Dredd Blog

Is 'Insanity' A Valid Defense To Ecocide? - 2

2012-02-01T09:52:00.000-06:00

In the first post of this series we talked about a mock trial of the type law schools hold each year for their students' edification.

As it turned out, the issue of whether or not insanity is a valid defense was not considered in that trial we spoke of.

The issue of ecocide is quite serious, causing the United Nations to consider adding ecocide to its list of crimes against humanity, because of the damage, death, and destruction already being done:

But should the bosses of polluting companies and the leaders of environmentally-unfriendly states join those responsible for mass murder in the dock. They could if a fifth crime against peace - ecocide - joined that list of human evils? The United Nations is now considering the proposal and the first test of how a prosecution for ecocide would work takes place on Friday, with fossil fuel bosses in the dock at the UK supreme court in London. It is a mock trial of course, but with real top-flight lawyers and judges and a jury made up of members of the public. The corporate CEOs will be played by actors briefed by their legal teams.

(Guardian). That trial the Dredd Blog post spoke of was intended to show what such trials in the International Criminal Court would look like.

Anyway, the jury took a short time of it to return a guilty verdict on two cases, even though that verdict was said not to be a forgone conclusion, since one defendant was found not guilty:

Two verdicts of guilty, one not guilty: that was the conclusion of the mock ecocide trial (details below) held at the UK's supreme court on 30 September. Real lawyers, judges and a public jury found the CEOs of fictional fossil fuel companies guilty of "extensive destruction, damage to or loss of ecosystem(s) to such an extent that the peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory, and of other territories, has been severely diminished", as a result of their company's extraction of oil from tar sands in Canada. The jury found one of the CEOs not guilt on the count of damage caused by an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

(ibid). One beneficial effect of these types of trials is that it focuses on the evidence and arguments that are at issue.

The recent Dredd Blog post Thin Ice brings up the story of Al Gore's current trip to Antarctica, one key area of focus in this Ecocide Is A Crime saga.

A post on his blog The Climate Reality Project, written from Antarctica, explains the situation in subdued language, taking the path that projects the least amount of damage from rising seas, yet the post also mentions that several scientists project a far greater sea rise and subsequent damage.

Al's post is a good read with useful links.

If I was Al I don't think I would get too close to "the people's House" of representatives, since they do not like those who resist Ecocide:

Josh Fox, whose HBO documentary “Gasland” raised questions about the safety of the natural gas drilling technique known as horizontal hydraulic fracturing, was handcuffed and led away on Wednesday as he tried to film a House Science Committee hearing on the topic.

The Capitol Police said that Mr. Fox, whose film was nominated for an Academy Award last year, was charged with unlawful entry.

Mr. Fox brought a crew to film a hearing of the energy and environment subcommittee that was looking into an Environmental Protection Agency finding that fracking, as the technique is popularly known, was probably responsible for groundwater contamination in Pavillion, Wyo.

Mr. Fox is preparing a sequel to “Gasland,” which has contributed to widespread concern about fracking, which uses large volumes of water and chemicals under high pressure to free gas deposits from underground shale.

The chairman of the subcommittee conducting the hearing, Representative Andy Harris, a Maryland Republican, objected to the presence of Mr. Fox and his crew as well as another crew under contract to ABC. A committee chairman has the discretion to bar cameras from hearings, according to a committee aide.

(NY Times). One wonders what the "strict constructionists" of the GOP think "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of ... the press" in the First Amendment means?

It is clearly time for an ethics investigation of the fascist republican heading up that puppet committee.

Dredd Blog On Steroids

2012-01-31T15:17:00.000-06:00

On this date three years ago I was hyperactive, posting the following three posts.

Those articles are posted again today, for the simple reason that you can wonder how much things have changed, or have not changed.

And guess what bloggers, the degree to which these subjects are still live, or have been solved by Mr. R. and Mr. D. in congress, is an indication of how much they are listening to you, or to the contrary how much they are not listening to you.

Hey, isn't today the Florida primary where votes are cast for the Nation Saver in Chief?

So, maybe these posts with show how that voting thingy is working out for us:

Let's Party - We Got Our Bailout Money!:

The robber barons of the US in our time purportedly first raised their ugly heads during the great depression long ago.

But their progeny, still at "work" today, have the same genetic disposition to look at the rest of us as the little people.

We are pests who bring up that constitution thingy and all that other quaint jazz that irritates them so much.

They are so brazen in today's great depression that they really do not try to hide it.

They fly in to beg for champagne and campaign money in personal or corporate jets when their PR people have not gotten the "don't do this and don't do that" memo to them yet.

Afterwards they may be chided with "you gotta know how to deceive the little people fool" by their handlers.

It got so bad that their base had to feign righteous indignation and feign being against giving them our money.

Well, actually they all give it out like they think it is their money don't they?

"Progressives" v "Zionists" is A Ruse:

Even in the face of history the blogs of self righteous indignation are against "Zionism" I guess.

Whatever they think that ism is.

That ism to their way of thinking seems to be synonymous with "Isreal", which is equal to "Jew" I gather.

So Zionism = Isrealism = Jewism?

These blogs of self righteous indignation and racism have progressed about sixty years backwards to another time when their self assessed righteous ancestors ran amok after being infected with the same meme such blogs are infected with.

One difference that throws them off, in terms of identifying what it is they stand for, is that the meme infecting them sixty years ago had a host wearing a NAZI uniform.

The host today dresses and acts differently. The host today also claims to be chic and cool and wise and intelligent and sophisticated.

As if the old host did not claim the same.

Try peace for a change and drop the loser meme.

Purple Haze or Fickle Finger of Fate?:

Today the often endangered people of Iraq will go through an election cycle.

They will cast their vote, get a purple finger, and return to their homes or jobs pondering their future and their past.

I followed the life of an Iraqi woman on her blog for a long time.

Before her output went cold in October of 2007 after she and her family had to flee Iraq along with millions of other Iraqis.

She noted many things about their "barbed wire elections" (At least eight of the 14,000 candidates have been killed in the run up to the election today).

She revealed, among many other things, that Iran had been harbouring many Shia outcasts.

They had been expatriated by the Saddam Hussein regime of Iraq and were waiting their turn to leave Iran and return to power at home.

When the bushies invaded, those expatriates returned to Iraq and instilled themselves into the Iraqi government at various locations when bushies banned Baathists from the Iraqi government.

These Shia expatriates did it undetected to the bushies and in many cases right under the very long bushie noses.

The bushies were doing a heckuva job in both Iraq and in Louisiana in the purple haze of those daze.

The Sunni population of Iraq was less than impressed with the bushie lack of performance, and to them, misguided focus on the Iraqi oil fields.

I mean they even went so far as to think the invasion and occupation might be about drill baby drill.

And so they mounted an insurrection. The bushies figured that out about four years later.

This election today in Iraq will probably hurt the feelings of those who feel elections are a magic panacea for democracy in the fertile crescent.

Again. Somewhat like our own elections here in 2000 and 2004?

But this Iraqi election will be over before the ongoing election in Minnesota for the other US Senator is over.

You see, Iraqi election officials are not soft on counting.

So is neoCon "democracy" fast and furious, steady as she goes, or just plain old willy nilly?

Thin Ice

2012-01-30T07:03:00.011-06:00

The NASA graph to the left shows global temperature rise during the industrial age (during about the past century and a half; 1880 - 2011).

The global warming deniers, at least those who are not still in psychotic denial, generally concede the warming now, however, the clinginess they have developed still clings to the notion that this warming is not anthropogenic, not human caused.

An interesting feature on the graph, which may have thrown some of us off, is the jagged nature of the annual line, when compared with the much more smooth 5 year average line.

The nemesis of the deniers, Al Gore, who traveled to Antarctica in 1988, is going back to Antartica with a group of scientists, business people, activists, and others (Gore To Antartica).

Since there have been new maps, new studies, and new indications that are causing concern, Mr. Gore and his entourage evidently want to document the current reality as a service to fellow members of current civilization.

Researchers completed a map of ice flow in Antarctica, and were somewhat surprised to find that ice flows like slow rivers from deep in the interior regions of the continent, not just at the coasts (Science Daily).

This is significant, because it means that because the ice is sliding or flowing toward the oceans, as ice falls off into the ocean and melts, more of the same will continue to happen because of the replenishing flow from the vast interior.

This is also of note because Antarctica is warming at a rate several times worse than the global average rate.

It had been thought, in the past, that ice further inland was anchored in place, and so it would take centuries to melt in place, but things are changing:

Other scientists have found that the speed at which sand dunes drift across the Antarctic desert has tripled in the past 40 years, as warming temperatures loosen the ice and power wind. A new study by the Indian Space Research Organization and the Geological Survey of India in Kolkata reports that 80 percent of India’s Himalayan glaciers are receding. Researchers have also found that Greenland’s longest-observed glacier, Mittivakkat Glacier, made two consecutive record losses in mass observations for 2010 and 2011.

(Ice Advance and Retreat). One common sense conclusion is that the acceleration means that the oceans will rise as described by the phrase that characterizes our time, "more than previously expected."

Mr. Gore and his entourage made it to Antarctica:

After crossing the legendary Drake Passage, we came in sight of the Antarctic continent. It is a majestic, otherworldly place. The Antarctic Peninsula, which juts northward toward South America, is lined with ice-covered mountains and surrounded by abundant wildlife in the sea. But even on this continent that looks and feels pristine, a troubling process is underway because of global warming.

(Al Gore From Antarctica). Check it out.

The lyrics to the following song can be viewed here.

The Universal Smedley

2012-01-28T16:20:00.014-06:00

Dr. Buffy Sainte-Marie wrote the song The Universal Soldier.

That generally unknown song was later recorded and made much more generally well known, on the pop charts, by Sir Donovan of England.

In case you have not heard her perform it, that song is shown being performed by Dr. Sainte-Marie in the video at the end of this post.

So what about the photo to the left, is that The Universal Smedley?

Yes and no, that is a photo of General Hermann Goering, a NAZI of the old Germany who became infamous, because, as Robert McNamara pointed out, the Germans lost that war, and those nations who lose the wars are drafted to supply the war criminals in the subsequent war trials.

I will quote General Goering later in this post.

The Universal Smedley is General Smedley D. Butler, who was a U.S. Marine and who is the very epitome of the universal soldier, every bit as much as the blues singer Blind Willie McTell is the epitome of the mainstream media.

I say that because Smedley not only participated in more wars than most mortals, but he was also decorated as much or more during war activities than most mortals.

The catch to this is that General Butler also wrote the book "War Is A Racket", as well as being the first 99% v 1% Occupy Washington D.C. speaker ever.

While doing all that, The Universal Smedley seems to have also coined the phrase "the soldier class" (a.k.a. "the 99%") way back in 1933:

"We are divided, in America, into two classes: The Tories on one side, a class of citizens who were raised to believe that the whole of this country was created for their sole benefit, and on the other side, the other 99 per cent of us, the soldier class, the class from which all of you soldiers came. That class hasn’t any privileges except to die when the Tories tell them. Every war that we have ever had was gotten, up by that class. They do all the beating of the drums. Away the rest of us go. When we leave, you know what happens. We march down the street with all the Sears-Roebuck soldiers standing on the sidewalk, all the dollar-a-year men with spurs, all the patriots who call themselves patriots, square-legged women in uniforms making Liberty Loan speeches. They promise you. You go down the street and they ring all the church bells. Promise you the sun, the moon, the stars and the earth,–anything to save them. Off you go. Then the looting commences while you are doing the fighting. This last war made over 6,000 millionaires. Today those fellows won’t help pay the bill."

(General Smedley Butler, Foreign Service Magazine, Dec. 1933, emphasis added). So, "what is the point Dredd?", you may be wondering.

The point is that talking the talk but not walking the walk is the reason our nation and civilization are in serious trouble.

Listen to one of Smedley's contemporaries:

Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship ... voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

(General Hermann Goering, Gilbert, G., 1995. Nuremberg Diary. New York: Da Capo Press. pp. 278–279. ISBN 0306806614).

Dig the song in that light, or dig graves, it has always been our choice after all.

U.S.A. Is Number Forty Seven In Free Press Quality

2012-01-27T15:00:00.006-06:00

This week we have concentrated on propaganda promulgated by the molders of public opinion in the U.S.A., which includes the main stream media.

We have also revisited the master American propagandist Edward L. Bernays.

Bernays is called by some "The Father of Spin", but Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter described him as a professional poisoner of the public mind, exploiter of foolishness, fanaticism and self-interest (Wikipedia).

Some may wonder why we are concerned with a free press, as they advance the notion that "since this is America we must have the best press in the world, right?"

Besides, they might go on to say, "the freedom of the press is even guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution":

Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of ... the press ...

(First Amendment). We can check how well we have been doing with a comparison to the other nations of the world, recorded annually by certain organizations.

The following list of countries are the top 47 nations in the world, in terms of press freedom, beginning with Finland at #1, and the U.S.A. at #47:

Finland, Norway, Estonia, Netherlands, Austria, Iceland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Cape Verde, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, New Zealand, Czech Republic, Ireland, Cyprus, Jamaica, Germany, Costa Rica, Belgium, Namibia, Japan, Surinam, Poland, Mali, OECS, Slovakia, United Kingdom, Niger, Australia, Lithuania, Uruguay, Portugal, Tanzania, Papua New Guinea, Slovenia, El Salvador, France, Spain, Hungary, Ghana, South Africa, Botswana, South Korea, Comoros, Taiwan, United States of America ...

(Reporters Without Borders, 2011-2012, emphasis added). After noticing that two of those nations, Czech Republic and Slovakia, were once part of the former U.S.S.R., you might ask "what laws has congress passed that did this damage to our press?"

The answer is that they have allowed the mainstream press, as well as themselves, to become the property of the 1%, a few for profit corporations, whose first interest is profits for stockholders, not true news for the public.

Furthermore, the U.S. mainstream press is known around the world, and to a lesser extent at home, as a vast propaganda engine (Blind Willie McTell News).

Heretics Deny The Dark Matter of Faith - 3

2012-01-26T16:02:00.013-06:00

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog once had a series going titled "Heretics Deny The Dark Matter of Faith", which was moved over to the Ecocosmology Blog.

Then, because propaganda was involved in promoting dark matter, another post "Heretics Deny The Dark Matter of Faith - 2", dealt with some of the discord within the ranks of scientists.

Today, that series is continued because it fits in with the recent posts on Dredd Blog this very week that focus on exposing the origins of our institutionalized propaganda.

Once again some cosmic propaganda in the form of the book The 4% Universe, concerning this dark subject matter, is struggling to get out of its cocoon.

The dark matter theory has been published in tons of textbooks, and in reams of scientific papers.

That book attempts to hawk to mere mortals, who do not understand such starry eyed things, that what we see, feel, hear, taste, and measure in experiments (the scientific method) applies so far to only "4%" of the total universe.

The post today will tie all that in with a statement Noam Chomsky made about the subject matter of institutionalization of propaganda:

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.

(Noam Chomsky, emphasis added). Let's remember that the subject is not only "dark matter", but is also the Dredd Blog scientifically rebellious binding of that subject with "faith," because this dark matter is more "scientific faith" than it is provable science.

The big deal in cosmology at the moment is "dark matter", so let's cut to the chase and let one of the foremost experts explain why this dark matter subject is so hot to trot:

‘We are on the verge of finding out what dark matter is’, Professor Carlos Frenk told the British Science Festival in Bradford. Frenk, director of Durham University’s Institute for Computational Cosmology, predicts that within the next few months, ‘Either dark matter will be discovered, or our model of the universe is not quite right.’

(Dim Galaxies Shed Light, emphasis added). The professor said we will soon be "finding out what dark matter is", "dark matter will be discovered", "or our model of the universe is not quite right"?

What the hell, we don't know what 96% of the universe is, nor have we discovered it yet, but he hope to discover it soon?

The 96% of "things that have not been discovered" are so much more "everywhere" than all that 4% we have discovered, and do know about?

But you can read all about the undiscovered unknown in tons of textbooks and reams of scientific papers?

Well, like Jesus said: "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel", or like the scientist said, most of what we know is only belief.

Exceptional American Propaganda Inspired NAZI Goebbels

2012-01-25T12:41:00.013-06:00

In a recent post, Dredd Blog discussed the failure of the social engines that produce American knowledge.

Today "we", you readers and I, will again go through some other interesting information associated with some of that post's listed reasons for the failures of some of these knowledge engines in contemporary American society.

Among several links in that recent post, one link referred to another Dredd Blog post which discussed Edward L. Bernays, who was the nephew of Sigmund Freud.

To begin to expand that background into today's post, let's notice an interesting development, which is that Sigmund Freud has fallen from grace in contemporary educational circles tasked with knowledge production:

In this respect, at least, contemporary hostility to Freud expresses a sound intuition. What Freud offers is a way of thinking in which the experience of being human can be seen to be more intractably difficult, and at the same time more interesting and worthwhile, than anything imagined in the cheap little gospels of progress and self-improvement that are being hawked today.

If Freud has been misunderstood, neglected or repudiated, he would have expected nothing else. He is rejected now for the same reason that he was rejected in fin-de-siècle Vienna: his heroic refusal to flatter humankind.

(Prospect Magazine). That article contains a great discussion of the well known minds that were at work during Freud's lifetime, a time of worldwide stress and tension, not unlike our world today.

Before moving along, I should also mention something often overlooked, Freud's sense of humor and courage, both clearly indicated in that article:

As his correspondence with Einstein confirms, he did not share the hope that reason could deliver humankind from the “active instinct for hatred and destruction,” which was clearly at work in Europe at the time. When he left Nazi-occupied Austria to spend the last year of his life in Britain, he knew that the destruction that lay ahead could not by then be prevented. But fate could still be mocked, and so defied. When leaving Austria, Freud was required to sign a document testifying that he had been well and fairly treated. He did so, adding in his own hand: “I can most highly recommend the Gestapo to everyone.”

(ibid). Edward L. Bernays studied the results of his uncle Freud's research into the nature of the subconscious mind.

Based upon that study of Freud's work, Bernays went on to prove, in my opinion, that Freud was on to something.

If Freud was so utterly wrong, Bernays could not have developed such a finely tuned propaganda engine based substantially upon Freud's work.

An understanding of propaganda unparalleled in world history and admired not only in America, but also admired by the most infamous propagandists of all time:

Bernays work inspired Joseph Goebbels; more than any other individual ...

(PR! A Social History of Spin). Joseph Goebbels was the propaganda minister of NAZI Germany under Adolf Hitler.

Now, let me tie this background of Bernays into the American engines of knowledge production that we have been discussing.

