Logical Fallacy: Argument From MOMCOM

This post deals with the confusion MOMCOM has created through propaganda.

It is a confusion that has contributed to causing the populace to be unable to properly contemplate the difference, in the sense of capacity, between the issues "we can't" vs. "we won't".

Now some background.

An astute, long time blogger, poster, and commenter here at Dredd Blog at one time, disaffected, exploded into the nether world over this issue and has not been seen since, after making these comments:

Yes indeed, oil - the concentrated energy of millions of years of sunlight - is indeed the most intoxicating of drugs ... Even if there were a viable alternative(s) on the horizon (which there isn't, nothing even remotely close) ...

(Sickology vs. Penology, comment section). To which I hastily replied:

I can't agree with you there.

That is the feeling any addict has and it is as real as withdrawal or the dread of withdrawal, but it is also an illusion as much as the fear that real pain and discomfort will never go away once withdrawal sets in is an illusion.

We can do it with a plethora of real energy sources as soon as we drop the "alternative" energy, which is oil.

I say there is an alternative energy source, and that it is oil, but there is also a one and only lasting source in the sense that it allows civilization to last along with it.

It is not oil.

The real energy is wonderfully multifaceted and waiting for our minds to grasp and use it abundantly.

(ibid). Then, in response, disaffected appealed to authority, which can be the exercise of false logic:

Well, I'm simply going with the experts in the field (the physics guys), almost all of whom say that there is nothing even remotely close to oil in terms of the amount of useful energy it provides from such a compact source. Which really shouldn't be surprising to anyone. If there were, we surely would have at least discovered it by now.

(ibid). That comment episode clearly included a resort to what those who study logic describe as:

Argument from authority (also known as appeal to authority) is a fallacy of defective induction, where it is argued that a statement is correct because the statement is made by a person or source that is commonly regarded as authoritative. The most general structure of this argument is:

1. Source A says that p is true.
2. Source A is authoritative.
3. Therefore, p is true.

This is a fallacy because the truth or falsity of a claim is not related to the authority of the claimant, and because the premises can be true, and the conclusion false (an authoritative claim can turn out to be false). It is also known as argumentum ad verecundiam (Latin: argument to respect), argumentum ad potentiam (Latin: argument to power), or ipse dixit (Latin: he himself said it).

On the other hand, arguments from authority are an important part of informal logic. Since we cannot have expert knowledge of many subjects, we often rely on the judgments of those who do. There is no fallacy involved in simply arguing that the assertion made by an authority is true. The fallacy only arises when it is claimed or implied that the authority is infallible in principle and can hence be exempted from criticism.

(Argument From Authority). The argument disaffected presented was "we can't" convert to green/alternative/renewable energy sources because "the experts say so".

Bloggers Randy and Dredd responded: it is not that we can't, the reality is that the authorities who are criminally insane won't.

The astute blogger disaffected then retorted:

"Once again, you hear what you want to hear. All I'm saying is that any sustainable society that exists post oil will be NOTHING like the one that now exists", which is not what the blogger disaffected had just written a few sentences before.

Blogger disaffected had written "... oil - the concentrated energy of millions of years of sunlight - is indeed the most intoxicating of drugs ... if there were a viable alternative(s) on the horizon ... which there isn't" ... then began diversions away from that statement when confronted.

The reality is that there are several ways out of the addiction to oil, like it was historically with civilization for thousands of years before oil was discovered and substituted for renewable energy.

The arts, literature, culture, music, peace, and democratic principles all flourished at various times and places just fine for billions of people for thousands of years.

In numerous locations humanity did fine around the earth well before BP (before Big Petroleum, before Big Pollution, and before Big Propaganda).

In fact, the short time that civilization has been addicted to dirty hydrocarbons (~200 years) can't compare to the thousands of years of healthy civilizations humanity lived in without BP.

The criminally insane leaders of the world (a.k.a. MOMCOM, e.g. see here and here) will not choose those ways that worked for thousands of years because they are criminally insane and they are making as many other people insane as they can.

That is how the toxins of power propagate after all.

Gadfly Polemics or Enlightened Dissent? - 2

The evolution of politics in the USA is a study of microcosm / macrocosm dynamics.

In broad general terms it is the diagnosis of national decline, the symptoms easily comparable to a nasty couple ("R & D") dying of cancer, yet unwilling to help each other as they go down.

They have evolved to the "enlightened" place where they cling to the disease as their savior even as they blame each other for causing the problems the disease produces.

Those who caused the problems are selected to be on a committee to solve the problems.

In short, they are "not taking their meds".

The Toxins of Power Blog gives some simple formulas listing antidotes ("the meds") or antitoxins to the disease toxins, but in a sicko society that system of cure has become anathema.

