Stef's Blog - a native London Southlander and unrepentant 'Conspiraloon™' who doesn't trust anyone, not even himself. Sometimes I take pictures. I also enjoy swearing immensely and think much faster than I can type, so each post comes guaranteed to include at last one confusing typo. OK?
I can't quite put my finger on what it is exactly but something about Deek Jackson's Conspiracy Clown project suggests to me, in the gentlest of ways, that Deek is currently tussling with the teensy weensiest of logical paradoxes
Deek appears to be suggesting that anyone who gets angry when someone disagrees with them is a dick. He appears to be quite angry that people behave like this
Fans of Star Trek will recognise this as being the same strategy William Shatner routinely used to destroy otherwise impregnable machine intelligences through force of paradoxical argument alone
Human intelligence is, of course, clearly superior to machine intelligence as it is (usually) more than capable of processing contradictory data with the aid of contradictory beliefs, without melting or destroying any mining colonies
As it happens I agree with what Deek is trying to say (which is why I'm posting his video) but he comes out with almost as much bullshit as many of the truthers he's criticising, and he defends his bullshit just as aggressively as they defend theirs
In the UK, back in the days before the Internet, it was possible to make a fairly reliable estimation of an individual's political viewpoint based on the title of newspaper they had under their arm; The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Daily Mirror, The Daily Express, The Daily Sport and all the rest, each had a particular target demographic. The biases were unashamed and undenied
The priority for the readers of those newspapers was not the quality of research, or the writing, or the photography or any of that nonsense. Their top concern, first and foremost, was to read material which presented events in a way that was most pleasing to their pre-existing world view Curiously, apolitical readers of the back pages of newspapers often genuinely were interested in non-partisan, well-written, well researched articles, accompanied by decent photography. Which is why you could sometimes screw up guessing a person's politics by their choice of newspaper, if they'd only bought it for the sports coverage
The reason why I'm raising the subject of people prioritising their world-view ahead of their thirst for objectivity is that I've just finished reading Webster Tarpley's take on the recent massacre in Norway...
Washington DC, July 24, 2011 – The tragic terror attacks in Norway display a number of the telltale signs of a false flag provocation...
As I was reading the piece I was overcome with the same sense of frustrated tedium that I've been feeling recently as I plough through most of the 'alternative' news and commentary on the web. In that respect, I'm not singling Tarpley out. His article on Behring Breivik simply typifies the laziness that I think is corrupting alternative analyses of current events
What's my problem with Tarpley's piece?
For starters this 'number of telltale signs of false flag terror' stuff is way too reminiscent of the cliched 'all the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda' nonsense that mainstream commentators trot out five seconds after anything bad happens in the world
And the parallels with mainstream presstitution don't end there. Tarpley and countless other 'Truthers' started banging out their analyses of the massacre whilst the bodies were still warm. The result was not informed commentary but mounds of speculative verbiage - where the absence of facts and carefully thought out conclusions was compensated for by a pile of 'what ifs' and 'maybes'
And whilst I'm on the subject of carefully thought out conclusions, the last time I looked the whole purpose of a 'false flag op' was to create the appearance that it was carried out by another entity. So how does framing up reactionary white supremacist lunatics 'punish' the Norwegian state for refusing to bomb Libya or, as others are writing, for its friendly relations with Palestine?
If this were a false-flag op to punish Norway wouldn't the idea be to implicate Libya, or Palestine, or Muslims in general? Why would Zionist or other establisment gangs stage an atrocity which discredits an ideology they've worked like bastards to cultivate and which they need to maintain now more than ever?
The Muzzers are soooooo going to catch it for this one
There's no serious critical or original thought going on in Tarpley's piece; no more than in most of the other alternative commentary I've read. The writers are just simply filtering through the material as it becomes available and cherry-picking that which fits their pre-established narratives. The end result is a certainty of conclusion that is a 'characteristic hallmark' of the most blinkered, the most confirmation-bias afflicted and the most thoughtless
It is a thorough deconstruction of the anomalies which J7 has identified in the alleged evidence that places alleged bomber Shehzad Tanweer at the scene of the Aldgate explosion on 7/7
As well as being significant in itself, the comments underneath that post are also worth reading. There are a couple of thought-provoking observations about the nature of the damage caused on the 7/7 train carriages, and also a series of contributions from what appears to be the same anonymous commentator...
