Tags
9/11 Truthers, Blowback, Capitalism, Chemtrails, Climate Change Denial, Conspiracy Theorists, Consumerism, Corporate State, Corporatocracy, Empire, Inverted Totalitarianism, Noam Chomsky, Occam's Razor, Resource Wars, The Principle of Parsimony, The Principle of Plurality, War for Profit
Occam’s razor, or Ockham’s razor, is a line of reasoning which uses succinctness and simplicity, employing the least assumptions to arrive at the most probable hypothesis that fits the available evidence. In other words, given two equally plausible explanations for a given phenomenon, the one making the fewest assumptions is more likely correct. Its foundation rests on two guiding principle to cut through falsehoods and pseudoscience reasoning:
- The Principle of Plurality – Plurality should not be posited without necessity
- The Principle of Parsimony – It is pointless to do with more what is done with less
In the search for truth, this tool of reasoning has been used throughout history by scientists and philosophers in the creation of models and theories, by detectives in solving crimes, and by objective researchers in debunking convoluted conspiracy theories. Occam’s razor is embodied by the probability theory which says that “all assumptions introduce possibilities for error and if an assumption does not improve the accuracy of a theory, its only effect is to increase the probability that the overall theory is wrong.” It is a heuristic method to guide scientists in the development of theoretical models. In the case of anthropogenic climate change, it can be applied to show how those who are skeptical about AGW are forced to weave a much more tangled web in order to explain things:
The serious, mainstream science view goes like this:
- The greenhouse effect is real. Without it, average surface temperatures would be -15C, not +15C
- CO2 is a greenhouse gas
- CO2 levels have increased by 41% since pre-industrial times
- A 100% increase will cause a 1.2C rise in earth surface temperatures
- This rise will in turn cause a 3C (+/- 1.5C) rise in surface temperature.
Explanatory video on this point here - Any rise above 2C must be avoided
Reasonably simple, given the vast complexity of our planet’s climatic system, and in fact the handful of serious climate scientists on the “sceptic” side agree with points 1-4.
Now here is the climate “sceptic’s” case:
- The earth is not warming
- If it is warming, it is due to the sun
- The warming is due to some kind of natural variation
- It’s going to get cooler soon
- CO2 is too tiny to make a difference
- CO2 will make a difference but there’s nothing we can do about it
- We can afford to wait another 10-50 years to see if it is going to get hot then do something about it then
- It is going to warm but only a bit
- CO2 is good for us
- Cloud cover will extend in a warmer planet and cool us down (No it will not)
- All models are always wrong
- Some models show that the climate will not warm much
- It is all a conspiracy by climatologists, Greens, the nuclear industry and the UN
- It cannot be happening because it would mean that fossil energy would become unprofitable
- It is cold outside today
- Heat cannot get into the ocean
- And so on
- And so forth
What the above shows is that there is an endless complexity to the arguments brought by the “sceptics”, many of them self-contradictory.
They are not trying to present a coherent picture of reality, which is the aim of science. They are merely producing a stream of counter statements. I have been impressed recently that when I try to discuss the one point where agreement exists with a delayer, they rapidly change the subject to find disagreement.
In fact, their case often boils down to a mirror image of the case for man-made global warming. If we say white, they just say black.
I predict therefore that soon “sceptic” blogs will be quoting William of Occam as evidence for the truth of their case.
Another cock-eyed conspiracy theory is chemtrails which astronomer Bob Berman deconstructs using the logic of Occam’s razor:
Some folks regard contrails suspiciously. Apparently, many don’t know what they are. Several websites call the lines chemtrails, and think that the US military is deliberately spraying a substance upon the population.
This is silly for a number of reasons. First, if you’ve ever watched crop dusting you know that chemicals must be released very close to the ground. Released on high, they’d dissipate with the wind and take forever to get down; the concentration on the folks below would be zero. Second, my commercial pilot friends (along with the controllers at the FAA) would all have to go along with the plot, since they’d see the process happening. I’m a pilot and airplane owner myself: It’s NOT happening. Third, what would be the purpose? Some say mind control. But are people acting differently lately? Others say it’s to sow disease. But why would anyone want to do this? Who would go along with it? Finally, some say “chemtrails” are a government project to combat global warming. Nice, but then why should such a laudable effort be kept secret? Other web-based “explanations” involve even wackier stuff like electromagnetic rays.
Logic never placates the truly paranoid, and discussions are rarely satisfying. Those who “believe” WANT to believe, and claim soil tests show that dangerous substances have been found beneath the planes. But again, nothing released from 40,000 feet would ever reach the ground except diluted to zero. And, more to the point, the videos of these supposed “chemtrails” shown on the scare web sites are actually a common type of contrail. The believers claim they’ve only started around 1998 – but I’ve observed those “spreading out” contrails for over 40 years. They’re not new. They’re contrails. No mystery, and nothing sinister here at all.
And yet another imaginative conspiracy, thoroughly debunked by the scientific community, surrounds the terrorist attack of 9/11 in which its die-hard followers believe that elements within the U.S. government planned and executed a controlled demolition of the TWC towers and WTC 7 in order to justify the invasion of Middle East countries and restrict domestic civil liberties. The first obvious question is why would a nefarious group within the government go through the logistical nightmare of crashing airliners into buildings in addition to rigging those buildings beforehand when a massive truck bomb, Timothy McVeigh-style, would have sufficed? Was that elaborate scheme really necessary in order to galvanize the political will to invade a foreign country for oil? And as Noam Chomsky points out in the video below, why implicate nationals from our major ally Saudi Arabia instead of people from the very country the neocons so desperately wanted to invade, Iraq? Perhaps the Bush administration just enjoyed the extra hurdle of fabricating WMD’s because planning and executing such a byzantine maze of deception involving so many people was the best way to keep it all secret and ensure the highest probability of success.
Another article of faith among conspiracy theorists is that the conspiracy would not have to have been very large. In Crossing the Rubicon, Michael Ruppert writes that there didn’t have to be any more than two dozen people with complete foreknowledge of the attacks to orchestrate 9/11, and that they would all be “bound to silence by Draconian secrecy oaths.” But those numbers begin to balloon out of control if all of the people and institutions accused of playing a part in the cover-up are counted. They would have to have included the CIA; the Justice Department; the FAA; NORAD; American and United Airlines; FEMA; Popular Mechanics and other media outlets; state and local law enforcement agencies in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New York; the National Institute of Standards and Technology; and, finally and perhaps most prominently, the 9/11 Commission. – link
[youtube:www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRV_MsbAZv4]
As more and more people fall off the economic ladder and lose faith in government, their plight will become fertile ground for conspiracy theorists looking to manipulate the anger and desperation of the dispossessed. JFK conspiracists have been around for nearly half a century and I think it’s fair to say that 9/11 conspiracists will have an even longer lifespan, perhaps outliving industrial civilization itself. The maxim of never letting a good crisis go to waste certainly held true for abusive power structures all across the globe after 9/11, but such an atrocity was inevitable due to nearly a century of nurturing and exploiting radical Islamists to serve the interests of the British and American Empires:
…When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in the 1980’s, the West, led by the United States, countered by implementing the “Islam” strategy. The recruiting of Islamic militants from around the world to fight in the “jihad” included the recruitment of Osama bin Laden by Saudi and Pakistani intelligence services. [26]
Ultimately, British strategy manifested or transmogrified into American support for the ‘holy warriors’ against the Soviet invasion. The United States invested massive amounts of armoury, military training and billions of dollars in this enterprise.
Chalmers Johnson defined, ‘blowback’ “as a way of thinking of an individual, a class, a nation or an empire…” when employed in the arena of “international conflicts” this way of thinking, “has a tendency to blow back onto the party releasing it.” [27] The criminal events in New York and Washington almost ten years ago, were partly and clearly a blowback from the “Islam” strategy.
Whereas Britain concocted and propelled the “Islam” option into strategic consideration amongst policy makers during the Cold War period, it was then the United States which was largely seen to “release”, implement and support this policy in Afghanistan in the 1980’s.
In conclusion, it needs to be emphasised that as the provenance of this “Islam” strategy pre-dates the Cold War and even the emergence of the United States as a superpower, there is every reason to believe that it will also outlive a perceived declining United States. We can now see this in Libya where NATO has worked in conjunction with Libyan Islamists to overthrow the Gadhaffi regime. [28]
The inside job of 9/11 was not some fiendishly clever plot by Cheney and a crack team of explosive experts and false flag operatives. It was the net result of decades and decades of colonial rule and the thirst for resources by Western citizens weened on suburban living, gas-guzzling automobiles, fast food, and industrial age values. Much energy and time is wasted on chasing phantom villains, while the real problems pile up around our make-believe world. Looking into history as well as into the mirror might be more productive than a crusade to bring imaginative boogeymen to justice.
the Heretick said:
Well written piece. I know people around the world read this site, here’s something for we Yankees.
https://movetoamend.org/
Our predicament goes way back.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad
I have written about this on various sites, I am not alone in waking up to this. Corporations are the cats-paws of the global ruling elite, if anyone is looking for a conspiracy, or a cause, try this one on for size.
Under the US Constitution it is people who should have civil rights, not legal entities created by the state; the owners of corps. have rights as citizens, their property should not.