For example, the antitoxin to the germ of war is peace, the antitoxin to the germ of propaganda is honesty, and the antitoxin to pollution is clean environmental practices, none of which are any longer considered by R & D to be the composites of a healthy planet.

And so now, as a result of having passed the peak of sanity, we observe the budget wars soap opera, touted by some as the pinnacle of "democratic" ideology that has evolved within our society.

The script writers of this bad screenplay portray the enlightened debate as a struggle between taking more from the aged and feeble folk in society versus giving even more to the brute forces of MOMCOM.

The role the casting director MOMCOM has chosen for each party, and the scene the choreographer MOMCOM has framed, make the many of us ill, make others of us change the channel with denial, and make the rest of us angry or depressed.

One Dredd Blog theory for this, on the local scale, is that MOMCOM wants the populace to become so fed up that they are willing to embrace martial law as the solution.

"Nothing could be worse than this" will be famous last words if that happens.

UPDATE: Chris Martenson is giving an economic warning based on the impact the disaster in Japan will have on the world and US economy.

Add to that the impact the brats may bring to the US economy by shutting down the government, the recovery may get even harder to see (anyone seen it yet???).

The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 4

One of the indicators for the current distance to the edge of the demise of current civilization, not unlike the doomsday clock scientists use, is the intensity of, or nearness to, the peak of the oil wars.

It would seem that we are now at the early stages of the oil wars, having been there for about ten years now, but not at the peak yet.

In Dredd Blog's estimation The Peak of Sanity of our current civilization was reached when the decision was made at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to switch to oil as the source of energy.

Flowing inevitably from that decision to become oil addicts to a finite source of the oil drug would be the day of The Peak Of Oil, when the supply begins to constantly diminish in quantity and in quality.

That peak of the availability of oil would then inevitably lead to the typical addict's reaction to any removal of the addict's supply of the drug of choice.

Dredd Blog calls that final reaction The Oil Wars (something like the opium drug wars of old, or the modern Mexican drug wars) on steroids.

Some history of posts at Dredd Blog dealing with the subject directly are as follows: The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 3, The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 2, The Peak Of The Oil Wars, Iraq: World's Number One Oil Producer - 2?, or Iraq: World's Number One Oil Producer, among many others (see another blog's take on it: The War In Libya: It's Really About Broccoli).

Does anyone think it strange that not long ago the "Libyan rebels" were on the run in their rusted-out Toyota pickups, but are now on the road to becoming oil barons?

The "Libyan rebels" took an oil port and are beginning to export oil according to a report today:

Libyan rebels are set for their first oil export as soon as Tuesday as they seek funding to sustain their uprising against Muammer Gaddafi's rule.

The Liberia-flagged Equator tanker was off Port Said, Egypt, early on Monday and is expected to dock at the Marsa el-Hariga crude oil export terminal near Tubruq, in east Libya, on Tuesday morning, according to Lloyd's Intelligence, the shipping industry data provider.

The owner of the tanker, Greek-based Dynacom Tankers Management Ltd, declined to comment when contacted by the Financial Times. Dynacom is Greece's third-largest tanker operator.

Oil traders and tanker shipbrokers said they did not know who had chartered the vessel, a Suezmax built in 1996 capable of carrying about 1m barrels of oil. Qatar last week offered to market the Libyan rebels' oil. At current prices, 1m barrels of east Libyan oil should sell for about $125m.

(FT, and CNN link below). The world knows how dangerous a heavily armed Mexican marijuana/cocaine drug cartel can be.

But is the world ready to contemplate how dangerous a nuclear armed oil drug cartel can be when yet another nuclear armed drug cartel takes from it the drug it must have in order to survive?

Do the math and connect the dots.

Foreign Policy Mag. has some interesting math along with some interesting dots to ponder:

The United States started out as 13 small and vulnerable colonies clinging to the east coast of North America. Over the next century, those original 13 states expanded all the way across the continent, subjugating or exterminating the native population and wresting Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California from Mexico. It fought a bitter civil war, acquired a modest set of overseas colonies, and came late to both world wars. But since becoming a great power around 1900, it has fought nearly a dozen genuine wars and engaged in countless military interventions.
...
In 2008, Americans elected Barack Obama in part because they thought he would be different from his predecessor on a host of issues, but especially in his approach to the use of armed force. It was clear to nearly everyone that George W. Bush had launched a foolish and unnecessary war in Iraq, and then compounded the error by mismanaging it (and the war in Afghanistan too).
...
Yet a mere two years later, we find ourselves back in the fray once again. Since taking office, Obama has escalated U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and launched a new war against Libya.
...
Moreover, as Alan Kuperman of the University of Texas and Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune have now shown, the claim that the United States had to act to prevent Libyan tyrant Muammar al-Qaddafi from slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Benghazi does not stand up to even casual scrutiny.

