Why The Military Can't Defend Against The Invasion

POGO at the garbage patch

Background

This post has a different subject matter from a previous post (War - Great Stimulant - Let's Invade us, 2).

It also has a different subject from what some military minds claim to be the military's greatest enemy (Your Health Is Their Number 1 Enemy?!).

It is closer to what some other military minds say is their greatest threat (Has The Navy Fallen For The Greatest Hoax?).

To grasp the concept of the invader being talked about today, one needs to combine POGO 101, with what the Pentagon told the president, (even as the Pentagon continues to be the number one single user of dirty oil,  and played a part in getting us hooked to begin with), all of which ends up being the gist of "we have met the enemy and he is us" (see POGO cartoon @ upper-left).

Thus, the invasion I am talking about today, is the invasion by the sea, or, as it is commonly called, sea level rise (SLR).

False Security, Inc.

Paul Revere, today, would be all about "two if by sea" because that is where the invasion is coming from, and it won't be an invasion by the British.

Senator Inhofe, High Priest of Denialism, is all about "one none if by land God" as the chair of the clueless environmental committee in the senate.

They have been scared silly it would seem:

What can be said when a young naive boy burns his nuts off on an airplane while playing a video game in his head?

Especially when it causes the whole commercial aviation system, together with the infamous homeland security gang (disorganized into a strange meme-complex) to go nuts too?

The Keystone Kops meme-complex comes to mind.

(The Keystone Complex To The Rescue, cf. Bart Simpson ... Security). They are all lathered up over things that, by comparison, are less dangerous than:

• You are 35,079 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist
• You are 33,842 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist
• obesity is 5,882 to 23,528 times more likely to kill you than a terrorist
• you are 5,882 times more likely to die from medical error than terrorism
• you’re 4,706 times more likely to drink yourself to death than die from terrorism
• you are 1,904 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist
• your meds are thousands of times more likely to kill you than Al Qaeda
• you’re 2,059 times more likely to kill yourself than die at the hand of a terrorist
• you’re 452 times more likely to die from risky sexual behavior than terrorism
• you’re 353 times more likely to fall to your death ... than die in a terrorist attack
• you are 271 times more likely to die from a workplace accident than terrorism
• you are 187 times more likely to starve to death in America than be killed by terrorism
• you’re about 22 times more likely to die from a brain-eating zombie parasite than a terrorist
• you were more than 9 times more likely to be killed by a law enforcement officer than by a terrorist
• [being] “crushed to death by ... [TV] or furniture” [as likely as] being killed by terrorist
• Americans are 110 times more likely to die from contaminated food than terrorism
• you are more likely to be killed by a toddler than a terrorist
• you [are] four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist

(Terrorism We Can Believe In? - 3). And yet, like Don Quixote, we spend trillions of dollars worrying about things that are not, by comparison, dangerous to us:

The Washington Post has begun a block buster series following a couple of years of research.

They expose some of MOMCOM's excesses in the field of spying ("intelligence"), showing that American spying, like the military, is out of control:

The investigation's other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

(Washington Post). That only scratches the surface, the story is also that no one knows all about it or how much it costs, hence, it is out of control.

(The Keystone Complex To The Rescue). That story reveals a shocking anti-American development on its own, but the story is all the more egregious in the context of the republicans wanting to cut education, health care, social security, etc., but not those senseless republican behemoths.

(Homeland Security Happy Daze - 2). When those neoCons took it to the hoop and started spying on all Americans, the courts held that such activity by the military NSA is illegal (ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 13).

For a decade these same luddites have been weakening, or trying to weaken, NASA climate scientists who have been warning "two if by sea" as they should.

But they have been weakened and damaged by those who should be strengthening them:

Changes in the area and volume of the two polar ice sheets in Antarctica ... and Greenland are intricately linked to changes in global climate, and could result in sea-level changes that could severely affect the densely populated coastal regions on Earth. Melting of the West Antarctica part of the Antarctic ice sheet alone could cause a sea-level rise of approximately 6 meters (m). The potential sea-level rise after melting of the entire Antarctic ice sheet is estimated to be about 73 m. In spite of its importance, the mass balance (the net volumetric gain or loss) of the Antarctic ice sheet is poorly known; it is not known whether the ice sheet is growing or shrinking. As a result, measurement of changes in the Antarctic ice sheet has been given a very high priority in recommendations by the Polar Research Board of the National Research Council, by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), and by the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs.

(The Agnotology of Sea Level Rise Via Ice Melt). The invader is poorly known because our leaders in government and business are all too often psychopaths.

On the Series Posts page (tab at top of Dredd Blog pages), under the heading "SEA LEVEL RISE" are links to posts about the invader.

Those posts will inform readers of the meaning of this quote on the Dredd Blog quotes page:

"One thing is for sure on the subject of global warming induced climate change: if there was ever a time to err on the safe side, it was long ago." - Dredd

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If I was a terrorist:

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A 1958 video which shows we went into the catastrophe with our "eyes wide open."