I will begin with a momentary focus on a comment made on Dredd Blog by an American student who had read a Dredd Blog post concerning Bernays:

Although I have an extensive education in the field of social work and likely encountered his theories at some point I do not recall this person.

(A Closer Look At MOMCOM's DNA - 4, comment by Marcelle). After reading the Dredd Blog post which explained the great impact Bernays has had on American knowledge production (or the lack thereof, depending on your viewpoint), that blogger was somewhat amazed to not have remembered Bernays.

The individual who was such a master of propaganda that he was the favorite of Goebbels, and who is the foundation of American propaganda, does not, like his uncle Sigmund, seem to be mentioned in contemporary American knowledge for some "reason" (wink, wink).

Interview with Saul Alinsky (1970) ...

Open Thread

2012-01-24T06:39:00.004-06:00

This is state of the onion script day.

Since nothing has changed for decades, the following are recent discussions about the annual fantasy fest we Americans love and hate all at the same time.

The SOTU fantasy fest:

The State of The Onion Script

The State of The Onion Script - 2

Tell Me No Lies

The Failure of Applied American Epistemology

2012-01-23T09:32:00.019-06:00

"Epistemology" is defined as: "a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge; the theory of knowledge, esp the critical study of its validity, methods, and scope" (Dictionary).

The teachings of Epistemology inform us that one of the fundamentals of understanding what we commonly call "knowledge," is the realization that our "knowledge" is substantially a matter of "belief" (The Pillars of Knowledge: Faith and Trust?).

Where the American brand of Epistemology has failed is not in its academic, conceptual, theoretical, or experimental accomplishments and dynamics.

Instead, that failure has been an inability to apply Epistemology as an honest, forthright, and effective tool for the enhancement of a fundamental need in American society and culture.

That fundamental need is the need to know how to use knowledge as a tool to help us govern our nation.

This need exists because we express and project, to the world, that we are a nation with a philosophy of government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."

This notion of a government by, of, and for the American people, is seen as an American myth in other countries, and is seen more and more as a myth by Americans themselves.

One damaging aspect of this phenomenon, this failure to efficiently and effectively apply the principles of Epistemology, is that American society and culture have experienced a severe weakening of the ability to properly understand and process information, so as to convert it into knowledge.

This has resulted, at best, in an overblown exaltation of the realm of opinion, combined with an intense diminution of the realm of knowledge; while at worst it has resulted in widespread social detachment from reality, in varying degrees (i.e. various degrees of social dementia; Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, in his book Strategic Vision, focusing on this failing aspect of American society, writes: "its populace is self-deluded and, frankly, ignorant about the rest of the world").

This dynamic shows up clearly, by coming out of the fog, during American election cycles and wars, but can also be readily observed by consideration of the following:

1) the failure to properly comprehend the effect that government propaganda has had on American "knowledge,"

2) the failure to properly comprehend the effect that corporate propaganda has had on American "knowledge,"

3) the failure of the mass media to effectively apply Epistemological principles,

4) the failure of educational institutions to effectively apply Epistemological teachings,

5) the epidemic spread of the problem due to psychological reliance on government,

6) the growing personality trait of authoritarianism within the populace, and

7) the growing plague of dementia.

In closing this post, Dredd Blog encourages all readers, to the extent that you can, to study Epistemology and Hermeneutics, to ease up on using opinion as a club, to very rarely use the word "truth" as a club, and to wonder some about The Tenets of Ecocosmology.

Afghanistan Is A Bipartisan War - 2

2012-01-20T09:20:00.005-06:00

In the first post of this series, in February of 2009, Dredd Blog commented on the problems of the Afghanistan war.

In that post we pointed out studies showing that weapons were going from Americans to the Taliban, and that the economy at home was being weakened by the war.

Since then a public verbal conflict has been going on between the U.S. and the Karzai Administration in Kabul, but that was not the end of the matter, because things are a lot worse now and growing worse by the day:

American and other coalition forces here are being killed in increasing numbers by the very Afghan soldiers they fight alongside and train, in attacks motivated by deep-seated animosity between the supposedly allied forces, according to American and Afghan officers and a classified coalition report obtained by The New York Times.

A decade into the war in Afghanistan, the report makes clear that these killings have become the most visible symptom of a far deeper ailment plaguing the war effort: the contempt each side holds for the other, never mind the Taliban. The ill will and mistrust run deep among civilians and militaries on both sides, raising questions about what future role the United States and its allies can expect to play in Afghanistan.

Underscoring the danger, four French service members were killed and a number were wounded on Friday when a gunman wearing an Afghan National Army uniform turned his weapon on them, according to an Afghan police official in Kapisa Province in eastern Afghanistan where the incident occurred and a Western official in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press. The Afghan police official, Asdullah Hamidi, said the shooting happened in Tagab District, an area that is viewed as dangerous and dominated by insurgent forces.

(NY Times, emphasis added). Can anyone seriously make the case for the continuation of this war as is?

Diplomacy that brings several nations of that area together, so they can resolve their own region's tensions, is a better working strategy.

There is little wonder why many experts and other observers, including Dredd Blog, can't see any valid reason for its continuation, therefore concluding that the "canned" stated reasons for the continuation are not valid.

The Elections of Pontius Pilots - 2

2012-01-19T07:05:00.021-06:00

One can't help but notice the similarities that exist when a comparison is made among politicians running for office this election cycle.

That comparison would be to compare them to the pilot captain of the Costa Concordia pictured in its place of unrest above left.

In the first post of this series Dredd Blog pointed out that none of them are really what they say they are, nor can they really do what they say they will do, thus the ship of state awaits an uncertain demise, a place of unrest.

Some of those who lie, cheat, steal, and beg for your vote, are not as competent as the captain of the ill fated ship in the photo above.

Yet, they promise you that they will be a heroic Sky Pilot In Chief, while commanding a vast armada of ships, planes, tanks, and nuclear WMD, spread around the world.

"Fake me to your leader" is an apt description of this phenomenon, which will be analyzed more deeply later in this post.

Some of you can experience what psychologists mean when they teach us that we "transfer" our emotional expectations and trust from our parents to our government, as we become adults.

Once that transference has taken place we tend to no longer look to our parents for such things, but rather we tend to look to "a greater power" for those things.

Some of you can experience the presence of the phenomenon, by realizing that you tend to think that your vote will elect a person, and will then propel that politician into the seat of Sky Pilot In Chief, who will then lead us to a promised land.

A land where the American Dream dwells in full force and effect still.

Or, you can remember your experience of that phenomenon, by noticing the absence of it.

That happens by remembering when you first thought that way, before you changed your mind upon a closer analysis, then comparing that old memory to the different understanding you now have.

The reason the tale they tell is no longer true now, whether it was ever true or not in the first place, is that our empire is in serious decline (Things Have Changed).

The Sky Pilots In Chief, whom we elect, are mere puppets of a demented fog of ideology held by a few, called by some "the 1%" realm.

They are the full embodiment of the captain of the sinking ship of state, yet who require that their carefully selected puppets dance their dance (not our dance).

Update: The Carnival Cruise Company (nice metaphor for MOMCOM) is now offering a 30% discount (through IRS of course) to those who were on the ill fated liner, who survived, and who want to take another voyage with them.

This degree of being out of touch with the populace they interact with is only matched by Pontius Pilots.

If "Pontius Pilots" seems like a mysterious phrase to you, here is a clue: you will elect one or more of them in November.

Wikipedia Down To Protest SOPA

2012-01-18T10:12:00.002-06:00

Dredd Blog joins Wikipedia in protest of a congressional attack on free speech:

Imagine a World
Without Free Knowledge

For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia ...

(Wikipedia). Please go there and send a message to your representatives.

The Virgin MOMCOM - 5

2012-01-17T05:15:00.103-06:00

In the previous post of this series, regular readers know that we took a look at the Wartocracy.

Regular readers of Dredd Blog also know that "wartocracy" is the handle Dredd Blog has given to the militant, imperial institutions which the MOMCOM 1% use to rule the United States, and which they say they use to "keep the crazy animals around the world in their cages."

Today, let's take a look at what others, besides Dredd Blog, see and think concerning just one facet of the vast Wartocracy, just one facet of that global, empire entity, that one facet which is known as "the military":

By 1990, the value of the weapons, equipment, and factories devoted to the military was 83% of the value of all plants and equipment in American Manufacturing. From 1947-1990 the combined US military budget amounted to $8.7 trillion ... Military industries crowd out the civilian economy ... and lead to severe economic weakness.” Consider that the US military is now spending over $1 trillion per year including all black and related expenses, which is more than the entire rest of the world combined. The next biggest spender is China at $91.5 billion according to Chinese figures. Johnson summarizes, “Devotion to military Keynesianism is, in fact, a form of slow economic suicide ..."

(Dismantling the Empire, by Chalmers Johnson, emphasis added). The author of that book, a staunch republican conservative, also has this background:

Chalmers Ashby Johnson ... was an American author and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He served in the Korean War, was a consultant for the CIA from 1967–1973, and chaired the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley from 1967 to 1972 ... He was also president and co-founder of the Japan Policy Research Institute ... an organization promoting public education about Japan and Asia ... He wrote numerous books including, most recently, three examinations of the consequences of American Empire: Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.

(Wikipedia). A few more reviews of his last book, and/or comments about the author, are available here, here, here, and here.

More posts concerning MOMCOM are available at the "Series Posts" page.

State Crimes Against Democracy - 6

2012-01-16T07:13:00.005-06:00

In this series we have been discussing the psychology, and other factors, involved with state crimes against democracy (SCAD).

The first post in the series is here, others may be looked up on the "Series Posts" tab at the top of any blog page.

The fact that conspiracies take place between members of government to carry out state crimes against democracy (against the people in other words) has been proven in courts of law.

One example it would be appropriate to mention on a day memorializing Dr. King, would be IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF SHELBY COUNTY, TENNESSEE FOR THE THIRTIETH JUDICIAL DISTRICT AT MEMPHIS, where a jury verdict stated that the government participated in a conspiracy to commit a SCAD:

THE COURT: In answer to the question did Loyd Jowers participate in a conspiracy to do harm to Dr. Martin Luther King, your answer is yes. Do you also find that others, including governmental agencies, were parties to this conspiracy as alleged by the defendant? Your answer to that one is also yes ... Is that your verdict?

THE JURY: Yes (In unison).

(King v. Jowers, emphasis added). The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a state crime against democracy.

Governments, including state governments of the United States, as well as the federal government, can and do commit crimes against the people.

As a nation degenerates these crimes are covered up and hidden, rather than being prosecuted as they are when a nation still has a healthy government.

The previous post in this series is here.

Hermeneutics For The Blogosphere

2012-01-13T06:15:00.017-06:00

The definition of "hermeneutics" is "the theory and practice of interpretation" (Hermeneutics).

It is said that originally the notion of hermeneutics was a way to interpret scripture.

In the western world in general, that would mean interpreting the Bible (ibid).

In the realm of jurisprudence, lawyers and judges utilize "legal hermeneutics" when they analyze, for example statutes, and it has even been said by some writers that they have refined the practice of hermeneutics:

In the larger field of hermeneutics, legal hermeneutics is characteristically described as exemplary.

(SSRN, The Distinctiveness of Legal Hermeneutics). Notice that there is a "larger field of hermeneutics", and that the field of legal hermeneutics is "exemplary", that is, a good example for the other fields of hermeneutics.

I can think of one technique immediately that brings out one exemplary dynamic of legal hermeneutics:

... canons of construction are no more than rules of thumb that help courts determine the meaning of legislation, and in interpreting a statute a court should always turn first to one, cardinal canon before all others. We have stated time and again that courts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there ... When the words of a statute are unambiguous, then, this first canon is also the last: “judicial inquiry is complete.”

(Connecticut Nat. Bank v. Germain, 503 U.S. 249, 253-254, 1992). It seems like a "no brainer", after even minimal analysis, that if there is only one unambiguous meaning to a text, "interpretation" is not necessary.

But remember that the definition given in the first link in this post was that hermeneutics was all about "interpretation."

Still, "interpretation" would be perverse to meaning if there was nothing about the subject text that could be "interpreted".

So, in the practice of "exemplary" legal hermeneutics, the exercise is first called "statutory construction", rather than "statutory interpretation", because the first exercise is to determine whether or not any "interpretation" is necessary.

Remember the oft repeated statement "what is it about 'no' that you don't understand?"

The implication is that "interpretation" is unnecessary to determine what "no" means.

Those who can find their way around the blogosphere know that misunderstanding of both blog posts, and of comments on those blog posts, are regularly confused and/or conflated as to their meaning.

We bloggers would do well to follow good canons of textual inquiry, that is, good blogging hermeneutics.

Using good hermeneutics does not mean that we have to agree with any text, once it has been analyzed for meaning, but it does mean that we won't be arguing or debating incoherently over that text.

One has to wonder if improper hermeneutics could be the reason that some experts disagree on the same body of evidence --- they have not developed sound hermeneutics?

On The Peak of Intelligence

2012-01-12T08:24:00.008-06:00

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog has cited the book "The Peak of Everything" in a previous post.

This blog is not the only blog, or other source, for an examination of the various peak notions.

No, many words flow from mouths and keyboards around the blogosphere in an effort to deal with the notion of the peak of this, and the peak of that.

Which is as it should be.

Depending on your world view, a famous or infamous clock even has tick-tocks pointing to the ultimate peak, the peak of the demise of current civilization:

In a sign of pessimism about humanity's future, scientists today set the hands of the infamous "Doomsday Clock" forward one minute from two years ago.

(Doom's Day Clock Moved). Twelve midnight is the Mother of All Peaks in terms of current civilization.

Today we focus on something that has not peaked in human civilization, or at least we hope that it has not.

That something is "intelligence", at least the type of intelligence that has to do with thinking, not the type that has to do with spying on Americans.

While pondering the peak of "intelligence", I do not link insanity to intelligence in any linear way, that is, a civilization can be very intelligent yet very insane at the same time.

Intelligence is a resource that can be used well, or misused, it is just that the extreme misuse of intelligence approaches the borders of insanity and can even go beyond that border.

Today, I argue that intelligence has a great distance to go before peaking, and I also argue that if human intelligence continues to be maximized, then used properly, we will be better off (so long as intelligence is not handled like we have handled the other things that can and have peaked).

To illustrate further, notice that the structure of how we think, in terms of brain operations, is not intelligence either:

Kahneman presents our thinking process as consisting of two systems. System 1 (Thinking Fast) is unconscious, intuitive and effort-free. System 2 (Thinking Slow) is conscious, uses deductive reasoning and is an awful lot of work. System 2 likes to think it is in charge but it’s really the irrepressible System 1 that runs the show. There is simply too much going on in our lives for System 2 to analyse everything. System 2 has to pick its moments with care; it is “lazy” out of necessity.

(Thinking, Fast and Slow, Financial Times). Dredd Blog defines "intelligence" as the efficient use of the two systems to bring about sane results.

Some Way Out Of Here - 3

2012-01-10T15:39:00.011-06:00

In this day and age in the U.S., characterized primarily as a deceptive era, sometimes people wonder if there is any way out of the state of affairs.

On this date in 2009 Dredd Blog posted "Some Way Out of Here."

That post was later moved from Dredd Blog over to the Ecocosmology Blog.

For your perusal, since it is a fundamental subject, Dredd Blog now posts that information once again:

It isn't often that I can see a path that fits what the Joker said to the Thief: "There must be some way outta here said the Joker to the Thief ..." (All Along The Watchtower, by Bob Dylan).

I mean some way out of the energy crisis.

A device has been built by University of Michigan scientists and students.

It takes water current (e.g. wave motion) and converts it into electricity:

A revolutionary device that can harness energy from slow-moving rivers and ocean currents could provide enough power for the entire world, scientists claim.

(Ocean Wave Electric Generator). A technical discussion of the physics and mechanics of it are discussed here.

The electricity produced by the generator can then be used to convert earth atmosphere into methanol.

This process actually takes the "green house gas" carbon dioxide (CO²) out of the atmosphere during the process. Yes, green house gas is converted into clean energy in the form of methanol during the process.

Another positive in this approach is that methanol works in current internal combustion engines, including gas and diesel versions. Methanol is not ethanol.

See, there is a way "outta here". Several ways.

The next post in this series is here.

Dredd Blog's Third Anniversary

2012-01-09T05:21:00.001-06:00

Wow that was fast.

Thanks to all the readers of Dredd Blog who have made it an interesting three years.

Hope you found something here that helped you in some way, made your day once in awhile, and challenged you always.

If not, there is always a chance it will happen in 2012 when "THE WORLD WILL END", but Dredd Blog will hopefully still be here.

Check in after the world ends, and together we will try to find where it went, then give it CPR for another, wiser try.

The sad, the funny, the profane, the criminal, the wrong, the good, and the next are all happening.

Everything is happening, so it is difficult sometimes to catch what will help or inform most.

Two other blogs, Toxins of Power and Ecocosmology, were initiated a couple of years ago, so that some specialized issues could be put there.

Keep the comments coming, they are a true value both for lurkers and for other bloggers who like to comment too.

Myth Addiction Is Establishment's LSD - 3

2012-01-08T07:01:00.051-06:00

One "great" myth which the establishment 1% forces on the 99% citizenry, via McTell News, is the myth that our national policies are wholly modern and civilized.

They tell us that all our cognition is modern because, as a nation, we learn from our experience, then move on to higher moral, civilized ground.

The reality, however, is that the fundamental underpinnings of U.S. political intellectualism, civics education, perception of history, foreign policy, as well as economics, seems to have been in very gross stagnation for quite some time.

Notice the following quote from a book, published in 1944, commenting on U.S. exceptional propaganda of that time, aptly describing the McTell News generated perception and concept of a "national enemy":

The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims, while incidentally capturing their markets; to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples, while blundering accidentally into their oil wells.

(As We Go Marching, by John T. Flynn, 1944, page 222). Some experts expect Iraq to "accidentally" become the largest supplier of oil now, since we blundered "accidentally into their oil wells".