(Is America Addicted to War?). "America" isn't addicted to war, MOMCOM is addicted to war, but since America is addicted to MOMCOM's oil and media the distinction is about the same as the difference.

Another post comes through to support Dredd Blog's theory for the reason Libya has been invaded:

Most of us have a low feeling that we are not being told the real reasons for the war in Libya. David Cameron's instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to jump on a plane and tour the palaces of the region's dictators selling them the most high-tech weapons of repression available. Nicholas Sarkozy's instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to offer urgent aid to the Tunisian tyrant in crushing his people. Barack Obama's instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to refuse to trim the billions in aid going to Hosni Mubarak and his murderous secret police, and for his Vice-President to declare: "I would not refer to him as a dictator."

This isn't the distant past. This is a few months ago. Yet now we are told that these people have turned into the armed wing of Amnesty International. They are bombing Libya because they can't bear for innocent people to be tyrannized, by the tyrants they were arming and funding for years. As Obama put it: "Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different." There was a time, a decade ago, when I took this rhetoric at face value. But I can't now, because I have looked too deeply into the real actions behind the honeyed words.

(Johann Hari, emphasis added). I noticed that the author said "most of us" do not buy into the propaganda.

That is healthy for a change.

A British periodical indicates that Iraqi oil was discussed prior to the invasion of Iraq:

The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq "post regime change". Its minutes state: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity."

After another meeting, this one in October 2002, the Foreign Office's Middle East director at the time, Edward Chaplin, noted: "Shell and BP could not afford not to have a stake in [Iraq] for the sake of their long-term future ... We were determined to get a fair slice of the action for UK companies in a post-Saddam Iraq."
...
The 20-year contracts signed in the wake of the invasion were the largest in the history of the oil industry. They covered half of Iraq's reserves – 60 billion barrels of oil, bought up by companies such as BP ...

(Independent). Oh those darn conspiracy theorists should get a job.

Surprise! Surprise! The rebels in their rusted out Toyota pickups who started the Libya war "to gain their freedom" are selling the Libyan oil to the USA:

The rebel government in control of the eastern part of Libya has made its first sale of oil from territory it controls, the State Department confirmed Wednesday.

Tesoro, a U.S. oil refiner, entered into a deal May 25 with the Transitional National Council based in Benghazi, Libya for 1.2 million barrels of Libyan crude oil, the State Department said in a written statement. The shipment was scheduled to arrive aboard the MT Equator, a Liberian-flagged tanker, at the Single Point Mooring in Hawaii on Wednesday. The dollar value of the deal is not known.

(CNN). Do not, repeat do not think this war has anything to do with oil, it is about broccoli.

The next post in this series is here.

The Virgin MOMCOM - 2

In the first episode of Dredd Blog's Jabber the Whut? series, readers were introduced to the perplexing virgin species of reptile leiolepis ngovantrii, a species that is composed of females only.

Virgin mothers are the sole source of the newborns in that population of reptiles!

Leiolepis reproduces by cloning rather than by "normal" sexual relations like other species:

All-female species reproduces via virgin birth, new study says.

You could call it the surprise du jour: A popular food on Vietnamese menus has turned out to be a lizard previously unknown to science, scientists say.

What's more, the newfound Leiolepis ngovantrii is no run-of-the-mill reptile — the all-female species reproduces via cloning, without the need for male lizards.

(National Geographic, emphasis in original). In The Virgin MOMCOM post Dredd Blog begins to show that ideological cloning is the somewhat similar method which MOMCOM uses to reproduce, or should we say replicate.

That is, by manipulating the amydala, thus inducing fear and intimidation, MOMCOM spreads across the earth by the practice of hijacking the amygdala of both Americans and foreigners to propagate as an ever growing meme complex.

The camouflage-clothed, doublespeak meme that is used to rationalize and morph the meaning of naked imperialism into "nation building", "the war on terror", or "spreading democracy", reproduces "little democracies".

But the reality is that the entire operation of MOMCOM is an expansion for the empire so as to grab up oil reserves (a.k.a. broccoli).

It is a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable post-peak-oil era, which will be followed by the inevitable collapse of the oil-addicted civilization.

We can easily note that leiolepis ngovantrii is a strange species for evolutionary biology to contemplate, considering Dollo's Law as Dredd Blog did in The Peak of Evolution, and we can easily see that its existence engenders wonder, debate, and contemplation as to which technique of reproduction is the more advanced, in terms of evolution.