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James said:
Why so much argument concerning conspiracy theories? Even chimps will conspire to knock off a competitive group of males. Complex operations involving deceitful, double-crossing humans are unlikely to remain secret. Those planning conspiracies know this. I would expect the probability of revelation to increase exponentially with each additional conspirator added. Even West Point cadets conspire to cheat on their tests, sometimes, and get caught. You must admit that 9/11 was a Pearl Harbor event that put the country into an emotional mode that tends to obviate reason. “Let’s get revenge”, and we didn’t take revenge on Saudi Arabia, we took revenge on Iraq while the Bin Laden family was being given the royal treatment leaving town. The global elite look out for each other when the slaves turn on the Big House. Regardless of whether 9/11 was planned by the governments or not, you should assume that some groups, including those in government, will plan and carry out even more horrendous acts.
In the meantime, like a starving or freezing body, metabolic necessities are being shunted from the periphery towards the essential organs. Banking, defense, utilities, the medical industry, government and universities are too big to fail, which means they or essential organs of the system and you in the periphery will be made to support them. Unfortunately those working in these industries know that they are “essential” to the system and will game the situation to extract absolutely as much wealth as possible. When the periphery is bled dry, including our petrodollar supporters, the central organs will collapse anyway, but the non-essential will starve and/or freeze first.
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xraymike79 said:
True enough, but when a reader demands that I must accept and spread their delusional CT’s or else, you know what path I’m taking. The rule here is to keep your CT freak flag in the closet because we’re not obligated to fly it.
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James said:
Agreed. Our current “natural” but pathological condition is freakish enough and deserves the highest degree of examination. The results may be unrewarding and not broadly acceptable, but they must be uncovered regardless, even though they contribute nothing to increasing the dopamine stimulation of the brain. We must search for the brake lever of the train because I assure you there will be those that will, in desperation, attempt to derail this runaway train before it reaches its ultimate destination.
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mike k said:
The truth is the most essential tool for the possible dismantling of a destructive culture based on secrecy and lies. To find the truth about our situation in the world today is an arduous and demanding task. Too few among us are up to doing this work. Nevertheless we have to use the best tools we have to try to save ourselves.
If we stop to devote our precious time and energy to argue with folks who are proposing far fetched ideas, many of which are preposterous on their face, there will be no time left to do the serious work we need so desperately to do. My response to a lot of this conspiracy stuff is often, “I just don’t have time for that.” It is more meaningful for me to pursue directions that might have some real value. I need to triage my concerns, or risk being overwhelmed by nonsense false trails.
How much of a threat do these imaginative CT’s represent to the PTB? None at all. In fact their idiotic diversions serve the elites very well by making anyone who questions the government/industry’s very real conspiratorial activities look like just another Wacko nutcase. So called normal folks are leery of listening to even well reasoned critiques of the establishment, and reject them automatically as just another weirdo conspiracy theory.
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xraymike79 said:
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xraymike79 said:
Our little escapade in Iraq…
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jonjost said:
You might be interested in this from my friend Gene Youngblood. Perhaps he’d let you post it? http://www.secessionfromthebroadcast.org/blog/2013/10/29/secession-broadcast-internet-crisis-social-control/
http://www.jon-jost.com http://www.cinemaelectronica.wordpress.com http://www.jonjost.wordpress.com http://www.americanplainsongs.wordpress.com http://www.paginasparaclarinha.wordpress.com http://www.jonjostcomingtoterms.wordpress.com
Date: Sat, 10 May 2014 09:57:07 +0000 To: clarandjon@msn.com
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mike k said:
One of the greatest threats facing us in the difficult times ahead is a general descent into irrational fears, hatreds and emotional confusion. Fertile ground for fascism to grow in. Those who can keep their heads when others are losing theirs will be much needed.
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Lidia17 said:
“nothing released from 40,000 feet would ever reach the ground except diluted to zero.” This is patently false. Do I believe the “chemtrail” folks? Not currently, but geo-engineering is absolutely being discussed, and if the gov. or some other entity were to embark on that path I don’t think they’d make it public beforehand.
Before calling suspecting the gov. of involvement in 9/11 “outlandish”, consider what happened during the dawn of the atomic era: soldiers as well as unwitting citizens were routinely exposed to radiation just to see what would happen. Even with the atomic bomb, they felt there was a possibility that it would end all life on earth, and yet they dropped it anyway. Dr. Strangelove, as a satire, is quite mild.
Regarding the Tuskegee experiments, it was said “for the most part, doctors and civil servants simply did their jobs. Some merely followed orders, others worked for the glory of science.” The government is on record as having carried out assassinations and assassination attempts. They told us, while torturing, “we do not torture”. So really, when defending the government’s story, you’re defending unconditionally, it seems, an entity proven to be lying and sociopathic.
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xraymike79 said:
The specific CT sited was a planned demolition of the WTC which has been disproven by multiple reliable sources. I can list numerous government cover-ups that were real as well, but that only proves that the U. S. Government acts the same as any other government in the world.
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Dredd said:
An authority that will watch and take part in the collapse a civilization of 7 billion people will not do what to 3,000 people?
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xraymike79 said:
The MIHOP theory has no credibility in my book, but you might be able to influence me with the LIHOP theory.
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Dredd said:
I respect your understanding and your opinion no matter what it is. We are all in the same boat trying to keep it from sinking with all aboard lost. I had this same conversation with Chomsky who is way cool in my book no matter what his CT positions are or if they differ from mine. Great blog.
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Stephen said:
We can all go on about CT’s but this is still funny.
http://www.corbettreport.com/911-a-conspiracy-theory/
Remember, they took the istsy bitsy little cuddle pumpkins out of the incubators…
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xraymike79 said:
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xraymike79 said:
This gentleman does not appear to be blogging anymore, but his site still has some really good info:
“I have a website debunking the Moonlanding hoax hoax (http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/NOT_faked/) and run into many of the same issues. And, like 9/11, the hoax and conspiracy claims are almost trivial to debunk. I do have an advantage on you, apparently. I consider myself an expert on the Apollo program, having studied it since I watched it happen live on TV as a child and I am now a Planetary Scientist thanks to the inspiration Apollo provided.”
The Moonlandings were faked and other nonsense
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Lidia17 said:
Mike, I would look at each case separately. You can’t say “the moonlandings… and other nonsense.” If you start out with the assumption that proposition X is nonsense, then that’s what you will “discover”.
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xraymike79 said:
Oh those are not my words. Go to the link and read that blogger’s profile.
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Lidia17 said:
I didn’t mean “you” you. Perhaps I should have written “one.”
My point remains in that people believing in a false hoax doesn’t mean that there isn’t a separate real hoax. I’m not trying to be flip here: if the topic is 9/11, I’m neither interested nor impressed by the credentials of a moon-landing CT debunker. All CTs are not created equal, and I believe you said as much somewhere along the line.
You point out the Iraq/WMD hoax, so you believe that, just not this other hoax. Fair enough, but why get so exercised in favor of one versus the other, then?
For all I know the moon-landing-hoax people are straw men put out there just for the purpose of associating anyone skeptical of anything with them. The gov. has been desperate to create terrorists: see all the embedded informants whose job is to incite violence and discredit/destroy non-violent opposition, so it’d really be child’s play to disrupt skeptic sites with the most far-fetched stuff. I think we can both agree that Queen Elizabeth being a lizard alien is more far-fetched than gov. involvement in 9/11. But anyone who can conflate those positions “wins”, and shuts down all discourse.
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mike k said:
Our human world is not going to end due to this or that hoax. The causes of our imminent demise go way back into prehistory, and have been gaining momentum as our expanding knowledge has given us a lot more power than we have the wisdom to handle. To obsess over some particular pieces of skullduggery is to miss the deeper, wider picture. If all the hoaxes that have ever been perpetrated were to be exposed, it would not make the slightest difference in preventing our unfolding disaster. All the energy people expend unraveling these real or supposed hoaxes is a colossal waste of time that could be better spent.
It is all to easy for hoax fans to end up doubting the reality of everything, and ending up believing that they are the star of their own Truman Show… Too many today already believe that Science is a vast conspiracy with nothing real about it! Guess where this kind of thinking is going to get us. Pretty soon it’s felt that one person’s ideas about whatever are just as good or better than a whole team of dedicated scientists and careful educated thinkers. Soon the world will hardly be large enough to contain all the half-baked fantasies being woven. We may as well throw away all the hard won real knowledge slowly worked out over our long history. Joe Blow is now crowned as the ultimate authority on anything you might want to know….
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xraymike79 said:
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pfgetty2013 said:
“The disclosures by Mr. Plumlee represent a very serious threat to the plans of the globalist war machine, and this criminal cabal is actively trying to cover it up and keep it secret from the American public and the world. This operation is, by orders of magnitude far greater than anything we have seen to date, including the operations known as Iran-Contra. Mr. Plumlee should know, for he admits and has testified before congress to transporting some 40 tons of cocaine into the U.S., while transporting tons of weapons, including automatic weapons and grenade launchers out of the U.S. into the hands of “rebels” during the Iran-Contra era. ”
– See more at: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/cia-whistleblower-faces-the-ire-of-an-angry-justice-department-over-benghazi-questions_052014#sthash.JpRMlt2G.dpuf
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mike k said:
Hope comes in two varieties, false and real. To think there is only one kind is a basic error.
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misericordia said:
But which is false and which is real can usually be established only after the fact, mike. They both look to the future, which is unknowable.
