The Empire Strikes Back - 2

This is a follow up to the post The Empire Strikes Back, to show why they strike back.

One of the top 50 people who influence public and social discourse is a "9/11 Truther".

He is number 41 of the 50, which means that whatever he is doing or has done is getting traction.

Notice what a left leaning British magazine has to say about his efforts:

Conspiracy theories are everywhere, and they always have been. In recent years, one of the most pernicious global myths has been that the US government carried out, or at least colluded in, the 11 September 2001 attacks as a pretext for going to war. David Ray Griffin, a retired professor of religion, is the high priest of the "truther" movement. His books on the subject have lent a sheen of respectability that appeals to people at the highest levels of government - from Michael Meacher MP to Anthony "Van" Jones, who was recently forced to resign as Barack Obama's "green jobs" adviser after it emerged that he had signed a 9/11 truth petition in 2004.

(The New Statesman). Some U.S. periodicals wonder why in the world the British press folks put him in the top 50, and attempt to explain why it could be a valid 41:

One of these choices, however, is beyond surprising - it is astounding.

I refer to the person in the 41st position: David Ray Griffin, a retired professor of philosophy of religion and theology who, in 2003, started writing and lecturing about 9/11, pointing out problems in the official account of the events of that day. By the time the New Statesman article appeared, he had published 8 books, 50 articles, and several DVDs. Because of both the quantity and quality of his work, he became widely regarded as the chief spokesperson of what came to be called “the 9/11 Truth Movement.” It was because of this role that the New Statesman included him in its list, calling him the “top truther” (the “conspiracy theorist” title went to Dan Brown, who was placed in the 50th slot).

(Global Research). Cass R. Sunstein, one of the government's theorists about how to neutralize Dr. Griffin and others, points out in his theory that popularity of the movement will dictate when the government should intervene by:

(1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. (3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories. (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech.

(The Empire Strikes Back). Sounds a bit Orwellian no? If they ban conspiracy theorizing many criminal prosecutions will be stopped, since they happen every day in the courts of the land (prosecutors use conspiracy theories: "they conspired to" do thus and such, which is considered to be good law).

Perhaps Obama's privacy official means banning conspiracy theories that are not official government conspiracy theories?

Where are we going when government officials advocate and teach torture, then are promoted to the highest levels in the judicial part of government, but others can not have conspiracy theories?

Some of these guys, like Cass, teach constitutional law at Harvard Law School? They evidently would not have to know the 4th or 1st Amendment now would they?

Here are some of the other people besides Dr. Griffin whose free speech they will be banning if they get all patrioty mavericky and go rogue:

Major General Albert Stubblebine, U.S. Army (ret) – Former Commanding General of U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, 1981 - 1984. Also commanded the U.S. Army’s Electronic Research and Development Command and the U.S. Army’s Intelligence School and Center. Former head of Imagery Interpretation for Scientific and Technical Intelligence. 32-year Army career. Member, Military Intelligence Hall of Fame ...

... or Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, PhD, U.S. Air Force (ret) – Director of Advanced Space Programs Development under Presidents Ford and Carter. U.S. Air Force fighter pilot with over 100 combat missions. (PhD in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering, Cal Tech). Former Head of the Department of Aeronautical Engineering and Assistant Dean at the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology. 22-year Air Force career. Also taught Mathematics and English at the University of Southern California, the University of Maryland, and Phillips University.

(The Patriots). Both of those intellectuals have literally fought to protect the First Amendment right to be a 9/11 Truther, and both are 9/11 Truthers.

Like Conservative Republican Richard Gage, an architect.

MOMCOM "Momma" Cass, I think that you have bitten off more than you can chew. Time to get real. You can't demonize liberals and conservatives at the same time so as to ban their First Amendment rights.

Open Thread

Lots to talk about ...

The Empire Strikes Back

MOMCOM is pissed because some folks do not swallow whole the conspiracy theory she-it demands that we believe.

Yeah, she-it demands that we believe it fervently with all our "pea pickin' little hearts" as Ernie Ford used to say.

Well MOMCOM, that is not going to happen and you know it quite well.

So, you have decided to continue the policies of J. Edgar Hoover, who was a despotic tyrant of the FBI for many decades longer than decency should have allowed him to be?

He spied on everyone he saw as a threat, and built files so he could "compromise them with blackmail".

