What We Know

You are here.

It is not a matter of belief.

"Despite the frigid temperatures that kept those in the eastern United States shivering all winter, the period from December 2013 to February 2014 was the 8th warmest on record globally [out of hundreds], the U.S. National Climatic Data Center reported Wednesday. That warmth early in the year could set the stage for another record or near-record warm year, one NCDC scientist said" (You are here).

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Another Spring of Whores of War

On this date in 2009 the poppies for making heroin were standing tall in Afghanistan once again.

Prior to that the Taliban had eradicated the poppy / heroin trade, which must have angered traffickers in the CIA.

AIG was trafficking in many things in Afghanistan and Iraq, including bail-out money.

An official of the Bush II administration was sent to prison for Iraq money laundering.

Republicans were messing with elections and being criminally prosecuted for it.

War was in every Pentagon official's blood then, so look over the posts at Dredd Blog on this date in 2009, then compare them to what is in every Pentagon official's blood today on the first day of spring:

“Russia has increased its [defence] budget but let me remind you that you have an ally [U.S.eh?] that has a [war] budget ten times larger than the next ten nations in the world,” said Mr Biden.

(Economist, cf. The Blaze). He ended with "may God protect our troops" (Whitehouse Press Office).

They are still singing that God on our Side thingy.

Here are those Dredd Blog posts:

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First Day of Spring 2009

Spring means different things to different people.

The winter of poppy cultivation had come to Afghanistan shortly before 2001.

On October 7, 2001, military strikes against Afghanistan were launched by the United States and an international coalition that included Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Germany and France.

The poppy cultivation had been almost completely removed from Afghan culture by the time that the invasion took place.

It did not take long for Afghan poppy cultivation to spring up again. By 2002 the spring of poppy cultivation was returning strong.

By 2006 Afghanistan was leading the world in poppy cultivation once again:

U.N. figures to be released in September are expected to show that Afghanistan's poppy production has risen up to 15 percent since 2006 and that the country now accounts for 95 percent of the world's crop, 3 percentage points more than last year, officials familiar with preliminary statistics told The Associated Press.

(Washington Post). An increase in heroin addiction and drug wars was the inevitable result.

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AIG Liquidity Corporation & Family

We have been doing a series on the AIG family of corporations. The Banque, the international, and the one in the spotlight.

According to SEC filings, AIG Liquidity Corp. was created in 1992 as a Delaware corporation. It was a subsidiary to AIG.

That SEC filing says all capital stock is initially owned by AIG which was shown as a money making business ("AIG and its consolidated subsidiaries"), an average of 3.53 pct. "ratio of earnings to fixed charges" from 1998 to June 30, 2003.

A later SEC Filing in 2004 repeats those figures, and sets forth PricewaterhouseCooper as experts on that issue. Other online sources show the optimism continued through 2006.

After Greenberg was ousted from the company in 2007 and J.J. Cassano was put in the lead of the financial products division, things began to change.

Cassano, among other things, discontinued the hedging that Greenberg had kept in place. That means that a major shield of protection was removed.

Perhaps Cassano really did believe his own smoke that the shield was not needed:

"It is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario within any kind of [rhyme] or reason that would see us losing one dollar in any of those transactions," he told investors.

(Out on the False Front, Daily News link). But it was not too very long before reality burned through the smoke and Moody was downgrading AIG:

New York, September 15, 2008 -- Moody's Investors Service has downgraded the senior unsecured debt rating of American Internation Group, Inc. (NYSE: AIG) to A2 from Aa3 in light of the continuing deterioration in the US housing market and the consequent impact on the group's liquidity and capital position due to its related investment and derivitive exposures. The company's long-term and Prime-1 short-term ratings were placed on review for possible further downgrade.

(Moody's Notice, pdf). This shows the danger inherent in business propaganda. Those who practice it are eventually caught in its web and they can't get out.

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Election Officials' Lack of Integrity

In Clay County, Kentucky, the election officials were evidently corrupted by the toxins within power.

A federal grand jury has indicted them for election crimes. A spokesman for the Kentucky state government stated:

“The allegations as detailed in the U.S. Attorney’s indictments, if found to be true, represent a great injustice to the citizens of Clay County. Our office appreciates the U.S. Attorney taking these allegations seriously and working with us to rid our state of election fraud. Our office cooperated with authorities on this matter, including referring voting irregularities from the 2006 primary elections to law enforcement officials. We hope that the judicial system will work expeditiously on this matter so that the dark cloud of suspicion hanging over these elections will not affect future elections.”

(Les Fugate, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State).

Here is a link to the indictment (PDF) which describes the parties and the charges against them.

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AIG Iraq

From previous articles it is clear that AIG is a company that is not afraid to try new things.