From that same book it would appear that the U.S. economic propaganda of today seems to have also been aptly described in 1944:

ON THE night of October 22, 1929, one of America’s most widely known economists addressed a great banquet of credit men. Not only were Wall Street prices not too high, he told his delighted hearers, but we were really only on the threshold of the greatest boom in the nation’s history. The prophecy evoked a burst of applause. Next morning, a few minutes after the great bell announced the opening of trading on the Stock Exchange, the storm broke. The greatest economic depression in our history was formally ushered in — though it had been in progress for some time. From this point on, as the country slowly roused itself to a consciousness of the far-spreading crisis, leaders in politics and business repeated with invincible optimism that it was all just a wholesome corrective. After several years a waggish commentator published a little volume called Oh, Yeah! It was a sardonic recording of the persistent and unconquerable stream of promises of quickly returning health. There you will find recorded the statements of statesmen, financiers, university professors, leading economists, and editors assuring the people that it was all a blessing in disguise, a corrective phenomenon, that the broad highway to renewed prosperity lay just ahead. All of which proved quite conclusively that these men did not know what they were talking about because they had no understanding of the economic system under which they lived. Then came the collapse of 1933 on the grand scale — and a resumption of the bright prophecies of happy days.

(ibid, page 166). If that sounds familiar (McCain 2008: "what economic problems?"), perhaps we are on a roll, perhaps we should take a look at another "historical DNA similarity"?

If so, how about the historical fact that we are the only nation to have burned alive hundreds of thousands of women and children of "barbaric enemies" with WMD in Japan, while at the same time putting Japanese Americans into concentration camps here in the homeland?

That was then, but recently while "blundering accidentally into their oil wells", we also "accidentally" used depleted uranium ammunition (WMD) again on women and children:

Alani's log of cases of birth defects amounts to a rate of 14.7 per cent of all babies born in Fallujah, more than 14 times the rate in the affected areas of Japan [Hiroshima, Nagasaki].

(Fallujah Babies). The sordid past and the sordid present witness against the notion that MOMCOM operates with modern, civilized practices.

We can go back a generation prior to the time MOMCOM used WMD to kill, maim, and destroy hundreds of thousands of women and children, to a time when myth addiction began to become institutionalized in the USA:

"... One of the most important comments on deceit, I think, was made by Adam Smith. He pointed out that a major goal of business is to deceive and oppress the public.

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"

(The Deceit Business). We can take a further gander into "the family album" to see that the little tykes grew up in a mythical world of empire daze proportions:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.

They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons — a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty [now 320] million — who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world ... It is the purpose of this book to explain the structure of the mechanism which controls the public mind, and to tell how it is manipulated by the special pleader who seeks to create public acceptance for a particular idea or commodity. It will attempt at the same time to find the due place in the modern democratic scheme for this new propaganda and to suggest its gradually evolving code of ethics and practice.

(The Ways of Bernays). When Bush II said "childurns do learn", most likely he was not talking about our U.S. children, that is, unless radical changes are made to our world view so that we become civilized once again, then convey that civilized education to them.

The previous post in this series is here.

Drugspeak: Language of BP

2012-01-06T07:09:00.006-06:00

BP stands for Big Petroleum, Big Pollution, Big Problems, and Big Propaganda.

The world can't seem to deal with fossil fuel problems, because civilization, for the most part, is not dealing with it as an addiction.

Furthermore, political dogma within some nations is corrupting the science to the point that people seem to be willing to enter into the growing denial, giving in to the falsehood that global warming and climate change are not really happening.

One presidential candidate in the U.S.A. recently cut a chapter on global warming from a soon to be released book, because of criticism from Rush Limbaugh and other deniers in the GOP.

Effects of Oil Abuse and Addiction

What makes oil addiction problems so challenging to face, as opposed to other national problems? Oil abuse affects the nation’s life in many ways, including health, finances and stability. It also affects the world community. What’s more, the strong denial and rationalization of the nation using oil makes it extremely difficult to implement renewable energy remedies, and can even make those who are concerned about oil addiction sometimes feel like they are the problem.

Health, Employment and Crime

Those nations that abuse oil have a greater risk for health problems down the road, from the risk of increasing disease, climate catastrophe, to eventual ecocide. Heavy oil use by one nation directly affects the health of other nations as well, including lung disease, brain damage, and even death from spills, air pollution, and accidents. Productivity decrease during the peak oil demise phase can also lead to oil wars, as nations fight over their share of the diminishing supply of the oil drug.

Staying Addicted: Denial and Rationalization

One of the most powerful effects of oil abuse and addiction is denial. The need to use oil is so strong that the oil barons use many tricks to rationalize oil use. Nations abusing oil may drastically underestimate the quantity of oil they are using, the quantity available, how much it is costing them, and how much it actually takes away from economies. The oil barons may lash out at concerned citizens, making the concerned activists sometimes feel like they are exaggerating or overstating the problem. What makes this so frustrating for concerned members of society is that the nation abusing oil often sincerely believes it does not have a problem, and will try to make the concerned citizen feel like they are the dysfunctional ones.

This denial and rationalization can lead to increased problems with political and governmental relationships. The nations abusing oil may blame political opponents by calling them promoters of the greatest hoax ever. While difficult stresses happen to every nation, an overall pattern of deterioration and blaming others may be a sign of further national trouble.

The Climate Catastrophes Are Here Now

Everyone knows that 2011 was a year of climate catastrophe, but some don't know that 2012 is off to a less than hopeful start. A year or so ago there was 55 feet of snow pack in some areas, but things have changed:

The snow drought across the U.S. so far this winter has raised questions about impacts on water supply, ski resorts and agriculture.

Only 22 percent of the nation was covered by snow on Jan. 4, 2012.

A snow depth analysis on Jan. 4 from 2004-2012 reveals the smallest area of the U.S. is covered by snow this year. The year 2007 ranks as the second smallest area of the U.S. with snowcover of about 27 percent.

The Intermountain West, especially the Sierra of California and the mountains of Nevada and Utah, shows a substantial snow drought this year when compared to normal and past years. The northern Plains and the upper Great Lakes are other areas that have little snowcover compared to past years.

...

According to the California Department of Water Resources, a snow survey on Jan. 3, 2012, suggests one of the lowest mountain snowpacks on record for the date.

(Scientific American). A sudden reversal like that should raise flags. The U.N. should begin to treat the oil problem as an addiction, and member nations should do likewise.

GWOT: In The "Eye" Of The Beholder? - 3

2012-01-05T10:52:00.007-06:00

On this date two years ago a Dredd Blog post pondered the meaning, in the real sense, of the Global War on Terror (GWOT).

GWOT sounds like a concept that a world empire would have, rather than a concept that an individual country would have, in the sense that all countries could be expected to fight terrorism within that country's own borders.

Anyway, here is the text of that post of two years ago on this date:

The GWOT, or global war on terror, is a military doctrine which some observers see as false propaganda.

Why not take a look at that assertion?

One of the reasons listed in The Declaration of Independence, for breaking away from King George III of England to become The United States, was:

He [the king] has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

(Independence From What). The early presidents explained why civilian over military was an integral part of freedom:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied : and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Those truths are well established.

(Greatest Source, emphasis added). Some academics, diplomats, and leaders of various sorts say that the U.S. has returned to that once-rejected reality:

The Worldwide control of humanity's economic, social and political activities is under the helm of US corporate and military power. Underlying this process are various schemes of direct and indirect military intervention. These US sponsored strategies ultimately consist in a process of global subordination ... US strategists, in an attempt to justify their military interventions in different parts of the World, have conceptualised the greatest fraud in US history, namely "the Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT). The latter, using a fabricated pretext constitutes a global war against all those who oppose US hegemony ... The US has established its control over 191 governments which are members of the United Nations. The conquest, occupation and/or otherwise supervision of these various regions of the World is supported by an integrated network of military bases and installations which covers the entire Planet (Continents, Oceans and Outer Space). All this pertains to the workings of an extensive Empire, the exact dimensions of which are not always easy to ascertain ... The main sources of information on these military installations (e.g. C. Johnson, the NATO Watch Committee, the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases) reveal that the US operates and/or controls between 700 and 800 military bases Worldwide ... In this regard, Hugh d’Andrade and Bob Wing's 2002 Map 1 entitled "U.S. Military Troops and Bases around the World, The Cost of 'Permanent War'", confirms the presence of US military personnel in 156 countries ... The US Military has bases in 63 countries. Brand new military bases have been built since September 11, 2001 in seven countries ... In total, there are 255,065 US military personnel deployed Worldwide ... These facilities include a total of 845,441 different buildings and equipments. The underlying land surface is of the order of 30 million acres. According to Gelman, who examined 2005 official Pentagon data, the US is thought to own a total of 737 bases in foreign lands. Adding to the bases inside U.S. territory, the total land area occupied by US military bases domestically within the US and internationally is of the order of 2,202,735 hectares, which makes the Pentagon one of the largest landowners worldwide (Gelman, J., 2007).

(Canadian Professor, emphasis added). U.S. observers during the era of WW II noticed that the military was in firm control even then:

"The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims, while incidentally capturing their markets; to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples, while blundering accidentally into their oil wells."

(Wikipedia, John T. Flynn's As We Go Marching, 1944, emphasis added). Other academics of our own system have even shown when and how the military media oil complex began to take over.

The big picture here is that the right wing warsters are firmly in power, peace is a farce, along with peace movements, a kinder and gentler nation movements, as well as the green revolution.

These movements are engendered by a notion of natural human rights which tend to originate on the left.

They are not a farce in the eyes of the world in terms of what is best for the world of humanity, but rather they are a farce in terms of whether or not the civilian authorities are in control over military authorities.

The United States is now a warmonger nation ruled by the military media oil complex and its 1% who have plundered the money of the people for their own illegitimate purposes.

A large segment of the left and the right in the United States are deluded into not seeing what is not all that hard to see.

Concerning the "Canadian Professor" mentioned and linked to above:

"Jules Dufour is President of the United Nations Association of Canada (UNA-C) – Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean branch and Research Associate at the Center for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of Quebec, Chicoutimi.

In 2007, Professor Jules Dufour became Chevalier de l'Ordre national du Québec, a distinction conferred by the Quebec government, for his contributions to World peace and human rights, his numerous scholarly writings and the work he accomplished in the context of national and international commissions on issues pertaining to regional development, human rights and the protection of the environment."

The Appendix of Vestigial Textbooks - 4

2012-01-04T07:54:00.016-06:00

In this series we have been discussing the ever present need to recycle textbooks as new scientific discoveries are made.

As we have discussed textbook extinctions, we have also discussed a hypothesis here and there, because they are the culprits that may cause certain textbooks to become extinct.

In the first post of this series we discussed one such hypothesis set forth by Dr. William Parker, whose hypothesis was that Darwin was wrong when he used the term "vestigial appendix", a term still in the textbooks that deal with that subject matter.

Darwin, in using that description, was advancing the hypothesis that the human appendix served no useful purpose, was vestigial, yes, was a throw away.

Dr. Parker, a modern research scientist, countered Darwin's hypothesis by setting forth a counter hypothesis that the human appendix was a safe harbor for gut microbes, and was therefore not vestigial.

Dr. Parker asserted that Darwin was wrong, and that current textbooks are in error.

Either hypothesis can't go anywhere unless, based upon it's assertions or premises, it can predict the outcome of experiments and/or explain other phenomena:

Parker’s idea, his hypothesis, predicts individuals with their appendix should be more likely to recover from severe gut infections than those without. To test this prediction, one could compare the fate of individuals with and without their appendixes after being experimentally infected with a gut pathogen.

(Your Appendix Could Save Your Life, Scientific American). As it turns out, Dr. Parker's hypothesis has predicted results that have been verified to a useful degree:

And then, second, the big result …. Individuals without an appendix were four times more likely to have a recurrence of Clostridium difficile, exactly as Parker’s hypothesis predicted. Recurrence in individuals with their appendix intact occurred in 11% of cases. Recurrence in individuals without their appendix occurred in 48% of cases.

(ibid). The data from that research strengthens Dr. Parker's hypothesis, even though it is not enough, yet, to move it into a theory, then later into a law.

But, due to those new research inroads (into the many benefits, values, and activity ongoing concerning human - microbe symbiosis) the future is more positive now than ever before for Dr. Parker's hypothesis.

There is a good chance it will be elevated to a theory, and thereafter cause changes to be made in the textbooks out there.

All Ocean Experience Is Local - 3

2012-01-03T13:17:00.009-06:00

In the first post of this series we mentioned that ocean levels are rising.

Like climate change, where one lives determines their observations about such changes.

It is no different with ocean level rise, because like land weather, it is not a uniform experience.

That is, some areas have experienced cooling, while others experienced warming, the net effect being warming when all the data are added together then averaged.

Ocean level rise has similar characteristics, that is, in some areas the ocean level is decreasing, while at the same time in other areas the ocean level is rising:

In Alaska, Hill’s team estimates that the sea level has been decreasing by nearly 1 centimeter per year – which is good news for Alaska, but only worsens the sea level rise in the tropics. Elsewhere, the first GRACE results, announced five years ago, showed that Greenland is shedding ice much faster than expected. More recent findings suggest the melting both there and in Antarctica has been accelerating.

Considering that melting ice caps are probably the single biggest climate threat, you’d think that governments would put a high priority on monitoring them.

(Scientific American). What an observer should take from this reality is that a person who says the Earth is cooling, and/or the ocean level is decreasing, can be correct as to a local area, but not correct as to global conditions.

Eventually as the polar caps melt, the ocean level will rise everywhere over time, but due to currents and other factors, the level will rise in some places before it does in others, even though the difference in level will be slight.

Be sure to look into the overall picture when researching such assertions.

The Government of the Government - 3

2012-01-02T15:15:00.004-06:00

Two years ago, on this date, we discussed the issue of the government of the government.

Following is the text of that post:

The government of the government is supposed to be the U.S. Constitution.

Many are of the opinion that the toxins of power have put a cloud upon the government.

To these observers the U.S. Government, which was framed to be a servant of the people, has become less recognizable than it once was in that role:

I'll take it all and keep right on moving -- one little ant doing his little bit among six billion other ants, because one day, you son's of bitches who talk peace and deliver war, who talk health and deliver illness, who talk good and do bad -- some day, mother f--ckers there will be peace on this planet -- real peace -- because time, real time, is on the side of evolution.

(Huffington Post). This frustration is one of the results of the failure of western educational systems.

The promulgation of the belief that biological evolution had its apex in Social Darwinism is the root cause.

"Too big to fail" is another way of saying "survival of the biggest", which is a distortion of "survival of the fittest".

Biological evolution at most is a beginning of a process, but it is sold like a product as the end of a process.

The tenets of Ecocosmology point out that memetic evolution takes over where biological evolution ends, and defines the meaning of "fit to survive".

Those tenets also point out what really governs the governments.

The next post of this series is here.

Don't take our lives away ...

Why Trial By Jury? - 2

2011-12-30T11:23:00.011-06:00

Almost three years ago Dredd Blog did a piece on the reason for the requirement of juries in our Constitution.

In that post we pointed out that the jury specification includes the requirement that a grand jury must be used to ponder the validity of government assertions of criminality, a requirement for a trial by petite jury, if criminal charges are brought by a grand jury, then finally in non-criminal cases involving civil matters over money or property, our Constitution requires a petite civil jury.

That Dredd Blog post was moved to the Toxins of Power blog because, as explained in that post, one of the reasons for jury involvement in our legal system is the notion that power corrupts:

Once the grand jury returns an indictment, still another petite jury must be convinced unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt that the individual who was charged is in fact to be held accountable for those charges. And the person charged need not say a single word. The prosecutor carries the entire burden to prove it. Is that fair? No. But it is safe.

Let us look at some abstract examples. In the courts during trials experts are used. In the typical case experts will give their opinions to the jury. Typically this means an opposite opinion for each side. The experts are sworn in, list their degrees, and the court makes a ruling that they are experts.

Afterwards those experts explain that they looked at the evidence, and then they tell the jury what their opinion is. The expert for the defense has one opinion, but the expert for the prosecutor typically has another and different opinion. On the exact same evidence I should add.

Finally, the everyday folk on the jury make the decision as to which expert was right and who was telling the truth! Yes, the person who left the farm after a 5:00 AM breakfast, and then drove the truck into town for that day's jury duty, decides which rocket scientist had it right.

If you are still wondering why this is so, remember that the foundation of jury theory is that the people can determine facts better or more accurately than those immersed in governmental power can. By “better or more accurately" I mean in the context of the effects that governmental power has on individuals.

We have found that historically, by and large, the people tend not to oppress their fellow citizens like governmental agents have tended to do. The old saying that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely" is directed at governments. It is not directed at juries of the people.

Juries are the people's reaction to the oppression of tyrants who have inebriated themselves with the toxins active within governmental power.

Oh to be sure juries make mistakes. But the mistakes of the people are much easier to live with over the long run than the mistakes of government.

So say the sages of the ages.

(Why Trial By Jury?). The work of a jury is not always easy, for one reason because experts often disagree on the same set of facts.

In yesterday's post, The Memes of Penrose - 3, I discussed the fact that the experts who disagree can even be top experts in a given field.

The video at the end of today's post shows why a grand jury, then a petite jury, should be used to determine the ongoing expert disagreements concerning many 9/11 controversies.

The Memes of Penrose - 3

2011-12-29T09:49:00.027-06:00

In the previous post in this series we noted that the dogma, ideology, and the science of the world of quantum mechanics, below a certain line or level, is said to be chaotic in a way that scientist Dr. Roger Penrose says does not make sense.

One Dr. Lynn Margulis (video) noticed the same thing with some evolutionary dogma, ideology, and science, then went on to cause quite a stir in the world of microbiology, the science that deals with the microscopic underworld.

Brits like Dr. Penrose and Americans like Dr. L. Margulis are resourceful people, always questioning the world around them from many viewpoints.

Then there are those who are called "fringe thinkers" who do not have the credentials of Dr. Penrose or Dr. Margulis, yet they also think that a lot of establishment science does not make sense:

Many people enjoy doing physics, and the vast majority of them work as professional scientists. Margaret Wertheim’s Physics on the Fringe, however, is about the minority, those who devote a significant portion of their lives to investigating the structure of the universe at their kitchen tables while their families sleep. These individuals (those she discusses are, with one exception, all men) did not train as scientists and then fail to find employment in their chosen field. And they are not amateurs who study physics textbooks and read scholarly journals. They are at the fringe, a place most of us ignore completely.

(Fringe Science, American Scientist). Then there are "those" who have some establishment folk running around in circles, trying to figure out where "those" fit.

For example, consider Dr. Steve Pieczenik:

Pieczenik was deputy assistant secretary of state under Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance and James Baker. His expertise includes foreign policy, international crisis management and psychological warfare. He served the presidential administrations of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in the capacity of deputy assistant secretary ... On May 3, 2011 ... Pieczenik claimed that Osama Bin Laden had died of Marfan syndrome in 2001 shortly after the 9/11 attacks, and that the attacks on the United States on 9/11 were part of a false flag operation ...