"How about he bent or crouched over the rucksack, which was on the floor, to detonate it? Or held it in his arms and triggered it?"
"You'll get your answer today when a survivor will testify that he saw Mohammed Sidique Khan detonate a bomb in his rucksack which was on the floor of the carriage. QED and time for you to put an end to your speculations"
"Are you accusing Mr Biddle of lying? What possible motive would a man who's had both legs blown off have in protecting the conspiracy that ruined his life? Don't tell me he's been 'got at'"
"The piece of shinbone was removed in hospital and passed to the scientists for DNA testing. It belonged to Tanweer. PS I was working at the forensic lab at the time."
"Are you accusing forensic scientists of fitting up Tanweer? "
"The answer to your question is no. I've only been in forensics for a mere 15 years. Can you give us a quick rundown of your forensic experience please?"
It turns out that, Daniel Biddle, the survivor who was going to 'testify that he saw Mohammed Sidique Khan detonate a bomb in his rucksack which was on the floor of the carriage' did not say that and actually referred to a small rucksack on someone's lap
This is a big difference, as the nature of the damage and injuries reported from the carriage is consistent with a large device at floor level, not a small device at waist level
Apparently, 15 years of relevant forensic experience does not equip the commentator to distinguish between statements which refer to...
Small rucksack on lap
vs.
(Large) rucksack on floor This is no Gil Grissom we're dealing with here
The style of the commentator's attack is an illustrative example of some of the strategies that apologists for Offical Narratives employ...
They insult and patronise in an attempt to provoke an emotional response
They ignore effective responses to their insinuations and simply move on to a new line of attack
and above all
They relentlessly attempt to force those who have identified flaws in an Official Narrative to generate speculations of their own
This is not the behaviour of someone who holds a point of view that they know to be well-supported. This the behaviour of someone who is either unconciously dissonant or consciously deceptive. This is what you do when you know you are defending a flawed position
And it doesn't help when, as illustrated by the following misguided comment I just saw under an Aangirfan post,truthers play right into the hands of those who would distract you from the weaknesses in their fairy story... "Maybe they just paid the guy off and he figures he's lost his legs in a bombing so why not profit from it. Even bomb victims can be ready to serve tyranny, either that or brainwashed at some point. These people did 911, so magicking up this "witness" is hardly beyond them."
To put it another way
Imagine you arranged to meet someone at a certain time and place
They don't turn up
The next day you phone that person and ask them why they didn't show
The person says 'But I was there!'
You say 'No you weren't'
The person then says 'If I wasn't there where do you think I was? And why? And with who?'
Would you be so daft as to even start to answer those questions?
(It's worth noting that after nine years of bullshit about holographic aircraft, space beams, MI6 vs CIA vs Mossad, LIHOP/ MIHOP/ BUNNYHOP, etc etc, 9/11 Truthers are finally realising that it might just be better to stick with fundamental facts that as wide a number of them as possible can agree to be 'True'... DECLARATION: NO MUSLIMS PROVEN INVOLVED IN 9/11)
Every self-respecting Conspiraloon has already seen the following clip numerous times but it is so beautifully expressed that I've never really tired of it
It's taken from 'Life is Worth Losing', a HBO Special by George Carlin
And what struck me the last time I watched the clip is the enthusiasm of the audience response to Carlin's routine.
In a handful of minutes Carlin, articulately and passionately, summarises the essence of Our predicament. The crowd clearly loves being told about how it is getting f*cked in the rear end and whoops and cheers every time Carlin pauses for breath
And then?
They all went home
And presumably carried on getting f*cked in the rear end as usual
Which, if you think about it for a moment, is quite peculiar behaviour
'You're getting f*cked!'
'Ha Ha, That's so true. Guffaw Guffaw'
'No really. I mean it!'