Look at AIG Global Marine @ Iraq for example. Or other AIG endeavors in Iraq.

AIG has advertised that it has extensive capacity to handle many Iraq reconstruction and other financial endeavours.

It is interesting that this information is found on Iraq Coalition Org website:

AIG member companies have the capacity and expertise to handle the insurance needs of contractors and companies doing business in Iraq. There will be a variety of unique coverages needed in this effort. Listed below are some of the core coverages AIG member companies can provide. A more extensive list of products and services can be provided as individually required.

(Iraq Coalition, PDF). It must have worried AIG to know that that area of Iraqi "business endeavours" landed some Bush II officials in prison for a long time:

Bob Stein, the comptroller of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, received the longest sentence of any Bush official (as of yet) - nine years in prison for money laundering, conspiracy and bribery ... some of the money ... was cash in suitcases ...

(BBC, Wikipedia). And they must have been especially concerned to find that their bonus payments of $165 million, which drove the USA crazy, is dwarfed by Iraq reconstruction fraud that would shame even Bernie Madoff:

In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff's notorious Ponzi scheme.

(British Independent). Yes, to be associated with large scale business endeavors in such a fraud rich environment, especially since they have banks in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Switzerland, was surely something they avoided like the plague.

That may not be the case, however, if the investigation of AIG's charges to taxpayers for federal contractors in Iraq, including KBR of Haliburton / Cheney "fame".

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The Freedom Is Back In FOIA

President Obama and AG Holder have made it clear that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is once again for real.

In a memorandum sent to all administrative agencies AG Holder said:

A Presumption of Openness

As President Obama instructed in his January 21 FOIA Memorandum, "The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails." This presumption has two important implications.

First, an agency should not withhold information simply because it may do so legally. I strongly encourage agencies to make discretionary disclosures of information. An agency should not withhold records merely because it can demonstrate, as a technical matter, that the records fall within the scope of a FOIA exemption.

Second, whenever an agency determines that it cannot make full disclosure of a requested record, it must consider whether it can make partial disclosure. Agencies should always be mindful that the FOIA requires them to take reasonable steps to segregate and release nonexempt information. Even if some parts of a record must be withheld, other parts either may not be covered by a statutory exemption, or may be covered only in a technical sense unrelated to the actual impact of disclosure.

(DOJ Website, Holder Memo, PDF). Ladies and gentlemen, start your inquiries.

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It is almost sickening to look back at lies and whoredom done in the name of the good people of America, especially when those sick foreign policies are still being implemented by the follow-up Obama Administration.

Transhumanism: Conundrum, Dichotomy, Science, or Selfishness?

Putting faces on machine mutation

The answer is "all of the above," depending on the context of the moment.

Which is probably a result, to some significant degree, of the media in our culture fostering an unsound basic language: doublespeak.

If we remember that the evolutionary science Anthropology, which tracks the evolution of Homininae, is nothing more than the record of incremental "transhuman change," i.e. human evolution, from a species "close to the last common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and humans" to the present time.

There is some debate as to the exact details of past evolution, but the use of the word "transhuman" as it applies to the future is where the more savage debate raises its ugly head (see e.g. Transhuman, Transhumanism, and Transhumanist Declaration).

In that sense of evolutionary science, the past is more clear than the future, because the baseline for that debate is anthropogenic technology.

Two divergent viewpoints arise, one is that the future is bright with human technological evolution solving all problems (5 Future Forecasts).

Another viewpoint is that the future is bleak because of fossil-fuel-based human technological evolution, and it is only going to get worse (Viva Egypt - 2).

That divergence of opinion concerning transhumanism no doubt is due in some degree or another to the doublespeak in our culture which is the result of doublethink in our cognition (The International Language: Doublespeak.gov, New White Trash: Doublewide Doublespeak, Propaganda Is A "Toxic Asset").

So, let's consider what we know:

The overwhelming evidence of human-caused climate change documents both current impacts with significant costs and extraordinary future risks to society and natural systems. The scientific community has convened conferences, published reports, spoken out at forums and proclaimed, through statements by virtually every national scientific academy and relevant major scientific organization — including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) — that climate change puts the well-being of people of all nations at risk.

(What We Know, AAAS, emphasis added). Our technology requires an economy, which currently requires the habitual and increasing use of finite substances: oil and other fossil fuels.

The addiction to oil, a finite resource, brings up the specter of the problem of peak oil (The Peak Of The Oil Wars, The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 9), which brings up the specter of the collapse of civilization and its technology along with it.

But civilizations, empires, and nations came, prospered, and went into collapse time and again in history:

A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.

Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common."

The research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharri of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of natural and social scientists. The study based on the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics.

It finds that according to the historical record even advanced, complex civilisations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilisation:

"The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent."