(Wikipedia, emphasis added, cf. PQ911). It is interesting that Dr. Margulis (considered a scientific heretic, for many years, later to be proven correct as to her revolutionary scientific papers, finally to be accepted by mainstream science, then given coveted awards) also said that the official government conspiracy theory is false.

These are very competent people, who the government must try to paint as "conspiracy theorists" (through their lackey, McTell News), or else give in to criticism.

If they give in to the criticism, then they must do the first criminal investigation of 9/11, which was the largest crime ever committed on American soil, without there ever having been a formal criminal prosecution of that crime (Grand Jury, Charges, Trials).

A long video is available here, showing Dr. Niels Harrit, a University Professor of Chemistry, experiencing an attempted character assassination hit on him by McTell News.

The McTell News does not want you to know that thousands of professionals, as well as hundreds of millions of people, at home and abroad, do not believe the government's conspiracy theory.

They favor, instead, the memes of Penrose.

The Fleets & Terrorism Follow The Oil - 4

2011-12-28T08:43:00.009-06:00

We began this series in a post about this time two years ago, recently posting what was then the latest in the series.

In that recent post Dredd Blog pointed out a U.S. buildup in the Persian Gulf area, which is the province of MOMCOM's USCENTCOM.

This year we saw increased climate change effects in the form of destructive weather in the U.S. and abroad, caused by fossil fuel use:

By many measures, 2011 was the most extreme weather year for the United States since reliable record-keeping began in the 19th century -- and the costs have been enormous. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2011 set a record for the most billion-dollar disasters in a single year. There were 12, breaking the old record of nine set in 2009. The aggregate damage from these 12 events totals at least $52 billion, NOAA found.

(One Earth). Nevertheless, we see increasing tensions in the ongoing oil wars for control of the fossil fuels that are bringing climate change disasters:

Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi warned that "not a drop of oil will pass through the Strait of Hormuz" if sanctions are widened.

Iran's navy chief Admiral Habibollah Sayari later said closing the strait would be "easy".
...
The Strait of Hormuz links the Gulf - and the oil-producing states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) - to the Indian Ocean. About 40% of the world's tanker-borne oil passes through it.

(Iran threatens to block Strait, emphasis added). Clearly, if the Iranians do in fact attempt to block the strategic strait, it would cause an immediate military response.

Thus the behavior of oil addicted civilization mirrors the behavior of gangs who fight over drug turf, over the right to peddle the drug in a particular geographic turf.

Odd Bedfellows - Incompetence & Fear - 2

2011-12-27T13:39:00.009-06:00

I thought a post two years ago would dove-tail well with yesterday's post about McTell News, yes would fit well here today, by adding some emphasis.

So, here is the text from that post two years ago:

Sometimes it is difficult to tell what the military oil complex news outlets are selling, fear or incompetence.

The incompetent fool who burned himself in front of the world has the news media all aTwitter, tweeting out fear like incompetence was irrelevant.

Does the media actually think that incompetent fools like the young man who lived in the basement instead of in the home upstairs with his wealthy family is really a grave danger to the United States?

There are many thousands of them in the United States who have been through the military fog of war and who have come out all foggy & dangerous about what is real and what is not real.

Are these incompetent fools the real enemy of the people of the U.S. or is the government controlled media who sell war like all warmongers do, more of a danger?

The anniversary of Operation Northwoods may or may not have something to do with it:

Operation Northwoods, or Northwoods, was a false-flag plan, proposed within the United States government in 1962. The plan called for CIA or other operatives to commit apparent acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Castro-led Cuba. One plan was to "develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington".

This operation is especially notable in that it included plans for hijackings and bombings followed by the use of phony evidence that would blame the terrorist acts on a foreign government, namely Cuba.

(Wikipedia, emphasis added). Or perhaps Wikipedia is a conspiracy theory?

In either case, this Homeland Security is an expensive joke if it's security can be destroyed by a deranged kid with a chemistry set.

The purpose of McTell News is to light up your smokestack (then blame it on you) baby:

The lyrics to this song are here.

Blind Willie McTell News

2011-12-26T05:35:00.087-06:00

Recently, I focused on a particular portion of the life of Blind Willie McTell, in terms of the use of that portion of his life as being a suitable, if not a great, fit for the caricature of the for-profit main stream media ("McTell News").

The McTell News is owned by a very few for-profit U.S. and foreign corporations that are now called "persons" by the U.S. Supreme Court.

I also mentioned some stark effects that the McTell News has had on the MOMCOM 1% elite, as well as the effect McTell News has had on the general public, the 99% (See Stockholm Syndrome On Steroids - 2).

Today, I want to focus exclusively on that caricature of McTell News, as well as how the songwriter Bob Dylan (who wrote what some call a masterpiece, "Blind Willie McTell"), along with a certain portion the citizenry in the USA, are also represented in some degree by that caricature.

The race of those caricatured in this post is irrelevant as a source of the reason McTell News exists as it does, because that reason is not a racial characteristic.

What is relevant, as a source for the reason McTell News exists as it does, is the attitude we have toward the facts and truth of reality, and what the actual, missing news could mean to the people of America.

The heart of the story, then, is that the deeply meaningful news is all too often purposefully hidden in plain sight within our culture.

One quick, stark example is the portions of reality that Blind Willie McTell and millions of other Americans, for decade upon decade, had to "agree" not to talk about in public.

During that time McTell News was play pretending that certain realities did not exist in any way that would require McTell News reporting:

"I wonder, John Lomax asked Blind Willie McTell, "I wonder if, if you know any songs about colored people havin' hard times here in the South" ... "Any complainin' songs, complainin' about the hard times and sometimes mistreatment [by] the whites? Have you got any songs that talk about that?" ... No, McTell said at once, he had no such songs, "not at the present time." Those were the songs of another era, but now "the white peoples is mighty good to the southern people, as far as I know" ... Read one way, Lomax's conversation with McTell is a tense social transcript from the Jim Crow South. Lomax, the overbearing if well intentioned white visitor, wants musical documents of poverty and racial oppression. The request may connote obliviousness on his part, as well as a condescending sympathy for blacks, but it is nevertheless rude and insulting, demanding that the singer violate basic, unspoken southern norms that should have been familiar to anyone reared in Texas. McTell knows better than to say anything against white people, let alone sing it, to a white man with even the hint of a southern accent and his wife, especially if ... a recorder is running ... McTell makes it clear that he knows songs that Lomax wants to hear ... he would never play them ... but to say as much and explain why would also violate the Jim Crow norms by making them explicit.

(Bob Dylan In America, Chap. 6, p. 173, by Sean Wilentz, emphasis added). Are there any journalistic, unspeakable, and publicly known words or ideas in America today, words or ideas that would be considered to be "unspeakably rude" by our "free press", our McTell News?

Oh lordy YES! (to be touched upon more towards the end of the post)

That is why Chapter 6 of the book, concerning the actual Blind Willie McTell, who Wilentz called "a songster", struck me well:

John Lomax, the archivist and collector, certainly wants what he wants, but ... McTell simply doesn't have it. The music that McTell knows best and prefers to perform carries no overt or even hidden social or political meaning. There are no old-fashioned sorrow songs about the black man's plight in his regular repertoire (and certainly not in his records, even though they are intended for the black "race record" market). His songs are up-to-date, and they are about sadness in love and gladness in love, drinking too much, benign nonsense, God, gambling, violence (much of it involving blacks attacking or killing other blacks), honoring life and death ... McTell is not a sharecropper or big-city laborer; he is a professional performer in a growing southern city. He lives within the iron structures of segregation ... and now he is making a very decent living playing music for whites as well as blacks and getting recorded commercially. For a black Atlantan in 1940, this amounted to a comparatively easy experience with white people -- while taking their money ...

(ibid, p. 175). That history shows Blind Willie McTell as the consummate caricature who is well suited (he always wore a suit and tie while performing) to symbolically represent McTell News, those who make their profits from selective news, just like Blind Willie McTell did from his use of selective music.

The book points out that Blind Willie McTell lived in a respectable neighborhood a few blocks from Martin Luther King, the father of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King would go on to become a household name in America, during the civil rights uprising in the South during the 1960's, as did Bob Dylan and rock music.

However, the path Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. took was more along the ways of the true path the U.S. Constitution sets for the real free press, at least when compared with the path Blind Willie McTell took.

To illustrate the contrary path McTell News has taken, notice:

The Bush administration turned the U.S. military into a global propaganda machine ...

(Associated Press Chief Executive Tom Curley). The McTell News jumped in bed ("embedded") with the masters of war, then McTell News feigned complaints about the propaganda that McTell News itself helped produce then spread far and wide.

The Pentagon replied to McTell News' feigned complaints with a feigned study which concluded that this well bedded relationship was OK, whether in war zones abroad or on TV at home, because the Pentagon has always used the very best prophylactics (Pentagon Says Its News Media Influence is OK).

The propaganda that Blind Willie McTell conformed to was a SCAD, was the same propaganda that Dr. King rejected, which was the notion that it was OK for the South to practice racial discrimination, segregation, lynching black men, using the "N" word, and to generally oppress some Americans because of their race.

A clear, undisputed example from James Madison gives a foundation for showing that McTell News is what it is because it is owned by, and embedded within, the warmonger corporate system:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war ... comprises and develops the germ of every other [enemy to public liberty] ... In war ... all the means of seducing the minds ... are added to those of subduing the force ... of the people.

(James Madison, emphasis added). President Madison's phrase "seducing the minds" is an older English description for what we now call propaganda or, in "nice" company, "spin".

Another case in point, out of an endless supply, is the Fukushima cover up, where the McTell News says "everything is fine, go home now, nothing to see here folks", while a scientific report says 14,000 deaths, so far, have occurred in the U.S. due to Fukushima's radioactive fallout (14,000 Deaths in U.S. Attributed to Fukushima, PDF).

One more news story, for this post, is the psychotic refusal by McTell News to deal with the millions of people who want another 9/11 Commission, but this time with an independent, scientific process.

In the USA, citizen journalists with an innate ability to use the pen, as well as the largest federal circuit court in the USA, all comment on the fundamental result of "untruthiness" at the heart of the vast American propaganda engines:

Saints may always tell the truth, but for mortals living means lying. We lie to protect our privacy (“No, I don’t live around here”); to avoid hurt feelings (“Friday is my study night”); to make others feel better (“Gee you’ve gotten skinny”); to avoid recriminations (“I only lost $10 at poker”); to prevent grief (“The doc says you’re getting better”); to maintain domestic tranquility (“She’s just a friend”); to avoid social stigma (“I just haven’t met the right woman”); for career advancement (“I’m sooo lucky to have a smart boss like you”); to avoid being lonely (“I love opera”); to eliminate a rival (“He has a boyfriend”); to achieve an objective (“But I love you so much”); to defeat an objective (“I’m allergic to latex”); to make an exit (“It’s not you, it’s me”); to delay the inevitable (“The check is in the mail”); to communicate displeasure (“There’s nothing wrong”); to get someone off your back (“I’ll call you about lunch”); to escape a nudnik (“My mother’s on the other line”); to namedrop (“We go way back”); to set up a surprise party (“I need help moving the piano”); to buy time (“I’m on my way”); to keep up appearances (“We’re not talking divorce”); to avoid taking out the trash (“My back hurts”); to duck an obligation (“I’ve got a headache”); to maintain a public image (“I go to church every Sunday”); to make a point (“Ich bin ein Berliner”); to save face (“I had too much to drink”); to humor (“Correct as usual, King Friday”); to avoid embarrassment (“That wasn’t me”); to curry favor (“I’ve read all your books”); to get a clerkship (“You’re the greatest living jurist”); to save a dollar (“I gave at the office”); or to maintain innocence (“There are eight tiny reindeer on the rooftop”).

And we don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk, as reflected by the popularity of plastic surgery, elevator shoes, wood veneer paneling, cubic zirconia, toupees, artificial turf and cross-dressing. Last year, Americans spent $40 billion on cosmetics — an industry devoted almost entirely to helping people deceive each other about their appearance. It doesn’t matter whether we think that such lies are despicable or cause more harm than good. An important aspect of personal autonomy is the right to shape one’s public and private persona by choosing when to tell the truth about oneself, when to conceal and when to deceive. Of course, lies are often disbelieved or discovered, and that too is part of the pull and tug of social intercourse. But it’s critical to leave such interactions in private hands, so that we can make choices about who we are. How can you develop a reputation as a straight shooter if lying is not an option?

(U.S. v. Alvarez). According to that narrative, as well as others, industrial strength lying is now as American as MOMCOM and apple pie.

Like Blind Willie McTell, the songster Bob Dylan rejected his own playing of any activist role in the 1960's type movements:

In mid-1964, he explained to critic Nat Hentoff: "Me, I don't want to write for people anymore - you know, be a spokesman. From now on, I want to write from inside me ... I'm not part of no movement ... I just can't make it with any organisation ..."

(RedPepper). Dylan eschewed movements of the genre that Dr. King participated in which led to King's assassination.

Along that same line, the public resists their civic duty to chide McTell News, sensing, perhaps by gut feeling, that the real news is not so "good" ("so you listen to the real news, not me").

Thus, the bleep goes on as if there were no consequences for being unaware.

A song about McTell News:

The lyrics of this song are here.

Double Down, Down, Down, and Downer

2011-12-23T07:50:00.017-06:00

The Dredd Blog post yesterday quoted a December 22, 2009, Dredd Blog post that contained prescient observations.

Observations by those who saw the democrats going down big-time in November 2010.

About a year after that post, in the very next election, that is exactly what happened to the democrats.

In the 2010 election they hit the iceberg going full steam in the W Direction.

You would think, by now, that they would have picked up on the rhythm of that post, of that election, and stopped kowtowing to the right wing madness.

They have not, rather they have doubled down, evidently giving up on America to join the neoCon infestation.

In so doing they (democrats and republicans) have passed the most fascist bill in American legislative history, which the double down president says he will sign into law.

Even grandma is now in danger of Big Brother Dementia, since the entire mob in D.C. (except for very few), seems to have been infected by the lunacy going around, because the president and the other democrats doubled down and steamed full ahead in the W direction once again.

Now they (democrats and republicans) sanction the killing and imprisoning of Americans on U.S. soil without charges and without trial, for an indefinite period or for life if they feel like it.

Merry ~~Christmas~~ Endless Wars to all ...
~~HO HO HO~~ HOSE HOSE HOSE ...
~~Peace~~ Piss on Earth ...
(from yo MOMCOM)

So Obama Thinks I Am Critical? - 2

2011-12-22T15:46:00.007-06:00

Sometimes it takes reflection to feel how things are going.

Two years ago on this date Dredd Blog posted a piece concerning whether or not I was being fair to President Obama, who I took up for in the first year of his presidency.

In that post, repeated verbatim below, I indicated that I had not been as critical as some others:

Oh to the contrary, I have held my tongue compared to others who voted for him.

Take for example the University Professor, Psychologist and Neuroscientist:

What's costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn't a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both.

What's costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.

The problem is not that his record is being distorted. It's that all three have more than a grain of truth. And I say this not as one of those pesky "leftists." I say this as someone who has spent much of the last three years studying what moves voters in the middle, the Undecideds who will hear whichever side speaks to them with moral clarity.

Consider the president's leadership style, which has now become clear: deliver a moving speech, move on, and when push comes to shove, leave it to others to decide what to do if there's a conflict, because if there's a conflict, he doesn't want to be anywhere near it.

(Huffington Post, emphasis added). Ouch! That rant goes on and on.

See, I have only criticized the administration in the hope that his advisers would wake up to the reality I reminded them of time and time again.

They seem to think they can ramrod their notions down the voters ballot box, a notion that will be tested like it was in the last election when the people rejected that approach.

My criticism of the administration has been exclusively to criticize them for continuing what the people rejected in the election.

For an apologetic in support of all the administration's deeds, and a pro-con comment session afterwards, see this post.

The Germ Theory - of Government - 2

2011-12-21T06:02:00.037-06:00

In the previous post of this series we looked at government from a vantage point not often considered.

We peered out over the political landscape from a doctor's vantage point.

Then we went even further, to consider the constitution as one form of medicine or immunization designed to treat those who would sit in any of the seats of power.

In our view expressed in that post, we examined the notion that those who sit in the seats of power (including religion) are constantly exposed to what we call the toxins of power.

We noted that the whole purpose for that constitutional treatment for exposure to those toxins, together with annual follow up elections to work as booster shots containing the anti-toxin called accountability, was to avoid an ongoing diseased government that more and more would oppress the people it purported to serve.

No doubt it seems strange, at first, to consider government from the perspective of a doctor, from the perspective of Epidemiology, nevertheless, at the same time it is common for people to react to some of the behavior of congress, the president, and the courts with the phrase "that's sick".

We bloggers, commenters, and posters at Dredd Blog have also expressed another notion, based on a review of the history of empires, that there is an increasing sense that the toxins of power can, over time, build up an immunity to those types of treatments (like the resistance of Streptococcus, for example).

We suggested, therefore, that we should "get modern" by developing an actual immunization vaccination that would have some capacity to protect those who are exposed to the toxins of power.

We noted that our microbiology scientists, researchers, and scholars, have made great inroads into the study of microbes, as well as the impact microbes have on the concept of what it is to be human.

We believe that we are now in a stronger position, medically and scientifically, to seriously begin to consider and to develop such a vaccine.

But note that this is not a vaccine for stupidity or incompetence, rather it is a vaccine for already intelligent, competent Americans who become government officials, and who are then and thereby exposed to toxins of power.

Toxins that will pull any and all of them toward behavior they would not otherwise normally conduct, prior to having been exposed to those toxins.

The Toxins of Power Blog now is advancing an ongoing, maturing hypothesis that encourages research and development which could move us closer to the day when we can discover what any such vaccine would be able to do to minimize the effects of the toxins of power.

Hopefully, those who have the capacity to do such research and development will take the idea and run with it for the benefit of people everywhere.

Stay tuned.

Stealth Budget For Stealth Bailout - 2

2011-12-20T15:15:00.005-06:00

Close to two years ago we considered an obscene war spending bill.

Nothing has changed, the congress and president are still obscene with the lust of war and plunder.

Meanwhile, a germ theory of government is emerging that explains their alien life form of behavior.

Here is the text of the post two years ago:

The massive military build up and military drills in South America give new meaning to "drill for oil" and "drill baby drill".

Stealthy numbers also seem to be in the growing stealth budget somewhere, hidden from public eyes.

A secret amount in the hundreds of billions of dollars of the taxpayer money is classified each year.

Thus, we never really know what the actual deficit is, but never mind, the amount they tell us about is shocking enough.