'Tee Hee. Got to go home now so that I can get up tomorrow and get f*cked some more. Ho Ho'
And if you think about it for a while longer, it's simple enough to figure out why Carlin, and people like Carlin, were and are allowed to have their little rants
Just as long as they're not offering any viable alternatives
As I haven't a lot of free time to put together much in the way of considered blog posts myself , I've been spending what free on-line time I have hanging around other people's blogs
Sad to say, and especially with the passing of Lord Patel, there continues to be not much in the way of UK blogging which suits my own personal tastes - sceptical of official narratives, but equally cautious about competing alternative narratives, and not inclined to run away with the fairies, or aliens
Craig Murray's blog is always worth popping by, though I suspect Craig has decided that he needs to retain at least some kind of connection with the mainstream in order to sustain a living. The swarm of trolls that descended on Craig's blog after he started commenting on the Israelis shooting nine peace activists in the back of the head indicates he must be doing something right
Aangirfan's prodigious blog is also worth visiting but, my, it does cross the line between anti-Zionism and something a tad more uncomfortable with reliable regularity
I've also spent a little time wading underneath the comments on Old Holborn's blog, though I always find myself wanting a shower afterwards
Old Holborn claims to be a Libertarian, though he and his entourage of commentators seem to spend the vast majority of their time venting race-hate about brown people and blaming them for all of the UK's ills, whilst devoting pretty much fuck all time to the Evils of the State. In fairness, Old Holborn also has the occasional wee pop at Zionists and has aroused the enmity of other members of the British Libertarian Party for doing so
That's the depressing state of Libertarianism in the UK - mostly pro-zionist wog-haters, plus the occasional anti-zionist wog-hater
In that respect, there are strands of American Libertarianism that are light years ahead of the essentially hate-fuelled discourse that's taking place in the UK
And what's the subject of Old Holborn's latest post? With the country, and the world, on the brink of an economic and social precipice, engineered by a governing, legal and financial elite that is to all intents and purposes entirely Muslim free. What's the Big Issue on the mind of the UK's leading Libertarian blogger?
The series of demented, racist comments underneath that post make truly depressing reading. There's no way of knowing just how representative this bile is of ordinary British people's views but there's no doubt that the media has been stoking it up for years and that must be having some effect
I despair
My one consolation is that, if history is anything to go by, it's the brown shirt dickheads who are first up against the wall after they've outlived their usefulness to their puppetmasters
For reasons that aren't important right now, I find myself in a position where I have to choose between continuing to be an expat or returning home to the UK
Until a few days ago I was all set to click the button, buy the ticket and return back to Blighty. A decision my family and close friends were supportive of
And then something interesting happened
Quite a few of my friends and family have started suggesting that I hold my horses and think about hanging on for a bit, certainly until my right to return to somewhere a long way from the UK becomes unconditional
Some have pointed to the relatively high cost of living and dire economic prospects of the UK as a reason for staying away. Both of which are very fair points. From the point of view of anyone who isn't an oligarch, the UK fucked
A couple of other people though have cited the newly, er, 'elected' Conservative government as a primo reason for keeping the Hell away from Dodge
Bollocks Personally, I think the Tories back in power is awesome news and the best conceivable outcome for the recent General Election
and the fact that the Tories have been forced into an unholy coalition with the Lib-Dems is just icing on the cake
It matters not a jot which figurehead is in charge of the supposed government. The Lords of Finance Capital controlled what went on in the UK before the General Election, and continue to do so after the General Election
What can change as the result of the election is people's perceptions of what is being done to them
I remember 20 years ago when a quarter of a million angry people tore up London in protest against a Community Charge which, in the scheme of things, was pretty much fuck all
And since then, with the noble exception of the protest against the invasion of Iraq, not a fucking squeak
Maybe, now that the Tories are nominally in charge, all those muppets who stood by all the ghastly things Nu Labour inflicted on the UK and world over the last 13 years might get off their arses and start opposing some of those ghastly things
Instead of supporting a political party on the basis that 'At least they're not the Tories' maybe it's about time a few more people defined their beliefs in terms of what they think is right and decent
because there ain't been much in the way of righteous and decency in the way the UK has been governed for a long, long time
-
edit: and hats off to the Daily Mash, it continues to be by far and away the best serious news channel in the United Kingdom..