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mike k said:
I suppose you could say that the continued existence of the Sun and Earth tomorrow is unknowable. But knowledge is never absolute, relying as it does on our imperfect understanding of the total nature of reality. Nevertheless our relative and imperfect level of knowledge allows me to go to bed tonight without undue concern for the continued existence of my home planet and it’s central star. For my own practical purposes an absolute and currently unattainable level of certainty is not essential.
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xraymike79 said:
Mike,
If interested in scribbling you thoughts into essays,
you can reach me here:
collapsitarians@gmail.com
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mike k said:
Thanks for asking mike. I’ll put it in the hopper.
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misericordia said:
I expect that a relative and imperfect level of knowledge is all any of us has to form an idea of what the future holds. The best prophets are the best guessers. If the ground you’re treading holds, the next step can be taken unthinkingly. If the ground starts to give, hope comes to take your hand. Hope is the handmaiden of impotence.
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xraymike79 said:
And hope is the handmaiden of deception and disappointment.
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xraymike79 said:
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xraymike79 said:
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xraymike79 said:
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xraymike79 said:
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Johnny Thrush said:
Elements within the U.S. government may have planned and sponsored the attacks, we’ll never know. Does blowback sound less conspiratorial?
Thermite, free fall, controlled demolition, Building 7 etc, etc sounded and still sound so ludicrous. The real question is why considerable effort has been published to debunk such nonsense. Popular Mechanics, of all publications, suddenly came out of Grandpa’s woodshop to do a journalistic takedown. This only served to popularize various nonsense. Matt Taibbi decided the truther tabloid sensation was so popular he had to write a book dedicated to its ridicule.
Look, we do know 9/11 was a conspiracy; there’s no question about that. Killing and displacing over a million people in Iraq was planned and carried out by the USA, this is generally understood as fact.
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andyuk said:
Elements within the U.S. government may have planned and sponsored the attacks, we’ll never know.
you are not obliged to sit on the fence on this topic, any more than with other ridiculous ideas like alien abductions, astrology or the loch ness monster. outlandish ideas require the proposer of them to justify their claims with the correct degree of evidence, (extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence). its not the skeptics job to prove they are false. without logic and evidence (and its certainly the case with 9/11) the idea can be dismissed out of hand with complete intellectual justification. no fence sitting required.
“The real question is why considerable effort has been published to debunk such nonsense.”
because 9/11 conspiracy is both incredibly popular and very very irritating (both for its popularity and stupidity). thats why skeptics also put considerable effort into debunking global warming denialists and a host of other psuedoscientific claims. some people just give a shit about whats true. unfortunately most people are pretty selective about whats true, as has been demonstrated here and on nature bats last.
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xraymike79 said:
We could go on with the the debunking and the debunked debunking the debunkers, but I think it’s time to get back to other issues –the kind that are truly going to kill us:
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Aptitude Design said:
Get ahead, with Perseus Brand Tools [something from the ’60s]
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xraymike79 said:
I think Matt Taibbi was right on the money when he said:
“People are so turned off and disenfranchised by their government that they are increasingly retreating into conspiratorial and paranoidal politics on both sides of the spectrum.”
Quotes from his book:
“Washington politicians basically view the People as a capricious and dangerous enemy, a dumb mob whose only interesting quality happens to be their power to take away politicians’ jobs… When the government sees its people as the enemy, sooner or later that feeling gets to be mutual. And that’s when the real weirdness begins.”
― Matt Taibbi, The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire
“To be robbed and betrayed by a fiendish underground conspiracy, or by the earthly agents of Satan, is at least a romantic sort of plight – it suggests at least a grand Hollywood-ready confrontation between good and evil – but to be coldly ripped off over and over again by a bunch of bloodless, second-rate schmoes, schmoes you chose, you elected, is not something anyone will take much pleasure in bragging about.”
― Matt Taibbi, The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire
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Johnny Thrush said:
It’s a fine book, thanks for the quotes. However, this election era tome has an inordinate amount of type dedicated to solopisitic ridicule that carries the reader along with the gags. How about insightful humor that features the enemies to saving the planet, all the tanks from the American Enterprise Institute to the New America Foundation, from Eric Schmidt to Jamie Dimon to the US Military to your State Senator. How is a smidgen of cathartcisim as the machine data mines your thoughts and feelings going to change anything? Occam’s razor indeed. Get fired, name some names, shake up your metadate, create your own reality. Taibbi is right on the money, with millions of other wanna be columnists out there, he’s the annointed cartoonist that gets to tell us how it is with Banksters.
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misericordia said:
I’m reading some insightful humour that dovetails nicely with your desire. And it features the voice of the enemy, an interview with The Man himself. He creates his own reality. Did he make you work 55 hours a week through summer? He did not. You did it to yourself.
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xraymike79 said:
And now I believe Taibbi, Greenwald, and Scahill officially sold themselves to the capitalist establishment, having gone to work for ‘First Look Media’:
In late February, Pando ran an article by Mark Ames revealing that Omidyar’s Omidyar Network had co-funded Ukraine revolution groups, investing hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of several years into the same NGOs as the US government—which ultimately helped propel regime change in Ukraine.
As Pando’s Paul Carr noted: “Omidyar and First Look have made statement after statement about how they aim to be a thorn in the side of the US government, and yet in several cases Omidyar has co-invested with that same US government to shape foreign policy to suit his own worldview.”
Such a collaboration is incredibly significant (as is Carr’s more recent reportage on the high volume of White House visits that have been made by Omidyar and senior Omidyar Network officials since 2009) and further validates the prospect that compartmentalizing discourse and controlling dissent is First Look Media’s true modus operandi.
Interestingly enough, Greenwald’s lengthy, scoffing response to the Pando exposé, entitled “On the Meaning of Journalistic Independence,” proved almost more telling than the article itself…
…
Not only does Greenwald now openly advocate the fusing of journalism with the same corporate-capitalist powers that he once deplored, but he even appears to be making a concerted effort to link activism into the fray as well, thereby successfully commoditizing all forms of dissent into one big pre-packaged, for-profit bundle to the masses.
Notice too the Romney-esque “billionaires-are-people” motif being casually floated, along with the notion that those who abhor the influence of billionaire benefactors on both the press and activism on a general scale are really just succumbing to their own naive, unrealistic worldview and will therefore never be able to effect policy or produce change on any significant level.
– See more at: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2014/04/03/bfp-exclusive-and-an-oligarch-shall-lead-them-omidyar-greenwald-first-look-medias-attack-on-the-future-of-the-press/#sthash.dCzNGbto.dpuf
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PMB said:
With all the fur flying regarding conspiracies the last few weeks I’ve kept my head down.
I’m curious though and would like further clarity from you if wish to do so. A few weeks ago you posted a link to the Rancid Honeytrap whose blogger had been focusing on just this issue. I was fascinated by the posts on that site. I assume you has read a number of his writings (my assumption may have been completely wrong).
Had you come away from those postings beginning to question the morality, motivations, and ethics of Greenwald, Tabbi and others or was this piece from boiling frog the straw that broke the camel’s back? Could you clearly state what you currently think of Greenwald and his new endeavor? Do you have concerns about this new site and what it claims to be? Would you look at his work as well as Scahill and Taibbi in the same way from this point on?
I try to not form an opinion based on a single blogger or writer (as I don’t with Guy over at NBL). What I do try to do is be open minded enough to know that what I believe or think about things may be built on sand and I’ll have to reconfigure my insides (not an easy or enjoyable task).
I raised this issue up at NBL (and will again at some point) including questioning such icons as Chomsky, Michael Moore, Amy Goodman and others. We’re all human and all flawed. I need to have as much information as possible. If Chomsky and others are making money from the system and investing it in entities they are vilifying shouldn’t we weight this information into what conclusions we come to?
I got push back from a small number of those who post at NBL for daring to question these liberal, progressive icons in the same way I question anyone. I wasn’t even trying to equate someone like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh with Chomsky or others, yet that was the conclusion that was come to. Again, reinforcing that the internet is a very difficult place to have conversations.
Sadly, no one asked me questions to gain a clearer perspective of my views. It’s the way we are today, and maybe have always been, we let our emotions take control of us all along the way denying we have emotions or ridiculing those that are able to actually express their emotions and be clear that feelings are not facts. It takes great courage to share feelings and why we feel that way. It’s okay I realize that we need to have “heroes” or people we look up to.
I found my way to Arthur Silbert’s sites via Honey Trap (I see you have links to him on the left, only I didn’t see them until afterwards) and his series on Alice Miller. I’ve been reading her work the last few weeks. I was familiar with her from people in 12-step mentioning her. Much of what she writes seems very relevant to me. At the time her books appeared I remember feeling that it was a time of being encouraged that people were trying to change and understand themselves. That Miller rejected the profession of psychology (late in her life) was encouraging; useless, yet a nice action.
A core theme of hers was to find a way to connect with feelings. Unfortunately I think we’ve taken a step backward. From events happening globally feelings (or being aware of them) are the last thing on people’s minds. They (we) would rather use the feelings to act out instead of doing something more useful with them.
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xraymike79 said:
Had you come away from those postings beginning to question the morality, motivations, and ethics of Greenwald, Tabbi and others or was this piece from boiling frog the straw that broke the camel’s back?
There work still has value, but as always, measure it against the other information that is out there.
Could you clearly state what you currently think of Greenwald and his new endeavor?