The just before Christmas spending bill is out:

The Senate will soon follow the House in passing a $636.3 billion Fiscal Year 2010 defense appropriations bill, the government's largest spending bill. The legislation contains 1,720 earmarks worth $4.2 billion, 17 percent less in number and 14 percent less in value from last year (remember that this is only disclosed earmarks: Major additions such as the $2.5 billion for 10 more C-17 Globemaster cargo planes are not included). The four top Congressional appropriators are responsible for 15 percent of the take: Senate Defense Appropriations Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HI) sponsored 37 earmarks worth $198.2 million, and Ranking Member Thad Cochran 45 worth $167 million. Over in the House, Defense Appropriations Chairman John Murtha (D-PA) sponsored 23 earmarks worth $76.5 million, while Ranking Member C.W. Bill Young (R-FL) got behind 36 worth $83.7 million.

(Taxpayers For Common Sense, emphasis added). We spend more on war machines and war each year, in the non-stealth budget, than all the rest of the world combined.

If we knew the amount they classify (Jekyl & Hyde) then spend on war machines and war each year, in the stealth budget, it would be more than all the rest of the world combined.

They are still hung up on that old domino theory where they have to destroy the economy in order to save it?

Manning Hearing - Live Updates

2011-12-19T14:02:00.005-06:00

The Guardian has a live-update feed on the Bradley Manning pre-trial hearing: here.

Nash / Raymond song about Manning:

"Kill Senate Health Care Bill" - 2

2011-12-16T08:46:00.004-06:00

Two years ago on this date Dredd Blog considered the debate going on then about health care.

Things have not changed that much, in the sense that the health care reform law is now before the U.S. Supreme Court for a decision as to whether or not it is constitutional in whole or in part.

Likewise, the health care reform law is still being heatedly discussed in the ongoing Republican Primary Debates.

Here is the text of the post of two years ago:

After the latest Joe Lieberman escapades leading to Senate Leadership capitulation, Howard Dean said on last night's Keith Olbermann show Countdown, that the Senate bill on Health Care should be put out of its misery.

On radio he said:

"This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate," Dean said. "Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill."

(Huffington Post). Is it not pathetic for a nation that exclaims peace to spend more on military than all the rest of the nations combined?

To spend less on health care than any other industrialized European nation?

A spending orgasm is just fine if it is spent on military or filthy rich banksters, but not fine if it goes to the middle class and poor?

No wonder we are falling from first place in significant areas of economics.

Iraq: World's Number One Oil Producer? - 6

2011-12-15T05:47:00.027-06:00

In this series that began in August of 2010, we have hypothesized that the Iraq war was about civilization's addiction to oil, and the resultant panic reaction to peak oil, a panic that will never end so long as we continue to traverse the downslope of the peak of sanity.

The showmen say that the Iraq war is over now, the oil barons say we won the war because we secured possibly the largest supply of oil known, and the statesmen say winning the peace is the traditional American way (because wars cannot really be won), but they also hope it is a real step in a better direction.

The propaganda engines of MOMCOM are talking about all that freedom we created in Iraq, even as the mid-east curse ("may America bring you freedom") is uttered incessantly to sectarian opponents.

Those in the know realize that the "freedom" which was created there was the freedom for oil barons to exploit and plunder the oil in Iraq, the oil that should have been used to enrich the Iraqi people, not the plundering invader drug warlords.

Those oil drugsters who run the U.S. government military and media now have the world's largest "embassy" in Iraq, overseeing untold numbers of mercenaries contracted from down the street in the U.A.E. where Haliburton of Cheney, Blackwater of Prince, and USCENTCOM of MOMCOM have set up headquarters.

The plan is going according to the schedule Dredd Blog has projected in this series:

“Crude oil expansion plans in the medium term are moving apace, with capacity now forecast to increase by 2.33 million b/d to 38.1 million b/d by 2016,” IEA said in its latest monthly report.

“Iraq accounts for 80% of the increased capacity, followed by the UAE and Angola,” IEA said, noting that capacity growth is 200,000 b/d higher than its previous forecast for the 2010-16 period.

(PO, 12/13/11, emphasis added). Those who thought oil had nothing to do with the Iraq war may stay in denial, but will look more and more foolish as time goes on:

Iraq hopes to increase production from the present 2.7 million barrels per day to 13.5 million by 2018.

That would easily top Saudi Arabia, the world’s top petroleum exporter, which pumps about ten million bpd. Current global demand is around 89 million bpd.

Three Western majors – BP, ExxonMobil and Eni – are hard at work developing Iraq’s massive southern oil fields at Rumaila, West Qurna and Zubair. Within six years, these fields could be pumping 6.8 million bpd.

(Scotsman, emphasis added). Will Syria and Iran be the next middle eastern nations to "secure the blessings of oil" for the homeland plutocracy?

Stay tuned.

The war is all over:

Better Dead Than Red

2011-12-14T09:19:00.007-06:00

Have any respect for your elders?

I mean the freedom elders.

For example: “Experience has shown that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” – Thomas Jefferson

Don't misunderestimate the power of the dark side of the matrix, dear hobbit.

The Judas Number - 30 - Pieces of Silver - 2

2011-12-13T07:08:00.005-06:00

Two years ago on this date we discussed a mysterious number that kept repeating itself in the reports from Pentagonia, Capitol of Bullshitistan, concerning events in Afghanistan.

That number was 30.

We don't see than number any more, except when we hear how many years the generals want to stay there.

Or perhaps how many times the President of Afghanistan has said he would side with Pakistan (or the Taliban?) in a war against the United States.

We revisit these stories ever so often to show how the behind the scenes institutions that work in the shadows are more permanent than administrations or congresses.

Read the story between the lines:

How about a Christmas story?

Remember the story of Jesus?

I mean the one where one of his own disciples, Judas Iscariot, sold him out to his enemies for 30 pieces of silver?

The civilians of Afghanistan can relate to the number 30, because it is trivial for 30 of them to be killed by Americans, who are there to teach them to be civil, modern, and democratic.

Yep, if any thing like serious killing is going to go on (like killing more than 30 Afghanis at a time) there must be permission given by the Secretary of State as a matter of law.

See, we are a nation of laws, which makes us exceptional, hence American exceptionalism.

The Afghanis don't know how lucky they are to have a great progressive American Commander in Chief pulling for them do they?

He is sending the Judas number 30 more thousand of those who kill 30 at a time, praise General Judas.

Well you know that law stuff always has loopholes, so have you noticed that when a bunch of Afghanis are killed these days there are always about 30 Afghani civilians killed?

You haven't?

Now that is some seriously exact killing folks, legal, exceptional, and fully Judas. All the military needs to do is report "30" civilians for it to be defined as trivial, exact killing.

But that being said, can you believe that some ingrates think the 30 number is being fudged? Yes it is true:

On Monday, the anonymous blogger Security Crank noticed something interesting: all the U.S. and NATO airstrikes in Afghanistan seemingly kill exactly 30 people every time. How can that be?

(Air America). How unpatriotic can some people get? Jesus would not be happy with them, pass the ammo, 30 boxes please, and learn what to notice, and what not to notice.

That security crank who is 30 challenged even said:

But look, hopping onto Google News and typing “30 Taliban” or “30 suspected militants” brings up literally dozens of stories each year, stretching back at least to 2005. Indeed, thirty seems to be the magic number when it comes to arresting or killing off Taliban and other militant fighters in Afghanistan.

(Security Crank, [or GodlikeProd or Agonist]). As if that arithmetic of insubordination could not be topped, some one down in sweet home Alabama noticed the same thing:

Last August my piece Around the Hindu Kush, 30 is a Magic Number quoted 16 media items about different incidents in Afghanistan between February 2006 and August 2008. Each of those incidents involved "30 militants", "30 insurgents" or "30 enemies".

Since then the number 30 has not lost its magic. Here is an update with 18 incidents since August last year all of which involve the magic number:

(Moon of Alabama). That is Judas Priest ghastly to notice things like that with an unfaithful questioning mind. Doubt is of the devil!

Don't these dissidents know it is not a matter of magic, it is a matter of biblical proportions, as our high priest in chief explained to the French Fry dude?

Yes, our Judas Priest in Chief has specified a democratic number of 30 as the reason these things happen this way.

This biblical 30 is done so our wars are always just, and those we are fighting are always evil. Isn't that special? Isn't that magic!

It is a biblical proportion that should be told during Christmas Time, the season of heavenly peace we are bringing to lucky nations everywhere.

Notice the holy official foundation for this principle of Judas 30 law:

We don't know much about how it works, but in 2007, Marc Garlasco, the Pentagon's former chief of high-value targeting, offered a glimpse when he told Salon magazine that in 2003, "the magic number was 30." That meant that if an attack was anticipated to kill more than 30 civilians, it needed the explicit approval of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld or President George W. Bush. If the expected civilian death toll was less than 30, the strike could be OKd by the legal and military commanders on the ground.

(LA Times). Hey detractors, you do know the meaning of "30 is ok" don't you? It means don't bother us with details of minor imperfection. Grace and forgiveness are the values of disciples of Christ doncha know?

This is sophisticated foreign policy based upon the King James Bible, which was good enough for Jesus, so it is also good enough for all our saintly body counters.

On Public Discourse

2011-12-12T06:56:00.002-06:00

Pat of SNL says: "Go figure while you tap your feet ..."

Here is the case of the 99% against the MOMCOM 1%, spoken by a 60's band:

Here is the defense presented by The 1% MOMCOM, spoken by another 60's band:

The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy - 3

2011-12-09T05:17:00.036-06:00

In the first and second posts in this series we touched upon the militant foundation of the American Plutocracy, and its child the American Plutonomy.

In addition, Dredd Blog pointed out that on the way to the American Plutonomy, protected by that militant foundation, the plunder, which the American 1% has done to the American 99%, was kept "secret" in plain sight.

We pointed out that the 1% used the media to pull off this plunder with the form of "communication" known as propaganda, all the while calling it "journalism", "entertainment", or "the media".

A couple of generations of this abuse has generated a form of Mass Stockholm Syndrome, so that we are not talking about the dynamics of individual Stockholm Syndrome sufferers, but rather we are talking about how that syndrome works and manifests after being injected into an entire society.

Let's revisit some numbers before we get into the dynamics of how this plunder of America has taken place:

Upon closer inspection, the Forbes list reveals that six Waltons — all children (one daughter-in-law) of Sam or James “Bud” Walton the founders of Wal-Mart — were on the list. The combined worth of the Walton six was $69.7 billion in 2007 — which equated to the total wealth of the entire bottom thirty percent!

(The Few, the Proud, the Very Rich). This 30% of Americans equates to about 100,000,000 American people, who have collectively as much "wealth" as those 6 Wal-Mart children.

We pointed out that those ~100,000,000 Americans are in poverty or on the edge of poverty, one paycheck or less away from falling through to financial ruin, something those six of the 1% won't worry about.

Is this concentration of power a result of equal opportunity and fair play, the supposed ethic of the Amercian Dream, or is it the result of a nightmare war on America that functions as Social Kuru, the social disease of financial cannibalism?

It is all of the above, but none of it is healthy or stable according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ):

The data may be a further sign that the U.S. is becoming a Plutonomy – an economy dependent on the spending and investing of the wealthy. And Plutonomies are far less stable than economies built on more evenly distributed income and mass consumption. “I don’t think it’s healthy for the economy to be so dependent on the top 2% of the income distribution,” Mr. Zandi said. He added that, “In the near term it highlights the fragility of the recovery.”

(The Graphs of Wrath, quoting WSJ, emphasis added). The heart, mind, and spirit of the method and means the 1% use has been known all along:

"Noam Chomsky: One of the most important comments on deceit, I think, was made by Adam Smith. He pointed out that a major goal of business is to deceive and oppress the public.

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"

(The Deceit Business). The institution that controlled the people by force previously, the militant institution, became the propaganda masters going forward, deceiving the public into thinking they were the most competent American institution.

The citizen journalist is now the antidote to the social kuru, but it is a weak force than can only talk about and reveal the issues which the 1% media will not reveal and talk about.

Not Really Mr. President - 2

2011-12-08T17:11:00.002-06:00

On this date two years ago, in a Dredd Blog post, the issues we covered was war, jobs, and government spending.

Not deja vu all over again?

Well, the country did not like it then and still do not like it.

Here is the text of that post:

I have been asking a question in two posts recently, and I hope the president did not answer when he said:

"We avoided the depression many feared," Obama said in a speech at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. But, he added, "Our work is far from done."

(NPR). Lately when he says "we" he is also talking about right wing idealists he kowtows to, calling it "bipartisanship".

No, it is kowtowing.

So, I don't know who the "we" is, but his predecessor was a right wing idealist who did not prevent the recession.

Just before Obama took office, in economic effect terms, "the most expensive public works legislation in U.S. history" was passed to "create jobs until 2009" by "we" the government.

The last two presidents both like war, and spending like a drunken sailor, not realizing that the wars of forever are causing the problem in the first place.

Dick Cheney may have run things for Bush II, but it looks like Secretary Gates is running things in two administrations.

Running things into the bloody ground of war.

Say It Forward

2011-12-07T05:53:00.029-06:00

By now you have probably heard that President Obama gave "a good speech" yesterday.

A speech that Dredd Blog will call a "say it forward" speech, which will be explained below.

It was a speech like more and more presidents are doing, since government is a political realm, guided by the machinations of big money, big oil, big media, and big military.

In particular, the President's speech was purposefully tailored after a speech President Teddy Roosevelt gave at the same location about a century ago.

The speech that Roosevelt gave took place during a time of robber barons and banksters, a time when there was no middle class, a time when a plutocracy running a plutonomy threatened to set in and become the norm for American society.

One could wonder, then, if the unspoken message that President Obama was sending was "As a Nation We Have Gone Back To The Future", back a century, back to our nation's dark ages, yes, back to the time of Theodore Roosevelt?

One could also wonder "so now we must 'lean forward' to get back to where we once belonged?"

The novel and later movie "Pay It Forward" was about doing good deeds as a form of investment in the future:

Trevor does a favor for three people, asking each of them to 'pay the favor forward' by doing favors for three other people, and so on, along a branching tree of good deeds.

(Pay It Forward). What is the difference, if there is a difference, between the notion of "pay it forward" and "say it forward", yes, what is the difference between now and then?

Noam Chomsky offers a clue when he says that our government, some few years after Teddy Roosevelt left the White House, became the purveyor of propaganda as a means of controlling the populace:

... this developed in ... 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.

(The Deceit Business, bold added; see also The Ways of Bernays). The U.S. government has evolved to become the offspring of politicians who are the offspring of "say it forward" rhetorical propaganda masters who design promises that are not to be kept.

Whether this is because the promises either can't be kept, or in some cases are intended not to be kept, is irrelevant.

The coin of the election realm, the coin of election promises, is as worthless as money at 100% inflation (there is lots of it but it doesn't buy much).

The American people in general do not believe politicians because of the reality of history, the reality that campaign promises are not kept.

The plunder barons, the banksters, and the warmongers, through their bought and paid for politicians, have destroyed the integrity of public discourse in America.

Therefore, to get back to the time of Teddy Roosevelt, we would have to break the bullshit barrier, yes, we would have to leave Pentagonia, the Capitol of Bullshitistan, and travel to a place and time where honesty is paramount.

Isn't that a road too far?

Get Back (to where you once belonged):

The Damage Has Been Done - 5

2011-12-06T12:28:00.006-06:00

In the previous post in this series we focused on the issue of worldwide drought.

The state and federal governments in the United States seem to be morphing into a stupor of thinking, or a lack of thinking.

These stupefied elected officials suppose that reports of environmental pollution, which is causing the mass extinction of species, climate change, and serious danger to civilization itself, is a political issue.

Not only that, a large group of House members in the GOP even think that global warming is a laughing matter, because they have been told as much by a for-profit "think tank" (see video).

That think tank also said the same thing about cigarette smoking as a cause of lung cancer, and convinced the courts and government of that lie for years, even as thousands died in reliance on their lies.

The criminal minded think tank is being paid by big oil to say that global warming is a big hoax which scientists the world over is playing on the seven billion people of the world.

Meanwhile, back in reality, in this post we focus on green house gas emissions once again:

Last year, emissions from burning fossil fuels rose by 5.9%, bringing the total rise since 1990, the baseline year for calculating emissions under the Kyoto protocol, to 49%, an average rate of increase of about 3.1% a year ... The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change, found that global carbon emissions were likely to carry on increasing at a rate of about 3% per year. It was accompanied by another study offering new proof that climate change is linked to human activities, in burning fossil fuel ... These two new results offer a stark message. Human carbon emissions are certainly disturbing the climate system upon which we depend, and in spite of the economic slowdown, and despite all the efforts by governments, businesses and people to reduce them, our emissions are reaching new highs. The climatic consequences, already emerging, will grow over time, and are irreversible.

(Guardian, quoting Journal Nature: Climate Change). The Obama Administration has been as bad or worse than those before it, so there seems to be no avoiding severe catastrophe and extinction of innumerable species.

And this comes at a time when the microbial sciences show that we humans are individual ecosystems composed mostly of microbe cells, not human cells.

The Matriarch of The Matrix - 2

2011-12-05T08:01:00.003-06:00

In the first post of this series we set the stage for comparing today's MOMCOM ruled society with the world of The Matrix.

The word "matrix" generally indicates a motherly source, and a motherly source generally indicates a female source.

Yet a MOMCOM engendered society is not essentially a thing of gender, it is essentially a thing of power.

The power to grow, the power to replicate, was an element involved with how Neo was able to convince the Sentient Machines of the danger of Agent Smith.

The Sentient Machines of The Matrix are a vision which some scientists today see as the future for the wealthy 1%, but not for the 99%.

In the latter episodes of The Matrix, Neo was able to convince the sentient machines that there was an unbridled growth taking place within their own artificial intelligence, with entities associated with them, yes, with their own artificial intelligence software that gave them the power of cognition.

What the sentient machines then did was to realize, after interfacing and communicating with Neo, that some sort of toxins had infiltrated their vast cognitive, software system.

Neo convinced the sentient machines of a dangerous instability to them, so they joined him in an effort to end the unbridled, toxin-generated growth taking place in the Agent Smith portion of their artificial intelligence realm.

They stopped the ongoing war to begin peaceful interaction with humans after realizing Neo was correct and did not want to destroy them, rather Neo wanted to normalize them.

Their is a similar danger to the 1% today.

Listen when people talk about economy today, and you will in generally hear the words "grow" and "growth" used as the "be all" power word.

To heal all economic woe, the economy must "grow", so we must see "growth", yes, "we must grow the economy" is the common mantra.