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ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 13

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ruled that NSA spying on Americans is illegal (ACLU v. Clapper).

The court chose to rule on the statutory  side of the equation, as the Supreme Court has directed in the past ("don't rule on constitutional issues when you can resolve the case on a statutory basis" - paraphrased).

The court wrote: "The district court held that § 215 of the PATRIOT Act impliedly precludes judicial review; that plaintiffs‐appellants’ statutory claims regarding the scope of § 215 would in any event fail on the merits; and that § 215 does not violate the Fourth or First Amendments to the United States Constitution.  We disagree in part, and hold that § 215 and the statutory scheme to which it relates do not preclude judicial review, and that the bulk telephone metadata program is not authorized by § 215.  We therefore VACATE the judgment of the district court and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. VACATED AND REMANDED." (emphasis added)

I have been covering this case for a long time:

• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 12
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 11
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 10
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 9
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 8
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 7
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 6
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 5
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 4
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 3
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 2
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller

NOTE: the court also ordered that the caption be changed, because the only one still in office now is: James "I told the least biggest lie under oath" Clapper.

The case is now ACLU v  CLAPPER, ROGERS, CARTER, LYNCH, and COMEY.

UPDATE: The usually right-wing House of Representatives is on the same page as the court on this issue (House rejects NSA collection of phone records with vote to reform spy agency).

The previous post in this series is here.

Big Brother & The Two Edged Sword - 2

I got your number

Regular readers know that often times Dredd Blog is on the case before the case develops.

Today we review an NSA spying case that caught one of the queens of Stalingrad flat footed (The Queens of Stalingrad).

Why do they not understand that letting government evolve and morph to the right always comes back to bite?

And more often than not that bite takes the head off first, then nibbles on the left overs (A Tale of Coup Cities - 4, Deja Voodoo, ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1).

Anyway, here is some Dredd Blog information from this date in 2009 talking abut NSA spying:

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The head of the House Intelligence Committee who allowed Americans to be spied on got caught in the web she helped weave:

Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.

Harman was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.

In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.

Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”

(CQ Politics, link below). A corrupt banana republic regime never passes up on an opportunity to blackmail to get their way.

That practice comes directly from the J. Edgar Hoover "why we wire tap" textbook. A "good wire tap" is one that can be used for political hay. So the regime took it up a notch:

And that, contrary to reports that the Harman investigation was dropped for “lack of evidence,” it was Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bush’s top counsel and then attorney general, who intervened to stop the Harman probe.

Why? Because, according to three top former national security officials, Gonzales wanted Harman to be able to help defend the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about break in The New York Times and engulf the White House.

(CQ Politics). It is clear why the Bush II regime began to spy on Americans well before 9/11 came along, and why they were doing government by blackmail to the very end.

Is it fair to say we can extrapolate and figure out what Cheney had in his large file cabinet, which he took with him when he left Dodge, and therefore, why the Obama Administration is not at liberty to prosecute the Bush II regime even for blatant torture crimes?

John Byrne at Raw Story has some quotes from a NYT editor who denies some of the specifics of the CQ Politics article.

The fundamental reality is that spying on Americans for political blackmail was part and parcel of FBI tactics for decades during J. Edgar Hoover. That was in the days of low technology.

The admitted NSA spying on Americans with very, very, high powered technology these days supports the premise that political blackmail may be at the heart of Obama's not being at liberty to prosecute the most horrendous torture crimes.

I think Obama is squeaky clean, so who is Obama protecting other than the torture freaks?

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The previous post is here.

Security: Familyland, Fatherland, or Homeland? - 5

Recent FOIA lawsuits in the United States have revealed disturbing trends, habits, and policies as regards spying on Americans.

The Snowden revelations (ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12; The Queens of Stalingrad, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) expand upon that.

Those revelations also paint a Big Brother picture of the mind of certain factions within the "American Democracy."

The new reports are more of the same type of sicko, fascist, Orwellian, dictatorial, Big Brother psychopathology:

Federal agencies tried to use vehicle license-plate readers to track the travel patterns of Americans on a much wider scale than previously thought, with new documents showing the technology was proposed for use to monitor public meetings.

The American Civil Liberties Union released more documents this week revealing for the first time the potential scale of a massive database containing the data of millions of drivers, logged from automatic license plate readers around the US.
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“The broad thrust of the DEA is to spread its program broadly and catch data and travel patterns on a massive scale,” Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with ACLU, told the Guardian. “This could be a really amazing level of surveillance that we’ve not seen before in this country.”
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Clark Neily, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a Virginia-based libertarian law firm, said Americans would be disturbed to know that law enforcement’s quest for revenue impelled mass surveillance.

“It’s deeply concerning and creepy,” Neily said. “We’re Americans. We drive a lot.”