I think he’s a valuable voice in revealing the abuses of what is ultimately the U.S. military industrial complex and intelligence agency run amok. This revelation from today:
Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who helped to break stories about mass surveillance in the United States, is making more revelations in a new book coming out Tuesday.
In an interview with NPR’s Morning Edition, Greenwald says one of the more “shocking” things he’s found is that the National Security Agency physically intercepted shipments of computer hardware, like routers, switches and servers, to outfit them with surveillance equipment.
Once they were done, they repackaged the hardware with “factory sealing” and sent it on its way to unsuspecting companies.
Greenwald says that for years, the United States has been warning global companies about buying Chinese products because they could be outfitted with surveillance hardware. This revelation, Greenwald says, exposes “an extreme form of gross hypocrisy” on the part of the U.S. government…
Do you have concerns about this new site and what it claims to be?
Yes, of course I’m skeptical and leery of the motives behind BIG money.
Would you look at his work as well as Scahill and Taibbi in the same way from this point on?
I would be less trusting at this point, but these journalists are not true radicals in the sense of understanding what is the root of so many global crises. I think they are all just looking to reform capitalism.
If Chomsky and others are making money from the system and investing it in entities they are vilifying, shouldn’t we weigh this information into what conclusions we come to?
Certainly, but are there any Virgin Marys in the world today who have any voice at all?
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Brutus said:
PMB sez: With all the fur flying regarding conspiracies the last few weeks I’ve kept my head down.
I, too, have kept my head down. Emotions run high on these matters, and it displeases me quite a lot to see arguments from both sides (belief/nonbelief) that basically tar and feather the opposing viewpoint. As with belief/nonbelief in god (the first conspiracy theory?), assertions both directions are not provable on evidence alone, since we draw different conclusions from the same evidence and/or reject some evidence outright, so we resort to emotion, which underlies all of cognition anyway and is thus inescapable. Yet we still have to live with each other; evidence indicates we don’t have to tolerate each other.
I’m witnessing a lot of mistreatment of others and righteous self-congratulations. Several worthy regulars have been driven away with particularly unkind parting shots. That’s the nature of the beast, I suppose, with arguing online, but that’s also why I don’t participate in comments sections overrun with vitriol, which is what’s happening here of late, sad to say. It makes me simply not want to read or contribute, knowing that eventually I will also come in for attack. Further, I appear to be on the losing side of consensus now that those who disbelieve the official 9/11 story have been sent packing and unceremoniously lumped in with every whackaloon out there.
No one could reasonably accuse me of mistreating anyone whose opinion on contentious matters differs from my own, nor could my contributions (posts and comments) be accused of lacking thoughtful consideration. If my contributions are impeached wholesale because I fall on the wrong side of a dividing line and I’m driven out like ulvfugl and Kevin Moore, well, I’ll accept that. I’ve considered moving on preemptively but haven’t yet made up my mind. I’d rather we all rein things in a bit and cool off.
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PMB said:
Brutus,
I thank you for this very heart felt (to me) and eloquent comment. It mirrored much of my own feelings these last few weeks.
I’ve been a part of nine attempts at building an IC and each have failed for similar reasons. This is the usual result I learned from Liam at the Communities Conference where he stated that 9 out 10 communities fail.
I don’t know if the strained and tension filled situation that has occurred between here and NBL can be healed. I do know that these were places which addressed the issues.
I was effected by 9/11, worked in the area, usually took the subway that either ran under the towers or one that left me off a blocks away in front of Federal Hall. That day I happened to have an appointment with the dentist out in Long Island and walked into the office just as they were watching the planes hit one of the buildings.
I’ve kept my opinions on all this to myself as the trauma of that time and the days following still remain in me. One of those wonderful life experiences I’ve had like living through the AIDS epidemic (not knowing all along as this was before testing whether I was infected). I was part of 9/11 Truth for a while before moving on to Peak Oil and more fully understanding our economic system, etc., etc., etc.
What I found amazing was that when Peak Oil took my attention many of the Truthers kept telling me that was the conspiracy, that there was plenty of oil.
For the record here I have a number of points/questions i keep to, much like the assessments on Climate Change and at least a number of the Positive Feedback Loops occurring now. One of the largest questions was the fact that there was never a way to determine who made the trades on the airlines. I worked for Wall Street and at one time at a firm called Depository Trust Company (DTC) which was the clearing house for all trades.
That the information behind these trades was lost always struck me as beyond belief considering all the back-ups and duplications occur during the normal daily business cycle of trading. Only that is the world we live in. It won’t change (sorry if that’s too cynical for people) until we change ourselves.
I believe emotions are really important. Feel them. Express them. Hopefully others can hear and not attack you, only expressing them makes you vulnerable and usually the one who gets attacked. It’s like putting a target on your chest. We see emotions as a weakness, yet it’s emotions that are the driving force behind what’s occurred here at COIC and often at NBL. It’s easier with the Internet, yet it occurs even in person.
All through my life I’ve labeled, “too sensitive” as is that is a crime and a weakness. Just to be clear I express this and am not looking for pity or sympathy. I’m almost done with reading Alice Miller’s books and find her fascinating and do wonder if had lived whether she’d be able to process collapse of civilization and extinction of the human race.
Just watched Hannah Arendt and found the film fascinating. I’ve read about her and never read anything by her. In the context of what Israel has become I get the sense that what she wrote about evil and the Jewish leaders in Europe after the Eichmann trail were rather profound. How would Arendt have seen what has been wrought upon the Palestinians.
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misericordia said:
How would Arendt have seen what has been wrought upon the Palestinians? Conceivably, she would exhibit the same “inability to consider the experiences of others from within” as she did in the case of Eichmann and the Jews who took orders from him,” or so says Richard Brody. Going with the title, Hannah Arendt’s Failures of Imagination, Brody charges Arendt with the failings typical of intellectuals. Not so profound, then, but rather limited according to more than one critic I’ve seen.
The phrase “banality of evil” has been heavily criticised as completely misrepresenting both Eichmann and the Jewish Council.
If by film you mean Claude Lanzmann’s The Last of the Unjust, as Brody tells it, Lanzmann wanted to right a historic wrong that Arendt helped foster in Eichmann in Jerusalem—that the “so-called Jewish collaborators weren’t collaborators.”
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misericordia said:
I have misstated it. The historic wrong is that Arendt proposed that the Jews in the Jewish Council were collaborators when they were not.
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Brutus said:
Interesting comment about failed attempts at ICs. My sense has always been that despite best intentions, we’re ruined people, flatly unable to make the necessary adjustments and concessions to live communally. For instance, upon learning that this or that community (e.g., the Hutterites) has severe behavioral and ideological restrictions and/or requirements that one forfeit personal property and wealth to the community upon joining, we all think (perhaps rightly) “nope, not gonna happen.” The same is probably true about relinquishing power and creature comforts as the world collapses around us. Whoever manages to survive or is born afterwards will perforce have a very different outlook.
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James said:
Did you make more money today? Did you get more dopamine tickets? Was it enough? Will it ever be enough or will you struggle mightily to achieve a new crest of happiness with your next purchase? I just want to be happy they say as they pop another anti-depressant and peruse Amazon looking for their next fix. Meanwhile the tumors grow larger, there’s more work to be done, more feel good for the technological ape. In the end they’ll all want to go back to a place undisturbed without bosses and cars and clocks and all of the ravages of cancerous growth, but it will be too late, they’ve already placed their bets on a technological nirvana, a mirage inside their simple minds that will only hold out as long as the A/C protects them from the developing planetary heat stroke. They’ll be at it again tomorrow, each masterfully performing at their metabolic best to assimilate the natural world into their malformed and toxic tissues that exude heavy metals, toxic gases and poisonous chemicals into the general circulation of life. What is Harvard doing? What is MIT doing? What is Stanford doing? Nothing. Promoting growth. Figuring out how to get rid of the piss ants? Who knows. They’re failures.
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Apneaman said:
It’s hard to admit that our obscene addiction to consumption is ultimately what financed the bribe money for politicians, regulators, etc. In addition, huge conspiracy theories are a form of self flattery. Like the only way they could get one over on you is to spend millions of dollars and years of 24/7 plotting and planing. No most people just went along with the program because that’s how we were conditioned and it is next to impossible for most of us to resist the infinite dopamine producing bread and circuses industrial society churns out. Personally, I managed, through great effort, to give up drugs and alcohol but I still struggle with the food. I rarely am able to choose bananas and apples over Moose Tracks ice cream. I usually rationalize it by saying to myself ” well at least I’m not drinking and fighting and shooting dope anymore” (just getting fatter). The problem is I have been saying that for almost 20 years now. The truth is that Moose Tracks is the heroin of dairy products. Like most industrial food today it was planed that way.
CityTalk: Michael Moss, Author, “Salt Sugar Fat”
What’s a “bliss point” the “mouthfeel” or the “Crave It” study got to do with the food we eat? Everything!
Michael Moss, a New York Times investigative reporter and author of “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Companies Hooked Us,” and host Doug Muzzio talk about food scientists and processed food industry giants and the adverse effect of their products on our health.
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misericordia said:
apneaman,
I consider it non-trivial that one of the families that founded the Baskin-Robbins heroin empire incubated a steely and determined environmental activist—John Robbins.