Michael Parenti - the quintessential pinko commie subversive
As an antidote to all that bullcrap from the BBC I've been linking to recently, here's me re-linking to a couple of talks by Michael Parenti which I consider to be absolutely essential listening for any budding Conspiraloons out there...
there is such a thing as an elitist class interest
that elitist interest is pursued with sometimes deliberate, sometimescovert, intent
It goes without saying that those of us who hold the above parapolitical beliefs are currently dismissed as lunatic, whackjob conspiracy theorists
...very often by newspapers and television stations that are owned or controlled by that non-existent elitist class which has no vested elitist class interest and which pursues its non-existent interests completely in the open with total respect for all human life.
Sad to say, I'm unaware of any heavyweight British academics of Parenti's quality. Come to think of it, there aren't many North American ones either. Peter Dale Scott comes to mind
None of the above constitues an unqualified endorsement of Parenti. He advocates some views and solutions I personally disagree with but his analysis of the socio-economic structure of our current system is bang on the money imho
-
And whilst bigging up pinko commie subversives it's also worth mentioning a particular meme that's been doing the rounds on the conspirasphere since the current economic crisis entered a more overt stage...
That is the idea that, through the banking bailouts, the British and US governments are imposing Communism on their people via the back door
Hmmmmmmmmm, I'll just scratch my chin pensively for a second or two there
Maybe if the British and US governments were nationalising profitable businesses and putting them completely under state control then, yes, that could be a form of Communism
But what is actually happening is that the British and US governments are handing over stonking amounts of public cash, cash that will take generations to tax back off people, to the bankers in exchange for absolutely fuck all, and certainly no publicly-accountable control
That's as good an expression of Corporate Fascism*, not Communism, as you're ever likely to see
What's going on here is an awful lot of middle-class conservatives can see that they're getting buttfucked but cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that it's the very system they've endorsed all these years that is being harnessed to do the buttfucking
ergo, it must be communist in some way
yeah, right
hmmm, much cognitive dissonance
We didn't have genuinely free markets before the current crash got under way and they are not being replaced by communism. We lived under a oligarchical kleptocracy before the crash and we still live under a oligarchical kleptocracy after. The New World Order is the just the same as the Old One. It's just a tad more overt these days, that's all
I'd be the first person to acknowledge that populist concepts such as socialism, or environmentalism, or even religion get hijacked and subverted to suit elitist, totalitarian ends but that doesn't mean that ideals such as enviromental awareness, a desire for social justice or the natural human tendency for spirituality are intrinsically evil; even if some right evil bastards take control of them sometimes
There is, unfortunately, plenty of scope to get downhearted and depressed about the apparent power of the interests that would screw us all over and the flaws in the infilitrated movements which claim to oppose them but, fuck it, it's how we respond to the challenges in Life which define and shape who we are.
-
* = of course, according to some right wing loons, Fascism doesn't actually exist and all Bad Things that have been attributed to Fascism in the past are, in truth, Socialist. Take this comment recently seen on The Antagonist's blog for example...
"Talking of 'fascism' (a term you throw around with the abandon of a child with a toy) do a little research, comrade, and you'll discover that both Mussolini and Hitler were socialists. Not to mention Stalin, Mao and all the other squalid little regimes around the world that have caused the world so much suffering. They've probably notched up a good 250 million murders at least between them. Talk about state oppression!"
Yup, neither Mussolini nor Hitler were fascists. An outstanding expose of Real™ History
I think it's fair to say that anyone who has used the Internet has been sucked in by at least some disinfo bullcrap at some point in their surfing
There is, after all, an awful lot of it about
Mind you, there's awful lot of it about in the longer-established media.
