating the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho into farmers and ranchers. This left wildlife to fill out the margins, usually in mountainous terrain or areas with poor access to water. Back then, there was constant pressure from hunters. Now, horses are competing with both wildlife and cattle for the landscape’s limited forage.

With limited rangeland already under pressure, some ranchers worry that setting aside acreage for buffalo implies taking land away from cattle and sheep. Across the West, many have protested buffalo reintroduction on those very grounds.  But that’s just one part of the story.

“It’s not too hard to see racism around here,” Jason Baldes told me on the first day we met. He wore his long hair in a thick braid and two rings in each ear. “The last racist slur I got was opening the gate to the buffalo.” Two men drove by, “calling me ‘prairie n****r’ — that kind of crap.” He steered the conversation along, almost dismissively. “This is way bigger than any of those knuckleheads that want to yell at me.”

https://www.hcn.org/issues/53.12/indigen...-belonging

Hello. And Bye.