The ACLU followed up Monday’s tranche of DEA documents, which were obtained under Freedom of Information Act (Foia) requests, with the further documents revealing that federal agents planned to use automatic license plate readers to monitor attendees at gun shows in April 2009. The group said it did not know whether the car surveillance was still going on, or how wide it ever spread.
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The perception that an average citizen’s car could be monitored upon entering or leaving a gun show – or any other lawful assembly – infringed upon civil rights, said Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

“It would be chilling,” Olson said. “You could think twice about exercising that right.”
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The license-plate readers have fed hundreds of millions of records about motorists into a national database, the first round of ACLU documents show. If license plate readers, also known as LPRs, continued to proliferate without restriction, and the DEA held ldata for extended periods, the agency would soon possess a detailed and invasive depiction of people’s lives, the ACLU has warned.

(U.S. Government Plan to Track Drivers). When is accountability going to be put back in place?

Help the ACLU "sue the bastids!"

The previous post in this series is here.

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"I really think that white people are from another planet ..."

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More proof from Chris Hedges ...

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Ministry of Truth

"Are you ready for some truth?"

Unlike the current species of The Ministry of Truth (MOT), which covers up its real nature with a fabricated public patina, the original MOT was not so inclined.

On the outside wall of the original MOT, described in the book 1984, are three of the slogans of the Tea of Truth Party (TOTP): "WAR IS PEACE," "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY," "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."

When the Authoritarian Type B members of the Tea of Truth Party get together for tea, they talk about supporting Authoritarian Type A members absolutely, unequivocally, and resolutely.

It is a matter of honor for TOTP, who love the "good side" of the Type A member, but who fear the "bad side" of the Type A member, thus, their favorite brain food is ignorance, which they call "the strength of the party" (Agnotology: The Surge).

You may be surprised to learn that the authoritarian TOTP is a two-headed entity:

You never would have heard of my research if [John Dean] had not recently plowed through my studies, trying to understand, first, various people he knew in the Nixon White House, and then some leading figures of the Republican

Party of 2004. [p. 4]
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Authoritarianism is something authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders cook up between themselves. It happens when the followers submit too much to the leaders, trust them too much, and give them too much leeway to do whatever they want -- which often is something undemocratic, tyrannical and brutal. In my day, authoritarian fascist and authoritarian communist dictatorships posed the biggest threats to democracies, and eventually lost to them in wars both hot and cold. But authoritarianism itself has not disappeared, and I'm going to present the case in this book that the greatest threat to American democracy today arises from a militant authoritarianism that has become a cancer upon the nation. [p. 8]

(The Authoritarians, by professor Bob Altemeyer, emphasis added). It may help to think of type B as enablers, and type A as bullies.

The interactions between bullies and enablers has led to an evolution from left to right, which includes torture, as the torture report being released today (information that we already knew) confirms.

President Ronald Reagan would be considered a RINO by today's evolved republicans, and would be considered left of center by the evolved democrats (President Reagan Puts Cheney In Jail).

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Some art of 9/11 ...

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Afraid To Be An American

The America of yesteryear is gone because too many people are afraid to be Americans any more.

The old America that has practically become extinct was anti-torture.

As a matter of fact, President Ronald Reagan would have put Dick Cheney in prison for his torture programs and his advocacy of torture:

Ronald Reagan was in office as U.S. President from 1981 - 1989.

In 1983 his DOJ prosecuted a republican Texas Sheriff for the crime of waterboarding: In 1983, Texas Sheriff James Parker was charged, along with three of his deputies, for handcuffing prisoners to chairs, placing towels over their faces, and pouring water on the cloth until they gave what the officers considered to be confessions. The sheriff and his deputies were all convicted and sentenced to four years in prison. [NPR Link]

(Pres. Reagan Puts Cheney In Jail). Too many Americans, including President Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder, are afraid to be Americans when it comes to prosecuting torture mongers in high places.

A relative handful of a hundred or so have not been afraid to be Americans, and have explained that to the United Nations:

Since the United States last reported to the Committee Against Torture in 2006, even more evidence has emerged confirming that civilian and military officials at the highest level created, designed, authorized, and implemented a sophisticated, international criminal program of torture.

In August 2014, President Barack Obama conceded that the United States tortured people as part of its so-called “War on Terror,” yet the United States continues to shield senior officials from liability for these crimes, in violation of its obligations under the Convention Against Torture.

(Torture by U.S. reviewed by UN, PDF). The new mantra, one rejected at the Nuremberg Trials, "I was following orders" is now asserted by those who are afraid to be Americans (ibid, cf. I Was Following Orders).

This neoCon America is not favored worldwide so the good reputation that the true America had is now gone (Neocons Poll Downward Worldwide).

Fear is the primary emotional construct of neoCon America, witnessed by the recent "Obola" scare (Obola: Art Thou Dying Properly?).

It is as if some neoCon government officials, drunk on political toxins, formed a paranoia-crazed mob (via the MSM) to take the civil rights away from a brave American (one not afraid to be an American) who went to fight a real danger at its source (Judge in Maine Eases Restrictions on Nurse).