I had a jaw-dropping conversation with a couple of people just before Christmas who patiently explained to me that the reason why Jean Charles de Menezes got shot was because he jumped over a ticket barrier and ignored repeated challenges from the police to stop running. They absolutely refused to accept anything different from me
And they never use the Internet
As it happens, I personally believe that the majority of 'serious' mainstream news coverage qualifies as disinformation to some extent or another
but back to the Internet...
I raise the subject of disinfo because I received a couple of emails from chums yesterday morning pointing me towards a video nasty of the alleged aftermath of an Israeli bombing attack in Gaza
The video struck me as being suspect for several reasons
- it was pixelated as fuck - there was no supporting information about who allegedly took the footage, or where, or when - the accompanying text on the original hosting site said 'copy available for download spread'
Because I'm a person who has never felt comfortable about giving or receiving commands, the thought of anonymous fuckers who I don't know from Adam urging me to spread/ duplicate/ forward something has the uncomfortable air of a chain letter about it to me
What the Internet was invented for...
As a general rule, if a video clip, or creepy letter, is strong enough I am perfectly capable of deciding whether I'm going to circulate it or not, and to who
Lebanon 2006 - before and after 'shopping'. As you can see the impact of the Israeli air attacks has been exaggerated to an outrageous degree by visual trickery
It's a funny game this disinfowar business. Expose a little photoshopping of the aftermath of a Israeli bomb attack and all those cluster bombs, cluster bombs which are still killing people two years on, simply melt away
We should, however, be thankful for the efforts of Little Green Footballs, the Hasbara crowd and all the other shills, cheats and trolls out there.
They're doing us a favour
They're reminding us not to be gullible fuckwits Just because someone is making noises you want to hear or offering up material that seems to support your pre-existing beliefs that is no reason to throw your critical faculties into the toilet.
If you don't trust this video
...then why the f*** should you trust this one?
If you don't apply the same level of rigour to your own beliefs as you apply to those beliefs you disagree with then you're allowing yourself to become a hypocrite and a fool
And I'm not excluding myself from the list of potential fuckwits.
Like I said, we've all been there and will almost certainly be there again
Back in 2001/2 a couple of friends were thinking about buying houses and asked for my opinion on the future prospects of the UK housing market
My take was that, even back then, the cost of housing was moving ahead of historical affordability levels and there was no way that house prices could keep rising faster than people's wage rises.
I guestimated that house prices would peak in the Summer of 2003, then fall back 10-20%, quite sharply
Which, of course, didn't happen
or rather it did happen, but in nothing like my estimated timescale
My mistake was that back then, before my full-on Conspiraloonery days, I assumed that the people responsible for our government and banks were not amoral sociopaths; fully committed to the path of deliberately wrecking millions of lives
Only an amoral psychopath would have encouraged the boom to continue beyond the 2002/03 levels, to a point where the inevitable economic correction would have to be so large it would become a national, and international, calamity
Make no mistake, a ghastly economic crash was a 100%, guaranteed, dead cert, inevitable consequence of the way our economy was being run, and anyone who says no-one saw it coming is either a liar or a fucking idiot
Now, as it happens, I've concluded that only a minority of the people who claim that no-one saw it coming are liars.
The majority really are fucking idiots; easily manipulated, greedy, dissonant, fearful idiots
You can take pretty much anything you've even seen written or said in the mainstream media about economic and financial affairs over the last ten years and forget it. It was all Wrong and yet the people who earned a living peddling Wrong are still at their jobs peddling a new brand of Wrong. For all the good they did anyone, they may as well have stayed at home, playing with themselves and eating cheesy wotsits, and not bothered going into work for the last ten years
Better than a career in journalism or banking, especially when combined with self-abuse
The same also applies to millions of people employed in the service sector over the last decade. A ridiculous number of people have been whacking off, playing silly games and kidding themselves that they were engaged in meaningful work.They enjoyed an undeservedly high standard of material living off of worthless IOUs paid to foreigners who've been working in sweat shops and fields on their behalf.