One Official of the Obama Administration is advocating doing the same against any U.S. citizens who believe a conspiracy theory besides the official government conspiracy theory of 9/11:

Conspiracy theories generally attribute extraordinary powers to certain agents – to plan, to control others, to maintain secrets, and so forth.
...
Such theories typically spread as a result of identifiable cognitive blunders, operating in conjunction with informational and reputational influences. A distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is their self-sealing quality. Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy.

(Conspiracy Theories, PDF). Hey, those who question the official 911 conspiracy theory could not agree with you more.

That is the one where they say "The Cavemen Did It!", yes, these special cave men had extraordinary powers, for cavemen that is, so they out did NORAD, the CIA, the FBI, and the Air Force to take out the three towers and the Pentagon!

Yeah, that's the ticket, "So easy a caveman can do it" ...

Isn't that extraordinary?

Can you believe that Cass R. Sunstein, an official in the Obama Administration, wants to infiltrate groups of U.S. citizens and spy on them if they hold theories or opinions different than his?

In his paper Conspiracy Theories, linked to above, he writes:

What can government do about conspiracy theories? Among the things it can do, what should it do? We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. (3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories. (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech. (5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help. Each instrument has a distinctive set of potential effects, or costs and benefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions. However, our main policy idea is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories, which involves a mix of (3), (4) and (5).

(ibid, page 14). Hey Cass, remember that scientists criticize other scientists and say radical things even to the point of saying that their peers have fantasies in place of actual science in some cases, Cass.

They don't infiltrate them so as to try to subvert them Cass. Instead they debate and do peer reviews and all kinds of scientific investigation Cass.

Stop being afraid of ideas, even if they are bad ideas, and get about the business of disproving bad ideas out in the open where we can all benefit from it Cass.

The simple solution is to get rid of the conjecture with a real 9/11 Commission with real teeth. Subpoena power, investigative power, but free from outside influence so it can get to the facts in full.

While Cass was at Harvard Law School, he advocated the policies of J.Edgar Hoover such as infiltrating and spying on professional architects as if they are terrorists or something.

Is that the meaning of "freedom" you learned at Harvard Law School, Cass, or are you deft because of the "W" on every compass point now?

You want to do bad things to U.S. citizens if they don't believe that cavemen from one of the poorest countries of the world completely shut down the defense systems of the U.S., became pilots of massive airliners, even though they couldn't even fly Cessna's, then did fighter-pilot quality flying?

Many pilots do not believe it Cass.

Have you stopped to consider that the Commissioners who did the 9/11 Commission Report do not believe what they wrote any more either?

Have you infiltrated them yet Cass?

Maybe you should consider infiltrating the Associated Press, Cass, because their CEO has said that MOMCOM turned the U.S. military into a global propaganda machine.

Have you infiltrated them yet Cass?

And what about these churches that carry around a book you took your oath on Cass; that book you carry to church which says an invisible evil power controls the governments of the earth?

Have you infiltrated them yet Cass?

Economists - Aliens From Cygnus?

There is an emerging bubble theory that is developing quickly.

It concerns the origin of U.S. economists who gravitate toward government "service" in order to "service" the people.

Scientists have discovered a bubble in space, which it could be argued, was first theoretically conceived by a scientist named Dyson.

That was before an actual bubble, about the size of our solar system, was discovered in space (see photo) in the Constellation Cygnus.

My theory is that the bubble is a very ancient runaway economic system developed by the ancestors of our current bankster species, before some of them migrated to our planet.

They are constantly talking about bubbles, constantly making them, constantly trying to keep them from popping by putting more and more "bubble stuff" into them.

Think about it, an expanding bubble gets thinner and thinner as it gets bigger and bigger.

To keep the skin from getting popingly thin, more must be pumped in.

Sound like our government's theory of bankster economics?

Told ya, there are bubble aliens among us.

Soupy Sales & Evolutionary Tales

Another soupy evolution tale is biting the dust if some scientists have their way.

Have you heard of the soupy birthers?

They forged the doctrine that humans emerged from a primordial soup years before even the birth of Soupy Sales.

The soupy doctrine has been around for eighty years, or as we say around here, eight decades.

How many nights did you stay up in college learning what now is said to have been just a college daze?

Now they tell us:

For 80 years it has been accepted that early life began in a 'primordial soup' of organic molecules before evolving out of the oceans millions of years later. Today the 'soup' theory has been over turned in a pioneering paper in BioEssays which claims it was the Earth's chemical energy, from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, which kick-started early life.

"Textbooks have it that life arose from organic soup and that the first cells grew by fermenting these organics to generate energy in the form of ATP. We provide a new perspective on why that old and familiar view won't work at all," said team leader Dr Nick lane from University College London.