Thus, the neoCon America founded on paranoia is a danger to all life forms, so stand up for the America which used to be good for the world (The Real Dangers With Microbes & Viruses).

In conclusion, the nation is evolving from "a kinder gentler nation" into a worldwide, nation-murdering military driven bully (American Feudalism - 6).

Resist the neoCons by not being afraid to be an American.

Mocking America - 4

What is your mission?

What does the passing of Rick Piltz who died recently (Rick Piltz Dies at 71) have to do with the co-founder of the Weather Channel?

John Coleman is  co-founder (pushed out) of the Weather Channel.

He appeared on Fox News recently to declare that global warming induced climate change is a hoax (Co-founder of The Weather Channel Is In Denial), which was quickly confirmed by Dr. Sarah Palin (Heartland Institute is their mentor now; The Exceptional American Denial), all of which was quickly debunked by The Weather Channel.

Dr. Palin is a well known scientific historian who from her front porch, while observing "Russia", discovered that Eugenics is being reborn by a conspiracy of 98% of the world's climate scientists (Agnotology: The Surge, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).

But, let's continue with this:

Piltz revealed in 2005 that the Bush administration was revising supposedly scientific reports to cast doubt on the existence of human-caused climate change. He leaked copies of the edited documents to The New York Times, after resigning from his job as a senior associate for the U.S. government’s Global Change Research Office.

Piltz’s move not only drew attention to Bush’s intentional suppression of scientific fact, but also to the administration’s dubious hiring practices. Less than a week after the story was published, the official who made the edits, Philip A. Cooney, announced he would resign as chief of staff for the Council on Environmental Quality in the White House to return to his former role as a lobbyist for the petroleum industry [a.k.a. Oil-Qaeda].

(Bush Wars on Climate Truth, emphasis added). The mission of the right wing Oil-Qaeda group (Oil-Qaeda: The Indictment, 2, 3) is to continue global warming induced climate change until it destroys civilization (MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact, 2, 3, 4, 5).

They are ensconced in a trance of denial or they could not promote this unthinkable act.

A heinous criminal act not seen in any of the worst mass murder/suicide pacts of history (Comparing a Group-Mind Trance to a Cultural Amygdala).

These psychopaths of the epigovernment (Epigovernment: The New Model, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) love to mock America by, among other things, denying the work of the American scientific community.

As has been shown in this series, one of the ways they do it through epigovernment infiltration of the media:

I sense a neoCon surge in the propagandasphere, remembering that Mittster Romney purchased The Weather Channel and Weather Underground:

On January 3, 2008, it was reported that The Weather Channel and its assets were put up for sale by Landmark Communications. On July 6, 2008, NBC Universal, Bain Capital and Blackstone Group agreed to purchase The Weather Channel from Landmark.
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On July 2, 2012, The Weather Channel announced that it would acquire Weather Underground, which will become operated under its subsidiary The Weather Channel Companies, LLC.

(Wikipedia, The Weather Channel, Weather Underground, emphasis added). The neoCons are long term propagandists, and are making a power play to try to control information about the Global Climate System.

(On The Origin of Tornadoes). This is the activity of the real matrix we should be concerned with, not the science fiction one (The Matriarch of the Matrix, 2, 3).

The previous post in this series is here.

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A 1958 video which shows we went into the catastrophe with our "eyes wide open."

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ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 12

This case involves the military NSA spying on Americans without any suspicion, let alone reasonable suspicion of wrong doing.

It is about a nation with a government that is consistently losing its way (Warrantless Searches - Unreasonable).

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog has followed the case all along the way,.

We have blogged about similar cases, including the one in the D.C. Circuit, so here are links to the previous posts in this series, spanning from the most recent to the original that was posted soon after the case was filed:

• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 11
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 10
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 9
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 8
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 7
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 6
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 5
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 4
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 3
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 2
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller

This case went to oral argument in the Federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on 9/2/14 (see video below).

The unusual took place at that hearing, in the sense that the court allowed the oral argument to be videoed for the benefit to public knowledge.

The appellate judges were quite compatible with a video version, and let the argument and discussion continue for far longer than courts usually do.

Don't mistake the three appellate judges' interruptions and questions as hostile, it is just that they want to understand the issues clearly, the issues presented in the briefs and pleadings.

This is a very important case for civil liberties in a growing police state.

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

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Agnotology: The Surge - 12

How do we analyse judgment?

Some of the cases in my Agnotology 101 textbook are scenarios that tend to support the hypothesis of long-time geneticist Dr. E.M. McCarthy.

His hypothesis concerns the hybrid lineage originating as a gleam in the eye of LUCA I and LUCA II (not his name for them).

Dr. McCarthy says that we humans evolved from a tryst between the two (The Germ Theory - of Government - 8).

Whether that hypothesis will develop into a theory or not is in question, as his book was put on hold due to "publisher problems" when one of the peer reviewers became offended by his subject matter.