So preoccupied did the British become with getting rich (sic.) off the back of shuffling paper that we took to importing several million immigrants to wait on us and wipe our kids' arses
This was all bonkers and wrong on so many levels
And there came a point where you would have to be an idiot yourself to believe that no-one in a position of power saw the inevitable collapse coming
It is also worth remembering that the infrastructure for a full-blown police state was being rushed-in at the same time the debt bubble was being inflated to calamitous levels
I now firmly believe that the people responsible for our governments and banks truly are amoral psychopaths, engaged in deliberate economic and social warfare against the rest of us, and the quality of my spooky predictive powers is now several orders of magnitude greater than it was seven or eight years ago
Put simply, if everything really was the result of a cock up rather than a conspiracy why is it that the apparent cock ups virtually always end up favouring the same class of people?
-
And whilst on the subject of dissonant bullshit...
There are some interesting parallels between the mainstream coverage of the recent economic boom and the Man Made Global Warming narrative
Each involved people looking at graphs of recent upward trending data, extrapolating those trends way, way up and fabricating explanations as to why this time it is different and why the upward trend was going to continue for the foreseeable future.
Both groups of rampers, economic and MMGW, have had the bulk of the mainstream media, industry and government on their side
In opposition to the people who believe that Man Made Global Warming, like house prices, could only go up there was a minority of people arguing that global mean temperature, like house prices, is cyclic, that there are signs a turning point has been reached and a downturn could well be on the cards
If and when it is established that a turning point has been reached, we will doubtlessly be told that (virtually) no-one saw it coming and that the Man Made Global Warming advocates were acting on the consensus of opinion of the majority of the experts
Bullshit
As with predictions about which way the economy was heading, consensus counts for absolutely fuck all
Either something is right or it isn't
And popular climate 'science', as it is currently practiced, has a lot more to do with politics and story telling than hard, testable science
There's a world of difference between hard sciences like chemistry and physics, which involve testable, repeatable processes and the more complex, chaotic natural sciences, such a climatology and evolutionary theory; which involve making up stories to explain that which has already happened and which is unlikely to happen again in quite the same way
It is easy enough to whip up an experiment to prove or disprove a theory about gravity. A lot harder to come up with something repeatable and testable which explains where wombats came from or if it is going to snow in New Orleans next week
Which is why the often-repeated claims that Man Man Global Warming is all about hard-science are bollocks
Staring at graphs of natural systems and kidding yourself that you've come up with a computer model which tells you what's going to happen next, be it with the weather or the financial markets, is a mug's game and will inevitably end up with only one result.
My favourite comment from the 1,000 or so posted underneath this recent article. Reference to to 'serious' scientists, i.e. scientists who agree with the views of the commentator, is as good an indicator that the writer is an utter twunt as any I know.
And, remember, whenever commenting about MMGW underneath news articles, any stories about unusually cold temperatures or heavy snowfall are examples of 'weather'. Any stories about unusually high temperatures or Hurricane Katrina are examples of 'climate'. 'Climate' stories are inherently more significant than 'Weather' stories'
-
A few days ago Lord Patel, because he knows I enjoy this stuff so much, sent me a copy of the latest press release from the Met Office. It's a corker...
30/12/2008 11:38
Met Office (National) (Met Office)
Pacific Continues to Influence Global Climate
2009 is expected to be one of the top-five warmest years on record, despite continued cooling of huge areas of the tropical Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon known as La Nina.
According to climate scientists at the Met Office and the University of East Anglia the global temperature is forecast to be more than 0.4 C above the long-term average. This would make 2009 warmer than the year just gone and the warmest since 2005.
During La Nina, cold waters rise to the surface to cool the ocean and land surface temperatures. The 2009 forecast includes an updated decadal forecast using a Met Office climate model. This indicates a rapid return of global temperature to the long-term warming trend, with an increasing probability of record temperatures after 2009.
Professor Chris Folland from the Met Office Hadley Centre said: "Phenomena such as El Nino and La Nina have a significant influence on global surface temperature. Warmer conditions in 2009 are expected because the strong cooling influence of the recent powerful La Nina has given way to a weaker La Nina. Further warming to record levels is likely once a moderate El Nino develops."