(Primordial Soup Not Ummm Ummm Good). Listen, this blog has alluded to a conspiracy theory that textbook companies are trying to inflate their soupy sales, sorta like Sarah Palin does (she buys thousands upon thousands of her own books).

Anyway, it tends to look like intellectual life in many circles is getting more and more to be composed of memorization, then taking a test to see how much one has memorized.

All righty then, it really could be like the venerable Noam Chomsky says:

And one of the striking features of the modern period is the institutionalization of that process, so that we now have huge industries deceiving the public—and they're very conscious about it, the public relations industry. Interestingly, this developed in the freest countries—in Britain and the US—roughly around time of WWI, when it was recognized that enough freedom had been won that people could no longer be controlled by force. So modes of deception and manipulation had to be developed in order to keep them under control.

And by now these are huge industries. They not only dominate marketing of commodities, but they also control the political system. As anyone who watches a US election knows, it's marketing. It's the same techniques that are used to market toothpaste.

And, of course, there are power systems in place to facilitate this. Throughout history it's been mostly the property holders or the educated classes who've tended to support power systems. And that's a large part of what I think education is—it's a form of indoctrination. You have to reconstruct a picture of the world in order to be conducive to the interests and concerns of the educated classes, and this involves a lot of self-deceit.

(Discussion with Noam Chomsky and Robert Trivers, emphasis added). Our educational system, then, is sooooo Book of Eli.

New discoveries locally as well as "out there" continue unabated.

MOMCOM And The War With The Earth

The Pentagon has released a report that has in it, among other things, an acknowledgement that global warming or global climate change is a reality.

So, it is not the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" as one GOP senator has repeatedly said?

The MOMCOM report clearly says:

Assessments conducted by the intelligence community indicate that climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and the further weakening of fragile governments. Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease, and may spur or exacerbate mass migration.

... DoD will need to adjust to the impacts of climate change on our facilities and military capabilities.

(Pentagon QDR, page 108 of PDF). Can you hear Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma whispering "say it ain't so" to the Pentagon?

Will the new neoCon script be like the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT) position of Senator McCain, who now says DADT is ok if the generals say it is ok?

Global warming is now real because the generals say it is real?

I am glad the generals and admirals realize a 30 foot rise in ocean level will have an impact on naval ports around the world; more impact than all the terrorists in the world will ever have.

One wonders if there will be tension now between MOMCOM factions, since the addiction to oil could be seen as a national security risk greater than the risk of political terrorism?

Science According To MOMCOM

When we want to really indicate that something is brainy or when we want to indicate that something is difficult for us to conceive, or even when we want to explain that something is not hard to understand, we tend sometimes to use the term "rocket science".

That is, when we say "this is rocket science" we mean that only wizards understand it, but when we say "this isn't rocket science" we mean that mere mortals can understand it.

Rocket science was developed thousands of years ago, several hundred years B.C., and is incredibly primitive from a cosmic viewpoint.

Why is it, then, that we tend to think rocket science is the ultimate in scientific capability?

It is because MOMCOM has a death grip on science and education as we know it.

Rocket science is a lazy scientific application that can't do what must be done in order for humanity to survive as a cosmic species.

It is the science of intellectual warmonger military types who only care about delivering a WMD payload somewhere on the surface of the Earth to destroy, kill, and maim.

Basically, "rocket science" is brain dead to greater cosmic reality.

Rain of Terror In The Land of Jesus

The land of Israel known as the Gaza strip had fire rain down on them causing widespread damage and death, according to one observer:

Human Rights Watch, the New York based rights group, said Israel's use of phosphorus weapons was more widespread and many people had died as a result of burn injuries.

Its report concluded that the Israeli military "repeatedly exploded white phosphorus munitions in the air over populated areas, killing and injuring civilians and damaging civilian structures, including a school, a market, a humanitarian aid warehouse and a hospital".

(Israel Reprimands Top Officers). As a result a general and another officer were punished.

What a concept.

Prosecute the ones who ordered wrongdoing (e.g. Generals) instead of prosecuting those who followed the orders (e.g. PFC).

Obama, Holder, are you listening?

The real side of the problem is that they were not given the punishment they deserved, because Israel was too soft on that terror.

However, at least the principle set forth is better than U.S. policy.

The U.S. does nothing to the top people who orchestrate the terror the ground troops do in obedience to criminal orders.

MOMCOM is such a looker, but the public is such an ugly little thang.