Further, considering what form of sanity might co-evolve, as Dredd Blog did in The Peak of Sanity series, the reality of leiolepis ngovantrii presents a difficult mind experiment.

Finally, it ends up that we can much more easily discern the nature of MOMCOM, because history tells us that empires come via war and go via hell on earth.

The next post in this series is here.

Open Thread

Open
Thread

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Science bites demented denial sufferers in House of Representatives ...
when their own puppy scientist's eyes are opened ... healed!

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Latest nuclear lie from Japan "radiation would be quickly diluted in the ocean" ... guess what kiddies water becomes radioactive too ...

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Latest Nuclear Status

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Check Out The Post At Toxins of Power Blog

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Saudi Oil Reserves Overestimated 40%???

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"We Americans will trade you 1 Bahrain for 1 Libya - Hillary Clinton"
Asia Times

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I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own

dig it MOMCOM

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Mend A City

Regular readers will remember that Dredd Blog recently discussed that it is a matter of law now that we live in a culture of falsehood: mendacity is our capitol city, the bubble district is where the money is, where the bailed-out banks are, and that the language of our government is mendacious, which generates a lot of illness and death.

Some tip-of-the-iceberg news reports touch upon the subject:

One of Barack Obama's first acts as president was to say that Guantanamo must go. It did not go. Soon after, he said that the Israeli settlements must go. They expanded. Obama made his peace in the end with Guantanamo and the Israeli settlements. He restarted the military tribunals at Guantanamo -- a feature of the Bush-Cheney constitution which he once had explicitly deplored -- and recently went out of his way to defend the Guantanamo-like abuse (compulsory nakedness and sleep deprivation) inflicted on an American prisoner, Bradley Manning, in the Marine Corps brig at Quantico. One had come to think of "X must go" assertions by Obama as speculative prefaces to a non-existent work. His words, in his mind, are actions. When he speaks them once or twice, he has done what he was put here to do. If the existing powers defy his wishes, he embraces the powers and continues on his way.

(David Bromwich). The religionists pray on a word, the comics play on a word, but MOMCOM just preys with words.

The fundamental sacred sacrament of The Virgin MOMCOM is the act of war, yet the sermon is about Mend A City, Mend A State, and Mend A Deficit, while doing none of the above.

Meanwhile, the cities, counties, and states are increasingly in danger because the "home land" is losing its homes, and is morphing into the "homeless land":

The mortgage crisis in this country doesn't get much attention in Washington these days, but it's huge. It's so huge, in fact, that it dwarfs most of the economic issues that have Washington in their grip. It's so huge that it's dragging down our entire economy. It's so huge that the numbers can be difficult to picture ...

The scale of the crisis is, in a word, staggering ...

How big is the mortgage crisis? Pick an adjective: astronomic, colossal, enormous, gigantic, ginormous, humongous, jumbo, mammoth, massive, monstrous, mastadonic, monumental, prodigious, tremendous, vast, very big, very large, whopping. Here's how big it is. Let's assume that you're reading these words one day after I wrote them. That means that:

By the time you read this, there will have been approximately 8,500 foreclosure actions in this country -- more than one thousand every hour during the working day.

By the time you read this, homes in the United States will have lost more than $13 million dollars in value. During a 24-hour day, this figure comes out to more than $500,000 an hour.

By the time you read this, homeowners will have paid $750 million in mortgage payments for non-existent housing value -- that is, the amount on their mortgages that disappeared when the bubble burst -- according to our estimate.

By the time you read this, the nation's bankers will have earned nearly $400 million, of which $56 million will be bonus money. Bankers like to say they work 24/7. (They don't, but let's say they did.) That means they will have collectively earned more than $16 million in salary and more than $2 million in bonuses during each and every one of the 24 hours hours before you read these words -- morning, noon, and night.

And all of these figures for the last 24 hours will be reached again during the next 24 ...

Here's a fact for you: The amount of wealth American homeowners have lost over the least three years is much larger than this year's entire Federal budget.

(RJ Escow). In the series The Graphs of Wrath - 2 we looked at the issue from a higher altitude, but noted that it does not look good up there either.

While there is a way out of here, the powers that be are in too much denial to take that path.

So they start another oil war as if to say "yeah, that's the ticket".

UPDATE: They started a war with a nation The Federal Reserve ("The Fed") loaned billions and billions to, and at cheaper rates than Americans can get from The Fed (if they could borrow any at all):

“It is incomprehensible to me that while creditworthy small businesses in Vermont and throughout the country could not receive affordable loans, the Federal Reserve was providing tens of billions of dollars in credit to a bank that is substantially owned by the Central Bank of Libya,” Sanders said.

(Washington's Blog). They choose mendacity over Mend A City every time.