What is often forgotten is that economists indicate that vast growth had been taking place just before the recent recession, but bubble growth was a characteristic of what led up to what continues to be the current economic disaster.

Thus, not just any type of growth is valid to any system, because after all, the foundational essence of the disease we call cancer is unbridled, unprincipled growth for growth's sake.

Size matters, but spastic growth matters even more.

The Citizen Journalist In America

2011-12-04T08:21:00.010-06:00

The Dredd Blog System has only touched upon the nature of citizen journalism in America, and why citizen journalism is needed now more than ever (see The Free Press Is Very Far From Here, Not-So-Free Press Files Bankruptcy - 2, Not-So-Free Press Files Bankruptcy, Warriors Press For Propaganda - 3, Warriors Press For Propaganda - 2, Warriors Press For Propaganda, GE Serves The Pentagon On TV Near Yoo, GE Serves The Pentagon On TV Near Yoo - 2, Stockholm Syndrome on Steroids? - 2, Survival Of The Fittest Willie McTell, The Matriarch of The Matrix).

So, to improve upon past coverage, today we focus on the citizen journalist exclusively, because the issue is important in the Occupy Movement context, and because citizen journalists are ultimately involved in the "free press" in America today.

Let's begin by noting that Dredd Blog does NOT include the corporate for-profit media of any sort, including the main stream media, in the term "free press", because they have let down the American people (see PBS - Citizen Journalist).

You might want to view the jaw-dropping video at the bottom of this post before proceeding, but just in case you don't, I will summarize by saying it is a news story from a main stream source quoting from a citizen journalist.

The citizen journalist is facing 75 years in prison for video-taping police performing public duties.

When the main stream media goes to the court house to inquire further, they are intimidated by officials there who warn them not to show what they have captured on video.

The lawyer for that main stream media news organization told them to obey the officials.

Thus, the main stream media cower while the citizen journalist stands up for ~~his~~ your rights, even facing what would be life in prison at his age ("give me liberty or give me death" comes to mind).

It might be excusable that the British are suffering confusion on that issue, as noted in a Guardian Article concerning the photographing of police.

That should not be the case for Americans, but alas, our nation has drifted away from our founding principles such much so that today America has morphed into a strange nation that suffers amnesia.

The question of the citizen journalist's right to take pictures of police performing their duties in public should be a no-brainer to Americans who have exposed themselves to Civics 101, specifically the First Amendment.

First, notice that "free press" citizen journalists are not required to be licensed by the state, nor can general constraint be imposed:

The press in its connotation comprehends every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion ... We think that the ordinance is invalid on its face. Whatever the motive which induced its adoption, its character is such that it strikes at the very foundation of the freedom of the press by subjecting it to license and censorship.

(Lovell v City of Griffin GA, U.S. Supreme Ct., 1938). Not only that, "free press" citizen journalism includes all legal means for gathering that news data, and any police or other official who improperly hampers that collection of data is personally liable to the citizen journalist for damages:

Simon Glik was arrested for using his cell phone's digital video camera to film several police officers arresting a young man on the Boston Common. The charges against Glik, which included violation of Massachusetts's wiretap statute and two other state-law offenses, were subsequently judged baseless and were dismissed. Glik then brought this suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that his arrest for filming the officers constituted a violation of his rights under the First and Fourth Amendments ... The First Amendment issue here is, as the parties frame it, fairly narrow: is there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative.
...
It is firmly established that the First Amendment's aegis extends further than the text's proscription on laws "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," and encompasses a range of conduct related to the gathering and dissemination of information.As the Supreme Court has observed, "the First Amendment goes beyond protection of the press and the self-expression of individuals to prohibit government from limiting the stock of information from which members of the public may draw." ("It is ... well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas.").
An important corollary to this interest in protecting the stock of public information is that "[t]here is an undoubted right to gather news 'from any source by means within the law.'" ... The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities, fits comfortably within these principles. Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting "the free discussion of governmental affairs." ... Moreover, as the Court has noted, "[f]reedom of expression has particular significance with respect to government because '[i]t is here that the state has a special incentive to repress opposition and often wields a more effective power of suppression.'" ... (quoting Thomas Emerson, Toward a General Theory of the First Amendment 9 (1966)). This is particularly true of law enforcement officials, who are granted substantial discretion that may be misused to deprive individuals of their liberties.

(Glik v. Cunniffe, U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit, 2011, PDF). The court was quite clear that police officers who wrongfully interfere with citizen journalists, and cities, counties, and states who allow them to do so, can be liable for very large sums of money damages, injunctions, and the like.

So you in the free press, including bloggers, all citizens filming the police in Occupy Movement locations around the USA, as well those like Dredd Blog who perform a public service for the people, let's keep the First Amendment alive.

In further preparation for the military junta state, to Big Brother it is a felony to be a citizen journalist, to videotape Big Brother's minions abusing peaceful citizens who are only exercising their constitutional rights:

The Dredd Blog System considers these citizens to be anti-toxins to the sickness caused by the toxins of power infecting the nation at this time. See (An Example of an Antitoxin, An Example of an Antitoxin - 2).

Hello Big Brother Homeland

2011-12-02T05:45:00.034-06:00

The United States Senate, in a 93-7 vote, has passed a bill that violates the United States Constitution according to the ACLU and other legal scholars.

The problem is a clause in the current war legislation determining how many hundreds of billions of dollars will be spent in the ongoing oil wars.

If that clause becomes the law then any U.S. citizen anywhere in the United States or elsewhere can merely be accused of wrongdoing then taken to GITMO to be held indefinitely without formal charges and without trial.

Right wing Republican warmongers and clueless Democrats put the language in the bill, saying that is what the law already is anyway.

So I wonder if the ACLU will file a lawsuit to have it held unconstitutional because it violates the 4th Amendment:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons ... against unreasonable ... seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the ... persons ... to be seized."

(Constitution, 4th Amendment); the 5th Amendment:

"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury ... nor be deprived of ... liberty ... without due process of law ..."

(Constitution, 5th Amendment); the 6th Amendment:

"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury ... and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense."

(Constitution, 6th Amendment); and the 8th Amendment:

"... nor [shall] cruel and unusual punishments [be] inflicted."

(Constitution, 8th Amendment). Furthermore, the Supreme Court has not taken the position the Senators wrongly said they had taken:

At this difficult time in our Nation’s history, we are called upon to consider the legality of the Government’s detention of a United States citizen on United States soil as an “enemy combatant” and to address the process that is constitutionally owed to one who seeks to challenge his classification as such. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that petitioner’s detention was legally authorized and that he was entitled to no further opportunity to challenge his enemy-combatant label. We now vacate and remand. We hold that although Congress authorized the detention of combatants in the narrow circumstances alleged here, due process demands that a citizen held in the United States as an enemy combatant be given a meaningful opportunity to contest the factual basis for that detention before a neutral decisionmaker.

(Hamdi v. Rumsfeld). Further, the dissent of conservative Justice Scalia joined by moderate Justice Stevens in Hamdi, was even more contrary to the Senate's waywardness.

Whatever happened to the "strict constructionists" that the neoCon fascists in the Senate always talked about, and what happened to the "democratic" Senators who were shamefully undemocratic by voting for fascism?

These lyrics are the song in the two videos below:

Oh, a storm is threat'ning
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Ooh, see the fire is sweepin'
Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet
Mad bull lost its way

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

The floods is threat'ning
My very life today
Gimme, gimme shelter
Or I'm gonna fade away

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

I tell you love, sister, it's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
Kiss away, kiss away

The W Direction Revisited - 2

2011-11-30T06:45:00.004-06:00

Why is Obama's job approval rating polling lower than any president in modern history at this time?

Did he leave his base behind, taking them for granted, and did the independents change their mind about him?

The Gallup Poll seems to indicate yes to those questions.

Once upon a campaign promise, candidate Barak Obama indicated that he was going to bring green change to the nation, starting in Washington, D.C., but it seems now that he was talking about getting green bucks for his campaign from the 1% this time, not from the 99% who elected him.

A change toward the green environmental direction has not happened, because from the day Obama was baptized into the Oilah Akbar religion during the Deepwater Horizon revival, he has become more and more an enemy of the Earth, following the W direction, following the oil baron Bush II:

Barack Obama has been just as zealous as George Bush in stripping away environmental, health and safety protection at the behest of industry, it turns out.

Some environmental organisations were beginning to suspect this, after Obama over-ruled his scientific advisors and blocked stronger ozone standards. Now, a new report [pdf] from the Centre for Progressive Reform has dug up some key data revealing that the White House in the age of Obama has been just as receptive to the pleadings of industry lobbyists as it was in the Bush era. And it goes far beyond ozone.

Under Obama, a little known corner of the White House - known as the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, or Oira - has changed more than 80% of the rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

None of these were changes for the good, the report says.

"Every single study of its performance, including this one, shows that Oira serves as a one-way ratchet, eroding the protections that agency specialists have decided are necessary under detailed statutory mandates, following years — even decades — of work."

(Guardian). He said he would put an emphasis on science, but he ignored the weather catastrophes being caused by decades of ignoring science, and truth be known, doing worse than those before him in some cases.

While Vermont considers rerouting rivers, while the national power grid rusts, while the oil wars are increased, and the dots have been connected, Obama has been full steam ahead in the W Direction.

His only hope for re-election is the Republicans who want to send a hyper-whacked out candidate to run against Obama, instead of a moderately whacked out candidate.

Obama must root for the right wing of the Republicans right now, because if a candidate like Huntsman won the Republican primaries Obama would be defeated.

At this time, it does not look like the Republicans will let him down.

The previous episode is here.

On The Origin of Leeks - 4

2011-11-29T15:17:00.008-06:00

A year ago on this date we talked about the dripping faucet of truth.

The fertile ground of secrets about government, too evil for our sweet little ears to hear, still grows larger and larger leeks.

The garden of journalism, outside the Establishment 1% Media, where the free press of the 99% thrives, is ripe still.

Yes, the plumbing is still leaking in the Republic of Bullshitistan ruled by the 1% plutocracy.

That is good, so here is last year's post revisited:

In the first episode of this series we talked about the ancient origin of leeks.

Oh those leeks, we discovered, are such good food for the people, but they are a poison for the elites, they are a risk to the warmonger, but above all they are for sure a perplexing problem to those vexed with the fog of nationalism that is founded on the exceptionalism of foolishness.

Those on the right, who feign "pragmatic constitutional understanding" when confronted with the Fourth Amendment, tend to say: "I have nothing to hide, so why should I care if 'they' search me or mine without a warrant ... I mean c'mon ... only criminals fear to be searched, besides it makes us safe and secure to give up the Fourth Amendment."

But those who officially preach that doctrine to the sleepy minions (e.g. T-Baggers) become hostile and vain when they are searched without a "warrant" by the CIA (Cosmic Intelligent Agents) of the people, and then have to "feast on leeks" when the rank lies and propaganda are exposed.

All of a sudden, they have no use for WiggyLeeks, the food of the common folk.

They become national security wonks all of a sudden when the tides turn upon them, failing to realize that a rogue government is not something that is safe and secure in the first place.

Why doesn't it occur to them that if those sworn not to do what they don't want out in the open didn't do those bad things they would have nothing to worry about?

Those who indoctrinated those lizard brain controlled minions tend to wilt like a leek in the desert without water when they have to endure violations of the principles of that "quaint writ" (Gonzales) because of the emergence of the truth about them.

Well, it is so close to thanksgiving time that we need to talk about that constitutional food of the people, the leeks of the people, from now until Pentagonia, Capitol of Bullshitistan is a democracy again.

After that we will celebrate the new era with some champagne and rejoicing while we sing "long live the leeks and long live the people".

As it turns out, a couple of media newspapers are leek eaters:

US embassy cables leak sparks global diplomatic crisis

• More than 250,000 dispatches reveal US foreign strategies
• Diplomats ordered to spy on allies as well as enemies
• Saudi king urged Washington to bomb Iran

"... cables date from 2007 or later — show American officials struggling with events whose
outcomes are far from sure. To read through them is to become a global voyeur, immersed in the jawboning, inducements and penalties the United States wields in trying to have its way with a recalcitrant world."

(Guardian, see also NY Times). Now go out into the garden, pick some leeks, and "boil them cabbage down" (the Guardian has a download mechanism).

We must not DeLay the rights of the people, we must resist the robber barons and the criminally insane, so that we preserve at least a chance that we or our children can dwell in the next civilization.

For the children who carry on:

The previous post in this series is here.

Banker Jekyll Will Hyde Your Money - 9

2011-11-28T16:22:00.018-06:00

For several years Dredd Blog has been doing posts which assert that monies are plundered from the people's treasury.

Then those monies are distributed around the world as a type of subversive invasion of the United States of America (pirate style).

The first episode was Banker Jekyll Will Hyde Your Money (8/30/09), and the most recent episode was Banker Jekyll Will Hyde Your Money - 8 (8/31/2011).

We just found out how accurate that series was when something we did not know recently surfaced:

The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he “wasn’t aware of the magnitude.” It dwarfed the Treasury Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.

“TARP at least had some strings attached,” says Brad Miller, a North Carolina Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, referring to the program’s executive-pay ceiling. “With the Fed programs, there was nothing.”

(Bloomberg, emphasis added). The Fed is the head of Banker Jekyll, but the rest of the banksters are like Agent Smith in the movie The Matrix:

The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.

(Business Insider, emphasis added). It almost seems like the United States has been invaded for its booty, leaving the people with an IOU in the treasury vaults where their money used to be.

The only thing we don't know is how much of the plunder the 1% have covered up, by declaring that that information is a state secret.

Like Dredd Blog has said for years now: Add It Up and It Smells (4/27/2009), Add It Up and It Smells - 2 (9/6/2010).

Wake up and smell the roses:

Will The Military Become The Police - 3

2011-11-27T07:38:00.007-06:00

This series deals with the ideology and circumstances which engendered the original Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C. § 1385) at the end of The Civil War.

We will address that law as the "PCA" in this post, as we discuss the incessant attacks on the PCA which followed those devastating events that happened in Manhattan, at the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania on 9/11/01 in the USA.

A military website offers this interpretation of the law in question, the PCA:

The Posse Comitatus Act

Section 1385 of Title 18, United States Code (USC), states:

“Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

The PCA does not apply to the U.S. Coast Guard in peacetime or to the National Guard in Title 32 or State Active Duty status. The substantive prohibitions of the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) were extended to all the services with the enactment of Title 10 USC, Section 375. As required by Title 10 USC, Section 375 the secretary of defense issued Department of Defense Directive 5525.5, which precludes members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps from direct participation in a search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity unless participation in such activity by such member is otherwise authorized by law.

The PCA generally prohibits U.S. military personnel from direct participation in law enforcement activities. Some of those law enforcement activities would include interdicting vehicles, vessels, and aircraft; conducting surveillance, searches, pursuit and seizures; or making arrests on behalf of civilian law enforcement authorities. Prohibiting direct military involvement in law enforcement is in keeping with long-standing U.S. law and policy limiting the military’s role in domestic affairs.

The United States Congress has enacted a number of exceptions to the PCA that allow the military, in certain situations, to assist civilian law enforcement agencies in enforcing the laws of the U.S. The most common example is counterdrug assistance (Title 10 USC, Sections 371-381). Other examples include: Prohibiting direct military involvement in law enforcement
The Insurrection Act (Title 10 USC, Sections 331-335). This act allows the president to use U.S. military personnel at the request of a state legislature or governor to suppress insurrections. It also allows the president to use federal troops to enforce federal laws when rebellion against the authority of the U.S. makes it impracticable to enforce the laws of the U.S.
Emergency situations involving chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction (Title 10 USC, Section 382). When the attorney general and the secretary of defense jointly determine that an “emergency situation” exists that poses a serious threat to U.S. interests and is beyond the capability of civilian law enforcement agencies. DoD personnel may assist the Justice Department in enforcing prohibitions regarding biological or chemical weapons of mass destruction.
Emergency situations involving chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction (Title 10 USC, Section 382). When the attorney general and the secretary of defense jointly determine that an “emergency situation” exists that poses a serious threat to U.S. interests and is beyond the capability of civilian law enforcement agencies. DoD personnel may assist the Justice Department in enforcing prohibitions regarding biological or chemical weapons of mass destruction.
Military support to civilian law enforcement is carried out in strict compliance with the Constitution and U.S. laws and under the direction of the president and secretary of defense.

(USNORTHCOM, emphasis added). That military website clearly indicates that the PCA generally prohibits U.S. military personnel from direct participation in law enforcement activities, such as interdicting vehicles, vessels, and aircraft; conducting surveillance, searches, pursuit and seizures; or making arrests on behalf of civilian law enforcement authorities in domestic affairs.

That military web page seems to be little more than propaganda, if one reads a Dept. of Homeland Security contractor website, where Bybee & Yoo lawyer types openly call that military website verbiage a myth:

The Posse Comitatus Act has traditionally been viewed as a major barrier to the use of U.S. military forces in planning for homeland defense. In fact, many in uniform believe that the act precludes the use of U.S. military assets in domestic security operations in any but the most extraordinary situations. As is often the case, reality bears little resemblance to the myth for homeland defense planners. Through a gradual erosion of the act’s prohibitions over the past 20 years, posse comitatus today is more of a procedural formality than an actual impediment to the use of U.S. military forces in homeland defense.

(The Myth of Posse Comitatus, DHS contractor website, bold added). You just have to notice the doublespeak used by Major Craig T. Trebilcock when writing the piece, using known propaganda techniques of the Bybee & Yoo type.

Trebilcock's insertion and use of "homeland defense" in place of "civilian law enforcement", as the operative clause in the text, tortures the original meaning and purpose of the law.

Clearly it is ridiculous and absurd for Trebilcock to define "civilian law enforcement" as a "homeland defense" of the type done by national military operations.

DHS contract lawyer Trebilcock's text, if it was honest and above board, would read:

The Posse Comitatus Act has traditionally been viewed as a major barrier to the use of U.S. military forces in planning for [civilian law enforcement]. In fact, many in uniform believe that the act precludes the use of U.S. military assets in domestic security operations in any but the most extraordinary situations. As is often the case, reality bears little resemblance to the myth for [civilian law enforcement] planners. Through a gradual erosion of the act’s prohibitions over the past 20 years, posse comitatus today is more of a procedural formality than an actual impediment to the use of U.S. military forces in [civilian law enforcement].

(ibid). This reveals how radical of a change DHS contract lawyer Trebilcock indicates has taken place in the law called the PCA.

Trebilcock says PCA is now nothing more than a "procedural formality", not really any "impediment to the use of U.S. military forces" in civilian law enforcement, even though the military website has language to the contrary.