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Apneaman said:
You make it sound as if it was planned for him to leave the family business. More like another disillusioned rich white liberal. What kind of logic implies that John Robbins activism somehow cancels out the food industry’s intentional addicting of billions of people for profit?
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misericordia said:
You sound like you’re in pain. I don’t want to make it worse but I’d like to gently suggest we watch words carefully. No one is getting addicted to food. Addiction is always a specific physiological process that can be described at the molecular level. I hate to sound pompous but you did unleash an unnecessary broadside.
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Apneaman said:
Somehow I get the impression that you don’t really have a problem with sounding pompous.
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misericordia said:
Maybe not. My impression is that you gun for newcomers.
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Apneaman said:
No I do not “gun for newcomers” (feel free to check old threads). I sometimes respond to others comments, but most of my comments are me thinking aloud and/or passing along a link. Your comment about John Robbins after my food industry video was a non sequitur. Furthermore, saying to me “You sound like you’re in pain.” is nothing but passive aggressive bullshit.
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misericordia said:
And just how would you know it’s bullshit of any sort? You don’t know me. Any reasonable person reading our exchange would wonder why you went on the attack. The John Robbins comment I made is tangential, but it is not a non-sequitur. My motive was to introduce you to Robbins if you didn’t know him. Here’s another thing you don’t know: I wanted to point out that your observation that conspiracism is a form of self-flattery is a good one. I forgot to include it.
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xraymike79 said:
If you don’t know the details of a real government conspiracy and the origins of blowback, this documentary is well worth your time:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/400495
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the Heretick said:
a very good exposition. Iran was not the only country we did this in, there was Guatemala the next year.
we have done this all over the world.
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xraymike79 said:
“Harvest of Empire” is a documentary that examines the role that U.S. military and corporate intervention in Latin America played in triggering massive waves of migration from Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America.
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xraymike79 said:
@AndyUK
I notice you’re wasting time with the nutters on NBL. Why do that to yourself?
Conversations with CT enthusiasts are never constructive. Apparently Kevin Moore has written a book on the subject of controlled demolition of the WTC, so he has a lot invested in this particular CT. He’s a hopeless case. And Guy McPherson has bought it hook, line, and sinker.
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xraymike79 said:
Here is what ulvfugl says about David Icke (At the “heart of his theories lies the idea that a secret group of reptilian humanoids called the Babylonian Brotherhood controls humanity, and that many prominent figures are reptilian.[2]“)
“Everybody knows that David Icke is a crackpot and a conspiracy theorist, don’t they. Because he’s been saying for years that the Thatcher government and the BBC were infested with paedophiles.
Well, turned out it was all TRUE, didn’t it. Like so many other ‘conspiracy theories’.”
Well isn’t that an amazing feat of deductive reasoning by ulvfugl. I’ll bet everything I own that if you pick any large institution, you’ll find paedophiles there. Anyone with common sense would realize this if they did a simple mapping of paedophiles in any city of the world. Take for instance this website:
http://www.familywatchdog.us/
or this in Britain, just the tip of the iceberg:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2284129/Revealed-The-map-Britain-shows-convicted-paedophiles-run-area-police-lost-track-them.html
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andyuk said:
“I notice you’re wasting time with the nutters on NBL. Why do that to yourself?
Conversations with CT enthusiasts are never constructive.”
i guess so that people sitting on the fence of an argument (that are not convinced either way) can hear both sides of the story.
but i agree kevin and the conspiracy gang are very angry over at NBL, so i dont think its possible to have a reasonable argument with them. by rejecting reasonable arguments, they prove they are not honest skeptics, interested in the truth at any cost. kevin asked me to watch a documentary and i agreed, but they got really steamed up when i suggested in a fairly civil tone that as the primary argument they were using was not proven, there was not much point in watching it all through because anything else based on an unproven idea is probably also going to be wrong!
as far as i can tell, the whole thing rests on (apart from the paranoia levels of a mentally ill person) whether steel melts at 300c. because it doesn’t melt at this temperature, they think the towers should have survived the fire. now in the first year of my architecture degree course it was carefully explained, by a qualified structural engineer, that steel loses ‘structural integrity’ in fire, therefore it has to be treated in a certain manner to allow the structure to survive for a reasonable length of time to allow people fire escape. i dont ever remember being taught that steel framed buildings, let alone skyscraper scaled ones were immune to burning down! so to base their hypothesis on such a misunderstanding is either very ignorant or very mendacious.
“And Guy McPherson has bought it hook, line, and sinker.”
thats a real shame because his main argument, although somewhat extreme, CAN i think be argued successfully from a logical and critical thinking perspective. its extreme unpopularity with the masses is not because guy is a paranoid fantasist, but because his opinion is based on evidence, honesty and reason. adding an incredibly popular but genuinely paranoid, mass delusional fantasy to the mix can only damage his credibility.
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xraymike79 said:
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James said:
It’s another day and mother nature’s teratogenic mishap continues to grow. Soon the placenta will shrink away from the womb and the umbilical cord will no longer carry nourishing substances. The humans trapped inside that morbid tissue will perish while a few rejoin the ecosystem, that is, if the mother does not also succumb.
West Antarctic Ice Sheet melting to raise sea level by four meters – unstoppable. That will put half of Washington, D.C. knee deep in the Potomic. What to do, what to do………….issue waders, build an Ark with room for two Senators from every state, pray to the great power in the sky to intercede, get the hell out of Dodge with a wheelbarrow full of money as soon as possible? Yea, that’s it. Get the money and run before this sucker goes down.
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xraymike79 said:
…Biden then moved on to the Vice Presidency under Barack Obama where his true imperial nature has become sadly more and more evident, especially during this Ukraine outrage.
Now we see that Biden’s son has been nominated to be in charge of Ukraine’s natural gas!
Wow! Isn’t that coincidence!
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xraymike79 said:
From Ran Prieur’s blog:
The link in the post is here:
http://mythodrome.net/mike-ruppert-childhood-abuse-near-term-extinction#comment-9945
Excerpt:
…I have no time for Guy/NTE, and nothing but contempt for Carolyn Baker; in the comments of that post above, Greer says that he wouldn’t be surprised if NTE produced suicides – and that was just a few weeks before Ruppert killed himself. You can see the effect that Baker was having on a very sick man in this clip, filmed very shortly before his death:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLDbSvEZka6GFokYmj74zgJXAN4yvs3EXE&v=aRPmxQqn3tg&feature=player_detailpage#t=612
In the time following, Baker (the self-styled “hospice nurse”) doesn’t seem to have shown an ounce of introspection in her possible role in leading Mike down this path. Quite the contrary, she seems to have doubled down with her hospice routine.
Like you, I won’t be returning to this thread – I’ve said my piece, and hope the links here are useful for those seeking to debunk the dubious science and pseudo-religious apocalypticism of Mr. McPherson and C. Baker.
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xraymike79 said:
And now Ran Prieur follows up with:
Link in post:
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Apneaman said:
“You can see the effect that Baker was having on a very sick man in this clip, filmed very shortly before his death”
I did not hear or see anything of the sort. Talk about seeing what you want to see and hearing what you want to hear. I say this as someone who has no time for Carolyn Baker and was not a follower of Mike Rupert. What individuals or groups are responsible for the other 40,000 plus (and growing) suicides in America? Mike Rupert had mental health illness for years including suicidal tendencies. As a former cop in LA the man probably saw things that would haunt most people for their entire lives. Only a big time asshole would suggest that one individual or group could push a mentally ill man with 63 years of life experiences over the edge.
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xraymike79 said:
Add in the stress of financial ruin and the belief that man would soon be extinct makes suicide an even more welcome option.
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Apneaman said:
I was not aware of Mike Rupert’s financial troubles, but it seems that men over 40 are the one’s who are committing suicide at the highest rate and loss of money/status is the #1 culprit. Mike Rupert was not the originator of NTE, but his body of work makes it clear that he was already well down that road before McPherson and Baker came along. I just looked at some of his stuff today and he thought Fukushima alone might do us in. If one wanted to (wrongly) play the blame game regarding dire messages it seems that M Rupert reached as many people as anyone.
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Brutus said:
My comment is found at Mythodrome, as well as those of PMB and ulvfugl. Not sure what makes Ran Prieur’s link to Mythodrome more worth paying attention to. BTW, he’s been all over the ideological map (he’s interesting but kooky) and seems to have settled into happy domesticity in the gift economy. Nice (lack of) work if you can get it, I guess.
Now that NTE has been added to the crazy conspiracy hopper, I think I’m done here. As I commented at Mythodrome, I’m not committed or “committed” to the idea as though it were to be relished, nor do I believe we know anything more than the roughest of outlines how it may manifest as to timing and mechanisms, but I find NTE not just one possible scenario among many but a very likely and harrowing one — as if industrial collapse won’t already be bad enough. As a civilization, we keep everything pointed that way remorselessly, and what remains of the ecosphere after collapse will be riotously (righteously?) inhospitable to large mammals.
How one responds to such a likelihood also ranges all over the map. No need to wander the sidewalks wearing a sandwich board proclaiming “the end is nigh!” through a bullhorn or the online equivalent. The future will manifest as it will irrespective of anyone’s fervent beliefs yoked to one scenario or another. But I daresay, it won’t take another 7,500 years; 100 or so more ought to do it. So long and thanks for all the fish.