These cyclical influences can mask underlying warming trends as Professor Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, explains: "The fact that 2009, like 2008, will not break records does not mean that global warming has gone away. What matters is the underlying rate of warming - the period 2001-2007, with an average of 14.44 C, was 0.21 C warmer than corresponding values for the period 1991-2000." ENDS
Wow! Warmest year for four years! Maybe...
Outstanding!
The Met Office has now taken to reporting predictions, predictions from people with an unparalleled record for making shit predictions, as if they were fact.
They're getting pretty desperate now
and really beyond parody
And, sure enough, this prediction was faithfully reported as 'news' by the press agencies straight away
The implication of the Press Release it that the deep ocean is acting as a huge heat sink, hiding all that 200 years' worth of alleged surplus warming out of the way for the time being. I would love to see some data that proves it's actually warmer down there - because everything I've seen to date points to nothing of the sort
As with the now discredited ramping of the housing and debt markets, this MMGW thing is now getting beyond the point where the people ramping it can claim honest error. Their subjectivity has become quite blatant. We're heading into outright dishonesty now.
Just like our fucked up financial services industry, the MMGW lobby is trying to tide itself over with some short-term fudging; in the hope that things will somehow turn back their way before the fudging is more widely comprehended
And, as with the now discredited ramping of the housing and debt markets, I'm not claiming for a second that the majority of people who have Faith in MMGW are being deliberately dishonest - the boundless human capacity for self-delusion, dissonance, religious belief and self interest can account for much of what is going on
But not all of it
There is no good reason to believe that the top people behind the MMGW agenda, or our economy, do not understand the inevitable consequences of what they are doing
and there's every reason to believe that they do understand what they are doing
After a couple of weeks away in the Boondocks I returned home to discover that billions of people around the world appear to be gripped by post-election euphoria...
The astute voters of New Zealand can now look forward to a future of glittering prosperity, packed with the kind of economic 'reforms' much beloved by the likes of the IMF and the World Bank, delivered by an ex.(?) employee of the Federal Reserve
There really is nowhere to run to
-
Meanwhile, in the wake of a only slightly less globally significant election, quite a few people appear to be whacking off deliriously at the prospect of America's first Blackish President
Presumably, the people who think that Obama's election is going to change anything are the same kind of fucknuts who thought that the election of Margaret Thatcher 30 years ago heralded a new era in gender equality or who didn't feel like vomiting when exposed to the 'Things Can Only Get Better' mediawankfest that accompanied the 1997 General Election
As it happens, clips of people dancing in the Millennium Dome to 'Things Can Only Get Better' in 1997 are thin on the Internet - I suspect eternal, irredeemable shame has got something to do with it - and I've only been able to locate this partial record put up by a Labour Party droid...
One comment underneath that clip's page on Youtube really did bring out the misanthrope in me. Does any species capable of supporting even a solitary individual as stupid as this really deserve to survive...
"The Conservatives may be leading in the polls at the moment, however, would David Cameron be able to take on the world banking system like Gordon Brown has? I think not..."
Fast forward back to 2008 and anyone who expects true change for the good from a President-elect who surrounds himself with psychos like Emanuel, Volcker or Brzezinski truly is an uttter, utter fucknut
One comment I saw over at Lord P.'s blog sums up my own feelings about the US Presidential Election nicely...
"What happens when you replace a sociopathic lunatic with an eloquent, sane man who espouses the exact same policies?
The reason why I have such a very big problem with Richard Dawkins is not that he is the leading spokesperson for Darwinist Evolutionary Theory. As it happens, I personally have many strong objections to Darwinism. However, some of my best friends are Evolutionists yet I feel absolutely no need to direct abuse at them
Nope, it's not the Darwinism thing that pisses me off about Dawkins
It's the fact that he represents the perversion of what now passes for popular science which has little to do with the idealised scientific method and a lot more to do with advocacy, case-building, lawyers tricks and politics
Science shouldn't be about amassing whatever evidence you can find to support your ideas
It should be about seeking out the material which most strongly challenges your theories
The perfect scientist says to himself every day 'I don't want to be wrong so I'm going to come up with everything I can to prove myself wrong'
Some common clues which suggest that someone posing as a scientist might actually be behaving like a Dawkins-style scientician include...