There is no doubt that Dr. McCarthy is an expert in the field of genetics relating to hybrids (ibid), however, even genetic hybrid history is like a movie with both good scenes and bad scenes (the "good" or the "bad" depending on the opinions of the audience watching the movie).

In some states, within the U.S., science and law are not always in sync or even in agreement.

That is a result, in today's case (see short video below), of political judgment or the lack thereof.

Again, depending on who is watching the movie.

When the development of a law, which is heavily involved with matters of science, is left to the political elite without meaningful resort to the scientific community, very strange results can evolve (again, see the video below about a law making it illegal for a woman to be impregnated with an animal embryo and vice versa).

Your future and mine are dependent upon those who make laws and decisions that impact the future.

Therefore, their view of the future is paramount, because it can affect generations of people (The Universal Smedley - 2, Viva Egypt - 2).

The book depicted at the top of today's post makes an attempt to discern the situation by testing opinions with some scientific rigor:

“Expert Political Judgment” is not a work of media criticism. Tetlock is a psychologist—he teaches at Berkeley—and his conclusions are based on a long-term study that he began twenty years ago. He picked two hundred and eighty-four people who made their living “commenting or offering advice on political and economic trends,” and he started asking them to assess the probability that various things would or would not come to pass, both in the areas of the world in which they specialized and in areas about which they were not expert. Would there be a nonviolent end to apartheid in South Africa? Would Gorbachev be ousted in a coup? Would the United States go to war in the Persian Gulf? Would Canada disintegrate? (Many experts believed that it would, on the ground that Quebec would succeed in seceding.) And so on. By the end of the study, in 2003, the experts had made 82,361 forecasts. Tetlock also asked questions designed to determine how they reached their judgments, how they reacted when their predictions proved to be wrong, how they evaluated new information that did not support their views, and how they assessed the probability that rival theories and predictions were accurate.

Tetlock got a statistical handle on his task by putting most of the forecasting questions into a “three possible futures” form. The respondents were asked to rate the probability of three alternative outcomes: the persistence of the status quo, more of something (political freedom, economic growth), or less of something (repression, recession). And he measured his experts on two dimensions: how good they were at guessing probabilities (did all the things they said had an x per cent chance of happening happen x per cent of the time?), and how accurate they were at predicting specific outcomes. The results were unimpressive. On the first scale, the experts performed worse than they would have if they had simply assigned an equal probability to all three outcomes—if they had given each possible future a thirty-three-per-cent chance of occurring. Human beings who spend their lives studying the state of the world, in other words, are poorer forecasters than dart-throwing monkeys, who would have distributed their picks evenly over the three choices.

(New Yorker, "Everybody’s An Expert"). Politicians more and more tend to view their opinions as being above or better than those of the public.

That even though the growing tendency of politicians in our culture is to develop "knowledge" in the manner of belief and trust (The Pillars of Knowledge: Faith and Trust?).

When this type of "personality" develops within a culture, the concept of "knowledge" inevitably suffers:

Here, we investigate one particular aspect of social cognition, namely, what we will call ‘‘political ideology,’’ by which we mean people’s self-placement on a dimension on which persons can be arrayed from left to right. Of course, every subfield in social science seems to have its own use of the word ‘‘ideology’’ (Eagleton, 1991); in following the conventional usage of public opinion research and political science we do not mean to deny the usefulness of other approaches (for some recent examples, see Larson, 2009; Prasad et al., 2009). Rather, we focus on that understanding that is in some ways the ‘‘ur-form’’ of social cognition—our sense of how we stand by others in an implicit social formation whose meaning is totally relational. At the same time, these self-conceptions seem to be of the greatest importance for the development of the polity and of civil society itself. Our question is, when citizens develop such a ‘‘political ideology,’’ what does this mean, and what do they do with it?

(Political Position and Social Knowledge, page 2). In the U.S. the scientific knowledge of more and more young and older people alike is waning.

We fall lower and lower in scientific ability, according to academic tests, compared to other industrial nations.

This is one of the ways that past societies have committed suicide (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch, 2, 3), so it is a matter of concern.

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

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Church & State Hybrid Law:

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Agnotology: The Surge - 11

"War on whites" research staff of Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL)

In this series we have noticed and noted several things while taking a look at Agnotology, the study of ignorance generators in American culture.

Ignorance generators within U.S. culture have been around for a century or so.

Their potency and realm of influence sharply increased as communication technology developed, improved, and then spread far and wide via radio, television, and the Internet.

Governments at times grabbed control of media, and ignorance via propaganda prospered and spread along with science, industry, and education (Mocking America, The Deceit Business).

In today's post let's take another look at how brazen the Ignorati have become.

Once ignorance generators establish control over the thinking of a meme complex, one suspects everything that those in that meme complex say is a quote from The Onion:

Representative Mo Brooks [R-AL] , appearing on Laura Ingraham’s radio program, diagnoses the Republican Party’s so-called difficulty attracting nonwhite voters. “This is a part of the war on whites that’s being launched by

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) deep in thought.

the Democratic Party,” explains Brooks, “and the way in which they’re launching this war is by claiming that whites hate everybody else.”