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xraymike79 said:
Quite an odd comment from you. Are you this touchy about the subject that no one can post an opposing opinion just for the sake of comparing viewpoints? And because I posted something from Ran Prieur, that makes it the official word from on high? Do I need a committee to approve of anything posted so as not to offend the sensibilities of particular people?
Good luck with your blog.
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PMB said:
I really don’t know what to say or whether to even say anything, but as I’m almost at the end of the road myself I’ll do my usual and step into an uncomfortable situation.
Why is this an odd comment from Brutus? It seems completely in the character of the person who has been posting on this blog for quite some time. I recently began reading through his blog from the start and have found him to be pretty consistent. The points he raises above seem well thought out and rational and raised in a pretty fair and not threatening way.
The recent dust-up regarding 9/11 seems to have left collateral damage. It is your comments that come across to me as touchy and reactive. I don’t read anything in Brutus’s comment that leads me to believe you shouldn’t post an opposing opinion or that Brutus feels that Prieur is the word from up high.
What struck me was that the way you chose to format the quote by Prieur was sendig a message. It appeared you wanted to bring that quote to our attention. Why you made this choice only you can know. It might have been unintentional and innocent on your part, only just as with print publishing the way a page is laid out has great meaning.
You could have chosen to merely format the quote as you do others. Merely black type on the white background indented. You can certainly post what you want, it’s your blog after all. You control the vertical. You control the horizontal.
What bothered me, and this is the point I wish you had raised, is that Prier didn’t read to the end of the short number of comments (only 16 at the time). Therefore he didn’t want to read anything beyond the comments that fit his own mindset and ammunition to support his own POV. Therefore he never go to other comments including Lydia’s which raised points counter to Paula’s.
Just so you and I are clear. I have no issue with you raising opposing viewpoints, it’s been one of the leading attributes of this site for me. You don’t have to vet what you post via me, I’m not sure you’d want a maverick like me on the committee anyway.
For clarity here’s a couple of questions:
1) Are you in agreement with what Prieur wrote?
2) Do you believe considering the possibility of NTE places on in the land of conspiracy theory wack jobs?
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xraymike79 said:
1) Are you in agreement with what Prieur wrote?
I posted a blog entry by Prieur that linked to a very articulate and rational comment by dermot. Let me quote from it:
…We recently had an NTE purge on hubberts-arms. We simply couldn’t deal with the NTE party liners any more.
It had reached the point where I fronted the mods/admin position that it wasn’t acceptable to say that NTE was ‘Inevitable’, and that those of us who disagreed with the inevitability were sufferers of ‘Hopium’. That this was a counsel of despair, a massive excuse to do nothing. Not to mention an INSULT to those of us on the forum who had been involved in peak oil / collapse for many years.
The reply: “YOU ARE SHUTTING DOWN FREE SPEECH”.
Now think about this: the NTE people are the ones demanding dogmatic acceptance of the most demoralising idea imaginable, and attacking anyone who disagrees with the auto-da-fe of “Inevitable Extinction” as being the ones who are attacking free speech! I replied to this, again: I don’t care about NTE as a hypothesis, or even saying it’s probable, but I’m not going to sit here and allow myself into being bullied into saying that extinction by Jan 1 2030 is inevitable, because that’s absurd – you are falling in love with a model. And their reply, I kid you not: “You are shutting down free speech”. Unless I accept Inevitable Extinction, I’m not supporting free speech, etc etc etc.
Comical or tragic? Depends if you’re related to or friends with someone who kills themselves as a result.
I made a clear statement to those members: talk about NTE = fine. Forcing the rest of us, under the shaming language of “hopium” to accept NTE as inevitable = not fine. That was the only editorial restriction imposed, and it was a restriction designed to broaden speech/debate, not narrow it. But this was not acceptable to them!…
Perhaps Brutus was offended that Prieur referred to McPherson’s NTE followers as “dumb”. I don’t agree with casting them in that light, but I do agree with the above quote. Also, Brutus made the great leap of concluding that I have now lumped NTE into the “crazy conspiracy hopper.” Total human extinction by 2030 is highly unlikely, but in the long run with BAU we are certainly headed in that direction and without a doubt a severe population crash is in store for us within this century. Considering the massive amount of GHG’s we are still pumping into the atmosphere and the consequent feedback loops set into motion, the continuous environmental damage and loss of biodiversity we are inflicting, and the corrupt nature of corporate capitalism along with governments beholden to such monied interests, how could this not be inevitable?
2) Do you believe considering the possibility of NTE places one in the land of conspiracy theory wack jobs?
As I said, NTE by 2030 is highly unlikely, but extinction is a scientific fact and the greatest illusion entertained by the human species is that we have been liberated from the constraints of the natural world.
“In spite of what moralists say, the animals are scarcely less wicked or less unhappy than we are ourselves. The arrogance of the strong, the servility of the weak, low rapacity, ephemeral pleasure purchased by great effort, death preceded by long suffering, all belong to the animals as they do to men.”
~ Georges Cuvier (1769-1832)
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xraymike79 said:
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mike k said:
Thanks apneaman for what seems to be a contrarian opinion, at least on this thread so far. I have learned that there is often much to be learned from people who I may have some major disagreements with. Even a really big flaw need not blind me to what that person otherwise might have of value. I have learned from Carolyn Baker and the many who publish on her site. Because she has bought into this NTE belief does not make me critical of her as a person, or blind me to other things she has to share. We all need to stop writing people off totally due to their holding some beliefs we do not share. To do so makes furthering a creative community of truth seekers and truth activists all but impossible. Don’t we have enough to pick on without ganging up on one of our own? Are we aware enough to catch ourselves when we are enacting some of the same negative patterns that are a large part of how we got into this mess we are in?
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Apneaman said:
Hey mike k. I don’t have a problem with NTE although 2030 sounds kinda early. I believe extinction is possible, but not a shoe in yet and I feel fairly confident that we will have a much smaller population by 2030. C Baker wrote a piece awhile back where she said that she feels sorry for people (like me) who don’t have spirituality (like her). Then a bunch of the other new age-ers piled on with their “you just don’t get it” crap. That’s what I don’t have time for. It’s hard to respect someone who considers me less than because of my non-beliefs. Besides, I was actually defending her.
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xraymike79 said:
Human stupidity, the Texas drought, and climate change:
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TR said:
If the Christians in Texas know that God controls the weather then they might ask what they did to piss him off so badly that he withholds the rain. lol
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misericordia said:
But for interviewer Thomas Morton’s laid-back demeanour, I’d have happily punched my computer screen in sheer frustration.
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xraymike79 said:
First step is to admit the problem. The next step is to figure out how to save ourselves…
[youtube:www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwsJDh0BrY8]
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xraymike79 said:
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xraymike79 said:
” ‘The universe is a pretty empty place and that’s something most people don’t get,’ said Michael Brown of Caltech. ‘You go watch Star Wars and you see the heroes flying through an asteroid belt, and they’re twisting and turning nonstop to avoid colliding with asteroids.’ In reality, he said when the Galileo spacecraft flew through our solar system’s asteroid belt in the early 1990s, NASA spent millions of dollars in a manic effort to steer the ship close enough to one of the rubble rocks to take photos and maybe sample a bit of its dust. ‘And when they got lucky and the spacecraft actually passed by two asteroids it was considered truly amazing’ said Brown. ‘For most of Galileo’s journey there was nothing. Nothing to see, nothing to take pretty pictures of. And we’re talking about the solar system which is a fairly dense region of the universe.’
“Don’t be fooled by the gorgeous pictures of dazzling pinwheel galaxies with sunnyside bulges in their midsections, either. They, too, are mostly ghostly: the average separation between stars is about 100,000 times greater than the distance between us and the Sun. Yes, our Milky Way has about 300 billion stars to its credit but those stars are dispersed across a chasmic piece of property 100,000 light-years in diameter. That’s roughly 6 trillion miles (the distance light travels in a year) multiplied by 100,000 … miles wide.”
~ Natalie Angier
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xraymike79 said:
Alice Friedemann talking with Howard Kunstler about the fast crash scenario:
http://kunstler.com/podcast/4865/
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xraymike79 said:
This lady is amazing. Kunstler’s best guest ever.
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xraymike79 said:
“The search for a good war is beginning to look as futile as the search for the mythical city of El Dorado. And yet that search remains our top public project.”
And the searchlight stops at Ukraine, full of neo-Nazis, corrupt oligarchs, nuclear reactors, an unelected government, a wrecked economy, a simmering civil war. God help us. Old animosities and ideological divisions come back to life. The United States and NATO stand off against Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Thirty-one people — maybe more — die in a burning building in Odessa. This kind of thing could be the pretext for a world war. Sanity is up in flames.
“The crisis in Ukraine is serious,” Floyd Rudmin writes at Common Dreams. “At some point soon, reality needs to become the priority. No more name-calling. No more blaming. If there are any adults in the room, they need to stand up. The crisis in Ukraine is going critical, and that is a fact.”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/05/08-2
“But then there’s always climate change”, said the MIC smiling…
Climate Change Deemed Growing Security Threat by Military Researchers
The accelerating rate of climate change poses a severe risk to national security and acts as a catalyst for global political conflict, a report published Tuesday by a leading government-funded military research organization concluded.
The Center for Naval Analyses Military Advisory Board found that climate change-induced drought in the Middle East and Africa is leading to conflicts over food and water and escalating longstanding regional and ethnic tensions into violent clashes. The report also found that rising sea levels are putting people and food supplies in vulnerable coastal regions like eastern India, Bangladesh and the Mekong Delta in Vietnam at risk and could lead to a new wave of refugees.