Who is telling the truth, USNORTHCOM's military website, or Trebilcock on the Department of Homeland Security contractor website?

The answer is: neither one is telling the whole truth.

The military has said in public to the press that a plan is in place for the military to perform a massive civilian law enforcement exercise never before seen in America:

A new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks.

“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” said the War College report.

The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S.

(The Homeland: Big Brother Plutocracy, quoting The Phoenix Business Journal). A nation-wide military plan takes a long time to develop, so why would they take a long time to develop a plan their website says is illegal?

The military knew of Trebilcock's perspective, they knew what was on their own military website, and they knew that Trebilcock calls PCA "myth", so they must have anticipated or somehow brought about change Trebilcock can believe in.

How they modify national reality is: being able to change the law when they want to.

For some time Dredd Blog has pointed out, in other posts in this series, (Will The Military Become The Police - 2, Will The Military Become The Police) that changes of this type are and have been taking place.

Let's add to our discussion federal legislation that is coming up for a vote next week, which will impact the spirit of the PCA, and will put it into the same category Trebilcock did, rendering the PCA a procedural formality, not an actual impediment to the use of U.S. military forces in civilian law enforcement.

That federal legislation went into committee as Senate Bill "S. 1253", which contained the following text:

(d) Constitutional Limitation on Applicability to United States Persons - The authority to detain a person under this section does not extend to the detention of citizens or lawful resident aliens of the United States on the basis of conduct taking place within the United States except to the extent permitted by the Constitution of the United States.

(S. 1253, Subtitle D, Sec. 1031). That would echo and mirror the original intent of the PCA, but that text was changed in committee to now read:

(d) CONSTRUCTION. — Nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force.

(S. 1867, Subtitle D, Sec. 1031). The bill ends up, among other things, being about using the military for domestic civilian law enforcement in the manner DHS contract lawyer Trebilcock had indicated.

In other words, the military will be used as a federal police force in domestic matters as the The Phoenix Business Journal, quoting military sources, indicated.

Federal military soldiers eventually being used to put down any "Occupy" movements, anywhere they are too successful, is the likely scenario that is unfolding:

... Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated ...

(Guardian, Naomi Wolf; see also this and this). This is exactly what Dredd Blog anticipated as an ongoing, increasingly military morph of civilian structures, and the military morph of the public fabric in the USA going forward ("lean forward"):

“Experience has shown that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” – Thomas Jefferson

The Senate passed the bill mentioned above (S. 1867), and the White House says it will veto it.

We have been here before, unfortunately. The following song is about four young Americans shot down in cold blood by ruthless people who follow any orders:

Mother Of All Enemies - 2

2011-11-26T07:25:00.020-06:00

In the first post of this series we discussed the great social damage that the U.S. military has done to Iraq.

In that post we discussed the hunger of many Iraqi people, as well as the millions of Iraqi people who have had to flee their homes, the millions of Iraqi people who have had to flee their nation, and the countless who have had to flee for their lives; to Syria and to other nations foreign to those expatriated Iraqis.

Within those Iraqis who could not flee, who have therefore lived through the holocaust of war in Iraq, there is a massive group of women, the size of a city, who have been deprived of not only the everyday life they once had, but have also been deprived of needed loved ones.

Today we focus on a New York Times piece concerning about 900,000 - 1,000,000 widows in Iraq today:

The Iraqi Ministry of Planning estimates that about ... 900,000, are widows. A separate government agency, the Ministry of Women, issued a statement in June putting the figure at one million ... Confronted with so many widows,
the Iraqi government is providing only minimal assistance, equivalent to about $80 a month to those widowed in the recent conflict.

“We expected we would get a lot of help from all sides, the Americans, the Iraqi government,” Ms. Khalaf, who lost her husband in 2007, said in an interview in her trailer. “But the fact is, nobody really cares about us.”

The rusting trailer camp, across from a car lot, represents a social challenge that is not easily remedied — not least because the gender imbalance makes it exceedingly unlikely most widows will remarry.

(NY Times). This is one of many reasons why it is a Mideastern curse to say "may the Americans bring you democracy".

The oil war with Iraq will bring much more wealth to the 1% of MOMCOM, but will bring only more misery to the 99% they lord it over.

According to psychologists, as Americans become adults they tend to transfer parental sentiments away from their parents toward ~~the government~~ MOMCOM as a replacement for further parenting.

MOMCOM sends them to places to make heroes out of them, so every 80 minutes one of MOMCOM's parented veterans commits suicide.

I saw a veteran wearing a T-shirt that said "pain is weakness leaving your body", thus this strong old song about MOMCOM's love:

The Empire Strikes Back - 6

2011-11-25T14:16:00.011-06:00

In the previous post of this series, we discussed that many blogs were reporting about and discussing this issue.

The American government is a core of a larger Ruling Group Mind (RGM), as the behavioral scientists are wont to call it (Dredd Blog calls it MOMCOM).

Recently that RGM, via the Keystone Komplex, coordinated vicious attacks on "their own", innocent, protesting Americans, Occupy, a movement whose agenda of sorts is described by Naomi Wolfe as:

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward:

(Guardian). Welcome to the embryonic Big Brother Homeland Plutocracy which could be a bigger Jabber someday soon.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T06:31:00.000-06:00

... and season's greetings.

The Matriarch of The Matrix

2011-11-23T07:14:00.072-06:00

In the hit movie The Matrix, the writers of that production articulated well a society of individuals who were inundated 24/7 by an illusionary world generated by a propaganda matrix.

The sole purpose of that all encompassing propaganda matrix was to incessantly cover up and hide from that shell encased populace the reality of their history of involuntary servitude to a very well hidden ruling elite.

Individual humans in that society were embryo like, physically weak, yet fully grown in size, who were attached to the matrix with cable connections that formed a cyborg-like umbilical cord into their subconscious, so that a fully false reality could be pumped into them.

The purpose of the false reality was to perpetuate a well established involuntary servitude to a ruling power structure called "The Sentient Machines".

Other cable connections pumped hydroponic garden style nourishment into them as they grew and existed inside their eggshell like encasement, while other cable connections took energy from them to distribute over a power grid to ultimately end up as the source of sustenance for those who completely ruled over them body, soul, and mind.

The action in the movie comes from the fact that a few humans have escaped from the matrix induced mental slavery to The Sentient Machines, have returned to their original state of mind and physical being, and are, as a consequence of their awakening, mounting an underground counter-coup, counterrevolution, and/or insurrection against their overlords (The Sentient Machines).

In today's post we will consider a hypothesis that society today is not substantially different in principle from that fictional world, but of course does, in degree only, vary from The Matrix (at least from place to place, from time to time, or from person to person).

Now let's attach today's reality to The Matrix theme's graphic schematic just described above.

The 1%, as they have been called recently (Dredd Blog calls them MOMCOM), equate to The Sentient Machines.

The 99%, as they have been called recently, equate to the involuntary human servants of The Sentient Machines.

The underground counter-coup, counterrevolution, and insurrection against The Sentient Machines, those who have been awakened to the enslavement of humanity (e.g. Morpheus, Neo, and Zion's populace) equates to the movement that has recently been called The Occupy Movement.

The Matrix, the carrier of the 1%'s enslaving message equates to the vast 24/7 American Establishment Corporate For-Profit Media (e.g. the press), which Dredd Blog has nicknamed Blind Willie McTell News.

In American society today, behind the scenes, when the 1% think that no one is listening, the 1% call the 99% "the hoi polloi", which is to say "the great unwashed".

That contempt the 1% have for the 99% was recently shown by the statement of Newt Gingrich who recently exclaimed that The Occupy Movement should take a bath, a Freudian link to the 1%'s contempt for the great unwashed, the hoi polloi.

It is also fitting that "newt" means lizard, that "ging" means catapult (the propaganda), and that "rich" is his status after his "service to the government" (he says he taught Fannie Mae "history" for a cold 1.8 million dollars).

Stay tuned for the next episode.

The W Direction Revisited

2011-11-22T09:11:00.020-06:00

The Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, is urging congress to stop the automatic cuts to the military war budget.

At the same time President Barak Obama is telling congress not to bother doing what Panetta is urging it to do, because if congress does pass such a bill, the President goes on to say clearly that he will veto any such legislation, forcing the already-agreed-to cuts to the bloated war budget.

What seems like a mix-up in the Administration's messaging was pointed out by a British source:

The so-called super committee's failure on Monday to agree on $1.2 trillion in deficit-cutting measures triggers up to $600 billion in additional defense cuts over 10 years beginning in 2013.

"If Congress fails to act over the next year, the Department of Defense will face devastating, automatic, across-the-board cuts that will tear a seam in the nation's defense," Panetta said in a statement.

"The half-trillion in additional cuts demanded by sequester would lead to a hollow force incapable of sustaining the missions it is assigned."

Republicans have vowed to prevent automatic cuts from hitting the military. Republican Representative Buck McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, announced on Monday he would introduce legislation to prevent the military cuts from taking effect.

President Barack Obama, accusing Republicans of scuttling the committee's efforts by refusing to consider tax increases on the wealthy, said he would veto any effort to bypass the automatic trigger.

(Reuters, emphasis added). It is long past the time for huge military spending cuts, because the military is a rogue institution spilling blood and wasting American dollars all over the world (On The Size of Government).

At the same time imperialistic militarism increases the dangers to Americans abroad and at home, by creating more terrorists, rather than diminishing them by giving peace a chance (The Virgin MOMCOM, The Chamber of Corruption).

Not only that, it diminishes our economic health, increases the imbalances in our plutonomy, and perpetuates the recession (Grid and Bear It, War is the Highway 61 of the 1%).

The next episode of this series is here.

The Appendix of Vestigial Textbooks - 3

2011-11-21T07:39:00.006-06:00

From time to time Dredd Blog follows reality by studying, and sometimes noting the changes in textbooks.

For example, in the previous post in this series we noted that textbooks are not always promptly changed then reprinted when new scientific or other discoveries prove those textbooks to contain false information (The Appendix of Vestigial Textbooks - 2).

In general though, we can determine how inquisitive our institutions are by examining the realm of textbooks.

For example, physics has some major debates going (Quantum State Revisited, Quantum Theorem Shakes Physics) that will not make it into textbooks for a while.

The microbiology textbooks are going to go through some major changes (On The New Meaning of Human, Hypothesis: Microbes Generate Toxins of Power) in a short while.

But today, we focus on the Political Science 101 and Civics 101 textbooks.

Will the textbooks from those disciplines be updated to reflect the change in U.S. government, from a constitutional republic with a capitalistic economy, into a plutocracy with a plutonomy (The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy) or that feigned propaganda fills today's news conference of choice (The Chamber of Corruption)?

Will the textbooks eventually contain the stories of brutality against peaceful young demonstrators and peaceful elderly demonstrators alike in the Occupy movements (e.g. Occupy Davis, Occupy Seattle, or Occupy Wall Street)?

The Chamber of Corruption - 5

2011-11-20T12:06:00.003-06:00

In the previous post of this series we focused on a corrupt institution at its face value.

In other posts we have gone down into the inner workings, all the way to the amygdala, then down even deeper, using the microscope of hypothesis and research, all the way down to the single cell level, then finally even further down than that.

Today, however, we are coming back up to the face, to once again gaze into the eyes of corruption, to gaze into the fog of dementia, by observing the whole face of it once again:

To begin with, when "reality" is converted into play pretend by demented officials, through "spin" or propaganda, State Crimes Against Democracy is the driving force those deranged authoritarians call "reality":
''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
(Karl Christian Rove). Musicians, poets, and other artists capture this demented essence sometimes, then put it into words wrapped in music that captures the reality in a memorable way:
Fog's rollin' in off the East River bank
Like a shroud it covers Bleeker Street
Fills the alleys where men sleep
Hides the shepherd from the sheep

Voices leaking from a sad cafe
Smiling faces try to understand
I saw a shadow touch a shadow's hand
On Bleeker Street
(Bleeker Street, Simon & Garfunkel, see photo above). Almost to a person the incoming Republican victors to the House of Representatives deny global climate change and global warming.

(Dumb & Dumber -> Bleak & Bleeker). The Bush II mentor Karl Christian Rove infamously said on the record that reality based thinking is history, and that instead "we" now make it up as we go ("we create our own reality ... we'll act again, creating other new realities ... all of you, will be left to just study what we do").

On the face of it, we have now isolated corruption to the childish, play pretend cognition of politicians who are intoxicated by the toxins of power:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized.

(The Ways of Bernays, emphasis added). In the eyes of the 1% elite of the plutocracy, the 99% are not capable of managing themselves, so they do it ~~for~~ to us, charging a fee of course.

A journalist mapped out some recent dynamics of that methodology in Moyers - The Nation, focusing on the path of The Powell Manifesto.

Meanwhile the Chamber CEO gets 4.7 million for taking such good care of business, because that is the way it is when indoctrination is enlightenment.

Obama heckled but he does not respond with pepper spray or any other form of oppression:

The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy - 2

2011-11-19T06:44:00.018-06:00

In the first post of this series we focused on the Orwellian nature of the plutocracy that has replaced the traditional American government.

We also focused on the plutonomy that replaced the traditional American economy.

Some recent information, based upon the recent census, indicates the scale and nature of the plutonomy, which we will get into, but first lets remember what the Wall Street Journal said about the inherent nature of a plutonomy:

... the U.S. is becoming a Plutonomy – an economy dependent on the spending and investing of the wealthy. And Plutonomies are far less stable than economies built on more evenly distributed income and mass consumption.

(Wall Street Journal, 2010). This statement was made before the national census data had been completely perused, nevertheless, have you noticed that instability in the ~~economy~~ plutonomy is talked about 24/7 lately?

The new census data, recently released, indicate that the plutonomy has set in hard, with no natural, traditional way out:

When the Census Bureau this month released a new measure of poverty, meant to better count disposable income, it began altering the portrait of national need. Perhaps the most startling differences between the old measure and the new involves data the government has not yet published, showing 51 million people with incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line. That number of Americans is 76 percent higher than the official account, published in September. All told, that places 100 million people — one in three Americans — either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.

After a lost decade of flat wages and the worst downturn since the Great Depression, the findings can be thought of as putting numbers to the bleak national mood — quantifying the expressions of unease erupting in protests and political swings. They convey levels of economic stress sharply felt but until now hard to measure.

(NY Times, emphasis added). When these numbers are crunched down then analyzed in terms of the effect on government, give a loud and clear message:

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is this: A highly complex and largely discrete set of laws and exemptions from laws has been put in place by those in the uppermost reaches of the U.S. financial system. It allows them to protect and increase their wealth and significantly affect the U.S. political and legislative processes. They have real power and real wealth. Ordinary citizens in the bottom 99.9% are largely not aware of these systems, do not understand how they work, are unlikely to participate in them, and have little likelihood of entering the top 0.5%, much less the top 0.1%. Moreover, those at the very top have no incentive whatsoever for revealing or changing the rules. I am not optimistic.

(Investment Manager View). Let's face it, if "money talks, and BS walks", and if "s/he who has the gold makes the rules", then we are talking about who rules America:

This document focuses on the "Top 1%" as a whole because that's been the traditional cut-off point for "the top" in academic studies, and because it's easy for us to keep in mind that we are talking about one in a hundred. But it is also important to realize that the lower half of that top 1% has far less than those in the top half; in fact, both wealth and income are super-concentrated in the top 0.1%, which is just one in a thousand.

(Who Rules America). The Occupy Wall Street movement that has spread around the nation is aware of what has happened and they want America back.

The problem is that the 1% feel that they have earned their place, have created a valid plutocracy, and the 99% will simply have to learn to deal with it and live with it.

The next post in this series is here.

NeoConrad & The Boo Dogs - 2

2011-11-18T07:37:00.006-06:00

There are some rumors floating around that a democrat on the Kick The Can Down The Road Committee is going to cave to the neoCons.

We seem to have entered the age of Pontius Pilate politicians, with each party having members who are called members of that party in name only (RINO, DINO).

Two years ago on this date Dredd Blog posted the following:

Senator Conrad, in his always feigned manner, was on Morning Joe today whining about deficits.

His position is phoney because the greatest cause of the deficits is the warmonger ideology in bed with the plundering of the treasury.

Senator Conrad always votes for war and war spending that cause crippling deficits and loss of financial sovereignty, but is dead set against health care reform that will help future budgets by arresting criminal cost increases.

War welfare is bankrupting the part of the country we call the middle class and the poor, while at the same time it is filling the banks of the robber barons and oil barons with unprecedented plunder.

Rid the government of these types of hypocrites.

Grid and Bear It

2011-11-17T05:17:00.042-06:00

Over two years ago we addressed the national power grid in the post A Grid We Can Believe In.

In today's post we will continue the argument that our energy problems in the United States are a matter of choice in "the first instance", and guess what, our energy problems are a matter of choice in "the second instance" as well.

By "the first instance" I mean that we have always had a choice to use or not to use "fossil fuels" or "hydrocarbon fuels" such as oil, natural gas, and coal, which are finite and therefore non-renewable.

And we have always made the wrong choice in the first instance.

By "the second instance" I mean that we have always had a choice to efficiently use those fuels, but we have always made the wrong choice:

Today’s electric power system is shockingly inefficient in terms of both resource use and the market economy.

Approximately two-thirds of the fuel burned to generate electricity is lost in the generation and delivery process. Or, to put it another way, our electric power system operates at approximately 33 percent efficiency.

There has been no improvement in efficiency in the electric power industry since the 1960s.

(Electric Power System, emphasis added, see also). It is almost the same as leaking 67% of the oil coming out of a well, to pollute the ocean with it, like Deepwater Horizon, or like burning off 67% of natural gas into thin air, or like putting 67% of the coal straight into landfills without using it.

In other words we are wrong in the second instance for using only 33% of the energy source in a shameful, utterly wasteful, polluting, national infrastructure for a century, a hundred years.

Then when we discover the gross inefficiency, we are wrong for making no improvements to this shameful, utterly wasteful, polluting, national infrastructure for a half of a century, for fifty years, and that wrong adds criminality to the scenario.

To make those first and second instance choices is simply insane, crazy, incompetent, foolish, and utterly mindless, and it threatens national security.

Especially at a time when jobs are needed desperately, at a time when the national power grid is vulnerable to solar incursions, and at a time when we should have been making better choices for a century now.

Remember when we used to laugh a Japan for their cheap trinkets, then not too long after that they took over the automobile industry with better quality, so lets not laugh at China:

China has the world's fastest supercomputer, the fastest high speed trains and is leading the world in building nuclear plants. One of its more remarkable achievements has been modernizing the grid. The country has developed a 1 million AC volt transmission line that loses only 8 percent of its power on a 1,200 mile journey from the power plant in western China to the cities in the east.