White racial victimization is a [mythical] concept as old as racism itself. White reactionaries in the 19th century imagined that abolishing slavery would turn white people themselves into slaves, and the concept of white subjugation was transferred into such things as black suffrage, civil rights, and so on. The war on whites has raged continuously in the right-wing mind for more than two centuries.
...
Likewise, the operative mechanism of the War on Whites is in dire need of refinement. Brooks defines it as “claiming that whites hate everybody else."

(NY Magazine, by Jonathan Chait, emphasis added). Ignorance generators have been around for a long time.

The wrong-wingers like to hold on to ancient myths and become zealots of obvious nonsense.

Blacks in America did not go to Africa to kidnap then bring whites to this land to become slaves, nor did Blacks maintain Jim Crow laws and discrimination for decades after the Civil War (Blind Willie McTell News).

The "party of ignorance" came to the mind of Gov. Jindal when he heard idiotic statement

A book about ignorance

after idiotic statement from GOP candidates:

“It is no secret we had a number of Republicans damage our brand this year with offensive, bizarre comments — enough of that,” Jindal said. “It’s not going to be the last time anyone says something stupid within our party, but it can’t be tolerated within our party. We’ve also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism. We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters.”

(Politico, quoting Gov. Jindal, R-LA). Agnotologists know that volumes of research has been done on racism --research which shows that symbolic racism is deeply embedded in the U.S. psyche and is perpetuated by racial ignorance now being promoted by Koch Brothers types of ignorance generating organizations (Symbolic Racism: A Look At The Science - 3, Hypothesis: The Cultural Amygdala, 2, 3, 4).

But as long as the Southern Strategy (see video below) is used to maintain darkness in the cultural amygdala of the Ignorati, Agnotology will continue to bear fruits like Mo Brooks, Curly Brooks, and Larry Brooks (shown in photos above).

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

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When Indoctrination Is Enlightenment - 5

Obama I

When a person suffers a head injury that causes a swelling of the brain, sometimes doctors will induce a coma, so as to reduce the pressure and therefore minimize damage to the brain.

A trance is said to be half conscious ("a half-conscious state, seemingly between sleeping and waking, in which ability to function voluntarily may be suspended"), while a medical dictionary mixes a coma trance with a lethargic hypnosis, sometimes called a trance coma, all of which are designed to modify consciousness in one degree or another.

In this series we are considering the concept of indoctrination in the same light as the concept of propaganda.

Both can be used as instrumentalities for doing the same thing, altering your consciousness, but not necessarily for any good medical reason (see This Is Your Brain On Propaganda, 2, 3, 4, 5).

In recent years the usage of both propaganda and indoctrination have been most intense when it comes to global warming induced climate change.

Whether the particular indoctrination / propaganda is used to cover up the century old oil wars (The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 10), or to cover up the mutually assured human extinction that the continued use of fossil fuels will bring (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch), the effort by government to deceive the population is furious (MOMCOM: The Private Parts, 2, 3, 4, 5, The Deceit Business - 3).

One of the examples of the trance-coma-hypnosis dynamic involves a notion of replacing coal and oil with "natural" gas:

The fossil fuel industry and their allies have spent the past 20 years attacking environmentalists and climate scientists as extremists, alarmists, and hysterics. Their publicists have portrayed them as hair-shirt wearing, socialist watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) who relish suffering, kill jobs, and want everyone to freeze in the dark. Extremists do exist in the environmental movement as everywhere else, but they represent a tiny faction of the community of people concerned about climate change, and they are virtually nonexistent in the scientific community. (Put it this way: if there is a hair-shirt wearing climate scientist, I have not met her.)

While the accusations may be false, that doesn’t mean they don’t affect our thinking. Too often, environmentalists find ourselves trying to prove that we are not what they say we are: not irredeemable anti-business job-killers. We bend over backwards to seek out acceptable compromises and work with business leaders, even to the point of finding a fossil fuel that we can love (or at least like).

And that leads to the wishful thinking. We want to find solutions, or at least meaningful steps in the right direction, that command widespread support. We want gas to be good. (I know I did.)
...
Insanity is sometimes defined as doing the same thing but expecting a different result. Psychologists define perseveration as repetitive behavior that interferes with learning. Whatever we call it, that seems to be what is happening. And whatever it is, it doesn’t make sense. Natural gas is not the bridge to clean energy; it’s the road to more climate change.

(Tom Dispatch, Dr. Naomi Oreskes, emphasis added). When those who have the power are the most ignorant, human extinction is "on the table" at all times:

Natural gas is falsely promoted by the Obama Administration and energy corporations as a “bridge fuel” that will allow American society to continue to use fossil energy over the coming decades while emitting fewer greenhouse gases than from using other fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

On this basis, President Obama is providing total support to a massive expansion of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for natural gas within the U.S. He seeks sufficient quantities to last for many decades, allowing the U.S. to export liquefied natural gas and oil throughout the world.
...