By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.

(Exploded Planet Hypothesis - 2, quoting a NASA project). No technology of history has been able to perpetuate nations, cultures, or civilizations.

The ideology of the transhumanist named FM-2030, who wrote the book "Are You a Transhuman?: Monitoring and Stimulating Your Personal Rate of Growth in a Rapidly Changing World," seems to me to be primarily selfish.

We can't focus on ourselves to the exclusion of our nation, culture, and civilization, because if they suffer collapse then we become members of a collapsed civilization with who knows what implications that brings.

In closing, let me say that transhuman or transhumanist are simply words that mean "human change," for better or for worse.

So, like every other "ism," it is no panacea unless it means human change that facilitates a lasting civilization along with the individuals within it.

Which fundamentally requires, in the first instance, cosmic adults rather than cosmic technology (The Evolution of Cosmic Adults - 2).

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Night Blindness, by David Gray

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Old Climate Catastrophe Policy: Triage

The Cultural Amygdala Divides America

This new series replaces the old series which began with  New Climate Catastrophe Policy: Triage and finally ended with New Climate Catastrophe Policy: Triage - 10 some years later.

We are in the season of the release of "new" reports of catastrophic climate change compiled by climate scientists.

They are constrained to use "new" in the title of these reports because the U.S. cultural Amygdala has been conditioned to accept "new," but not to accept "old."

You may have felt or sensed "the condition your condition is in" when you read the word "Old" in the title, and your amygdala then packaged the word "old" by wrapping it with an unflattering rap.

So, you almost clicked on down the Internet Highway 61 leaving Dredd Blog in the dust of swirling electrons.

But since you are still here, let's take a look at the newsy:

The world is at growing risk of “abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes” because of a warming climate, America’s premier scientific society warned on Tuesday.

In a rare intervention into a policy debate, the American Association for the

7 last summers = 7 lowest sea ice extents

Advancement of Science urged Americans to act swiftly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – and lower the risks of leaving a climate catastrophe for future generations.

“As scientists, it is not our role to tell people what they should do,” the AAAS said in a new report, What we know.

“But we consider it our responsibility as professionals to ensure, to the best of our ability, that people understand what we know: human-caused climate change is happening, we face risks of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes, and responding now will lower the risks and costs of taking action.”

(Climate Change Warning, links removed). Another thing that our cultural amygdala does has to do with the deep state fear of death, which urges you to skip any news that causes you to confront that ominous specter of the future:

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.

(Convergence - Fear of Death Syndrome). Thus, the Epigovernment tells the government to tell you to move along, nothing to see here folks, we got this all figured out.

Even though the Epigovernment is the cause of the problem (The Peak of Sanity - 3), and they are solely guilty (Oil-Qaeda: The Indictment) for taking trusting citizens down Highway 61.

Just another message from just another messenger "just sayin'."

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Quicksilver Messenger Service, "Happy Trails"

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A Tale of Coup Cities - 10

The 239 people aboard a Boeing 777-200ER airliner, which together comprise Malayasian Airlines Flight 370, are still missing.

I have been using that situation metaphorically as a means to describe what is happening to "the ship of state" of the United States of America (see e.g. Titanic Mistakes Using The W Compass - 3).

Bear with me, because in today's post I want to apply these dynamics to the concept of a national coup, because in a sense a hijacking is a coup.

In the ongoing Flight 370 case, some of the characteristics of a hijacking now

What vendetta?

seem to exist.

The manual turning-off of the transponders that transmit data (ACARS, etc.) prior to the final voice communication from the flight deck ("good night"), is a signal that the hijackers do not want the world to know what is going on or where they are headed with this.

Likewise, in a coup the press or media is the "transponder" that makes information known about conditions related to the ship of state.

So, aircraft hijackers turn off the transponders that tell those who are watching the aircraft where it is, how high it is, and other facts that will indicate the current condition or status of the flight.

Likewise, ship of state hijackers impair the press or media whose purpose is to report facts to those who are watching the ship of state to ascertain the current condition or status of the nation (In the Fog of The Presstitutes - 3).

"Transparency" is the natural and healthy condition of having all transponders and fact indicators on, so as to inform the appropriate entities who need to know.

Do you care where we are?

Hijackers and coup members don't want any revealing information broadcast about.

They only want to keep an eye on those they are abusing, which is the passengers or the citizens.

They therefore keep a close eye on them, i.e. spy on them to make sure that their captives are being compliant and not dissenting.

Otherwise, the activities of the ongoing hijacking or coup may fail because of the light of day, because those impacted could become aware and find a way to take appropriate action (The Queens of Stalingrad, Mocking America).

So, do we submit to the coup or do we say let's roll?

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Quicksilver Messenger Service, Happy Trails:

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