An equivalent U.S. line, with only 760 kilovolts, would lose 80 percent of its power.

(GreenTech Media, Michael Kanellos, emphasis added). We are destroying, then rebuilding, the infrastructure in foreign nations during the ongoing oil wars while we let fellow Americans rot in the inefficiency here at home.

The 1% energy barons are not effected by the price of waste so they do not concern themselves with the suffering of the 99%.

Likewise, the apologist propagandist lackeys of the 1% will say that there is no choice, but those media puppets are deceitful, because there are many other and better choices, but the time for all the deceit to stop is long overdue.

As a result of willful choices, we have entered the criminally culpable era (Is 'Insanity' A Valid Defense To Ecocide?).

It is as if the 99% are beginning to realize that, like other mass murderers, the powers that be will not stop until they are stopped.

The dirty oil barons, dirty natural gas barons, and dirty coal barons will not stop on their own, rather, they must be stopped by their victims.

The Impact of Toxins of Power On Evolution - 2

2011-11-16T09:03:00.012-06:00

In the first post of this series we projected the notion that the 1% plunder barons (who control and who are the government) would plot against the OWS movement of the 99% around the nation.

Homeland Security ideology is a runaway toxic cancer created by the neoCons during the Republican Presidency and congress of the recent Bush II years.

Reports are coming out in various locations, including the video below, indicating that Homeland Security is coordinating and plotting the demise of OWS.

This is the W direction we expected and indicated in The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy.

All Ocean Experience Is Local - 2

2011-11-15T11:10:00.007-06:00

Two years ago on this date Dredd Blog had the following post about ice-melt affecting the oceans:

This is the last of the "all ___ is local" series, at least for awhile.

The subject of the oceans really can illustrate the reality that we are all in this Earth experience together, really can show the fallacy of the "all ___ is local" mantra, because what one nation does environmentally will have an effect on the other nations within the global community.

Scientific papers are constantly being released which in effect say that "it is worse than we thought last time".

One crisp example concerns the Greenland ice sheet:

Satellite observations and a state-of-the art regional atmospheric model have independently confirmed that the Greenland ice sheet is losing mass at an accelerating rate, reports a new study in Science.

...

The Greenland ice sheet contains enough water to cause a global sea level rise of seven metres [about 21 feet].

...

Without [some lucky] moderating effects, post-1996 Greenland mass loss would have been double the amount of mass loss observed now.

(Science Daily, emphasis added). A 21 foot (7 meter) rise in ocean level would certainly have the effect of destroying civilization as we know it.

The great and small sea ports of current civilization would be destroyed, as a billion people who live in the areas that would go underwater migrated, relocated, or perished.

The small nation of Greenland could effect our entire civilization on earth?

Yes, however, the nation of Greenland by itself has no control over global weather, a function of all nations that are warming the global temperature of the earth by their own seemingly local endeavours.

If we add to this phenomenon the fact that the Arctic & Antarctic ice are also experiencing the same thing, factoring in that it is not reversible in any meaningful way, it is an incredibly serious matter.

The next post in this series is here.

The Penn State of Mind

2011-11-14T08:06:00.019-06:00

What is up with Penn State University students rioting because their football coach was fired for covering up the sexual abuse of children?

The rioting students destroyed news vehicles and other property, but there were no arrests of the rioters by campus police or any other police.

Meanwhile peaceful protesters (who are unhappy that the 1% have established a coup and have installed a plutocracy to rule over the 99%) are shot and arrested around the country.

And don't forget the Kent State of mind where students were shot down and killed on their university campus for wanting a war stopped, shot down in cold blood by American storm troopers who were in disagreement with the students' want for peace.

This is The Penn State of Mind, which should now dampen the laughter and skepticism concerning Dredd Blog posts entitled This is Your Brain on Propaganda.

This public behavior by a university and its students, an American institution that is supposed to be the seat of American intelligence, the seat of American learning, yes, the seat of the future of America, comes at a time when most Republican primary candidates are advocating war and torture on the public airwaves in public debates.

These young riotous Penn State students, after attending this university, after watching leaders clamoring to be the warmonger in chief, the torturer in chief, yes, after graduating, are going to sit down at the seats of power, they are going to be given the helm of government sooner or later.

You can bet that over six billion people in the world (who are watching these events take place in a nation that has military bases strewn across the world, who are watching a warlike nation that has been invading and occupying other nations for a decade) are wondering "what ... is this the future of America?"

Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 10

2011-11-13T06:23:00.034-06:00

In the previous excursion I broached the subject of human-microbe symbiosis, a promising yet unexpected new direction in microbial research and science.

I say "unexpected" because it has the impact of redefining what the nature of our physical being is, redefining what it is "to be human" physically, and, as I will point out in this post, mentally as well.

One of the areas of focus for this new research is our "gut microbes", a symbiont tiny world within us, and so I naturally wondered about the notion of "a gut feeling", a subject we touched upon previously:

I have a "gut feeling about this" is a common utterance amongst some people.

Once upon a time we would chuckle or giggle at the question: "Is a 'gut feeling' a signal from your microbes?"

But more and more a "yes" answer to that question is looking neither fully impossible nor fully improbable, according to experts in this field of human-microbe symbiosis ...

(On The New Meaning of Human). As it turns out, some macro-level psychological research was finding its way into a book at about the same time some microbiologists were preparing papers to reveal incredible details about their new discoveries.

Let's break from the subject of our physical gut to notice some comments from one book review of that psychological research:

There have been many good books on human rationality and irrationality, but only one masterpiece. That masterpiece is Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Kahneman, a winner of the Nobel Prize for economics, distils a lifetime of research into an encyclopedic coverage of both the surprising miracles and the equally surprising mistakes of our conscious and unconscious thinking. He achieves an even greater miracle by weaving his insights into an engaging narrative that is compulsively readable from beginning to end.

(Financial Times). Another take on that same book presents a quiz so that you can see your gut feelings at work, even as it ties the subject of our gut to the subject of our mind:

The questions in this quiz are designed to trigger System 1, which relies heavily on intuition to provide us with answers that we perceive to be correct. Whenever you find yourself “going with your gut,” that’s System 1 — often standing in the way of rational thought. It’s no wonder that the word “heuristic” has its root in the word “eureka.” Go ahead and take this quiz, based (loosely) on Kahneman’s four decades of research; follow your gut and see just how wrong you are.

(Vanity Fair, emphasis added). That book review leaves no doubt that cognition is clearly being linked to our physical gut, in terms of types of reasoning.

I should add that Kahneman’s book ties in nicely with the work of Lakoff, whom we have pondered at times, and who notes that probably "98 percent of your reasoning is unconscious - what your brain is doing behind the scenes" (The Toxic Bridge To Everywhere).

We have also noted that symbiont microbes even take part in the construction of our brains as well as the construction of our genetic material (Hypothesis: Microbes Generate Toxins of Power).

And for the science-fiction aficionados, there are some indications that some of the microbes on Earth may have originated elsewhere in the solar system, then were deposited here on Earth by meteorites or comets:

So, we have scientists telling us of not only microbial influence on the functioning of human thinking and human genetics, but that that science is now followed up with the staggering potential that some of that microbial influence on human thinking may come from microbes from another world.

(A Structure RE: The Corruption of Memes - 4). If microbes do some of our thinking for us, it behooves us to ponder the nature of microbes, as we also ponder where we might be taken by them, seeing as how we are evidently partnered with them in a symbiotic relationship.

Now we can continue the discussion about how symbiont microbes dwelling within all of us may do a lot of our "thinking" for us.

Let's do so by contemplating the subject of "global warming", which some scientific skeptics have recently changed their minds about, to now agree that global warming is real and is happening here on the Earth.

The battle lines in the global warming storm are drawn along the contours of the subject in the form of a debate as to whether human civilization is causing that global warming, or whether or not it is a purely natural phenomenon which will happen no matter what human civilization does or does not do.

That "debate" is not dispositive of the problem, because there are a host of other forms of pollution, not directly related to global warming, which are causing concern about ecocide.

International discussions, international interaction, and international cognition as to how to deal with ecocide is increasing.

We looked into one aspect of international thinking in the post Is Insanity A Valid Defense to Ecocide?, where some embryonic international development for trying to deal with the subject is beginning to surface.

The two lines of discourse or belief concerning global warming and ecocide contain stark contrasts.

Those who conclude that certain human behavior is endangering human civilization, is endangering its very existence by ecocide, are in the majority of scientific consensus.

The minority side of that discourse does not believe that humanity can have a fatal impact on human civilization by causing ecocide.

The tweaker for the day, then, is the question: "what kind of microbe would want to destroy the Earth's environment, and what kind of microbe would not?"

Can we can entertain a notion that alien microbes (UMO - unidentified microbe organisms), as well as Earth born microbes, influence (not control) human reasoning, and that the alien microbes are the only ones that might want to destroy the life on Earth?

Further contemplation of that subject is here and here.

The previous post in this series is here.

On the Daze of Assault

2011-11-11T06:45:00.009-06:00

The tort or crime of assault, now prevalent and well established in American law, originally came to our shores with the adoption of the British Common Law in the Constitution, and the courts down through time.

Assault had a long history in the English common law, and a jury trial was available, as it now still is in American law.

Assault is often associated with battery, which means, for example, that one individual illegally hits another individual.

There is an international concept that is akin to assault, which indicates that nations can also commit a form of assault, which is illegal under the United Nations Charter:

The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has told the BBC the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter.

(BBC, 2004). Others have pointed out that a resolution requesting the invasion of Iraq had been withdrawn:

The invasion of a single nation by another nation or group of nations is only legal under the UN Charter if such an invasion has been sanctioned by the vote of the UN Security Council. This did not happen in the case of the recent Iraq invasion, since the United States and Great Britain, led by the U.S. Secretary of State Powell, withdrew on March 17, 2003 their resolution to stage such an invasion from consideration by the UN Security Council when they realized that the majority of its members would vote against it.

(Dissident Voice, 2004). When we were growing up and going to public schools, individuals who committed assault were considered to be bullies.

Nations who follow such practices are seen as rogue nations, and those who fight in such illegal wars are veterans of illegal wars.

But those veterans who are speaking up about it are purifying the news. Somebody has to not be Blind Willie McTell:

Time: Child of the Empire

2011-11-10T06:59:00.041-06:00

Remember the lyric "see the arrow on the door post" and you will understand why this "door" post discusses the video below.

This door opens at the time when another socially intoxicating warmonger holiday is upon us, one of the many instituted, then perpetuated by propaganda in order to expand upon the glory daze of the 1% elite who "do the wars".

Morning Joe on MSNBC (child of parent GE) continues to hawk the warmonger society regardless of the fact that the public continues to reject The W Direction as the wrong direction.

This morning the Time Magazine Peddler came through Morning Joe's parade stream to sell his magazines by hawking the notion of war as a good thing, all the while lamenting the fact that the American people do not like war.

Go figure that one, or instead realize that the American people traditionally think that war is a social disease, while the 1% warmongers have convinced themselves, and their lackey military elite who run The War Colleges, that war is good art.

The war magazine salesman indicates that his opinion of the Constitution is that it constitutes the appreciation of war because of the phrase "the common defense".

That war magazine salesman, being a member in good standing of Blind Willie McTell, fails to realize that "the common defense" is something the 99% (the commoners) determine, not their overlords, the 1% elite.

That is because the wars that the 1% lust for are never wars that defend the common 99% (as pointed out by The Father of the Constitution).

Rather, they are wars that tend to plunder or enslave those common 99%, and to make the world of the 99% a less safe place, because of less and less peace.

The magazine salesman goes on to say that no domestic job is as exalted as a military "job" is, and that military pay has gone up dramatically since 9/11.

Wow, the war magazine salesman guy can recruit too (is that the reason the 1% have seriously damaged the job market that the 99% have to labor in?)

The magazine war salesman guy fails to mention that soldiers get paid at most ten percent of what the war profiteers are paid for their human product, contract mercenaries (not official soldiers; mercenaries from Blackwater / Xe), which is about a million dollars a year for each mercenary.

Morning Joe pipes up to say that these soldiers "ran" cities in Iraq and Afghanistan, as if that means they know how to build nations (but do not learn first how to destroy them).

A recent map shows how they know "to run a city", revealing the incredible number of deaths in a city where they got lots of "run" experience (connect the dots), while a blog that went silent in 2007 tells the story of a family who, based on the soldiers "running a city" experience, had to join millions of others to flee their own nation and become refugees in Syria.

Is the war worshiping magazine salesman implying that we should let the military take over the political arena in the United States because the people feel that the military is the most competent American institution, even as they have for a decade disliked the wars the military fights (when the military invades and occupies sovereign nations)?

You're doin' a heckuva railroad job McTell ...

The Memes of Penrose - 2

2011-11-09T17:28:00.002-06:00

Two years ago on this date we posted about one of the more honest scientists on the planet.

Oh, did I mention that his honesty is controversial?

Goes with the territory, as was pointed out by the Toxins of Power blog a while back.

Anyway, here is the text of that post:

Clearly this blog is perceived by some to be radical when it comes to criticism of scientific viewpoints, whether those viewpoints are establishment viewpoints or rebel scientists' viewpoints.

When a theory does not pass the fundamental smell test this blog is likely to point it out if there is enough time to do a post on that subject.

Today I want to show that this blog has fairly mild criticisms compared to some of the criticisms leveled by world renowned scientists.

Before we begin let's remember that medical science, mental science, political science, and physics are all called science.

First offered for your perusal is the world famous Roger Penrose:

Quantum mechanics is an incredible theory that explains all sorts of things that couldn’t be explained before, starting with the stability of atoms. But when you accept the weirdness of quantum mechanics [in the macro world], you have to give up the idea of space-time as we know it from Einstein. The greatest weirdness here is that it [quantum mechanics] doesn’t make sense. If you follow the rules, you come up with something that just isn’t right.

(Discover). The Ecocosmology Blog calls out for a movement toward a new physics free from the blind faith Penrose talks about.

We criticize the flailing space programs of the nations of earth because they use eons old propellants while they cling to bad habits. But this blog's criticism is mild compared to the castigation some writers offer:

Bluntly, we're not going to get there by rocket ship.
...

The long and the short of what I'm trying to get across is quite simply that, in the absence of technology indistinguishable from magic — magic tech that, furthermore, does things that from today's perspective appear to play fast and loose with the laws of physics — interstellar travel for human beings is near-as-dammit a non-starter.

(Antipope). Meanwhile the rear view mirror debate about whether or not creationism or evolution best explains where we came from rages on as evolutionary scientists send mixed messages while backing down from relying on biological evolution to solve the cosmic problems humanity faces.

We have seemed radical I am sure when we point out what would be considered madness if an individual did what nations do sometimes. See for example "Etiology of Social Dementia" or "100 Years of Psycho Therapy - Take Cover" to mention two.

But some highly respected scientists consider the same subjects, offering criticism that would seem to be as severe as this blog ever is:

A recent paper by the biologist Janis L Dickinson, published in the journal Ecology and Society, proposes that constant news and discussion about global warming makes it difficult for people to repress thoughts of death, and that they might respond to the terrifying prospect of climate breakdown in ways that strengthen their character armour but diminish our chances of survival. There is already experimental evidence suggesting that some people respond to reminders of death by increasing consumption. Dickinson proposes that growing evidence of climate change might boost this tendency, as well as raising antagonism towards scientists and environmentalists. Our message, after all, presents a lethal threat to the central immortality project of Western society: perpetual economic growth, supported by an ideology of entitlement and exceptionalism.

(Monbiot). I have offered the notion that a reason we deny impending death or catastrophe can be a matter of capacity rather than moral turpitude, or a matter of self deceit of the physical crisis kind of the type people go through when they are freezing to death.

But I always call for the better essences within us to arise to the occasion by working together, even to the point of asking science and religion to work together.

All Weather Is Local - 3

2011-11-08T05:51:00.020-06:00

Two years ago, on this date, we began a series of posts in order to point out how people can think of weather in terms of what only they feel, see, and hear, gladly disregarding the world around them.

In other words, our local weather is a major factor in our concept of global warming and global climate change, to the point that in many cases people tend to think that "if it hasn't happened to me, then it really hasn't happened".

As an example, for deniers in the Washington, D.C. area, the snow of a few years ago was called "Snowmageddon or Snowpocalypse", as a slap at global warming scientists who are concerned about what they expect climate change to do to civilization.

In true denier fashion, when the catastrophes of 2011 came around, those same people, who had chortled about global warming because it had snowed, closed their eyes and ears to the reality happening all around them.

Nor did they say much about Snowmaggedon this month when millions went without power, some for a week or more, after wet, heavy snow broke records, trees, cars, buildings, and their giddy smugness, while double-digit numbers of people died.

One major exception to the denier dementia was a scientist who was substantially paid by a conservative denier organization (Koch brothers) to show that the globe was not warming.

His scientific conclusions were that global warming is happening no matter what is happening in any one locale, and he recanted his global warming skepticism, to the chagrin of the die hard deniers, who have a psychological problem of some sort.

Following is the text from the post two years ago:

How many times we have heard the political pundits repeat the statement that "all politics is local"?

A well known saying that has been attributed to Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill.

Some have likewise observed that "all weather is local" in the same sense it was intended by Tip.

The posts "Parochial Climate & Parochial Mentality" and "Coldest July or Warmest July?" point out the fact that people tend to base global climate concepts on the phenomenon of their local weather, the same way they fashion their political views.

Something close to home strikes them as being the way things are everywhere, which gets them in deep trouble on the world scene.

The parochial global climate view of things makes it difficult for governments to fashion a global policy because of a million beliefs that "all weather is local".

For that reason theory is emerging which states that governments will be forced to deal with the climate induced environmental catastrophes headed our way with a policy of triage.

The Rolling Stones and John Lennon straighten up Senator Inhofe after he neoConFuses Jumping Jack Flash with cow farts. Carbon Dioxide and other green house gas is Jumping Jack Flash (which sounds like the experience of serious climate change a la a bad weather outbreak):

I was born in a cross-fire hurricane
And I howled at my ma in the driving rain
...
I was raised by a toothless, bearded hag,
I was schooled with a strap right across my back
...
I was drowned, I was washed up and left for dead
I fell down to my feet and I saw they bled
I frowned at the crumbs of a crust of bread
I was crowned with a spike right thru my head ...

Jumping Jack Flash is a gas, gas, gas ...

The previous post in this series is here.