Cherry picking of real data and the rejection, or editing, of anomalous data
Any attempts to force people into 'you're with us or against us' style false choices
Any claims that the science of any subject is 'settled once and for all'
Attempts to depict anyone with opposing points of view as a nutter
The problem is, of course, when faced with a fundamentalist pulling these kind of stunts is that it's difficult not to be drawn into a similar pattern of behaviour and respond to foamy-mouthed advocacy with foamy-mouthed counter advocacy
I've had a couple of recent exchanges with some chums on the subject of man made global warming
They send me links about temperatures going up. I send them links about temperatures going down
They send me links about polar bear numbers shrinking and pictures of cute baby bears stuck on ice floes. I send them links about about polar bear numbers not shrinking and pictures of ice breakers stuck in ice
and then I remembered visiting Athens this year, a few days after it had been covered by six inches of freak snow
and then I remembered a mate spending the night in my place after visiting China with a suitcase full of flip flops and chinos only to walk into the worst snowstorms in fifty years
Here in the UK we've just endured yet another spectacularly shitty summer, with the BBC covering up for that other bunch of propagandist stooges at the Met Office, who fucked-up their summer forecast yet again, by downplaying how bad the summer was and knocking out articles suggesting that there was nothing unusual about this summer at all...
I can't find any reference to that fact on the State Broadcasting Company's website but I did find an old article bigging up the implications of sunspot activity four years ago (link corrected), when sunspot activity was consistent with the global warming myth. The article ends with the most outstanding horseshit I've seen labeled as science for at least a week...
'This latest analysis shows that the Sun has had a considerable indirect influence on the global climate in the past, causing the Earth to warm or chill, and that mankind is amplifying the Sun's latest attempt to warm the Earth.'
When the language of climate change gets so screwed up that the Sun is referred to as having an 'indirect impact on global climate' (as opposed to the presumably ever so direct impact of that devil gas CO2) you can be pretty sure somebody's trying to sell you a serious lemon
Anyone who knows a little about the kind of fruity little clubs and belief systems popular with our ruling classes will have some sympathy with Lord Patel's reservations about the corporate-sponsored wankfest that was yesterday's Olympic handjobover ceremony...
Coincidentally, as part of a personal regime to get fit enough to qualify for a visa to get the fuck out of here long before the Illuminated Fascistic Horror that will be London 2012, I walked down the length of the River Lea in East London and through the 2012 Olympic site a couple of days ago
There's a lot of building work going on and plenty of publicity material slapped up on the walls to remind passers-by, or rather not remind passers by, of the massive exercise in dissonant doublethink which has the likes of McDonalds, Coke and Visa investing heavily in sponsoring an event which purports to represent everything that they are not
Official Olympic 'Partner' logos
Not Official Olympic 'Partner' logo
Whilst in the area I checked out Hackney Marshes, home to no less than 88 full size amateur league football pitches and arguably London's most iconic monument to the supposed Olympian amateur sporting ideal - something which wasn't lost on Nike...
The fact that the Marshes are going to be smothered in delicious concrete and turned into a car park for the Olympics says it all really
Cue the Joni Mitchell...
...though comparing Hackney Marshes with Paradise might be pushing things, just a little
Handy Tips for Internet-based identity thieves: Mother's maiden name: Yamamoto,
Primary Education: The mean streets of Lambeth,
Secondary School: St Trinians,
Pet's Name: Zoltan! Hound of Dracula,
Memorable Date: Yesterday
This Blog approves of Economicians who sound like ducks
Michael Hudson
F W Engdahl
Proudly sponsored by:
This blog is also an Official™ Member of the Dame Pauline Neville Jones Fan Club
Fish of the Month
Piglet Squid
Sudden Adult Death Syndrome
In our first ever public health campaign, we seek to highlight the unexplained and deadly curse that stalks our world - and has left our greatest scienticians baffled! Please alert us to possible sightings and help eradicate this menace once and for all.