In addition, the report predicted that an increase in catastrophic weather events around the world will create more demand for American troops, even as flooding and extreme weather events at home could damage naval ports and military bases.
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PMB said:
Interesting statement on one of Thom Hartman’s shows aired on WBAI last week regarding food in Syria. It was a call in show and Hartman responded to a point a caller made about food prices. Hartman said that the rise in food prices could be attributed to manipulation by commodities traders.
There is most always a rush to get callers off the line and move on to the next caller. I wonder if Hartman (or anyone) can actually focus on the moment and realize what they are saying. I realize many callers capture the call and don’t show respect or regard that someone else is waiting but it’s a dog chasing its tail situation.
Things are said in a rushed way which never gets readdressed (unless another caller does so (and can get through the gatekeepers or if staff brings it up to the host (how likely is that you decide) and so a ripple effect is caused based on a comment.
Hartman’s off the cuff response that the rise in food prices could be traced to commodities traders isn’t a thorough response. Yes, commodities traders (do I have to say not all, but most) love to see situations arise which cause suffering in others as they can make money on the rising prices of resources and materials.
Making a statement about commodities traders dilutes the discussion. It’s turns a complex conversation into a strawman argument. We all love to hate the evil Corporations that put a gun to our heads everyday forcing us to eat crap, be entertained, and travel round the world trying to leave behind our drab and humdrum lives. If only all those Corporations would just straighten out it would all be okay.
Let’s not dismiss the impact that Climate Change is having that food is in short supply. It’s gargantuan. That without water you can’t grow it. That without water animals die. That without water we die. People were leaving their farms in Syria just as those left the dust bowl in the U.S in the thirties. That first episode of the Showtime celebrity series about Climate Change focused on the Syrian farmers who left for Turkey due the conditions on their farm.
What’s “funny” about this all is the Syrian farmers wanted the government to do something to get them back to their farm. What’s “funny” in one of the above videos is that one of thee young people in Texas said, “I won’t worry about the water until I can’t get any.” I’ll bet those boys will scream for Government help when there’s no water coming out of the tap and Walmart stops shipping in free bottles of water. Please, let’s not all jump on Texas as being unique in this behavior.
Seems we aren’t willing to do anything until it’s after the fact. Seems we don’t want to hear about problem prior to it’s occurring when we could do something, but choose not to. After all we’d rather be a consumer than a citizen or a person.
Proof of the pudding regarding where our eyes are is the web site by Mark Evanier, a television writer, a self proclaimed liberal, and Democrat. It a site that seems to garner loads of attention from people (Time) and gives the illusion that is addresses issues of concern (sometimes) besides raving about Hollywood and the film “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.” Really you should check out that site to get a pulse on the heartbeat of the average American (at least). I’m sure most coming to this site probably won’t have to check it out as they already know what the pulse feels like.
Even when Evanier is writing about friends who are now out of work he shows little understanding of the root of the issues we are facing. He easily brushes aside what’s happening saying something pithy like, “I’m sure they’ll get a job soon.” Of course these friends will be out on the street soon and sadly Evanier’s home is too full of paraphernalia to provide them with a roof over their head. Hey, that’s Hollywood where the show must go on.
It was easy for years for the rest of the world to smirk and act superior to Germans when the belief was that there was something about them that caused the events in Germany to unfold as they did. It couldn’t happen here, could it? That belief was smashed by the Millgram experiments. Let’s not pile up on Texas as tempting as that is.Unfortunately I’m afraid that is exactly what we are going to do.
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xraymike79 said:
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Apneaman said:
It’s been my observation that Texas and many Texan’s preach their own special brand of manifest destiny and exceptionalisim. When people claim superiority they tend to make targets of themselves. Bragging about leading the nation in state executions doesn’t help either. Your right it can happen anywhere. Like Ukraine right now.
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Apneaman said:
Oil spill on streets of Los Angeles
An oil pipe in Los Angeles spilled an estimated 10,000 gallons (38,000 litres) of oil in the streets, the LA Fire Department (LAFD) says.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-27426220
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xraymike79 said:
Check out raw video of the oil burst.
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Apneaman said:
It has now been updated to at least 50,000 gallons.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-crude-oil-spill-atwater-village-20140515-story.html
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xraymike79 said:
Washington’s diplomatic, gas-guzzling acceptance of the lethally anti-gay, Sharia Law-touting Sultan of Brunei:
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F.Tnioli said:
“Another cock-eyed conspiracy theory is chemtrails” – not just that. Yes, there are a few quite silly conspiracy theories about “chemtrails”, they exist; however, there are also hard facts about spreading certain particulate matter, too. I’ll elaborate.
“astronomer Bob Berman deconstructs using the logic of Occam’s razor” – i doubt he does. At best, he attempts to do, but imho, fails at it.
“First, if you’ve ever watched crop dusting you know that chemicals must be released very close to the ground.” – crop dusting is done to affect crops. Crops are on the ground. Ergo, dusting is to be done close to the ground. But, when things which are to be affected are not on the ground – then chemicals are released at high altitudes. Very well known examples of such – are: weather control (clearing skies for some important event, like main annual military parade or summer Olympic games opening ceremony, for one (known as “seeding clouds”); and spreading disactivating chemicals in order to reduce and remove radioactive matherial from the athmosphere, which was done on a large scale after Chernobil disaster – lots of radioactive dust was in the clouds which were going towards Minsk (Belorussia’s capital), and so, the military was spraying disactivating chemicals to reduce amount of radiation Minsk’s population would take. Those chemicals resulted in several-centimeters-high “foam” layer when it rained, which i saw with my own eyes (i was a kid, and lived in Minsk back then). Bottom line: this Berman’s argument is completely and utterly wrong…
“Released on high, they’d dissipate with the wind and take forever to get down” – science says, not “forever”, but several days to a few years (depending on size, form and mass of the particles). Particles which i’ll mention later – would take several months to few years to go down. This is hardly “forever” – what Berman tries to do here, scientific thinking – or political speech? Sounds like it’s the latter.
“… the concentration on the folks below would be zero.” – contrary to this statement, concentration of some metals in surface waters is found to exceed maximum-safe levels up to several dozens times. Surface water means water from river and lakes. Rain water levels are even higher. I’ve watched several distinqueshed scientists performing measurements and giving such numbers in obviously rural areas. There are pages like http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/htm/303.html with various details about this – note, i’m not saying everything there is correct, but quite much seem to be. Also, there are pages like http://www.americanelements.com/sraloxnp.html , and one can easily calculate how many particles of, quote, “20-80 nanometers” size even a single, quote, “Typical bulk packaging … truck load (T/L) quantities” would have. But if mr. Berman is unable to do the calculation – here’s the number for him (assuming mean 50 nanometers diameter of particles, and 3 cubic meters being a “truck load quantity”): 24.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 particles. This means nearly 3.4 billions of such particles for EVERY PERSON ALIVE. Just in one truck. This doesn’t sound like something which can produce “zero concentration”, especially if the business is done on scale of thousands tons of the matherial sprayed annually (see below for “why”).
“Second, my commercial pilot friends (along with the controllers at the FAA) would all have to go along with the plot, since they’d see the process happening. I’m a pilot and airplane owner myself: It’s NOT happening.” – mr. Berman and his friends are probably flying in areas which are not actively sprayed during daytime. Easy as that. Night spraying is difficult to notice, if at all possible, and trails dissipate much by the time daylight comes. Their primary purpose – which is SRM – is fulfilled for months ahead, and does not require those particulates to be visible by a naked eye.
“Third, what would be the purpose?” – why, SRM, of course. Solar radiation management. See this US patent, for example: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5003186.PN.&OS=PN/5003186&RS=PN/5003186 . I hope “uspto.gov” is not a conspiracy theorists’ website? =)
“Some say mind control.” – some do. Some others say, man was made outta dirt (some religious folks). Does it cancel genetics? No. There are lots of idiots out there. Doesn’t prove anything.
“Others say it’s to sow disease. But why would anyone want to do this? Who would go along with it?” – more sensible version. Google “Eric Pianka ebola” for an example of who and why may want to sow disease. In general, any serious scientist nowadays knows that Earth is overpopulated by humans (accounting for the lifestyle mankind does, nowadays). Reducing human population is definitely required if Earth’s biosphere is to have any chances of avoiding complete disintegration. Humane or inhumane, ethical or unethical – this is “other” questions here; the fact that there is the urgent need to reduce human population – is undoubtful.
“Finally, some say “chemtrails” are a government project to combat global warming. ” – here we go. Even official “white house scientists” say so, by the way. Not in public, but at least one record leaked. “It’s like riding on the necks of our grandkids”, “not really an ethical dilemma” – that’s what one of them said at that meeting about geo-engineering SRM methods, among other things.
“Nice, but then why should such a laudable effort be kept secret?” – several reasons:
1. public opinion is against geo-engineering in general, and against SRM in particular;
2. method itself does not solve the problem – in fact, it (to some degree) postpones it, while causes of the problem intensify further; thus creating a BIGGER threat at some later date. Sooner or later the spraying will stop. The longer it goes, the larger and faster jump of temperatures will be once it stops. Thus, it endangers future generation (their very lives, likely). Noone will like that. I don’t, for example;
3. strontium and aluminium, in sufficient concentration, are threats to people’s health. Less threat than abrupt global warming, of course, – but still a significant threat. Most of the public would be furious about this;
4. admitting large-scale SRM effort automatically means admitting that global warming is not just existing – but gravely dangerous. Oil lobbies, some big governments and some huge international corporations all deny global warming. Thus, they can’t admit SRM project is being done – it’d ruin their whole propaganda about (they say absense of) global warming.