“We have to control methane immediately, and natural gas is the largest methane pollution source in the United States,” said Howarth, who explains that Earth may reach the point of no return if average global temperatures rise by 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius in future decades. “If we hit a climate-system tipping point because of methane, our carbon dioxide problem is immaterial. We have to get a handle on methane, or
increasingly risk global catastrophe.”….

“While emissions of carbon dioxide are less from natural gas than from coal and oil, methane emissions are far greater. Methane is such a potent greenhouse gas that these emissions make natural gas a dangerous fuel from the standpoint of global warming over the next several decades. Society should wean ourselves from all fossil fuels and not rely on the myth that natural gas is an acceptable bridge fuel to a sustainable future.”

...

(Global Research, emphasis added). It is time that we lose the indoctrination about al-Qaeda terrorists, which is a propaganda storm, to focus on the real threat to our security and well being: Oil-Qaeda.

The previous post in this series is here.

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Crazy on You  by Heart

We may still have time
We might still get by
Every time I think about it I want to cry
With the bombs and the devils
And the kids keep coming
Nowhere to breathe easy no time to be young

But I tell myself that I'm doing alright
There's nothing left to do tonight
but go crazy on you
crazy on you
let me go crazy, crazy on you

My love is the evening breeze touching your skin
The gentle sweet singing of leaves in the wind
The whisper that calls, after you in the night
And kisses your ear in the early light ... yeah
oooohhhh

And you don't need to wonder, you're doing fine
And my love, the pleasure's mine
go crazy on you
crazy on you
Let me go crazy, crazy on you

Wild man's world is crying in pain
What you gonna do when everybody's insane
So afraid of fortune, so afraid of you
What you gonna do?
awwww oooohhhhh

Crazy
crazy on you,  let me go crazy, crazy on you

I was willow last night in my dream
I bent down over a clear running stream
I sang you the song that i heard up above
And you kept me alive with your sweet flowing love
ewwwwhhh
let me go crazy, crazy on you
Crazy, crazy on you,
Let me go crazy, crazy on you
oooohhhhh

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Upcoming UN Lawsuit: The Monkey Trial II

New Groundhog Day Tank ("The Dervish 101")

As was pointed out yesterday, Russia has won the latest oil war within the territory of the old Ottoman Empire (The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 10).

One of the solutions proposed on Morning Joke today was a trial in the United Nations (UN).

Madeleine "Not So" Albright (Maddie) said we should have a Monkey Shoots Down An Airplane Trial in the UN, yes, another super trial about whodoneit dammit in the Ukraine, a trial that would follow the big win just like the First Monkey Trial that Colin "The Honest" Powell presented there.

The one about weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq that preznit Blush eventually found in his office.

"I brought Clapper's littlest lie this time"

Maddie was not the only one who is advocating the tactic of "sue the bastids" in the courts of public propaganda.

No, not by a long shot:

Ukraine’s transitional government was quick to respond to its Crimean losses. On April 3, Minister of Justice Pavel Petrenko announced that a review of Ukraine’s “losses in Crimea, including Ministry of Energy property, the Black Sea shelf and Chornomornaftohaz, and Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport property (railway, real estate, ships and planes” had been completed with an eye toward launching a case at the Council of Europe to recover compensation for damages."

(Russia Claims Ukraine’s Black Sea Oil And Gas Bounty). While Americans who listen to Rupert Morlock Newz might not remember the Weapons of Monkey Deception trial, most Europeans will.

Germany and Russia, jurors in the Colinoscopy (First Preznit Blush UN Trial), were not convinced then; neither are they convinced now (Is The McTell News Malaise-ian Frenzy Related to Guilt?).

Neither was the UN Security Council convinced by the Colinoscopy:

On September 16, 2004 Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, speaking on the invasion, said, "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal."

(United Nations Security Council and the Iraq War, emphasis added). That was the result of the case based on the evidence which the Agency provided.

So, the Agency & James "The Perjurer" Clapper (ACLU v Clapper) will now be witnesses at the UN trial, after perjuring themselves and the government before their own countrymen and Congress without ever being held accountable?

Remember that they were spying on Americans everywhere, but lied and said they were not.

The perjurer and what else will be the witnesses for the Obama Administration in the trial - McTell News perhaps?

The Germans and Russians also want a trial after an independent body (like the UN Inspectors of yesteryear) conducts an independent investigation (Merkel, Putin Agree on International Probe of MH17 Crash).

Thus, the current media propaganda frenzy is so Groundhog Day Deja Vu all over again.

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"Tell me Lies", by Fleetwood Mac:

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On The Origin of Security - 5

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog has, from its beginning (The Deceit Business), discussed the hidden reasons for why the rogues within what we call "government" constantly talk about "security."

So, I am called a "conspiracy theorist" (On The Origin of "Conspiracy Theory" - 3) until what I post comes to pass years later, at which time I am called "subversive" by the fascist subversives of the coup (see e.g. A Tale of Coup Cities - 11).

The social disease involving Authoritarian Type B cognition, a.k.a. Stockholm Syndrome, has led these rogue servants of the Epigovernment to think that all the world is a paradise of trusting souls who believe their every word ---which is a foreign policy ignorance that has caused some worse-than-bad foreign policy practices.

Recently some of that bad policy has blown up in the face of the ignorati who are hiding in those dark holes of the federal bureaucracy (The Queens of Stalingrad - 4).

For example:

It's been a common scene at recent encounters between American and German officials. But behind the perfect façade, relations are cracking. Even as workers were decorating Tempelhof Field with pennants and small flags last Friday, a report was making the rounds in the German capital that could very well drag relations between Washington and Berlin to a new low.

During questioning, an employee of Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), told German authorities he had sold secret documents to the Americans. Given that special encryption technology was found during a raid of his apartment, it seems highly unlikely that selling the classified information was his idea.

This Wednesday, the spying scandal took on a new dimension when investigators with the Federal Criminal Police Office raided the home and offices of a Defense Ministry employee whom officials also suspect may have spied for the Americans.

The developments are only the latest tussle in a relationship between Germany and the United States that has suffered in recent years. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has already abandoned hope that the United States will come to its senses and rein in its intelligence agencies. During Merkel's last visit to Washington, US President Barack Obama wasn't even willing to commit to a no-spy agreement guaranteeing Germany a modicum of security.

Merkel Fears Growing Anti-American Sentiment

The chancellor did, however, expect the Americans to at least refrain from involving her in any further embarrassing incidents -- she has no interest in seeing a continued rise in anti-US sentiment in Germany, a development that would ultimately offer her no choice but to distance herself from the Americans once again. But that point may have already been reached.

As of the end of last week, the BND had not yet fully investigated the spy scandal. But if the story turns out to be true, it will mean that the Americans paid a mole to copy documents for them, some of which were even intended for the German parliamentary committee set up to investigate the NSA's activities in Germany. It would represent a new level of audacity.

The initial reports alone were enough to enrage key members of Germany's coalition government composed of Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) -- so much so that some now feel US intelligence agencies are capable of anything.

(Der Spiegel, "Germany's Choice: Will It Be America or Russia?"). Such contemplation has not existed for some six decades until now.

The American people as well as the German people found out at the same time, because of Edward Snowden's revelations to the press, that they (the people) were the targets of the military NSA (ACLU vs. Clapper).

The reason for this subterfuge, traitorous cognition, and back stabbing obscenity has a transparent purpose even though its machinations have not been transparent:

William Binney is one of the highest-level whistleblowers to ever emerge from the NSA. He was a leading code-breaker against the Soviet Union during the Cold War but resigned soon after September 11, disgusted by Washington’s move towards mass surveillance.

On 5 July he spoke at a conference in London organised by the Centre for Investigative Journalism and revealed the extent of the surveillance programs unleashed by the Bush and Obama administrations.

“At least 80% of fibre-optic cables globally go via the US”, Binney said. “This is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in. At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores.”

The NSA will soon be able to collect 966 exabytes a year, the total of internet traffic annually. Former Google head Eric Schmidt once argued that the entire amount of knowledge from the beginning of humankind until 2003 amount to only five exabytes.

Binney, who featured in a 2012 short film by Oscar-nominated US film-maker Laura Poitras, described a future where surveillance is ubiquitous and government intrusion unlimited.

“The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control”, Binney said ...

(Guardian, "... goal of the [military] NSA ...", emphasis added). The morph of the U.S.eh? into a new authoritarian personality is out now.

The many Dredd Blog series, such as Will The Military Become The Police (2, 3, 4), does not seem so "radical and conspiracy theory-ish" now does it cowboys and cowgirls?

The government's idea of security is so depraved they can't determine "security" from a "human crisis" at times:

Plaintiffs are eight immigrant children, ranging in age from ten to seventeen. The Government has begun proceedings to deport each of them; they will soon be called to appear before an Immigration Judge. In court, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) will be represented by a trained lawyer who will argue for the child’s deportation. But no lawyer will stand with the child. Each will be required to respond to the charges against him or her, and, in theory, will be afforded an opportunity to make legal arguments and present evidence on his or her own behalf. But in reality those rights will be meaningless because children are not competent to exercise them. Each child has attempted to find representation through pro bono legal service providers, but none of them have found anyone with the resources to take on their cases. Absent this Court’s intervention, these children will be forced to defend themselves pro se under the immigration laws – a legal regime that, as the courts have recognized, rivals the Internal Revenue Code in its complexity.

(J.E.F.M. a minor, vs. Eric Holder, line #s removed). That will go over about as well as the other policies discussed in this post.

The previous post in this series is here.

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Cold Play, "Viva La Vida"

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