“But again, nothing released from 40,000 feet would ever reach the ground except diluted to zero.” – plain wrong, once again. Another example (in addition to the above) – is volcanoes’ ash. Now and then, large eruption throws up millions of tons of volcanic ash up to some 30000+ feet. While up there, it poses a grave danger to jet lines. But it goes down in matter of days and weeks, creating substantial soil-fertilization effects over long-term. Another example is coal power plants. Old types, that is – they emit some sulphur compounds, among other things. Those can climb up to 30000+ feet as well, – and they caused acid rains when going back down, in the past. The problem was so massive Europe had to do alot of legislation (and engineering work) to create new, cleaner, coal power stations types.
“And, more to the point, the videos of these supposed “chemtrails” shown on the scare web sites are actually a common type of contrail.” – true, many (o suspect, most) of “scare web sites” – display normal contrails as something unusual. I’m not even sure if mentioned sprays of metal oxides create any visible (by naked eye) effect, at all. What i am sure about – is that modern jet fuel contains at least aluminium oxide in substantial quantity, said to be “anti-corrosive additive”. Assuming most airbuses and boeings around the world use such a fuel nowadays, the amount of metal oxides added into upper troposphere / lower stratosphere – can be not just thousands, but perhaps hundreds of thousands or even millions of tons.
There are additional facts which confirm the spraying of SRM agents, such as:
– massive slowing of global warming observed in 2000s and up to date, happening despite accelerating rise of GHG gases and other AGW accelerating processes (such as dropping albedo of Earth);
– the empirical observation of the jump of temperatures, done in USA when nearly all civilizan jet fleet was grounded for 3 days after 9/11 (temperature rise in just 2 days was nearly +1 degrees celcius for the difference between max and min daily temps – and this is VERY stable fegure, normally);
– vastly different-than-Earth-average climatic records for places which are very remote (for example, Kamchatka): temperature rise there, for the last decade, was some +2.5 degrees celcius annual temperature, which is nothing short of catastrophic even in terms of just one human generation.
Now, Occam’s razor in fact favors any assumption which, if taken, can explain many observed phenomena. The more things a single assumption can explain, the more likely it is the assumption is truth, – this is direct consequence from Occam’s razor. Metallic oxides being sprayed at jet-liner altitudes on a massive scale, – is an assumption which can explain all the above, and other observed events. As such, this assumption is very likely to be truth.
All the wrong conspiracy theories, “silly” scare websites and alike – may in fact be nothing else than informational “noise” to mask the SRM program in action (reasons to hide itfrom public – are given above, and they sound quite serious, imho – it’s about BIG money, after all).
Cheers.
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xraymike79 said:
Didn’t you get the memo? Chemtrail Conspiracy theorists like yourself are exactly the problem.
Do you realize how much would have to be sprayed day and night for it to show up in soil samples? Do you know how many people would have to be involved in your vast conspiracy?
I won’t waste another breath on such B.S.
http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/articles/chemtrails/
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xraymike79 said:
A couple quotes from Robert Scribbler on the CT of Chemtrails that appeared on this thread:
…I have no knowledge or evidence on large-scale and/or currently ongoing geo-engineering. I’ve seen instances of individuals seeding oceans with iron or attempting other quackish schemes. But, that said, if there is a large-scale effort out of the public eye, then it’s a well held conspiracy. And I’m generally not open to suggestions of such (chemtrails etc). Further, if such were ongoing, it would come up in aerosol and earth energy balance observations and estimates, which it hasn’t…
…That said, it remains quite clear to me that the chemtrail conspiracy theory is full-blown misinformation…
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James said:
An overlay of tribalism and hierarchical behavior have resulted in gross inequities of consumption and wealth accumulation both within nations and between them. It seems that once growth is no longer possible, those that still possess resources will make efforts to retain ownership. A coalescing of interests between government, large corporations and Wall St. will establish a police and gulag state to suppress those clamoring for their fair share of the pie. So, the nexus is still trying to grab what it can on the outside or foil others from grabbing it while trying to subvert any organized resistance internally. Eventually they will be hit from both sides as “citizens” decry harsh suppression and external forces inflict costly losses. For the average citizen to play their game any longer is absurd, but participation will become even less optional as time goes on as they control the legislative bodies and can twist the framework of laws and regulations to suit themselves. The governmental clergy of mass media will broadcast widely that “hope and change” is just around the corner while the noose continues to be tightened around the neck of the middle class.
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xraymike79 said:
“There’s really absolutely nothing new about this. We’ve been doing resource extraction at the expense of indigenous populations for the entire history of this country. Kind of unique to the situation is you’ve got a lot of upper middle class white people with college degrees getting ticked off because they’re being treated the way Third World people have always been treated by corporate America.”
– Lon Burnam, Gasland Part II
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xraymike79 said:
5-16-2014
In just over five years Britain will have run out of oil, coal and gas, researchers have warned.
A report by the Global Sustainability Institute said shortages would increase dependency on Norway, Qatar and Russia.
There should be a “Europe-wide drive” towards wind, tidal, solar and other sources of renewable power, the institute’s Prof Victor Anderson said.
The government says complete energy independence is unnecessary, says BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin.
The report says Russia has more than 50 years of oil, more than 100 years of gas and more than 500 years of coal left, on current consumption.
‘Decisive action’
By contrast, Britain has just 5.2 years of oil, 4.5 years of coal and three years of its own gas remaining.
France fares even worse, according to the report, with less than year to go before it runs out of all three fossil fuels.
Dr Aled Jones, director of the institute, which is based at Anglia Ruskin University, said “heavily indebted” countries were becoming increasingly vulnerable to rising energy prices.
“The EU is becoming ever more reliant on our resource-rich neighbours such as Russia and Norway, and this trend will only continue unless decisive action is taken,” he added.
The report painted a varied picture across Europe, with Bulgaria having 34 years of coal left.
Germany, it was claimed, has 250 years of coal remaining but less than a year of oil.
Professor Anderson said: “Coal, oil and gas resources in Europe are running down and we need alternatives.
“The UK urgently needs to be part of a Europe-wide drive to expand renewable energy sources such as wave, wind, tidal, and solar power.”
However, Jim Skea, Research Councils fellow in UK Energy Strategy. cast doubt on the findings of the report.
He told BBC News: “This sounds very unlikely. What’s more, it’s irrelevant – the UK has a stable supply of imported energy, even if it is a good idea to increase our own supplies.”
The government recently announced it was cutting subsidies for large-scale solar energy and the Conservatives have said there will be no funding for new onshore wind farms if they win the next election.
Ministers are hoping that enough shale gas – extracted by fracking – will be obtained to make a difference, the BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin says.
They are also offering incentives for more oil research in the North Sea – and trying to persuade the USA to export more gas, he added.
The Global Sustainability Institute’s research covers environmental, societal and economic challenges facing the world.
A Department of Energy & Climate Change spokesperson said the premise of the report was “nonsense”.
“The UK is one of the most energy secure countries in the world thanks to the combination of our own reserves, our diverse sources of imported energy and our focus on increasing clean, homegrown energy in the UK – which includes nuclear, renewables and carbon capture and storage.
“As well as attracting record investment into our energy security since 2010, the UK is leading globally on energy security, particularly through the G7 which has agreed to take global action to improve energy security, and in getting a deal in the EU to cut carbon emissions by 40% by 2030.”
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mike k said:
People love to gossip. One of the payoffs to the gossiper is to be the one with some surprising inside information that his listener is not privy to. This is supposed to make the one you tell it to think of you as wise and profoundly in on stuff that they never would have guessed was happening. Hopefully the one you have gifted with your inside dope will now have a new respect for you, and look forward to your having the skinny on more exciting secret stuff. Their first inclination will probably be to corner someone to tell “the latest” and your fame will spread as the source of amazing revelations….
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mike k said:
Mike, I admire the way you have handled this contentious affair of CT believers. You maintained your balance under fire. These discussions of the fate of our world bring up some strong emotional responses in people, and often reasoned positions come in for heavy criticism, which can degenerate into ugly personal attacks. I take part in face to face groups, and have had to learn how to temper my strong feelings on some issues while not hiding or suppressing how I feel. That we have feelings about these issues is a good thing, but we all need to learn to express them in a way that does not insult those we are sharing with.
All this goes to Rodney King’s famous question, “Can’t we just get along?” The answer is, yes Rodney – if we are willing to do the work on ourselves to learn how to do that. These discussions we are having online or face to face are precious opportunities to learn to share with each other in a way that does not end up in an egotistical shouting match, but instead can engender some mutual understanding and result in our learning those things we desperately need to navigate the time we are swimming in…
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Aptitude Design said:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175772
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Apneaman said:
At least 21 dead in Vietnam anti-China protests over oil rig
Riots spread from south the central part of Vietnam as crowds set fire to industrial parks, sparked by rig in disputed territory
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/15/vietnam-anti-china-protests-oil-rig-dead-injured
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xraymike79 said:
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